Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show Read online

  When it seemed as if all the people had entered the hall and I came forward to buy my ticket, my father ran. He ducked away from me, raced around the side of the hall, and disappeared. I got in free, but that wasn’t the bonus I had sought.

  That night, Blarney made much of what he called “the politician’s promises.” The country rang with them and Blarney capitalized. He seemed to know which politician was making the most outrageous promises and he lampooned them without mercy.

  Each evening, his performance began with the words “I’m the most promising politician in Ireland—I’ll promise you anything.” The audience was laughing already. With no reference to the fact that he sat on Venetia Kelly’s knee, he looked out over the audience, his red mouth opening and closing slowly in chunks as he launched into his satirical tirade.

  “I’ll promise you anything. I’ll get wives for men with no teeth. I’ll get husbands for women with bandy legs. I’ll give every man, woman, and child here money. Cash. Into your hand. For free. There’ll be a barrel of drink at every crossroads and a tube sticking out of it and all you’ll have to do is suck on it. Free for every man, woman, and child. But the clergy’ll have to pay.”

  Venetia Kelly, serene as the moon, sat and looked on and Blarney ranted, his words driving spikes into the national spirit.

  “How many farmers are here tonight? Put up your hands.”

  As hands rose all over the hall, he peered across their ranks.

  “Too many. Now I’m going to work a miracle. I’m going to please the farmers!” and everybody roared with laughter. Admiration too for the shrewdness of the satire; every politician outside the big cities knew that the farmers carried the key to the election, and they’d been notorious for complaining about everything.

  “In fact,” he went on, “I’m going to start by fixing the weather. Every year, July and August are going to be fine, and the harvest’ll be great.”

  More laughter.

  “And September’ll always be lovely. For the other ten months of the year, I’m going to give ye all grants. Money. Into the heels of yer fists. So that ye never have to work again. Isn’t that what ye’ve always wanted?”

  Loud cheers rang out. He paused and looked all around, whispered something to Venetia. When she nodded, Blarney turned to the audience again.

  “But that mightn’t be a great idea. Because what’ll the farmers have to complain about then? I call it—soothing the baby.”

  How they howled as he filleted them. He judged it with a fine touch, and he seemed to know that his darts would become the currency of the next day’s local conversation.

  Sometimes he played games with the audience.

  “Ask me for a wish,” he’d say. “Come on, ask me for a wish and I’ll grant you a wish.”

  Some foolish person would call out, “I’d like a wish, Blarney.”

  “What’s your wish?”

  “I wish for money, a ton of it.”

  “Your wish is granted. When you go home tonight your house’ll be burned down and you’ll get a ton of money from the insurance company.”

  That night in Charleville, Blarney came out and asked, “How many people in this audience trust either Mr. de Valera or Mr. Cosgrave?”

  Many hands went up.

  “What would you trust them with?”

  Nobody answered.

  Blarney pressed. “Would you trust them with your money?”

  They laughed—some uneasily, I felt. And nobody answered.

  “Would you trust them with a gun?”

  Like the sound of some massive snake, the intake of breath hissed through the hall.

  “I suppose,” said Blarney, “you could trust them with your womenfolk.” Laughter. “And God knows you could trust your womenfolk with them.” Much more laughter.

  Then he delivered the punch. “But could you trust them with your children’s future?”

  Nobody laughed.

  Blarney’s parting shot made an uncomfortable night worse. While waiting for the show to begin, I’d heard more criticism of my father. “What kind of a fool is he? Hasn’t he a big farm over near Cashel?” And, “Ah, he’s off with this young one outta the show, you’ll see her in a bit.” And, “Four hundred acres nearly, and he walked away from the whole thing. Something dirty there.” When Venetia Kelly first appeared as Portia, two people behind me sniggered and one said, “That’s her, that’s the bike the oul’ fella is ridin’.”

  After the show, I heard it too. “What did you think of her?” And, “Jaysus, if I saw her first, that oul’ fella wouldn’t get a look in.” And, “You could ride her in the Grand National.”

  I cringed. I wanted to ream them, but I didn’t have the courage. And when they’d gone from the hall, which was up a lane, I followed them down the slope to the street, walking behind one group and then another, trying to hear their comments. Mostly, they were laughing—which also felt filthy and awful.

  And then my life changed forever. Altered for all time by a single gesture.

  When we look back in wonder at the moments when Fate shows itself, it’s never that things might not have happened; it’s that they might have happened differently, that one might have been inserted into a particular orbit at a different angle and consequently have taken different actions, producing a different outcome.

  I turned away from the sneering mockers and stumbled in the dark, almost falling over Charleville’s high double curb. As I steadied myself I saw a movement, a flash of light across the street. I looked over at a wide, elegant house, and saw the movement again. A hand in a white sleeve was waving, beckoning. Was it waving at me? I looked all around; nobody stood near.

  Now both hands, both white arms, came through the door and—no question—they were waving in my direction. Up and down they went, like a semaphore.

  I walked toward the house. If the arms didn’t belong to somebody who knew me, at least their gesture showed enough quirkiness to be worth investigating. As I approached, one arm withdrew, and the other changed its movement; it stopped waving and beckoned. Behind me, I couldn’t see a soul—therefore the beckoning had to be for me. From the open door came a glorious female voice singing something that sounded like Italian opera.

  A bright lamp lit the hallway. I approached, peering forward, feeling my way, looking for details. The hand beckoned again and now that I’d come within a yard or two of the open door I could see into the hallway. The upper half of the walls had a lemon paper on them, with faint and lovely trees. Below a rail at waist height spread a firm anaglypta paper, chocolate-colored, with geometric patterns. Somebody with taste and a sense of color lived here.

  The arms had disappeared but the voice kept singing. I ventured fully into the doorway, wondering what to do next, and now I stood in the empty hall. Should I follow the siren call?

  But the voice was fading as though the singer were moving far away; they do that in legends to draw the hero farther in. And then the voice grew strong again and she appeared. I had never seen this woman close up but I knew who she was—the older of the two who had led my father through the lit doorway that night in Cashel, that night that now seemed so long ago, but was less than two weeks past.

  Graceful and smooth, she walked to me in a glide. I stood there, not knowing what to do. Next she held out both of her hands, palms down, to take both of mine.

  “I,” she said, with a pause, “am Sarah Kelly. The actress.”

  As distinct, I thought out of nowhere, from Sarah Kelly the Pope. Or the train driver.

  That was how we met; we would know each other until she died, many, many years later.

  She continued, “And you’re Ben. Without a shadow of doubt. You’re so like him. Let me have a look at you. Oh, my—you’re so big, so handsome. You look so refined!”

  Since Missy Casey doesn’t count, this was the first compliment I’d ever had from a real woman. My mind lurched. How much of this can I ever tell Mother?

  But my second thought slammed i
n like a ramrod: Where’s my father?

  She guessed it and said, “He’s in here. We had to take him out of circulation for a while. Do you like my new home?”

  I began to say, “Is he all right?” but she interrupted my effort and said, “Look.”

  Holding on to me with one hand, she lifted the lamp from the hall table and led me into the nearest room. Her hand was as soft as a glove.

  I had an impression of robin’s-egg-blue walls, turquoise armchairs, paintings of mountains. On a dark piano sat rows of photographs. The raised lamp drew me to look at them—mostly posed shots of Sarah Kelly, and some of Venetia when an infant and a child, though none of Venetia as an adult. One by one Sarah held up the photographs and told me each narrative:

  “This is me in As You Like It. And this is me in The Well of the Saints. Mr. Yeats especially likes that picture. And this is me with Mr. Yeats. His wife was quite jealous of me.”

  Sarah had a number of stratagems for getting attention, most obviously a low tone, so that one had to lean in to hear her, and—even more effective—she had an upward inflection at the end of each sentence, suggesting that she always wanted an answer. I perceived this only many years later; I was too young that night, and too afraid, and I hadn’t yet learned how to observe people and make mental notes of how they behaved.

  I know that I’ve already described Sarah as she was earlier in her life, as she narrated it to me, and then later in life, how she was in the years I visited her near Dublin. However, so that you can fix her in your own mind—and you should—let me recall her at that moment in Charleville.

  To begin with, I’ve always been accustomed to tall women—Mother, Miss Fay, Large Lily, who was not only tall but, well, large. Their tallness and Sarah’s differed, and the difference came from two factors—the way Sarah held herself, and the way she moved.

  James Clare told me you should always dance as if there were nobody watching you, and you should always sing as if there were nobody listening to you. Sarah carried herself as though onstage all the time. When she came into a room—that was an entrance. Every time she left—that was an exit. And if she sat, rose, or made a gesture, she seemed upstage of everybody else—unless she wanted to be downstage.

  In the first few minutes of that meeting, she walked about the place like a character in a Russian play—all demeanor and no force, all mood and no challenge.

  She kept her voice low, she looked directly into my eyes, and from time to time she touched my arm—not a grip, not a slap, a feather’s touch, an inclusion. I had no consciousness of people’s age in those days; forty, sixty, eighty—it meant nothing to me, it never does to the young; people were old or they weren’t, and Sarah was old. But young-old, not ancient; she was within reach, like an aunt.

  And she was exquisite, what would later be called “movie-star beautiful.” She tossed her hair back frequently, she freed my hand from hers and groomed her tresses. Notwithstanding my anxiety of the moment, I stole a look at her face and her figure when I could.

  Also, and to my surprise, I liked her so much. For some reason that I hadn’t yet defined, I was prepared for two-way hostility. It never happened; she defused that possibility with an attitude kinder than comfort.

  She used her hands a great deal—even the hand carrying the lamp waved about, casting shadows on the walls, and making these rich little rooms into alluring caves. I glimpsed a few more oil paintings on the walls, tall, serious portraits, and some more mountains, and lavish drapes hung from floor to ceiling, and I walked by a chair of brilliant yellow. Sarah talked on and on in that voice to which I could—and eventually did—listen all day.

  If I had to sum up my impression of Sarah Kelly as I saw her in the first few minutes of that meeting, I’d say: tall, not a bone out of place, by which I mean, not angular or awkward; a sweeter face than one could imagine, so gentle close up that I can’t believe it translated to an audience at the back of a theater; and yet—power. Power in the way you know steel is strong just by looking at it. Power like a big cat who doesn’t have to hurry, because the kill will be there when wanted.

  I have to say, though, that I found her thrilling to be near because of the attention she exuded; nobody else had ever made me feel like that. And she was kind to me, smiling, touching my arm, thoughtful, almost loving, as when she smiled at me and said, “I’ll take you into the living room now.”

  She led, I followed—and there he sat. My father. Close up in this light, he looked tired. Apart from the punched brogue shoes, I didn’t recognize his clothes—a thin check shirt, a jacket that I’d never seen, gabardine pants. At the door of the hall he’d worn his overcoat; he’d had it with him since Cashel. Yet I have to say that he seemed peaceful—so peaceful and natural that once again the nature of the circumstances seemed impossible to believe.

  Sarah hovered at the door, then stepped out of sight with a little wave to me, though I’m certain she stayed within earshot.

  We imagine in advance, don’t we, the feelings that will surface at such moments? I had long anticipated what it might be like when I confronted him for the first time—affection, tears, maybe. The imaginings had escalated when I first learned that he had “disappeared,” and I thought only of the relief I’d feel if and when I found him.

  This meeting didn’t go like that: Fear stuck its nose in, as fear so often does. And as we all know, fear often turns to anger in order to speak what it must.

  I said, and I know I was rough in my tone, “Why’d you run away from me tonight?”

  “Here. Sit-sit-sit down.” He patted the couch.

  “D’you want to come home with me? I have the car here.”

  “How-how-how are you?”

  “Will we go, so?”

  He shifted on the sofa.

  A lovely room—I observed that much. Beige flock wallpaper, butter-colored cushions. How many rooms did this house have? “Will we go?” I insisted.

  Constitutionally my father had little ability to refuse any request from anybody. Which, I suppose, is why and how we all found ourselves in this situation.

  “How-how-how’s the car?”

  Nothing about this—nothing—made sense. But in the ordinary scheme of everyday life, nothing made sense of the Great War or the 1916 Rebellion or the guerrillas in the hills or the wild arguments over the treaty or the Civil War or the fellow from the village with the razor-blade slashes up and down his legs. Nothing on any scale makes sense if you’re enmeshed in something senseless. As this was.

  My father said, “Did-did-did you get something to eat?”

  I decided to change tack. If I got off the subject of his possible homecoming, I might find out something useful about the life he was living.

  I said, “Where are you traveling next?”

  “Isn’t it a pity-pity-pity you haven’t a vote yet?”

  You know that moment when a piece of metal breaks loose from something, and it screams as it comes in contact at speed with other metal? That’s how the questions screamed through my mind—high shrieks, with little or no control attached. I wanted to ask: Where do you sleep at night? What kind of bed? Is there somebody else in it with you?

  Shaving was my father’s ritual, his High Mass, a time of mountainous lather and walrus grunts, a cry of delight or calamity now and then, and at the end wild praise for his results.

  “Isn’t that marvelous?” he’d say over and over, his hand fingering his chin like a housewife buying a cauliflower. Stroking the flourishing mustache, he’d sometimes add, “I’ve great growth in me.”

  I’d seen this ritual for as long as I could remember, perched beside him and reveling in the mighty importance. Now I wondered if he’d shaved at all in the past two days. And his mouth was twisted in a kind of ruined, unhappy line.

  I also wanted to ask: Who’s feeding you? What kind of food are you eating? Are you eating enough? My father loved his food more than a gourmand, and he loved Mother’s cooking—and not just to eat it, but to talk
about it. “The Nobel Prize for carrots was awarded today,” he’d begin, or the Nobel Prize for mashed potatoes, or the Nobel Prize for chicken broth. Or he’d cry out, “The Nobel Prize for cooking was shared this year among the following nominees; Louise MacCarthy for her baked parsnips; Mamzelle Louise Hopkins for her leg of pork; Mrs. Harry MacCarthy for her apple tart.”

  To my eye this didn’t look like a man who had awarded a Nobel Prize recently.

  But I didn’t ask any food questions or shaving questions or indeed any more questions. Instead, my shrewd intentions collapsed and I sat there and told him, in a voice like a mad fellow’s, what I felt.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve seen the show so many nights, I was always in the hall or very near at hand, and I’ve stood there freezing and often in the rain until nearly the dawn watching the lamps in so many bed-and-breakfast places finally go out, sometimes at three o’clock in the morning, wondering if you were the fellow in that room, behind that window. And all you could do was run away from me.” I stopped—and added, “And I’d rather go hungry than do without you anymore.”

  He listened, sitting right beside me, so close that I could feel the warmth of his heavy torso beside me, and the heave of his breathing, so close that I could tell him all this in a low voice, so close that I could have reached out and touched him—but I wasn’t able to, I just couldn’t do it.

  And so close that I saw the tear trickling down the side of his profile that was turned to me. I couldn’t see him full face on, and I regretted that, and he didn’t turn to me, not even when he asked, “How-how-how is your mother?”

  No chance to answer—we were interrupted. He heard the footsteps before I did, and he quickened, wiped his face, sat up, and began to rise. I knew who it was before she came in.

  At least as tall as her mother, she wore a towel around her head and a mask of white cream on her face, and she too entered a room as though walking onstage. She wore a blue ankle-length robe of some kind, not unlike a djellaba, with a hood. The entire effect, the hood, the death-white mask, the elongated stance—they all created a wild, unsettling combination of great force and total anonymity.