Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (3 page)

I was so excited in those last months of 1931; I was on fire. And with good reason. Fierce winds of change were blowing across our little island, and the spores of turbulence were landing everywhere. We heard daily threats of Communism and Bolshevism and Fascism—all the public-life “isms” of the early twentieth century. One colossus, the tallest man in politics, was striding the national stage. His rivals in the government
were attempting to close down his newspaper and haul the editor to a military tribunal. Not a few people, my parents included, feared that there might even be a gun-barrel coup d’état—by either side—before polling day.

That 1932 election finally settled the political definition of our country. It gave form to a structure that had begun to identify a nation—out of old clay, new shapes. At the same time we became a model of how democracies evolve, how a people can go forward hopefully while not abandoning their past. This was a battle between the fresh politics of the young state’s first government, which had been in charge for ten years, versus forces that represented ancient and unquenchable warlike passions but hadn’t been able to get their hands on the levers of power.

Of course it was all still being run by politicians. We have an old saying here: “No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.” My father, who had what he called a “flypaper mind,” loved the writings of Ambrose Bierce and could quote at length from
The Devil’s Dictionary
, one of his favorite books. And in this period of fierce shenanigans, Bierce’s quotation defining politics rang through our house every day—“the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

Mother and I became so used to it that whenever the words came from my father’s lips, we chimed in like a satire’s chorus. If we’d had a tune to it we could have sung it.

Moving from the general to the particular—I was guaranteed a ringside seat in the election. Even if matters hadn’t suddenly assaulted us, even if my father hadn’t done something so wild, so out of character, I’d have been in the thick of it all, because I already knew that I had an official job. At eighteen I was of age to serve as the clerk at our local polling booth in the village.

The day itself was memorable for a number of reasons. Our local teacher Mr. O’Dwyer acted as polling officer; he and I sat side by side at a table in the schoolhouse. As you’ll see later on, I was there against all the odds, and, given everything that was going on, plus the possibility of wild embarrassment on the day itself, I think it was heroic of me to turn up.

My job was to supervise the Register of Electors, verifying the names and addresses of the people who came in and asked for a ballot paper. The pencil with which I did this task was specially provided, Mr.
O’Dwyer told me, by the government in Dublin—the “Mighty Pencil,” he called it.

He mentioned one word over and over—“personation.” Personation is an offense under the law—it should be called “impersonation”—and it involves entering a polling station, asking for a ballot paper under a name not your own, and then voting: in short, pretending to be another person. Already well known, it became a vogue word during that election; we, the Irish, loved the slogan “Vote early, vote often,” and I saw it at first hand that day.

Polling was unusually heavy; we had a turnout in our area of 90 percent. Personation attempts also rose on that tide. Throughout the twelve hours, Mr. O’Dwyer challenged as many as twenty or so voters. The election fell on a Tuesday, 16 February, deliberately chosen as just an ordinary working day. Voting hours ran from nine in the morning until nine in the evening, and shortly after we opened the school door a tall gentleman strode in like a general, walked past Mr. O’Dwyer, and made straight for me.

“Name and address, please, sir?” I said, as instructed.

“Jeremiah Quinn, Ardkeeran, Mantlehill.”

I looked up the letter
Q
on my thick sheaves of lists, and found the name and address. Just as I was about to brandish the Mighty Pencil, tick his name, and hand Mr. O’Dwyer the voting paper—which the polling officer had to validate with a little stamping machine—Mr. O’Dwyer said, “Is that Jim Kennedy I see before me?” He said it pleasantly and the man didn’t move a muscle.

“Turn around, Jim, ’til we have a look at you,” said the teacher.

Mr. “Quinn” or Mr. “Kennedy,” or whatever his name was, marched out.

Shortly after that, a lady came in, older than my mother, a heavy woman in an old burgundy-colored coat like a bad carpet. She gave the polling officer a wary look—Mr. O’Dwyer had his head down at the time. But when she gave me the name and address, Mr. O’Dwyer raised his head and said, “Well, well. And the dead arose and appeared to many. I was at your funeral, Agnes. That was a good send-off.”

She also walked out fast, and he muttered to me, “They’ll be up out of their graves today.”

He explained: Individuals from outside the district were coming to
our village to vote. Hoping that we in the polling station wouldn’t notice or know, they were giving us names they’d taken off headstones. And of course many of those names mightn’t yet have been struck off my voting registers, which weren’t always up to date.

Mr. O’Dwyer said, “Why don’t they do the job right and hire actors? At least they’d be convincing.” He added, “Wait ’til you see. Those two will be back here and they’ll vote as themselves.” Which they did.

The antics went on all day. Voters who had cast their ballots earlier came in late, in different clothes, giving different names.

Mr. O’Dwyer, cheery as ever, said, “Oh, John. Is it colder out? You were wearing no hat this morning.” And he said, “D’you know what, Mrs. Glacken? You looked ten years younger this morning. Is it the headscarf?”

Once I had grasped what was going on, my antennae waved like a bug’s. By the end of the day I was myself catching people who had already voted. The Mighty Pencil? I wielded it like a sword.

Did we get them all? I think so. The teacher was certainly very complimentary when he met Mother a few days later, and she told me that Mr. O’Dwyer said I’d make a very good detective. (That remark contributed to my burdens, and I’m afraid that Mother taunted me with it as the weeks went by.)

Prosecutions followed. We had a neighbor, Jack O’Donnell, an activist with a fierce political appetite. Convicted of voting twice in the election, he had to pay a large fine, and he will go to his grave known as “Jack O’Donnell–Jack O’Donnell.”

S
peaking of political tricksters, let me now unveil the father of Sarah Kelly, grandfather of Venetia. His full name, Thomas Aquinas Kelly, was a comic misnomer. The only moral inquiries this man ever made had to do with money—the inside track, the shortcut, the influence, the bribe, the pull, the means, typically foul, of getting what he wanted. He came out of the womb a criminal.

Everybody knew him by his nickname: “King” Kelly. I believe he gave it to himself. Out in Montana he told them that when he was growing up in Ireland he had been nicknamed King. When he came back to Ireland he told them that in Montana they’d christened him King. You can’t dismantle a circular myth.

Like so many crooks, King Kelly had marvelous natural power. He wore check waistcoats and well-cut tailoring, but never learned that a brown suit says “Not a gentleman.” His shoes, handmade by a cobbler in Dublin, came from exquisite leather, and when he wanted something from somebody he loomed in over them with his big frame and poked them with a finger as thick as a shillelagh.

Those who knew him—including myself—we admitted that we enjoyed King Kelly. There was guilt in the admission, but there was also
pleasure. He was a gale of good company, and not a word from his mouth could be believed. He had a rich voice, full of Irish and with some American, and no better dinner companion have I known. But he was as crooked as a ram’s horn; if King Kelly said he’d pray for you, you’d be sure of Hell.

He told me wonderful tales, mostly lies, but very entertaining, especially to somebody like me, who’s interested in how tales are told. I wrote down this particular story; I ask you to remember it, see how illuminating it will become.

There was a man I knew one time
[
all King Kelly’s stories began like that
]
when I was buying land in Galway, not so many years ago. And I was talking to this man when a lady approached me and said to me, “Are you the famous King Kelly?” I said I was, and she said to me, “I’d like a word with you, please, sir.”

Before she drew me aside, the man I was with whispered in my ear, “Don’t go near her—she’s a fairy queen.”

“She’s a what?” I said, but by then it was too late
.

Now I was worried, I’ll admit to that, because there’s strange people over there in Galway, people with purple eyes and jaws like horses, people who wear their hats upside down on their heads, and when they shake your hand you don’t know whether they’re trying to give you one of their fingers or take away one of yours
.

So anyway I walk off a little bit with her and she says to me, “I don’t want you to buy that land.”

“What land?” says I, a bit baffled in myself, because I hadn’t been talking to the man a bare ten minutes, and nobody else knew he was selling land
.

“My family used to own it,” she says. “Tell me you won’t buy it and I’ll grant you my favor.”

She was a tidy-size woman, and she had a bosom as round as a brace of bells. In her right eye there was a hazel fleck in the gray, and she had lips so pursed and plump they could whistle by themselves. But land is land, and so I said to her, “My dear young woman, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She looks at me and she lays a hand on my arm, and she says to me, “King Kelly, I offered you my favor and you said no! Well, now, here’s my disfavor,” and she tightened her grip on my arm
.

It wasn’t a tight grip, but all of a sudden my arm began to grow cold. And then it grew colder. And then it froze. And I looked down at my hand and it was as blue as the sea. And in front of me there was this woman standing like a proud little person, her silk blouse high at the neck, her face and the rest of her excited as a hen at a cockfight
.

“Madam,” I says to her, “is it that you’re freezing my arm?”

She said, “That’s the wintry blast of my disfavor.”

Well, the arm got colder and colder, and then it began to hurt because the skin was beginning to shrink, and the tears came to my eyes, as the tears will do in the cold weather or when in pain. But here’s the next thing I found: My tears were ice-cold. They were just above the point where water freezes and they were barely squeezing out of my eyes. Talk about bewildered—I didn’t know whether it was Tuesday or Easter
.

The little woman never took her eyes off mine. She stared into me, into my soul. Her face reddened a little at the cheeks, always a moment I find exciting in a lady. It was her left hand that lay on my arm, and next she took her right hand and placed it on my opposite hip. Oh, dear God. Instantly the bone froze
.

“Madam,” says I, my jaw slowing down as it froze. “I’ll never buy land in this county again.”

She released me and said, pretty as pie, “Thank you, King Kelly.”

I said to her, “If that’s what your disfavor is like, let me see your favor?”

But I never got an answer. She walked away from me and I turned around to my friend, the man I was going to buy the land from—but he was gone. And when I looked back at her, she was gone too, and we were out in the middle of the country with no place to hide, so she must have vanished up into the sky. I ran out of County Galway that night like a man escaping from his mother-in-law
.

King Kelly told me that story, and many similar, while drinking big liquors and smoking great cigars, the veins in his strong cheeks like the lacy filaments of red leaves. He liked to talk forever, as did his daughter, Sarah, as did his granddaughter, Venetia, as did Mrs. Haas, whom King Kelly hated as much as she hated him; “Shark-face,” he used to call her. So much for Sarah’s insistence that they all adored one another. Those four people form the first half of the cast in this drama that took over my life when I was still in my tenderest years.