Maeve Brennan - The Visitor

“My dear, dear child,” she said. “Do you remember me at all?”

She had a breathless voice, and she coughed gently.

Anastasia smiled warmly at her. She was glad she had come down. She glanced at her grandmother, who apparently was admiring the teacups. Katharine came in with hot water and a plate of scones. Katharine hoped the tea was strong enough.

Anastasia thought, She’s always carrying a tray or something. She’s always been carrying things in and out through doorways, and then she must know a lot too. She must think to herself a great deal.

Katharine straightened up from the tea tray.

She said, “My sister was telling me a terrible thing. About a mother of a friend of hers who was killed by a train the other day. No. The train didn’t really kill her. She wandered away from them, out of the house one night. A humour took her, she went down on the tracks. She got past the tracks all right, and then she fell down. It was the sight and noise of the big engine so close, I suppose. She got up later and talked all right, but she died the next day.”

She looked at them all with a frightened inquiring glance. They were silent to her.

Anastasia said, “Poor old woman.”

Mrs King said, “Her time had come , Katharine.”

“Will there be anything else?” asked Katharine, and she went out of the room and shut the door quietly behind her.

They all sat there with their tea. Miss Kilbride sat in her chair, not relaxed. She paid attention to everything; even a sudden spurt from the fire drew a little smile from her. Her eyes went constantly to Anastasia’s face, and Anastasia knew of this scrutiny, and the grandmother knew of it too, and was no longer amused by it, but uncomfortable and cross because of it. Her crossness showed in the abrupt way she handled the teacups. She was irritated at the sudden life that moved in the room, seeing curiosity and conjecture where for so long there had been only unaltering melancholy and lengthening memories. Yet she was complacent, being removed from the shy conversational strivings that marked the renewing of acquaintance between Anastasia and Miss Norah Kilbride. They were lonely and unsatisfied, and she was lonely and satisfied and closed.

At six o’clock Miss Kilbride got up and put on her hat, a little round hat that looked like a man’s bowler, with a curling feather at the side. She peered into the mirror and patted her hair. She said goodbye, and, smiling and nodding, made Anastasia promise to visit her soon.

“She is mad as a hatter,” said the grandmother cheerfully, after she had gone. “She is my oldest friend, but I think she’s mad. That’s a wig she wears.”

“Is she bald?”

“I think she is, or nearly so, anyway. She had an illness years ago, and her health never really returned to her. That was when she began to lose her hair. She used to have rather fair brown hair. She had a demon of a mother, who was bedridden but ruled her house with a rod of iron. She managed to stop Norah from marrying, too. She’s thirty years dead, and she still has that girl under her thumb.”

Anastasia sat on the edge of her chair and looked into the fire. The grandmother sighed.

“Listen to me,” she said, “calling her a girl. She’s over seventy and younger than I am myself at that. We two were at school together. Poor Norah. I think she likes her wig, though.”

Anastasia smiled over at her.

“She pats it as if she were fond of it,” she said.

“You ought to go see her soon,” said Mrs King. “She’s a poor lonely thing.”

After a time the Christmas season came. Anastasia found a great deal of pleasure in buying presents for her grandmother and for Katharine. She wrapped them in ceremonial paper, in secret, and hid them in a low drawer in her wardrobe. She spent every afternoon in the shops. She found herself walking down Grafton Street. The crowd surrounded her with noise and hurry, the Christmas crowd, inattentive, preoccupied with lists and plans, while she, without pressing business, kept her mind with her and took notice of small things that interested her. She listened to the excited voices of the children and watched their mothers, those with money and those with little to spare.

In one large shop on Grafton Street she stood irresolute and watched two girls choose a necklace. They looked up and saw her, and she pretended to be watching for someone. People were coming into the shop, and she watched from where she stood and found after a time that she was looking intently for her mother’s face.

Then it seemed that her mother entered, wearing the familiar small black hat, and walked toward the staircase with precise busy steps. Her face was serene, and her eyes held the clear look she wore for strangers.

I can see her back, even. And she watched the slender upright back disappear up the stairs.

She thought, She has gone to the dress department, and without hesitation she hurried herself to the dress department.

“Have you seen my mother?” she asked one of the girls. “She’s not very tall, wearing a black coat and a small hat with a bird on it. She was just here, I think.”

“We’ve been busy, Miss,” said the girl. “I noticed no one in particular.”

Well, I can’t leave her here, thought Anastasia. She wandered idly about for a few minutes but could not bring her mother’s face to mind.

She left the shop and went into a church nearby, where she lighted a candle and knelt to pray. After a time she saw her mother slip into a place a few seats ahead of her. There she knelt motionless as she always knelt, with her face upturned to the altar. Her hands were gathered in front of her, holding her rosary.

I can leave her here — and she stepped reluctantly out into the aisle and genuflected. Happy Christmas, she whispered as she bent her knee, and she made her way slowly to the back of the church. She slipped an offering into the poor box and blessed herself with holy water. She was trembling, and in that soft uncertain grateful mood that easily gives way to tears. It was already dark, but the air in the street seemed to shine after the heavy darkness of the chapel.

In the hall at home Katharine came smiling to greet her. She was tying her apron behind her back.

“Your grandmother wanted a word with you when you came in. She’s at her tea. You look perished with the cold, child.”

“I am a bit cold.”

She threw her coat across the hall chair. She looked into the hall mirror and smoothed her hair. The grandmother was waiting for her. Her white hair lifted lightly away from her forehead, from her cool old blue eyes.

“Had you a nice walk, Anastasia?”

“I did a little shopping. It was crowded but I liked it I spent the whole afternoon in the shops.”

“As long as you didn’t spend your whole money in the shops.”

They smiled and Anastasia took a cup of tea.

“About money — have you enough?”

“Plenty, thanks.”

“Let me know if you run short. Now, I wonder if you want to attend midnight mass on Saturday. I’m not going to go. You can use my ticket if you like, but I’d want to let Father Duffy know.”

“Yes, I’d like to go. Couldn’t the two of us go?”

“I’m not up to it, Anastasia. I’d rather go to mass in the ordinary way Christmas morning, anyway.”

“Well, it is apt to be a bit tiring. Will you give me the ticket then?”

“Yes, of course, and you want to get there well before midnight, to be sure of a place.”

Her voice was raised and cheerful. She sounded as though she were saying, Welcome home. Anastasia felt eagerness swell up inside her, and she searched for some good thing to say and found nothing. She smiled in her excitement. She felt herself approved. It must be the mass that did it. She’s pleased that I’m going. She felt the nervous stiffness that she had not known was in her flow down and away. She searched hard for an easy natural word to say but there was no word. It did not matter. Now she would get up for mass every Sunday. She looked from the floor to the ceiling along the walls, looking at her home. For the second time that day the weak silly tears came to her eyes. My home, she thought, and settled back into it.