Delaney. Part XX

Adrienne is all nerves and excitement as Brother Frank pulls the horse and cart under the wrought iron sign as they enter the grounds of Townley Hall and roll onto the drive. A late summer heat wave has made the day uncomfortable, but the afternoon breezes and the shade of the tall trees lining this part of their drive bring a pleasant chill, and Adrienne gets goose bumps. Her anticipation climbs as they leave the wooded portion of the approach and can see the magnificent estate. She fidgets with the colorful shoulder bag sitting on the bench next to her to give her hands an outlet for her excitement.

A massive row of Blackthorn bushes line one side of the drive, wild and lush. The hedge forms a wall of leaves and thorns with rich purple sloe berries waiting for autumn to arrive to be picked and made into gin. But Adrienne is too mesmerized by the grand manor house to give any attention to what Mr. Byrne refers to as “Delaney’s Hedge.” Though she has seen Guildhall and many of the fine buildings in west London, this east end Bengali girl is stunned by the grandeur of Townley Hall set upon such a sumptuous country landscape unlike anything in London.

“She lives here? At this grand house?” Her mouth slightly agape.

“Welcome to Townley Hall.” Says Brother Frank. And the ego he bore from his arrogant youth is intact enough to receive a kind of secondhand pride as one so well known and loved by the people who own this fabulous estate.

When they pull up to the manor Mr. Reilly comes out to greet them.

“Good day, Brother.” He says with a tone that has far more warmth than his usual stiff formality yet far less warmth than chummy friendship.

“Hello Mr. Reilly. This is…” But then Delaney appears on the threshold of the house, dwarfed by the monstrous wooden double doors of the manor.

“Frank.” She says with obvious endearment, but then she catches sight of Adrienne and doesn’t recognize her at first, so adult-like and gorgeous. Her white teeth beaming from her smile and brilliant eyes are as set upon Delaney as Delaney’s eyes are set upon her.

“Adrienne?” And Delaney rushes to the cart, Adrienne pushing herself up by her crutches and nearly tumbling out upon her friend. Mr. Reilly helps the young Bengali woman by lifting her twisted legs over the ledge of the cart and onto the ground, but she is locked so tightly in the embrace of Delaney that she doesn’t need her legs at all. Both are caught a bit off guard by the depth of affection they feel. After all, they have only really been in each other’s physical presence for a day. But it was a vulnerable period in their lives and drawing near to someone in pain while you yourself are in pain, even if only for a day, can forge a bond like no other. That, along with ten years of weekly letters which were more like intimate diaries than simple correspondences.

“Let me look at you,” Delaney says holding Adrienne at arm’s length while the young Bengali props herself up with her crutches.

“I can’t believe how beautiful you are?” She tells her, placing a curious finger upon Adrienne’s nose ring. Her one small fixture of wealth in a life of relative deprivation.

“Me more beautiful? Last time I saw you, you were a mangy boy! Look at you now.”

At seventeen Delaney has come fully into flower. Dark brown curly hair falling upon gentle shoulders with streaks of auburn traced by the afternoon light. Just a few freckles on the bridge of her nose which fade into rosy cheeks. Green eyes wet with emotion and eyebrows like brown caterpillars arched above slightly colored lids. Truth be told she did put on a little make up in anticipation of Brother Frank’s visit.

Delaney has a short-sleeved, yellow ochre blouse, simple and unadorned but one which sets off her complexion well. Adrienne reaches over to Delaney’s right wrist and lifts her forearm, tattoo side up. Adrienne runs her bent fingers over the tattooed runes.

“So, this is it.” She says, smiling in wonder and admiration.

“That’s it. There was a time I was so afraid of people seeing the runes. As a child it attracted a kind of attention no child wants. I don’t care now. Some of my friends think it’s pretty cool – you know, all mysterious and cryptic. No one seems to know what they mean.”

“I remember that Brother O’Brien had some books about runes,” Frank offers, “But they had to be burned after the fever visited the Friary. But luckily,” he says with a sort of swagger, “I have learned to read druidic runes myself as of late.” He jumps from the cart and onto the gravel stepping over to the young ladies.

“This here,” he says, taking Delany’s upturned arm from Adrienne and tracing a finger over the first line of runes. “This here says ‘a girl most bewildering and complex.’”

“And what about the rest?” She says smiling.

“This line says, ‘try to understand her and you will be perplex.’”

They laugh at this.

“Perplex?” Adrienne says. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“What about the last line?” Asks Delaney, enjoying his playful attention.

“Raise her ire,” He says now stroking the last line, stalling a moment searching for a rhyme. “And upon you she’ll place a hex!” And Brother Frank drops her arm laughing and steps back before she can land a blow.

“Hmm,” says Adrienne. “I was fooled. I thought all those sacred robes made him some kind of holy man. I see now that little has changed. He’s still just a big ass.” But she covers her mouth as if genuinely caught off guard by her own profanity.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She says sincerely. “That was so rude.”

“No worries,” says Brother Frank still smiling. “You’ve earned the right to call me worse.”

“Reilly,” Delaney says with subconscious authority. “Let’s have my friends out on the patio.”

Then turning to Brother Frank and Adrienne.

“Would you like something cold or hot to drink?”

“Oh!” Says Adrienne. “I almost forgot.” And she reaches into the bag draped over her shoulder and pulls out a bundle wrapped in canvas, giving it to Delaney. The aroma coming from the package is powerful.

“It’s coffee!” She tells them. “My family works in the greenhouses and grows coffee. Years ago, we had visitors from Ethiopia who gave us the beans and taught us to grow and roast them.”

Delaney hands it to Reilly. “Reilly, can you fix some for us?”

He screws up his face. “I’m … I’m not sure …”

“You crush the beans,” Adrienne says, making a pounding motion with closed fist upon open hand. “If you’ve got pestle and mortar you can smash them up. Then you can put them at the bottom of a pot – you can use a teapot – and let them steep in boiling hot water. Then carefully pour it into cups so you don’t dump the grounds.”

“I shall give these instructions to cook.” Reilly says, holding the bag aloft in front of him as if it is diseased.

“Come on over to the patio,” Delaney says. “Papa won’t be home until late, but you can meet Mother.”

****

“Why, in fact, Shelly was planning to make a visit there this week, weren’t you?” Mr. Kelly says. He and Mrs. Kelly appear no different, except for the addition of greying hair. All of the children have grown and are practically unrecognizable to Ash and Jackson. The oldest boy, Conor, has married and moved out, living a short distance away in Grangebellow. Three of the other children are teenagers now and working at the Murder Factory. The youngest, Maeve, is eleven and attends the local school. She was only a baby when Jackson and Ash were last there. But it is Shelly who seems most changed to the brothers. At twenty-nine it seems as though all the angst and the ease with which she once expressed her discontent has been bottled up and turned to gall. It shows upon her face somehow.

“Surely you could accompany them.” Mr. Kelly adds looking to Shelly.

“I could do.” She says, and it is difficult for Jackson to read her posture. She was so transparent back then, so easy to see what she was thinking. Now there is a veil over her soul. Is it spirit of indifference or simply resignation?

“I’d like that.” Says Jackson. “The ride will give us opportunity to catch up.”

“There isn’t much to catch up on.” She says. “Still working at the Murder Factory, though only part-time now. They demoted me. I stay mostly in the washing area tending to the scrubbing and the hanging up of linens. Not so much doing the collecting.”

And Jackson notices her hands, red and chaffed. Looking even older than her mother’s hands he thinks. Shelly sees him looking and slips them under the table onto her lap.

“Oh dear.” Says Magdalene. “I hope it wasn’t on my account that you were demoted.”

“It’s OK,” Shelly says coolly. “It’s not the sort of place you want to climb the corporate ladder.”

“Oh Shelly!” This time there is a thread of compassion and gratitude in Magdalene’s voice. “I want you to know that what you did saved me and Adrienne’s life. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer, and Adrienne would certainly have been eliminated the very day you broke us free.”

“Then it was worth it.” She says with a little warmth.

“Besides which,” Magdalene is groping for Ash’s hand on the table next to hers. He moves it into the path of her searching. “I don’t believe I would have met and married your cousin if you hadn’t intervened.”

“Then it was doubly worth it,” She says, this time there is a definite thawing of her icy demeanor.

“Yet you have remained unmarried.” Says Jackson. Shelly does not respond to this as he has not directly asked a question and she appears uninterested or unwilling to tell the story of how this can possibly be when most girls in the area marry in their teen years.

“I was sorry to hear about your wife,” she says, and her eyes meet Jackson’s for the first time. The corners of his mouth lift a little; a strange, grief-soaked smile that visits someone recalling the loss of something beautiful.

“Did you know she was a Bengali service worker?” Ash says, and Shelly cocks her head slightly in wonder at this.

“I don’t suppose that made you popular with the corporation.” She says.

“Oh, loss of popularity was the least of it.” Says Ash, who likes to tell Jackson’s stories, and Jackson, for his part, is not one to tell his own stories very well so he endures his brother’s fondness for disclosing what he would be loath to say about himself.

“He not only married a Bengali woman, but he moved with her to the east end of London! You wouldn’t believe the kind of neighborhood they lived in, though he made a decent love nest out of their little flat. Jackson so ensconced himself in that borough that he pressed the corporation to start an incentive scheme for teachers in corporate schools to teach in the east end.”

“And how are relations,” Mr. Kelly asks, “between the City of London Corporation and the Bengali autonomous region?”

“They are warming,” Jackson replies.

“Jackson still lives there.” Ash says. He wants to impress Shelly, or at least the firebrand of a young woman that gave them both such a dressing down all those years ago for their complicity in corporate privilege.

“The revolution was bloodless,” Jackson continues. “But the Bengalis walled themselves off from Poplar eastward to Southend-on-Sea. Of course, the corporation controlled the Thames, but the Bengali’s nearly starved that first year of the revolution, learning to grow their own crops and live without the corporation’s monopoly on all goods and services. But they managed. I’m not sure the west enders in London fared much better with the loss of their labor source. But when the plague abated the Irish came to fill the jobs.”

“You’re welcome.” Shelly mutters, her old snark returning for a moment.

“The Bengali Autonomous Region is beginning to prosper now, and trade with the corporation has become strong. Adrienne’s family are coffee farmers now, overseeing a massive community garden plot. In the winter her brothers work in the steam yards building steam engines. In fact, the corporation has copied our designs and revived steam power themselves, like the steamship we arrive on yesterday.

“Truth be told, the corporation is losing its hold.”

“There it is!” Ash exclaims. “He’s drunk the Kook-aid. Thinks the corporation’s days are numbered.”

“They are.” Jackson fires back. “There’s even an Irish community now in Twikenham that lives free from corporate goods. Bengalis have come to advise them in governance, farming, education …

“But enough about me,” he says not wanting to stir up an argument with Ash here in the Kelly home. He looks to Shelly.

“What is it that brings you to Dunleer? You father said you were planning to go.”

“I like to visit the convent, now and again.”

“Really!” Ash says. And it would be rude for an Englishman to probe further, so the comment hangs in the air an uncomfortable minute before Jackson says.

“Perhaps we could collect you at nine tomorrow morning on our way there.” “That would be fine.” Shelly says. And the group indulges a few pleasantries until Magdalene remembers that they must return to the Corporate Arms before Adrienne arrives back from her visit with Delaney.