The Bright One (7 page)

‘'Tis all part of the learning,' Molly said. ‘Everyone has to start at the bottom!'

‘Why?' Moira demanded. ‘Why do I have to sweep floors and clean basins? 'Tis not something I'll ever do once I've got away from it.'

‘Will I wet the tea again?' Molly said soothingly. The child did look tired. Hadn't she been on her feet all day? ‘'Twill take a drop more water. Take off your shoes in the meanwhile.'

She gave Moira a cup of tea and a scone.

‘And now I'll have to get on with the meal,' she said. ‘It will never do not to have it ready when Dada comes in. I'm all behind because I've been sewing your dress.'

Moira's face showed a flicker of interest. ‘Is it finished, then?'

‘Not quite,' Molly admitted. ‘Not a lot to do, though.'

‘Where is it? Can I see it?'

‘No,' Molly said firmly. ‘When the meal's over and we've cleared away, I'll fit it on you.'

‘But I want to go out this evening!' Moira protested.

‘Take your choice,' Molly said. ‘Have your dress fitted or go out. Either way I'm starting on Breda's tomorrow. Where are you going, anyway? Who with?'

She was aware that at fifteen years old Moira couldn't be kept on a leash. Would it were so! She didn't feel safe with her gone so much as beyond the end of the road.

‘For a walk,' Moira said briefly.

‘I asked who with.'

‘Friends. I don't know, do I? It depends who turns up.'

The argument was interrupted by Patrick and Colum who came in at the door like a tidal wave. They were so big, so full of life. How is it that my sons are huge and my daughters small, Molly wondered.

The twins, though they worked in different places, left home at the same time and somehow always managed to arrive home together.

‘Tea not ready?' Colum demanded. ‘I'm starving!'

‘'Twill not be more than a few minutes,' Molly said. ‘Moira, lay the table.'

‘Why me?' Moira complained. ‘Haven't I been working all day?'

‘That's true,' Molly said. ‘And if Breda was here I'd be asking her, but since they're haymaking she and Dada might be a bit late. Would you all want to be waiting for your tea until they came home?'

‘No!' Patrick and Colum chorused.

‘Then why shouldn't
they
lay the table?' Moira demanded.

She had a point, Molly thought, though not a very good one. There were things women and girls did, other things men and boys did.

‘Because that's the way it is,' she answered. ‘Do I ever ask you girls to bring in the water, or mend a chair or put up a shelf? No, I do not! So get on with it. What sort of a wife will you make if you're not willing to lay a table?'

The meal itself would take no time at all to make. It was, as always, fresh soda bread with jam, except that today, as a treat, there were eggs; only four amongst seven of them, but she would scramble them, adding a drop of milk to make them go further. Earlier in the year, in the spring when the hens were laying prolifically, there was nothing she liked better than to serve every one of her family with a new-laid egg, boiled to perfection, with two for James, of course. But the hens were not laying so well now.

The difficulty was in dividing seven into four with people coming in at different times. In the end she decided on two for the four children already present and the other two between James, Breda and herself. She would wait until they came in. That way James would have almost a whole egg to himself. Haymaking was hard work.

‘Mr O'Reilly sent you this,' Patrick said.

It was a small sample packet of assorted biscuits.

‘The traveller left a few for Mr O'Reilly to give to his best customers,' Patrick said. ‘This is the only one I've seen him give out.'

‘You couldn't call
me
a best customer,' Molly said. ‘Though I'd like to be.'

Patrick laughed.

‘I think he's sweet on you, Mammy!'

‘Then it is not reciprocated,' Molly said. ‘Though you must never tell him so. He's nice enough, poor man, and I'm sorry for him with that wife of his. Just tell him thank you kindly.'

She vaguely wondered if Patrick could be right. Luke O'Reilly frequently sent her small things from the shop, though usually samples which he himself had been given. Well, he was on the road to nowhere there. Why would anyone with a man like James O'Connor coming home to her give a sideways glance at anyone else, even if it was not a sin in a married woman, which it was, though not one
she'd
be likely to have to go to Confession for.

The smell of the scrambled eggs was tantalizing in her nostrils. She could have sat down there and then and eaten the lot. She hoped Breda and James wouldn't be too long.

She had hardly finished serving when Breda came in, on her own. ‘Dada said we were not to wait for him because he will go to the Golden Harp with the others. Didn't he have a terrible thirst on him, he said. I would have liked a dandelion and burdock but he said I was too young to go into such a place.'

‘Indeed you are!' Molly said. ‘I'd be very cross if that were to happen. Did he say how long he would be?'

‘No, Mammy.'

He wouldn't. There was no telling, especially as he would have some money on him, for Farmer O'Farrell paid his casual men daily. He might be home in an hour or it might be bedtime before he rolled in.

‘Oh well!' she said. ‘I'll scramble the one egg for you and me right away. Are you hungry?'

‘Starving!' Breda said. ‘Though Mrs O'Farrell gave us some tea and bread earlier on.'

‘As soon as I've finished I'll start again on your dress,' Molly said to Moira.

For modesty's sake, since the boys were around, Molly and Moira went to the bedroom to fit the dress. Molly slipped it over her daughter's head and stepped back to judge the result. Not bad, she thought. Not bad at all. Now for fitting the sleeves.

‘The neck's wrong!' Moira said.

‘Wrong?'

‘Oh, Mammy, it's not at all what I wanted! Did I not say I wanted a sweetheart neckline? You'll have to cut it lower.'

‘I will do no such thing!' Molly said. ‘Stand still, and hold out your arm while I fit the sleeve.'

‘But Mammy, I can't possibly have this high, round neck!' Moira wailed. ‘It's childish.'

‘You
are
a child.' Molly spoke through a mouthful of pins. She had known what would happen. She was well aware of Moira's wishes.

‘I am not! I am fifteen!' Moira cried. ‘I want a sweetheart neckline!'

‘So you are fifteen,' Molly said. And well developed, she thought, with a high, round bust, not at all the figure for a low neck. ‘It is not grown-up, and you will not have a low neck! Do you want to make an exhibition of yourself?'

She probably did. Her pretty daughter liked to be noticed. What she didn't realize was that it didn't need low necks for her beauty to be appreciated. To display herself in the way she desired was to invite the wrong kind of attention. Moira had to be protected from herself.

‘I don't care if I do!' Moira said.

‘Well I do,' Molly said. ‘And do you want to embarrass Kathleen in front of the sisters? You will have a round neckline, not too high, not too low, with a white collar which will look good against the red.'

It would also show off Moira's elegant neck, Molly thought, but there was no need to say so. Wasn't the child vain enough already? She fervently hoped she would have none of this trouble over Breda's dress. She hated dressmaking, it was the least of her womanly skills. Only the lack of money prevented her going into Ennis and buying ready-made dresses for the three of them.

In the end, Moira was called for by her best-friend-of-the-moment, Brigid Duffy. The twins had already set out on their own pursuits.

Molly was uneasy about Moira's choice of friend. She reckoned that Brigid was fast, a bit wild; not the sort of companion for Moira, who needed a restraining hand rather than encouragement. But you couldn't blame Brigid, she reasoned. The Duffys were not up to much all round: friendly and cheerful, but slatternly, not over-scrupulous, and frequently in trouble with the Garda.

‘Don't be late back,' she cautioned Moira. ‘Not a minute after half-past nine!'

‘Oh, Mammy, that's too early!' Moira protested. ‘It's a summer's evening. It doesn't get dark for ages. Brigid never has to be in by any special time.'

I can well believe that, Molly thought.

‘You just don't trust me,' Moira grumbled. ‘You've forgotten what it's like to be young!'

It was the sad truth, Molly admitted to herself, that, at bottom, she never quite trusted Moira. It was an awful thing to think about your own flesh and blood.

‘Quarter to ten, then,' she said. ‘And if you are a minute later you'll not go out for the rest of the week!'

She had not, however, forgotten what it was like to be Moira's age. She remembered it all, though it did seem a long time ago. And had she ever, at fifteen, envisaged how it would all turn out? In fact, she thought, she had always accepted that either she would marry an Irishman and raise a family or, if no man asked for her, she would emigrate, make her way in the world.

But wasn't raising a family the highest calling a woman could have? Didn't Father Curran preach it all the time? Didn't he say that mothers were raised high, were precious in God's eyes, and that in heaven a special place would be reserved for them?

She hoped he was right. It didn't always feel like that.

‘Will you start my dress tonight?' Breda asked when Moira had flounced out.

‘Not tonight. I don't want to clutter up the place when Dada's coming for his supper.'

‘Why don't you like sewing, Mammy?' Breda enquired.

‘I don't know. I never have, nor my mother before me. There'll be no sewing in heaven for me!'

‘What will there be?' Breda was curious. It was the kind of conversation she loved, and Mammy never dodged it.

‘We don't know, do we? But in
my
heaven there'll be running water, hot and cold, scented soap, and bathrooms like they have at the Big House, only warmer.'

‘What else?'

‘Well, let me see now! Sure, there'd be plenty of food, all kinds, but not too many potatoes. And someone else would have cooked it, which is why I don't care what kind of ovens they have. Of course, just now and then I might feel like making a batch of soda bread. And as for clothes, they'd all be off-the-peg, perfectly fitting, and in beautiful colours!

‘I'm afraid it's very domestic, my heaven!' She glanced across at Kieran as she apologized, but his head was in a book, he hadn't heard her.

‘So what about you?' she asked Breda.

‘It would be like Kilbally,' Breda answered. ‘With the beach and the sea and the cliffs. And I'd have a dog. And nobody would have to cross the water if they didn't want to, just to earn money. We'd all be together. And there'd be free sweets: toffees, chocolate, fudge. You could eat as much as you liked without feeling sick, and not a penny to pay. Can I stay up until Dada comes in?'

‘Not unless he's home before nine,' Molly said. ‘That's your latest. You're a growing girl.'

She doubted now that he would be home before then, and it turned out she was right. All the family, except herself, were in bed before James came home, Moira sneaking in at ten o'clock, charging through the living room and into the bedroom, eyes down, looking neither to right nor to left.

James was not quite precise in his movements or in his speech. He had clearly had a lot, but he couldn't quite be called drunk. But in any case, Molly thought, even when he
was
drunk he was never loud-mouthed or violent. On the contrary, he was mellow and amorous, as he proved now, taking her in his arms, holding her close, kissing her with passion.

She succumbed to his embrace with pleasure, while at the back of her mind wondering how much of the day's earnings had gone to the landlord of the Harp.

‘I'm as hungry as a hunter,' James said, releasing her. ‘And Farmer O'Farrell gave me some rashers. I could eat a couple.'

‘I'll put them on,' Moira said. ‘And I saved you an egg, which will go nicely with them.'

It seemed to Breda that the trip to Dublin would never happen, so long was the waiting. In reality it was little more than a week from the time her dress had been completed – as it happened, to her utter delight – but each day seemed at least the length of two. In the evenings she went to bed early, hoping that the night hours would pass more quickly than those of the day, but it didn't work. The August evenings were bright, the sun still in the sky, so that she couldn't get to sleep.

She was still awake this evening when Moira came to bed indeed she usually was – and she couldn't refrain from starting a conversation with her sister.

‘What will it be like?' she asked.

‘You've asked me a hundred times!' Moira protested. ‘I've told you, I
don't know
! At least it'll be better than Kilbally.' She spoke with deep disgust.

‘I
like
Kilbally,' Breda said. ‘But Dublin will be different, won't it?'

‘How am I supposed to know?' Moira asked impatiently. ‘I've never been, any more than you have. None of us have been except Kathleen, and she never writes a word about the city.'

She was peering into her hand-mirror, a worried frown on her face. She had a spot just starting, bang in the middle of her chin, and she could tell by the look of it that it was going to get worse before it got better. As she stroked it it felt like a large, round hillock under her finger. Should she squeeze it, she wondered anxiously? Or perhaps bathe it with hot water? How could she face Dublin with an angry spot on her chin? All those people looking at her. It was too humiliating for words.