Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (17 page)

And then came the seventh man, the One. Sedate and competent, he slid from his horse and walked a slow pace forward. The round spectacles on a beaked nose glinted in the light. With a steady climb he ascended to the truck flatbed and stepped forward for the crowd to see him. Had I been standing farther back I’d have seen how he’d arranged for the arch
to frame him. The crowd began to applaud—and then to cheer, and to cheer, and to cheer. Eamon de Valera bowed with a swirl of his wide black cloak, looked behind him to find his chair, and sat down.

The early speakers had little to say: land sales, dairy prices, and a hot national potato—wage increases for the police. Their warm-up act didn’t last long, and then the Chief stood up.

He pushed back the hood of his cloak and stood bare-headed, so far forward from under the arch’s edge that the rain poured down his long face. He would be fifty the coming October, and he looked older than the mountains. The great black cloak stayed wrapped around him; the glass circles of his spectacles shone. His head turned like a lighthouse, for five, ten, fifteen seconds, scanning the crowd, giving them his beam. Then he threw open the cloak, held out his long white hands, and pronounced, “My beloved people.”

Everything about him—the torchbearers, the white horse (or was it winged Pegasus?), the black cloak, the defiance of the elements: mythic. Even as I watched, he seemed to grow taller.

And the voice completed the fabled presence—a wide, rich accent, with a growl when needed, and above all a clarity. Though he seemed never to enunciate, you could hear every word he spoke. He’d been a teacher, I knew; and his experience of a classroom’s authority had translated itself upward to the political stage. This man stood there as if rooted—unassailable and fierce. As Large Lily would have said, “He was like something you’d write away for.”

The content of de Valera’s speech took second place to its form; the meaning of his words mattered less than the impression. At first he didn’t seem a spectacular orator—little fire, less brimstone; but as his speech continued I began to feel hypnotized.

Remember—I wasn’t there to fall under anybody’s spell. Yet I found myself unable to stay outside this experience, to watch as a mere observer. Whether I liked it or not, I was being drawn into the mood of the night.

Epic? Yes—without question, especially to somebody like me, who even at that age was drawn to the legendary and the fabled. Here, though, wasn’t I watching that most dangerous of things—a myth being deliberately built? Of course I was! Politics has always reached for whatever
it can to secure the hearts and minds of the voters—promises, theatrics, blandishments, snake oil.

It’s to my credit and discredit that I went along with it—and perhaps as a boy of eighteen I should have done. I felt the crowd’s excitement. I looked up at this man and was awe-stricken. I saw the weather of Ireland on him, the rain falling on his head and flowing down his face, and I felt that he was part of those elements, that he was in some way from the gods.

That’s what he wanted me to feel, I know. And yes, he did grow taller as his speech went on, but it was a rising to the occasion that lifted him higher. And the cadences of his voice grew warmer, but it was the warmth of fire. And he became more reassuring, but it was the reassurance of a man who felt that he was about to be confirmed as the most powerful figure in the land.

“Since we got our freedom,” he intoned, “the freedom we struggled for, the freedom we roamed the mountains and hills fighting for, the freedom we spilled our blood for. Since we got that freedom, we have been seeing the beginnings of a new slavery. Taxation. The government has paid its members and its friends handsomely. Taxation. Out of our money. Taxation. They drive big cars. Taxation. They live in fine houses. Taxation. What has happened to freedom? Taxation. What have they done to man’s most precious possession, the gift of liberty? Taxation.”

Not once did he wipe the rain from his face. Not once did he flinch as a fresh February squall swept over him. Not once did he falter, hesitate, stumble, or halt.

And I doubt that any of his three thousand listeners flinched either—I certainly never wiped my face. I stood directly beneath him and next day I had a crick in my neck, because I’d never once ceased to look up at him. If that’s not a mesmeric effect, what is?

The words he spoke told us nothing new. We were a proud nation, with an ancient history; we had the resources and the international friendships to go it alone; we deserved our total independence, but we wouldn’t have that independence until all the vestiges of a foreign power had been expelled from our rich and storied island.

He’d said it all before; he’d say it all again; this was a man who rode to power on the white horse of his own vision. And made us see that white horse too, and wish we owned it.

Mr. de Valera didn’t stay for the adulation; he’d have been there all night. He turned away, descended, didn’t look right or left, didn’t shake hands—and vanished into the dark of Sarsfield Street. I saw the hawk face in profile one last time and it wasn’t made of flesh, it was carved from stone.

Somebody near me asked, “How long was the speech?”

A few voices answered, “Just over the hour.”

In the rain, on a cold evening, this man as aloof as a hermit had made us forget for sixty minutes where we were, and made us think only of where we might go. Under his leadership—and he said so—we could go anywhere, be anything, be free.

The crowd began to thin out, and I looked across to see my uncle Denny. He didn’t move when the others did; he stood there, silent, head bowed, rain dripping from his hat. His hand rested on a lamppost—I soon realized that he needed its support. He looked dreadfully ill, and it wasn’t just the peculiar light from the lamp above his head. I waited until he began to walk, and then I followed him to make sure that he reached his home or someplace that looked safe.

He could have taken a number of shortcuts, but he stayed on the same long, climbing street. I saw him clearly all the way, ten yards ahead. He walked very slowly. Many people hurried past him; nobody stopped him to greet, to talk. They say that when a man knows he’s going to die, he’ll let nobody recognize him.

With me now twenty yards or so behind, my uncle reached his house, climbed the steps, and paused. He was so weak, trembling and shaking his head. At last he opened the door to his house and went in, slow as a funeral. I never saw him again.

“
M
y beloved people,” began another political speech that night, “I love you because you’re going to vote for me. Since we got our freedom, the freedom we hid under the beds for, the freedom we ran away for, the freedom we spilled other people’s blood for—since we got that freedom, we’re slaves. But I want you to be
my
slaves. I want you to stop paying your taxes to the government and pay them to
me
. I want a big car out of
your
money. I want to buy myself a fine house out of your money. That’s what your money can do for me. That’s why I want you to vote for
me
—I want you to elect me as the best man to take your money. I’ll buy a bigger car than anyone. I’ll buy a better house than anyone.”

You can probably guess who the speaker was—but I hadn’t a hope of getting into the hall. It seemed as though de Valera’s entire audience had simply turned around and gone to hear Blarney.

In front of the doors they milled about like bees at a hive. Many snuck down each side to see if they could get in at the back, but the single rear entrance had been firmly bolted. The big van and the two cars that the show used stood nearby, also locked and protected, with planks leaning against and all around them.

Eventually, one of the wide front doors opened a crack, and a man I had never seen before slipped out and faced us. He closed the door behind him, stood with his back to it, and made an announcement in a strong English accent; he had long greasy hair tied in a ponytail.

“Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Crawford.” Though he said
Cwawfod
. “I’m a member of the company and I want to help as many of you to see the show as we can fit into the hall. Now we’ve assessed the accommodation, and first of all we want you to form a nice orderly queue, two people side by side in a long line.”

The people of County Limerick did as Cwawfod asked. It took perhaps five or six minutes, with much good-natured shoving and jostling, and then Cwawfod went down the line, counting. Nobody knew whether they’d get in—until he bisected the queue and said, “That’s as many as we can fit. I’m so sowwy, ladies and gentlemen.”

Those for whom there hadn’t been enough room went away, somewhat reluctantly but in very good humor. They yelled slogans: “Vote for Blarney” and “Up Blarney.” The others waited until the doors opened, and Cwawfod started taking the money for the tickets. Cwawfod’s eyes, however, were bigger than his belly; many of us were left standing outside the open doors, looking in.

Cwawfod’s face impressed me; he looked worn and tired, a lonely man. Or so I thought. Maybe through Cwawfod I’d get to my father—without telling him who I was.

The rain had ceased; the bitter cold had gone from the night. As I looked in and watched the antics on the stage I could see matters a little more objectively. Without question, this traveling show, which was tawdry in many ways, and awkward and goofy, had some magic ingredient. Why else did the audience respond so wildly?

Venetia Kelly was the magic. I know that now; I’ve known it for a long time. Her presence infused each show, she lifted it above what it seemed to be. That night, she was dressed neck to toe in a long crimson gown that folded about her as though she were a Roman empress. She again spoke a long passage of verse, not from
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
, but from Tennyson’s poem about the death of King Arthur—also a school text.

The silence indoors enfolded us outside; a cough would have echoed around the hills. My eyes never left her. I stood straighter as she came to
the moment when the truth is told, when the knight of the Round Table, Sir Bedivere, hurls the sword out into the lake for the third time. He’s been cheating, hiding the sword, not doing as the dying king directed.

Looking to the door, she spoke the line of the arm rising from the lake waters to grasp Excalibur as it whirls through the night sky, a woman’s arm, “Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.”

I shivered; people near me made small murmuring noises. Inside the hall, they closed their eyes in wonder and emotion. And I swear that none of us, inside or out, moved or breathed until she’d reached the fading words “And on the mere the wailing died away.”

She was fourteen years older than me and from a different civilization, another world. My mind, my soul, left that drab patch of scrabby ground in front of the church hall and watched as the three “black-stoled, black-hooded” queens placed the dying King Arthur in the barge, “dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern,” and took him off to the Heaven of Avalon. Glorious! But—I wanted to be the only one listening to her. With a reluctance that hurt, I began to understand my father’s actions, even if I was being demented by them.

I wondered again that night who chose the order of the show’s program. Directly after the dramatic poem, we had more songs, more tumblings, more chasing of maidens (a barmaid this time), and the flockin’ tuba. And then came the top of the bill. This time he arrived onstage with Venetia Kelly; she pushed him in a perambulator, and then lifted him out and held him on her knee as she sat on a high stool.

He told jokes again.

“D’you want to hear about my friend MacInerney?”

“Yes, Blarney.”

“My friend MacInerney—he had a dog that everyone in the pub knew. For years and years, here comes MacInerney, here comes the dog. Then one day MacInerney arrives into the pub by himself. Alone.

“‘Hah, where’s the dog?’ says the barman.

“‘Ah, sure I had to put him down,’ says MacInerney.

“‘You had to put him down? Was he mad?’

“‘Well,’ says MacInerney, ‘I can’t say he was too pleased.’”