Scarlett (66 page)

Strangers the day before, strangers again the day after, on Saint Patrick’s Day people joined hands and danced, joined voices and sang. They shared the sun and the air and the music and the streets.

“It’s wonderful,” Scarlett said when she tasted a chicken drumstick from one of the food stalls. And, “It’s wonderful,” she said when she saw the green chalk shamrocks on the brick paths of Chatham Square. “It’s wonderful,” about the mighty granite eagle with a green ribbon around its neck on the Pulaski Monument.

“What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful day,” she cried, and she spun around and around before she sank exhausted onto a newly vacated bench next to Colum. “Look, Colum, I’ve got a hole in the bottom of my boot. Where I come from everybody says you can tell the best parties because they’re the ones where you dance your slippers right through. And these aren’t even slippers, they’re boots. This must be the best party ever!”

“It’s a grand day, to be sure, and there’s the evening still to come, with the Roman candles and all. You’ll be worn through just like your boot, Scarlett darling, if you don’t take a little rest. It’s near four o’clock. Let’s go to the house now for a bit.”

“I don’t want to. I want to dance some more and eat some more pork barbecue and have one of those green ices and taste that awful green beer Matt and Jamie were drinking.”

“And so you shall tonight. You observe, do you not, that Matt and Jamie gave up an hour ago or more?”

“Sissies!” Scarlett proclaimed. “But you’re not. You’re the best of the O’Haras, Colum. Jamie said so, and he was right.”

Colum smiled at her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. “Saving only yourself,” he said. “Scarlett, I’m going to take off your boot now, hold it up, the one with the hole in it.” He unlaced the neat black kid lady’s boot, removed it and upended it to empty the sand and crushed shell fragments. Then he picked up a discarded ice cream cornet and folded the thick paper to fit inside the boot. “This should get you home. I’m supposing you’ve got more boots there.”

“Of course I do. Oh, that does feel much better. Thank you, Colum. You always know what to do.”

“What I know right now is we’ll go home and have a cup of tea and a rest.”

Scarlett hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was tired. She walked slowly beside Colum along Drayton Street, smiling at the smiling people thronging the street. “Why is Saint Patrick the patron saint of Ireland?” she asked. “Is he the saint of any place else?”

Colum blinked once, astonished by her ignorance. “All saints are saints for every person and every place in the world. Saint Patrick is special to the Irish because he brought us Christianity when we were still being lied to by the Druids, and he drove out all the snakes from Ireland to make it like the Garden of Eden without the serpent.”

Scarlett laughed. “You’re making that up.”

“Indeed I am not. There’s not a single snake the length and breadth of Ireland.”

“That’s wonderful. I do purely hate snakes.”

“You really should come with me when I go home, Scarlett. You’d love the Old Country. The ship takes only two weeks and a day to Galway.”

“That’s very fast.”

“It is that. The winds blow towards Ireland and carry the homesick travellers home as fast as a cloud flying across the sky. It’s a grand sight to see all the sails set, and the big ship fairly dancing over the sea. The white gulls fly out with her until the land is almost lost from view, then they turn back, crying because they cannot come all the way. The dolphins take over the escort then, and sometimes a great whale, spouting like a fountain with astonishment to have the beautiful sail-topped companion. It’s a lovely thing, sailing. You feel so free you think you could fly.”

“I know,” said Scarlett. “That’s just what it’s like. You feel so free.”

S
carlett thrilled Kathleen by wearing her green watered silk gown to the festivities at Forsyth Park that night, but she horrified the girl by insisting on wearing her thin green morocco leather slippers instead of boots. “But the sand and the bricks are that rough, Scarlett, they’ll take out the soles of your elegant slippers!”

“I want them to. I want, one time in my life, to dance through two pairs of shoes at one party. Just brush my hair, please, Kathleen, and put the green velvet ribbon on to hold it. I want to feel it loose and flying when I dance.” She had slept for twenty minutes and felt that she could dance until dawn.

The dancing was on the broad plaza of granite blocks that surrounded the fountain, the water glittering like jewels and whispering beneath the merry, driving rhythms of the reel and the lilting beauty of the ballads. She danced one reel with Daniel, her small feet in their dainty slippers flashing like little green flames in the intricate patterns of the dance. “You’re a marvel, Scarlett darling,” he shouted. He put his hands around her waist and lifted her above his head, then turned, turned, turned while his feet pounded to the insistent beat of the
bodhran
. Scarlett stretched her arms wide and lifted her face to the moon, turning, turning in the fountain’s silver mist.

“That’s how I feel tonight,” she told her cousins when the first Roman candle flew up into the sky and burst into showering brightness that made the moon look wan.

Scarlett hobbled Wednesday morning. Her feet were swollen and bruised. “Don’t be silly,” she said when Kathleen exclaimed about the condition of her feet, “I had a wonderful time.” She sent Kathleen downstairs as soon as her corset was laced. She didn’t want to talk yet about all the pleasures of Saint Patrick’s Day; she wanted to turn over the memories slowly, by herself. It didn’t really make any difference if she was a little late for breakfast; she wouldn’t be walking to the Market today anyhow. She’d just leave off stockings and wear her felt house slippers and stay in.

There certainly were a lot of steps from the third floor down to the kitchen. Scarlett had never noticed how many when she was running down them. Now each one meant a stab of pain if she didn’t carefully ease her weight down. No matter. It was worth staying in for a day—or even two—to have had the joyful dancing. Maybe she could ask Katie to shut the cow in her shed. Scarlett was afraid of cows, she always had been, all her life. If Katie shut it up, though, she could sit outside in the yard. The spring air smelled so fresh and sweet through the open windows that she longed to be out in it.

There… almost to the parlor floor. I’m over halfway. I wish I could go faster. I’m hungry.

As Scarlett gingerly lowered her right foot to the first step on the final flight of stairs to the kitchen, the smell of frying fish rose up to meet her. Damn, she thought, it’s no-meat time again. What I’d really like is some nice thick bacon.

Suddenly, without warning, her stomach contracted and her throat filled. Scarlett turned in panic and lurched to the window. She held on to the open curtains with frantic grasping hands while she leaned out of the window and vomited into the thick green leaves of the young magnolia tree in the yard. She was sick again and again until she was weak, and her face was wet with tears and clammy sweat. Then she slid helplessly down into a huddled miserable heap on the hall floor.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but the feeble gesture did nothing to erase the sour, bitter taste inside. If only I could have a drink of water, she thought. Her stomach contracted in response, and she gagged.

Scarlett put her hands over her middle and wept. I must have eaten something gone to poison in the heat yesterday. I’m going to die right here, like a dog. She took short panting breaths. If only she could loosen her stays; they were cramping her aching stomach, cutting off the air she needed. The rigid whalebones felt like a cruel iron cage.

She had never in all her life felt so sick.

She could hear the family’s voices from below, Maureen asking where she was, Kathleen saying she’d be down any minute. Then a door banged, and she heard Colum. He was asking for her, too. Scarlett clenched her teeth. She had to get up. She had to go downstairs. She would not be discovered like this, bawling like a baby because she had partied too much. She wiped the tears from her face with the hem of her skirt, and pulled herself upright.

“There she is,” Colum said when Scarlett appeared in the doorway. Then he hurried to her. “Poor little Scarlett darling, you look like you’re walking on broken glass. Here, let me put you at ease.” He picked her up before she could say a word and carried her to the chair that Maureen quickly pulled up close to the hearth.

Everyone bustled about, their breakfast forgotten, and in only seconds Scarlett found herself with her feet on a cushion and a cup of tea in her hands. She blinked back the tears in her eyes, tears of weakness and happiness. It was so nice to be taken care of, to be loved. She felt a thousand times better now. She took a cautious small sip of tea, and it was good.

She had a second cup, then a third and a piece of toast. But she averted her eyes from the fried fish and potatoes. No one seemed to notice. There was too much hubbub getting the children’s books and lunchbags sorted out and shooing them off to school.

When the door closed behind them, Jamie kissed Maureen on the lips, Scarlett on the top of her head, Kathleen on her cheek. “I’ll be off to the store now,” he said. “The bunting must come down and the headache remedy must be put on the counter where all the sufferers can get to it easy. Celebrating is a fine thing, but the day after can be a fearsome burden.”

Scarlett bent her head to hide her blushing face.

“Now you just stay as you are, Scarlett,” Maureen ordered. “Kathleen and I will have the kitchen cleared in no time, then we’ll go to the Market while you have a little rest. Colum O’Hara, you stay where you are, too; I don’t want your big boots getting in my way. I want you under my eye, too; it’s little enough I get to see of you. If it wasn’t for Old Katie Scarlett’s birthday, I’d beg you not to leave so soon for Ireland.”

“Katie Scarlett?” said Scarlett.

Maureen dropped the sudsy cloth she was holding. “And did no one think to tell you?” she said. “Your grandmother that you were named for is going to be a century old next month.”

“And still as sharp-tongued as when she was a girl,” Colum chuckled. “It’s something for all the O’Haras to pride themselves on.”

“I’ll be home for the feast,” Kathleen said. She glowed with happiness.

“Oh, I wish I could go,” Scarlett said. “Pa used to tell so many stories about her.”

“But you can, Scarlett darling. And think what a joy for the old woman.”

Kathleen and Maureen rushed to Scarlett’s side, urging, encouraging, persuading, until Scarlett was giddy. Why not? she asked herself.

When Rhett came for her, she would have to go back to Charleston. Why not put it off a little longer? She hated Charleston. The drab dresses, the interminable calls and committees, the walls of politeness that shut her out, the walls of decaying houses and broken gardens that shut her in. She hated the way Charlestonians talked—the flat, drawn-out vowels, the private language of cousins and ancestors; the words and phrases in French and Latin and God only knew what other languages, the way they all knew places she’d never been and people she’d never heard of and books she’d never read. She hated their society—the dance cards and receiving lines and the unspoken rules that she was supposed to know and didn’t, the immorality that they accepted, and the hypocrisy that condemned her for sins she never committed.

I don’t want to wear colorless dresses and say “yes ma’am” to old biddies whose grandfather on their mother’s side was some famous Charleston hero or something. I don’t want to spend every single Sunday morning listening to my aunts picking at each other. I don’t want to have to think the Saint Cecilia Ball is the be-all and end-all of life. I like Saint Patrick’s Day better.

Scarlett laughed aloud. “I’m going to go!” she said. Suddenly she felt wonderful, even in her stomach. She stood up to hug Maureen and she barely noticed the pain in her feet.

Charleston could wait until she got back. Rhett could wait, too. Lord knows she’d waited for him often enough. Why shouldn’t she visit the rest of her O’Hara kin? It was only two weeks and a day on a great sailing ship to that other Tara. And she’d be Irish and happy for a while yet before she settled down to Charleston’s rules.

Her tender, wounded feet tapped out the rhythm of a reel.

Only two days later, she was able to dance for hours at the party to celebrate Stephen’s return from Boston. And not long after that, she found herself in an open carriage with Colum and Kathleen, on her way to the docks along Savannah’s riverfront.

It had been no trouble at all to get ready. Americans did not need passports for entrance to the British Isles. They didn’t even need letters of credit, but Colum insisted that she get one from her banker. “Just in case,” Colum said. He didn’t say in case of what. Scarlett didn’t care. She was intoxicated with the adventure of it all.

“You’re sure we’ll not miss our boat, Colum?” Kathleen fretted. “You were late coming for us. Jamie and them left an hour ago to walk over.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” Colum soothed. He winked at Scarlett. “And if I was tardy a bit, it was no fault of mine, seeing that Big Tom MacMahon wanted to pledge his promise about the Bishop in a glass or two, and I couldn’t insult the man.”