Friends Indeed Read online

  He shrugged. With his great, sloping shoulders it was an oddly helpless gesture. 'Things have changed,' he said again.

  'It's you who've changed, Dada.' I kept my eyes on Sarah and her mother. 'Bess Rooney has always worked for us and Sarah is still my friend, even if I haven't seen her for a while. Some things don't change.'

  'You'll see soon enough that they do.'

  My father was muttering and sighing, close to exhaustion. He wasn't as young as he'd used to be and he needed to sleep off the wine.

  'It's like this, Allie.' He put his hand over mine. I didn't turn from the window. 'Bess still does the cooking, it's true, and as a kindness, and for the sake of old times, I've given work to Sarah. But your mother has engaged a housekeeper to take charge of things.' He sighed. 'It's a big house.'

  Three servants. That must please my mother. My father, reading my thoughts, said, 'Your mother has a position in society now. You've a position now too.”

  I'd had a position before and liked it. It was my mother who'd hated her position as a publican's wife, thought herself better than her neighbours and her husband. I could see how she might find it hard to live with my father's rough and ready manners. But his heart was kinder than many beating behind a more polished exterior. Or had been, when he was a publican.

  It was because things were not as before that I'd wanted to stay in Paris. The last thing in the world I desired was to be a French-speaking addition to my mother's dinner parties until a husband was found for me.

  The carriage shifted as the standing horse grew restless. On impulse, in a sudden fury of determination, I pushed open the door, gathered my skirts and jumped down into the street.

  'We can't leave Sarah and Bess,' I kept going, 'not with the police bullying them like that.'

  I stopped when I heard the gunshots and saw why the police had herded people behind the gates. The dead animals were being gathered into carts. The wounded ones were being executed.

  'Now will you get back in here? Their kind are more than able to walk. Are you gone stone mad or what?' My father was out of the carriage, angry and shouting again. Fearful for me too, but I couldn't help that.

  'I am no madder, Dada, than I ever was. I won't leave Sarah and Bess while we've got a carriage.'

  When he started to come after me I picked up my skirts and ran for the gates. My dress had a Paris bustle so my movements were easier than if I'd been wearing the crinolines still in fashion in Dublin. I called to Sarah and Bess as I went, forcing my voice above the noise of the police and crowd and dying animals.

  'Sarah, Sarah Rooney!’ I called, 'can you hear me, Sarah? It's Allie. I have a carriage. Shout out my name if you can hear me.'

  I'm not much more than five feet tall and when I stood in front of the college gates I couldn't see a thing over the crowd behind. I turned for my father but he'd stopped following me and was back with the carriage. When I faced the gates again a policeman was blocking my way. He was was about my own age, or might even have been younger. His chest buttons were at a level with my eyes.

  'Move on out of here, miss, get back to your carriage. Better for you to be on your way.

  'I'm here to relieve you of two of your charges.' I was shyly anxious, looking up at him with wide eyes. My French deportment lessons had taken many forms. 'I'd be much obliged if you would call to a Miss Sarah Rooney and her mother for me.' I laid a hand delicately on the low square of my dress bodice, as if the task I'd set myself was suddenly too much. 'There's a place for them in our carriage.' I kept my eyes on his and smiled, tremulous and stricken. 'This is a terrible thing to have happened . . .' I lowered my eyes and caught a tearful breath and fiddled with a lock of my hair.

  'Tell me the names again,' he said, 'I'll get them out of there for you.'

  He had a countryman's accent and a countryman's way of doing things. Within minutes Sarah and Bess Rooney were on my side of the gate.

  'The Dublin Metropolitan Police is always glad to be of service.' Their rescuer smiled pinkly, full of a boyish need for praise.

  'You do the force credit and I'm grateful to you.'

  I gave him my hand and another, happier, smile. I'm nothing if not kind and I was grateful to him. He touched my fingers, gently, and bowed and went away.

  Sarah and I looked at one another awkwardly. She was the one who spoke first.

  'You always did have a way of getting what you want,' she said as she looked me up and down, 'only now you've got manners as well. You look very fine,' she put her head to one side, 'like a doll.'

  In my rose-pink silk dress with its darker velvet stripe I was overdressed for the occasion, it's true. But I couldn't help my height.

  'Is that all you have to say to me?' I said. 'I may not have grown as tall as you have but I'm—'

  'Thank God for that,' she laughed, and was suddenly the Sarah I knew, 'they'd have had to put me in the circus if I'd grown any more.'

  We hugged each other then, tightly and for a long time before separating to laugh and look at one another and hug again. Sarah was wearing a bleached-out blue cotton dress.

  'You didn't answer my last two letters,' I said.

  'No,' she said, 'I didn't.' I waited but she didn't explain why.

  Bess, who'd wisely remained silent through the ceremony of our greeting, spoke at last. 'Dear God Allie what a terrible situation for us to be meeting in you're a good girl to stop and pick us up like this . . .'

  She spoke fast, without pauses and in a rasping voice that was the legacy of a doctor damaging a nerve in her neck when she was a girl in the Liberties. Forever afraid her voice would go before she got the words out, she stopped only when she needed to take a breath.

  'We're lucky we weren't all killed and we might have been only that it wasn't our time to go and the good Lord spared us.' She took a breath then and held out her arms, bony like the rest of her and nearly as long as her daughter's. 'You're not too grown and changed to come to Bess I hope.'

  I went to her for a hug as warm as Sarah's had been; I'd spent more time in Bess's angular arms as a child than I'd ever spent in my mother's. Or my father's, though he did his best in other ways.

  'We'd better go,' Bess stood back, 'your father's waiting for us with a face like a fighting dog on him he'll be ravenous and wanting his breakfast.'

  My father growled as we climbed into the carriage.

  'That was a terrible thing to happen Leonard those animals bolting like that,' Bess said as we moved off.

  'It was, Mrs Rooney, it was.'

  My father's frown said he did not want her calling him Leonard but Bess, if she noticed, paid no heed.

  'It's the omnibuses Leonard dangerous things I always said did you hear about the catastrophe at the Portobello Bridge?'

  My father gave a discouraging grunt but Bess got on with her tale anyway. She seemed older to me, worn-looking but still gentle. Her dress was a dull brown with a black stripe.

  'There were eight passengers on the omnibus when it happened and the driver stopped on the incline on the Rath- mines side of the bridge to let a man and his son get off. . .' she took a breath, 'Holy Mother of God but what happened then was terrible one of the horses backed and dragged the other with him and without warning the omnibus horses passengers and driver all went into the lock chamber and ten feet of water . . .' she stopped. 'To make matters worse the lock-keeper opened the sluices of the upper instead of the lower gates.'

  She gave a mighty sigh; she'd always had a fine sense of timing.

  'The six dead bodies had to be got out through the roof. . .'

  'That's enough about disasters,' my father said. 'I want a bit of peace and silence for the rest of the journey.'

  'And you deserve it,' Bess was placatory, 'after your journey but I'll nevertheless remind you all that it's always been my contention that animals and machinery don't go together and I'm being proved right.'

  'What other news of Dublin then?' I asked Sarah.

  'Dublin is as you see it.' Sa
rah observed the passing street. 'People manage their lives as best they can. As they always did.'

  'Is that all you have to tell me?' I was impatient. 'The same could be said of any city. No wonder you didn't write if that's all you have to say. Tell me what there is that's new.'

  'The smallpox was big in the town last year. This year it's the cholera the people are worried about—'

  'Cholera is known to the people of Paris too,' I cut her short. It was as if she didn't want to talk openly to me. If she was inhibited by my father then I was having none of it. 'So are smallpox and diphtheria and typhoid.'

  'You're such an expert on the cities of the world I wonder you don't know more of your own.' Sarah shrugged. 'I'm sure you'll find out soon enough that living in the city is no longer fashionable in Dublin. Those that can are moving out beyond the canals. You'll be safe enough from disease in Haddington Road.' She turned to my father. ‘I'm surprised, Mr Buckley, that you haven't assured Allie how safe she'll be from the gases and vapours given out by animal filth in the city centre.'

  'She said nothing about being worried.' My father was stiff.

  'That's because I'm not.' I spoke hurriedly. 'Tell me, Sarah, how things are in Henrietta Street.' The old mansion my father had bought was the same tenement building in which the Rooneys had lived for years.

  'You'll have to visit and see for yourself,' said Sarah. My father said nothing.

  'Your new home is very grand, Allie.' Bess looked sideways at my father. 'Things will be different for you now.'

  'So my father keeps telling me.' I was short. 'He says too that my mother has engaged a housekeeper. What sort of woman is she?'

  'Low-sized your mother took her on just a week ago.'

  That was as much as I could get out of her about the housekeeper.

  There was very little said about anything else either for the rest of the journey, and nothing at all said by my father. But I was glad to be with Sarah again, and with Bess, and put his bad temper down to exhaustion after our journey.

  I should have paid more attention. I might then have been more alert, better prepared for what was to come.

  I might have been, but it's unlikely; I was never what you might call farsighted.

  Chapter 2

  Allie

  There was a barrier to be got round before I saw my mother. It came in the shape of a woman called Mary Connor and I'd never in my life come across so small an adult. She could have been one of the oldest too except that Mary Connor's age, as with everything else about her, was shrouded in mystery. With her humped back she was the closest thing imaginable to a witch: Not a benign one either.

  She was the housekeeper my father had spoken about and she opened the door when we arrived, her withered face full of reproach.

  'Mrs Buckley was worried. You were expected a good hour ago.' She spoke only to my father. Her voice was high and thin, like a child's.

  'An animal stampede delayed us.' My father, when she didn't step aside, squeezed hurriedly past her and into the hallway. 'Is Mrs Buckley inside?'

  'She is.'

  Still the woman didn't move, not even to blink a pair of eyes so pale they were almost colourless.

  I stayed where I was on the doorstep, waiting for her to let me come in. A full half-minute passed while we eyed one another, neither of us prepared to move.

  I thought then that the immediate animosity I felt was what decided the future of our relationship, but I was wrong.

  Mary Connor had a hostility towards the world in general and towards me, as my mother's daughter, in particular.

  She had a high, bony forehead and her mouth was a narrow opening in a web of puckered skin. Her tiny body was neatly dressed in darkest grey and she appeared to have no hair at all under the tight, white-frilled black skullcap covering her head.

  My father brought the impasse to an end. 'Come inside. Allie, don't be shy of your new home.' His joviality boomed through the house with false bonhomie. 'Don't be shy with Mary either. Your mother's very pleased with the housekeeping she does for us.' He beamed his contrived smile on the small woman. 'Tell Mrs Buckley we've arrived, Mary.'

  'She knows. She heard the door knocker.' Mary Connor stayed where she was. 'She's waiting in the drawing room.'

  'I'd be obliged if you'd go ahead of us anyway.' My father's smile became manic and she moved at last.

  Her back was rigid as a marionette's as she went down the hall and, without knocking, through the second door she came to.

  I left the safety and light of the granite step for a hallway so cold and heavy with drapes it might have been a funeral parlour.

  The house was a fine one, large as my father had said, with an arch at the end of the hallway leading on to an elegant staircase and to steps down to the kitchen and cellar. But the only daylight came from a high, rear window and all of the doors were closed. I was as if I'd entered a prison. There wasn't even the comfort of having Sarah and Bess Rooney about since they'd gone, with the driver and my trunks, to the back entrance of the house.

  'Pay no heed to Mary Connor.' My father rubbed his hands together but couldn't quite manage to keep the smile on his face. 'She's a bit contrary but she suits your mother . . .' He fell silent as the housekeeper reappeared.

  'Mrs Buckley's waiting,' she hardly moved her mouth.

  'Grand, that's grand.' My father put a hand on my back. 'Go and meet your mother. I'll help that fool of a driver with your trunks.' With a speed I had not known him capable of he disappeared down the steps at the back of the hallway.

  My mother barely raised her head from the book on her lap as I came into the room.

  Albert, her grey, long-haired cat, looked up just as reluctantly from where he lay against my mother's feet as they rested on a footstool. She was wearing gold-embroidered morning slippers. Albert had got fat.

  'Hello, Mother.' I stood in front of her.

  Mary Connor remained inside the closed door, very silent and very still, a ghostly slave to my mother.

  'You haven't grown a great deal,' my mother observed, extending a hand that was white as the cuff of lace on her yellow silk morning dress, 'but then I didn't expect that you would. You've always inclined to your father's build.'

  I took and briefly held her fingers; we were neither of us keen to prolong the contact. My mother studied me then, silently, her black eyes chilling my heart in the way they had been able to do since I was a child. The cat watched us.

  'You appear to have spent your father's money on at least one gown which is in good taste,' my mother said. 'I hope the contents of your trunks display a similar discernment. Mary will unpack for you presently. I'll help her myself.'

  I said nothing. I didn't want Mary Connor unpacking my clothes. I didn't want her anywhere near my belongings, or anywhere near my person either. My mother, who had a great interest in fashion and jewellery and ornamentation of every kind, was of course entitled to see what I had brought from Paris.

  'I hope your new home compares with what you've grown used to in Paris.' My mother made a languid gesture at the room.

  I looked around. It was very much to her taste. The deep buttoned settee was upholstered in a ruby velvet which matched the curtains, there were antimacassars on balloon-backed chairs, a six-light crystal gasolier and, over the mantel, an ornate, gilded mirror. All of this, I'd no doubt, reflected the best that Dublin had to offer in furniture and decorating.

  'It's very nice, Mother, very elegant.' I hesitated. 'I'd like Sarah to help me unpack.' I went on looking around the room, avoiding my mother's eyes. She sighed, as if my response was no more than she'd expected. In the silence Mary Connor cleared her throat.

  'Sarah Rooney is preparing the breakfast with her mother.' My mother's feet uncrossed themselves on the footstool, 'and Mary, in any event, is better suited to arrange your wardrobe.'

  The cat, with a malevolent look my way, rubbed himself against her feet as my mother gave a longer sigh.

  'I must say, Alicia, that
I'd hoped you would have acquired maturity and grace. Your father, of course, doesn't set a good example. It wasn't the socially correct thing to take the Rooneys with you into the carriage.' She fondled the cat's ears, smiling. 'Sadly, one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.'

  She had always known how to diminish me but I was older now, and wiser. Or so I thought. I walked to the mirror and removed the ribboned diadem I'd worn travelling.

  'In Paris,' I said, 'coiffures are softened this season with a sprinkling of powder. Women are wearing their hair off their foreheads with curls on the temples.'

  My mother's dark hair was unpowdered and dressed in a heavy chignon. Her voice, when next she spoke, had hardened. 'I won't have Sarah Rooney handling your French wardrobe.'

  'And I won't have Mary Connor doing it for me.' It was as if I'd never been away; we were disagreeing as we'd always done. 'I don't know Mary Connor. Sarah is my friend and knows how I like things. Sarah and Bess were always—'

  'Bess Rooney was a servant who didn't know her place. Sarah was a precocious child.' With a delicate yawn my mother stood next to me at the mirror. 'These things were of no consequence when we lived among them and their kind.' Frowning, she smoothed a strand of hair into the chignon before, carefully and coldly, studying my reflection.

  I saw myself as she did and notions of my worth and beauty learned in Paris vanished. My mother was taller and more beautiful than I would ever be; beside hers my reflection was that of a pale girl with a small face. I'd a couple of good points and those I'd got from her anyway: my eyes were large and dark and my hair, freed from the diadem, was a pale, flaxen colour.

  'Such a pity . . .' My mother didn't say what the pity was, she didn't need to. Everything about me was a pity as far as she was concerned. 'I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say, Alicia.'