Brooklyn (2 page)

There were always children, Miss Kelly said, looking for bars of chocolate or toffee or bags of sherbet or jelly babies, and men looking for loose cigarettes and matches, but Mary would deal with those since she was no good at large orders or remembering prices, and was often, Miss Kelly went on, more of a hindrance than a help when there was a big crowd in the shop.

"I can't stop her gawking at people for no reason. Even some of the regular customers."

The shop, Eilis saw, was well stocked, with many different brands of tea, some of them very expensive, and all of them at higher prices than Hayes's grocery in Friary Street or the L &N in Rafter Street or Sheridan's in the Market Square.

"You'll have to learn how to pack sugar and wrap a loaf of bread," Miss Kelly said. "Now, that's one of the things that Mary is good at, God help her."

As each customer came into the shop on the days when she was being trained, Eilis noticed that Miss Kelly had a different tone. Sometimes she said nothing at all, merely clenched her jaw and stood behind the counter in a pose that suggested deep disapproval of the customer's presence in her shop and an impatience for that customer to go. For others she smiled drily and studied them with grim forbearance, taking the money as though offering an immense favour. And then there were customers whom she greeted warmly and by name; many of these had accounts with her and thus no cash changed hands, but amounts were noted in a ledger, with inquiries about health and comments on the weather and remarks on the quality of the ham or the rashers or the variety of the bread on display from the batch loaves to the duck loaves to the currant bread.

"And I'm trying to teach this young lady," she said to a customer whom she seemed to value above all the rest, a woman with a fresh perm in her hair whom Eilis had never seen before. "I'm trying to teach her and I hope that she's more than willing, because Mary, God bless her, is willing, but sure that's no use, it's less than no use. I'm hoping that she's quick and sharp and dependable, but nowadays you can't get that for love or money."

Eilis looked at Mary, who was standing uneasily near the cash register listening carefully.

"But the Lord makes all types," Miss Kelly said.

"Oh, you're right there, Miss Kelly," the woman with the perm said as she filled her string bag with groceries. "And there's no use in complaining, is there? Sure, don't we need people to sweep the streets?"

On Saturday, with money borrowed from her mother, Eilis bought a dark green shop coat in Dan Bolger's. That night she asked her mother for the alarm clock. She would have to be up by six o'clock in the morning.

Since Jack, the nearest to her in age, had followed his two older brothers Pat and Martin to Birmingham to find work, Eilis had moved into the boys' room, leaving Rose her own bedroom, which their mother carefully tidied and cleaned each morning. As their mother's pension was small, they depended on Rose, who worked in the office of Davis's Mills; her wages paid for most of their needs. Anything extra came sporadically from the boys in England. Twice a year Rose went to Dublin for the sales, coming back each January with a new coat and costume and each August with a new dress and new cardigans and skirts and blouses, which were often chosen because Rose did not think they would go out of fashion, and then put away until the following year. Most of Rose's friends now were married women, often older women whose children had grown up, or wives of men who worked in the banks, who had time to play golf on summer evenings or in mixed foursomes at the weekends.

Rose, at thirty, Eilis thought, was more glamorous every year, and, while she had had several boyfriends, she remained single; she often remarked that she had a much better life than many of her former schoolmates who were to be seen pushing prams through the streets. Eilis was proud of her sister, of how much care she took with her appearance and how much care she put into whom she mixed with in the town and the golf club. She knew that Rose had tried to find her work in an office, and Rose was paying for her books now that she was studying bookkeeping and rudimentary accountancy, but she knew also that there was, at least for the moment, no work for anyone in Enniscorthy, no matter what their qualifications.

Eilis did not tell Rose about her offer of work from Miss Kelly; instead, as she went through her training, she saved up every detail to recount to her mother, who laughed and made her tell some parts of the story again.

"That Miss Kelly," her mother said, "is as bad as her mother and I heard from someone who worked there that that woman was evil incarnate. And she was just a maid in Roche's before she married. And Kelly's used to be a boarding house as well as a shop, and if you worked for her, or even if you stayed there, or dealt in the shop, she was evil incarnate. Unless, of course, you had plenty of money or were one of the clergy."

"I'm just there until something turns up," Eilis said.

"That's what I said to Rose when I was telling her," her mother replied. "And don't listen to her if she says anything to you."

Rose, however, never mentioned that Eilis was to begin work at Miss Kelly's. Instead, she gave her a pale yellow cardigan that she herself had barely worn, insisting that the colour was wrong for her and that it would look better on Eilis. She also gave her some lipstick. She was out late on Saturday night so she did not witness Eilis going to bed early, even though Nancy and Annette were going to the pictures, so that she would be fresh for work at Miss Kelly's on her first Sunday.

Only once, years before, had Eilis been to seven o'clock mass and that was on a Christmas morning when her father was alive and the boys were still at home. She remembered that she and her mother had tiptoed out of the house while the others were sleeping, leaving the presents under the tree in the upstairs living room, and coming back just after the boys and Rose and their father had woken and begun to open the packages. She remembered the darkness, the cold and the beautiful emptiness of the town. Now, leaving the house just after the twenty to seven bell rang, with her shop coat in a carrier bag and her hair tied in a ponytail, she walked through the streets to the cathedral, making sure she was in plenty of time.

She remembered that on that Christmas morning, years before, the seats in the central aisle of the cathedral had almost been full. Women with a long morning in the kitchen ahead of them wanted an early start. But now there was almost nobody. She looked around for Miss Kelly, but she did not see her until communion and then realized that she had been sitting across from her all along. She watched her walking down the main aisle with her hands joined and her eyes on the ground, followed by Mary, who was wearing a black mantilla. They both must have fasted, she thought, as she had been fasting, and she wondered when they would have their breakfast.

Once mass was over, she decided not to wait for Miss Kelly in the cathedral grounds but instead lingered at the news-stand as they unpacked bundles of newspapers and then stood outside the shop and waited for her there. Miss Kelly did not greet her or smile when she arrived but moved gruffly to the side door, ordering Eilis and Mary to wait outside. As she unlocked the main door of the shop and began to turn on the lights, Mary went to the back of the shop and started to carry loaves of bread towards the counter. Eilis realized that this was yesterday's bread; there was no bread delivered on a Sunday. She stood and watched as Miss Kelly opened a new strip of long sticky yellow paper to attract flies and told Mary to stand on the counter, fix it to the ceiling and take down the old one, which had dead flies stuck to every part of it.

"No one likes flies," Miss Kelly said, "especially on a Sunday."

Soon, two or three people came into the shop to buy cigarettes. Even though Eilis had already put her shop coat on, Miss Kelly ordered Mary to deal with them. When they had gone, Miss Kelly told Mary to go upstairs and make a pot of tea, which she then delivered to the newspaper kiosk in exchange for what Eilis learned was a free copy of the Sunday Press, which Miss Kelly folded and put aside. Eilis noticed that neither Miss Kelly nor Mary had anything to eat or drink. Miss Kelly ushered her into a back room.

"That bread there," she said, pointing to a table, "is the freshest. It came yesterday evening all the way from Stafford's, but it is only for special customers. So you don't touch that bread whatever you do. The other bread'll do fine for most people. And we have no tomatoes. Those ones there are not for anybody unless I give precise instructions."

After nine o'clock mass the first crowd came. People who wanted cigarettes and sweets seemed to know to approach Mary. Miss Kelly stood back, her attention divided between the door and Eilis. She checked every price Eilis wrote down, informed her briskly of the price when she could not remember, and wrote down and added up the figures herself after Eilis had done so, not letting her give the customer the change until she had also been shown the original payment. As well as doing this, she greeted certain customers by name, motioning them forward and insisting that Eilis break off whatever she was doing to serve them.

"Oh, Mrs. Prendergast now," she said, "the new girl will look after you now and Mary will carry everything out to the car for you."

"I need to finish this first," Eilis said, as she was only a few items away from completing another order.

"Oh, Mary will do that," Miss Kelly said.

By this time people were five deep at the counter. "I'm next," a man shouted as Miss Kelly came back to the counter with more bread.

"Now, we are very busy and you will have to wait your turn."

"But I was next," the man said, "and that woman was served before me."

"So what is it you want?"

The man had a list of groceries in his hand.

"Eilis will deal with you now," Miss Kelly said, "but only after Mrs. Murphy here."

"I was before her too," the man said.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," Miss Kelly said. "Eilis, hurry up now, this man is waiting. No one has all day, so he's next, after Mrs. Murphy. What price did you charge for that tea?"

It was like this until almost one o'clock. There was no break and nothing to eat or drink and Eilis was starving. No one was served in turn. Miss Kelly informed some of her customers, including two who, being friends of Rose, greeted Eilis familiarly, that she had lovely fresh tomatoes. She weighed them herself, seeming to be impressed that Eilis knew these customers, telling others firmly, however, that she had no tomatoes that day, none at all. For favoured customers she openly, almost proudly, produced the fresh bread. The problem was, Eilis realized, that there was no other shop in the town that was as well stocked as Miss Kelly's and open on a Sunday morning, but she also had a sense that people came here out of habit and they did not mind waiting, they enjoyed the crush and the crowd.

Although she had planned not to mention her new job in Miss Kelly's over dinner at home that day unless Rose raised the matter first, Eilis could not contain herself and began as soon as they sat down to describe her morning.

"I went into that shop once," Rose said, "on my way home from mass and she served Mary Delahunt before me. I turned and walked out. And there was a smell of something. I can't think what it was. She has a little slave, doesn't she? She took her out of a convent."

"Her father was a nice enough man," her mother said, "but she had no chance because her mother was, as I told you, Eilis, evil incarnate. I heard that when one of the maids got scalded she wouldn't even let her go to the doctor. The mother had Nelly working there from the time she could walk. She's never seen daylight, that's what's wrong with her."

"Nelly Kelly?" Rose asked. "Is that really her name?"

"In school they had a different name for her."

"What was it?"

"Everyone called her Nettles Kelly. The nuns couldn't stop us. I remember her well, she was a year or two behind me. She'd always have five or six girls following behind her coming from the Mercy Convent shouting 'Nettles.' No wonder she's so mad."

There was silence for a while as Rose and Eilis took this in.

"You wouldn't know whether to laugh or to cry," Rose said.

Eilis found as the meal went on that she could do an imitation of Miss Kelly's voice that made her sister and her mother laugh. She wondered if she was the only one who remembered that Jack, the youngest of her brothers, used to do imitations of the Sunday sermon, the radio sports commentators, the teachers at school and many characters in the town, and they all used to laugh. She did not know if the other two also realized that this was the first time they had laughed at this table since Jack had followed the others to Birmingham. She would have loved to say something about him, but she knew that it would make her mother too sad. Even when a letter came from him it was passed around in silence. So she continued mocking Miss Kelly, stopping only when someone called for Rose to take her to play golf, leaving Eilis and her mother to clear the table and wash the dishes.

That evening Eilis called at Nancy Byrne's at nine, aware that she had not made enough effort with her appearance. She had washed her hair and put on a summer dress, but she thought that she looked dowdy and was resigned to the idea that if Nancy danced more than one dance with George Sheridan then she was going home on her own. She was glad that Rose had not seen her before she left, as she would have made her do something more with her hair and put on some make-up and generally try to look smarter.

"Now, the rule is," Nancy said, "that we are not even looking at George Sheridan and he might be with a whole crowd from the rugby club, or he might not even be there at all. They often go to Courtown on a Sunday night, that crowd. So we are to be deep in conversation. And I'm not dancing with anyone else, just in case he came in and saw me. So if someone is coming over to ask us to dance, we just stand up and go to the ladies'."