Academy Street. Mary Costello

on the step and folds her arms. She can make out the laurel tree on the lawn. She remembers when she and Maeve came home from school every day, her mother sitting under the shiny laurel tree with a blanket around her knees, sewing, and Oliver beside her in his cradle. Sometimes her head was down, sleeping. Oliver wasn’t long born and he was sleeping too. Tess would run to them and look in over the top of his cradle and smell his baby smell. Her mother’s long hair was tied back. Then she would get a fit of coughing and her hair would come loose. Once there was blood in her hankie. When she was in bed, sick, her hair was let down. They took Tess up to her mother’s room last week and her mother was sitting up in her white nightdress. They lifted her onto the high bed and her mother kissed her forehead. But then, when Tess started to stroke her mother’s hair and lie against her, Evelyn said, Come on, down with you now, madam, and she took her away.

      Tess has not had her tea. She wonders who will make their teas now. She likes a boiled egg and currant cake with butter. She likes when her mother stands beside her father at the table and pours him a cup of steaming tea from the teapot. Sometimes, he puts out his hand and touches her mother’s bottom and she and her sisters pretend not to see. Her mother is in her coffin in the chapel tonight. God will probably drop down his Golden Chute soon – any minute now – when he is ready to take her mother up into Heaven. That is how she, Tess, and her brothers and sisters arrived on earth. Her mother told her that whenever she and Tess’s father wanted a new baby, she went to the chapel and there she prayed and God, hearing her prayer, dropped down his Golden Chute and popped in a baby and down the chute the baby flew, fat and happy and gurgling, into her mother’s waiting arms.

      Tess takes off her shoes, looks up at the black sky, begins to hum. She is not sure if the Golden Chute actually takes people back up into Heaven. That is a guess. She wonders if her mother is on her way, now, this minute, moving through the dark sky, in and out among the cold stars. She grows a little afraid. She looks down at her hands. She picks at the old burn mark on her thumb. She bites off a bit of skin and chews it. She remembers the day she got the burn. Oliver wasn’t even born and she had not started school. She went out with her mother to feed the hens. Chuck, chuck, chuck, they called out. They went into the duck-house and the hen-house to gather the eggs. Her mother had a bucket and Tess had a small tin can. Tess wanted to be just like her mother. When her mother put the eggs in her bucket that day, Tess wanted eggs in her tin can too. She started to cry, but then her mother said, Look, Look, and she picked up three lovely shiny stones from the yard and put them into Tess’s can and rattled them around. Then her mother ran off inside, in case the bread got burnt. Tess ran after her, but she saw another lovely pebble shining up at her from the ground and she stopped and put it in her tin can and raced in through the small yard, calling out to her mother about her new pebble. At the back door she tripped and tumbled down the steps into the kitchen, and then, half running, she fell sideways into the open fire. Her mother cried out and let the griddle pan fall and ran and lifted Tess and swung her across the kitchen into the big white sink. Later, telling Tess’s father what had happened, her mother began to cry. Her two little hands were burnt, she told him, wiping her eyes. Tess tried to show him the pebbles but her hands were all bandaged up.

      Everyone dresses in black the next morning and goes to the funeral. Tess and Maeve stay behind with Mike Connolly. The dining-room table is set with the good china and cutlery. There’s a leg of mutton cooked and left aside in the kitchen. Mrs Glynn comes with warm brown bread. She takes off her coat and puts eggs on to boil. She tells Maeve to mash up cold potatoes with a fork. When the plates are ready Tess and Maeve carry them up to the dining room. Mrs Glynn puts on her coat and says if she hurries she’ll make the burial. Tess’s heart jumps. Mrs Glynn takes Maeve with her, but Tess is too young to go to the graveyard. ‘Your poor mother,’ she says. Before they leave Tess asks about Oliver. When is Oliver coming home? Mrs Glynn says they can come and see him tomorrow. He’ll be going to live with Aunt Maud after that.

      When they are gone the house is quiet. The smell of the mutton makes her feel sick. She listens to the clock ticking. Everything is changing. No one puts the wireless on any more. She hears water dripping inside the pipes high up on the wall. Upstairs the floorboards are creaking. She starts to grow afraid. She is sure there is someone up there. She thinks her mother will come down the stairs and into the kitchen. She runs out into the small yard and as she turns the corner onto the lawn she crashes into Mike Connolly. ‘Ah, a leanbh, slow down, slow down.’

      ‘I think Momma is coming down the stairs, Mike, I think she’s back. I heard her steps.’

      ‘Come on in now out of that, and make me some tea. My belly’s above in my back. D’you know how many cows I milked this morning, do you? Before you even turned over for your second sleep, Missy!’

      He throws two sods of turf on the fire, and hangs the kettle on the crane. The clock is quieter now. Outside, the crows are cawing. Mike is standing, looking into the fire, and she does the same. When the flames are big and red and the kettle is singing he makes a pot of tea. He cuts the bread and says, ‘Will we make a bit of toast?’ She smiles. He knows – like her mother knows – that toast is her favourite, favourite thing in the world. He sticks a cut of bread on a fork and leans in and holds it before the flames. She leans in too. Their faces grow pink and warm as the bread turns brown. He toasts three or four cuts and neither of them says a word. But she is happy. She is happy. They sit together at the big table and he butters her toast and spreads jam on it and her mouth waters. He pours two cups of tea and gives her a wink. ‘Eat up now,’ he says. And then, just as he is about to take a bite, he turns his head and sees something and a change comes over him. She follows his look to her mother’s apron hanging on a nail at the end of the dresser. It is floury around the belly from all the times her mother leaned against the table, kneading the bread. ‘Eat up, Mike,’ she says quickly. ‘Your toast is getting cold.’

      They have all come back, the priest too, and they are sitting at the long table up in the dining room. Tess keeps an eye on the small china milk jugs, and when they are empty she runs all the way back to the kitchen and refills them. She moves along the table offering buns and shop cake from a plate. Her hair is tied back neatly. She stands straight, smiling politely when she is praised. The priest asks her how old she is. Seven, she tells him. He says she’s a great girl and that she’s the image of her mother and in that second her heart nearly bursts with happiness. She looks across the room, up at the spot above the window where the bird tore the wallpaper. She wants to run and find her mother and tell her what the priest just said.

      Her father sits at one end of the table, the priest at the other.

      ‘May the Lord have mercy on her soul,’ the priest says. ‘What age was she, Michael?’

      Her father stops eating. ‘1904, she was born. She was forty last March. That’s when she started to complain. Just after the child was born.’

      He looks around at them all, then at the priest. ‘I met a nun once in a church in Galway,’ he says. ‘She was back from America. D’you know what she told me? She said that a man’s soul weighs the same as a snipe. Some scientist over there weighed people just before they died, TB patients she said, and then he weighed them again just after they died, beds and all. And weren’t they lighter . . . Imagine that . . . The soul was gone, she said.’

      Aunt Maud blows her nose into her handkerchief. Evelyn goes around the table with the teapot, then whispers something to Aunt Maud.

      ‘She told Evelyn where to get the linen table-cloth to put on the table for the meal,’ Aunt Maud says. ‘Isn’t that right, Evelyn?’

      Evelyn nods and sniffs. ‘She did. Only a few days ago. She told me which drawer it was in.’

      Tess is watching her father. He takes a drink of tea and swallows. All the time he is looking down. She can see the bones in his face moving under his skin.

      ‘She was a fine woman,’ the priest says. ‘A fine woman.’

      ‘She even told us which dress to lay her out in – her new blue dress,’ Evelyn says.

      Tess’s heart nearly stops. She understands what that means; her mother is lying in her coffin in her new blue dress. The one she got in Briggs’ that day