Forty-eight years ago…
‘It’s perfect,’ Tess said and she nudged Nancy in the side. Nancy hadn’t said a word since they arrived on Swift Square. Probably, it was a combination of the decrepit state of the buildings and the poverty pervading even the stringy smoke rising from houses too big to find heat in just one miserable fire. Neither had expected the Ritz. No doubt, it had been grand – once.
Swift Square was situated on the right side of the city, but a hundred years of tenements and a lack of genuine fondness for the ubiquitous Georgian architecture had laid it prone. It was anyone’s guess whether it would survive to glory once more or limp wounded into the annals of city history.
Tess loved its faded opulence, the houses, four storeys over basements, hung back like chiselled old men from a placid age. In the centre, a garden, perfectly square, the size of a playing field cut out into allotments, and in the afternoon sunshine, she could see threads of blackberries interlacing through the rusting railings. Reaching up and over, apple trees gravid with this year’s unripe hoard swayed gently on a late summer breeze.
Tess pulled her eyes back to the tall house that Aunt Beatrice had given them directions to. It was like every other house on the square, a little better, but no worse than most, the only difference seemed to be a small porch reaching out to welcome them on the drive beneath the main front door. It seemed the basement flat Aunt Beatrice had promised them was at ground level, the house built one floor up from the common hordes.
‘Yes, it’s…’ Nancy was squinting at the darkened windows. ‘It’ll do just fine, I’m sure.’ She sounded anything but sure. It was nothing like their home in Ballycove – a solid block, double-fronted, with a trailing footpath through the small garden to the road.
‘Well, it’s yours for as long as you want it,’ Ted Smith lived up the stone steps, behind the once grand front door. ‘I remember your aunt so well…’ he said, smiling now at Tess. ‘You’re like her; you know that… she was a bonny girl, then.’ He shook his head, as though remembering some long-told joke again. Then he handed them two fat black keys and pointed towards the little door opposite. ‘You’ll find it has everything you need for basic living, nothing fancy mind, but it should keep you going and it’s a roof above your heads at any rate,’ he said, making his way back up the steps.
‘Aunt Beatrice could certainly pick them,’ Nancy whispered when he closed the front door with a bang.
Tess thought the whole place had a faded bohemian look to it, but she decided not to murk the waters of Nancy’s mood with any fanciful notions that might put her off even more.
‘Come on, I’m dying to see inside,’ Tess said. She’d never been in a grand Georgian house before and they’d be moving in properly in a week’s time.
‘I suppose, we do have things to do,’ Nancy said half-heartedly. Today, their father had sent them on a mission to make a list of what they’d need to turn it into a home. In a few days’ time, he would pack up all they needed in the back of their Ford Anglia and settle them in to their new lives.
‘It feels like it hasn’t been opened in a very long time,’ Tess said as they pushed aside the porch door. She inserted her key into the inside lock of a once navy door that had faded to blue and was peeling slowly away.
‘Well, we won’t be bored, at least,’ Nancy said and Tess was glad to hear some of her sister’s resolve returning. ‘Before you know it, we’ll have that door looking as good as new,’ she added, smiling at Tess.
Inside was every bit as dark and dusty as Tess had feared and she hesitated for a moment at the entrance to the main living area. ‘It’s very…’ Then she caught Nancy’s eye and they both laughed.
‘It’ll be okay, nothing that a bit of elbow grease can’t fix,’ Nancy said, probably with far more enthusiasm than she felt and Tess loved her even more for it. ‘We’re not going to let a few spiders’ webs finish your career before you even get a chance to start.’
‘Oh, Nancy,’ Tess felt for once as though she really was the younger of the pair. ‘It will be great,’ she ducked her head to avoid a particularly thick web. ‘It’s a lovely flat, once you look past the neglect.’ Tess meant it, there was an unexpected homeliness about the place.
Of two small bedrooms at the front of the flat, one opened onto the main hall, the second into what seemed to Tess a large room that doubled up as a living room and kitchen – she could imagine blazing fires and hot chocolate here in winter, cosy and cocooned from the busy city beyond. At the rear, a small scullery and bathroom that smelled of mould and felt cold and damp, but even that was not enough to quell her pleasure. She walked to the furthest end of the living room and opened up the sash window, it looked out onto a long ribbon of garden, far more generous than their meagre strip at home. Immediately, a wafting fresh breeze began to infiltrate the years of stale neglect.
‘Look,’ Nancy called from the little scullery, ‘we can start straight away. There’s enough polish and soap here to clean the Taj Mahal.’ She planted a sweeping brush in Tess’s hands, ‘Come on, you’re not a famous singer yet, you can take the cobwebs from the ceilings and sweep up the floors.’ She was running water across some old cleaning cloths, her eyes bright with the intention of making this little corner of Dublin a new and happy home for both of them.
They worked hard that day, but they hardly noticed that. They giggled their way through the work and, when the laughter halted, Tess sang whatever tune Nancy called to her. Soon it was almost five o’clock, their first day in their new flat over and so they finished up with barely enough time to make it to the train station.
‘Thanks,’ Tess said as they walked arm in arm along the platform, elated but tired from their busy day.
‘Oh, don’t be daft,’ Nancy laughed, but then looked across at Tess. ‘You know, this could work out very well for both of us. The last thing I want is our father coming down here and telling us it’s all off because the flat is not suitable.’
‘Do you really mean that?’ Tess said. ‘You’re not just saying that because you want me to be able to take up my place in Trinity.’
‘No,’ Nancy smiled at her now, ‘no, I really do mean it. I’m looking forward to this, in my own way maybe as much as you are.’ She drew to a halt, for a moment, looked into Tess’s eyes. ‘The truth is, Tess, I’ve realised something…’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I look at you and you’re so… alive, where as I… well, I’m just wandering through life. I’m hoping that here, in Dublin, well, it might help me find something that really means something to me.’
‘Like my music?’
‘Perhaps, but it won’t be music for me. I have a feeling that there’s something, or someone, that I have to find and I’m not going to find whatever or whoever that is in Ballycove,’ Nancy said shyly.
‘Oh, Nancy,’ Tess threw her arms around her sister, delighted that perhaps at last she was ready to take a brave step towards fashioning a future of her own making. That Nancy could have something that might offer more than all she’d ever known, it was all Tess could want for her sister. ‘I’m so pleased. I have a feeling that you’ll find it very easily and the future is going to hold all either of us can dream of.’