Maggie's Breakfast (25 page)

About a minute or two later Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe stopped to look in the window of a men’s clothing store.

“Go inside,” Mrs. Axe said.

I didn’t know what she meant.

“Go!” Miss Sheridan said as she pushed me towards the interior of the shop.

I had never been in such a place.

They went about the task of outfitting me from head to toe. Rack after rack of clothing was brought in from the back room of the shop to find what Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe thought suited me.
After about forty-five minutes of testing and fitting, standing and sitting, I was transformed from what can only be described as a tattered scarecrow into a person who might have been born with a
silver spoon in his mouth. My feet were measured for new shoes and my legs were fitted to the trousers I was being poured into. Something about the smell of new clothes and the way they looked and
felt on me made me forget where I was. Had the clothes been a set of wings I couldn’t have felt any higher.

After stumbling over at least six ways of saying thank-you, I said goodbye to Mrs. Axe and Margaret Sheridan. With my old clothes in a large brown-paper bag, I walked further down Grafton Street
until I came to the entrance of Trinity College – the old bastion of education that had been planted there four hundred years ago. It was a place where Catholics didn’t go. I stopped
and looked at the students entering and exiting the place. For years I’d wondered what was inside the gates of the place. I had always been afraid to even look in. I had heard or read that
the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First of England built it and only rich Protestants were allowed to go there and it was no place for Catholics. The Catholic Church wouldn’t allow any
Catholic to go there anyway. If you were a working-class Catholic you weren’t supposed to even notice it when you walked by. It was one of those strange things that we were brought up with.
“Don’t look at that big Protestant hole when you’re taking the bus at College Green.” It was very much like a sin. Whatever it was, it had only to do with Protestants
– off limits to Catholics for so long most didn’t believe it actually existed even though it was the most obvious building in all of Dublin. Trinity College was a world within a world.
Word was that the fellas who were in there wore grey suits with white collars. Protestant ministers, who drank, smoked and were married as well. I stopped at the entrance with my new suit and
walked in. While walking past a wastepaper basket I dropped the brown-paper bag with my old clothes into it. Nobody paid any attention to me. I walked around the yard holding my new overcoat on my
arm. I was in the middle of the place related to some part of the Protestant Hell. I didn’t see anyone walking about with cloven feet. Young people wearing coloured scarves and expensive
clothes were dashing every which way. Some were riding bicycles. Someone asked me where the library and the science department were. I looked at two girls walking across the yard and I noticed them
looking back at me. I wanted to talk to them but I was afraid they’d discover me. I walked all around the campus until I was back again at the front gate. I felt so good I decided to walk
home and half of Dublin, if they wanted to, could look at me in my new clothes.

I liked my new suit so much I sometimes slept in it. One day, after holding on to it as if it was my skin, I decided not to wear it to work. Afterwards when I went looking for it in the bedroom
my mother told me she had pawned it and bought food to feed the rest of the family for a week. Sitting at the dinner table that night I watched the rest of my family chewing away on boiled bacon
and cabbage. When the plates were licked clean my father apologised to me and thanked me for the meal. My mother promised to get the suit out of the pawnshop before my seventeenth birthday. I knew
she wouldn’t be able to afford it if I lived to be ninety. I assured her I’d make enough money in the Shelbourne to redeem the suit myself.

And then everything changed.

Two weeks later Miss Sheridan entered the tea lounge. She walked to the table next to the big window, sat down and within a second called to me. I crossed the room and stood in front of her.

“Did you say anything to your mother or father about what we discussed?” she asked.

“I mentioned it.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nobody paid any attention. That’s the way it is in my house.”

Miss Sheridan turned her head towards the window and then looked back at me. “Sit and never mind about your job. I’ll talk to the manager. Sit.”

I sat down on the chair in front of her.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to Mayo?” Her voice became sad and soft when she mentioned her home county. “I remember when I first went to London. You’ve
never been there, have you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“When I was younger I spent a lot of time in London. Covent Garden.”

The way I heard it was ‘Convent Garden’.

“That’s a magnificent –” She paused. “You wouldn’t know much about Covent Garden, would you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I didn’t think you would. How could you?”

“You were in a convent for nuns?”

Miss Sheridan laughed. “Heavens no! Very few nuns there! Very few! Actually there is an opera about nuns. The Carmelites!
Les Dialogues des Carmelites!
A young girl who wants to
escape the reality of death joins a convent in France. Of course there’s no escaping that. Heaven knows I’ve identified with that character more than once. Young people shouldn’t
have to be thinking about such things.” She stopped again and took a deep breath. I got the feeling she had wandered into talking about something she wasn’t comfortable with.

At the same time Quinn came back from his break. He saw me sitting and called out, “Walsh? Get up out a that!” He then approached me. “What’re ya sittin’ there
for?” he asked in disbelief. “You’re still workin’.”

Miss Sheridan snapped her fingers at him. “Get me a pot of tea, please,” she said in very firm voice, more to get rid of him than anything else.

Quinn made an about-face and retreated to the kitchen.

Miss Sheridan then handed me a thick envelope. “Have your mother and father look all this over and get back to me.”

I took the papers from her and attempted to stand up.

“Sit!”

I sat down again.

“Is everything clear to you now? You know about getting your passport and all that other paper stuff, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Don’t do anything foolish now. For Heaven’s sakes please don’t do anything that would embarrass me. I’ve asked Ruth to do this favour. I think you’ll be
pleased. And tell your mother not to worry.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Quinn arrived with the tea.

Miss Sheridan put her hand to the teapot. “Oh, I meant to ask you for toast as well. Would you get some for me, please?”

Quinn withdrew to the kitchen. Miss Sheridan laughed out loud.

“When you go home inform your parents again about all this,” she said to me.

She poured her tea and began to drink. Then Quinn arrived with the order of toast. He also put the bill in front of her.

She picked the bill up and looked it over. “Put this on my account, would you? And don’t ask me to sign for it. You know who I am. God knows I’ve been here often enough to own
the place.”

Quinn walked away with bill in hand.

Ignoring the toast, Miss Sheridan took a few more sips of tea.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she then said.

She stood up and walked away.

My eyes were still on her as she left the room.

Quinn approached me. “What was goin’ on there? Sittin’ down havin’ tea with a customer? You’ll be sacked.”

I remained seated and picked up the envelope Miss Sheridan had given me.

“What’s in that?” Quinn asked me.

I looked inside the envelope. I knew my parents wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of the documents inside.

“I think I’m going to be leavin’ this job,” I said.

Quinn looked at me. “Where will ya go?”

“First I have to tell my mother and father, and then I’ll tell you.”

But I didn’t tell them that day, nor the next. Then the third day, when I still hadn’t produced any results, Maggie and Mrs. Axe took the documents back from me and asked me to bring
my mother to the Shelbourne to sign them there.

* * *

My two younger brothers Larry and Ger were on their knees, bent over a chair with their chins in their hands, praying along with my mother, when I came home from work that
evening.

My mother prayed:
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen
.”

My brothers took the cue and continued.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.
”

I walked to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of tea. Two hens were pecking away outside the kitchen door. I wondered to myself if they knew how to say the rosary.

My mother called to me, “Aren’t you goin’ to kneel down and say the rosary?”

I couldn’t find it in my mind or body at that hour to kneel down on the cold floor.

“I’m too tired, Ma. I’ve been workin’ all day. I was up too early this mornin’ and I can’t even think straight.”

“You won’t pray for an ounce of luck!”

I poured myself another cup of tea.

“
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, amen.
”

My mother knows God is looking forward to seeing her, I thought. He’ll call out her name! ‘Molly MacDonald Walsh, you’re one of the very best women in Ireland. You’ve
done everything the way you were supposed to and you’ve prayed night and day and you’ve made your children pray night and day and I’ve a big book that has every prayer listed that
you ever said and every prayer that your children and mother and father said. Everything is listed here and you haven’t missed praying on one holy day. That man you married isn’t as
good a repenter as yourself, but I know you’ve done your best to show him the way. Every angel here since the beginning of goodness is singing hymns for you and all the holy people like
you.’

Molly got up off her knees and sat down on the chair in front of the fireplace. “Go to bed, you two!” she yelled at my two younger brothers.

Larry and Ger went leaping up the staircase to the bedroom.

“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

“He’s upstairs asleep where he always is. Nothin’ can wake him. I wish to God he’d find a bit of work.”

I went up the stairs, sneaked into the small bedroom and saw the shape of my father lying in bed with the bed-sheet covering his head. An old photograph of his parents hung on the wall across
from his bed. In the picture my grandparents were very well dressed. My grandfather had a watch attached to a gold chain in his vest pocket. He wore a stiff white shirt collar and tie. He looked
well off and content. My grandmother, standing next to him with her hand on his arm, looked handsome and happy as well. Her appearance was very un-Irish. Her dark eyes and black curly hair made her
appear Spanish. She wasn’t the typical fair-skinned Irish girl. The old photo of my grandparents seemed not only locked in time but in a state of serenity and happiness. I couldn’t
understand it. How could two members of my family be in the same place at the same time and be happy and smiling? The faded photograph apparently served as a constant reminder to my father that he
had come from a class above the woman he married.

A minute or so later my father sensed I was standing in the room and pulled the sheet from his head and got out of the bed. I was surprised to see that he was fully dressed. I walked out of the
room and went back downstairs. Almost immediately Paddy came down, holding up his trousers with one hand. He looked me over as he walked to the back door. I was expecting him to growl at me, but he
didn’t.

“What happened to you?” he said as he passed me.

“Nothin’ happened to me,” I answered.

He then made his way to the toilet in the back yard.

For some inexplicable reason my mother had fallen silent. It was as if she was waiting for some heavenly reward for having just said the rosary. But she always gave me the feeling that she
didn’t trust silence and after about ten seconds of it she turned to me.

“He’ll never be dead while you’re alive.”

I was going to reply or defend myself in some way but I was distracted by hearing the hens cackling outside in the back yard. It seemed that they too wanted to be part of whatever was going on
inside the house. I sat quietly sipping on my tea.

My father had vanished into the outhouse. It was the only place where there was a bit of privacy. Everybody at one time or another retreated to the crapper. I read most of my comic books there.
It also had a lock on the door. I often stayed in the latrine longer than I should have, just to be away from what went on in the house. The toilet had no light or heat but it was quiet and
peaceful. In the past it was a good place to hide when Father Devine dropped by or when my mother wanted me to join in and say the rosary. Our neighbours’ outhouse was attached to ours. Only
a thin wall separated the toilets back to back. Many times when I was sitting quietly reading my comic books I’d hear my neighbours behind me using the toilet. When they talked to themselves
I’d hear that as well.