Academy Street (2 page)

The coffin is crawling towards the front door. Then the men leave it down on two
chairs, and rest for a minute. When they pick it up again everyone walks behind it
and it passes through the open door, into the sun. On the gravel there is a black
hearse and a thousand faces looking at them. The men bring the coffin to the back
of the hearse and shove it in through the open door, like into a mouth. Maeve starts
to cry and Claire goes to her.

Tess turns and sees Mike Connolly at the edge of the yard, with Captain the dog at
his feet. He is holding his cap in his hand. She thinks he is crying. Everyone is
crying, but she is not. She looks up and sees the blackbird on the laurel tree, eyeing
her.
You robber
, she wants to shout,
you tore my mother’s wallpaper, and now she’s
dead.
She looks past the white railings that run around the lawn, over the sloping
fields and the quarry, far off to a clump of trees. Then the hearse door is shut
and she gets a jolt. She looks around. She does not know what to do. The evening
sun is blinding her. It is shining on everything, too bright, on the laurel tree
and the lawn and the
white railings, on the hearse and the gravel and the blackbird.

The hearse pulls away and people start walking behind it. Her uncle’s car follows
and then the horses and traps, and the neighbours, wheeling bicycles. Claire is beside
her again, leaning into her face. ‘You’ve to go into the house, Tess. You and Maeve,
ye’re to stay at home with Kathleen.’

Her cousin Kathleen takes her hand, leads herself and Maeve around to the side of
the house, down the steps into the small yard. Before they reach the back door, Tess
breaks away and runs back across the gravel, the lawn, off into the fields. On a
small hill she stands and watches the hearse moving up the avenue, turning onto the
main road. It moves along the stone wall that circles her father’s land, the crowd
and the horses and traps walking after it. Sometimes the trees or the wall block
her view. But she watches, and waits, until the black roof of the hearse comes into
view again, flashing in the sun. It slows and turns left onto Chapel Road, and the
people follow, like dark shapes. Then they begin to disappear.

She stands still, watching until the last shape fades and she is alone. She is gone.
Her mother is gone. She feels a little sick, dizzy from the huge sky above. She feels
the ground falling away from under her—the grass and the field and the hill are all
sliding away, until she is left high and dry on the top of a bare hill. Like the
Blessed Virgin in the picture in the church when she is taken up into Heaven from
the top of a mountain. Maybe she, Tess, is being taken up into Heaven this very minute.
She can hardly breathe. She turns her face towards the low sun and closes her eyes
and waits.
Please
. She waits for
her mother’s face to appear, a hand to reach out.
She leans her whole body upwards, desperate for the sun to touch her, the wind to
raise her, the sky to open, Heaven to pull her in.

When she opens her eyes she is still in her father’s field, and there, a few feet
away, are cattle, five or six, staring at her with big faces and sad eyes. The ground
is under her feet again, the grass is green, nothing has changed. She looks around,
frightened, ashamed. She starts running back towards the house. She runs into the
yard, searches the barn, the coach house, the stables. She sticks her head into the
dark musty potato house and calls out, ‘Mike, Mike, are you there?’ and waits and
listens. Everywhere is silent. Soon it will be dark. She hears the sound of a motor
in the distance. A car is coming down the avenue. She stands and waits for it to
appear in the yard. Her heart is pounding. It is the hearse, she thinks, returning.
With her mother sitting up in the front seat, smiling, and the coffin behind open,
empty—a terrible mistake put right. They had come to the wrong house. They had come
for the wrong woman—it was old Mrs Geraghty back in the village they should have
taken.

But it is not the hearse that drives into the yard. It is Miss Tannian, the poultry
instructress. She steps out of her car in a green tweed costume and patent shoes.
And auburn hair, like Tess’s mother’s. The sky is pink and as she comes towards Tess
the last of the sun lights her up from behind. She is speaking to Tess, saying,
I
am sorry, I am so sorry
. Tess runs away from her, off along the edge of the yard,
under the arch towards the orchard. The big iron gates are open and she runs in and
stands in the shadows. The apple trees are dark, their low crooked branches like
old women’s skirts. Her eyes dart all over the place, along the four high walls.
And then she sees him, Mike Connolly, sitting on an old stump at the far end, his
head down, Captain beside him. As soon as she sees him the tears come. She runs and
falls at his feet and begins to sob.

It is dark when the others come home. Her aunt Maud and Maud’s husband, Frank, and
the aunts and cousins from Dublin crowd into the kitchen. The Tilley lamps are lit.
There are all kinds of nice things on the pantry shelves, cakes and buns and biscuits.
Mrs Glynn, who took the baby over to her house, is here. She helps Tess’s sisters
serve tea and sandwiches to all the guests, and whiskey to the men. Her father sits
quietly in the armchair. Her brother Denis has his head down. Tess wants to climb
up on his lap like she used to when she was four. They are talking about the baby,
Oliver. Aunt Maud says she will take him.

‘It’ll be for the best,’ she says.

Her father says nothing.

‘It’ll only be for a year or two,’ Aunt Maud says. ‘And sure ye’ll be over and back,
and Kathleen can bring him back every Sunday to play with the girls.’ She looks around
the table. ‘That’s settled so. And isn’t it what she wanted herself?’

‘It is,’ her father says at last. ‘It’s what she wanted, all right.’

She goes up to the front hall and drags a stool over to open the door. It is dark
outside. She sits on the step and folds
her arms. She can make out the laurel tree
on the lawn. She remembers when she and Maeve came home from school every day, her
mother sitting under the shiny laurel tree with a blanket around her knees, sewing,
and Oliver beside her in his cradle. Sometimes her head was down, sleeping. Oliver
wasn’t long born and he was sleeping too. Tess would run to them and look in over
the top of his cradle and smell his baby smell. Her mother’s long hair was tied back.
Then she would get a fit of coughing and her hair would come loose. Once there was
blood in her hankie. When she was in bed, sick, her hair was let down. They took
Tess up to her mother’s room last week and her mother was sitting up in her white
nightdress. They lifted her onto the high bed and her mother kissed her forehead.
But then, when Tess started to stroke her mother’s hair and lie against her, Evelyn
said, Come on, down with you now, madam, and she took her away.

Tess has not had her tea. She wonders who will make their teas now. She likes a boiled
egg and currant cake with butter. She likes when her mother stands beside her father
at the table and pours him a cup of steaming tea from the teapot. Sometimes, he puts
out his hand and touches her mother’s bottom and she and her sisters pretend not
to see. Her mother is in her coffin in the chapel tonight. God will probably drop
down his Golden Chute soon—any minute now—when he is ready to take her mother up
into Heaven. That is how she, Tess, and her brothers and sisters arrived on earth.
Her mother told her that whenever she and Tess’s father wanted a new baby, she went
to the chapel and there she prayed and
God, hearing her prayer, dropped down his
Golden Chute and popped in a baby and down the chute the baby flew, fat and happy
and gurgling, into her mother’s waiting arms.

Tess takes off her shoes, looks up at the black sky, begins to hum. She is not sure
if the Golden Chute actually takes people back up into Heaven. That is a guess. She
wonders if her mother is on her way, now, this minute, moving through the dark sky,
in and out among the cold stars. She grows a little afraid. She looks down at her
hands. She picks at the old burn mark on her thumb. She bites off a bit of skin and
chews it. She remembers the day she got the burn. Oliver wasn’t even born and she
had not started school. She went out with her mother to feed the hens. Chuck, chuck,
chuck, they called out. They went into the duck-house and the hen-house to gather
the eggs. Her mother had a bucket and Tess had a small tin can. Tess wanted to be
just like her mother. When her mother put the eggs in her bucket that day, Tess wanted
eggs in her tin can too. She started to cry, but then her mother said, Look, Look,
and she picked up three lovely shiny stones from the yard and put them into Tess’s
can and rattled them around. Then her mother ran off inside, in case the bread got
burnt. Tess ran after her, but she saw another lovely pebble shining up at her from
the ground and she stopped and put it in her tin can and raced in through the small
yard, calling out to her mother about her new pebble. At the back door she tripped
and tumbled down the steps into the kitchen, and then, half running, she fell sideways
into the open fire. Her mother cried out and let the griddle pan fall and ran and
lifted Tess and
swung her across the kitchen into the big white sink. Later, telling
Tess’s father what had happened, her mother began to cry. Her two little hands were
burnt, she told him, wiping her eyes. Tess tried to show him the pebbles but her
hands were all bandaged up.

Everyone dresses in black the next morning and goes to the funeral. Tess and Maeve
stay behind with Mike Connolly. The dining-room table is set with the good china
and cutlery. There’s a leg of mutton cooked and left aside in the kitchen. Mrs Glynn
comes with warm brown bread. She takes off her coat and puts eggs on to boil. She
tells Maeve to mash up cold potatoes with a fork. When the plates are ready Tess
and Maeve carry them up to the dining room. Mrs Glynn puts on her coat and says if
she hurries she’ll make the burial. Tess’s heart jumps. Mrs Glynn takes Maeve with
her, but Tess is too young to go to the graveyard. ‘Your poor mother,’ she says.
Before they leave Tess asks about Oliver. When is Oliver coming home? Mrs Glynn says
they can come and see him tomorrow. He’ll be going to live with Aunt Maud after that.

When they are gone the house is quiet. The smell of the mutton makes her feel sick.
She listens to the clock ticking. Everything is changing. No one puts the wireless
on any more. She hears water dripping inside the pipes high up on the wall. Upstairs
the floorboards are creaking. She starts to grow afraid. She is sure there is someone
up there. She thinks her mother will come down the stairs and into the kitchen. She
runs out into the small yard and as she turns the corner
onto the lawn she crashes
into Mike Connolly. ‘Ah,
a leanbh
, slow down, slow down.’

‘I think Momma is coming down the stairs, Mike, I think she’s back. I heard her steps.’

‘Come on in now out of that, and make me some tea. My belly’s above in my back. D’you
know how many cows I milked this morning, do you? Before you even turned over for
your second sleep, Missy!’

He throws two sods of turf on the fire, and hangs the kettle on the crane. The clock
is quieter now. Outside, the crows are cawing. Mike is standing, looking into the
fire, and she does the same. When the flames are big and red and the kettle is singing
he makes a pot of tea. He cuts the bread and says, ‘Will we make a bit of toast?’
She smiles. He knows—like her mother knows—that toast is her favourite, favourite
thing in the world. He sticks a cut of bread on a fork and leans in and holds it
before the flames. She leans in too. Their faces grow pink and warm as the bread
turns brown. He toasts three or four cuts and neither of them says a word. But she
is happy. She is happy. They sit together at the big table and he butters her toast
and spreads jam on it and her mouth waters. He pours two cups of tea and gives her
a wink. ‘Eat up now,’ he says. And then, just as he is about to take a bite, he turns
his head and sees something and a change comes over him. She follows his look to
her mother’s apron hanging on a nail at the end of the dresser. It is floury around
the belly from all the times her mother leaned against the table, kneading the bread.
‘Eat up, Mike,’ she says quickly. ‘Your toast is getting cold.’

∼

They have all come back, the priest too, and they are sitting at the long table up
in the dining room. Tess keeps an eye on the small china milk jugs, and when they
are empty she runs all the way back to the kitchen and refills them. She moves along
the table offering buns and shop cake from a plate. Her hair is tied back neatly.
She stands straight, smiling politely when she is praised. The priest asks her how
old she is. Seven, she tells him. He says she’s a great girl and that she’s the image
of her mother and in that second her heart nearly bursts with happiness. She looks
across the room, up at the spot above the window where the bird tore the wallpaper.
She wants to run and find her mother and tell her what the priest just said.

Her father sits at one end of the table, the priest at the other.

‘May the Lord have mercy on her soul,’ the priest says. ‘What age was she, Michael?’

Her father stops eating. ‘1904, she was born. She was forty last March. That’s when
she started to complain. Just after the child was born.’

He looks around them all, then at the priest. ‘I met a nun once in a church in Galway,’
he says. ‘She was back from America. D’you know what she told me? She said that a
man’s soul weighs the same as a snipe. Some scientist over there weighed people just
before they died, TB patients she said, and then he weighed them again just after
they died, beds and all. And weren’t they lighter…Imagine that…The soul was gone,
she said.’