The Rising of Bella Casey (12 page)

‘What’s all this commotion, little girlie?’ the Bugler asked, parting Bella’s shawl and peering in at the child. The baby, on hearing a man’s voice, stalled in her protests.

‘What do you think, Nick?’ Bella asked, full of trepidation. Since when had Bella become so timid?

‘She has her mother’s eyes and colouring, I see, and not much from the Beavers,’ the Bugler said.

‘Oh, but Nick, she has your nature,’ Bella said.

‘Loud and likes her grub, is it?’ the Bugler said then pulled
her to him. ‘Take off that ould hat, would you, Bella for I can’t get at you with the white feather in the way.’

He looked away as the Bugler enveloped her in scarlet.

They sat in the parlour, all formal as if the Bugler and Bella were official visitors, while his mother clattered about in the kitchen making the dinner.

‘There’s a deal of pot-walloping going on,’ the Bugler said as the ill-tempered symphony continued. Bella rose and went into the kitchen, but Ma batted away her offers of help.

‘No,’ she insisted, ‘you must be with your husband.’

They ate their dinner off the stiff white cloth brought out for the occasion. The house had been cleaned from stem to stern. His mother had surrendered her bed to the Bugler and Bella and dressed it with new linens but she was huffy with him all the same.

‘And tell me, Nicholas,’ she went on as they sat over the remains of the dinner – oh, she had put on a right show – a hock of meat, potatoes and a dish of curly kale – ‘what are your intentions? For Bella here has a child to rear.’

‘Well, Mrs C, I’m signed up till ’93,’ the Bugler said with a laugh in his voice for even when he was being serious there was a jocund air about him. ‘And if I stay the course, I’ll be
honourably
discharged and then I’ll be back to look after my two girls.’

He winked broadly at Bella. As if some secret joke had passed between them.

The Bugler’s military regalia was all laid out in his mother’s room. His scarlet coat with the crescent epaulettes, his
trousers
with the red piping, his cocky Glengarry.

‘Try it on there, Sonny,’ the Bugler said, planting the hat on his head. He marched around the house, making battle sounds – the cannon’s roar – and miming the beat of a drum. He slung the dress coat around his shoulders – it bore the Bugler’s smell, the sweet tang of drink, the musty whiff of tobacco – and he inhaled and puffed out his chest. Was this how the Bugler felt when he strutted about? The gold trim and the brass buttons – is that what had dazzled Bella?

‘I’m going to be a soldier,’ he declared one evening to his mother, after showing his friend, Georgie Ecret his new props, a far cry from the usual run of play – sticks and stones.

‘Not while I have breath in me,’ Ma said. ‘Haven’t I already lost two sons to the forces?’

‘Isn’t it a right and sacred thing to serve?’ Bella said.

‘Is that so, now?’ Ma said.

‘Without the army, we’d all be flooded out with Fenians,’ Bella went on.

‘It isn’t Fenians that Mick and Tom are fighting beyond in England.’

‘My Nick says that it doesn’t matter where you serve, so long as you’re faithful to the Queen and honour the flag.’

‘Isn’t that a grand speech, altogether,’ Ma said with her hands
on her hips. He looked from one to the other, perplexed by all the aggravation. What was it all about?

The Bugler’s leaves followed the same pattern as the first, he and Bella playing husband and wifey in the parlour while his mother retreated to the kitchen. Ma’s chorus of resentments echoed his own. Yon Beaver had no manners, she would start, uses the saucer to drink his tea; treats the place like a
barracks
, sprawling around, expecting to be waited upon hand and foot; spends more time in the company of bowsies in wine lodges than with his lawful wife and child.

Bella would counter with her own litany. Her Nick was
petrified
of breaking the good china cups with the rose pattern, that was all. He was happy to pull his weight, but every time her Nick offered to set the fire, or bring the coal in from the yard, he would be batted off and told to sit, sit, wasn’t he the visitor? And was it any wonder he preferred the rough
company
of the tavern? He wasn’t treated like an interloper there.

It would have taken the wisdom of Solomon to fathom the truth between the warring women and he was an eleven-
year-old
boy. All he knew was that when the Bugler packed his kit bag to return to Aldershot, the only one to shed salt tears was Bella.

In the wake of his departure, Bella would sit at the
pianola
and play. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine them
back in a time when there had been harmony, and not the stormy brew that now pervaded. The Aeolian had been left behind by the last tenant. It had once been cherished, but the ivories were yellowing and when you opened the door where the scrolls should have been, it was empty.

Bella would try her hand at a Beethoven sonata or a Boccherini minuet. He’d thought the music might soothe, but Bella’s playing seemed to fuel his mother’s ire.

‘You won’t have much leisure for the piano after you’ve borne the Bugler five or six more,’ Ma would say.

Bella would stop playing and close the lid quietly as if she wanted to trap his mother’s future for her in the darkness.

‘Aren’t you awful quick,’ Bella lamented, ‘to write me off completely?’

He was attending St Barnabas’ now, a far cry from the order and calm of Bella’s realm. The boys were a rowdy lot; there was a constant undertow of shuffling and spitting and the classroom was closer to the barred cages of the
Zoological
Gardens. Master Hogan was the ringmaster of the circus, more interested in wielding the leather and making entries in the Punishment Book than in educating.

‘Casey,’ he would bark – no first names here. ‘Take up where Ecret left off.’

He hated reading aloud. He had to strain to keep the lines from running into one another. The Master took his poor
sight for stupidity.

‘Next,’ Master Hogan would bark before he could
stumble
through two consecutive sentences. ‘And you, Casey – out on the line!’

He came home daily with burning palms. He’d learn whole passages by heart from the anthology so that he might be prepared when next he was asked, but Master Hogan skipped about the book, so he could never be sure what chapter the Master might land on. He often feigned illness so that his mother would keep him back from school, pretending that his eyes were worse than they were.

‘He shouldn’t be kept from his books,’ Bella complained. ‘You’re only encouraging him in rebellion.’

‘Is that so?’ Ma said.

‘St Barnabas may not be a grand seat of learning but a school of a mediocre tenor is better than no school at all.’

‘The Master singles him out and makes no allowances for his ailments,’ Ma would say.

‘I promised Pappie I would see to it he got his schooling.’

‘Oh yes, my lady, we know all about your promises. If your poor father could see …’

And then the old argument would be stirred up and he would be forgotten.

‘If you’re so worried about his education,’ Ma said, ‘fetch down your books and teach him yourself.’

Bella gave him lists to spell and tested him in the evenings as she wielded a hissing iron. She made him rattle off the
capitals
of the world while she folded the laundry. She would mark off poems for him to read aloud and parse and analyze.

‘You must improve on your comprehension,’ she would warn, ‘you can’t rely on memory alone.’

But it was a constant battle. If she wasn’t quarrelling with his mother, it was baby Susan – her cough, how late she was to walk, her sacrosanct naps. In the schoolroom, where she had three dozen infants in her care, Bella had always been in charge and the pattern of patience. But at home her attention was fractured by just one. And it was never him. It rankled still, the childish hurt of it, his first expulsion.

One afternoon she set him a reading exercise from the
Poetry Treasury
. He loved that book, large as the bible with its
gold-leafed
pages and red leather covers. He was to read
Tennyson’s
‘The Brook’.

‘Quietly now, to yourself,’ Bella instructed, ‘and make sure you recognise and understand every word. Then later, when I’ve put Susan down, I’ll examine you on it.’

Susan was on her lap, fractious, something to do with her teeth. He sat at the kitchen table, while Bella cradled Susan in her arms, crooning her into slumber. He worked for several minutes in silence. But he couldn’t concentrate with all those lovey-dovey sounds Bella was making.

I come from haunts of coot and hern
… he started to declaim.

‘Pipe down, now, Jack,’ Bella said putting her fingers to her lips, ‘for I’ve only just got Susan off.’

And sparkle out among the fern
… The music of the words made him want to sing them aloud.

‘Didn’t you hear me, Jack?’ she hissed, ‘You can do your recitation out loud in a little while.’

He shot her a glare. Wasn’t it her idea to bring the
schoolroom
home? And wasn’t he only doing as he was bid?

I wind about, and in and out, with here a blossom sailing
… he started again but this time at full tilt.

‘Make him stop, Mother, would you?’

For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever
…

He was shouting now and Susan had started grizzling. Bella laid her carefully in the bassinet. Then she straightened and came at him. For a minute he thought she was going to strike him. In one swift movement she stretched across the table, whipped the book from under his nose. She waved it in the air showily, then placed it on the chair and sat on it.

‘Give it back to me,’ he yelled.

Susan added her own aggrieved cry to the clamour.

‘I’ll give it back when you’re ready to behave yourself!’

‘Ah Ma!’

‘Oh for pity’s sake, give the child his book, Bella.’

‘I will not,’ she said, her eyes fiery. ‘Not until he shows me a bit of respect.’

Respect, was it? He’d show her. He leapt up and ran around to Bella’s side of the table. He ducked behind her and locked his arms around her chest. With all his might, he tipped her back, chair and all, so that only two of the legs were on the floor. She made to tamp down her skirts to stop them riding up at this precarious angle.

‘Hand it over,’ he hissed in her ear.

‘Let me go!’

‘Hand over the book first,’ he said.

‘Mother,’ she appealed. ‘Make him let me go.’

‘Jack,’ Ma said warningly.

‘I’ll let you go,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you go alright and see how you’ll like it.’

He released his grip and stepped back. The chair teetered for a moment before Bella went toppling backwards. She reached out her arm to catch the edge of the table, but the cloth puckered at her flailing grasp and with a clinking jostle, it brought milk jug and sugar bowl to the floor with her. The jug broke in a temper. Bella was still caught in the upended chair, her legs in the air, her skirts all up around her. This time he saw everything, the gap of flesh between her stays and her
bloomers
, her dimpled thigh. He felt a hot rush of victory.

‘If your Bugler could see you now,’ he said with some satisfaction.

‘Jack!’ she cried as she tried to right herself, but one of her feet was caught in the rungs of the chair and she was
hampered by her skirts.

‘Mother, he attacked me!’

‘Give over you two,’ Ma said. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

She surveyed the broken jug, the spilt milk.

‘Help me up, Mother,’ Bella pleaded and held out her hand.

‘Help yourself up,’ Ma said and went back to her mopping up.

He leaned over Bella, still seated in the upturned chair but with her head on the floor and her feet in the air. He
scrabbled
for the book beneath her skirts and pulled it free. He went back to his place at the table and putting his head down he stared blindly at the book, trying to quiet his thumping heart. He watched surreptitiously as Bella tried to right
herself
, crouching on all fours first, then hauling herself to
standing
. Her hair had come loose from her combs. Her skirts were stained with milk, her blouse was in disarray. A button had popped in the struggle, leaving a gape at her breast.

‘Look at me,’ she said to him. ‘You have me ruined.’

And then the tears came. A great dam-burst, racking sobs that seemed to come from the pit of her stomach. Her face, when he dared to look, a mottled mess. He stared down at the
Treasury
. The back cover had come away from the spine in the tussle and was hanging on by the merest thread. Bella’s
Treasury
torn in two …

He stoops to retrieve the ball of scrunched-up paper from
the carpet at his feet. He tries to smoothe the pages out, to undo the damage, but the delicate carbon between the sheets has been irretrievably torn. A day’s work destroyed, by a fit of bad temper. No great loss, in truth. What use were all these memories to him when he could make no sense of them? Bella had been right. It wasn’t his memory that was at fault, it was his understanding. He would have to start again.