A Mother’s Spirit. Anne Bennett
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Joe couldn’t help comparing Bramble to the farm horses back home. Their top speed was little faster than a man could walk briskly. He did agree with Brian, though, that the city streets were not so safe for horses any more. Soon Bramble would be sold on and it would be a car that Joe would be driving. That thought was a scary one. However, for now he had to care for the horses and it was Joe who drove the sombre Brannigan family to St Bridget’s church a few days later for Tim’s funeral.
The next day was Thanksgiving and a half-day off for Joe. And so, after tasting such delights as apple and butternut squash soup, pumpkin pie and Mayflower pudding, he decided to look up Patrick Lacey. He braced himself and went into the city on his first tramcar. Patrick lived in a downtown tenement, and McManus had given Joe instructions on how to find him in that maze of streets on the East Side. He found 57 Orchard Street fairly easily, but stood outside it for a moment or two, surprised by its seediness. It had not been what he had expected at all in this brave new world.
The tenement was just one of many, and built of dull grey brick, with an iron fire escape fitted to the side of it, running down to the ground, and which, to Joe’s surprise, was festooned with washing. There were few people about, but then the day wasn’t a pleasant one and the other servants had told him that on Thanksgiving Day most people got together with their families if they had any close by.
As he entered the tenement door, his nostrils were immediately assailed by a pungent smell that came, he supposed, from so many people crowded in together and he was glad that the smell got fainter when he reached the third floor where Patrick’s rooms were.
Patrick was delighted to see him and Joe noted his friend seemed taller somehow, and certainly broader than the man he remembered leaving Ireland’s shores.
‘Well, the American life seems to suit you well enough,’ he said as Patrick drew him inside. ‘You’re looking grand.’
‘Never mind me, you old codger,’ Patrick said. ‘Sit you down there and I will rustle us up some tea and then maybe you will tell me what has happened to you because all I have had so far is cryptic messages.’
Joe sat down on the battered sofa and in no time was nursing a cup of hot strong tea and regaling Patrick with his adventures since the incident at the docks.
Patrick listened flabbergasted. ‘You are one lucky sod,’ he remarked good-naturedly when Joe had finished. ‘Tom always used to say if you fell in a dung heap, you would come up smelling of roses and he is damned right.’
‘I can’t help being in the right place at the right time.’
‘Where was the imperilled heiress when I was ready to disembark?’ Patrick asked. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
‘If there wasn’t one, then there wasn’t one,’ Joe replied with a grin. ‘I’d say that heiresses, imperilled or otherwise, are in pretty short supply, and you can’t lay the blame for that at my door either.’
Patrick shrugged. ‘I suppose not,’ he conceded. ‘And I haven’t done that badly myself either.’ He caught sight of Joe’s disbelieving eyes and said, ‘I know what you are thinking and you are right – it isn’t that damned pretty a place and not one half as good as where you are living. But it is a good deal better than some, and better than when I first came when I was lodging with another family. Talk about cramped.’
‘How many rooms have you?’
‘Three,’ Patrick said. ‘If you have finished your tea I’ll show you.’
‘Well, this is the living room, I suppose?’ Joe said.
‘Yeah, and the only room with windows,’ Patrick said. ‘Though the view is not one to write home about, so I am not really bothered about that anyway. Next door to it is the kitchen.’ And as Patrick led the way to it Joe caught sight of a few cupboards and a sort of stove with a couple of gas rings. ‘Fairly new innovation, the gas,’ Patrick said. ‘These tenements were thrown up with no form of lighting, heating, no running water, nothing, but now we have gas lights, gas rings to cook on, and a toilet just down the corridor. ‘And this,’ he said, opening the door off the kitchen, ‘is where I sleep. You see there would have been plenty of room for you too.’
There would have been, Joe saw, for Patrick had a sizeable double bed, but Joe thought of his own little room and bed for him and him alone – his little oasis of calm where he could hide away in his off-duty moments – and he knew he would never change places with Patrick. He didn’t say this, however, because he had no wish to alienate his friend.
‘At least you are almost right in the city,’ he said, ‘and I bet there is fine entertainment to be had in New York on Thanksgiving Day?’
‘Entertainment?’ Patrick cried. ‘Man, there is everything here. Catch up your coat and we’ll hit the town and you’ll see for yourself.’
Joe never forgot his first foray into New York at night and he wrote in all down in a letter to Tom the following day.
Dear Tom,
Last night I was out with Patrick Lacey, who wanted to show me what New York is like at night and we went in on an underground train that they call a subway. We went into what looked like a large metal box on the street to find hundreds of steps leading down. And you went down so far I began to think that we were descending to the bowels of the earth.
Suddenly, we came out at a platform, not unlike those at Derry with the ticket office at the end and it was hard to believe that above us were roads and houses and shops and people carrying on as normal. However, everyone else seemed to be taking it in their stride and the platform was fair teeming with people. I didn’t want to make a holy show of Patrick and so I said nothing and got in the train behind him as if I had been doing it every day of my life and it seemed no time at all till we were at Times Square.
Full darkness had fallen then and oh Tom there are not enough words to tell you about the lights. Patrick said he was fair mesmerised at first and so was I. The colours were so bright, so vibrant. It was amazing. There weren’t just one or two, you understand. Whole sides of buildings were lit up in every colour you could think of and some were fixed to flash on and off.
Eventually Patrick dragged me away to a place called a speakeasy, because though there is supposed to be no alcohol allowed in America at the moment, at the speakeasies they serve it in teapots and give you a cup to drink from, with a saucer as well, so any taking a casual look in would think we were all taking tea.
They play something called jazz. It’s really catchy, foot-tapping music, and played with such energy on big brass instruments. The dance floor was full.
The way some of the women dance the Charleston and the Shimmy and the like, though, would be frowned upon in the whole of Ireland. And many of the young women have their hair cut short, and their dresses go straight down and have a little bit of skirt at the bottom with hems just below the knee. And some smoke and nearly all wear cosmetics. Imagine a few of those walking the streets of Buncrana?
It was a truly amazing night and at the end of it, I took a streetcar that brought me most of the way home. This truly is a wonderful country, Tom, and I cannot thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to come here.
But when Joe had sealed that letter and sent it, he wondered if Tom would feel any resentment when he read it, knowing that he would never experience any of these things himself. All Tom’s life he had sublimated any desires of his own and bent to the will of a crabbed old woman who never had a civil word for him. Joe knew at the end of it, with their mother gone, eventually Tom would inherit the farm, but he thought it a high price to pay.
As the months slipped one into another, Joe considered himself a very fortunate man. He had a job he enjoyed, especially when the car arrived. It was a magnificent, dark green Cadillac, and Joe thought that the idea that he would sit behind the wheel and drive it was both terrifying and thrilling. But he had readily taken to driving, and so the carriage and matching pair that pulled it had been sold, and so had Bramble, and Joe was by then so mesmerised by the car that he hardly