The Light of Evening (33 page)

mer so herewith questions to be answered: for ye’er meal on Sunday when ye arrive is it to be hot or cold fare. I do not want ye to have even a cup of tea at Shannon Airport, complete waste of money. Since you said you might build in the kitchen garden I go up there more often than I did and try to picture you in a new house and the old stone wall of the garden to protect you, back to your roots where your heart is. I pray that I live to see it up. There is so much red tape in passing on a bit of land but it shall be done. The surgeon who does the veins wouldn’t do mine, told me to get a pair of elastic stockings and wear them permanently, my age no doubt. Four people buried here this week a Mrs. Whiley in her thirties and three that died of some flu that’s going around, Hong Kong or Kong Hong, or whatever it’s called.

Dear Eleanora,

Your brother called with his darling wife stayed one night. I got up at three in the morning and found them in the hall arguing, God knows why. The plants you put in the front garden are doing all right. We had the man from the council, the Gate Lodge has to be demolished and they won’t give a penny but it must go. Mrs. Noonan was buried last week, a massive funeral down as far as the Rock. We’ve started the fires, only for the television it would be so lonely. Your Christmas cake is on its way, a bakers will ice it, for if I iced it it would get broken. When you wash my cushion covers do it yourself as you don’t want the colors of the embroidery to run, don’t ever fold them up wet that’s what happened the last time. Do you still wear the grosgrain black dress and the turquoise brooch from Tibet? I went to Dublin with your father just to be sure he’d come home okay, sold three horses but the stud farm got most of it. I’m happy they’re disposed of, trainers and jockeys telling him he’d win races, all bull, the sense you pay for is the best sense. I walked Dublin to try and get you a white counterpane of long ago but I failed so do not blame me. I didn’t

buy a thing only four side combs. I wouldn’t live in the city for love or money, it’s a rat race. Thank God for the fresh air and the quiet, fears come on at night that never do in daytime. In years to come cities will be overcrowded and life so very mixed up that a peaceful spot will be impossible, so make your plans for the kitchen garden, it will be yours and no one else’s, it’s a home for the future. I got a good cough bottle with some of the money and thanks for the beautiful velvet jacket but to tell the truth I am bursting in it, even the armpits are too small. I will take off the buckle and put it on another garment. Four boys here coming home from a dance drove into a stationary lorry, the road a battlefield with dead and dying.

Dear Eleanora,

The electric blanket you gave me conked out and they said in the factory it wanted a new control. In case I should pass away we will get the mapping done for the kitchen garden when you are here. Somehow I have been thinking of you every moment. I went to a drama in the town hall but see one drama and you see the lot. A fella on his way to a ballad session called in, said he wanted to send you poems of his a bit simple I had to tell him for a finish to go he’s not all square. I don’t think he had eaten for a week. Never again will I rear a chicken. Another colt has been bought, it’s a disease. With your money I got one and a half tons of anthracite. People here say they’ll take an action against you for putting them in books and the dead people would take an action against you if they were alive. Your father gets tired from tearing after horses, he has to sleep on a board bed for his back. You seem to be traveling a lot but maybe it agrees with you. Land and houses here are sky-high. My old friend Mrs. Veller is blind and has to be led across the street. They moved from Foxrock out to Wicklow, her daughter went to Australia and is lonely there, the nearest neighbor one hundred miles away.

I wish you’d come oftener, it would be a change for you. You said you have thought of moving to America, well I had a man here visiting who spent forty-five years in it and his account is frightening, your life in danger even in daytime. He couldn’t get over how nice Rusheen is. I never want to think of it all weeds and briars and overgrown, never. I keep a few guests now for B and B, I am not materially minded but they fill in a few lonely hours. I would not like you to live in the USA but if you go for a visit I will ask you to locate somebody for me. I was given an address but the letter returned after six months having been interfered with, steamed. Television in and out of the repair hospital. Your enclosures are a godsend, to have a pound is pure freedom but I don’t let on you send it. I am enclosing you a little ivory letter opener as something tells me you don’t open my letters regularly. I staggered and fell on the back kitchen step, took me an age to get to the phone to call a doctor in emergency and that’s not like me. He said I was carrying surplus water and surplus weight, a pure eejit, it turned out it was cataracts in both eyes. The girl in Todd’s showed me a cashmere cardigan at the old price of twenty pounds but needless to say I wouldn’t spend that on my whole body. I went to an eye doctor because of fainting and told him that I’d lost the sight in my left eye for five or six minutes and he said it was a stroke and lucky the sight came back at all. A big ashtray I bought you got crushed on the way home. My eyes are better now but not my feet. If I had good feet I’d walk down the avenue to the gate to see folks passing. I dream of you most nights and the other night I thought you had turned into a beautiful black cat that spoke. I got the breakfast room painted a buff yellow.

Dear Eleanora,

The birds are singing gloriously all day but I can’t say that it’s spring. You’d go to your knees in muck and wet in the lawn and your father having to fodder cattle in the night

when the youngster comes from his factory work, it’s impossible to get help anywhere. The domestic economy instructress swore to me that she could get the stain off my first piece of embroidery, done fifty-five years ago, but instead burned it with whatever acid she applied to it. I’ve had to do a little invisible mending before I give it to you. Your brother rang, I could tell from his voice he was full of alcohol, they think of nobody only themselves, they covet this place but they have another guess coming. The little shrub you planted is flowering, an orange bell flower, I talk to it because I know it’s part of you. Please put some savings aside for your rainy day.

Dear Eleanora,

We got two new pups, mischief-makers. I had left clothes on the line all night, the ground in the morning pure white like it had snowed. They had got to work on the sheets and the pillowslips, chewed them to bits. I could have killed them. The chimneys are full of crows’ nests even though they were cleaned last spring, they clawed the pots off. We are four weeks sitting up close to an oil heater and the paraffin gives off a foul smell. Yes, your brother thinks Rusheen is his, all settled, she’s the one driving him on though he was born selfish. If he got it you or your children would not be let inside the bottom gate. He was so vexed last Christmas night that he drove away from here and killed one of the pups and we cried and cried. He didn’t even stop, only drove on and didn’t tell us until we found out about it for ourselves. He loves neither man or beast. Some have nature and some have not. The comrade mourned her pal, couldn’t get her into the kitchen to warm up and when she hears a dog barking in the distance she listens to see where the sound is coming from. Your father weeps and so do I. The paling around the house is all rusty and the posts will take forty pounds’ worth of paint. That house you thought you might buy, Gore House, is a disaster. We brought a man that knows all about timbers, he said it’s

only fit to demolish, roof also rotten. A German man bought it many years ago but never came back, saw it from the air, so forget about it. I’d like you to persevere and build in the kitchen garden, an old stone wall all around you. No price for cattle, people killing their own beef now as most have got deep freezers. Do you recall the leak above your bed in the blue room when you were here, well I woke and saw a light shining and I couldn’t believe it and went across and found the light on though the switch was off and when I went to turn it off I felt a current. Got so alarmed that I rang Graham and the creature came at midnight and found the carpet and boards of the floor all wet, all rotten and said lucky I didn’t stand on that spot or I’d be in Kingdom Come. Your brother has never said would I or his father like a drive in one of their two cars, he isn’t worth worrying about.

Dear Eleanora,

I have the head of that statue you gave me worn from tapping it; you won it for catechism, a black saint, blessed Martin de Porres. It will be laid on my breast and buried with me. At seventy-eight it’s time to think. If I ask you something don’t be cross, can we be buried in the same plot? I know you love this country in spite of the ugly things people have said about you and we could be near a nice grassy corner under trees, could you promise me that, if you can’t then we won’t worry. I have a nice Dutch man staying, the only thing is he has to have his breakfast at six-thirty. Your brother and herself called and said they wanted things here settled once and for all, shameless at getting what they consider theirs, said his beautiful wife did not intend to be a caretaker for you and yours. We sang dumb. Earlier he’d offered to bring me to Limerick to a specialist, the next day going out your father said, “We’ll see you tomorrow” and he said, “You’ll see me no more.” He said you had pots of money from scribbling and I said you’d have pots of money if you didn’t part with it

so easily. They live for road and big hotels and race meetings and she going around buying clothes and furniture nonstop. They don’t see their parents’ plight and what their parents did for them. There was a time when I could go up to the yard to boil pots of meal ten times a day and still do the cooking and baking and have the house spic and span and pick the elderberries to make the wine unbeknownst, to have for visitors. I hope you didn’t tuck those cushions away in some press, that you weren’t ashamed of them, I wouldn’t want you to deny your mother like Peter who denied Christ as the cock crowed thrice. We make a good fire and sit by it, me thinking and your father thinking and scratching his head, the wind going all around the house fierce. My father used to tell of the night of the big wind in 1839 a poor man and his poor wife with their roof shot off he tying his wife to a tree to go back in and collect their utensils and when he came out again neither trace nor tidings of her swept away. But maybe death is not that terrible, no more fight, no more fighting but I do want to see Coney Island before I die. I heard it’s not as big an attraction as it used to be but for me it has associations.

Dear Eleanora,

Michael Patrick died and we have learned on the grapevine that twenty-three first cousins are remembered in his will, your father being one, but as you would expect, relatives in close touch will have got in there quick. What we want to find out is if your father is mentioned in the residues which would be worthwhile as the farm is very valuable. He’d moved in with neighbors since he got feeble and most likely they’ll get the major portion. Also we don’t know if there is a second will there could be and we mightn’t get a lookin. He’d lost three stone and was waiting to see his solicitor when he dropped dead. My wants are few as I grow older but there are things we could do by way of improving the place, phosphate and lime for the fields, good gates and fences as

animals are breaking in and breaking out at all hours. We had Michael Patrick prayed for on Sunday at the first Mass. I hear on good authority that your brother is hitting the bottle and so is she, we are trying to put them out of our minds completely, all they think of is racing, drinking, and hotels. Poor Ellie had a three in one operation, slow to heal. Henry Brady’s funeral miles long. Miss Conheady the cookery instructress is very sad. She lost her only sister Moira who died on her eighth baby. It was the saddest thing I ever saw to see her laid out in the morgue and at her feet was this little dead baby. Men and women in tears. Price of postage, telephone rental, and electricity all gone up. Your father went to Lisdoonvarna for the waters and your Aunt Bride and I went for the drive, people singing and dancing down at the wells all day and all night, some hoping to find husbands. Our puppies are getting big and oh so mischievous. They got up on the table for a fletch of bacon, got their teeth into one of my Dr. Scholl’s elastic stockings, two good nightgowns, and a pajamas. They jump feet high. The tea-maker you sent us is a gift, especially in the mornings. Tom Lahiffe died milking a cow, sister of his broke her neck running to him to pick him up. Your last week’s enclosure was too much but I am getting the dining room papered. It’s sixteen years up and was done badly and I put emulsion over it two years ago, a botched job, so I am hoping it will pass your admiration test. I often wish I had a bank account like you. We never seem to be able to keep a pound, I reckon we are fools. I think of you hourly. Got another flu and then relapse and didn’t know or care if I died. Bride had it too, all crocks, but I’m up and even made jelly, a tedious task as sometimes it doesn’t thicken. I wouldn’t have made it at all only the apples were knocked down in the wind and rain and I thought what a sin and the world starving. Cattle down to twenty pounds per head, six of ours gone with tuberculosis and the Department bought them for half nothing, newborn calves have been sold at a pound whereas

a chicken costs one pound fifty. Didn’t someone ring up to wish us happy anniversary and that’s how I remembered the fifty long years, no big party. I’m not able to cater for anybody and bad colds and cold sores and itch is woeful. If I could feel like myself I’d thank God but I don’t feel and never will. Had a crowd of men making silage for three days and had to feed them, nearly killed me. We have a heat wave now and it’s sweltering. Silage making is more practical than saving hay. When you watch an animal die you think how sad it must be to see a human die. My best days I have seen out.