Legacy of Secrets (48 page)

“And to Boston’s most distinguished man,” she replied, smiling back at him, because she also meant it.

There was the sound of a carriage outside and she glanced excitedly at him. “Oh! Here they are!” she exclaimed, and he laughed as she hurried to the top of the stairs to receive her guests. She looked so young and charming in her tight blue bodice and swirling cream skirt. She had flowers in her hair and she was wearing the diamond-and-sapphire earrings he had not seen worn since his mother’s day.

The hired butler flung open the door and Lily watched puzzled as he came up the stairs holding a silver salver with
a white card on it. “Mrs. Brattle White’s compliments, ma’am,” he said.

Lily picked it up and read it. The excitement left her face and she passed it silently to her husband. “Mrs. Brattle White regrets that due to unforseen circumstances, she will be unable to attend the reception tonight,” John read out loud. “It’s all right Lily,” he said consolingly. “The old dear’s probably got a summer cold. After all, she’s in her seventies, you know.”

Another carriage drew up and again the butler brought them a card. It said the same thing: “Mrs. James Adams regrets …” he read, puzzled. “But she’s my aunt,” he exclaimed. “She’s been after me to marry for years.
Nothing
would keep her from meeting my bride. What’s going on? Has Boston come down with some epidemic I don’t know about?”

Carriage after carriage drew up outside, but no guests arrived, only the little white cards engraved with their names and their handwritten regrets.

The footmen waited impassively on the stairs and the hired butler paced the hall; the music played and the champagne and food waited in all their expensive glory in the dining room.

Lily straightened her back and stood tall. She tilted her chin in the air, and summoning all her dignity, she walked up the stairs to her room. She stood at the window watching the procession of smart carriages wending their way up Mount Vernon Street. And each time the coachman stepped out and climbed the steps to deposit his card on the silver tray. All those “regretful ladies,” she thought bitterly, facing the truth. She was related by marriage to every good Boston Brahmin family. And received by none of them. She knew there would be no more parties in her house. No one would ever come.

John found out the truth from his aunt later that night. It was his ex-cook, now employed by Mrs. Brattle White, who had let the cat out of the bag on the very day of the party. “She’s Irish, like meself,” she had told her new employer.
“And
she used to be his housekeeper. She gave us all the sack though, when she decided to marry him and up her station in life. She always did give herself airs. Anyone might have thought she was a real lady, instead of an Irish servant like the rest of us.”

The next morning Mr. and Mrs. Adams departed hurriedly for an extended “honeymoon” abroad, leaving behind a scandal that refused to go away.

A
FTER
I
HAD DONE MY SHOPPING
in Galway and Shannon and Eddie had finished browsing in Kenny’s Bookshop and buying hazelwood walking sticks and gorgeously colored mohair lap rugs, and thankfully not purchasing a single thing with a shamrock on it, we adjourned for lunch. Over pints of Guinness and plates of oak-smoked salmon with rich soda bread, not as good as Brigid’s but then none ever is, we talked about Lily. Eddie said he thought she was headstrong and selfish, though she had redeeming qualities. And Shannon said she was sorry for her because all she had been was young and spoiled and rather silly and it was not really her fault.

“Ah,” I said, “but blaming it on Finn O’Keeffe, that was her fault.”

“You’re too soft-hearted when it comes to Lily,” Eddie told her.

“No, I’m not,” Shannon retorted. “Besides, if Finn and Dan had stayed at Ardnavarna, they would have ended up just the way they began, as a groom and a gillie. And just look what happened to them.”

“Ah,” I said again, mysteriously this time. “But you haven’t heard the whole of it yet. You can see I have all my characters poised, all interlinked in some delicate way, their lives almost touching, but not quite.
Not yet.”

They laughed at me. “We know,” they chorused. “We have to wait. ‘All in good time.’”

“No time like the present,” I said briskly, pushing aside my plate and downing my Guinness in a practiced fashion. “And we shall continue with Dan.”

D
AN
O’K
EEFFE WENT TO THE BARBER
and had his thick curly red hair cut short and his bushy beard trimmed to a reasonable face-framing fuzz, and he then bought himself a new outfit before he went to see Thomas Keany. Clean and neat again and with his money in his pocket, he felt on top of the world as he strode down Prince Street, greeting a dozen different acquaintances en route.

The ward boss invited him to take a seat, eyeing him searchingly, noticing his new clothes and his confident smile and also the new look of experience on his face. He said, “Well, O’Keeffe? Have you come to return my fifty dollars?”

“Indeed I have, sir.” Dan laid the money on the table. “But not yet the gold watch I promised you.”

Keany left the fifty lying on the table between them. He said, “Then I take it the venture was not a success?”

“Indeed it was, sir.” Dan told him exactly how much of a success his venture had been while Keany listened attentively. “I made seven hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-five cents, Mr. Keany,” he ended triumphantly. “I bought myself new pants and a jacket and a haircut and I gave a friend of the family, poor Mrs. O’Donovan, fifty dollars. With your fifty repaid that leaves me with six hundred and three dollars exactly. And that’s more than enough to buy Corrigan’s little old shop. I’m sure he’ll sell for five.”

Keany nodded reflectively and said, “Tell me lad, what makes you think you can do better with Corrigan’s store than the man already has himself?”
“I’ll smarten it up, sir. I’ll paint the place, make it look fresh and clean. I’ll stock better produce and offer more variety.”

“And will you be charging more?”

“Well, I’ll have to add a bit to the prices to cover the extra expenses….”

Keany nodded. “And that’s exactly where your scheme falls to pieces. Corrigan’s shop is in Boston’s poorest area. The people there barely have two nickels to rub together and every cent you add to the price of an onion counts. Corrigan’s is a nickel-and-dime business in a nickel-and-dime area and it’ll never be any different. Those poor women will look at your fancy paintwork and the extra cent on the onion and they’ll go around the corner to the next grocer because he’s cheaper. The only thing that matters to them is the price. Absolutely nothing else.”

Dan stared glumly at him. His grandiose dreams of a smartly painted, neatly stacked shop flew out the window and a new image of himself appeared, wandering the open road with a peddler’s satchel on his back until he was as old as the little guy he’d bought the suspenders from. And, like him, when he was seventy he saw he would still be sleeping in a haystack with a bottle of hooch to keep away the night’s cold instead of with a good woman in a feather bed.

He took all the money from his pocket and laid it on the desk alongside Keany’s fifty dollars and said miserably, “So there’s my choice then. Become old and gray like Corrigan, selling two cents’ worth of sugar to women who can’t afford it, or wear myself out as a traveling man with only a bottle for company in me old age.”

Keany rapped his knuckles emphatically on his wooden desk. “I’ve been behind this desk for twenty-five years, son, and I’ve had all sorts come to me for advice, or a loan, or help in sorting their problems. I’ve seen a fella desperate for the price of a coffin to bury his child; old men with nothing left in their pockets for a night’s lodgings in the bitter cold; and families needing a roof over their heads.
Men have come to me, like you did yourself, for money to set themselves up in business, and I admit I’ve made mistakes. But not many. A man becomes a pretty good judge of character under those circumstances.”

He sat back again; putting his fingers together he looked thoughtfully over them at Dan. He said, “Did y’ever think of going up a notch or two, Dan lad? More of a carriage-trade business, in a smarter area where there’s good money spent on food—and plenty of it. I happen to know of a lease going on a shop at the corner of Clarendon Street—only a small place, mind you, but it’s a damn fine location. Most of the cooks on Beacon Hill are Irish women and they’ll patronize an Irish grocer for sure. A fine-looking enterprising young fellow like yourself could do very nicely there.”

Dan looked doubtful. Clarendon Street was alien territory, a place of nobs and snobs. His entrepreneurial confidence had been gained dealing with country hicks and he wasn’t sure he was ready to tackle the grand ladies of Boston yet. “I don’t know what they eat in rich houses,” he said doubtfully.

“You didn’t know who wanted to buy pocket watches or red suspenders either,” Keany pointed out. “But you had enough savvy to find out. The lease on the property is two hundred and fifty for the year.”

Dan looked at his six hundred dollars. It would buy Corrigan’s shop and Corrigan’s life-style; he knew he would not lose his money, but neither would he make any. Or he could take a gamble on a year’s lease of the smart shop with enough left to do it up and stock it, and if he were lucky he would make money.
Real money.

“Thanks for your advice, Mr. Keany, sir. I’ll take that lease,” he said quickly, before he could change his mind.

“If you are the fella I think you are, you will not regret that decision,” Keany said, shaking his hand. “I’ve had plenty of men come to me with good schemes for businesses and the only flaw in ’em was their own character.
I’m betting on you, Dan lad. But remember, only you can make it a success.”

Keany arranged for the lease and Dan signed his name with a firm hand and paid his two hundred and fifty. His stomach clenched agonizingly as he watched his money disappear into the attorney’s safe, and he remembered all those bone-chilling lonely nights on the road and all the hard-talking it had taken to amass it, dollar by dollar. Telling himself there was no going back, he went to inspect his new premises.

Keany had been right: the shop was on an important corner with a window onto Clarendon and one onto Boylston, and a doorway catercorner in between at the top of two wide stone steps. The shop itself was twenty by twenty square, with a smaller storeroom in the back. There was a minute hallway and a dark narrow staircase leading to the two rooms over, and they were to become his new home.

“Just one year, Dan boy,” he told himself seriously, standing in the middle of his shop. “That’s all you’ve got. At the end of it, you’ve either made your money back or you’ve lost it all.”

He walked through the tree-lined streets of Beacon Hill and Back Bay, noting the elegant redbrick houses and the gas streetlights and the leafy calm. There was a pleasant feeling of leisure about the area, as though it would be in bad taste to even think of hurrying, and he noticed even the smart shiny carriages clip-clopped past at a sedate pace.

Plucking up his courage, he went to the tradesmen’s entrance of one of the grand houses and asked to speak to the cook. He told her he was opening a new grocery on the corner of Clarendon and asked if there was anything in particular she would like him to stock, and he made a careful note of her answer. He repeated this at a dozen or so houses and made a note of all the information.

He installed mahogany shelving in his shop and glass-fronted cupboards with solid brass fittings. He polished the mahogany counter to a high sheen and added a couple of
bentwood chairs for his customers to take their ease while placing their orders. He had his shop front painted a rich deep red, the color of good claret, and had the name
DANIEL’S
inscribed in brass letters on the fascia board and painted in gold leaf on each window, with
HIGH CLASS GROCERS, SUPPLIERS TO THE CARRIAGE TRADE,
written underneath.

He bought an old carriage for deliveries and had it painted in the same smart claret and gold as the shop, with
DANIEL’S
emblazoned in gold letters on the sides, and for ten bucks a week he employed a grateful young man called O’Dwyer, with Irish blue eyes and a family of six to keep, as stockroom assistant and deliveryman. He made early morning rounds of the markets, meeting suppliers and wholesalers, searching for only the best of everything. And “Country Fresh” were the bywords used on the flyer he sent out announcing the opening, in rich burgundy lettering even though colored inks cost a fortune, on thick expensive paper so that it could not be ignored. He had it hand-delivered to the kitchens of all the grand houses by a dozen scruffy little Irish kids eager to make a few cents, and he placed prominent ads in every Boston newspaper and journal.

Early the next morning, smart in a white linen coat, Dan inspected his shop windows proprietorily from the sidewalk. He unrolled his red-and-white striped awnings, watered the twin bay trees in neat tubs, one on each side of the steps, inspected the fresh fruits and vegetables set out in small wooden crates on green felt-covered trestles, each fig and peach wrapped in white tissue paper like a precious gift. The sacks of fresh coffee beans, chests of China tea, and jars of vanilla pods, saffron, and cinnamon perfumed his shop, as did the large copper bowl of fresh flowers on the counter next to the huge brass cash register that had cost him a small fortune. But then, everything had. He had gone for broke with the “Nothing but the Best for the Best” attitude that was to become his motto.