The Rising of Bella Casey Read Free Page A

Street!’
    ‘Where’s the bread?’ Babsie enquired, arms folded in indignant fashion across her chest.
    ‘I’m hungry,’ Baby John wailed.
    But Mrs Beaver ignored both lamentation and rebuff.
    Once inside she examined the piano for signs of damage. It was a wretched and undignified way to treat a precious musical instrument, akin to violent assault, but it seemed to have escaped unscathed. She beckoned to Babsie and John to help her put the piano in place under the four-squared window that squinted on to the street. She stood back to admire it. Her very own piano, the sum of every fine and noble aspiration she had ever nurtured. She pulled up a kitchen chair and dredged up from memory Mozart’s
Rondo Alla Turca
. Her ruined fingers knew their way about though her swollen joints were rusty. Shestumbled through to the end, her children clustered around her as if at a recital, but they were surly with puzzlement. This gaiety of their mother’s was a mood they did not know. When she had finished she eyed them fiercely, an expression they were more familiar with.
    ‘If anybody asks,’ she warned, ‘not that it’s anybody’s business, you can tell them this is your mother’s inheritance, do you hear?’
    ‘A likely story, Bella,’ her brother said coming upon the scene, for in her haste to get the piano safely housed, Mrs Beaver had left the street door open.
    Babsie stepped away from the piano. There’d be fireworks now, the girl thought. Her Uncle Jack and her mother were always at loggerheads. Like chalk and cheese, that pair. Her mother, proud, Protestant and loyal to the Crown, her uncle a Labour man, a nationalist, a spouter of Irish, even. And Godless with it, her mother would say. Babsie was surprised to see him for she was sure he would have been mixed up in the rising. Skirmish, she corrected herself.
    Her uncle was forever talking revolution, the workers throwing off their chains. She knew for a fact he’d been off drilling with the Citizen Army.
    ‘Are you not out with them?’ she asked him.
    ‘Ah no, Babsie … this whole business,’ – he jerked his head towards the street – ‘it’s a bloody folly.’
    Her mother’s hands had fallen to her lap. Like Babsie, she was waiting for the lofty condemnation that was sure to come. Nomatter what he thought of the rising, he would not approve of looting. He stood on the threshold of the cold room – no fire lit, no food on the table,
    ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said, ‘play on.’
    Her mother went back to the keys, reprising the Turkish tune. When she was done, Uncle Jack clapped his hands and let out a whoop of admiration. Then he began to laugh while Babsie and Valentine exchanging perplexed looks.
    ‘What’s the joke?’ Baby John asked.
    ‘Bella fiddles while Dublin burns,’ Uncle Jack said finally, still spluttering with laughter. Her mother made no response to the mirth at her expense.
    ‘Paradise regained, Bella, by hook or by crook!’ Jack tried again.
    ‘By crook,’ Valentine said, scowling.
    But even then her mother refused to be riled. She returned to her playing. A different tune this time, more sombre, a dead march tempo. Babsie flounced into the scullery to put the kettle on. It would have to be third-hand tea now from the last pot they’d brewed. Really, her mother was the giddy limit. Send her out for tea and she comes back with a blessed piano. And then she sits down and gives a recital!
    ‘The
Moonlight Sonata
,’ her mother announced.
    Valentine knelt before the hearth and tried to rouse a spark from the ashes. Baby John’s stomach grumbled. Mrs Beaver shut them out. Hang them all! Even her brother, once so beloved,trying to bait her on the doorstep. She concentrated on the creeping left hand, like the steady arpeggio of time. Once, she would have favoured the yearning right. She closed her eyes and let her creaking fingers lead her blindly back, back to the beginning of their story.

MISTRESS OF HER CIRCUMSTANCES
    H er