Chestnut Street (9 page)

Nessa Byrne’s aunt Elizabeth knew all about everything and she was never wrong.

She came to visit them in Chestnut Street every June for six days, and because she had high expectations, they cleaned the house and tidied up the garden for about two weeks before her visit.

Aunt Elizabeth’s bedroom was emptied of all the clutter that had built up there in the year since her last visit. They touched up the paintwork and lined the nice empty drawers with clean pink paper.

Nessa’s mother often said with a weary laugh that if it hadn’t been for Elizabeth’s annual vacation the whole place would have been a complete tip.

But then Nessa’s mother should not have felt guilty; she had neither the time nor the money to spend on house renovations. She worked long hours in a supermarket and supported three children without any help from her husband. Nessa never remembered her father going out to work.

He had a bad back.

Aunt Elizabeth was her father’s elder sister. She had immigrated
to America when she was eighteen. She worked there as a paralegal. Nessa wasn’t quite sure what it was and you never asked Aunt Elizabeth a direct question like that.

Nessa’s father smartened himself up when his sister arrived. No sitting in his chair looking at the races on television, and he helped with the dishes too. He always seemed very relieved when Elizabeth left.

“Well, that passed off all right,” he would say, as if there had been some hidden danger there that none of them would have been able to avoid.

Aunt Elizabeth would be out all day, visiting places of culture. She would go to art exhibitions, or the Chester Beatty Library, or on a tour of some elegant home.

“All that matters is seeing places of elegance, places with high standards,” she would tell Nessa as she trimmed and clipped the brochures to paste them into a scrapbook. Nessa wondered who would see these scrapbooks year after year. But again, it wasn’t a question you would ask Aunt Elizabeth.

There was no call for jolly happy family pictures. Certainly not at Nessa’s home. And not at a picnic out on Killiney Beach or on Howth Head, where Nessa’s mother would have packed hard-boiled eggs and squishy tomatoes to be eaten with doorsteps of bread. Aunt Elizabeth wouldn’t want to record this, no matter how much the sun had shone and how heartily they had all laughed during the day.

But on one evening during her yearly visit Aunt Elizabeth would invite the whole family for a drink at whatever she had decided was the new smart place to go in Dublin.

And it
was
a drink, not several drinks, orange for the children, a red vermouth with a cherry in it for Nessa’s mother, a small Irish whiskey for her father and the house cocktail for Aunt Elizabeth herself.

They all had to dress up for this outing and a waiter was usually invited to take a snap of them all blinking in whatever unfamiliar
background. Presumably, when the picture was developed, it would be inserted in the scrapbook.

“All that matters,” Aunt Elizabeth would say, “is that we are in the right place.”

Nessa wondered why this was so important. But Aunt Elizabeth looked so smartly dressed and confident. She must be right.

Aunt Elizabeth often went to a big newsagent’s shop in O’Connell Street with a small notebook. Nessa sometimes went with her.

“What are you writing down?” she asked once, and then felt guilty and anxious. You didn’t ask Aunt Elizabeth direct questions. But, oddly, there seemed to be no problem.

“I’m looking through the magazines and writing down the names of people who go to art gallery openings and first nights. It’s amazing how many of the same names turn up over and over.”

Nessa was confused. Why should anyone care about who went to what? Even if they lived here? But if they lived three thousand miles away? It was insane. Her face must have shown this because suddenly Aunt Elizabeth spoke to her seriously as if she were a fellow adult.

“I’m going to tell you something very important, so listen well. I know you are only fifteen but it’s never too early to know this: all that matters is the image you create of yourself. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Nessa said doubtfully.

“Believe me, it
is
all that matters. For a start you should call yourself by your full name, Vanessa—people will have more respect for you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that—they’d all think I was a gobshite.”

“And you should
never
use language like that, about yourself or about anyone. If you are to amount to anything, then you must have a seriously great sense of respect about the way you appear to others.”

“Ma says that as long as you’re nice to other people that’s all that matters.” Nessa showed some spirit.

“Yes, Vanessa, and very worthy of her too. But look at your mother, worn out slaving in a supermarket, allowing my brother to spend her earnings as well as his dole money on drink and horses.”

Nessa held her head up high. “My dad is terrific.”

“I was at school with your mother and father. I was three years older than them, but I look ten years younger. All that matters is giving a good impression of yourself to others. It’s like a mirror. If you look well, and people think you look well, then they reflect it back at you.”

“Yes, I see.”

“So, Vanessa, if you like, I can help you a little, advise you about clothes and posture and the things that matter.”

Nessa was torn. Did she accept the advice and become elegant like Aunt Elizabeth? Or did she tell her to get lost, that she was fine as she was with Ma and Da?

She looked for a moment at her aunt, who must be forty-seven. She barely looked thirty. Her hair was short and well cut; she washed it every day with a baby shampoo. She wore a smart dark-green suit that she sponged every night with lemon juice. She had a variety of brightly colored T-shirts, and one really nice brooch on her lapel.

Ma looked so different, never time to wash her long greasy hair, tied back in a rubber band. Ma didn’t have highly polished court shoes that she stuffed with newspaper at night, like her sister-in-law. She had big, broken flat shoes that were comfortable at work and on the long walk home.

Nessa’s school friends had always admired her aunt. They had always said that she was lucky she had got away from Chestnut Street and done well for herself in New York. God, they said, anyone could do well in America compared to here.

Yet it looked as if Aunt Elizabeth had reinvented herself somehow
and might be able to reinvent Nessa too, if she were given permission.

“What are you thinking about, Vanessa?”

“Why did you go to America, exactly?”

“To escape, Vanessa. If I had stayed living in my mother’s house in Chestnut Street there would have been nothing for me here, working at a checkout till somewhere, nothing better.”

“Some people in Chestnut Street have great jobs.” Nessa was mutinous.

“Now possibly, then no.” Her aunt was very definite.

“Could you make me … you know … a bit in charge … I don’t know the exact word, but like you are?”

“Yes, Vanessa. The word is
confident
, by the way, and I could. But before I start I want to know if you are serious. Will you call yourself Vanessa, for example?”

“It’s not important, surely?”

“It is in a way; it shows that you want to have style.”

“Okay, then,” said Vanessa Byrne agreeably, hoping there would not be too much flak at home.

“Are you off your skull?” Da asked her when she mentioned her new name.

Her brothers fell about the place laughing.

“What do
you
think, Ma?” she asked, going out to the kitchen, where her mother was peeling potatoes.

“Life is short. Whatever makes you happy,” her mother said.

“You don’t really mean that, Ma.”

“Jesus Christ, Nessa or
Va
-nessa, if that’s what you want. You ask me a question, I answer it, then you tell me that I don’t mean it. I’ll tell you what I mean. I’ve been sitting with an east wind coming in the doors, which they leave open all day until I have a pain all down my whole left side. I’ve heard at the supermarket
that we may all have less hours’ work next month, and what will that mean to this household? Your aunt will be back shortly from some museum or other expecting finger bowls and linen napkins on the table. I don’t care if you call yourself Bambi or the Hag of Beara, Vanessa—I have far too much on my mind.”

And at that moment Vanessa decided she would be a person of style.

Before Aunt Elizabeth left Chestnut Street to return to America, Vanessa went up to sit in her bedroom and watch her pack.

She noticed that there were no gifts for anyone back in New York. Her aunt always brought the family gifts—big art books. Things about Vermeer or Rembrandt. They would open them and leaf through the colored pictures politely the night she arrived, then the books would go on a shelf beside last year’s Monet and the year before’s Degas.

“Jaysus, wouldn’t you think she’d give the kids something to spend?” Vanessa’s father would mutter.

“Shush, isn’t it nice that she brings some sort of culture into this house.” Ma always tried to see the good side of things but Dad was having none of it.

“She never brought anything but fights and arguments into this house. We were all perfectly happy, five of us in this house, until Lizzie started her act, saying the place was shabby and common and whatever.”

“Don’t call her Lizzie—she hates it.”

“It’s her bloody name, and now she’s started filling Nessa up with these notions as well.”

Vanessa had heard all these conversations. The houses in Chestnut Street were small; there wasn’t much you didn’t hear.

Aunt Elizabeth had closed the bedroom door and turned her radio to Lyric FM. This way they wouldn’t be overheard.

“That’s Ravel, Vanessa. All that matters is to recognize good music. You’ll be surprised at how quickly it all will become familiar.”

“What should I do first, Aunt Elizabeth?” Vanessa asked.

“I think you should give your room a style of your own.”

“Like get rid of all my own things in here—is that what you mean?” Vanessa liked the film posters, fashion articles and footballers that decorated her walls.

“Keep only things that are graceful and elegant, Vanessa. Only items that will speak well of you.”

Vanessa looked bewildered.

Her aunt explained. “How are people to know what we are like unless we send them messages, child? The way we dress, the way we speak, the way we behave. How else are people to get to know us?”

“I suppose so.” Vanessa was doubtful. After all, you knew who you liked and who you didn’t like—it hadn’t all that much to do with messages.

She watched as the suitcase was neatly packed, transparent bags of underwear, scarves, T-shirts, all immaculately folded. The scrapbooks took the place of the art books she had brought over with her.

Aunt Elizabeth had been born in this house forty-seven years ago, and look at her now. It could happen to Vanessa too. She looked at her reflection, tousled, grubby even, her school shirt torn at the collar, her skirt stained with food and pen marks.

“There’s no money for new clothes or anything,” Vanessa said as she saw she was being observed. She half hoped that some financial help might be offered, but then Dad always said that Lizzie still had her confirmation money.

“So you’ll have to learn to look after what clothes you
do
have, I suppose.” Her aunt was vague, as if it had nothing to do with her.

“And my hair?” Vanessa looked despairing.

“Go to Lilian Harris at Number Five.”

“Yes, but again, where would I get the money to pay her?”

“Do something for her instead—you know, take her mother for a walk, do the shopping one day a week, then she can give you a proper haircut every month.”

It was a possibility, certainly.

“It would be easier if you were here,” Vanessa said, looking at her very elegant aunt, who was creaming her long, slim hands carefully. Ma’s hands were cracked and red and had never known hand cream.

“You can write to me, Vanessa, telling me your progress.”

“And maybe come and see you in New York one day?” Vanessa was daring.

“One day, maybe.”

Vanessa had heard warmer invitations in her young life. But she was not going to get moody about it. “Let’s go down for supper. Ma’s making shepherd’s pie as a treat for your last night here and she’s inviting Miss Mack and Bucket Maguire.”

“That’s nice.” Aunt Elizabeth made it sound as if some poison were being prepared for them. “Remember, don’t eat any of the mashed potato on top, Vanessa, no bread and butter, and try to encourage your mother to have salads in future.”

During supper Vanessa Byrne watched her tired mother, her impatient father and her ill-mannered brothers, Eamonn and Sean, gobbling up the shepherd’s pie. She never felt more like a traitor than that evening as she nibbled at the meat part of the pie and halved a tomato with her aunt. It was as if she had crossed a line, changed sides.

She wrote for advice three times to Aunt Elizabeth in New York. Always she got a frank and helpful reply. Yes, indeed, Vanessa
should take a Saturday job in a restaurant but she must choose a smart place, and insist that they give her a uniform to wear. An entirely fictitious reference was sent from New York to help her get such a job.

No, it would be very foolish and time wasting for Vanessa to try to learn to play the piano. She was too old to start a musical education at fifteen, she would be better to borrow CDs from the library and learn to appreciate music made by others.

And yes, Vanessa would be well advised to go to any poetry readings, book launches or cultural events that she heard of around Dublin. She would meet a lot of interesting people this way.

And Vanessa did. Including Owen, who was twenty-two and couldn’t believe that Vanessa was still at school. She was going to write about this to her aunt, but something stopped her. Like the fact that she had never asked Owen back home to Chestnut Street. Like that she didn’t want to tell her aunt that she was having sex with Owen.