Himself(22)
She went less and less to her job at Father Jim’s. Sometimes she didn’t turn up for weeks. Then she’d go home to find him sat with Mammy, not minding the smell. The filth. Talking to the old bitch as if she could even answer him.
When he saw her he’d stand up, his manner uncertain and a little defeated.
Or she’d see Bridget all over the town. She’d look up and there would be Bridget, smiling mournfully at her, with her eyes watering as if in a fierce wind.
All in all, she was a shocking disappointment to them.
In the forest Orla peed on the ground and wiped herself with a handful of moss. ‘I’d pull up my drawers now if I had any,’ she said to the bees. ‘Tell him that, why don’t you? Tell him I’m a queen bee with a cold arse.’
She pulled on her runaway daddy’s boots and was gone.
Chapter 8
April 1976
The auditions for Mrs Cauley’s annual fundraising production are legendary. On this day villagers and onlookers flock to Mulderrig Village Hall, where animals are sold in the car park and marriages are brokered in the cloakroom, and the parts that haven’t already been filled by Mulderrig’s most reliable performers are ruthlessly fought over.
This is the time to bring new talent to the fore and if there isn’t a musical number in the play Mrs Cauley will put one there. For many it’s a rite of passage: two choruses of a song from The Mikado on a badly lit stage.
Mulderrig will applaud them.
For the town loves those who give it a shot, even if only to fall on their arses. A bad performance will only be half remembered, but a good one can have you riding high all year.
Mrs Cauley knows how to give the people what they want.
She’s known it ever since she got off a train at Connolly Station with a suitcase in her hand. She’d looked at the buildings and the clouds and the parks and the people and she’d decided to stay. For the soft Irish skies suited her mood.
And so there she was, tripping to the Abbey Theatre with her brown curls bobbed under her hat and her little chin tilted up. Full-lipped and clear-eyed. Although her mind had always been old, her gloves and her accent were new. No more than an underfed foreigner with a pretty lisp and a stable of suitors.
There were so many men!
Men who gazed at her in the street, in the shops, in the bars, who held doors open for her, held out stoles for her, flagged down cabs for her, waited backstage for her with corsages and jewellery in velvet boxes. Men who sat in the stalls night after night (and sometimes twice on a matinee) and sighed as she held the wild dark breathing mass beyond the stage lights in the palm of her little immigrant hand.
You wouldn’t know it to look at her now: the raddled old rook. But yet, as Mrs Cauley makes her entrance the crowds that gather in the village hall hush and part in reverence. Dressed in a beaded cocktail dress that’s seen better days, with a tatty flapper-cut wig askew on her head, Mrs Cauley crosses the floor with a slow haphazard shuffle. Now and then she stops to return a nod or a smile, now and then she winks up at Mahony to disguise the pain.
Miss Fidelma Mulhearne (schoolteacher, spinster, deceased) watches closely from the back of the hall. She haunts the rooms she taught in when she wore a twinset and the building was a school. In death, as in life, Miss Mulhearne is a picture of respectable Irish womanhood. Her neat hair is waved and pinned, her low-heeled brogues shine dimly and her skirt hovers demurely above her ankles. She adjusts her spectacles and peers across the hall as Mrs Cauley and the fine-looking fella from Dublin take the stage.
He glances over at Miss Mulhearne and winks.
Miss Mulhearne flickers in surprise and flies into the kitchen to hide behind the tea urn with her dead heart beating fast. She wonders if she ought to be outraged as she undoes the top button of her cardigan.
Leaning heavily on Mahony’s arm Mrs Cauley turns to face her audience.
The women of the Catholic Housewives Forum have turned out in force (with the exception of Annie Farelly, who has sent her apologies again this year). The quayside, the Post Office and General Store and Kerrigan’s Bar are well represented, as are the outlying farms and houses and the coastguard.
Mrs Cauley shuffles to the centre of the stage and pauses; Mahony can almost feel her drawing the fibres of herself together. She lifts up her head and her voice comes, rich and rolling, big enough to fill the dusty corners. ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of Mulderrig, it is a profound pleasure to be amongst you and to see so many familiar faces.’
Mrs Cauley looks down the slope of her ancient nose. ‘Today I will be auditioning for our twenty-seventh annual fundraising production.’
There’s a round of applause.
She smiles. ‘Of course we do not do this for artistic edification alone. Last year’s production raised enough money for Father Quinn to indulge his flock with the purchase of an opulent set of new hymnbooks.’ She takes a step forward with her walking stick and lowers her voice. ‘And do you know, there was even enough money left over for Father Quinn to pay for some much-needed attention to his organ.’
Someone snickers at the back of the hall.
Father Quinn attempts a smile.
‘As always, there’s an open buffet provided by Kerrigan’s Bar.’ Mrs Cauley sees Mrs Moran pick up her canvas shopper. ‘So you’ll get the run of your teeth if you’re quick enough.’