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She stands still, watching until the last shape fades and she is alone. She is gone. Her mother is gone. She feels a little sick, dizzy from the huge sky above. She feels the ground falling away from under her—the grass and the field and the hill are all sliding away, until she is left high and dry on the top of a bare hill. Like the Blessed Virgin in the picture in the church when she is taken up into Heaven from the top of a mountain. Maybe she, Tess, is being taken up into Heaven this very minute. She can hardly breathe. She turns her face towards the low sun and closes her eyes and waits. Please. She waits for her mother's face to appear, a hand to reach out. She leans her whole body upwards, desperate for the sun to touch her, the wind to raise her, the sky to open, Heaven to pull her in.
When she opens her eyes she is still in her father's field, and there, a few feet away, are cattle, five or six, staring at her with big faces and sad eyes. The ground is under her feet again, the grass is green, nothing has changed. She looks around, frightened, ashamed. She starts running back towards the house. She runs into the yard, searches the barn, the coach house, the stables. She sticks her head into the dark musty potato house and calls out, "Mike, Mike, are you there?" and waits and listens. Everywhere is silent. Soon it will be dark. She hears the sound of a motor in the distance. A car is coming down the avenue. She stands and waits for it to appear in the yard. Her heart is pounding. It is the hearse, she thinks, returning. With her mother sitting up in the front seat, smiling, and the coffin behind open, empty—a terrible mistake put right. They had come to the wrong house. They had come for the wrong woman—it was old Mrs. Geraghty back in the village they should have taken.
But it is not the hearse that drives into the yard. It is Miss Tannian, the poultry instructress. She steps out of her car in a green tweed costume and patent shoes. And auburn hair, like Tess's mother's. The sky is pink and as she comes towards Tess the last of the sun lights her up from behind. She is speaking to Tess, saying, I am sorry, I am so sorry. Tess runs away from her, off along the edge of the yard, under the arch towards the orchard. The big iron gates are open and she runs in and stands in the shadows. The apple trees are dark, their low crooked branches like old women's skirts. Her eyes dart all over the place, along the four high walls. And then she sees him, Mike Connolly, sitting on an old stump at the far end, his head down, Captain beside him. As soon as she sees him the tears come. She runs and falls at his feet and begins to sob.
* * *
It is dark when the others come home. Her aunt Maud and Maud's husband, Frank, and the aunts and cousins from Dublin crowd into the kitchen. The Tilley lamps are lit. There are all kinds of nice things on the pantry shelves, cakes and buns and biscuits. Mrs. Glynn, who took the baby over to her house, is here. She helps Tess's sisters serve tea and sandwiches to all the guests, and whiskey to the men. Her father sits quietly in the armchair. Her brother Denis has his head down. Tess wants to climb up on his lap like she used to when she was four. They are talking about the baby, Oliver. Aunt Maud says she will take him.
"It'll be for the best," she says.
Her father says nothing.
"It'll only be for a year or two," Aunt Maud says. "And sure ye'll be over and back, and Kathleen can bring him back every Sunday to play with the girls." She looks around the table. "That's settled, so. And isn't it what she wanted herself?"
"It is," her father says at last. "It's what she wanted, all right."
* * *
She goes up to the front hall and drags a stool over to open the door. It is dark outside. She sits 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.
Excerpted from Academy Street by Mary Costello. Copyright © 2015 by Mary Costello. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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