The Walking People Page 11

  "We saw your advertisement," Johanna said. "We're looking for work."

  Mr. Breen nodded, looking back and forth between the two girls. "Ah..." he said, rubbing at his temples. He hadn't expected anyone to turn up so soon. He decided he should give them a tour of the guest rooms, then stopped himself. This was not how his wife would have done it—his wife who had run the place for eleven years and then up and died on him just as things were going to turn around. A thought came to him.

  "Experience?" he said. "Do ye have any experience in hotels?" He directed his question at Greta, who deflected it to Johanna.

  "No sir, but we've been cooking and cleaning our entire lives, and we're good workers."

  "Brilliant," he said. "Will I show you the kitchen? We have an electric cooker. Are you familiar?"

  "Of course," Johanna said, ignoring the nudge Greta gave her. They had a cooker, but had used it only a handful of times. Johanna's tone implied a level of expertise that made Greta nervous.

  Mr. Breen led them to a small dining room with four tables, through a swing door to the kitchen. "We'll have a test, will we?" he said. "To see how this will work? There's all the makings here of a full breakfast, so why don't I see how you do, one at a time, and then we'll eat and talk a bit more."

  Johanna was already rolling up the sleeves of her blouse. Two minutes later she had the skillet sputtering. She cracked an egg, halved a tomato, diced a potato, sliced pieces of black pudding, laid four bangers next to the eggs. She remembered to fill the electric kettle and plug it in. Fifteen minutes later she plated a hot breakfast. Twenty minutes later Greta had cracked two eggs onto the skillet and let pieces of the shell fall in. She tried to pluck them out but burned her fingertip, which she popped into her mouth and sucked as the eggs bubbled. When she flipped the first egg, the yolk broke and ran across the skillet. She was afraid to do the same to the other, so she watched it cook until it was fried hard. The potatoes were cold. She forgot the tomatoes and the tea.

  Mr. Breen was kind about it. He said he was sure that Greta was a fine worker, but in fact he had only one kitchen position open, and she might be more suited to a housekeeping job, something quiet, out of sight, less demanding. Greta agreed, and waited for him to tell her when she could begin such a job. "Unfortunately," he said, "we have nothing like that available at the moment."

  "Do you have anyone making up the rooms now, Mr. Breen?" Johanna asked.

  "I do it myself," he told her. "It's only the kitchen where I'm pure useless. To be honest with you, the rooms don't get much use except for the summer, and even then ... It's really the kitchen that stays busy all year with the coast traffic. There's lorries going up and down all the time now and not many places to stop for a hot meal. And I still have a working farm here, you know. Half working."

  "But with the crowds you're sure to get soon, do you not think you'd need more help? Someone to serve the plates? Someone to clean up? Sweep? Dust? Someone who would work for, let's say, two quid a week?"

  Mr. Breen rubbed his temples again. The crowds. The radio had been promising crowds for years now, and he was sure, just as Mrs. Breen had been sure, that it was only the electricity that was holding them back. Now even that obstacle was behind him. He leaned back in his chair and rested his hands on his belly. The girl had done a power of a job in the kitchen, and looking at her, he wondered if she'd take the job only if there was something for the other girl as well.

  He looked at the other girl, the way she looked back and forth between the older girl and himself. She'd hardly said a word, and he wondered if there might be something just a touch wrong with her. Just a touch, mind you—nothing that would keep her from doing a good job making up the rooms, but perhaps not someone he'd want greeting the guests and bringing them their tea. It was the way she held herself, a bit awkward, and the way whenever she looked at anything, she turned her whole body to face it head-on. She was looking at him now, peering out from behind a quarter inch of glass, and she had turned in her chair so that they were practically knee to knee. For the second time that day, Mrs. Breen seemed to walk into the room without showing herself, just to whisper in his ear.

  "I haven't asked anything about yourselves," he said. "Where are ye from? What's your name? How will you get here and back every day? Lateness is something I can't tolerate, not in this business." He looked at them closely, first the older, then the younger. "What age are ye anyway?"

  Johanna took his questions in order. "We're from Ballyroan. Our name is Cahill. We've three older brothers, two in Australia, one at home. We've good bicycles we can use every day. If we're late, you can dock us. I'm twenty, and Greta is eighteen."

  Greta's head snapped up, and Mr. Breen caught a look of panic pass through her features. He guessed they were more like eighteen and sixteen. It would be easy enough to find out if he asked in Conch, but he didn't mention any of this, and he had to will himself not to smile at the girl's boldness. The name was familiar, and he knew there was almost no one left in Ballyroan.

  "All right then, girl. You've talked yourself into a job. Into two jobs, in fact." He glanced at Greta. "I like a clean slate, so let's start on Monday, and we'll do the weeks Monday to Sunday from this point forward."

  Johanna was too elated to go back to the cottage, so just where they should have turned off onto their own little road, she veered left and down to the ocean. She couldn't stop the numbers from streaming through her thoughts: three pounds a week multiplied by fifty-two weeks of the year, plus possible tips in the summer, a possible extra bit for Christmas or for doing a good job, and in a year's time she'd have something substantial. Plus the eggs and the odd jobs she did around town, mending and fetching errands for some of the old ones. Greta followed her sister, bouncing and rattling on the bumpy ground, finally hopping off the bicycle and walking it almost to the waterline. By the time Greta caught up, Johanna was already in her bra and underpants and striding out into the water until it was knee-high, hip-high, chest-high, and then her dark head disappeared. The sky and the water were the same slate gray, and Greta shivered as she picked up Johanna's clothes and moved them out of the water's reach.

  At home, Johanna told Lily and Little Tom the news, and Greta described the dining room with the little bud vases on each table, the napkins folded like party hats. They expected Lily to be happy, but she listened in silence, her face stony. When they were finished telling, she began with the questions, one after the other, as if she'd finally woken up after a long sleep. What kind of man was James Breen? Was there a woman of the house? Did he have children? Was business really expected to get better? Were there any other people around? Did he talk to either of them alone, or always together? Why did he hire two if the advertisement asked for only one? On and on, her questions poured forth, one on top of the last, so that they could barely answer one before she'd already moved on to another.

  "Mammy, I don't understand you," Johanna said. "You should be delighted."

  "I want to understand it first," Lily said. "James Breen is no more to me than a stranger in the road, and you'll be scrubbing his kitchen and sweeping his floors."

  "For a price," Johanna said. "For good wages."

  Greta could tell that if Johanna let herself say another word, there would be an argument in no time.

  "We thought you might have known him ... from before," Greta said. "Did you and Pop not deliver out that way?"

  "Not to any James Breen," Lily said, but there was a note in her voice that trailed off. "There was a Frances Breen. A big sort of a woman. She had a B and B, now that I think of it, an inn, they called it. With a ritzy-sounding name—not at all suited for the place I'm thinking, oh, what was it anyway? I doubt anyone ever stayed there. It looked as if it might topple over headfirst into the waves."

  "That's the one," Greta said. "It's called Silk of the Kine."

  "Exactly right," Lily said, clapping her hands together as if she were dusting them off. "Now, you tell me why they couldn't have called it
Breen's, like the Walshes have Walsh's and the McDonoughs have McDonough's. No, your father didn't like them people. Didn't like them at all."

  Each day when the girls were at work and Little Tom was out of the cottage, Lily did something she never thought she would do. She went into the kitchen and turned on the electric light. It was strange the way the new light ate up the brightness of the fire and made it smaller. After a few weeks she went to the back room and had a look at the electric cooker. It was an odd-looking thing, with metal coils and grates. She switched it on and watched the coils turn from gray to red. She held her hand above it and felt the heat pushing against her palm. Eventually she filled a pot with water and put it on top of one of the reddened coils. Nothing happened at first, but then slowly, after a few minutes had gone by, she saw the telltale bubbles begin to form at the bottom of the pot and slowly rise to the surface. They rose faster and faster, and next thing she was looking at water in full boil. She threw the water out the back door and did it again. The next morning, she put butter in the skillet and fried an egg.

  What the children had promised seemed to be coming true. Little Tom, poor devil, was doing a power of work on his own, and Lily could see with her own eyes how those plug-in gizmos had picked up the load that Jack and Padraic would have carried if they'd been home. They worked faster than a person could work, actually, and more often she saw Little Tom smoking his pipe out back, something he hadn't had time for since Big Tom died. So far, none of the cows had been scorched or electrified. Neither she nor the children had been burned to a crisp in their beds. One morning, almost four months after the electricity was hooked up, Lily was suddenly sorry she hadn't gone to the ceremony in Conch that night. The regret hit her without warning, as if she'd wandered into a pocket of cold air. Greta had begged her, had pulled her by the arm and told her they'd come home early, and she'd enjoy herself, and there'd be nothing like it again, nothing like the first time. Johanna, as was her style, asked her only once and, when she refused, did not ask again.

  Lily knew that they thought she hadn't noticed a thing in six years, and she could understand why they would think that. It would be difficult to explain even if she wanted to. Most days life seemed like a pantomime, like one of those drawn-out plays the nuns made them act out at holidays, all parts scripted and assigned. The girls moved in circles around her, and Little Tom in a big circle around all of them.

  The girls thought she didn't notice anything anymore, but they were wrong. She noticed everything: that they'd stopped going to school, that they never went to Mass, that their underclothes were stiff with salt from swimming in their skivvies, that Johanna now cursed like her brothers, and that Greta had begun a hobby even Johanna didn't know about. Greta had begun collecting things and keeping them in an old biscuit tin under their bed. Silly things, really—an old thimble, a rusted key that didn't open anything, a few buttons, a few beads, a hair clip, a prayer book, a yellow rubber ball, a tin of hair pomade, a tea sieve, and one surprising thing: a brand-new compact with a mirror inside. It was shiny, pristine, with a mother-of-pearl finish and a hidden button for popping it open. Inside, in addition to the mirror, was a small circle of pressed powder, many shades too dark for Greta, with the manufacturer's tissue still pressed to the top. It was nicer than any cosmetic Lily ever had, and she wondered where Greta got it, how much she'd paid for it, and why, for God's sake, she had spent that kind of money for a shade that didn't match her skin. At first Lily thought it must have been Johanna's, but no, it was there with the rest of Greta's things. It was a small discovery, but it was the first time Lily had felt surprised since Big Tom died. So little Greta, that goose, wanted grown-up things. It was time, Lily supposed.

  Every week Greta spent at Mr. Breen's hotel, she noticed a new thing she liked. Sometimes they were physical things—the white towels, the blue-and-white-checked tablecloths, the little bud vases she'd noticed on the first day—and sometimes they were just ways of doing things. The tea, for instance. At home they always threw everything in together, the leaves, the water, the sugar, the milk, and heated it up on the fire. Mr. Breen put his leaves in a tiny sieve about the size of a chestnut, then lowered the sieve into the hot water. He let it steep, then removed it and stirred in a bit of sugar, a splash of milk.

  "So the idea is to never let a leaf loose in your cup, is it?" Greta said.

  "You're pure genius, Greta," Johanna said.

  Johanna's job was no busier than Greta's, despite Mr. Breen's talk of coastal traffic. He was apologetic. "Soon," he promised. "An off week, I'd say. It's a blessing, really. This way you can settle yourselves before the crowds start coming." He seemed so sorry about it that Johanna worried that she'd misunderstood, that he was going to pay them only if people came. But at the end of that first week she got her three pounds, Greta got her two, and he promised a busier second week.

  Over the next few weeks they saw a total of two dozen people, none of whom stayed overnight. Once, they got four ESB men who were there to see firsthand the progress that had been made in the west. Mr. Breen sat with them as they smoked their pipes and talked about the threat of an unusually wet spring. Johanna sat in the kitchen for three hours, trying to decide whether she should clean up or whether they'd talk long enough to want another round of eggs and rashers.

  Then one morning, after Johanna finished mopping the kitchen floor and was dumping the wash water outside, she spotted a woman walking up the road toward the inn. She was carrying a small suitcase in one hand, and the other hand she kept on her head to keep her hair in place. She was lopsided with the weight of the suitcase, and every few feet she came to a dead stop, switched the case from one hand to the other, wriggled in her shoes. "Greta," Johanna said, nodding toward the road. Greta immediately went upstairs, unlocked the biggest and brightest guest room, put fresh sheets on the bed, and plugged in the electric heater. She ran a damp cloth along the windowsill and along the baseboard. By the time she got downstairs, the woman had taken off her long tweed coat to reveal a pink corduroy dress, long sleeved, with a collar like on a man's shirt, buttons from top to bottom, and a wide navy blue belt cinching it in the middle. Mr. Breen had not yet appeared.

  "Hi," the woman said when she saw Greta. "The bus driver said there would be vacancies? I hope so, because it's nasty out there and these shoes are killing me. This is April? I'd hate to see January around here." She paused as she looked at Greta. "Stupid, wearing shoes like this. I knew it too, and I wore them anyway." She put one foot forward to show Greta what she was talking about: dainty roundtoed navy blue shoes with a narrow heel about an inch and a half high. She laughed. "Well, now that you know I'm desperate I guess you'll go ahead and bump up the price."

  Greta could hear by the creak of the floor that Johanna had come up behind her. She looked over at her, but Johanna seemed as thrown off as Greta. The woman was looking back and forth between them. "Is it a bad time?" she asked. "You could direct me somewhere else."

  "Not at all," Johanna said finally, moving swiftly across the room to take the woman's bag. "We've plenty of room. Make yourself at home. Pull yourself right up here—Greta, move that chair closer to the fire, will you? Take those shoes off, Missus, if you like. We don't mind. I'll fetch Mr. Breen and he'll—"

  "It's Miss, actually, but you can call me Shannon. Named for the river."

  "Is there a river Shannon in America?" Greta asked.

  Shannon smiled one of those pure white one-hundred-watt American smiles. "No, honey, your river Shannon. Never heard of any other."

  In the kitchen, after taking the woman's suitcase upstairs, Greta pulled on her sweater to run out to the stable in search of Mr. Breen. "Well, for fuck's sake," Johanna said as she took an inventory of what they had in the way of food. "You never know what the day will bring, do you? A Yank in Yank's clothes and a Yank way of talking with a face like the map of Ireland."

  And as she ran across the stretch of grass behind the inn, over the patch of gravel, around the derelict bar
n, down the little hill to the stable where Mr. Breen was working, Greta wondered what kinds of things Shannon carried in her little case.

  Supper was chicken, killed by Mr. Breen, cleaned and cooked by Johanna. Shannon went to her room for a rest beforehand, and downstairs, Greta suggested that they bring up tea. Johanna was up to her elbows in blood and feathers. "I'll bring it myself," Mr. Breen said cheerfully, then looked off, as he did when something was occurring to him. "Will I? Or will you bring it, Greta? Will she be indisposed, do you think?"

  "The Lord save us, Mr. Breen," Johanna said. "She's already had two cups in front of the fire. I'd say she'll live the next three-quarters of an hour without."

  "Right," said Mr. Breen. "Let's leave her in peace then. Lovely. Exactly right."

  Shannon didn't want to eat alone, so she asked the three of them to sit with her. Mr. Breen declined, citing unfinished business in the stable, so Greta and Johanna sat and heard all about the place in New York City called Queens and, inside Queens, a place called Woodside. It sounded like a busy place, at least as busy as Galway City, plus a train that ran above the streets that you had to climb a long flight of stairs to board and that brought you straight to Midtown, whatever that was. Straight to the Statue of Liberty, Greta guessed. Shannon didn't seem the least bit like the fussy Yanks Greta had heard about secondhand and thirdhand when she went to Conch on errands and stopped to listen to stories about so-and-so's third cousins who'd come from Boston or Pittsburgh to find their roots. Greta, like most people who'd never met a Yank in person, assumed that all of them complained of the cold or the damp, or said things like there's a spot on my knife, I don't take sugar, I prefer my potatoes mashed, and that kind of thing.

  "Are you on your holidays, then?" Johanna asked.

  "Not exactly. More like business."

  "Business here?"

  "In Conch, actually. Do you know it?"