The Light of Evening (34 page)

Dear Eleanora,

I’m sure you will be pleased by our news. The mare won in Limerick, her second time to run. I enclose the cutting. Your father was thrilled, as Sabre Point was a sure winner and people had bet thousands on her and also there were two other great horses and nobody gave our Shannon Rose even a chance but she surprised many and disappointed many more. The trainer’s son Bobby was about to get on her for the race when a demon, a trainer that she was with earlier at huge cost, went up to him and said that’s the greatest pig of a mare was ever ridden and she’s liable to run against a wall and throw you off, well had it been a strange jockey was riding her he wouldn’t have gone out into the race, but Bobby knowing her so well after two months knew her to be the gentlest creature alive. The Galway Hobo never wanted her to win and absolutely starved her when he had her. After the race a couple of prime boys wanted to buy her when they thought your father couldn’t pay for her any longer and that he’d sell her cheap. He is absolutely ecstatic. It’s not what she won, the two hundred pounds, but it will put up her value and he’ll try her over hurdles now and if she takes to them he’ll race her again. We were invited out to the trainer’s house for a cup of tea, a mansion. I hadn’t been outside the door, only to Mass and the henhouse. Sometimes I’d love for a spin on a Sunday evening

but no such luck. People preach about Christianity and all the rest but how many act like Christians? When I’m dying I hope you will be with me, I always hope for that. The green chaise upstairs I’m getting new legs on it and plush cover, maybe red, maybe purple. The carpet sweeper you got me is a boon, better than the electric, they pick up more. Everything twice the price since decimalization came in. You’ll find this strange but I was in Limerick recently and was introduced to a lady as your mother and she said I saw your daughter at Phoenix Park races two weeks ago with two very good-looking men. I said you are mistaken it wasn’t my daughter as she was not home and she said the friends with whom she was with said it was you and as a matter of fact she said you wore a velvet coat very long and very unusual and that was what attracted them to you so I said you must have a double. The only peculiar bit was concerning the coat, velvet with gold braiding, the image of yours. Were you or were you not at Phoenix Park races last month? Strange that and I not to know it. Please do not fuss too much to keep your figure; your health must go before all else. God help anyone dealing with tradesmen, they come and go as suits them. There was a letter in the paper saying your writing is tripe, written by a man in Carrick-mines. I did see a lovely picture of you taken at an oyster festival; so near and yet so far. I like your hair down. It will be exciting to go to Finland but I’m always frightened for you in airplanes. Your father can’t go anywhere as there are a couple of cows to calve and sometimes young cows don’t calve right. We had one a week ago and the calf was dead and we have to find another calf to suckle her but they don’t always take on to them; so many drawbacks in farming. I have to herd in cows and calves with him, it’s beyond me. I can’t run but it has to be done. I enclose medals of Saint Benedict blessed by the mission fathers at the rails and they carry a special blessing so keep one in the house and put the other on your clothing as you travel so much.

Dear Eleanora,

Your father has been gone now for fourteen days. He was asleep after the operation when we got to the hospital so we went out for a cup of tea and went back and stayed twenty minutes. He looked worn. The surgeon said it was a very big operation, two thirds of his stomach taken away. The ulcer was very far up and hard to get to, but that it was well it was taken out as malignancy had set in. Your father says he’d die before he’d go through it all again, you’d feel sorry for him to see him all tubed up, the nurses are very rough and the matron who knows him would be kind except she’s on leave. Many pints of blood had to be put into him. I suppose I wasn’t really sympathetic for a long time, I felt it was nerves and contrariness but now I see I was wrong. I am so relieved to see him well. Do drop him a line when you can. Another sick cow was taken away to Limerick on the lorry for the knackers yard. Farming is an utter nightmare. You are lucky to have brains and to use them, not like the foolish virgins in the parable. I go for a checkup next month, I should have gone long ago. It would be worse to be out on the roadside like our forebears were. A Cecilia Long who nursed in the USA for thirty-five years took retirement and came home to nurse her sister Lilly a cripple. Last Sunday a niece visited them but by the time she’d got home in the evening word awaited her that Aunt Cecilia fell going up the stairs and broke her neck. Pitiful. I felt so sad after Ellie’s death I couldn’t bring myself to go to the funeral. I went to see her sick and when I went into the room I took fright with the roaring of her, I’ll never forget it. I’m tired from nothing and then tired from something. I did ring Bea Minogue one morning for the locum’s number and before I knew it she was here on the doorstep and drove me over to him. He gave me an injection which pained me for one and a half hours but I suppose it helped because I slept and I raved all day. Bea said he came again to make sure the fever was abating. Bea is the soul of kindness.

I fear you are mixed-up about things which is why you did not come this year. The teacher said he will look for the book you want, he will try a trunk. The breach has come with your brother: they want too much and assumed there was no one else in the family.

Dear Eleanora,

Now for the bombshell, we might have to sell Rusheen. Things are getting on top of us. Your brother is making demands. We know it’s her, she’s cracked but he is not man enough to stand up to her. We have said goodbye to them for the last time. We might build a bungalow. He demanded ten thousand pounds immediately and let everyone else go to hell. We hear now they have gone to Spain to recuperate. We’re not the only ones who had to sell their homesteads, nobody ever counted with him only her and I believe his life is hell, a brother of hers let it out at a funeral. The animal that won the race is now one and a half years in training at seven guineas a week plus jockey’s fees, plus stablemen, plus fifty pounds to the jockey every so often, a dead loss but if I say anything there’s ructions so I sing dumb. Some critic commented that you as a writer are trying to present a false and malevolent picture of your country, said your works will not live on. Another critic to outsmart him wrote that your work is hocus pocus so you see how controversial you are but sometimes we get the sting of it. I regret to tell you that more trouble is brewing regarding your most recent book. Some have written to publishers to say they are going to take an action against you. Of course they are money mad but they are also out for your blood. I say that I do not want to hear about it but they are evidently upset and very sore with you. They did not expect you to go back years and years to make them objects of ridicule and humiliation. Your father and I do not discuss it as I feel it hurts him too. Yet I know I can go to you if I am in need. I have heard indirectly that you were seen

crying in public. I hope it does not bode some fresh disaster. With the last money you sent me, I’m going to buy myself a rocking chair and rock away for the remainder of my life. Gore House that you enquired after went for thirty-five thousand and you could drive a car through the woodworm in it, fungus all over the place and everything rotten. The report is you bought it and as late as last night three people congratulated your father on the purchase. When shall I see you again? You hinted about living in New York, but I pray you don’t. A bank strike and shipping strike so tourists have canceled as they can’t bring their cars. Your father cried a lot before his operation as he was afraid it would perforate at any time. I am telling you it would be better to be married to a man in a cottage earning a weekly wage as there is no money in farming. Last night I had a dream of being back at home in Middleline and looking from the field in front of the door in through the window and seeing a beautiful metal crucifix and white beads hanging on the wall and saying to myself the room is changed, it means change and what does it signify? When you have a minute, would you ever draw a sketch of your black jacket with the grosgrain reveres, I am getting one made like it as I have black skirts but no good jacket.

Dear Eleanora,

Great news that you are coming for a weekend. I had to read your card twice in case I imagined it. I hope to have chickens in good killing order and have a new recipe with apples and chestnuts, for the stuffing. We’ll go up the mountains to see the scenery like long ago. I must give you the tapestry picture of the Statue of Liberty as you will have it when I no longer exist, something you could never buy in a shop. This racing bug is a form of lunacy and he keeps getting into debt in the hope of getting out of debt, utter folly, he works for horses alone. I did more perhaps for your brother than for you long ago when I had a couple of pounds and went to

Limerick on a lorry, deprived myself of even a cup of tea to come home with a tennis racket or a new flannel trousers for him that never even said thank you. I have a little request but really it’s not that important, if you can’t get it don’t worry, a copper bracelet for rheumatism to be worn on the arm and never taken off. A nurse told me about it, says it’s miraculous. Even my toes are rigid and sore. I set out to pick a few blackberries and ended up with half a bucket, I made fifty pounds of jelly and only wish I could hand it over the hedge to you. So please bring baskets galore when ye come. The boys love it on scones. You must be lonely without them. Let us pray they don’t grow up heartless and ungrateful and that they never take against you. The most unkindest cut of all, like you once read to me from some book.

Dear Eleanora,

The coat you posted is beautiful but it has one defective skin in the back which the manufacturers stretched to make it fit and I brought it to the furriers in Limerick to ask if they could put press studs in the vents down the back to make it sit but no go as it wasn’t bought there. They even showed me where and how the skin had been faultily cut as if I wanted to know. I got you a supper cloth as I remember you saying you liked them. Our dogs fought Saxton’s dog and ours got the worst of it, one had to be carried in, not even able to stand. The new fridge you ordered has been delivered, it’s pure marvelous as milk always went sour and meat kept only a day. I have a German lodger for six months but of course he has not two words of English. Great to-do here over your latest book, ninety-five percent shocked, they have borrowed from one another to see how revolting it is and ask why can you not write parables that would make pleasant reading. There are lovely teaspoons that I got for coupons out of cornflake packets and they are yours if you fancy them. Another death in the factory, an only son. So that girl you got to help you

did something dishonorable I am not surprised. The fire barrel of the stove conked out on me and I will have to go to Teresa O’Gorman’s to have your Christmas cake baked. There are many parts of my life I would not want to relive but I must say I had good times of it in Brooklyn. New York I only set foot in once and on a very unhappy mission, searching for a friend who wasn’t even there at the time. How I long for us to have a big chat one day as there are things I’d like to tell you. You have not forgotten us or our creature comforts but there is something that bugs me. It hurts the way you make yourself so aloof, always running away from us, running running to where. Are we lepers or what …

Or…

What

Or…

What

Epilogue

We were sitting by the kitchen stove, my mother and myself. It must have been September, too early to light a fire in the front room, but nevertheless a bit of a chill to the evening, even the dog, the old rheumatic dog, had gone into his cubbyhole and we had not the slightest difficulty putting in the hens, they wandered in of their own accord. After she’d bolted the door we stood to look at a most ravishing sunset, a shocking pink that spanned a huge panoply of sky, rivers and rivulets crimsoning all before it, ruddying the fort of somber trees, seeping into cloud that was erstwhile and sullen and straggly.

“There’s no place like home,” she said, and I nodded because she wanted me to think likewise.

Once in the kitchen she opened the two oven doors to let the heat out and we sat for one of our chats. Quite unselfconsciously she ran her hands along her neck, all along the sides and then to the back to feel the stiffnesses, and though she had not asked me I felt without the words that she wished me to massage her and I did, searching out the knots and the crick, then along the nape, under her swallow, holding the bowl of her head in my hands, entreating her to let go, to let go of all her troubles and she replying, “If only we could, if only we could.”

Somewhat emboldened, she opened the top button of her good Sunday blouse so that I might lay my hands above the mesh of blue veins that were raised like braid over her sunken

chest. She began to bask in it, her expression melting, a happiness at being touched as she had never been touched in all her life, and it was as though she was the child and I had become the mother.

Twilight falls upon her in that kitchen, in that partial darkness, the soft and beautiful light of a moment’s nearness; the soul’s openness, the soul’s magnanimity, falling timorously through the universe and timorously falling upon us.

acknowledgements

So many people helped me in my researches that I sincerely hope I have forgotten none: the Clare Heritage in Tuamgraney, the Irish Folklore Commission in Dublin, the National Library of Ireland, Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh, the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the American Irish Historical Society in New York.