The Pull of the Stars(69)

All Souls’ Day now, I remembered. We’re supposed to visit a graveyard.

Does a hospital count, since there’s always people dying in it?

Let’s say it does. Oh, I should say a prayer for Mammy.

Bridie asked, Was it in hospital she took her fever after your brother was born?

I shook my head. At home. It happens every day, the world over—women have babies and they die. No, I corrected myself, they die of having babies. It’s hardly news, so I don’t know why it still fills me with such rage.

Bridie said, I suppose it’s your fight.

I looked sideways at her.

What you said to Mr. Groyne about women being like soldiers, laying down their lives? Well, your job’s not to bear the babies, it’s to save them. And the mothers.

I nodded. My throat hurt. I said, All of them I can, anyway.

Bridie crossed herself. Bless Mrs. Power, mother of Julia and Tim.

I bent my head and tried to join in the prayer.

Bless all the departed, she added.

Silence like silk around us.

Bridie remarked, These have been the two best days I’ve ever had.

I stared at her.

The time of my life. Such an adventure! A couple more people are alive because of us—because you and me were here and did our bit. Can you credit it?

But—the very best days, really, Bridie?

Well, and I’ve met you.

(Her five syllables, like blows to my chest.)

You said I was a tonic, Julia. Indispensable. Didn’t you put balm on my hands when you didn’t even know me? Gave me your comb. And a birthday as well. When I broke the thermometer, you said it was your own fault! You’ve taught me so much in two days. Made me your helper, your runner. Made me matter.

I was speechless.

I thought again of what a good nurse Bridie might make. Has the order never proposed to have you trained in anything?

She made a face. They placed me in service when I first came up to Dublin, but the lady sent me back—said I had a lip on me.

Yes, I could see there was a spark about Bridie that the meaner kind of employer would resent.

I sometimes go out to char by the day, she said. Hotels, schools, offices.

And the wages you get—

Bridie’s face made me realise that she never saw a penny. She said, We still owe the nuns for our rearing and education.

My voice was furious. If the order takes your pay, that’s bonded servitude. Are you boarders not free to leave?

I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, Bridie admitted. Let’s talk about something more fun now.

She was shivering, I saw. I huddled farther down and pulled her under the blankets.

The stars inched across the sky. I told Bridie the plot of every Mary Pickford film I’d seen. Then of other films, anything I thought she might enjoy.

She enjoyed them all.

At one point we were talking about children. I volunteered, I won’t be having any myself.

No?

I don’t know that I ever wanted to marry, exactly. But in any case I’ve missed the moment.

Bridie didn’t say, Thirty’s not old, as any other woman would have. She just looked at me.

I said, I was never exactly beautiful, and now—

But you are beautiful.

Bridie’s eyes, the gleam of them. And you haven’t missed this moment, she told me.

Well, I suppose not.

She took hold of my face and kissed me.

Not a no, not a word, not a movement to stop her, nothing. I just let it—

Her—

I let the kiss happen. Never before, never this way. Like a pearly moon in my mouth, huge, overwhelming, the brightness.

This was against every rule I’d been reared by.

I kissed her back. The old world was changed utterly, dying on its feet, and a new one was struggling to be born. There might only be this one night left, which was why I kissed Bridie Sweeney, held her and kissed her with all I had and all I was.

Lying on the cold slant of the slates, trying to catch our breath.

My eyes brimmed.

Bridie noticed at once. Ah, don’t cry.

It’s not—

What is it, then?

I said rashly, I bet your mother remembers your real birthday. There must have been a moment when you were put in her arms and she thought, Oh my.

A grim chuckle from Bridie. Oh, my burden, more like.

Oh, my treasure, I said. (Taking her hands.) The sweet weight of you on the day you were born—imagine.

Bridie put her mouth to mine again.

We got colder and colder as the night wore on. We kissed and we talked, on and off. Neither of us mentioned the kissing so as not to burst the bubble by touching it. So as not to think about what it meant for the two of us to kiss.

We got onto the war, and I found myself telling her about Tim’s best friend, Liam Caffrey, how the two fellows had signed up together, bold as brass, grinning away in the photograph that still hung a little tilted, the only picture on my brother’s wall. I told her, Liam didn’t make it home.

What happened to him?

He was shot in the throat last year at the Battle of Jerusalem.

(I moved Bridie’s finger to the dip at the base of my own throat. The same spot where Tim wore his little touchwood, which had saved his skin, perhaps, though not the rest of him.) She wanted to know, Was he there, your Tim?

As near as you are to me now. Splattered with bits of his friend.