Her Black MantillaDavie Condon was on his way home from the creamery one morning in May, when he saw the girl on the road ahead, walking in the headland beneath the blossoming hawthorn trees. He drew up next to her, stalled his horse and cart, and pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes, while his horse stretched its neck to toward the headland and blocked the girl’s path. She stood motionless and silent as a statue, her lead level with the cartwheel, holding a small red suitcase to her chest. Her long black mackintosh was buttoned to the throat, and she wore a black mantilla that covered her head and the back of her neck.
Davie asked if he could give her a lift someplace, and in a low and childlike voice she said she was looking for the Tarpeys’ place.
— The Tarpeys’? That’s not so far down the road at all, he said, gazing at the dusty road before him, the undamaged hoof prints, and the tracks his cart had made a few hours earlier, the hawthorn blossoms drifting aimlessly along the road.
— Yes, sir, that’s the same of them, sir.
He told her to sit up on the back corner of his cart, that he’d be passing Tarpey’s place, and without a word she lifted the red suitcase on to the back corner of the cart, which creaked when she sat up. He waited until he did not hear her breath before he shook the reins, told the horse to git up, and the beast swung away from the ditch, dragging a clump of grass in his mouth.
— It’s a long way from the station, Miss, he glanced sideways and said, guessing the station was where she had come from. He heard a faint reply, though he could not make out a word of it against the sound of the creaking wheels, the horse hooves striking the road, and the clinking traces. Then he slowed the horse and glanced round to see the lower part of her round, pale face, her blood-red lips. The mantilla hid her forehead and eyes. Her legs hung over the edge of the cart, and he noticed she was wore new shoes that were coated in fine dust from the roads. He pulled the reins to him and told the horse to stop. — Take them shoes off if you want to. Your feet must be sore, and we have a good ten minutes to go yet.
The girl leaned forward and unlaced the plain, black shoes which she then held tenderly in her lap. She was wearing no stockings, and as Davie shook the reins and the horse began to move, she lifted her legs our before her, and the mackintosh parted to the knees. He drew his legs together, faced the road, and lashed the horse’s rump with the end of the reins. The startled horse snorted, raised his tail, and broke into a brisk trot.
At the crossroads, Davie pointed to the farmhouse, in a paddock sloping upward, where four cows and a pony grazed. The girl put one foot on a spoke and stepped down, then reached for her shoes and suitcase; she turned her back to him and stared at the farmhouse, her shoes in one hand and the suitcase in the other.
— Thank you, Sir, she said, watching the cottage, but not taking a step toward it.
— You’re welcome, he said, - and you don’t have to call me sir, either. There aren’t any of them around here.
He watched her put the suitcase and shoes down on the road; then she opened her mantilla, her hands rapidly fixing it around the top of her head and neck, and then arranging it around her neck and face. He bashfully looked away from her, to the sagging thatched roof of Tarpey’s cottage, part of which was obscured by elm trees growing far into their paddock. He bid her good day; she kept staring and said nothing, so he led his horse and cart through the crossroads, went on down the road, but as he approached the first bend he told the horse to hold up, and he turned, because he felt she was still standing there, and now watching him, but behind him the crossroads were empty, only for a sudden and ghostly breeze he did not feel that shook the long and wild grass on the tall ditch.
Twenty-eight years before, a Shorthorn bull Davie’s father owned crippled the Tarpey brother, James, who was then thirty. The brother had borrowed the bull and was leading it through the crossroads when it turned on him. It was talk for a long time about what bad luck had befallen the young man, who had been planning to marry a local girl, and never agin did James Tarpey appear in public. He was bedridden all these years, cared for by his sister, Lena.
Davie had stopped again, to watch his cows grazing in his big field that went all the way to the crossroads. Then he was passing the Coughlins’ house, which was down a short boreen. Missus Coughlin was carrying a bucket to the dairy; she did not see him, but if she did, she would have walked down to the roadside for a chat, although Davie was happy enough that she did not see him, for he avoided her if he could at all, like he did everyone else. Davie and Mrs Coughlin’s two boys — Brendan and Michael — had gone to National School together nearly forty years ago. Michael had emigrated in his early twenties; Brendan lived at home and, like Davie was unmarried. That morning, on his way out of the creamery store, he had run into Brendan, who told Davie about an upcoming dance in the parish hall, inquiring if he had any interest in going; a few of the lads were meeting beforehand in Power’s.
The winter put years on me, Brendan, he told his neighbour. Anyway, I’m way too old at forty to be going to dances. I’d be far happier sitting at home reading the paper.
There’ll be loads of time left for you to sit reading newspapers, Brendad Coughlin laughed and slapped his neighbour on the shoulders.
Davie’s horse and cart were traveling down the short boreen to his house. On both sides of the path, the poplars had filled out, the sunlight glinting on their silvery leaves. Davie felt the blood rising to his face; he squeezed the reins, shut his eyes to the irritating light, but only to see again the strange girl slipping he black shoes off , her pale ankles and the coat falling away, while the hawthorn blossoms floated above the road behind the cart — the horse had stalled on the flagstones before Condon’s house, whose front door was shut. Davie threw the reins over the horse’s back and hopped down. The noisy chickens gathered at his feet; he told them to hold on, he’d feed them in a minute; he was unhooking the traces when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, his mother an sister walking through the big field beyond the house, on their daily journey to his father’s grave, which had begun twenty-two years ago.
* * *
Alice Gilmartin was eighteen, an orphan went out to the Tarpeys by the nuns and the help of a local parish priest, to work the small farm and help old Lena Tarpey with her bedridden brother. Lena Tarpey put Alice in one room upstairs. It was small and rectangular, with a slanting ceiling, and one single bed below a small and rectangular, with a slanting ceiling, and one single bed below a small window. There was one homemade chair next to the bed, and an old wardrobe in the corner of the room. Alice put her shoes and the suitcase on the floor of the wardrobe, and hung her coat and Mass clothes on the hooks.
The old woman’s bedroom was underneath the stairs, to the right of her brother’s whose solid brown door, with a rattling white doorknob, stayed closed until the old woman had to empty his chamber pot, take in his food, the pan of warm water every Saturday to wash him, and then she only opened the door enough to slip in and quietly shut it behind her.
Lena Tarpey was thin and stooped; her face was brown and wrinkled. On weekdays, she wore a blue, faded scarf, and on Saturday night, when Alice went upstairs to bed, the old woman boiled two kettles of water over the fire and washed her hair with Lifebuoy soap, in a basin at the kitchen table; after, she washed the scarf along the crane, where it dried overnight in the dying heat from the turf.
Alice was not a stranger to farm work: she had been sent out to help on farms before, so she brought the Tarpeys’ four cows morning and evening, milked them, and hunted them out through the trees, into the paddock. She tackled the pony, hitched him to the cart, and took the milk to the creamery. Every Tuesday and Friday, she brought a shopping basket and went into the creamery store to get a pound of butter, tea, sugar or flour, whatever the old woman had told her. What the Tarpeys owed was written down and deducted from their milk money at the end of the month.
When Alice arrived back from the creamery, she untackled the pony and went inside for breakfast. After she ate, she fed the hens, gathered the eggs, forked out the cow house and wheeled the manure to the dung heap, in the wheelbarrow. Her last job of the day was to sweep the flagstones before Tarpey’s door. The old woman came out of the house and walked to the edge of the yard, where she stared at the elms, her arms folded, her back turned to Alice.
— You’re worse than James ever was, she turned from the trees and remarked to Alice one evening. Mad for work like yourself, he was too, when he was able to do it. But come inside now and eat the supper before it gets cold. That very same dust will be back again tomorrow. The kitchen table was covered with a cracked, faded white and red oilcloth. A milk jug, butter dish, and chipped sugar bowl stood in the centre. For supper, Alice and the old woman ate fried eggs and soda bread that the old woman had baked over the fire in the afternoon, while Alice worked outside. Suppertime was Alice’s favourite part of the day; she felt relieved and hungry after the day’s work, as she watched through the window the sky above the elms. Lena Tarpey sat across the table from her. She told Alice that James used to sit exactly where Alice was sitting, and he couldn’t keep his eyes from the window, either. When she mentioned her brother, Alice was reminded that another human being lived under the rood and when the old woman was not in the kitchen, Alice had gone to his door a few times, straining to hear a breath or a creaking bedspring, but she never heard a thing; and when she worked outside, she noticed his window was so soiled that no shaft of light could possibly get in.
One Monday evening, not long after Alice arrived, she was on her hands and knees searching for a hen’s nest in the ivy and the long grass that covered the ground underneath the elm trees. She knew a hen was hatching, because she did not come in at night when Alice called. Alice was startled by a shadow falling over her, and she turned to see the old woman holding a bundle out.
— It belonged to James, when he was your age. I washed it this week.
She handed Alice a neatly folded gabardine, similar to the one the old woman herself wore.
— Thank you, Mam. Alice stood quickly, and bowed graciously.
— I want you to get the flour tomorrow, but be watchful of that fellow, said the old woman.
— Beg pardon, Mam? said Alice.
— That grocer, keep and eye on him. He’s the very kind to take advantage of a stranger.
— Oh, yes, of course, Mam.
— Watch the way he weighs it.
— I will so, Mam.
— I suppose the men in the store make a cod of you.
— They do, Mam, but mostly only one of them.
The old woman folded her arms and started through the trees. — Don’t worry about them at all, she assured her. — They cod everyone, and you’re only a girl, anyway.
They don’t concern me, Alice bowed her head. — The nuns warned me, she whispered.
You’re a good girl then, said the old woman. — That’s a grand sky up there tonight, thank God.
It’ll be a grand summer for all of us, God willing.
Yes, please God, Mam.
We don’t bother with saving the hay anymore, with only the few cows left, the old woman said. — We’ll buy a reek later in the year.
All right, Mam.
If it’s that hen you’re looking for she hatches over there every year, the old woman pointed to a clump of tall grass at the edge of the paddock.
When the old woman went in, Alice walked over and found the nest, which was where the old woman said it would be. Alice knelt beside it and gently stole her hand underneath the warm hen, and one-by-one her fingers touched eight warm eggs. She stood and ran to the dairy and brought a cup of meal, and she carefully lifted the hen from the nest and sat there guarding the eggs and watching the hen eat.
The next morning, Alice tied the pony and cart to the railing outside the creamery store, where the other ponies and horses were tied. She tugged the mantilla around the side of her face, pulled the peak down over her forehead, and then tightened the clumsy gabardine around her waist. She walked across the gravel, the wicker shopping basket swinging on the crook of her arm; she opened the door. Her nose twitched at the smell of cigarette and pipe smoke, sour milk and cow manure, and she stood there for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dusky light from the one window to the right of the door. She was aware that a few men leaned against stacked bags of grain, though she had never directly looked at them. They talked and read the paper, but now Alice felt their eyes following her, as she made her way, head bowed, to the counter. She peeked behind the counter at two shelves, stacked carelessly with mouse poison, packets of sugar, rice, jelly, oat flakes, tins of meat and fish, cans of peas and custard, many of whose labels had faded out. She stood at the counter in front of the weighing scale. Flour, tea leaves, and grains of rice were scattered along the counter top.
Gerald Clohessy, the grocer, was stout and bald, only for the few wisps of white hair above his ears; he wore a white shop coat. A grey moustache hid his upper lip. He smiled and nodded, saying God bless to Alice, bending towards her, in an effort to see beneath the mantilla. Alice bowed her head, whispering that Miss Tarpey needed three pounds of flour and the usual pound of butter, if you please, sir.
Brendan Coughlin, who was tall and wiry, with tangled red hair, stepped up next to Alice; he was one of the three or four men who stood at the end of the counter.
— It must be a Tuesday or it’s Friday already, and I didn’t even know it, but whatever day it is isn’t it time you took that veil off, so we can all have a good look at you. It’s not in mourning you are, or is it? A young one at your age shouldn’t be acting so shook. Believe you me the time goes by more quicker than you think.
He had leaned his elbow on the counter, also trying to see beneath the mantilla; the men at the end of the counter were laughing. Alice pulled at the corner of the mantilla, but she did not budge an inch. She was watching the grocer scoop flour into the metal dish, his stomach shifting against the edge of the counter, and she watched the needle on the scale darting back and forth. The grocer lifted the dish of flour, emptied it into a small bag and shoved the bag toward Alice.
— There you are, he said. — Don’t forget to tell Lena and she brother now that Gerald was asking for them.
— That’s a grand dress you’re wearing today, Brendan Coughlin said, and they laughed. — It must be very hard to come across one that nice. You must have gone to town to buy it, he added.
Put more flour in, sir, if you please, sir, Alice said firmly.
— What is it I’m hearing you saying, the grocer spat on the floor at his feet. — What did you have the cheek to say to me! You, you nobody, a stranger and a girl to walk in here and talk to me that way!
Brendan Coughlin stepped back down on the counter. — She’s putting you in your place, all right, Clohessy, that’s the best one I ever heard around here, he smirked.
— You didn’t put enough in, sir.
— You dirty forward bitch, said the grocer, as he snatched up the bag, tore the neck open and heaped more flour in; he then plopped the bag back down on the counter before Alice. — Take that, and get yourself away from here as quick as lightening. You don’t belong here, and your likes never will.
The men at the counter sniggered like schoolboys, and through the settling cloud of flour dust, Alice saw the spittle shining on the grocer’s twitching moustache, as she reached out to pick up the bag of flour and the pound of butte, and drop them into her basket. She went quickly to the door, and when she was almost there, a hand reached down and shoved it open; the light nearly blinded her.
— You have grand manners, Davie Condon, I always knew that about you. Brendan Coughlin shouted, as the door shut behind her and their laughter faded. She sighed and crossed the yard to the pony and cart, her feet crunching the gravel and the basket numbing her arm. She laid the bag on the cart and untied the pony, and she then sat up on the cart, surprised at how firm her hands were as she gripped the reins and led the pony into the quiet road. When she rounded the bend in the road she felt safe, imagining the boiled egg in the teacup, beside the mug of hot tea that the old woman would have waiting for her.
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