Ellis Island (28 page)

“Here,” I said, finding a set of embroidered cotton napkins in a garish purple, and passing them around.

The women cooed over them for ages until Brid said, “I declare, Ellie, well, thank you for showing us all this. It’s the most delicate bit of work ever I’ve seen.” She folded it and held it up to return it to me. “You can keep it,” I said. Then, seeing her confused look back at me, I said, “As a gift—please have them.”

“Oh, no I couldn’t possibly . . .”

She bristled and I became worried that I had offended the older woman.

“Certainly you can.” Maidy had come back and was standing at the door. “I declare you women have given away crochet work to cover half the fields of Kilmoy, you can surely afford to take something back.”

Brid puffed, but put the piece on her lap.

“Besides, Ellie has no use for them here, have you, Ellie?”

I followed her lead. “No, indeed,” I said, adding, “and Carmel, please—you take the cushion.”

Both women put their heads down and waved their hands around in violent objection, saying firmly, “No, no, no—Ellie . . .” But with Maidy’s encouragement I kept going.

I opened another drawer and pulled out the glass cat Sheila had given me. It was wrapped in tissue paper. “Here, Nuala,” I said, passing it across to the astonished redhead, “you take this.”

She unwrapped it and gasped. “Oh no, no, no, Ellie,” she said, “there is no way I could take this off you. There is no way on God’s earth I could . . .”

I looked at Nuala holding the mended glass cat—the incongruous frivolity of it against the plain fabric of her navy woolen skirt, the delicate poise of its marbled arched neck in her worn, working hands—and I realized that this was what all of us women were craving: a bit of beauty. Something pretty for us to look at, and touch, and wonder at, to break through the monotony of our hardship. I had come back from America with a trunkload of beautiful things and that was all that separated me from my neighbors. I wanted to give each of them a piece of the beauty I had hidden away in this trunk.

I stuck my hand in and pulled out Isobel’s black silk gown with the embroidered peonies. It was the first beautiful thing I had seen when I arrived in America, the garment that for me had most epitomized the glamour and wealth of New York. I handed it across to a plain, round-faced girl who had pushed herself to the front of the circle, and she yelped with delight as she grabbed it.

“Dervla!” a woman who was probably her mother said. “Give that back!”

Dervla’s eyes widened as she closed her eyes and held the soft fabric to her cheek. I realized that was the moment of beauty. The fleeting joy of acquisition—and then it was gone. I was glad to be giving these things away with the same ease that they had been given to me.

“No,” I said, “you keep that, Dervla. All of you—please, I brought these things home from America to give as gifts. And you’ve all come here today, and brought your men with you to help us. Well, I really appreciate that, and you’re all going home with something and that’s that.”

Nuala and Carmel put up a good fight for the rest of that day, objecting and calling me crazy and saying they were having none of it, and asking Maidy what kind of a daughter-in-law I was at all to be giving away my precious things like that, and claiming I was surely mad. Maidy shook her head and said I was a stubborn strap, and always had been, and objecting to the gifts was a pointless exercise and that, in her experience, they were as well off to take them.

“That child sent home every penny she earned from America to pay for John’s operation,” I heard her quietly say to Brid in a corner. And the old woman shook her head in amazement and admiration.

The following morning there were double the number of men marching across our field and behind them every woman in the townland. “Oh God,” I thought, running to put the kettle on, “they’ll all be looking for gifts from the trunk.” But that turned out to be far from the case.

Unlike the day before, the wives had taken care that each of their men had brought their own breakfast of tea and bread with them, so they were dispatched without ritual to get on with their work, allowing the women to get on with the business of chat. I had the kettle boiled by the time they arrived and there was a tin plate piled with potato cakes keeping warm on the fire stoop, while others sizzled away in the pan. The women settled themselves immediately, pouring themselves tea into the cups that they had carried with them. Someone had brought honey, and we drizzled it over the warm potato cakes, overloading the fire to meet the demand for more.

As soon as we were settled and fed, Brid presented me with a piece of her own work, a knitted tea cozy with a beautiful crocheted flower on its top. I promised I would treasure it and placed it straight over the china pot on my dresser.

“Now tell me, Ellie,” she said, having gathered around her a small audience of her cronies, “this shop of yours will have windows, I take it?”

“Well, yes,” I said, amused.

“Well then, you will be needing curtains,” she said, and pulled a length of cotton from under her apron. As she did so, a half-dozen other women did the same until they had built a pile of patchwork fabric on the floor in front of them.

“No,” I insisted, “it’s too much trouble,” and they were as thrilled with my objections as I had been with theirs the day before.

For that day, my house belonged entirely to the women of our townland. The weather was dry and we all gathered round in circles outside on stools and stones. When we ran out of those, men were dispatched for bales of hay to use as makeshift tables and chairs. “Ladies of leisure,” the new curate joked as he called by to offer moral support, “sitting around enjoying yourselves when the men are hard at work. I declare—is this a spraoi or a mehil?”

“Don’t we deserve a day off, Father,” said Carmel, “to welcome back one of our own?”

I had never felt like “one of our own,” but, to my surprise, I was glad to be viewed as such. I worked hard that day, lavishing each of the women with praise for their gifts of food and with thanks for their help—stepping aside to let the strident take control of my fire and graciously serving the lazy with tea where they sat. I seduced them with chocolate and coffee, melted into warm, creamy milk and sweetened with sugar, and when the men came in for their tea when their day’s work was done I let them see that, while John Hogan’s wife had been absent this long while, she was back now and happy to make ready with porter and cigarettes. I allowed my house to become home for everyone that day and by the end of it, I was the toast of the village.

Chapter Forty-Seven

My shop was beautiful. The counter was of a dark polished wood and John had given every shelf five coats of gloss paint—a beautiful sunny yellow, which we had bought in from Dublin and had had delivered with my first Findlater’s order. Behind the counter I placed chunky glass jars filled with sweets the color of jewels; the tinned fruit and vegetables were stacked in pyramids; the chocolate bars, coffee and spices for baking were arranged in decorative piles. I had also bought in some satin ribbon, colored buttons and a small selection of silks that I kept in glass drawers underneath the counter, so that they were visible, but not immediately available to grubby hands.

I believed there would not be as much call for the expensive items, but none of them were perishable and they gave the shop an air of something special, adding to my own sense of pride in the place. “It’s important,” I said to Maidy, when she pointed out to me that there was scant need for luxuries such as tinned pears and satin ribbon in our vicinity, “that my customers know we are as well stocked as any shop in town.”

If they all thought I had come back from America with “airs and graces,” I figured it made sense to build on that. Let me pass my airs and graces on to them so that they might feel we country folk were as good as the snooty townspeople, with our very own shop selling fancy goods and frivolous items, and with a shopkeeper more delicate and obliging than any you might find in the town of Kilmoy!

In addition, of course, I had taken great trouble to have stock that would meet all of their everyday needs. Flour, baking soda, blue—these things were available for a small price when bought in bulk, and I believed I would be able to sell them on at a good profit while still maintaining lower prices than the greedy shopkeepers in town.

On the first day of business I was so nervous that I went down to the shop at half past seven and started to fluster about the place, moving things around, polishing the countertop. I had taken in a small amount of hardware—buckets, mops, sweeping brushes—and I put these outside the front door to serve as an advertisement that I was open.

By eight I was very worried, having told myself that I would doubtless be alone in there all day, demented with fear that I had wasted all of my money and time on this vain venture. To settle myself I went into the small back room to make tea and, as I did so, I heard the door rattle and the counter bell let off a loud
phwriiing
.

It was Maidy, and she had persuaded my mother to come with her. “We’ll not stay more than a few minutes,” Maidy said. My mother held her bag to her chest and looked around ner-vously. I knew it would be strange for her, me opening a shop, given our family history. This was not what she had intended to happen when she made her throwaway comment, but before I had time to consider this, a half dozen or so of the local women came flooding through the door in a gaggle of enthusiasm and started poking around, “oohing” and “aahing” and firing questions at me. “How much are those bars of chocolate—are they the same ones we had at the mehil?” “Will the handle on that bucket hold? If it doesn’t, can I bring it back and buy the handle alone?” “Can I buy that ribbon by the half yard?”

More neighbors followed, and Maidy and my mother had no choice but to help me fetch and carry from the shelves and count out the money as the women filled their baskets and emptied their pockets in a constant stream of custom. Maidy took it all in her stride, but my mother was flustered and kept disappearing into the small stockroom. At one point I walked in to collect some tinned peaches and found her sitting alone, as still as a statue—as pale she had been while grieving for my father.

“Mam?” I said. “Won’t you come outside?”

“Too many people,” she said. “I want to go home.”

“Ah, stay for another while, Mam,” I said.

Then she suddenly snapped, “All this fuss—you’re not the first person to open a shop around here, Eileen!”

I didn’t know what to say to her, but just knelt down and put my arms round her in a half embrace. “It’s all right, Mam,” I said. “Everything is different now.”

For the longest time she refused to come back into the shop, until at last Maidy insisted on my mother keeping Brid Donnelly company. The old woman had arrived mid-morning for a quarter of currants and had been so delighted with the place that she had taken up residence on a stool by the stove, surveying the comings and goings as if she were at a Broadway show. Maidy persuaded my mother to sit with Brid—“As a charity to me, Attracta, to stop her asking so many questions of me”—and although my mother was very stiff at first, before long she and Brid were discussing methods of embroidery and were in danger of becoming great friends.

Two or three other women were standing at the counter gabbling away, and I was just coming back from the stockroom with more raisins when the room suddenly went quiet. A young girl stood framed in the front door. I wiped my hands on my apron and, as I went to greet the newcomer, an unpleasant feeling clenched my stomach. It was Mary Kelly’s daughter, Veronica.

Mary was our nearest neighbor, shunned because she had become pregnant out of wedlock and given birth to an illegitimate daughter before anyone had realized what was going on. Nobody had the faintest idea who the father was, and that, I had always believed, added to people’s mistrust of her. It could have been any one of their husbands, or sons, or fathers. John and I seldom saw her out, though John had been down and fixed Mary’s thatched roof once or twice, and I had delivered messages to her door.

Veronica had the unkempt appearance of a troubled waif. She had been a small child when I left; now she was a young woman of thirteen, but I recognized her by the sadness in her eyes and the proud set of her mouth. “Veronica,” I said, “how lovely to see you.” I walked across and led her by the shoulders in among us. “Where is your mother, Veronica—is she not coming up herself, today?”

“No,” the child answered, barely audible even in the silence. “She just wanted to say she wishes you and the Mister the Lord’s luck with the shop, and for me to buy some starch.” She held out her fist and dropped two warm pennies into my hand.

The women of the village stood and stared. I looked past them to my mother. She was sitting, her back as straight as a post, and her eyes were wide and full of a fire that was fear or pride, or both. She gave me an encouraging nod that was so small as to be imperceptible.

“You tell your mother to keep her money for now, Veronica,” I said. Then, still looking at my own mother, I added, “In any case, I have a proposal for her. I’ll need an extra pair of hands about the place, so perhaps she will allow you to work for me?” At this, my mother gave me a slight smile. I looked at the girl again. “If that’s suitable with you, Veronica?”

My new employee nodded wildly. Brid Donnelly let out a scandalized “Humpf” and was drawing breath on some sharp comment when Maidy stepped up and put one hand on the old woman’s shoulder to silence her. Signaling to the child, she said, “Never mind all this talk. As long as you’re here, Veronica Kelly, you can start work and get Mrs. Donnelly a cup of tea—she is half parched. The teapot is out in the stockroom, and for the love of God, Ellie, find a clean apron for the child.” Then she clapped the shocked girl into action. “Come on, come on—out back, girl, and smarten yourself up, or there’ll be no job here for you. Now, Ellie, have you forgotten you promised Brid and me a taste of those new Garibaldi biscuits?”

I sent Vinny Moran down to tell Mary we would be keeping her daughter in the shop to help out for the day, then had the lad walk her home when the shop was cleared out, long after darkness had come. Veronica had a full stomach and a happy heart that day, and it was, I knew, the first day for a long time that she had experienced any luck.

My own luck had been plentiful that day and, on reflection, I realized, for many days before it.