Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (20 page)

B
y now I knew that I wasn’t doing this solely for Mother. I missed my father. I missed him every moment of every day. When I awoke in the morning, my heart sank at the thought that once again he wouldn’t be at the breakfast table. And therefore couldn’t ask me, as he often did on some farm matter or other, “What-what-what would you advise?”

Although I know now that he was teaching me, training me, I didn’t feel that at the time. Instead I felt that I was part of the place and its systems, that I wasn’t there merely to eat, drink, go to school, come home, eat and drink again, and go to sleep—I felt useful. Now that he was gone, that was gone.

And I missed the sound of his voice, and the way it filled the places he inhabited. By that, I don’t mean that he was loud and overbearing; it’s just that he seemed to be the natural sound for the places in which I saw him—as natural as a rushing noise from a river, a wind in the trees.

I missed too his interplay with Mother, the responses she drew from him, his earnest intent to answer every question she asked, his desire to please her, his evident wish to give her credit for everything that happened every day, including the rising of the sun. Yes, I know that a coolness
had seemed to exist between them now and then, but they were a natural couple, buck and doe.

For instance, Mother had always lived in general from one lift of her spirits to the next. In between, she trod what my father called “the vale of melancholy,” often not raising her eyes for almost a full day.

“Your mother’s in the vale of melancholy,” he’d say when I was a little boy. “We’ll leave her by herself for a bit and then we’ll go and cheer her up.”

I had visions of some dark cleft in some high brooding mountains, like the engravings in the old books that we had. To be fair, she never ruled people with her moods; she tried to keep them to herself, but they leaked from her, leaked all over the household.

My father was her elixir—he and he alone knew how to break such a run, how to race down into her glen of despair, grab her, and hustle her out of there and up into the sunshine. I couldn’t do it; as a boy I tried, with stories, with impersonations. Once or twice I shook her into laughter with a description of a neighbor or a reenacted scene from the forge or a fracas from one of the village shops, but only my father could make the restoration last.

He did it by generating good news, usually with a compliment thrown in. In the evening he’d say, “You-you-you have an admirer.”

Unable not to be curious, she’d raise her head from the sewing or darning and look at him, her eyes, but not her lips, speaking the question “Who?”

My father would then mention the name of somebody they had met, some dashing man, married, or a bachelor known to be exciting, a rake, maybe, and Mother would say, “Oh?”

To which my father would then say, “He-he-he needn’t go sloping around here, that’s for sure, if he knows what’s good for him. And anyway I think he’s partly a lunatic. They-they-they say you can see him lurching up the hills and through the woods when there’s a full moon.”

That always got her—the full moon; she’d go against her own mood and laugh. Now, of course, she realized that if my father truly had run away with this actress, he had taken her elixir with him and somebody else was drinking it.

As for me—I missed above all the sudden little things that happened so often, that moment in which he would call or beckon and say, when I
reached him, “I’ve-I’ve-I’ve something to show you.” And it would be a new and much lighter model of horseshoe that he’d picked up at the forge, or a quotation that he’d found in the newspaper or one of his books and had scribbled down on the back of an envelope.

I didn’t know how much I loved these things until I no longer had them, which is an echo of a saying Mother now uttered every day: “You never miss the water ’til the well runs dry.”

In Charleville, the town named for King Charles II, the well wasn’t dry—but it did feel fouled at first. Not because my father reappeared, which he did. Normal as the night, he stood at the door to the hall, taking the money and handing out the tickets—and a new pain began.

I hung back, waiting until the last tickets were sold; then I could grab a word with him. As people approached the door and saw him, they nudged one another and pointed him out. I overheard their first remarks: “That’s the fella that ran away from his wife and farm;” and, “Him selling the tickets—is he the dirty oul’ fella ran off after the woman in the show?”

My father had acquired a notoriety; my family was being marked as scandalous; perhaps audiences were larger because they wanted to see his paramour; this invoiced feelings of deep, deep shame.

I stepped back farther into the shadows, so as not to be seen—and to watch more closely. Yes, the people of Charleville were indeed pointing him out, and yes, they were indeed sniggering. Under my clothes, I felt the slime of chagrin pour down my body, from my head and neck down my shoulders and rib cage, down my stomach and thighs.

When it seemed as if all the people had entered the hall and I came forward to buy my ticket, my father ran. He ducked away from me, raced around the side of the hall, and disappeared. I got in free, but that wasn’t the bonus I had sought.

That night, Blarney made much of what he called “the politician’s promises.” The country rang with them and Blarney capitalized. He seemed to know which politician was making the most outrageous promises and he lampooned them without mercy.

Each evening, his performance began with the words “I’m the most promising politician in Ireland—I’ll promise you anything.” The audience
was laughing already. With no reference to the fact that he sat on Venetia Kelly’s knee, he looked out over the audience, his red mouth opening and closing slowly in chunks as he launched into his satirical tirade.

“I’ll promise you anything. I’ll get wives for men with no teeth. I’ll get husbands for women with bandy legs. I’ll give every man, woman, and child here money. Cash. Into your hand. For free. There’ll be a barrel of drink at every crossroads and a tube sticking out of it and all you’ll have to do is suck on it. Free for every man, woman, and child. But the clergy’ll have to pay.”

Venetia Kelly, serene as the moon, sat and looked on and Blarney ranted, his words driving spikes into the national spirit.

“How many farmers are here tonight? Put up your hands.”

As hands rose all over the hall, he peered across their ranks.

“Too many. Now I’m going to work a miracle. I’m going to please the farmers!” and everybody roared with laughter. Admiration too for the shrewdness of the satire; every politician outside the big cities knew that the farmers carried the key to the election, and they’d been notorious for complaining about everything.

“In fact,” he went on, “I’m going to start by fixing the weather. Every year, July and August are going to be fine, and the harvest’ll be great.”

More laughter.

“And September’ll always be lovely. For the other ten months of the year, I’m going to give ye all grants. Money. Into the heels of yer fists. So that ye never have to work again. Isn’t that what ye’ve always wanted?”

Loud cheers rang out. He paused and looked all around, whispered something to Venetia. When she nodded, Blarney turned to the audience again.

“But that mightn’t be a great idea. Because what’ll the farmers have to complain about then? I call it—soothing the baby.”

How they howled as he filleted them. He judged it with a fine touch, and he seemed to know that his darts would become the currency of the next day’s local conversation.

Sometimes he played games with the audience.

“Ask me for a wish,” he’d say. “Come on, ask me for a wish and I’ll grant you a wish.”

Some foolish person would call out, “I’d like a wish, Blarney.”

“What’s your wish?”

“I wish for money, a ton of it.”

“Your wish is granted. When you go home tonight your house’ll be burned down and you’ll get a ton of money from the insurance company.”

That night in Charleville, Blarney came out and asked, “How many people in this audience trust either Mr. de Valera or Mr. Cosgrave?”

Many hands went up.

“What would you trust them with?”

Nobody answered.

Blarney pressed. “Would you trust them with your money?”

They laughed—some uneasily, I felt. And nobody answered.

“Would you trust them with a gun?”

Like the sound of some massive snake, the intake of breath hissed through the hall.

“I suppose,” said Blarney, “you could trust them with your womenfolk.” Laughter. “And God knows you could trust your womenfolk with them.” Much more laughter.

Then he delivered the punch. “But could you trust them with your children’s future?”

Nobody laughed.

B
larney’s parting shot made an uncomfortable night worse. While waiting for the show to begin, I’d heard more criticism of my father. “What kind of a fool is he? Hasn’t he a big farm over near Cashel?” And, “Ah, he’s off with this young one outta the show, you’ll see her in a bit.” And, “Four hundred acres nearly, and he walked away from the whole thing. Something dirty there.” When Venetia Kelly first appeared as Portia, two people behind me sniggered and one said, “That’s her, that’s the bike the oul’ fella is ridin’.”

After the show, I heard it too. “What did you think of her?” And, “Jaysus, if I saw her first, that oul’ fella wouldn’t get a look in.” And, “You could ride her in the Grand National.”

I cringed. I wanted to ream them, but I didn’t have the courage. And when they’d gone from the hall, which was up a lane, I followed them down the slope to the street, walking behind one group and then another, trying to hear their comments. Mostly, they were laughing—which also felt filthy and awful.

And then my life changed forever. Altered for all time by a single gesture.

When we look back in wonder at the moments when Fate shows itself,
it’s never that things might not have happened; it’s that they might have happened differently, that one might have been inserted into a particular orbit at a different angle and consequently have taken different actions, producing a different outcome.

I turned away from the sneering mockers and stumbled in the dark, almost falling over Charleville’s high double curb. As I steadied myself I saw a movement, a flash of light across the street. I looked over at a wide, elegant house, and saw the movement again. A hand in a white sleeve was waving, beckoning. Was it waving at me? I looked all around; nobody stood near.

Now both hands, both white arms, came through the door and—no question—they were waving in my direction. Up and down they went, like a semaphore.

I walked toward the house. If the arms didn’t belong to somebody who knew me, at least their gesture showed enough quirkiness to be worth investigating. As I approached, one arm withdrew, and the other changed its movement; it stopped waving and beckoned. Behind me, I couldn’t see a soul—therefore the beckoning had to be for me. From the open door came a glorious female voice singing something that sounded like Italian opera.

A bright lamp lit the hallway. I approached, peering forward, feeling my way, looking for details. The hand beckoned again and now that I’d come within a yard or two of the open door I could see into the hallway. The upper half of the walls had a lemon paper on them, with faint and lovely trees. Below a rail at waist height spread a firm anaglypta paper, chocolate-colored, with geometric patterns. Somebody with taste and a sense of color lived here.

The arms had disappeared but the voice kept singing. I ventured fully into the doorway, wondering what to do next, and now I stood in the empty hall. Should I follow the siren call?

But the voice was fading as though the singer were moving far away; they do that in legends to draw the hero farther in. And then the voice grew strong again and she appeared. I had never seen this woman close up but I knew who she was—the older of the two who had led my father through the lit doorway that night in Cashel, that night that now seemed so long ago, but was less than two weeks past.

Graceful and smooth, she walked to me in a glide. I stood there, not
knowing what to do. Next she held out both of her hands, palms down, to take both of mine.

“I,” she said, with a pause, “am Sarah Kelly. The actress.”

As distinct
, I thought out of nowhere,
from Sarah Kelly the Pope. Or the train driver
.

That was how we met; we would know each other until she died, many, many years later.

She continued, “And you’re Ben. Without a shadow of doubt. You’re so like him. Let me have a look at you. Oh, my—you’re so big, so handsome. You look so refined!”

Since Missy Casey doesn’t count, this was the first compliment I’d ever had from a real woman. My mind lurched.
How much of this can I ever tell Mother?

But my second thought slammed in like a ramrod:
Where’s my father?

She guessed it and said, “He’s in here. We had to take him out of circulation for a while. Do you like my new home?”

I began to say, “Is he all right?” but she interrupted my effort and said, “Look.”