No Drinking, No Dancing, No Doctors, page 13
Joe didn’t answer, he shook her hand solemnly before Beulah left the shop.
Chapter Thirteen
Louis’s smooth cheeks were damp as if he’d been crying, his hat was pulled down over his eyes. Beulah could barely see the tip of his nose, his soft lips. She tried to talk to what she could see of him.
‘I got talking to Mrs Tobin,’ she tried out, unsurely. From the distance Louis’s stiff-shouldered black figure looked angry. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
They say she is a nice woman,’ Louis muttered, as he turned the trap for home.
Beulah thought that Louis was driving the pony too fast. The town streaked past her and she was afraid that he would use the whip too hard. They were soon on the outskirts of the town and into the countryside. The hawthorn hedges scraped across her view. They passed a few other pony and traps and several men with donkeys and carts but Louis did not say hello to them in his usual neighbourly fashion, only crouched in the front seat, driving like a devil.
Beulah gripped the seat tightly and hoped they would not meet Bertie or Han or the Reverend Moylan. Just as they were turning in their avenue she saw Danny Fox standing in the middle of the road with his mouth open. ‘Good day, Louis,’ he roared.
‘Good day, Danny Fox,’ said Louis and turned Sally quickly down the tree-lined drive.
They clattered into the cobbled yard and only then did Louis push up his hat so that she could see his face. She had never known Louis to get angry.
‘Look at your hair, Beulah!’ he shouted and turned to unharness Sally. He walked with Sally over to the stable and left Beulah standing there uncertainly, Shep fussing around the bottom of her long skirt. How could she look at her hair? They had no mirrors. Was there something in it to show that Joe had touched it? But, Joe hadn’t touched her hair, she remembered, as she put her hand up to her cheekbone. How could Louis notice something like that?
She put her hand up to the front of her hair. It felt different, smoother, sweeping grandly over one ear from one side to the other. Beulah, like all the other Poleite women, usually had a flat centre parting and her hair was pulled back severely. She was still not sure what it looked like, but she could feel with her fingertips that it was glamorous. It felt like what the hairstyles of the women in the pictures in Mrs Tobin’s shop might feel like.
How could Mrs Tobin have done it to her! Surely she must have known that a Poleite woman was not allowed to be fashionable or elegant. She could have met Han or Bertie or even the Reverend Moylan. They would have called a special meeting like they did that time that Sam Potts wouldn’t stay away from the waitress in Bandon.
Louis was taking a long time and Beulah decided to walk into the house herself. She heaved the big shopping bag out of the cart and struggled to carry it in. She could hear Louis coming behind her now. He usually carried all the heavy bags. Before this, Beulah had thought that she didn’t care whether Louis helped or not.
From the scullery, she could hear Louis clattering. She guessed that he was feeding Shep, so she crept back into the pantry and pulled out the book. Tucking it under her arm she ran down the dark passage.
Beulah looked down at the little blue volume in her hand. She hadn’t even wanted it, she thought again angrily. Now she would have to hide it.
She could hear Louis in the kitchen room now, stoking the range. Shep was her dog who she’d brought from her own home and yet it was Louis who had remembered to feed her. Now he was doing the fire and he would probably make the tea as well. She should go in and help him but she couldn’t because she had to get up to old Uncle Georgie’s room to hide Mrs Tobin’s book. She ran upstairs away from the sound of Louis’s shovelling, the scream of the whistle from the old kettle. Pushing in the door quickly, she went to the half empty bookshelves. She placed the book between two other blue-bound books, hoping that it would pass for another of grand-uncle Georgie’s books, although it seemed to Beulah that the title and author were screaming out from the spine in deadly black letters, The Walk of a Queen by Annie P. Smithson.
Converts. Bertie had told her about them and he said that they were always women. Brainwashed by the priests, drugged with incense and soft talk from nuns. Or Latin words, maybe? Beulah considered that possibility. However it was managed, Bertie said, they got tricked into becoming Catholics. They were always sorry afterwards when they ended up scrubbing floors in convents, making sandwiches for priests and embroidering the priests’ vestments for the rest of their days.
‘Couldn’t they come back?’ Beulah dared to ask once.
‘And who would have them back after all that?’ asked Bertie.
‘Isn’t it only kind and Christian to take them back?’ asked Beulah surprised.
‘I wouldn’t take a girl like that back, no sirree. I wouldn’t even if it was yourself.’ Bertie caught Beulah’s eye with a hard stare.
‘Look here, child,’ Bertie went on. ‘You know I’ve nothing against my Catholic neighbours at all. I’m fond of every one of them and I’m the first to run to them when they’re in trouble. But girls who run out of families and cause trouble just to be bowing down in front of the same God in a different church don’t deserve to be taken back.’
‘Do you believe they’ve got the same God?’ Beulah asked.
‘Of course I do,’ said Bertie. ‘But he likes us better, you know.’
‘Do you think so?’ Beulah asked, thinking about the half a bag of sugar she had eaten in secret that very week.
‘Aren’t we doing all the right things, sure?’ Bertie rasped his hand across his chin. ‘I don’t know what the Lord would do without the Poleites!’
Beulah touched the front of her hair again and began to take the pins out. She flattened it as hard as she could with her fingers, rapidly plaiting it into her usual style. Her fingers were sure and steady now that she was out of the town. She thought about Bertie, the whole time she was working on her hair.
Bertie didn’t know anything about Beulah. He still called her child though she was touching six feet. Beulah thought about the hard stare that Bertie had given her. She never knew why it worried her. She was not about to run away to become a convert, she didn’t care about God enough to make such an effort.
Louis was sitting by the table. He had made the tea in the blue and white striped pot, a cake box from the confectioner’s stood beside the teapot. Beulah went over to the table and scraped out the wooden chair. ‘Cake, when did you get the cake?’ she asked.
Louis looked up at her, his eyes were huge and black in the dim kitchen, his pupils dilated to cover nearly all the blue iris.
‘Aren’t I the one who should be asking questions?’ He poured the tea into her cup. Beulah stared at the tea in the white cup. It was very strong, he knew that she didn’t like it strong.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked. She wanted to sound gentle, but her voice came out sour.
‘I mean what I say and here’s question for you now.’ Beulah cringed under his new and hateful voice. ‘Why did you say you wanted to go to Mrs Tobin’s for castor oil when you had something else on your mind entirely?’
‘But I did get the castor oil,’ Beulah insisted, guiltily.
‘I know you did, but what happened to your hair?’
‘It fell down.’
‘It fell down, did it now? Since when did a Poleite woman’s hair fall down in public?’
‘It didn’t really fall down, it was going to, and anyway I’ve got away more hair than the other women. You know that.’
‘I don’t go around comparing women’s hair, I’ve better things to do, so I have. You went to the hairdresser’s didn’t you?’
‘I did not. I never went near Nora O’Neill’s salon in my life. It’s a filthy-looking place.’
Louis raised his voice slightly, ‘You left me like a fool in the main street with every infidel in the town looking at me.’
Beulah swallowed and raised her voice, ‘Can you not remember our wedding? Reverend Moylan told you that you were never to doubt me. That you were to cleave to me.’
‘And what would the Reverend Moylan say about you? Leaving a fellow Poleite out there, exposed like that, surrounded by corner Johnnies.’
‘And what could I do with my hair after falling down? Did you expect me to walk down the main street like a tramp?’
If Joe Costello hadn’t been there what would have happened then? Mrs Tobin might have noticed her, but maybe she mightn’t have noticed her if she hadn’t heard Joe speaking. And maybe she would have walked out of the shop with her hair falling down. Beulah could feel the sensation of her hair slipping down from its clips, falling down over her neck. The whole of the town, the corner Johnnies, the town girls laughing at her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me my hair was falling down? Hunched like an old man on that trap, caring for nothing and nobody. I was in no hairdresser’s, but if it wasn’t for Joe Costello coming to my aid I’d be the laughing stock of the whole town.’
She could see then that he would have believed her now and that she shouldn’t have mentioned Joe Costello.
‘Joe Costello the doctor’s son?’
‘He’s a doctor himself now.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me himself.’
Louis’s face was still for a while, then he quietly asked her questions. She told him a version of what had gone on in Mrs Tobin’s back room, carefully omitting any reference to The Walk of a Queen by Annie Smithson.
‘So what exactly did he call you?’
‘I think he called me Mrs Kingston.’
‘How did he know you were married, I wonder?’
‘I don’t know, do I? Sure, maybe he said, Miss Kingston.’
‘Maybe he did,’ said Louis. ‘Go on.’
‘So he said, “Excuse me, madam, I mean Miss Kingston, I think your hair is going to fall down.”
‘So he went away then with himself, I hope?’
‘He did, yes.’
‘And what kind of a woman is this Mrs Tobin? Is she a decent infidel?’
‘Oh, very decent and kind and a welcome for everybody.’
‘How do you know she has a welcome for everybody? Was there someone else there while she was fixing your hair?’
‘Nobody.’ Beulah couldn’t meet his eye.
‘There was someone else there, wasn’t there?’
Louis stood up, ‘Joe Costello was there, I’ll wager.’
Beulah remained silent, she didn’t know what else she could do.
Louis went and sat on the other chair again, he took his cup up and washed the tea leaves around the side of his cup, like a tinker about to tell fortunes. His shoulders were stiff and straight, as if he’d a coat hanger inside his black coat.
‘So you let an infidel, worse still a butchering doctor, see your hair when no one else not even your husband has seen it?’
‘You’re not allowed to see my hair anyway, so you’re not.’
‘I am so.’
‘Who said so?’
‘The Reverend Moylan said so. I was expecting to see it the night we got married. He said that I would see it. Only I thought that you were shy, I was giving you a chance.’
‘You were the one who was shy,’ Beulah persisted.
‘Maybe I was, maybe I was,’ Louis’s colour was rising, ‘but I thought that you were too. I was having respect for your feelings and that is the size of it.’
Beulah stood up too. She had her hand over where she thought her heart was, the lower border of her rib cage. She pressed hard against the bone, hurting herself as much as she could. If she hurt herself enough, maybe Louis would stop asking questions.
But Louis continued to look at her bitterly. Beulah took her hand down from her rib cage, she had always thought that it would be Louis who would do the placating. ‘I am awful sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean that.’
‘I am.’ Beulah pulled the clips out of her hair. It fell over her face and she pushed it back. Louis looked at the floor.
‘Look at my hair!’ She pulled at his arm like a lonely child, but Louis would not look at her hair.
‘I can’t look at it, now,’ he said, but he took her hand. ‘Let us go on up to sleep.’
They went up the dark passage and as they passed Uncle Georgie’s room, Beulah told Louis about The Walk of a Queen, trying to explain her helplessness. Throwing the blame, ‘And I was telling her that I did not want it, but she kept on.’
Louis wanted to go and see Mrs Tobin,’ You shouldn’t have let her order you like that. She will have to take that book back.’
‘She meant well, she was only trying to be kind, I didn’t want to have no manners.’
‘She knew full well what she was doing. What interest does she think you could possibly have in what a convert has to say?’
Beulah shrugged inside her long white nightgown. Their bedroom was very warm, their heads drooping with tiredness. Outside a low whine started up.
‘Is it Shep?’ asked Louis.
Beulah sat up stiff, listening. ‘It’s not like her. But she must be growling at something.’
‘I’d better go down,’ said Louis, lowering his legs over the side of the bed.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Beulah.
‘There is no need,’ said Louis but he was glad when she insisted, tying her hair back and buttoning her long black overcoat over her nightgown. Louis stuffed his night shirt inside his big black trousers and they set off together, hurrying down the stairs to the back door.
Outside, the full moon hung over the old beech trees, Shep was straining her neck out from behind one of the trees and Beulah wondered why she wasn’t running to meet her. She broke into a run, calling Shep’s name out loud.
Shep lay behind the tree, trying to rise up from her hindquarters and failing. Licking Beulah’s face and hands, whining as Beulah tried to examine her in the light of Louis’s bicycle lamp.
‘It is the right hind leg,’ said Louis, holding it up and Beulah was glad for Shep that Louis’s hands were dry and warm and gentle. ‘How did it happen at all?’
It was clearly broken, limp and bloodied, hanging at an awkward angle.
‘It’s gone all right, it must have been a car,’ said Louis.
‘Whose car I wonder?’ said Beulah. There was a silence then. Louis didn’t answer and Beulah wished that she hadn’t asked that question. Dr Costello’s was one of the few cars around.
‘Well,’ said Louis. ‘An accident is always better than an illness. A clean break heals in no time.’
Poleites preferred accidents to disease. Disease was mysterious and malignant, it came from the inside and it stank. Accidents came from outside and they were clean. Breaks and cuts. They could be bound up and splinted. They healed up quickly if they were kept clean. They could be the cleanest way to die, too. The sudden snap of the neck after a fall from a horse, a head split open on the road after a skid on the ice.
Beulah and Louis carried Shep gently into the kitchen and then Louis went out to the shed to look for a splint.
Shep lay, looking over her shoulder at Beulah, she had stopped whining, but her well-behaved silence was harder to bear. Out in the pantry, Beulah removed a white cloth from the can of milk on the pantry shelf. She took a mug from the hook overhead and scooped two mugfuls into the saucepan. She went to the cupboard and emptied a small heap of sugar into the milk. An old biscuit tin in the corner caught her attention for a moment.
‘Shep,’ she called out and Shep whined back. ‘What about a nice bit of shop bread?’ Shep whined again and Beulah ran into the kitchen with the tin under one arm and the saucepan in the other hand. ‘Look what I’ve got here for my pet!’ She opened the tin and took out a piece of L-shaped bread with a dark brown shiny crust. Once a week, the baker delivered cottage loaf to Old Mrs Sheehan. It was shaped like the back seat of a car and there were divisions along the length of it. Nellie broke off however much a customer needed. It was Beulah’s favourite bread but she always had to have an excuse to buy it because Poleite women were expected to bake their own. Beulah had been hiding this piece for herself, now she wanted Shep to have it.
Beulah lit the gas and was slowly heating the milk and bread and sugar when Louis came in with a thin small slat of wood and a few old strips of linen.
‘Let that alone for a while until I get the splint on her,’ said Louis. ‘Have you washed her paw?’
‘I didn’t think of that,’ said Beulah, going over to the range to get the kettle. ‘A small dropeen of disinfectant would be no harm,’ Louis said and took a brown bottle with a cross on it from the bottom of the dresser. ‘Bertie only ever uses salt,’ said Beulah.
‘Well, I use this the whole time,’ said Louis. ‘My biggest fear is gangrene.’
The brown liquid went down into the hot water in a milky cloud and a sharp, sweet clean smell rose up. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ said Beulah.
‘Oh, it’s great altogether,’ said Louis. ‘You can put it in your bath and all.’
Shep let Beulah bathe her paw without a murmur. Beulah thought that there were tears in the dog’s eyes until she realised it was her own eyes that were brimming with tears. Louis took out a blue handkerchief and wiped them. Beulah inclined her head and then together they wiped Shep’s paw with a rough towel. Their heads touched for a moment and Beulah stepped back while Louis bound Shep’s paw tightly against the slat.
Beulah went to heat up the goody, stirring it with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Louis stayed sitting beside Shep, stroking her head. ‘I hope it works right now, I wouldn’t like her to have a crooked leg,’ he said.
‘Have you done many of them?’ Beulah was drowsy, the smell of the milk heating reminded her of Han, of home at bedtime and when she was ill.
This is the first, now, that I’ve done for real,’ said Louis.
‘You looked like an expert to me.’
‘Do you remember our old cat, Blackie?’
‘The fat one, who never moved except to follow the sun around the yard all day, wasn’t she Blackie?’
‘That’s her, that’s the one, well I used to practise on her.’
