with passengers on the platform, holding on for dear life and me thinking that Mary Kate might be on it, but she wasn’t. All I could remember of the lodging house was the little black man that was on the umbrella stand and his curled hair a chocolate brown.
The chapel commanded half a street and ran around the side of another. Three entrance gates, but the three wooden doors all locked. A vault to one side also locked, but I found a little lychgate that opened in. How they found me I never knew. Maybe they’d gone to all the chapels. I hid at the back of the stone grotto, the picture of Our Lady in front in her niche and a little girl kneeling before her, probably St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I knew it was them, somehow knew, Mary Kate and the lodger, and when I called out they ran to me, our reunion, so glad, so joyous, the goodwill flowing from one to the other, her coat around me going up the hills, the wind in our faces, but safe and united.
It was when she saw the pencil that the blind man had given me that she went berserk.
“Who was the blind man?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where did he want to take you?”
“To Wonderland.”
Wonderland! She went mad at the word. It was the very same
as if he had kidnapped me. Kidnapped. She said it three times. One of the lodgers preparing her supper looked on, aghast. Her daughter said, “Mama take dictionary,” and they took a dictionary from the dresser but Mary Kate’s tirade was too fast for them. She was wording the telegram of condolence that she must send to my mother and father. “My dear Katherine and James, it is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that your daughter is missing.” She believed it. She who had vouched for me, she who had hawked all the way to the depot to meet me and had welcomed me was now the one to have to forward the bad news. The woman holding the dictionary threw it down: “She crazy, she get crazier, all the Irish people they go crazy … they drunkards … they break the tooths.”
In bed Mary Kate cried, said she shouldn’t have shouted at me but it was for my own good, I could have ended up in a house of shame. Then, and between swigs from the bottle that was under her pillow, she relayed the story of Annie, a girl from Wicklow. She’d met Annie’s brother Pol, a broken man, going around to the bars and the dance halls, telling his story, or rather Annie’s story. When Annie’d got off the boat aged sixteen there was no one to meet her, the cousins that were to meet her had not shown up. Seeing her all alone and unbefriended, a well-dressed woman came across to her and offered to give her shelter, had papers to vouch for her character. So she went with her, thinking she was going to a convent. Instead she was brought to a big house with a madam, where she was made a prisoner and groomed to be a prostitute. No one heard from her back at home, her poor mother getting more and more anxious as time passed, until eventually they realized that something dreadful had happened to her and they scraped and they scraped to find the money for her brother to come to America, which he did. He went from one borough to the next, went to the priests who referred him to the bishop, paid a detective agency, and finally Annie’s whereabouts were discovered. He went one night, wearing
a trilby hat, disguised as much as he could, showed up as a customer, sat in a room along with the other men, drinking, waiting their turns to go upstairs, and the madam, realizing it was his first time, showed him photos of her little troupe. He chose his sister. The madam said he would have to wait quite a while as the lady, Vivien she called her, was extremely popular, especially with the regular clients. He drank champagne since that was the thing to do, but kept sober. When he found himself in the room with Vivien, in a gown, with soft lighting and the bed
The chapel commanded half a street and ran around the side of another. Three entrance gates, but the three wooden doors all locked. A vault to one side also locked, but I found a little lychgate that opened in. How they found me I never knew. Maybe they’d gone to all the chapels. I hid at the back of the stone grotto, the picture of Our Lady in front in her niche and a little girl kneeling before her, probably St. Bernadette of Lourdes. I knew it was them, somehow knew, Mary Kate and the lodger, and when I called out they ran to me, our reunion, so glad, so joyous, the goodwill flowing from one to the other, her coat around me going up the hills, the wind in our faces, but safe and united.
It was when she saw the pencil that the blind man had given me that she went berserk.
“Who was the blind man?”
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where did he want to take you?”
“To Wonderland.”
Wonderland! She went mad at the word. It was the very same
as if he had kidnapped me. Kidnapped. She said it three times. One of the lodgers preparing her supper looked on, aghast. Her daughter said, “Mama take dictionary,” and they took a dictionary from the dresser but Mary Kate’s tirade was too fast for them. She was wording the telegram of condolence that she must send to my mother and father. “My dear Katherine and James, it is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that your daughter is missing.” She believed it. She who had vouched for me, she who had hawked all the way to the depot to meet me and had welcomed me was now the one to have to forward the bad news. The woman holding the dictionary threw it down: “She crazy, she get crazier, all the Irish people they go crazy … they drunkards … they break the tooths.”
In bed Mary Kate cried, said she shouldn’t have shouted at me but it was for my own good, I could have ended up in a house of shame. Then, and between swigs from the bottle that was under her pillow, she relayed the story of Annie, a girl from Wicklow. She’d met Annie’s brother Pol, a broken man, going around to the bars and the dance halls, telling his story, or rather Annie’s story. When Annie’d got off the boat aged sixteen there was no one to meet her, the cousins that were to meet her had not shown up. Seeing her all alone and unbefriended, a well-dressed woman came across to her and offered to give her shelter, had papers to vouch for her character. So she went with her, thinking she was going to a convent. Instead she was brought to a big house with a madam, where she was made a prisoner and groomed to be a prostitute. No one heard from her back at home, her poor mother getting more and more anxious as time passed, until eventually they realized that something dreadful had happened to her and they scraped and they scraped to find the money for her brother to come to America, which he did. He went from one borough to the next, went to the priests who referred him to the bishop, paid a detective agency, and finally Annie’s whereabouts were discovered. He went one night, wearing
a trilby hat, disguised as much as he could, showed up as a customer, sat in a room along with the other men, drinking, waiting their turns to go upstairs, and the madam, realizing it was his first time, showed him photos of her little troupe. He chose his sister. The madam said he would have to wait quite a while as the lady, Vivien she called her, was extremely popular, especially with the regular clients. He drank champagne since that was the thing to do, but kept sober. When he found himself in the room with Vivien, in a gown, with soft lighting and the bed
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