On Canaan's Side (13 page)

As we came out back towards the huge gates, painted in their white and black squares like a racing flag, a tall man all kitted out in similar finery to Joe, but even sharper, a light linen suit, a sleek brimmed hat as if torn off the back of a seal, and in the colourful company of three laughing women, opened out his arms when he saw Joe and said:

‘Joseph, goddamn Joseph Clarke!’

‘Sorry, bud, I ain’t no Joseph Clarke,’ said Joe Kinderman, laughing. ‘You’re thinking of some other guy.’

‘Oh, I guess. Begging your pardon there,’ said the man, bringing up some elaborate lingo in his confusion, and his voice tinged with doubt.

Anyhow, we passed on through the square frame of the gate into the blurred roaring of the city. The efforts of the new light were waning as the day waned, but nevertheless we trod along with contented steps.

That night in the bed Cassie said she was going to rub out the name of Jesus Christ in the New Testament and put in Joe Kinderman’s instead. Why, she didn’t just think he was Jesus Christ, she reckoned he was God the Father Himself. The Holy Ghost too maybe thrown in for good measure.

I had to stop writing a few minutes ago. In the dark of the evening there was a push on my bell, and I jumped in this skirt, yes I did. I was still at the bottom of that ride, still with Cassie and Joe, and I came back into my little house with a strange jolt. All day there was a series of short drenching showers, and now, being returned by the bell to the present, I could suddenly smell the potato plants in the field between me and the sea, luxuriating I am sure in the rainfall and the new warmth. I folded over this big accounts book, where I am now scribbling, because much to my astonishment I have needed so many fresh pages, thinking at the start I might be done in twenty or thirty. I do not even know why I had the accounts book still, stuck in a drawer, since it dates from the time I ordered for Mrs Wolohan, and is properly hers. So I write my little nonsenses on her paper, properly speaking.

Anyway I rose with a stiffness as infinite as that previous happiness, and wended my way in the darkness of the corridor, where my photographs winked in the odd light, my brother Willie in his uniform that Maud sent me before she died in Dublin, thinking I might cherish it, and Joe Kinderman in his Cleveland police officer’s rig-out, looking fairly stupendous, and Ed in his uniform, and Bill in his – not that I could see them as such, but they were vivid and lit as always in my mind’s eye.

At the door it was only Mr Eugenides with a covered basket. I turned on the porch light for him, and he stood there silently, the basket in one hand, and raising his nice fedora hat with the other, in his mannerly way.

‘I am not disturbing, Mrs Bere? God forbid. My wife says, take this up to Lilly Bere. It is no small thing. It is Mrs Eugenides’ best pot roast. She knows you are an expert, but she said, Lilly won’t mind me. I said, of course she will not. I hope we don’t offend, bringing owls to Athens?’

He seemed immensely pleased and energised when I gratefully accepted his gift.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ I said, ‘I will give the basket back.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I have fifty of them. Some of my Greek produce, hey, comes in such baskets. From the island of Samos, that sleeps in the arms of a Turkish bay. There. Keep it, you will have a little bit of the old country for yourself. Mrs Eugenides says this is of course not traditional Greek cooking, but she learned the pot roast from her best friend, and wishes for you to have it in turn. Her late friend was from Cape May, New Jersey. She has written out the recipe, see.’

‘That is so kind.’

‘She wishes to hand it on to you,’ he said, still in his excess of excitement.

‘Well, that is the purpose of cooking. The great purpose. It’s all about friendship.’

‘
Orea
,’ he said,
beautiful
, a bit of Greek I did understand, I had heard him utter it so often in his store. ‘Goodnight to you, Mrs Bere. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Eugenides.’

It was a lovely pot roast, as I found when I had a little bit of it, with nuts, and cheese, perfection. The face of Mrs Eugenides’ entirely unknown friend from Cape May, New Jersey, seemed to hover before me for a moment, as if permanently attached in spirit to her cooking.

B
eing a woman of her word and much more besides, Mrs Wolohan arrived this morning and reminded me she was bringing me to Gerard to get my hair done, which I had of course forgotten. I didn’t even know if I
had
known in the first place. She might have said something about it, and anyway, I could think of no excuse not to do it, and gathered up my bag and put on my road shoes and went out with her.

‘It is an absolutely lovely day,’ she said. ‘I was swimming this morning at six. That’s a.m.’

‘In the pool?’ I said.

‘In the sea. I went down alone. There was no one there at all. I slipped into the water. It was wonderful. Then I went home,’ she said, banging the car door on her side, and taking off with a little whoosh of sand from the roadside, ‘and I ate some strawberries and cream. Katherine Mansfield describes a woman in one of her stories as eating cream with a “rapt inward look”. That is so good. It is exactly like that.’

Mrs Wolohan is a woman who has endured vast vicissitudes. What has saved her generally in life is not just her courage, which is signal, and her faith, which is solid, but her enjoyment of all the minute pleasures of being alive, something that always gave me pleasure also, in cooking for her. When she was served up, on a dark winter’s day, my famous Beef Wellington, which in fact was one of Cassie’s recipes, though Mrs Wolohan didn’t know that, followed by the simple body blow of my autumn pear tart, Mrs Wolohan would exhibit her happiness openly, and create a small speech to remember the occasion. No matter what else was going on all around her, no matter what crushing history was being presented to her. Her whole philosophy was to go on, like a soldier who has lost comrades along the way, and has buried them with due love and remembrance, but who also has assignments ahead that he must go to meet. I think, considering her life, this aspect of her is well-nigh miraculous. It is because of this that I cannot help but to love her.

She is much younger than me, and I was already nearly fifty when I went to work for her mother, and some time after, for her, when she married. Why she has harboured me, why she has protected me, all these years of my retirement I do not know. Why she has allowed this long long tenancy of her little house, which might be put to a hundred other uses, and indeed, in being so near the sea, is very valuable, standing plumb on its little yard, remains to me a mystery.

She is a tallish bony woman, who in a rather unusual way has got more lovely as she has got older. One of her sisters was considered a great beauty. But Mrs Wolohan, like one of those opera singers whose voices only come into full power at forty, is also beautiful, now. Her features are well defined, her eyes are blue, and she dresses plainly in trousers and shirts. She has about ten yards of haute couture outfits hanging in various wardrobes, and these she uses for her charity work, and dinners, and the like. Otherwise she is not too bothered, except I am sure that these seemingly inexpensive clothes cost a great deal and were bought on Fifth Avenue.

Her car is an ordinary mid-range one, nothing fancy, and I love to drive with her in it. When I am close in to Mrs Wolohan, she will talk away. And there is something in her attitude that makes it so plain that she ‘has time for me’, as my father would say. That is so flattering that it brings out the best in me, and I never feel old with her, though there must be thirty years between us. I have known her since she was a very young woman, and worked for her or lived near her for over forty years. We have never, ever, had a bad word between us, which I think is very remarkable.

When I was first engaged by her mother, it was actually Mrs Wolohan, now I think back on it, then very young, who interviewed me. It was probably 1950, and it was odd to be questioned by one so young. But all her queries were politely put, and even at that age she showed a maturity beyond her years. She of course loved that I was Irish, being ‘Irish’ herself, and loving Ireland, where she had been as a child on many visits. People love Ireland because they can never know it, like a partner in a successful marriage. I am a bit the same way myself. Ireland nearly devoured me, but she has my devotion, at least in the foggy present, when the past is less distinct and threatening. When the terrors associated with being Irish have been endured and outlived. As much as I could of my story in America I told her. I cannot remember if I said anything about Tadg. I
seem
to remember doing so, and her being astonished at his fate, but in truth I do not know if I was in fact so brave as to tell her. I
see
in my mind’s eye her open, attentive face, her horror that a young man could be murdered in such a manner. I did not give her all the exact details about Joe, how could I? But I think she gathered that I had had my difficulties. More than anything else, it was no barrier against employment that I had a child, who was about four years old at the time. Ed hung about my skirts like a witch’s familiar. He was much admired by Mrs Wolohan’s mother for being ‘well behaved’. If he had not been, I could never have kept my employment there, and I am very grateful to him for that. The casual atrocities that young children commit now and then, however, were well within the bounds of the acceptable. Ed took down most famously a unique piece of Belleek pottery, with the picture of an Irish castle in a wild landscape, and did for it in such an absolute way that it never rose back to its shelf again. This was taken in a good spirit. Mrs Wolohan’s mother said she would tie him by the leg like a country dog to the kitchen table if it happened again, but luckily this resolve was never tested.

I am saying all this because I want to record my gratitude. Gratitude has a place, as does commiseration and condolence.
Wirra-wirra
cried the old keeners round the coffins in vanished Wicklow days.

Gerard’s salon on Main Street is always busy, because there are a thousand well-tended hairdos around here. This morning he was shouting something at one of his girls when we came in. Mrs Wolohan paused in the doorway, myself just behind her. She turned and gave me a look, as if to say, he is a great artist, and we must overlook his character. As if to say, the cave is full of lions, but we must enter anyway.

One of Gerard’s other rather cowed girls took me in hand, and guided me over to the sinks, so she could wash my hair. Alas my hair is thin, and so when you wash it, I do have a sorry bald look to me. So that I would not willingly go to the hairdresser of my own accord. But she was very thoughtful, and whipped a towel around the offending mess, like seaweed on a stone, and brought me over to Gerard.

‘Mrs Bere,’ he said, as if the name alone spoke volumes, and he need say no more. But what he intended, what he implied, I do not know. With a certain brutal deftness, he peeled off the towel, and dropped it to the floor. He took my poor tresses in his fingers, and drew his fingers through them, again and again, so that he caused a little ache to begin in my scalp. Meanwhile Mrs Wolohan had come up behind him, and was looking not at me but at my reflection in the mirror.

‘Mrs Bere would like you to do something uplifting.’

‘Of course.’

‘Something to cheer her up. Do you think you can do that, Gerard?’

‘Yes,’ said Gerard, but with an unexpected sadness in his voice. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she should have a bit of colour?’ she said.

‘Oh, Mrs Wolohan, Mrs Bere does not let me put colour in her hair. I have tried to convince her. But she says, what do you say, Mrs Bere?’

‘I am content with the white.’

‘You see?’ said Gerard.

‘Well, I will not try to influence her. She knows her own mind.’

‘What I like,’ said Gerard, ‘is these bones. You have such good bones, Mrs Bere. I could shave your head and you would look just fine.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Mrs Wolohan in her best sensible voice, ‘don’t shave her head.’

‘It is very fashionable now in Manhattan.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘Of course,’ said Gerard.

While he worked, Mrs Wolohan remained at my shoulder. She seemed to get more and more lost in a daydream. Without thinking what she was doing, her hand eventually came up and rested on my right shoulder. She stood there like that for a long time. She was in Gerard’s way, but he contrived to work around her. What she was thinking, who could say? I often have thought that she has a lot to think about, if she cares to. If she doesn’t just block it out. Her sense of the delicious is maybe part of that effort, not to dwell on terrible things. To continue on. At length she breathed a great sigh, and patted my shoulder, and let her hand drop away again.

Then she drove me home, all coiffeured up, or as much as Gerard could manage. Tested to the limits of his skill. Silent, because Mrs Wolohan was silent. What a long long time I had known her, I thought. I could be the mouse in the wainscot that could tell the whole story of her life, but from a mouse’s point of view. The true terror and suffering I cannot really envision. The heart torn out of her again and again. Her true victory over her life though, I have witnessed.

She had brought an old woman out to get her hair done. Old, irredeemably so. Looking just as ridiculous and ancient I am sure, but cheered, as Mrs Wolohan knew I would be. Somewhat.

Telling his beads, o’er and o’er.
That’s some old poem or ballad, I forget which.

I seem to remember some matters well enough, even in the great mire that is my poor head, but it would give me a great fright to have to put a date on everything. Thank God it does not behove me to do so. For it is just me sitting here, telling my tale to myself, that’s what it feels like, mostly, old matters held in the fingers of memory, like those old beads in a family rosary, polished by a lifetime of prayers, and handed down, and slowly slowly no doubt diminishing and thinning as they go from creature to creature. When we were small, my father would occasionally take a great desire to saying the rosary, and we would be down on our spindly knees every teatime for a few weeks. Then this fervour would disappear for a long time, and what it was in his life that brought on these tremendous bouts of piety, in which we were obliged to participate, I of course could not say, then or now. The ordinary stations of a man’s life maybe.