Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show (47 page)

I was delighted to see her and she was staggered—and thrilled—at our marriage. Never had I seen her so excited; she said over and over to Venetia, “But, my dear, you are lovely, lovely.” And then said, “And what a young man you’ve found for yourself, what a guy.”

She and James came to all the night performances of the week; they knew that the program changed with each show. Miss Fay knew every word of every scrap of drama; I could see her from where I stood—she was mouthing the words and smiling in all the right places. James sat back, proud like a man at his child’s school play.

In the new repertoire, Blarney’s role had changed. He still had a solo appearance with Venetia, and he still did “political commentary”—but she also deployed him in the play extracts. He did Fool from
King Lear;
he was young Gobbo, and Autolycus, and most touchingly of all, Ariel, the wistful but dangerous sprite from
The Tempest
. Venetia had arranged costumes for him, and he electrified the audiences—and the players—in his new colors.

On the last night in Sligo, we had arranged for our hotel to put up a late meal for us with Miss Fay and James. By now we’d met on a number of occasions, and it was clear that for them our marriage amounted to a gift. At a moment during the meal, Miss Fay said to me, “How are your parents?”

She said it with some caution, her face down somewhat.

I said, “I’ve been on the road since late February.”

Venetia, always quicker than me, said, “Should Ben go to see them?”

James said, “The nothing time is over.” He smiled and explained to
the two women, “Something I said to Ben when we last met. There is always a time when to do nothing is to go forward.”

We all agreed to meet next day and say our farewells. Venetia and I walked upstairs to bed; her condition didn’t yet show; the baby wouldn’t be born until December. In the room I took the Blarney suitcase off the bed and she said, “No. Open it.”

She took Blarney from the case and sat down. Blarney began to speak.

“Ben, you like stories, don’t you?”

“Yes, Blarney. I like stories.” What was this? Venetia ignored my raised eyebrows.

Blarney went on. “Ben, there’s a story I can’t tell you yet. But I will one day. You’ll probably find it out before I can tell you. All I want you to know is—it’s no part of my story. You know that, don’t you?”

“If you say so, Blarney.”

“Do you mean—you don’t believe me?”

“I think you’re a tough little fellow, Blarney.”

“Ben, I’m hurt. Will you believe me if I tell you that Venetia has nothing to do with that story either?”

“Is this a bad story, Blarney?”

“It is, Ben. It is.”

“Then I know that Venetia had nothing to do with it.”

Blarney lowered his head and Venetia looked away. Then they both recovered and Blarney said, “You should go to visit your parents, Ben.”

“I don’t want to leave Venetia.”

“Venetia understands. Don’t you, Venetia?”

She nodded and Blarney said, “And go soon, Ben.”

N
ext morning we made arrangements. James and Miss Fay were taking a train to Dublin that evening. I decided to go with them; much easier to get down home from Dublin than from Sligo, whence I could find no direct route. Venetia came to the station. She seemed unusually somber, and I put it down to the fact that we had never previously parted. I boarded the train, and waved from the window.

As we left Sligo, James began to point out the landscapes of Yeats’s poems and recite from them.

“‘I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree.’”

Miss Fay and I chimed in. “‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.’”

The two adults began to talk about the poet. For all of my young life, from the time that I began to read as a pastime and not merely as a school necessity, the figure of Yeats stood in the Irish landscape like a huge tree. The analogy isn’t mine. Friends who are authors and poets and dramatists have often said to me that any Irish writer in the early twentieth century found it hard to get the warmth of the sun in a shadow as great as that.

My lasting image of Yeats has as much to do with his physical appearance
as with his verse. I saw him many times—a big man, bigger than my father, and much heftier. Unlike my outgoing and smiling parent, Yeats always wore a preoccupied air, as though pondering great things.

Perhaps he was—but as I’ve already hinted, I’ve since learned from many people who knew him that he was a calculating man who judged carefully the image that he wished to present to the world.

None of his shrewdness, though, or his attempts to conceal it, impinged upon his poetry, and if his large frame in his cloak and wide-brimmed hat dominated my mind’s eye in my teens, twenties, and thirties, his poems became my sound track—and the nation’s.

James then remembered a story that he had told Yeats.

“He sat on the edge of his seat like a child. His eyes were round and wide, and his mouth open like a bag. He was hanging on every word.”

Miss Fay commented, “It must have been a wonderful story, and therefore you have to tell us.”

He began; this is what I recall of it. As James told it, and as I see it written down now in my own words, I understand that the language was as important as any of the narrative drive. And as ever, James was using it to teach me about life in general.

There was a man one time and he knew many things. He knew how to grow beautiful ears of wheat and when to take the new potatoes out of the ground. He knew when a horse was ready to be taught how to jump a ditch, and he knew when to bring his dairy cows in for the winter. He knew how to take care of his family, for he had a wife and a son, and he knew how to hire good men and send bad men away. This was a man who knew how to get himself liked, and how to like people, and that is one of the greatest gifts of all
.

Above all he was a man who knew how to conduct himself decently, and to keep himself on a safe and steady path. If he felt sorry for himself, he never allowed anybody to know it, not even his dear wife. If he felt sudden bursts of gladness, as we all do, he knew they were dangerous things too, and he kept a lid on them most of the way, like you’d keep a lid on a pot, with just a little bit open so that the water doesn’t boil over
.

The people who knew this man well, who saw him every day, saw that he was a man who understood things. He understood how the sun rose, followed by the moon. He understood why hares danced in the fields at certain times
of the year. He understood why grain had to be harvested at an exact moment in its ripeness, and people used to send for this man and ask him to come and rub the ears of their wheat between his fingers and tell them if it was ready to be cut
.

There were many other things he understood—like the moment to stand in the river and catch a salmon with your hands as it leaps northward over a weir on its journey to the spawning grounds. Or not to cross a male donkey with a female pony, but to do it the other way ’round; otherwise you’ll get an animal over which you’ll have no control, your only reward will be biting and kicking and bucking to beat the band
.

This was a man who understood why the stars are brightest on a frosty night, and why a shout can be heard for miles across a lake. And why milk turns yellow at certain times of the year, and as a consequence, the care to take when feeding cows that have calved. And why a man will look you in the eye during the making of a bargain, but you should always look at his feet, because if his feet shift you have a liar on your hands
.

Now this man was also a successful merchant, and he practiced his merchantry in great style. He sold barley to make ale and he sold pitchforks to make hay. He sold polish to make boots shine, and he sold cards to make men gamble. He sold pipes to smoke tobacco and pipes to make music. And he dispensed all these things with always the good word, always the willing piece of advice
.

“Mind, now,” he’d say, “that you don’t let the dog lick the polished boot for he’ll get dizzy. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that you clean the inside of this basin with cold water, else the milk’ll turn sour when the moon rises. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that the stone for that knife is kept wet for an hour and a half before you come to sharpen—otherwise the stone won’t like the blade. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that you give your good lady a ribbon for her hair to match her eyes—otherwise she won’t know that you think her a beautiful woman.”

This was also a man of learning. He had learned what other men will take by way of orders, and what they won’t take. He had learned that some trees have to be cut down in a particular way, because he was also a man who sold timber. He had learned the names of all the old gods, because he knew that a day might come when he would need to speak to one of them. He had learned the lessons of the old sages because he understood that wisdom, if there is such a thing, takes three hundred years and three hundred days to be worth
anything. And he had learned one of life’s most important lessons, which is when to talk and when to fight
.

So, as I say, this was a man who knew a great deal of things about a great deal of things and was generous with his knowledge and his advice and his observations
.

Like Yeats, Miss Fay and I, in the train carriage, listened like small children. And I had a wonderful idea—why not have Venetia turn Blarney into a storyteller? She had already gone a long way to reduce his sinister qualities by including him as an actor in the play extracts.

We never heard the end of James’s story—because the train slammed to as sudden a halt as it could manage. We had run into a new drama. On the side of the track—we’d halted by a small village—a house blazed.

Men jumped from the train to see if they could help. The villagers were running too. Flames licked from the windows—a poor enough, two-story dwelling.

I could see the men asking questions of a woman, trying to ascertain whether all people had quit the house. The woman had gathered four children around her, and she kept shaking her head. She evidently assured the questioners that nobody remained inside, because, working in teams, men went in and brought such furniture as they could grab out onto the street.

Then, however, beams began to fall, and with each crash the sparks rose in ever higher showers, causing the children to recoil farther each time. They wailed and danced in anxiety.

I stepped out too, but James suggested that nothing could be done. Such a sight! Sparks flying to the sky, faces turned to the flames, children not knowing whether to cry, the woman distraught, the train like a long green creature stretched and curved down the line, shining in the fire. I don’t know what became of those poor folks after that night. With the rain pouring down, I climbed back on the train and saw the flames reflected in the windows.

F
rom the outward signs it seemed that James visited Miss Fay’s house often. He had what looked like a permanent room there, where he kept some papers, and the notes for the book he was writing on traveling storytellers. I learned all that during supper, and was then shown to a room that I would use for many years. Miss Fay lived in Rathmines, in a tall brick house, with a pleasant smell of old carpets. She had a retainer who lived in the basement, Allie, who shouted rather than spoke. Every room on each floor had collections—masks, birds’ eggs, small animals in glass cases, umbrellas. The room in which I slept had shelves of old engineering and geometry instruments—ivory slide rules, dividers, and protractors—and I felt protected and safe, I who had at that time slept in so few houses in my life.

I’ve said that James and Miss Fay may have viewed me as a kind of surrogate son—but I never felt less than the same age as they were. They delivered their remarks as to an equal; their advice took the form of debate. Today I know that I was witnessing perhaps the last practitioners of eighteenth-century manners.

In anticipation of my visit to my parents, they asked what I expected to
find. We discussed many options. It became clear that Miss Fay knew of my parents’ removal to the cottage—and the likelihood that they would still be there. I sensed her embarrassment, but she fought it, and joined in the discussion.