Ellis Island (27 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

The moment those words left my mother’s mouth it was like a revelation. This was what I wanted—a shop.

The next day I went home, and before I had even taken my coat off at the door I said to John, “I want you to build me a shop.”

He didn’t know what to make of it at first, he thought I was joking—but the idea had set in my head overnight and had already grown into an absolute.

There were certainly enough people living in the hinterland of Kilmoy to need the service of a country shop. Not everyone had horses or carts, or indeed the wherewithal or time to go into the town every week. A local shop could provide those people with the basics they needed—sugar, tea, flour, starch and blue—within a half-hour walk or short bicycle ride. From an advertisement in
Sketch
magazine, I wrote to the Dublin food wholesaler Findlater’s, and they sent me a catalog by return of post. Flicking through its pages, my enthusiasm rose to boiling point. Alongside the everyday basic shop-bought foods, such as baking soda and currants, were exoticisms that I had not expected to find in Ireland. Chocolate, coffee and spaghetti! And almost any food in a tin: tomatoes, apricots, beans, corned beef! Foods I’d thought I would never eat again could all be had from Findlater’s—at a price, of course, but I did not care. I would be able to eat like an American again!

One room would certainly not be enough for this shop. I would have to have two—one as the shop itself, and a smaller one to store the stock. From our farm, John was already selling on as much produce as the shops in Kilmoy would take from him, and still there was more left over than we could use. I decided we could sell that too. In which case we would need a cold room as well, with no windows and walls thicker than the rest, and a dugout chamber for burying our apples to keep them fresh through the year, and hooks along the ceiling for hanging meat and draining chickens.

John and I had both become frugal savers, determined never to repeat the earlier failures that had plunged us into poverty. John had money saved in a small bag stuffed into the side of our horsehair mattress, in addition to the forty dollars that he had given to Maidy to keep for me. That gave us enough for the materials to build the shop. And I had money saved from my American salary, and more from cashing in my first-class ticket—plenty to cover the initial stock. I decided I would write to my bank in New York for my savings, although—suddenly reluctant to sever all ties—I also made the quiet decision to retain my American stocks.

At first John assumed that all I wanted was a simple room added to the side of our house. This was how most country shops were laid out and, with Paud’s help, he would have it finished in a matter of weeks. But our house was too far back from the road, I protested. I wanted people to be able to pull up their bicycles and come straight in—and out—again. I wanted a shop that would thrive and grow, not just make me a little pocket money. A shop on the roadside at the edge of our front field was the only option. I drew out the design I wanted on a piece of paper, and measured it out on the ground in stones.

John seemed daunted by the prospect. “Are you sure this is the best place to have it, Ellie?” he said as the two of us stood at the roadside. “It seems very—big?” It started to rain and John hunched his shoulders against the flimsy collar of his shirt. He had a worried look on his face that was unlike him. He seemed tired and vulnerable, and part of me wanted to make it easy for him and forget the whole thing.

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll manage the farm while you build it. I’ve managed the farm before. We’ll get Vinny Moran in to build the walls. Paud will help. You can oversee the work and do all the carpentry. Together, you men will get it up in no time.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, sighing heavily. But he walked all round the boundaries I had made, taking long steps, his lips moving as he made a mental note of the measurements. And the next day Paud was there, walking the boundaries himself, also shaking his head.

I hadn’t meant John to build the walls with Vinny—it was strong man’s labor and he still could not lift. But John, as well as being determined and hardworking, was also vain. He would not have me see him as weak. He struggled to break stones and lift them into place, his legs buckling and giving way beneath him, until I had to take Paud aside and implore him to find a way of dividing the labor between them so that John would not kill himself or hinder his own recovery. At last, between the three of them, they got a system going where each man was doing the work suited to him—Vinny, the heavy lifting; John and Paud, the smaller stone and mortar work. Still, even by working from dawn to dusk each day, after four hard weeks the walls were barely halfway up.

Maidy, anxious to get her husband back, came out to survey the fruits of their labor and immediately announced, “Pssssht. You’ll be dead before this is finished. We’ll have to call a mehil.” The mehil was the system whereby all the neighbors gathered together to help one farmer complete a big task, such as haymaking or building. Up to thirty men would work for one or two days for no fee, and the women would prepare their meals and pour their porter while the work was being done.

The idea of a mehil horrified me. Every nosy neighbor for miles around would be getting a look round my house—dozens of women clattering around my kitchen, gossiping and bringing back news to the surrounding parishes of my crockery and my clothes and my “airs and graces.”
“She was bad enough before she went to America, but now she’s pure stuck up altogether.” “Running off to America after she brought poor John Hogan to his knees in poverty . . .” “. . . And him crippled, and her swanning about the town as if she’s somebody.”
I knew what they all thought about me and I didn’t mind as long as I could avoid them all. Now Maidy was bringing them down on top of us.

John was against the idea too. He felt humiliated by the idea of asking for help. He was a giver—he liked to be generous, but he was not comfortable receiving.

“Can we not just pay some more men to come and help?” I said.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” John backed me up. “The Moran boys are all strong, and none of them are working at present.”

“That’s not the way things work around here,” Paud said. “The Moran boys will come anyway, for all you’ve helped young Vincent over the past few months. The men like to help each other out—that’s the way it is.”

“And the women like to get into your house and rummage around looking for news,” I said crossly.

“John has helped every farmer in this townland take in the hay since he was a boy,” Paud asserted. “Time enough they paid him back.”

Maidy persuaded me into it. She assured me that she would keep the numbers of the women down. One woman was enough to cater for the needs of half a dozen men, she said, and she promised to keep the worst of the gossips at bay. “In any case, Ellie,” she said, “you have nothing to be worried about. These people are your neighbors and they want you to succeed.”

I gave her a look that left her in no doubt that I did not believe her.

“And they’ll be your customers too,” she reminded me sagely. “So you had better get used to them.”

With a sudden shock, I realized she was right. Kathleen Condon and her cronies were my potential market. The mehil, although it was not a prospect I relished, was one that I realized I would have to throw myself at with some effort if my business was to succeed.

My parents being the kind they were, I had never attended a mehil myself. I consulted Maidy and over the coming days I planned as thoroughly as I had with Mrs. Flannery for Isobel’s weekend party.

Each of the women would bring food—gifts of bread, butter and sweet things—and it was important that whatever I prepared complemented their efforts rather than competed with them, so that they could flatter one another’s talent for baking without fear of the hostess upstaging them. With this in mind, I would simply provide the meat, two large hunks of bacon and several roasted chickens for the table—there was no showing off in the presentation of it, but it was an expensive commodity and people would appreciate the sustenance. John bought in a box of cigarettes, a barrel of porter and two bottles of whisky.

The men arrived at first light, more than thirty of them walking up from the road. Some of them were carrying tools over their shoulders, and with the red sky behind them they looked like an army marching toward us. Following behind them were a scattering of women, many of them older, lifting their long skirts clear of the damp grass. It was clear that our invitations had been taken up by all the men of the townland, but by far fewer of the women.

Maidy greeted each woman at the door, taking their cakes and tarts and placing them on the kitchen table. All of the women knew who I was, but I struggled to place many of them, which set me at a disadvantage at once. While I recognized some faces, I could not then remember their names, which created an awkwardness in me.

The first hour passed in a flurry of business as the men had to be fed before their day’s work began. Maidy acted the hostess, running around shouting instructions at all of us, looking for more tea, another hunk of bacon and faster slicing of the soda cake. When the men had left to do the work, the women were able to settle then with our tea and sweet things. There were around ten of us in all. It was the discreet handful that Maidy had promised me, but I could see by her face she was disappointed that more women had not turned up. Accustomed to how crowded these gatherings could become, several of the older women had brought their own stools and chairs to sit on, but there were so few of us that one or two of them were still empty. I put a plate of cake down on one milking stool to take the bare look off it, but the old crow who had brought the cake gave me such a look that I removed the plate straightaway.

Maidy was wonderful. While the women clearly felt awkward in my house, she kept the conversation flowing between church news and general parish gossip. After a while, however, she saw that Paud had forgotten his jacket and she excused herself to take it down to him. After she left the room a terrible awkward silence descended, and I was at a complete loss as to how to break it. We smiled weakly at one another, and I thought one of us might faint with tension. Then I noticed the oldest woman, Brid Donnelly, a religious matriarch whom all the younger women respected and feared in turn, shift uncomfortably in her seat. Relieved at having an excuse to break the silence, I said, “Do you need a cushion there, Brid?”

“No, I’m fine, really I—”

I leapt out of my seat anyway. “You do, you do—wait there a minute . . .”

I all but ran into the bedroom and sighed deeply in relief for a few seconds, before grabbing a small cushion from the bed. It was a small hand-embroidered one that Emilie’s mother had given me to use for comfort on my journey home. I did not want to go back in, and wondered how long it would be before Maidy returned to rescue me. But I forced myself back through the door.

“There,” I said, smiling and handing the cushion to Brid.

“Thank you,” she said.

Then, before she put it behind her back, she held it up to her face and exclaimed, “What a
beautiful
piece of embroidery.”

“Thank you,” I said—but Brid ignored me and handed it over to a woman sitting over at the table.

“Carmel,” she said, “take a look and tell me what you think of that.”

Carmel took the cushion and, as soon as her hand touched it, said, “Mother of God, it’s as
soft,
what class of a fabric is that?”

“It’s velvet,” I replied.

“Well, my word,” she said. “And I never knew velvet could be embroidered.” She rummaged in the pocket of her apron and took out a tiny pair of glasses. She hooked them around her eyes and began to examine the cushion like a diamond dealer. “Oh, that is magnificent,” she said. “Truly now—and the
colors
. . .”

“Now did you ever see the like of that, Carmel Flaherty?”

“Never in my life—where would you get thread that color, I wonder? Nuala—take a look at this . . .” Carmel handed on Mrs. Andruchewitz’s cushion to Nuala as if it were made of gold leaf, and every woman gathered about to look at the intricate embroidery work and feel the soft brush of the velvet. It was clear from the close way they were studying the workmanship that these women were keen craftswomen themselves, and I felt a surge of pride that my little black cushion was getting such attention and praise.

“Who embroidered this?” Nuala asked. “Was it yourself?” She looked at me directly, her voice full of amazement.

“No,” I replied, “it was my friend’s mother, in America. A Polish lady.”

“Polish,” several of them said together, nodding.

“And is she living around here?” a younger woman whom I didn’t recognize asked.

“You silly fool!” Brid reprimanded her. “Eileen was in America—isn’t that it? Isn’t that where she got it?”

“Have you anything else like it?” Carmel piped up.

“I have some more of her work, I think . . .”

Emilie’s mother had given me several things she had embroidered, but I had never placed any particular value on them before—in truth, finding them a little bright and gaudy for my tastes. But seeing her work through the eyes of these discerning craftswomen I could see the beauty in it.

I went into the bedroom and dragged the trunk out from under the bed and into the kitchen. The women dispersed from around the embroidered cushion on Nuala’s lap and gathered in a circle about me. I felt like Ali Baba, as I lifted the trunk onto its side and began to open the drawers.