The Light of Evening by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online

that was. A tall man kept pestering me, kept saying, “You must be Mary Mountjoy,” and I pretended that I didn’t understand him, in case I was kidnapped. That was the word, Sheila had dinned into us on the voyage, not to be kidnapped and not to have cheeky youngsters run off with our luggage, pretending that we were bound for Baltimore or Connecticut, or places unknown to us.
    When my cousin came it was not the reunion I expected. She said why the tears, why the sulking. Did I not know she would come? She was not in the least bit like the tinted picture of herself that her mother had shown my mother; she was much stouter and her clothes were drab.
    Where we docked it was bitter cold, the remains of snow on a swerve of dirty grass, a black man with long tapering fingers played a fiddle, played the different tunes to appeal to the emigrants, jog memories of their homelands. “Enjoying yourself, honey … going to marry the man you dreamed of,” he said to me and started to dance a jig. Mary Kate was furious and lugged me away. He laughed and called after her, “It’s not a funeral, baby,” and dragging me she said, “You stay near me now, you stay near me now,” vexed because he had made fun of her.
    Everything then so hurried, getting the ticket, getting on the train, going through tunnels, then ugly sooted buildings, depots, rundown houses, and not a word exchanged between us. I could feel she was angry with me because of my gawkiness, because of my accent and my oilskin bag, bound with twine. She talked to herself, mumbled, as the train rumbled along. Then all of a
    sudden her mood changed and she kissed me and hugged me and said my mother and her mother were first cousins and that meant that she and I were second cousins and would be buddies. We were going to the borough, the borough being much nicer than the city, leafier and closer to nature.
    The boarding house was in a street of houses that were all identical and in the dusk they looked mud-colored, but afterward in daylight I saw that they were more the color of rhubarb. We had to tiptoe. There were umbrellas and a walking stick in a china holder in the hall. She said he was a blackamoor. He had a brown face, his red eyes rimmed with silver ore. The kitchen was shared with many others, their foodstuffs on different trays with their names and a very old icebox that grunted and had odd things in it, like soft cheese in muslin and a bowl of beetroot soup. She made me stick my head inside it to feel how cold it was. Ice was precious. In the hospital where she worked packs of ice were put over the heads of the lunatics so that they could rant and rave without being heard. She had kept me some eats — bread with meat paste and a cold rice pudding. A lady came to fetch something out of the icebox but didn’t throw us a word. After she left Mary Kate stuck her tongue out, said she didn’t like her, she was foreign, all the other lodgers were foreign except us. We didn’t stay long in the kitchen, it being communal, whereas her bedroom was private. We had to go through another bedroom with a couple and a baby and my heavy laced boots creaked awful.
    It was topsy-turvy in her quarters, clothes, shoes, dishes, and coat hangers skewed about. A red quilt with herringbone stitch was pulled up over her bed, by way of making it. She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ’s handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere. Because it was a special occasion she would allow herself a little toddy. She wanted me to know that she was not a drinker but
    now and then had a drink as a pick-me-up. From a small bottle she poured some into a mug, kicked her shoes off, then threw off her glasses, and her eyes without them looked dopey and sheepish. Tears gushed out of her when I gave her the porter cake my mother sent