If you would like to read it let me know and I'll send a PDF.
There are no chapter numbers; last week's chapter was called 'Eddie' and this week's is called 'Nuala.'
I will conclude next time with the next part called 'Gertie.'
THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING. FIRST DRAFT.
Nuala
Eddie's funeral took place at Fairview Church; the same place where he took his other sacraments: baptism, communion, confirmation and marriage.
“When Eddie was here just after Christmas attending his father's funeral he had no idea that his own demise would be so soon; he was here ten days ago and as usual, after mass, he lit a candle to his dearly beloved Gertie. After all these years he will be joining his beloved wife Gertie in the . . . . ”
As he spoke Nuala sat in the big church which was full as Eddie was very popular; she let her mind wander and thought about the mother she had never known, the father she had hardly known and her grandparents who had, more or less, brought her up.
She was sitting next to her grandmother, herself a new widow.
She followed the coffin, to Eddie's resting place in Glasnevin cemetery in the back of a hearse and she sat there as quiet as a mouse next to her grandmother, aunt and cousin; the only relatives, as far as she knew, that existed.
Nuala looked around her father's bedroom; his double bed was in the middle of the room underneath the window; it had been there for as long as she could remember. When she was little she would stand on the bed and see the River Tolka through the window.
On one side was a chest of drawers and on the other a small bedside table with a jewellery box on top; the jewellery box had been there forever but she had never opened it; it was time. In the tiny top drawer she found some brown necklaces and a turquoise bracelet; the second drawer had more necklaces and some rings and the bottom drawer had a small purse, a post card of Dublin and a soft brown feather.
The only thing in the purse was the stub for a ticket to a cinema in Sligo.
She turned the post card over and read it; it was signed by Gertie; her mother. Nuala had never met her mother and this was the first time she had seen her hand writing; she held the post card in her hand and stared at the words her mother had written; as she looked tears came into her eyes and one of them fell, just missing the card, as it dropped to hit her knee before splashing onto the floor.
The writing was fairly clear, although a little childish, and it was written in pencil. She put the card back into the drawer and looked out of the window at the Tolka; she must have stood there for at least half an hour staring at the river below; she didn't really see the river or the Fairview Strand as the thoughts were racing through her head.
She wasn't consciously collecting any of her thoughts, although some of them must have been going into her brain and being stored there as brains very cleverly do, as they were coming in and going out so fast she couldn't control them.
Her father had never told her anything about her mother and it was a shock to be so close to her; she had seen her mother's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery many times and was just there to bury her father; as the grave lay open awaiting her dad's body she felt a connection to what was under that ground; that was her mother down there; she couldn't see anything as she looked but she knew that if it were possible she would have opened the coffin and looked at her; nothing morbid but just to look at what clothes she was buried in. Her father said she had been buried in blue, as she was a child of Mary, and she often wondered how her father knew that as he had always said he didn't know anything about Gertie's family or her past and it seemed strange, to Nuala, that any of the conversation when they were courting would be about being a child of Mary.
Eventually she sat on the bed and closed the bottom drawer; then she opened the top one with the jewellery in it and ran her fingers through the necklaces; they felt smooth and clean and there was a very attractive smell from the drawer. She tried the turquoise bracelet on and it was a perfect fit. She knew she looked a lot like her mother, as she had seen the few photographs of her, but she hadn't known her size.
She put her fingers to the bottom of the small drawer and a pin pricked her finger; she took it out and fastened the clip at the back of the offending broach; it was about half an inch long and half of that wide and it was some kind of black stone surrounded by smaller stones; they might have been diamonds for all she knew. She put it back into the drawer and put the turquoise bracelet on top.
Nuala went out of the flat and into the Dublin air; as she walked towards the gates of the flats she could hear children playing and the sound of their play grew quieter as she walked up Poplar Row towards North Strand Road and into Fairview Park.
Being a Saturday there were plenty of people about; couples laying in the grass, some fella throwing a ball for his dog and the inevitable hurlers hitting their hurling ball a good hundred yards to each other; it's a wonder someone didn't end up with a cracked skull the way they hit it.
Something desperate was going on in Nuala's head as she walked. She was trying to plan what she would do with her life now that she was alone – totally alone in the world except for one cousin and an aunt in Finglas, who she had never felt close to for years, and her granny.
Her granny had been like a mother to her but, with her father's death, things were suddenly different. There were things she needed to know.
Was it time to go away and start a new life? She didn't know. What she did know was that somehow she needed to go west to where her mother came from; she wanted to find out who her mother was and more importantly who she, Nuala, was; where she came from.
Her grandmother lived a couple of miles away on Malahide Road and after wandering around Fairview Park, Nuala walked up to her flat; her granny knew that Nuala would be moving into Ballybough House and after a while Nuala left Malahide Road for her new home.
Nuala was still at school but she had a part time job visiting old people in their homes and helping them; she would sometimes cook a breakfast, cook some lunch – maybe do a bit of shopping for them and she would also help some of the really infirm people to get in and out of the bath tub or bed.
She had been doing this for a few years and had managed to put quite a bit of money away but now in the space of six months in her eighteenth year she lost both her father and grandfather; things were different.
In O'Connell Street there are lots of employment and temp agencies and Nuala had been in to every one; she was after a job in Sligo but the only jobs available were in Dublin.
She didn't tell anybody of her plans
Nuala was no stranger to her father's flat as she would see him there most days and many years earlier she had given up trying to shake him out of his mourning. She could see him serving customers at the pub with a smile on his face and a joke on his lips but as soon as he was alone with her he was miserable again; to her it was as if he blamed her for his misery.
Now that he was dead she decided to move into his bedroom and sleep in the bed he had shared with her mother; there was something spiritual about the experience and after the first night she couldn't wait to go to bed early.
The things she was learning about herself took her a few days to digest and she spent a lot of time alone in the flat thinking about them.
Her mother had mentioned someone called Sorcha as the post card read: 'Dear Sorcha; I fell in love in Dublin with the first man I bumped into; a beautiful blue eyed Dubliner. We went to the top of Nelson’s Pillar and he pointed out it was the first day of spring the twenty first of March; how romantic – I wish the circumstances were different and I wished I could give you my address but I can’t and I think you will know why. Lots of love; G.'
The post card didn't have a stamp and was addressed to Sorcha to an address in Sligo Town, Sligo. Who was Sorcha? She had never heard her father talk about her.
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