Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (33 page)

“He was down on his knees polishing my boots and he lifted his head and he looked straight up at me, the glasses winking in the light, and he says to me, ‘D’ya know what, Blarney? I’ll have to go again next year.’”

When my father stopped laughing, he nudged me and we went outside. Again, we had a lovely sunny day, and we strolled down the street to the bridge.

“We could go home now,” I said. “I filled the tank in the car.”

“Wasn’t that great?” he said. “Fourth place.”

“Mother isn’t doing well.”

“He was nearly elected. I wonder-wonder-wonder what would have happened.”

I said, taking a deep breath, “There’s the money.”

“Ben, you should go on home.”

I said, “What are you going to do about the money?”

“I don’t-don’t-don’t know yet.”

I said, “Will you come home with me? Even for the day?”

“I’m going to stay with this girl. Ben, she’s-she’s-she’s like a great dream that goes on and on. At my age, that’s like, that’s like Heaven.”

I said, “But the farm? And everything?”

“She’s, Ben, she’s a wonder altogether.”

I said, “My instructions from Mother are to follow you until you come home.”

“She tells me these wonderful things, she transports me.”

There are moments, aren’t there, when you think that the person with whom you’re conversing has gone mad—or has been mad for some time and you simply haven’t observed it?

We’d both been leaning our elbows on the parapet. He stood up straight and looked into the distance like the captain of a ship or a mariner from a legend of the sea.

“I’m where I want to be. I’m where I want to stay.”

I said, “And what about—” I struggled and came out with “Miss Kelly?”

He didn’t answer, because he had seen something. Toward us came Venetia, still holding Blarney. All my father’s systems sprang to the moment; I’d seen him like this only when a horse won a race.

Venetia reached us, and I went on alert too. There we stood, on that bridge over the Blackwater, the best salmon river in the country, as the February sun looked down on us, a lemon in the sky.

My father shook Blarney’s hand and spoke to him.

“Congratulations. A fine showing, Blarney.”

Blarney looked at me and said, “Of course you know Miss Venetia Kelly—but say, ‘How-d’you do,’ to her anyway.”

I turned to Venetia and said, “How d’you do, Miss Kelly?”

Were we all mad? Were we crazy?

She said, “I’m very well, thank you. I’m so glad you came to see the votes counted.”

Blarney interrupted, “Blazes, girl! He came to see you. Are you blind in one eye and can’t see out the other?”

And we laughed—including my father, who chortled in delight.

Venetia said, “We all want to go back to Charleville. Including my grandfather. Somebody’s waiting there to drive him somewhere.” She turned to me. “Will you come, Ben?”

Venetia turned and walked away. My father followed her—and then stopped abruptly, turned back, and addressed me.

“To-to-to answer your question—Miss Kelly will do what I want. She’ll do what I say.”

My poor father.

H
ow much I learned in that one year—in that one day! Some things were not good; some were wonderful—and one was a lesson for the rest of my life. I’ll address it first; the others, the good, the not-good, the wonderful—they will become apparent.

Here’s the lesson: We’re born—forgive me for stating the obvious—of birth parents, our blood, our kin. By the act of bringing us into the world they’re charged—or are supposed to be charged—with the task of steering us across our early lives so that we, like them, can go and do likewise, bring children into the world and perpetuate our species.

By and large our blood parents do that, or at least they did so in the society into which I was born. True, we were having at that time a massive aberration in our family, and it was having a great and difficult bearing on the bringing up of me; that is also self-evident from all you’ve learned so far.

In Fermoy that Monday, I learned that “other” parents exist. The world knows that they exist too, but it doesn’t often acknowledge them. It makes a halfhearted effort to do so by, in some societies, giving us godparents. But those sponsors at the baptismal font amount to no more than a nod in the direction of which I speak.

The alternative parents whom I have in mind come from the spirit world. “Extra,” or “additional” parents, whatever you like to call them, they’re often preferable to your birth parents. And, whatever their spiritual origins, they can be practical and very present if you allow them to be.

If we find and identify them, they guide us, they tell us things that no other parent would dream of telling us—because they know things about us that no blood parent can ever know. How do they do it, how do they know? That is part of the mystery—they know it instinctively.

I found my new parents that day. They parented me for years and years, for as long as they lived. Their presence inside me parents me to this day, no matter what my age as I tell you this. In fact I’ve decided not to disclose to you the age I am as I write this down. It’s irrelevant, because I’m using their energy, the force they gave me, to tell this tale. Therefore my calendrical age doesn’t matter.

You can probably guess who they are—well, one of them anyway; the other had been offering herself as such for some time. In my general agitation I’d forgotten to mention to James Clare the name of Miss Dora Fay, who had often said how much she wanted me to meet him.

They were lovers at the deepest level you’ll find on this earth, in that they cared for each other more than they cared for anything else—except for the work they gave to the world, and that was a kind of loving anyway.

I almost fell down when I saw them together. In those days, a kind of tearoom existed in Fermoy. It is long gone. The woman who owned it ran away one day in 1935 with a sailor who swaggered in, took a look at her, and said, “Will you come with me to the coast of Africa?” And she did, a woman with straight hair and curly teeth, and she closed the door and never came back.

I met her that day—she was named Molly Barrett and I look at her in my mind’s eye and wonder where such a plain and ordinary woman hid her dreams of romance, the dreams that took her to the coast of Africa. (See? Another Digression; I can’t seem to break the habit.)

So, I parted from my father and Venetia (as I looked after them I saw Blarney hoisted high, looking back at me and waving, and I know that my father never saw Blarney doing that). The morning—it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet—had me ravenously hungry, as all emotional perturbation still does.

I asked a man at a street corner, an old soldier in his army tunic, ragged pants, and broken shoes, where I could get a cup of tea, and he said nothing, just looked into a distance that would never be available to him. He was like all those old soldiers who stood on those street corners, shell-shocked from the World War, and would remain so all his life. A woman overhearing my question pointed me to Molly Barrett’s tea shop.

The door had a bell that jangled—and so did I. At a table by the wall sat James Clare and Miss Dora Fay—my new parents, according to the mystic and mysterious systems of the world. Though deep in conversation, they turned their heads as one person. As one person they held their hands out to me. And as one person they smiled.

That is why I believe in a life beneath our lives, a system below our consciousness, a world of half-thoughts and memories of times in which we’ve never lived. Never in my life up to that moment had I needed help so much, never had I needed somebody to slow me down and make sense of all that had been happening.

Indeed, my intention had been to sit in the tearoom and list out and look at all that had already happened. A formidable list, you’ll agree, and changing all the time; my father gone from home, and now beyond recovery; the woman who was the object of his affections attaching herself to me; her grandfather associating with sinister men, and having sinister intent; Mother holding herself up in the world after a collapse so steep that John Milton couldn’t have written it. If ever a paradise had been lost, Mother’s was.

And me, myself—torn in all directions at once—ringing, ringing, ringing with the moods and feelings induced by Sarah’s embrace and Venetia’s kisses, and not having the beginnings of a notion as to how to handle all this; and worried sick about Mother and faced with the prospect of endless weeks and months, maybe years on the road, and no solution of any kind in sight anywhere.

I had a lot to think about. When I sat down, I knew I was close to tears and unable to look at either adult. Miss Fay shook my hand—and held it for just a moment. So did James Clare.

He said, “I didn’t know until this morning that you’re the young man my friend Dora told me about so long ago. How are you?”

Naturally, I told them. Everything. They listened in silence; that’s one of the great gifts that alternative parents can give—they listen without
comment and never make judgments. I expected them to home in on my worries regarding Mother and money and everything of that nature. Instead they became greatly excited about the relationship—so far—that promised to arise with Venetia.

They kept on exchanging what are called “significant glances.” If my parents did that as I was telling them something, it always bothered me, made me anxious. Here, though, I took it as a sign that they were on my side and were thinking between them as to how they might help.

I don’t know how I received that impression; I certainly didn’t imagine it, because that indeed is what they were doing—silently figuring out a way to help without actually intruding. And with the first words they spoke they showed me how much they were on my side.

“Ben,” said Miss Fay; she had that slightly lisping speech you find in all people with prominent front teeth. “You know, don’t you, that you’re caught up in very fantastic circumstances.”

(One of the things that I always liked about Miss Fay was the way she attached the word “very” to many of her terms, even to her superlatives. The milk I brought to the cottage was “very delicious.” A rainbow was “very wonderful.” Eggs were “very brilliantly nourishing.”)

James Clare added, “That’s a bit of what I was trying to say to you the other day.”

Miss Dora Fay said, “And you’ve probably been wondering whether you’re exaggerating the way you feel about it all.”

Again I nodded; there wasn’t a lot else I could say.

She patted my arm. “It’s very impossible to exaggerate it all. I’ve never heard of such a thing as you’re immersed in.”

James said, “And you’re wondering what you’re going to do? Well, the first thing you’re going to do is what you should always do—have a cup of tea and a bun.”

As I would discover, James’s solution to most difficulties was a cup of tea and a bun; it’s now my solution too.

They sat back in their chairs. Molly Barrett came over. She said to them, “And this is your son, I suppose?”

“In a way,” said Miss Dora Fay. “In a way.”

I was introduced to her; she came back with tea and a bun that had currants on it, and a cherry on top.

“Get yourself outside that,” said James.

As I ate my bun and drank my tea, Miss Dora Fay said to me, “Now, Ben. Let me guess which is the matter that most besets you.” She reflected for perhaps half a minute and said, “The matter of your father’s young lady? Am I correct?”

I nodded; nodding was still a high priority with me, and anyway my mouth was full.

“Is she lovely?” said Miss Fay.

James blurted with crumbs, “Oh, Dora, wait ’til you see her. She’s like the moon—silver and mysterious.”

“And it seems,” said Miss Fay, like a scientist analyzing a problem, “that she’s choosing you.”

“Why shouldn’t she, why wouldn’t she?” said James.

“Then that’s what will be,” said Miss Dora Fay. “The world knows its own mind.”

“D’you remember what I said to you last week?” said James, his face alight. “Use your own power. Isn’t that what’s happening?”

M
iss Fay, for all that she looked like an ostrich with glasses, possessed useful social gifts. She knew, for instance, when to bring a conversation to a close—as she did now.