The Rising of Bella Casey (7 page)

She found her temper shortening, even with the children. One day when little Cissy Roberts pestered her once too often could she please go to the lavatory, she was so consumed with getting through her appointed lesson unobstructed that she ignored the child and the inevitable happened – a large pool on the
schoolroom
flags. Another inadvertent victim was Alfred Baxter. Alfie was a dim-witted child, soft and fat. He was slaving over his headline template and having trouble with his p’s and q’s. Poor child, he always turned them backwards. Bella remembered halting before him. He was bent over the page, his little tongue edging out over his bottom lip in avid concentration.

‘What did we say about the P, Alfred?’ she asked.

‘P goes right, Miss.’

‘And Alfred, which is your right hand?’

The stupid child raised his left.

Looking down at the unseemly page in front of him, the unmitigated mess of it and Alfie’s trusting face so full of sunny certainty gazing up at her, Bella felt a surge of anger. She had the teacher’s pointer in her hand; she had been using it to point at the alphabet inscribed on the board.

‘Hold out your hand,’ she ordered. Alfie looked up at her. Confused. Always confused.

‘The other one,’ she barked. She raised the pointer and brought it down hard.

She would never forget the look on the child’s face. Not of pain though she had succeeded in making him howl and had brought up a red weal on his little palm. But of betrayal. Like many of her pupils, Alfie felt the belt at home. Bella was acquainted with his father, a brooding bully of a man, whose children would run into mouse-holes to escape him. There would be many actions she would take in her life that she would be ashamed of, but if there was to be a Judgement Day, Bella knew that this transgression – the striking of Alfie Baxter – was the worst.

T
he blow brought Bella to her senses. She might not have been schooled in the uncouth lessons of biology, but she had missed her monthly and she knew the import of that. She had seen this happen once before at the College. To her
bête noir
, Prudence Collier, no less. One minute Miss Collier was in the full bloom of love with Her Neville – which Bella saw in capitals so partial was Prudence to repeating it – the next she had been sent down in disgrace. Neville Cardew was a scrivener’s clerk at the Custom House; he was going to climb the ladder of Her Majesty’s Service, reaching such heights that he might well move into the Vice-Regal Lodge and be running the country any day now, according to Prudence. On she wittered, imagining herself already as the wife of a Castle functionary. Then at the height of her fancy, she disappeared, on account of what Miss Swanzy
called a family emergency. When Bella had reported this to Lily, she had guessed immediately the true reason.

‘I fear,’ Lily said, ‘that the family emergency might be of Prudence’s own making.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ Bella remembered saying, still the greenhorn.

‘Oh Bella, her family took her before her encumbrance began to show,’ Lily said as if explaining some complicated lesson to a child.

‘Poor Prudence,’ Bella had said then, without thinking. For Prudence’s absence would improve her daily life no end. There would be no more sniping, no snide remarks. But she
had
been sorry, sorry for the loss of the fine life Prudence could have had, the good education gone west, the prospects of betterment banished. And she remembered what Lily had said, a rueful valediction.

‘One slip, Bella, is all it takes.’

It was time to make haste.

The Liverpools, she discovered, were to play on the bandstand on the Carlyle Pier the following Sunday. On the pretext of taking the air on the pier at Kingstown she donned her style and walked as far as Merrion Square to catch the tram. As arranged she met Clarice Hamilton at the stop. Clarrie had been at the Model School with her but had failed to reach Final Standard. Instead she was sent to train up under Madame Felice, the milliner’s on
Wicklow Street. Bella had lost touch with her until she had
visited
the shop one day shortly after she had started work and was ordering a hat – a dove-grey toque, she remembered – and who was serving behind the counter but Clarrie Hamilton.

‘Oh yes,’ Clarrie had said after they had done their
catching
up. ‘Mrs Faylix has been very good to me though she’s a bit uppity if you ask me. Not French at all but she likes to drop a bit of the
parlay vu
.’ This all delivered in loud tones in the body of the shop. Clarrie had never been what you’d call discreet. ‘She’s from Newfoundland Street, if you please.’

Their acquaintanceship had persisted from that day, and on certain occasions – such as this one – Clarrie’s brand of brave jollity was exactly what was called for.

‘Aren’t you the dark horse, Bella Casey?’ Clarrie cooed when Bella told her of her plan. ‘I never imagined you’d take a fancy to a soldier!’

She nudged Bella in the ribs – she had always been robust in her expression and not at all lady-like. Poor Clarrie was no oil painting. She had a long angular face, a tall awkward build and decidedly big feet.

‘Don’t worry, Bella, if we run into him, I’ll make myself scarce.’

She gave Bella a rum wink, delighted to be in on the conspiracy.

‘Sure isn’t my auntie sick and I must visit her, isn’t that what I’m to say? Oh, I
love
this,’ she said as they mounted the tram.

Bella was glad of Clarrie’s uncomplicated company as they drove out to the sea. The day wore a blue bonnet that matched
her own, though up on the upper deck it was so windy they had to hold their hats on their laps. The sea when they came upon it was frilled with white. Clarrie chattered on beside Bella, commenting on what people wore – the ladies’ hats in particular – but also threading her own ambitions for the day into the
conversation
. Wouldn’t it be great if they were to bump into Lance Corporal Beaver? How thrilled she was that she might be the agent of such an assignation, and wouldn’t it be just the ticket if he were to have a soldier companion with him?

‘They always have a less handsome friend,’ Clarrie said.

Rather sadly, Bella thought.

The regimental players were filing up the steps to take their places as she and Clarrie hunted for a free seat among the white timber deckchairs scattered on the green. Clarrie snaffled two and positioned them to the side of the bandstand so as to enjoy an unobstructed view.

‘Which one is he?’ Clarrie hissed in her ear. Bella
surreptitiously
pointed.

‘No wonder you’re in such a tizzy, isn’t he a darling man? So tall and don’t you just love the get-up of him? And look, look,’ she said and pointed out something Bella had not noticed. ‘He has a tattoo there on his left wrist. I hope he hasn’t got another girl’s name embroidered there for that would be hard to wear. I thought it was only sailors as had tattoos, though I suppose since he’s in colours, that’s what you might call a military tattoo …’

Bella could see those around smiling at their expense for
Clarrie
had a voice that carried. Because she was rambunctious by nature, it was sometimes difficult to be sure if people were
laughing
with her or at her. But, whichever it was, she brought a touch of gaiety even if, sometimes, it was at her own expense. Luckily the band struck up then –
The Radetsky March
– and the rest of Clarrie’s monologue was drowned out.

Sitting there in the benign mid-summer sunshine with half the world streaming by, arm-in-arm, and the other half gathered around the bandstand tapping their feet to the merry music and children skipping to the beat or rolling hoops, the day rinsed and clean, the sea sparkling and everyone in their Sunday best, it was easier for Bella to believe that some good might come of all of this. Though, inwardly, she quailed.

‘I’m sure he’ll come this way,’ Clarrie said excitedly in a pause in the music. ‘Give him a wave.’

But before Bella had a chance to respond, Clarrie shot up and raised her own two arms like a woman drowning, so that the Corporal would have to have been blind to miss her. He waved doubtfully at the apparition that was Clarrie, only relaxing, Bella thought, when he saw that she was not alone. At the first break in the performance, he laid down his brass and made his way through the scatter of chairs towards them. Bella braced herself. Not alone had she to charm this mercurial man, she had to ensnare him. She wasn’t equipped for this. Then she thought of her condition and quelled her doubts. Needs must. At least, she had already felt
the quickening of desire for the Corporal and wasn’t it better that she felt some stirring for him, than nothing at all? It raised her above some stylish-dressed pusher on the street with an eye for a uniform. Still, what she was planning required a dimming of her heart in deference to her intellect. She had to bend this man to her will. She had to feign the innocence of the barefoot girl she had been when they first met in the kitchen of Innisfallen Parade and have him wed her before she began to show. Turn him into a keeper, as Clarrie had said, but she only knew half the story. Bella was soiled merchandise – that is what Clarrie would have said had she known for she did not put a tooth in things – and from now on she would have to act accordingly, until she could don the habit of a wife.

‘Bella Casey!’ the Corporal announced bold as you like – almost as loudly as Clarrie trumpeting in her ear.

Bella showed a cherry smile, courtesy of Clarrie who had pinked her lips on the top of the tram.

‘If it isn’t Corporal Beaver!’ she replied taking up his tone of bravado. He did look a treat in his dress uniform, a red coatee with blue-roll collar and cuffs, his black breeches trimmed with white, a yellow rope across his chest on which his bugle was slung, his buttons and his epaulettes all golden gleam. She saw the enormity of the task ahead of her and felt her own inadequacy in the face of it.

‘Enjoying the music?’ the Corporal asked. ‘That last one was our regimental quick march, “Here’s to the Maiden”.’

‘Oh, Clarrie and I were just taking the air, as it happens. The music was a pure bonus,’ Bella said.

The Corporal smiled.

‘This is my friend, Clarice Hamilton,’ Bella said. Clarrie extended her hand in her forthright way.

‘Oh look,’ she said to Bella, ‘it only says MOTHER.’

She was back to the tattoo, a garland of indigo at the Corporal’s wrist, which had always been eclipsed by cuffs or gloves before. He had the grace to look confused.

‘Any news of those brothers of yours?’

‘Oh they’re doing fine,’ Bella replied. ‘As far as we can make out, though Mick is forever being confined to barracks or put on latrine duty. For what he does not say.’

‘For unspecified misdemeanours, no doubt,’ the Corporal said with a wry smile.

Clarrie was still hovering, against all instructions.

‘And how’s Jack?’

‘He’s quite the grown-up now going to big school at St
Barnabas
. I don’t see as much of him now that Mother and he have moved away.’

A salient fact Bella was determined to smuggle into the
conversation
.

The Corporal played with his dress gloves. Bella fixed on his tattoo, the letters cast in red, entwined in what looked like thorns. Go, she urged Clarrie with her eyes, go.

‘I don’t suppose I could interest you in a turn on the pier,’ he
asked finally when Clarrie insisted on standing there, mute. ‘It’d be a pure disgrace to have come all this way and not enjoy the scenery.’

‘Indeed,’ Clarrie agreed heartily.

‘Perhaps your friend would like to join us?’

Time for the sick auntie line, Bella thought, come on, Clarrie. How often had they rehearsed this!

Just then another soldier appeared, another Liverpools’ man, broad and plain-looking, years older than the Corporal.

‘Ah Nick, me old compadré,’ he said and clapped his hand on the Corporal’s shoulder. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

‘Clarice Hamilton,’ Clarrie interposed and shook his hand in that manly way of hers.

‘Vizard,’ the squat man replied and his plain face broke into a wreath of smiles. ‘Corporal James Vizard. Charmed, I’m sure.’

The newly introduced pair moved ahead while Bella dawdled behind with the Corporal.

‘I’ve been thinking of the first time we courted,’ the
Corporal
was saying as he and Bella strolled towards the glaring brine. ‘That evening of your father’s funeral, God be good to him.’

Bella blushed to think of it. Pappie was never far away, much and all as she might wish it in this particular instance.

‘Oh,’ she replied, a mite too hastily she feared, ‘but we have met several times since then. There was the bazaar and sure haven’t you paid your respects in Dominick Street, too?’

‘Ah yes,’ he conceded, ‘but I don’t count those. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very partial to Mrs C and all, though I think she’s on
the outs with me for me for leading her darling boys astray.’

‘Oh no,’ Bella lied.

‘Ah, Bel,’ he said. It was the first time he had used her name in that candid way, the way a sweetheart might. ‘You know what I’m driving at. We were always in company, is all I’m saying.’

He halted and took her arm, placing it in the crook of his.

‘But that first night on Sackville Street,’ he said ‘you were quite the spitfire.’

How strange that he should remember her forwardness when what she recalled of the evening was her tears. She summoned up all of her false courage.

‘And can be again,’ she said and reached up and kissed him full on the lips in broad daylight so as he could not be in any doubt.

She wore her blue chenille with the leg-of-mutton sleeves, her black garibaldi jacket with the military braiding and her
two-tone
boots with the Louis heels. She put her hair up in a French twist and donned her straw boater with the polka-dot band. She chose a corner booth in Bewley’s at the solemn back of the noisy café. Wan afternoon light streamed in as she unpeeled her gloves and laid them on the marble-topped table. Her new boots were pinching. On top of that, a pebble had lodged itself between the sole and her stockings, and all through the encounter she was aware of it, a tiny irritant, a chafing presence. She was early, deliberately so, and was hoping that the Corporal would not be too late for she would have to guard against someone else asking
to share the table. A young woman alone in a café could attract the wrong sort of attention … The minutes ticked by and she felt most singular, despite the shelter of the maroon-coloured upholstery and the wood-panelled walls. The waitress didn’t help, coming up to her and licking her pencil ostentatiously and with a stern jib, standing over her with a peremptory ‘Yes Miss?’ – as if Bella were some kind of street-walker looking for a free sit-down. Bella was about to tell her that she was waiting to be joined by a gentleman, when the Corporal arrived. He was a vision of gold and crimson, the flurry of the street still about him. He included the waitress, Bella noticed, in his broad smile of greeting.

‘Apols,’ he said, ‘for the delay.’

Bella rose immediately and held her two bare hands out to him.

‘Nicholas darling,’ she said in her most cultivated tone for the benefit of the little waitress.

‘Bel,’ he said doubtfully.

But it had the desired effect. Vanquished, the waitress, who had tried to make her feel so unworthy, took the order and slunk away.

‘Sit, sit,’ Bella said for she knew she must take charge at once. And the Corporal sat, obedient as a scolded child.

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘the schoolmarm is never off-duty, I see.’

‘We’ll take tea here and then …’

‘And then …?’ He arched his eyebrows sardonically.

‘Then, Nicholas Beaver, you can escort me home and if you’re very good …’

She excused herself once they arrived at Dominick Street and went directly to the bedroom, asking the Corporal to wait. She lifted her hat carefully from her head and shrugged off her jacket, placing both on the chair by the bed. Her fingers trembled as she undid her boots. She unhooked her stockings, thinking how carefully she had donned these items not three hours before. She looked at herself in the mirror before she went on, but she didn’t linger on the reflection. Instead, she took a deep breath and
readied
herself for the performance.