It didn’t take long to collect her things, just a small bag to pick up from the big, sprawling apartment where she had lived as Walter Starr’s girl with a group of restless young people for those happy months before the circus left town without her.
And so began Chicky’s new life. A small, almost monastic bedroom at the top of the boarding house, up in the morning to clean the brasses, scrub the steps and get the breakfast going.
Mrs Cassidy had eight lodgers, all of them Irish. These were not people who had cereal and fruit to start the day. Men who worked in construction or on the subway, men who needed a good bacon and egg to see them through until the lunchtime ham sandwich that Chicky made and wrapped in waxed paper and handed over before they left for work.
Then there were beds to make, windows to polish, the sitting room to clean, and Chicky went shopping with Mrs Cassidy. She learned how to make cheap cuts of meat taste good by marinating them, she knew how to make the simplest of meals look festive. There was always a vase of flowers or a potted plant on the table.
Mrs Cassidy always dressed nicely when she served supper, and somehow the men had followed suit. They all washed and changed their shirts before sitting down at her table. If you expected good manners, you got good manners in return.
Chicky always called her Mrs Cassidy. She didn’t know her first name, her life story, whatever had happened to Mr Cassidy, even if there had ever been a Mr Cassidy.
And in return, no questions were asked of Chicky.
It was a very restful relationship.
Mrs Cassidy had stressed the importance of getting Chicky her green card, and registering to vote in the city council to make sure that the necessary number of Irish officials got returned to power. She explained how you got a post-office box number so that you could mail without anyone knowing where you lived, or anything about your business.
She had given up trying to persuade the girl to get a social life. She was a young woman in the most exciting city in the world. There were huge opportunities. But Chicky was very definite. She wanted none of it. No pub scene, no Irish clubs, no tales of what a good husband this lodger or that lodger might make. Mrs Cassidy got the message.
She did, however, point Chicky towards adult education classes and training courses. Chicky learned to be a spectacular patisserie chef. She showed no interest in leaving Mrs Cassidy’s Select Accommodation, even though a local bakery had offered her full-time work.
Chicky’s expenses were few; her savings increased. When she wasn’t working with Mrs Cassidy, there were so many other jobs. Chicky cooked for christenings, First Communions, bar mitzvahs and retirement parties.
Each night, she and Mrs Cassidy presided over their table of Select Lodgers.
She still knew nothing about Mrs Cassidy’s life history, and had never been asked any details about her own. So it was surprising when Mrs Cassidy said that she thought Chicky should go back to Stoneybridge for a visit.
‘Go now, otherwise you’ll leave it too late. Then going back would be a big deal. If you go this year just for a flying visit then it makes it much easier.’
And in fact, it was so much easier than she had thought.
She wrote and told them in Stoneybridge that Walter had to go for a week to LA on business, and that he had suggested she use the time to come to Ireland. She would just love to come back home for a short visit and she hoped that would be all right with everyone.
It had been five years since the day her father had said she would never come back into his house again. Everything had changed.
Her father was now a different man. Several heart scares had made him realise that he did not rule the world, or even his own part in it.
Her mother was not as fearful of what people thought as she once had been.
Her sister Kathleen, now the wife of Mikey and the mother of Orla and Rory, had forgotten her harsh words about disgracing the family.
Mary, now married to JP, the mad old farmer on the hill, had mellowed.
Brian, bruised by the rejection from the O’Hara family, had thrown himself into work and barely noticed that his sister had returned.
So the visit was surprisingly painless and thereafter every summer Chicky returned to a warm welcome from her family.
When she was back in Stoneybridge she would walk for miles around and talk to the neighbours, filling them in on her mythical life on the other side of the Atlantic. Few people from these parts ever travelled as far as the States – she was safe in knowing that there would be no unexpected visitors. Her facade would never be brought crashing down by a surprise arrival from Stoneybridge at a non-existent apartment.
Soon she was part of the scenery.
She would meet her friend Peggy, who told her of all the dramas in the knitting factory. Nuala had long ago left to live in Dublin and they never heard from her any more.
‘We always know it’s July when we see Chicky back walking the beaches,’ the three Sheedy sisters would say to her.
And Chicky’s face would open up into a big smile embracing them all in its warmth and telling them and anyone else who would listen that there was nowhere on earth as special as Stoneybridge, no matter how many wonderful things she saw in foreign parts.
This pleased people.
It was good to be praised for having the wisdom to stay where you were in Stoneybridge, for having made the right choice.
The family asked about Walter, and seemed pleased to hear of his success and popularity. If they felt ashamed that they had wronged him so much they never said it in so many words.
But then it all changed.
The eldest of her nieces, Orla, was now a teenager. Next year she hoped to go to America with Brigid, one of the tribe of red-haired O’Haras. Could she stay for a little bit with Aunty Chicky and Uncle Walter, she wondered? They would be no trouble at all.
Chicky didn’t miss a beat.
Of course Orla and Brigid would come to visit; she was enthusiastic about it. Eager for them to come. There would be no problem, she assured them. Inside she was churning, but no one would have known. She must be calm now. She would work it out later. Now was the time to welcome and anticipate the visit and get excited about it.
Orla wondered what would they do when they got to New York.
‘Your uncle Walter will have you met at Kennedy, you’ll come home and freshen up and straight away I’ll take you on a Circle Line Tour around Manhattan on a boat so that you’ll get your bearings. Then another day we’ll go to Ellis Island and to Chinatown. We’ll have a great time.’
And as Chicky clapped her hands and enthused about it all she could actually imagine the visit happening. And she could see the kind, avuncular figure of Uncle Walter laughing ruefully and regretfully over the daughters that they never had as he spoiled them rotten. The same Walter who had left her after their short months in New York and headed west across the huge continent of America.
The shock had long gone now, and the real memory of her life with him was becoming vague. She very rarely went back there in her mind anyway. Yet the false life, the fantasy existence was crystal sharp and clear.
It had been what had made her survive. The knowledge that everyone in Stoneybridge had been proved wrong and she, Chicky, at the age of twenty, had known better than any of them. That she had a happy marriage and a busy, successful life in New York. It would be meaningless if they knew he had left her and that she had scrubbed floors, cleaned bathrooms and served meals for Mrs Cassidy, that she had scrimped and saved and taken no holiday except for the week back in Ireland every year.
This made-up life had been her reward.
How was she to recreate it for Orla and her friend Brigid? Would it all be unmasked after years of careful construction? But she would not worry about it now, and let it disturb her holiday. She would think about it later.
No satisfactory thoughts came to her when she was back in her New York life. It was a life nobody in Stoneybridge had dreamed of. Chicky coul
d see no solution to the problem of Orla and her friend Brigid O’Hara. It was too aggravating. Why couldn’t the girl have chosen Australia, like so many other young Irish kids? Why did it have to be New York?
Back at Mrs Cassidy’s Select Accommodation, Chicky broke the code that had existed between them for so long.
‘I have a problem,’ she said simply.
‘We will talk problems after supper,’ Mrs Cassidy said.
Mrs Cassidy poured them a glass of what she called port wine and Chicky told the story she had never told before. She told it from the very beginning. Whole layers and onion skins of deception were peeled back as she explained that now the game was up: her family who believed in Uncle Walter wanted to come and meet him.
‘I think Walter was killed,’ Mrs Cassidy said slowly.
‘What?’
‘I think he was killed on the Long Island highway, in a multiple car wreck, bodies barely identified.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘It happens every day, Chicky.’
And as usual, Mrs Cassidy was right.
It worked.
A terrible tragedy, motorway madness, a life snuffed out. They were so upset for her, back in Stoneybridge. They wanted to come to New York for the funeral but she told them it would be very private. That’s the way Walter would have wanted it.
Her mother cried down the phone.
‘Chicky, we were so harsh about him. May God forgive us.’
‘I’m sure He has, long ago.’ Chicky was calm.
‘We tried to do what was best,’ her father said. ‘We thought we were good judges of character, and now it’s too late to tell him we were wrong.’
‘Believe me, he understood.’
‘But can we write to his family?’
‘I’ve already sent your sympathies, Dad.’
‘Poor people. They must be heartbroken.’
‘They are very positive. He had a good life, that’s what they say.’
They wanted to know should they put a notice in the paper. But no. She said her way of coping with grief was to close down her life here as she had known it. The kindest thing they could do for her was to remember Walter with affection and to leave her alone until the wounds healed. She would come home next summer as usual.
She would have to move on.
This was very mysterious to those who read her letters home. Perhaps she had been unhinged by grief. After all, they had been so wrong about Walter Starr in life. Maybe they should respect him in death. Her friends now understood her need for solitude. She hoped that her family would do that also.
Orla and Brigid, who had been planning to come and visit the apartment in Seventh Avenue, were distraught.
Not only would there be no welcoming Uncle Walter coming to meet them at the airport, but there would be no holiday at all. Now there was no possibility of Aunty Chicky to take them on this Circle Line Tour round the island of Manhattan. She was moving on, apparently.
And anyway, their chances of being allowed to go to New York had disappeared. Could anything have been more unfortunately timed, they wondered.
They kept in touch and told her all the local news. The O’Haras had gone mad and were buying up property around Stoneybridge to develop holiday homes. Two of the old Miss Sheedys had been carried away by pneumonia in the winter. The old person’s friend, it was called; it ended life peacefully for those who couldn’t catch their breath.
Miss Queenie Sheedy was still there; strange, of course, and living in her own little world. Stone House was practically falling down around her. It was said that she seemed to have barely the money to pay her bills. Everyone had thought she would have to sell the big house on the cliff.
Chicky read all this as if it were news from another planet. Still, the following summer she booked her flight to Ireland. She brought more sombre clothes this time. Not official mourning, as her family might have liked, but less jaunty yellows and reds in her skirts and tops – more greys and dark blues. And the same sensible walking shoes.
She must have walked twenty kilometres a day along the beaches and the cliffs around Stoneybridge, into the woods and past the building sites where the O’Haras were busy with plans for Hispanic-style housing complete with black wrought iron and open sun terraces much more suitable for a warmer, milder climate than for the wild, windswept Atlantic coast around Stoneybridge.
During one of her walks she met Miss Queenie Sheedy, frail and lonely without her two sisters. They sympathised with each other on their loss.
‘Will you come back here, now that your life is ended over there, and your poor dear man has gone to Holy God?’ Miss Queenie asked.
‘I don’t think so, Miss Queenie. I wouldn’t fit in here any more. I’m too old to live with my parents.’
‘I understand, dear, everything turns out differently, doesn’t it? I always hoped that you would come and live in this house. That was my dream.’
And then it began.
The whole insane idea of her buying the big house on the cliff. Stone House, where she had played when she was a child in their wild gardens, and had looked up at from the sea when they went swimming, where her friend Nuala had worked for the lovely Sheedy sisters.
It could happen. Walter always said it was up to us what happened.
Mrs Cassidy had always said why not us just as much as anyone else?
Miss Queenie said it was the best idea since fried bread.
‘I wouldn’t be able to pay you the money that others might give you for the place,’ Chicky said.
‘What do I need money for at this stage?’ Miss Queenie had asked.
‘I have been too long away,’ Chicky said.
‘But you will come back, you love walking all around here, it gives you strength, and there’s so much light and the sky looks different every hour here. And you’ll be very lonely back in New York without that man who was so good to you for all those years – you don’t want to stay there with everything reminding you of him. Come home now, if you like, and I’ll move into the downstairs breakfast room. I’m not too good on the old stairs anyway.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Queenie. It’s your house. I can’t take any of this in. And what would I do with a big house like this all on my own?’
‘You’d turn it into a hotel, wouldn’t you?’ To Miss Queenie, it was obvious. ‘Those O’Haras have been wanting to buy the place from me for years. They’d pull it down. I don’t want that. I’ll help you turn it into a hotel.’
‘A hotel? Really? Run a hotel?’
‘You’d make it special, a place for people like you.’
‘There’s no one like me, no one as odd and complicated.’
‘You’d be surprised, Chicky. There are lots of them. And I won’t be around here for long, anyway; I’m going to join my sisters in the churchyard soon, I’d say. So you should really have to decide to do it now, and then we can plan what we are going to do to make Stone House lovely again.’
Chicky was wordless.
‘You see, it would be very nice for me if you did come here before I go. I’d just love to be part of the planning,’ Queenie pleaded. And they sat down at the kitchen table in Stone House and talked about it seriously.
When Chicky got back to New York, Mrs Cassidy listened to the plans, nodding with approval.
‘You really think I can do it?’
‘I’ll miss you, but you know it’s going to be the making of you.’
‘Will you come to see me? Come to stay in my hotel?’
‘Yes, I’ll come for a week one winter. I like the Irish countryside in winter, not when it’s full of noise and show and people doing leprechaun duty.’
Mrs Cassidy had never taken a holiday. This was ground-breaking.
‘I should go now while Queenie is alive, I suppose.’
‘You should have it up and running as soon as possible.’ Mrs Cassidy hated to let the grass grow beneath her feet.
‘How will I explain it a
ll . . . to everybody?’
‘You know, people don’t have to explain things nearly as much as you think they do. Just say that you bought it with the money Walter left you. It’s only the truth, after all.’
‘How can it be the truth?’
‘It’s because of Walter you came here to New York. And because he left you you went and earned that money and saved it. In a way, he did leave it to you. I don’t see any lie there.’ And Mrs Cassidy put on the face that meant they would never speak of it again.
In the following weeks, Chicky transferred her savings to an Irish bank. There were endless negotiations with banks and lawyers. There were planning applications to be sorted, earth movers to be contacted, hotel regulations to be consulted, tax considerations to be made. She would never have believed how many aspects of it all there were to put in place before the announcement was made. She and Miss Queenie told nobody about their arrangement.
Eventually it all seemed ready.
‘I can’t put it off much longer,’ Chicky said to Mrs Cassidy as they cleared the table after supper.
‘It breaks my heart, but you should go tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Miss Queenie can’t wait much longer, and you have to tell your family some time. Do it before it’s leaked out to them. It will be better this way.’
‘But to get ready to go in one day? I mean, I have to pack and say my goodbyes . . .’
‘You could pack in twenty minutes. You have hardly any possessions. The men in this house aren’t great on big flowery goodbye speeches, any more than I am myself.’
‘I’m half cracked to do this, Mrs Cassidy.’
‘No, Chicky, you’d be half cracked if you didn’t do it. You were always great at taking an opportunity.’
‘Maybe I’d have been better if I hadn’t seized the opportunity of following Walter Starr.’ Chicky was rueful.
‘Oh yes? You’d have been promoted in the knitting factory. Married a mad farmer, have six children that you’d be trying to find jobs for. No, I think you make great judgements. You made a decision, contacted me for a job and that turned out all right for twenty years, didn’t it? You did fine by coming here to New York, and now you’re going back home to own the biggest house in the neighbourhood. I don’t see much wrong with that career path.’