The Bright One (5 page)

‘Why do you need so many pockets, Dada?' she enquired impatiently.

‘Don't they all have their uses?' James said. ‘Now where in the world . . . ? I could have sworn . . . !' He started the search again.

‘James!' Molly implored.

‘Ah! Here we are then!' he said, fumbling. ‘Now who should this be for?'

Breda stood on tiptoe, trying to see into the pocket.

‘No, not for you, Breda,' he said. ‘'Tis for Moira. Yes, I distinctly remember buying this for Moira!'

From the large pocket inside his jacket he drew out a small hand-mirror. It was oval, with a handle, and pink-backed. Moira flushed with pleasure at the sight of it.

‘Isn't it exactly the right thing?' Molly said.

She'll be able to put her lipstick on properly. The words rose to Breda's lips, but she bit them back. This was no time to be ungracious, and perhaps Dada had also bought
her
a mirror, only a different colour. Blue would be nice. The thoughts flew round in her head while James's hand strayed to another pocket.

‘Ah! 'Tis here,' he said.

Then it couldn't be a hand-mirror, Breda thought. That pocket was too small.

It was a hair slide, in the shape of a butterfly. Green with a design on it in blue. She drew in her breath sharply at the sight of it. It was entirely beautiful.

‘Oh, Dada,' Breda said, ‘it is wonderful! It is just what I wanted!' She hadn't known that before she had set eyes on it, but now she was quite certain.

‘I knew it the minute I saw it,' James said. ‘And now what are you going to give me?'

‘A big kiss!' Breda said.

She raised her arms and he swung her up so that she was level with him. When she kissed him his face was rough and itchy on hers, like a scrubbing brush, and the breath of him was strong and sweet. Like cough mixture, she thought. Oh, he was the best of fathers, even though he
had
broken his sacred promise, for which she now totally forgave him, and God would too.

James put Breda down again, and bent so that Moira could kiss him also. She was getting too big, too much of a young lady, to be swung through the air. He hoped his little bright one would be a while yet before she grew up.

‘Thank you, Dada,' Moira said. ‘It is just right. It will be very useful.'

‘Sure, you're very welcome,' James said.

Then he sat down, and stopped searching in his pockets, as if it was all over. Breda looked at him in dismay.

‘Mammy!' she said. ‘What about Mammy?'

‘Oh!' he said, straight-faced. ‘Was I supposed to bring something for Mammy? Oh, dear me!'

‘You forgot!' Breda said in horror. She turned to Molly.

‘Then you can share my hair slide, Mammy,' she said. ‘We can wear it in turn.'

‘And you can look in my mirror any time you want to,' Moira offered.

‘You are good girls, both of you,' Molly said, ‘but I'm sure Dada is teasing us again.'

‘Mammy knows I would never be forgetting her,' James said.

He fished inside his waistcoat pocket and brought out a small, dark blue, cardboard box, which he handed to Molly.

‘It's a lovely box,' she said.

‘Never mind the box. Open it up!' he ordered.

Inside, against dark blue velvet, lay a pair of earrings; tiny crosses, not more than half an inch long. Molly gasped.

‘Oh! They're beautiful!'

‘Nine carat gold,' James said proudly. ‘You're to wear them all the time. You are not to keep them just for feast days. All the time, mind you!'

While Moira held up her mirror, Molly fixed the earrings. Hadn't she always wanted some just like this?

‘But too fine for me!' she said.

‘Nothing is too fine for you, sweetheart!' James said. ‘So there you are! Everybody pleased! It was worth the money, all of which I spent, except for a few coppers to give to the boys. Oh, and a shilling left over, which is all yours, my Molly.'

With a flourish he handed her the coin. She struggled not to show her disappointment. Oh, the earrings were lovely, and wasn't it true that they were what she had always wanted, but she did so need the money. A shilling would go nowhere. Still and all, he meant to be generous. His heart was in the right place, even if his head was not. She had best go down to O'Reilly's now, not wait until tomorrow, but spend it before James asked to borrow it back to go out with his mates.

‘And how is Mrs O'Reilly?' Molly asked.

‘Not well. Not well at all. She is a sorely tried woman.'

He weighed out a pound of sugar (to the last grain, Molly thought) and tipped it into a blue bag. And wasn't he a sorely tried man, Luke O'Reilly asked himself? A man with a grocer's shop to run and a wife who was always ailing, so that he had everything to do, in the house as well as in the shop.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Molly sympathized. ‘And what would seem to be the present trouble?'

She said ‘present trouble' because Mary O'Reilly seemed to have been poorly on and off ever since Luke had brought her back from Dublin as his bride, more than a dozen years ago. There were those who said serve him right for not choosing a woman from the county when there were plenty who would have been willing to step into a nice little business, and serve him well, and have his children, which Mary O'Reilly had failed to do. Also, she had Dublin ways, she set herself above the people of the west, she did not stand and chat to anyone after Mass. That last was true, though the bit about Dublin ways was usually said by those who had never been there, nor ever would.

‘You may ask,' Luke O'Reilly said. ‘But indeed 'twould be hard to tell you. Isn't Dr O'Halloran entirely mystified?'

And no wonder at that, for one time it was her head and another time her back, or her legs, and all the times in between those mysterious things which went on in women's bodies.

‘Dear me!' Molly said. ‘Well, give her my best wishes. And I'll take two ounces of tea, please.'

‘Ceylon?'

She hesitated. It cost more, but it made a better cup, which was important if you were going to use it twice over.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Ceylon it is.'

‘Ah!' Luke O'Reilly said, ‘You know what's best, Mrs O'Connor.'

‘It's one thing knowing, another affording,' Molly observed. ‘I hope Kieran is being a help to you?' She looked around the shop for a sight of her son.

‘He's doing well enough,' the grocer said. ‘Inexperienced, of course.'

‘He'll learn quickly,' Molly said with confidence. ‘He's a willing worker.'

‘I'll give him that. He's out at the back, unpacking goods. Would you be wanting him, then?'

‘Oh no!' Molly said quickly. ‘I'll not take him from his work!' She would let Luke O'Reilly know that she would not be an interfering mother.

‘Will there be anything else, then?'

‘No. Nothing else.'

In fact, the shop was full of things with which she would like to have filled her basket: tinned peaches, chocolate biscuits, ox tongues, apricot jam. She averted her eyes from the well-filled shelves, picked up her purchases and left.

Luke O'Reilly, having no other customers to distract him, moved to the open doorway and watched her walk down the street, noting the free swing of her hips, her slender ankles, the way she held her head so upright on her shoulders, as if she
was
somebody. She was a fine woman, none finer in Kilbally. Why would a woman like her fall for a man like James O'Connor? She was wasted on him; he was not fit to tie her shoelaces.

It could have been different, he thought. Hadn't he had his eye on her when she was sixteen? He'd been thirty then, already the owner of his own shop. He'd waited until she should be a little older, not wishing to frighten her off, but he'd waited too long. While he was busy, occupied in building up his business, she'd met James O'Connor, and that had been that.

He watched until she was out of sight, then turned back to answer a petulant call from his wife, who now appeared in the doorway at the back, which led into the parlour.

‘I'm parched!' she said. ‘My head's throbbing and I shouldn't wonder if I have a fever. Wouldn't you be making a cup of tea?'

‘Just coming!' Luke O'Reilly said. ‘Just coming!'

Molly continued down the road. It was hot, the sun still high in the sky, but she liked it that way. She loved the long school holiday, the children all at home, under her feet. Except Kathleen, she thought bleakly. As well as shoes, she was trying to save enough money to travel to Dublin to visit Kathleen, even if she might only be allowed to see her for a short time.

A few weeks only and the others would all be back at school, Kieran cycling fifteen miles each day to school on a bicycle which was long past its best. He should be a boarder, but it couldn't be afforded. Secretly, though she knew it was selfish, she was glad.

She put on a spurt now, remembering that she had left the bread to prove and it would likely be brimming over the top of the bowl.

Only Breda was in the house.

‘Where's Dada?' Molly asked.

‘Gone down to the harbour,' Breda said. ‘He has to arrange about a fishing trip, he said.'

‘Is that it?' Molly said. She had not thought he would want to go fishing, not his first night home. Perhaps it would be tomorrow night. It wouldn't put much money in his pocket, but at least they'd get a change of diet.

‘Can I help you to make the bread?' Breda asked.

‘Of course!'

Between them they shaped the loaves. Molly cut the cross in the top of one, and allowed Breda to do the other.

‘Why do you cut the cross?' Breda enquired.

‘Why, to let out the Devil of course!' Molly answered.

‘Drat! It's doing it again!'

Molly slowed down the sewing machine to a stop, raised the foot, took out the garment she was making – a dress for Moira – and turned the material over to inspect the back of the seam. As she expected, instead of a straight, even stitch like that on the front, there was a row of twirls and curls of thread, rapidly getting tighter as the seam went on.

Kieran, sitting at the other side of the table, raised his head from his books and looked at her.

‘I'm sorry,' Molly apologized. ‘Take no notice – I didn't mean to disturb you. It's the tension gone again. I'll get it right, sure I will, but 'tis a nuisance. I'll have to unpick the whole seam and do it again.'

‘Can I do anything?' Kieran asked.

‘Not really. You'd be worse than I am!'

She spoke kindly. It was not a rebuke but he was the least mechanically minded person in the family, possibly in all Kilbally. And why not? Did he not have other gifts?

‘I'll see to it,' she said. ‘I'll be twiddling a few knobs, turning a few screws, and 'twill come right in the end. It usually does.'

Patrick and Colum were the ones she needed now. Either of them would know exactly what to do. Even James might. But at the moment all except herself and Kieran were out of the house; the twins and Moira at work, Breda gone with her father, who was helping Farmer O'Farrell with the hay.

What she
actually
needed was a new sewing machine. Her mother had given her this one, having decided, the minute the last of her family left home, that she had done all the sewing she ever intended to do, not to mention that she couldn't see very well.

‘It's all yours, with my blessing,' she'd said as she'd bequeathed the machine to Molly, ‘and if ever I need the odd seam stitching, sure, I know you'll do it for me!'

The blessing had worked more like a curse, Molly thought, unpicking the stitches. The plain truth was that the machine was so old, she wondered it didn't lie down and die. One day it surely would.

Kieran, absolved, returned to his books. He had left the Christian Brothers at the end of last term. They had been both sorry and pleased to see him go; sorry because he was well liked, pleased because of the life which lay in front of him. His own emotions had been much the same. In September he would go to the seminary in Dublin to start his long training for the priesthood, but in the meantime there was so much to do: books to read, notes to make, things to learn. He couldn't afford to waste any time, though in any case it absorbed him. He could think of nothing else he would rather be doing.

Wasn't it a miracle, Molly asked herself, that he could concentrate at all, what with the rattle and vibration of the sewing machine, with her own remarks when she forgot for a moment to be silent, and with people constantly passing to and fro in front of the window? They
had
to share the table; there was nowhere else where he could spread his books or she her sewing.

She tightened one more knob, checked that the shuttle wasn't all jammed up with thread, then set to work again. After a few inches, she eased the material out and inspected the back of the seam. It was all right, thanks be to God! Was there a special saint for sewing machines? Saint Dorcas? She crossed herself quickly, reinserted the material, then began to turn the wheel with her right hand while skilfully guiding the material with her left.

For the next half-hour she machined away while Kieran read and wrote, both of them in silence. She was aware of a deep but simple happiness. She completed the side seams, the shoulders and the sleeve seams. She would wait until Moira came in from her work before setting in the sleeves, so that she could pin it up on her. It was a tricky bit of the operation; she hadn't much confidence and Moira was so fussy.