Ma, Now I'm Goin Up in the World, page 26
‘That one is empty,’ she said, pointing at the next one.
‘Yeah, right. OK, thanks. Sorry about making it look like I was going through your stuff, Anna,’ I muttered, trying to keep me face that was turned red as a tomato away from her sight. ‘I wasn’t really being nosy! I was, eh, looking to see what one was free.’
‘Don’t worry about it! Sure, I haven’t much to look at anyhow,’ she said, sounding like she wasn’t bothered about clothes. ‘Do you want a hand making your bed?’ she said, bending down to take off me blankets.
‘Ah, no, not really . . . But only if you like!’ I said, seeing she was already getting started.
‘Here we go!’ she said, putting me suitcase down on the floor and grabbing the blankets through the air, landing them on the next bed.
‘Ah, you’re very nice to want to help me, Anna. I think you’re going to make a lovely nun. You have a very kind and gentle nature,’ I said, seeing her looking at me with her eyes sparkling, like she was already on her way to being a saint. She had a look in her eyes that would make you think she was mad about some fella, or her mind was in another world, or she had some secret that kept her mind on it and she wasn’t really here, present in the room with me.
‘Thanks for helping me, Anna. That was very good of you.’
‘No trouble,’ she said, wandering over to rest her elbows on the window and looking at the passing sights.
I lifted me suitcase and started taking me stuff out. I lined everything up in the shelves, putting in me two pair of knickers. The elastic was gone out of one of them. Jaysus! I better go into Dunnes Stores and buy two new pair. I need a few things. Nylons and a pair of new shoes so I can wear the black patent ones the nuns bought me when I left the convent. I hung up me two coats on hangers: me green wool one for everyday and me good French one for good wear. Then last, me new multicoloured jacket. I love that! It’s so warm and snug and soft, I thought, running me hands over the woolly jacket when everything was put away nice and neat, and everything in its place.
I lifted the empty suitcase and stuck it on the bottom of the wardrobe, putting it standing up on its side. ‘Ready!’ I said, slamming shut the wardrobe.
‘Oh, good! Come on! I’ll show you where everything is,’ she said, putting her hand on me back.
Gawd! I’m very lucky to have her sharing me room, and she couldn’t be nicer, I thought, following her out the door.
‘The bathrooms are all on the ground floor,’ she said, with the two of us walking side by side down the stairs.
We turned right at the bottom of the stairs and went into a huge big room. ‘This is the sitting room,’ she said, standing in the middle of the room. I looked around, seeing blue shiny paint walls, a load of grey plastic chairs in a line and more down behind each other all facing a shelf high up in the wall with a television sitting on it. There was a window high in the wall but you couldn’t see out anyway because it was toilet glass. A big table was pushed against the wall with a record player on top. In the corner beside the window was a shelf holding a statue of St Martin De Porres.
‘That’s it. This is the recreation room,’ she said, smiling at me and looking at the room like it was something the Queen of England would sit herself in.
‘Grand!’ I said, not meaning a word of it. I was now used to better. It didn’t take me long to get used to the comfort of living in the height of luxury when I was staying with the mother. I sighed, thinking, Jaysus! It doesn’t take long to ruin a body. A few months ago I would have been down on me knees thanking God for all the comfort of this place if I hadn’t just come from living with the aristocracy, as they call themselves! Still, this is all mine. I’m not under compliment. Freedom is worth more than money. Yeah, oh I do love to be beside the seaside! I smiled, then laughed, rushing over and throwing me arm around Anna, saying, ‘Come on, Anna, baby! Show me the rest of the place.’
She laughed, wrapping her arm around me waist, and the two of us went flying out the door, getting caught in the frame because we wouldn’t fit.
21
* * *
I followed the crowd down the stairs to the basement, then into a big room with long wooden tables and benches along three walls, and another table with two benches went nearly the length of the room and sat in the middle of the floor. A little hatch opened and a girl started pushing plates of food through. I looked around for Anna, seeing no sign of her. Ah, yeah! She must be over in the convent with the nuns. Yeah, that must be right. Because she’s one of them now. She told me she entered the convent a few months ago. Before that she lived here with the girls. Wonder why she’s still sleeping in the girls’ rooms? Hmm! Doesn’t matter.
Right! Where will I sit? I saw a spot at the head of a table near to the hatch and made straight for that, sitting meself down, and waited for the grub. A young one with thin black hair and a grey face full of blackheads, wearing eyeglasses, slammed down a white plate in front of me then slid another plate to a girl sitting on me right.
‘Ah, Josie! Could you get me a few beans to go with this?’ the girl said, looking down at her plate like she would die of the hunger if that was all she was going to get.
‘Can’t!’ said Josie, narrowing her nose and turning away, curling her mouth. Looking like she would love to poison the lot of us with the dirty looks she was giving everyone.
‘Young one!’ I said, calling her and looking down at me plate with the dry bit of hard toast in the middle and a lump of yellow rubber planted on top. Jaysus! That looks like it would poison you. I’m definitely going to starve to death if that’s all they feed you. I could feel me heart sinking. I really was looking forward to get something nice to eat.
‘Wha do yeh want?’ she said, passing me on her way back to the hatch.
‘What’s this called?’ I said, pointing me finger and lifting the plate to show her.
‘It’s whatever yeh think it is!’ she snapped.
‘Well, do you have some tomato sauce?’
‘No!’ she said, and kept going.
‘Well, at least would you give us a bit of bread and butter? Or maybe a few beans? I’m starved with the hunger,’ I said, trying to keep me patience but ready to erupt if she didn’t act civil to me.
‘Yeh can waeat fur dat!’ she snorted at me.
‘I can what?’ I said, not understanding a word she just said.
‘Josie just said you can wait for that!’ a blonde curly-haired young one said, sitting on the left of me.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Can she not give it to me now?’
‘She’ll give it to you all right!’ the young one laughed, nearly choking on her bit of rubber with the sudden laugh at her own joke. ‘Best not to upset any of the kitchen girls,’ she said, leaning into me and chomping on her hard toast and yellow rubber.
‘That doesn’t bother me!’ I snorted. ‘Not if they’re going to be serving me up slops!’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ she laughed, nearly choking at a sudden thought. ‘Wait! That’s nothing. Rub them up the wrong way and you’ll get a special plate all reserved for your little own self. Isn’t that right, Joyce?’ she said to a young one with a big mop of frizzy ginger hair and a white face plastered in freckles, sitting next to her.
‘Yeah, say nothing!’ the girl said, looking at her and nodding at me.
‘Ah, Jaysus! This place is not worth the money they’re getting,’ I moaned, lifting the rock-hard toast with the bit of egg on top and trying to chew it.
A big fat woman moved in between us, slamming her elbows into me to make room for herself. ‘Tea!’ she said, slopping it into the cups without waiting for an answer. It spilled on the table and I jumped back, not wanting to get me good frock ruined.
‘Yeah, give us a cup!’ I snapped, shoving the cup and saucer at her. She only half filled it, then leaned on top of the girl beside me to serve the one next to her. I could see the girl was nearly suffocating with the fat aul one’s chest stuck in her mouth. I looked, seeing her going red in the face at having to lean all the way back on her chair, nearly toppling over and making suffocating noises with the laugh trying to squeeze out of her.
‘Thanks, Madge!’ she puffed, getting herself a bit of breath to squeak out after the fat aul one’s back, as yer one moved off to try and scald someone else.
‘Jaysus! This is an awful place,’ I snorted to the blonde young one who was laughing again and making faces behind the Madge one’s back.
‘Ah, you take no notice,’ she said, looking at me. ‘When did you get here?’
‘Today,’ I said.
‘Oh! Where are you from?’
‘Dublin,’ I said.
‘Lucky you! I’m from the back of beyond. The bog!’ she laughed. ‘Dingle in Kerry. What are you doing?’ she said to me.
‘I’m going to be starting a secretarial course on Monday,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Law, God help us. At Trinity!’
‘Oh! You are going to become a solicitor!’ I said, looking at her admiringly.
‘Yeah, that’s the general idea. But the mother wants me to go for the bar.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A barrister! She loves the idea of me strutting my stuff, lording it around the law library in a wig and gown!’
‘So are you going to do that?’
‘Not bloody likely! What? And have to sit through all those dinners at the King’s Inns with all those dried-up old fogeys? Never! The district court will do me.
‘I have a brutal mother,’ she said, making a face, thinking about it. ‘Me poor father is at home grieving for me. I bet he’s even planning a funeral for me right this minute, with a huge monument to my memory. He’s convinced something terrible is going to happen to me up here in the wicked city, if I don’t die from natural causes first! He’s a doctor. And when I was young I got rheumatic fever. Since then he’s been trying to wrap me up in cotton wool. He wouldn’t even hear of me coming to Dublin. He wanted me to go to Cork or somewhere close to home. But the mother said I was strong as a horse and he could stop his nonsense! She packed me in the back seat of Father’s car with all me new luggage. Jesus! I’m going to need a freight train to move me by the time I leave here with all the stuff she keeps sending me up. Then she settled poor Father in the driving seat and ordered him to drive me to Dublin. They don’t call her Attila the Hen for nothing! But thank God she got that right! I play the two of them off each other like a violin!’ she laughed. ‘Daddy says yes, giving me a wink. Our secret! She says no. He uses reverse psychology on her, telling me loudly to listen to my mother. He agrees with her. She gets suspicious. Then she goes against him, thinking she has worked it out. My mother is daft as a brush! But you would have to love her!’ she roared, laughing her head off.
‘God!’ I said, getting the picture of her father fussing and gnashing his teeth with the worry over her. Imagine! He must be a lovely soft man, really kind, that cares about his family more than anything else on this earth. That cheered me up no end, thinking I might get someone like that for meself some day.
‘So!’ she sighed, letting out a big breath then peeling her eyes away from me to land on the gingery-haired girl sitting on me right. ‘Are you going home this weekend, Joyce?’
‘Yes, I have to hurry! I want to get out of the city and on the road before it gets too late. I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere and end up trying to hitch a lift in the dark.’
‘Ah, Joyce! Give it a miss. Come out to a dance with me on Sunday!’
‘I don’t know, Odette,’ Joyce said, creasing her face, wanting that but not too sure. ‘I told Mammy I would be home this weekend.’
‘Ah, for Christ’s sake, Joycie! Give the mother a miss for once. Come on! Come out with me. Sure, the crack will be great! You never know, we might even meet a couple of fine things!’
‘Where are you thinking of going, is it the National Ballroom?’ Joyce said.
‘Jesus, no! The one across the road from that. They have a better class of fella there. They buy you a mineral first before they leap on you with their big paws and start trying to drag the knickers off you!’ puffed Odette.
‘Are youse going to a dance?’ I said, thinking that was a great idea. I never set foot inside a dance hall in me life.
‘Yeah, why? Would you like to come?’
‘Yeah, I would! When are you going?’
‘Sunday after lunch. It starts at three in the afternoon and ends at eight. That gives us plenty of time to get all dolled up and put plenty of war paint on! Are you interested? Come with us! Joycie is coming, aren’t you, petal?’ she said, digging your woman in the side.
‘Oh, I don’t know! Mammy worries when I don’t come home.’
‘Ah, for Jesus’ sake, Joycie! Come on with us out of that! You need to cut the umbilical cord! If you keep this up, she’ll have you out of that nice spot you’re in with the Department of Agriculture and back home taking care of her. She’s a civil servant,’ Odette said, flying her head around to me.
‘The mammy made her get a nice safe job. Joycie, the daft cow, had other ideas. She wanted to be an artist. Go to the Sorbonne! Paris, if you wouldn’t mind! The idea of it!’ snorted Odette. ‘The poor mammy would lose the mind! That would have definitely turned her into a full-time invalid. She only gets a touch of the vapours when Joyce is due home!’
‘Ah, stop, Dottie! That’s my mother you are making fun of!’
‘No, it’s true, Joyce. Didn’t you tell me yourself the neighbours say there’s not a bother on her. She’s to be seen from dusk till dawn, out in the pinstripe wellies, digging and smothering her vegetable garden in horses’ manure! That’s all going on behind your back, you know, while you’re up here in the bright lights of Dublin, leading a shocking, decadent life! Wrestling with all them big hefty farmers coming up to whinge they can’t get a living out of their twenty acres of land and complain they can’t understand all them forms you are sending them.’
‘Most of them can’t even read the bloody things,’ moaned Joyce, sipping on her tea and looking very woebegone, probably at the thought of all she was missing out on.
‘They even offer to take her out and ply her with all the lemonade she can handle, with a drop of poteen slipped in to help the romance along!’ Odette whispered, making sure Joyce could hear.
I roared laughing. ‘Gawd, ye’re gas!’ I said, enjoying her no end.
‘By the way, what’s your name?’
‘Martha!’
‘OK, Mart! It looks like it’s going to be just you and me hitting the town on Sunday! Are you game?’
‘Yeah, definitely! I can’t wait,’ I said happily, shaking me head up and down with the excitement waiting ahead for me.
‘Right, be ready around two o’clock.’ Then she lifted herself up and stood stretching. ‘I better start getting the head down to the books,’ she yawned. ‘See you later, Mart! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Joycie, darling! Make sure to wear your chastity belt or the mother will have you certified! The first time I met her,’ Odette whispered to me, ‘she asked me for the lend of a hacksaw!’
‘Why! What for?’ I said, wondering what she was talking about.
‘She’s desperate! That’s why!’ Odette said, leaning into me and laughing, looking sideways at Joyce. Then she was gone, making it out the door with Joyce’s shoe flying after her.
‘Jesus! You’re an awful scourge, Odette Clarke!’ Joyce roared, hopping over to the door to pick up her shoe. Then she rushed back laughing, saying, as she sat back down, ‘That one is mad as a hatter.
‘God, I’ll never hitch a lift home at this rate!’ she moaned, throwing her head back and giving a big yawn.
‘Why do you have to hitch?’ I said.
‘Because the train is too expensive. It would set you back a fortune! Nearly a full week’s wages!’ Joyce said, stirring herself and making a move for the door. ‘Bye!’ she waved at me.
‘Bye, bye!’ I said, standing up meself and making for me room.
That was great, I thought. I have new friends. Well, one good one. Odette is very easy to get along with. I really like her. Gawd! I’m doing great – meeting nice people and starting me new life! What more could I want?
22
* * *
‘We’re here!’ Odette said, eyeing the long queue waiting to get into the dance hall. ‘Jesus! I look like an Amazonian woman in these shoes!’ she said, looking down at her black-patent high heels. ‘I’m going to be towering over these little shrimps,’ she said, eyeing the fellas all mooching up the queue slowly and checking the change out of their pockets to get the right money. ‘I can see it now! They’ll have their heads pressed to me bosom, sucking on me mammary glands!’ she snorted, pulling the front of her lovely lemon silk frock down and tightening the lace around her chest.
‘That frock is gorgeous, Odette! Where did you get it?’
‘In a little shop not far from home, believe it or not,’ she said, fixing the gold chain that hung around her waist then dropped down the front.
I had one too. But not as good as hers. Mine was cheap! You can tell the difference. But I’m delighted with the new clothes I bought meself yesterday, specially for the dance. I looked down at me new white skirt with the chain hanging down, and me gold sandals. Then up at me lovely red shirt with the white stripes. I’d even done up me hair in curls. I put in hair rollers last night after washing it. I bought the rollers in Arnotts Stores in Henry Street. Me hair came out looking lovely.
‘Do you like me hair, Odette? Does it look OK?’
‘Oh, yeah! It really suits you! I love the way it flicks in a wave over your right eye. Very chic!’ she said. ‘You look like a 1940s film star!’
‘Ah, will ye stop outa that, Odette!’ I said, delighted with meself.
‘No, honestly! You should get it permed like that. Your hair has a fabulous texture. It’s silky and the coppery highlight tones come through really lovely in the sun!’
