The Garden Page 3

  They never went to the end of the pier, this year. It was supposed to be too far. At the end was a lighthouse, rocks, steps, a variety of attractive things, under a high sheltering wall. Thus the pier walk was an often disagreeable means which never led to any desirable end.

  The other unpleasant thing was going to church on Sunday morning. Dermot had no objection to church as such. He rather enjoyed it, at home. At home, however, it was a comparatively simple matter. Here, it was surrounded with a fearsome degree of ceremonial, which filled the entire morning. First of all, there was the uncomfortable and inhibiting stiffness of best clothes. Dermot rarely spilled food over himself: he had a kind of manual daintiness in that respect: but Sunday breakfast was always spoiled by these added reasons for not spilling anything. After breakfast, he was kept hanging about in the nursery, till it was time for him to be “got ready.” Then—and this was the only nice part of the morning—he was turned into the garden, with strict injunctions not to go beyond the big cross-path outside the orchard, and wait there till he was called. This prohibition did not irk him. Having hitherto associated only with grown-ups, he was very law-abiding. Besides, he enjoyed wandering slowly up and down, trying to go the whole way across the garden treading on the cobbles only: then on the flat stones only: never succeeding, for he would always overbalance somewhere, or set himself too long a jump. The bells of Glenageary added to his entertainment by playing a selection of tunes, their practice for three quarters of an hour before the service. They played “Abide With Me” oftenest, but were hampered in their execution of it by the lack of one of the necessary accidentals. The difficulty was met boldly by substituting the nearest semi-tone. Dermot would look up, and frown, aware of an irregularity for which he could not account. Still, he liked the bells. They were appropriate, somehow, to his one private part of the morning. He stopped, in the middle of his balancing feats, and looked at the tall spire from where they came. It rose behind a terrace of red brick houses, surrounded by heavy trees. Above it, in the distance, was the sweep of the Dublin Mountains. They looked very far away. Wild land, suspect, as being the home of cats even larger and fiercer than those who prowled the valley.

  Presently a firm step would sound on the stone path, the orchard door would open, and Granny would issue forth. Granny always carried herself well and boldly ; but, on Sundays, she was magnificent. The ribbons of her black but jaunty bonnet, tied beneath her chin, jutted out proudly on her full, broad bosom. Her bead cape seemed to Dermot three or four bead capes, so nobly did it hang: with the rustle of her skirts, the hissing of her satins, the clicking of her beads, and the determination of her gait, she sailed out into the garden like some grand, majestic ship, in undaunted mourning for a lost armada. Even her face seemed set in more resolute lines. It was as if the Sabbath, entering into her, filled her easy-going spirit with an uncommon dignity. Armed with that holy confidence, she feared no man’s rebuke. Yet Granny, as even Dermot could see already, was gentle and indulgent to a fault. She had no pride, no thought of self, and was the credulous victim of a whole colony of unfortunates who battened in rotation upon her charity. She was too soft hearted to be a grand lady, except on Sunday morning.

  In this high spirit, she would summon Dermot to help her cut some sprigs of lavender from one of the big umbrella bushes half way down the garden. Producing a long scissors from some royal fold, she would with a few imperious waves of it disturb the crowd of butterflies, bees, and other insects which had business about the bush, snip off a few choice flowers, and return to the house. There, she would lay them out upon a table, cut the stalks even, and double them back upon the flower. Each church-goer was presented with one, to put inside his handkerchief. Then—expedition number two—she must go, still with her scissors, to take a sprig of verbena from the wall outside the nursery. This was likewise divided, into single leaves, one for each prayer-book. Towards the end of this operation, Grandpapa would descend from the bedroom, and stand in the hall, brushing his top hat. The hall was never light enough, but he always. began brushing the hat there, grumbled, and took it in to the dining-room window.

  “Are ye ready, Alfred?”

  “I am, Amelia.”

  “Do you think, is it time we were starting?”

  “It wants”—a pause—“it wants but seventeen minutes of eleven, and the tram is not due till the quarter.”

  Then—as always—Grandpapa would go down to the gate, and look over it up the road, ready to signal, by urgent and dignified pantomime, the first approach of the tram.

  Meanwhile, Dermot’s unwilling hands would have been forced into stiff, hateful kid gloves, his sailor hat given a final twist—so that the elastic galled his chin—and his wide silk sailor tie given a final pull. He was “ready.” Dermot’s mother drifted through all this ritual, which had held good since her childhood, with a humorous acquiescence. She smiled indulgently at Dermot, at Granny, at everybody. That was the way she took things, over here. The responsibility off her shoulders, she relaxed, and watched all about her with an affectionate amusement.

  The tram, when it stopped to admit Granny and her party, was seen to be full of old ladies and gentlemen, all likewise on their way to church. Once Granny had seen her charges seated, and could look round, there was a deal of bowing and smiling, and a lifting of silk hats. This little ceremony, for some reason, irritated Grandpapa. He preferred to walk. Only when his gout attacked him, and the half mile was too much, would he perforce endure it, with a very ill grace.

  The tram seemed quite different on a Sunday. It was, in fact, the same tram: this Dermot proved to his own satisfaction, by the number: but it, too, seemed transformed by Sunday airs. Probably it was the costume of the travellers, the scent of lavender and leather gloves, defeating the tram’s week-day smell, making it for the moment a long drawing-room, an inconvenient salon, where the graces of intercourse were cramped by distance, posture, and the solemnity due to the occasion. Courtly old gentlemen, sitting with their knees wide apart, their hands clasped on the upright walking stick between them, might incline stiffly quarter right, and enquire after the health of “Mrs. Conroy, ma’am”: but even that courtesy cost them a painful constriction at the neck. Mercifully, the period of waiting was short. The conductor had barely time to take their pennies when they were at the church. Then, he might rest from the exertion, for twenty old ladies and gentlemen in their Sunday clothes were not to be hustled off a tram in the year nineteen hundred and one. When the tram had well and truly stopped, the churchgoers would arise, stiffly, and with some parade of mutual assistance. Next came a polite mutual surrender of precedence, causing, in the narrow gangway, almost as great difficulty as a panic. Only one person could alight from the tram at a time, and all the ladies got down backwards—while to such old gentlemen as had already achieved the conductor’s platform was presented the distressing alternative of remaining where they were, in everybody’s way, or of getting off before a lady. It all required two minutes, if not three: and the conductor, child of his age and clime, stood in the road, helping the ladies in all friendliness and respect, by the guidance of his arm or the official assurance of his person and uniform ; confirming Christian ratepayers in their belief that all was well, and that the tram, marvel of an enlightened age, yet creature of their needs, would not proceed until the last of them had been safely deposited in the road.

  To Dermot, all this happened as part of the awful, established order of life. Child as he was, he missed scarcely a detail of it: but for him it meant nothing but Sunday Morning At Granny’s. To the very young, if one may borrow a phrase from the theatre, all parts are straight parts. The notion of character comes later. All Dermot’s senses were busy, gathering data about his surroundings, in order that he might be able to cope with them: in order that he might know how to behave. Church at home had ceased to be frightening, because he knew, now, what happened there. Church here was different. Timidly, eagerly, he memorised the differences, holding tight to his mother’s
hand, grateful even to have crossed the road without the need for any action on his own part. The arrival of baby Eithne had thrown him forward upon the world. He was “a big boy” now. Decisions had to be taken, facts confronted. . . . He shifted his grip of his mother’s hand. The kid glove was hot and sticky. They were at the church gates. Remembering from last week, he let go, unwillingly, timidly, and took two steps forward to Granny, just as she was turning to call him. His mother’s hand encouraged him, delivered him over with a little squeeze of understanding. He knew, in the moment of letting go her hand, that she was glad he had remembered, of his own accord. Fortified, he braced himself to suffer.

  “Ah, Mrs. Conroy !” The speaker seemed afflicted by a permanent hysterical giggle. Her speech shook like a jelly. “And this is yeer little man! I declare to goodness, he’s grown—so—big! And yeer daughter! She must be proud of him. And another one, too! A girl! Isn’t that grand! Margaret, dear, I was saying to yeer mother, you must be proud of the two o’ them !”

  Fascinated, Dermot watched the agitation of her beads, her cape, and the lilac ribbons which daringly enlaced her poke bonnet. Then he jumped. The spout of her conversation was turned his way.

  “And do you like being over here? Do you like your holiday?”

  He swallowed, and opened his mouth. Before the words would come, the lady straightened up again, and answered the question herself.

  “Indeed, and I’m sure ye do, with yeer dear Grandmother to look after ye all so well. Sure, it’s better than being in England, now, isn’t it? Ah, sure, Margaret me dear, you only have to see him. He’s a proper little Irishman already.”

  To all this Granny assented graciously, at the same time conveying, by a certain majesty in her demeanour, that a time had come for more serious considerations. Miss O’Killikelly’s enthusiasms were always a little deprecated by her. So loud a voice, so buoyant a manner, were considered unsuitable for a church path, and indeed for many another social occasion, but condoned for the sake of the lady’s goodness of heart, and her invaluable qualities as church worker.

  “Well: I’ll see ye all afterwards,” giggled Miss O’Killikelly, nodding delightedly, and withdrawing into the main door of the church.

  Granny’s pew was at the side. St. Patrick’s was cruciform. At the top of the shaft was the choir, the organ, and the communion table. (Anyone who called it an altar would have been for ever debarred from entering the doors again.) In the cross-piece, facing each other across the chancel, and in the higher part of the shaft, sat the chosen, those who rented pews. Below them sat less exalted parishioners, and, at the very end, were some four or five benches for the accommodation of casual worshippers. When her summer visitors came, Granny had an arrangement whereby she could borrow a couple of seats in the pew in front of hers, from a lady who spent the summer months elsewhere. Dermot did not know in which pew he would rather not sit. To be in front with Granny, in the very front pew of all, was to be conspicuous, marked down as Granny’s grandson by the whole host of her friends, his behaviour watched, his fumblings noted ; with Grandpapa’s voice praying behind him, loud and penetrating, a word after everyone else in the General Confession, in the Litany, in the Creed and at the end of each line in the hymns. This last did not matter so much. Grandpapa was once a fine singer ; he had still the melodious ghost of a tenor voice, and it expired, regularly, less a voice than a sigh, the backwash of a smaller wave which has broken after the others. Dermot’s mother, who had inherited the gift of song, hardly sang at all in church: and Granny had a habit of swinging gently from side to side when she sang, much as a professional singer turns to give each side of the hall the benefit of her voice—though this, needless to say, was not Granny’s motive. On the other hand, Mr. O’Shea the churchwarden would himself carry the plate for the front pew to put in their offerings: whereas in the second pew it was handed along by the worshippers, a proceeding which filled Dermot with the extremity of nervous anguish. Grandpapa’s hand shook so: suppose he were to drop it! Dermot’s fears (which impelled him to drop in his own threepence from a height, as if the plate were red hot) increased from Sunday to Sunday, stalking away behind him, following the plate’s progress from palsied hand to hand, till at last—oh merciful relief !—Mr. O’Shea’s returning footsteps could be heard, and he stood, stiff and pompous, waiting his turn to fall in with the five other gatherers of tribute, and march in virtuous procession to deposit his gleanings upon the vast brass salver extended by Canon M’Gonigal.

  The Canon himself, the choir, the organ, and the general conduct of the service, were as yet outside Dermot’s range. They existed for him as the constituents of a vague blur of sounds and tableaux: Canon M’Gonigal in the pulpit, a handsome, imposing silhouette: warm floods of tone, lights, attitudes: and above all, the great stained window, showing Jesus walking on the waves. This grew clearer and clearer to the child. He stared at it, never tired of noting its details: the dark, labouring ship, the little green curled waves, more like cauliflowers than the sea as Dermot knew it ; the dark green clouds, St. Peter tidily sinking, and in the midst of all, Jesus, in splendid robes of crimson, looking down at St. Peter, with one hand uplifted, and saying—as was written below, on scrolls, at queer angles and levels—“It is I. Be not afraid.”

  One day, gazing at the window, with the drone of the sermon in his ears, Dermot realised that the moments he dreaded were approaching. Soon Canon M’Gonigal must finish, and then—the ordeal of the plate. Looking up, in a sweat of anguish, he was suddenly struck by the message of the window. “Be not afraid.” He stared, his mouth opened—then, in a great cool wave, he understood. It was meant for him too. In his relief he smiled, he looked around upon the worshippers, he almost spoke aloud. He must have moved involuntarily in his seat, for Granny, recalled from some far reverie, put out her hand with a dreamy smile, and touched his arm. He smiled back at her, radiantly. When the plate came, he looked at it, then up from it at the massive contours of Mr. O’Shea, and wondered how he could ever have been afraid.

  After church, there was a regular orgy of sociability on the gravel. One after another, beaded and bonneted old ladies exclaimed over him, asking him questions so idiotic, so far removed from his notions of reality, that with the glibbest tongue in the world he could not have known how to answer them.

  “Aah, he’s shy !” commented the ladies audibly, among themselves: whereupon one added, “Aah, sure, he wouldn’t be shy of me. Would you now, Dermot? Why—do ye know: I knew your dear Mother when she was no bigger than yourself. Didn’t I, Margaret?”

  “Indeed, you did, Miss Geoghegan.”

  “I was telling Dermot here I’d known his mother since she was a little child, smaller than himself.”

  “Oh, yes, to be sure.”

  “Aye.” Miss O’Killikelly hovered ecstatically on the outskirts of the gathering. She assumed, somehow, a proprietary attitude towards the family’s doings, which she mitigated by her extreme humility: alternately intruding and apologising, with a giggle, for her existence. It would be difficult to snub Miss O’Killikelly, even if Granny had the wish or the severity to do so: and she had neither, for the voluble little old lady, in addition to her parochial activities, was a marvellous gossip, with the rarer commendation that there was not in her whole nature one germ of malice. Certain classes, certain countries Miss O’Killikelly lumped together in one fierce damnation ; but at the sight of a single member of them, she would instantly forget her principles, and be incapable of anything but an unsparing, officious activity of kindness. Dermot did not like her, because she embarrassed him, and spat, quite unintentionally, in his face.

  The married ladies of the parish might patronise Letitia O’Killikelly, but they were often dependent on her, for gossip, for friendly help, and, in real trouble, for a sudden shrewdness which sobered the beaming apple face, and revealed an experience of life not to be reconciled with her everyday exterior. Now, they smiled in her direction, and back at Granny, signifying in a glance the
ir understanding, their Christian charity, and their appreciation of Mrs. Conroy’s goodness in allowing Miss O’Killikelly to bask within the radiance of her offspring.

  These conversations ended, Granny and Dermot’s mother went out and joined Grandpapa. In distaste for such reunions, he waited inside the gate of the People’s Park until his womenfolk should see fit to join him. Miss O’Killikelly’s raptures he found particularly unpleasing. A prejudice against that lady was one’ of many characteristics with which Granny had to contend in him.

  Church did not end the day’s solemnities for Dermot. There was still Sunday dinner. To this feast one or two guests were bidden, usually old ladies. Sometimes they would be chosen from among Granny’s parochial peers, sometimes from those whom it was” a kindness” to invite. In these latter cases the scale of measurement was financial, not social. The etiquette of both time and place enjoined that, however kindly one might use one’s social inferiors elsewhere, they could never be admitted as guests to one’s house. When Dermot grew older, he was to perceive that, in reality, his childhood went far, far back into the eighteen-sixties and the eighteen-fifties. In a provincial, decadent form, this era lasted in Dublin well into the early nineteen hundreds. It was maintained by a class numerically and spiritually narrow, a tiny, black-coated incubus, a ruling caste: the Protestant well-to-do, in whose hands was vested all influence, all authority, all patronage: a class so deeply, so instinctively prejudiced that Grandpapa, the most charitable of men, who would pick up a worm from the path for fear it should be trodden, cried out indignantly if a strange Catholic approached his door. Yet his cook, his gardener, all his servants were Catholics. He treated them with the utmost consideration and kindness, and they bore him no ill-will for his opinions, which they found as much a fact as the facts of wealth and poverty, birth and humble living.