Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

“Yes,” said Cousin Bridie.

“Your great-grandfather has finally passed on, as we all must, and you’re to stay with your cousin during the wake. Only three or four days. We’ll all have to say prayers for him to help him out of purgatory, though I’m sure he won’t need many. He was a very good man.”

“He was a patriot,” Cousin Bridie said. She began to cry.

“Comfort yourself, Mrs. Anckers. I’m sure death came as a blessing. He was an old man and he suffered great pain. Pray to Our Lady. Think of the sorrow that must have been hers. We must all expect to lose our fathers and mothers, but she lost a child, her only child, so that He might pay the price for our sins.”

Cousin Bridie stopped crying.

“Now, if Emma is feeling well enough, I must be getting back to my class. Your family is in my prayers.” She touched a finger to Emma’s arm, close to the hurt, and smiled and left.

Bridie put the baby in the pram that was standing in a puddle outside the door. The wheels made snaky tracks on the dry pavement. You could hear a classroom, inside, singing Old Black Joe. Emma loved Music best, taking after her father in that. Her father was dead.

Cousin Bridie took her hand crossing the street, though she didn’t need to. Emma was six going on seven and walked home every day by herself or sometimes with the Kramer boy.

She asked, “How old is Granny?”

“Eighty-six.”

“Is that old to die?”

“You might say so. In Ireland.”

“But not in England?”

“Who’s been talking to you about England?”

“Nobody.”

“Your mother?”

“Sister Augustine says you don’t have to die in England, because they’re all heretics there.”

“I’ll bet your mother has been saying things to you.” Cousin Bridie made one of her faces. She didn’t get on with Emma’s mother. The Anckers were poor and lived on O’Connell Street, while Emma and her mother lived with their grandfather above the flowershop, Tauter’s Ageless Flowers. Mr. Tauler was a Jew, and handled the commercial end. Emma’s grandfather made the flowers, but he was too fat to look after the shop, so Emma’s mother did that now, and Emma washed the flowers with Fairy Liquid, first a capital F , then a capital L .

The Anckers lived in two rooms in the basement with the three babies, Florence, Christopher, and Angela. One whole wall was covered with the books, old books from before the Plague some of them. They were Leonard’s books. Leonard was Cousin Bridie’s tragedy. He had a degree from Trinity College and he was supposed to make houses except he didn’t, so when you visited them you had to eat Public Health food from Unesco, and right before every meal Cousin Bridie would say, “I hope you don’t mind the way we eat.” It was better food most of the time than the food from stores.

After the babies’ formula Cousin Bridie sat down by the telly, Sunset Serenades. Leonard was out at a Conservative meeting, and Emma, being careful, took out one of the tall books. A woman was laying down on a bed without any clothes and there was a fat nigger-woman behind her carrying flowers. Then there was a boy dressed up like an Irish National Security Agent and playing a flute. Then just some flowers. Then a sort of mess with a boat in it. Then the woman who looked so much like Emma’s mother that they all agreed it was a miracle. She had a parrot too.

Leonard came home drunk and said he damn well did think it was a cause for celebration, and Cousin Bridie said he was disgusting and there are some things you shouldn’t say.

And then Leonard said, “Well I say fuck him and fry him, the old bastard.”

You should never say fuck.

And Cousin Bridie said, “Little pitchers.”

And Leonard said, “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you tell me we had company!”

Then they had dinner. Dinner was soup with cabbage and bones, then some fried protein and veg, then a nice fortified pudding, though Leonard took most of it on his own plate. Cousin Bridie said, “I hope you don’t mind the way we eat” four different times.

After dinner you always have to watch the telly, first Newsflash , which never made much sense except about superstars, then Looking Back , about the First Famine a hundred years ago, and that was fun but it only lasted ten minutes, and then This Emerald Isle . Tonight it was only a panel discussion of teenagers about kissing. A month ago Sean Kramer had kissed her and she’d shown him her bottom and he showed her his bottom with the peewee on it. It was a secret. The discussion was moderated by the Right Reverend C. S. Marchesini, S. J., who was very much in the public eye lately and talked about. Sometimes kissing was a sin and sometimes it wasn’t, and the best policy was to ask your confessor.

It was eight o’clock when Emma’s mother came by; she was late. Cousin Bridie said, “Mary, you look just beautiful! Leonard, doesn’t she look beautiful?”

Leonard said, “Yes.”

Her mother said, “I dug it out of Ellen’s trunk. It was the only thing I could find.”

Cousin Bridie said, “It’s just beautiful”

And it was, Emma thought, very beautiful. Her mother was always beautiful, more than anyone else she’d ever seen.

It was going to be a lovely funeral. People would be coming from Dublin to be there. The Council had voted a monument. Leonard had to laugh about that. He showed them the drawing he’d made, using the true and only limestone of Kilkenny that God put there. Leonard didn’t believe in the new materials. Her mother said after all you can’t tell the difference. Leonard said he could tell the difference. Her mother said she supposed a man in his line of work would have to, but it came to the question of money, didn’t it? Cousin Bridie said she thought there were times when it wasn’t a question of money. Some things are sacred. Her mother said, “Well, well, I suppose Bridie is right.” Cousin Bridie made one of her faces.

They went for a walk, Emma and her mother, down O’Connell Street and up Cathedral Street and along the iron bars that fenced St. Stephen’s Cathedral where Leonard wouldn’t go, instead he went to Immaculate Conception on the other side of town, even on Christmas and Easter, and then in by the broken gate. Her mother explained about the wake and all the visitors and having to stay with the Anckers, because they were their only relatives now. You couldn’t count the Almraths or the Smiths. But it wouldn’t be for long.

“And then …”

“And then we’ll go away?”

Her mother laughed the way she did when they were all living together and she lifted Emma up and hugged her into the chilly silk of Ellen’s dress. Ellen died, and then Emma’s father in the fight, and now Granny. They were Catholics and Catholics have to die. Someday Emma’s mother would die, and someday Emma would die, too, and it can be a beautiful experience if you are in a state of grace.

“Yes, we’ll go away. We will go away. But you mustn’t talk about it, darling. Not even now. And if your Cousin Bridie tries to talk to you about England, or about me, you must say that you don’t know anything about what I’m going to do with my share of the money. It’s our secret. Do you promise?”

“Yes. But will you tell me about London?”

“London-oh, London is going to be wonderful, Emma. When you see it the first time you’ll think you’re in a dream. London is the most beautiful city in the world. Dublin is just a dustheap by comparison.” She gave Emma one more squeeze and lowered her. The grass where they walked was so long that it tickled her legs over the tops of her boots and made them wet.