Grandmother and the Priests Read online

  She was never quite explicit to anyone as to how she contrived to meet the lad, who was Bruce Raymond Cullen. But contrive she did, under the very noses of her parents. She also met him on other occasions. “He was mad for me from the beginning,” she would tell her granddaughter, “and he a Scots Presbyterian and I a Catholic. We ran off to Gretna Green, and were married within a month.” But not in the presence of a priest. The lad may have been mad for Rose Mary, but he “wouldna hae a priest,” he made it clear. So Rose Mary had him without the priest, a fact which when revealed to her parents caused them impotent agony. Nor would there be a second marriage. Rose Mary was infatuated, and she was to remain infatuated for all of five years, during which time her four sons were born. Then the infatuation ended as abruptly as it had begun, and Bruce was rarely seen at home any longer. He continued his concert work and died when his oldest son was ten years old, and if Rose Mary mourned him it was not evident.

  No one had ever accused Rose Mary O’Driscoll Cullen of being a patient lass, and so she took upon herself the proper bringing up of her sons — whom she had found dull and uninspiring almost from their birth — impatiently. They all reminded her of her husband, of whom she had become unbearably weary long before he died. Now that there was no scandalous husband on the premises, involved in a marriage they considered invalid, the parents of Rose Mary came to her assistance, bewailing her dire circumstances. They were hardly poverty-stricken even from the point of view of modern days, for Rose Mary had inherited two thousand pounds a year at her twenty-first birthday from her maternal grandfather, and Bruce Cullen had made quite a bit of money, himself, on his concert tours of the British Isles, and had made even more money among the sentimental Scots and Irish immigrants in America. It is true that Rose Mary had spent most of the fine money on her own small person, and was adding to her store of jewelry, and that her house — now in Glasgow — was modest and not in a fashionable neighborhood. But she and her children were scarcely starving, though the besotted O’Driscolls felt they were. So they established a fund for Rose Mary, and the equally besotted brothers and sisters added to it. (It is of no consequence, of course, that Rose Mary did not tell her parents that her husband had left her considerable money.)

  Rose Mary was humbly grateful and affectionate to her kin for all they had done for her; they missed that green and mocking sparkle in her eye. As she wanted, more than anything else, to get her lads from under her feet, she immediately sent them to public (private) schools far from Glasgow. She then took a grand tour of the Continent to renew old and fascinated acquaintances, and there was an interlude with an Italian gentleman of family of which no one in the Isles had ever heard, nor did they ever know. Satisfied, surfeited, and full of the lust for life, she returned to the Isles, lived in London for a while, then became interested in increasing her fortune through investments. As she was restless, she moved from city to city as time went on, establishing fine homes, then selling them at a sound profit.

  Her sons married fairly well, but Rose Mary was not interested either in them or their wives or their subsequent children. She did declare, however, that she had always wanted a daughter, and when one of the sons, the third, did produce a daughter Rose Mary was in temporary raptures, invested the child in her own christening robe, and named her after herself. The child, Rose Mary Cullen, had Grandmother’s own hair, greenish-hazel eyes and general features, but unfortunately she had also inherited her Grandfather Cullen’s sober and dogged personality. So Grandmother lost interest, if she still retained a random affection for her namesake. She remembered the child on her birthday and at Christmas, but saw her infrequently until the little one was about four years old. Grandmother was then living in Leeds in a very fine house indeed, in the very center of a block of houses she was renovating and restoring for later profitable sale.

  So it was that little Rose Cullen found herself every winter for considerable periods in Grandmother’s house, whenever her parents had their prolonged and bitter rows. She never quite discovered what the rows were about, and never really cared, for she was a child of silences and solitudes. She accepted life with deep and passionate interest, but it was not a personal interest. She almost welcomed the rows so that she could go to Grandmother’s at Leeds, where the house was filled with beguiling treasures, a parrot or two to be teased and observed from a safe distance, an air of luxury, and, always, Grandma’s vivid if not affectionate presence and Grandma’s strange and exotic guests. Besides, Grandma had a cook of an expansive nature whom little Rose found very comforting, and who could be relied upon for dainties from Grandma’s table and bonbons and glazed chestnuts and candied ginger and exquisite tartlets. And Grandma’s gardens, even in winter, were mysterious with mist and silence and wild birds and rooks, and, above all, there were no wrangling parents.

  Rose often said to her husband, William McConnell, “I remember a time at Grandma’s in 1904. (She always insisted I call her Grandmother, however; it seemed to her less aged than ‘Grandma’, and much less dull and suety.) I remember . . .”

  Her first memory of Leeds, England, and Grandmother Rose Mary O’Driscoll Cullen’s house, was when she was just under four years of age and a row had blown up at home. Her parents packed a bag for her, put her on a train by herself, and returned home to do unrestrained battle. Grandmother’s carriage and coachman met her, silently, at the station in Leeds, and in silence they drove to Grandmother’s house. Rose recalled that first lonely occasion very sharply. The dun-colored streets were awash with cold and sooty rain; water splashed on the roof of the carriage. Lights drifted by as they passed lonely houses, and the air was full of the stench of coal gas, wet leather and wool, and smoke. The horse clopped along on the cobblestones. The darkness came down heavily and the carriage lurched from side to side. Rose’s hands were numbed with cold, even in their gloves. She listened to the boom of the wind against the carriage, the far wailing of it as it rushed westwards. She was not frightened, nor even lonely, for she was accustomed to loneliness. Carriages passed, their lanterns lit. Once one of those new and rowdy motorcars charged around the carriage, startling the horse, and causing the coachman to curse and threaten with his whip. The gutters chattered; the stones of the street glistened in lamplight. But Rose was excited; she was on her first visit to Grandmother’s and to the mysterious world in which that legendary figure lived.

  The house was very large and lighted at almost every window, and there was a reflection of red and flickering firelight on draperies not yet drawn. The building had a little portico with about four white, round wooden pillars and a broad fan of brick steps leading to the door from the street. The coachman, with a sour look, opened the carriage door for Rose. Then he was moved to some kindness for the forlorn little girl. He swung her up in his arms with a hearty word, and his rough chin and check scraped her face. He carried her up the steps and said cheerily, “There you be, little miss,” put her down, banged the knocker, and returned to the carriage for her luggage. In the meantime a smart, uniformed maid stood on the threshold, staring without favor. “A kid in the house,” she mumbled, and pulled Rose inside smartly. “Behave yourself, and no trouble,” she warned. Grandmother was entertaining at dinner, and there was no time for any greeting. The unfriendly maid pushed Rose irritably up an immense stairway of white wood and velvet carpeting, and then into a long hall filled with closed doors. A lamp burned at its farther end, the light enclosed in a crimson globe. The maid opened the door of a small and arctic bedroom, and lit a candle. Rose saw the big bed with its canopy, its horsehair chairs, its little green slipper love seat, its empty fireplace, its Brussels rug, its blue velvet draperies looped back over fine lace curtains.

  “Have you had your tea?” asked the maid, threateningly.

  Rose shook her head. The maid sighed. “And now I’ve got to get a kid’s tea,” she grumbled. “Very well, you. Sit there and be quiet,” and she lifted the child and set her down with a thump on a giant rocking chair whose horsehair c
hafed her thighs immediately. “Not a word out of you,” the maid warned, and slammed the door after her. Rose was suddenly very tired, yawned and drowsed, the chair swaying under her. She came awake to see the maid angrily lighting a small fire. There was a tray on the table of sandwiches, tea, cream, sugar, pound cake, a hot scone or two, and jam. Rose was hungry at once, climbed down from the chair, stood at the table and began to devour the food. The fire caught; the wind thundered in the chimney; the windows rattled. It was a cold night.

  The maid scrubbed her with coolish water in a large bowl afterwards, sneered at her flannel nightgown which boasted no lace or embroidered buttons, and thumped her into the icy bed. “Where’s Grandmother?” Rose asked.

  “Better things to do than to bother with the likes of you,” said the maid. “Go to sleep. The chamber’s under the bed, and mind you use it properly.”

  Rose did not sleep for a long time. She watched the small fire on the hearth, and listened to its brisk crackling. She listened to the wind pounding at the windows, shouting in the chimney, growling in the eaves. The rain sounded like a cataract. She was at Grandmother’s, in Leeds, the first of many visits, which were not welcomed. But she had already learned that there is little welcome for anyone in the world, and so was not disturbed. She said her prayers tranquilly enough, praying dutifully for dear Papa and Mama and all the Poor. God, she was certain, was standing right there beside the bed. She had known much about Him since she had been hardly two years old, long before anyone had ever spoken His Name to her. Rose turned her head on the sweetly scented bolster, and there, over the fireplace, stood a crucifix, the first she had ever seen. It was very large, and the Body of the Christ appeared made of dark gold. Rose had never as yet heard of Him, fully, but all at once she was filled with understanding. She fell asleep as if under the blessing of a sleepless Guardian.

  That was all Rose ever remembered of the first of the many visits to Grandmother’s house in Leeds. It seemed to her that those visits never ended all the rest of her life, and she returned to the memory of them as one returns to an old cathedral of one’s deepest memories — though Grandmother’s house was hardly a cathedral.

  Rose was going on five on her next visit, and it was this visit that impressed itself forever on her memory, as the beginning of her friendship with Grandmother’s holy men. They were the only holy creatures ever to enter Grandmother’s houses, until the end of her life.

  Chapter Two

  Rose was four in the last September and British children begin their education at that age. The little girl was sent to a very small private school run by a dejected but punishing Miss Brothers in the latter’s shabby but genteel house. Rose did not like the schoolmistress and was bored by the other children, who ranged from four to fourteen. Children, at four, learned their letters at once, and began to read, or God help them.

  After the Christmas holidays she was sent to Grandmother’s again. She was delighted to be free of Miss Brothers and her schoolmates and chattered freely while her mother packed her luggage, a uniqueness that caused her mother to eye her with reflection. The train excited her as before. She read a storybook in that compartment filled with adults. They did not smile at her; children in England are not regarded as objects of interest but only as nuisances. The rain began, the dull gray rain of midwinter, and the shouting winds. Hamlets moved sluggishly beyond the windows; narrow little streets were revealed, filled with lorries or hurrying working people. Twilight was coming down.

  The train rumbled; gentlemen rustled their newspapers. Ladies knitted or drowsed or conversed together in low voices, pausing only to look outside haughtily when the train paused at some sooty station. There would be the ‘lower-class’ people who were scurrying towards the second-or third-class coaches — mostly the third — their heads and shoulders hunched together against the rain and wind. Rose felt sorry for them. They were the Poor she was always being admonished to pray for every night. There seemed such a lot of them, and they appeared so cold and shabby, so red in the chapped face.

  It was dark, and the rain and the wind were truly formidable. “Leeds!” called the guard, and Rose picked up her heavy bag and struggled with it to the door of the corridor. No adult, of course, offered to help her. She was a child and therefore well able to take care of herself. But the guard at the door of the compartment smiled at her kindly, and said, “Here, that’s a big lumbering thing for a little lass. I’ll give you a hand.” She was much surprised. He even lifted her down the high steps of the carriage. He embarrassed her. He made her feel small and incompetent. A new coachman and Grandmother’s carriage were waiting, and the train guard tossed her luggage into the carriage while the coachman watched impassively. The train guard touched his cap as if she were a grown-up lady, and as she did not know what else to do to repay him for his kindness she gave him a curtsey. The coachman sneered and spat. “Lookin’ for sixpence,” he muttered, driving off. “Give him that, did you?”

  “No,” she said, “I have only three shillings, for emergencies.”

  She spoke in the chilly accents taught her at Miss Brothers’ school, and the coachman became silent. When they reached Grandmother’s house he even alighted and lifted her and her luggage from the carriage. “Don’t get above yourself,” he warned her, however. “It’s the Madam as has the money, not your Pa.”

  Grandmother, of course, was at dinner, with guests, all gentlemen from the sound of them. But what voices! They were the voices of giants, laughing, interrupting, bursting into laughter, arguing. They were also musical, with the brownish burr of the Scots and the Irish. There were snatches of rollicking song. Manly voices, strong and powerful. “The priests, again,” said the coachman disdainfully to the maid. “At it again, are they?”

  “Ever so,” said the maid, in a tone to match his own. “Wot she sees in them — ”

  “Once a Roman, always a Roman,” said the coachman, departing.

  “What’s a Roman like?” Rose asked Elsie, with interest.

  “Never you mind,” she snapped. “Just keep out of their sight. Upstairs with you, and mind your tongue.” But Rose was older now, almost five. “Watch your own tongue, Elsie,” she said with hauteur. “You are not the one to correct me.” She had learned a thing or two at Miss Brothers’, and a lady was not to endure impudence in servants.

  “I’ll give it to you!” cried Elsie, viciously. But she did not haul Rose upstairs this time. She followed her with the luggage, three steps behind, muttering to herself. She lit the fire; the room was as bitterly cold as Rose had remembered. Then she went down for Rose’s tea. She came back, empty-handed. “The Madam wants you in the dining-room,” she said, incredulously. “You! A kid! Wot’s the world comin’ to, tell me? But then,” she added, as if it explained everything, as it probably did, “the priests want to take a look at you.”

  The ‘Romans’. Rose was filled with curiosity. Also, she was hungry. “I want my tea,” she reminded Elsie.

  “Ha!” Elsie said, and threw up her hands. “There’s a place ordered for you at the table. At the table! Go along with you now, fast as you can. But wash your hands first.”

  She scrubbed Rose’s hands and more roughly scrubbed her face. Then she combed out her hair. “Red!” she said, with contempt. “And not a curl in it. Straight as a stick. Your ribbon is undone.” The comb, and her fingernails, dug into Rose’s scalp. Elsie even rubbed the dust from Rose’s boots and straightened her stockings and brushed down her woolen Tartan frock. “No beauty, you,” she said, with pleasure. “All knees and elbows and you not five yet. You’ll be as tall as a man, from the looks of you, and the Madam so dainty!” She made it sound as if to be five were rather criminal, but Rose was accustomed to this attitude on the part of adults. One outgrew five, eventually. Six followed, and then seven, and time took care of the guilt of being less than five. She had also learned that time took care of other unpleasant things, too, such as sitting in a form at Miss Brothers’. The summer would eventually come. Chri
stmas had come, hadn’t it, just when she had given up hope? (Papa had finally surrendered to the ‘Popery’ of Christmas, at Mama’s relentless insistence, for as a true Scot he despised and ignored Christmas and celebrated only the New Year. But Mama had not, as yet, introduced the enormity of a Christmas tree.)

  Rose went downstairs sedately. What would the ‘Romans’ be like, those strange creatures of whom Papa talked with mingled fear and disgust, and in a dark tone? She had learned, however, to discount much of what her parents said, and besides, Mama would often laugh at Papa’s lurid tales of priests and nuns. Rose made her way through the baize door to the threshold of the dining-room, which appeared vast, too brilliant, too intimidating, to her. It was all one dazzle, from the chandelier blazing from the ceiling, to the white lace tablecloth set with glittering silver and crystal. Worse, it was full of monumental men with huge red faces. The only lady present was Grandmother. She was flushed with wine and laughter and joy, and was dressed in her favorite color, green, satin this time, restless with gems. There was a great fire on the hearth, and the room was very hot. Grandmother’s hair was piled high on her head, and it was the color of flame.

  “It’s Queen Victoria, herself, come to life again!” shouted Grandmother, catching sight of Rose, and gesticulating towards the door. “The ugly frock and all, and the sober face of her!” She yelled with mirth and lifted a freckled thin bare arm in a mock gesture of salutation. Her shoulders were astonishingly bare, and small.