The Rising of Bella Casey Read Online Free

wrath.
    Aunt Izzie came back with two guineas for the caul. A certain Captain Boyle, bound for the Cape Horn, had purchased it believing it would save him from shipwreck and drowning.
    ‘It’s akin to Popery believing in such charms,’ Pappie had said, scowling as Mother pocketed the money.
    But then he cheered.
    ‘Now, David Copperfield,’ he mused, ‘he was born with caul and didn’t he turn out well in the heel of the hunt?’
    But so was Hamlet, Bella was about to say, since Pappie was calling on literature as witness. But she held her tongue. It didn’t do to boast idly of knowledge.

    Jack did not fall to the croup like the two before him for Mother watched him like a hawk. She rubbed tallow on his chest at the rumour of a cold. If she heard even the ghost of a cough she’d be off down to the apothecary on Talbot Street for a tuppence worth of squills. But in the end it was his eyes that came to scourge him. From the age of five he was tormented with trachoma and this led on to conjunctivitis. She and Mother tried to ease his pain with zinc and rosewater and poultices of tea-leaves. They took turns dousing his head in a bucket of cold water while trying to make sure his eyes were open – a certain cure, or so they said. He must have been the most baptised child in Ireland. And to addinsult to injury, they had to bandage his eyes for left to his own devices he would have rubbed them raw. So the poor mite was often plunged into darkness. It was a strange cure, Bella thought, being made blind to prevent blindness. Her mother was at the end of her tether with him. Until she heard tell of a Dr Storey at the Ophthalmic Hospital by the back of Trinity College. He prescribed Golden Eye ointment which it was Bella’s job to apply underneath the child’s eyelids. The battles she had with him! She almost had to rope him down. Bella cared for all her brothers, of course she did. She was the eldest, she’d minded Mick and Tom and Isaac, she’d organized them and bossed them about, tied their shoelaces, wiped their noses. But she
loved
Jack. Maybe it was because she had seen him being born? That she had known him before he had opened his sticky eyes to the world, before he even knew himself? Or was it that she was tied to him by love and pain, in equal measure?

    Bella had gone as far as Fifth Standard in the Model School when Miss Arabella Swanzy suggested she go on to be a teacher. Miss Swanzy was the head governess of the Teaching College and called in person to press upon Bella’s mother the advantages a profession would bestow on a girl in her circumstances. That was how she put it – ‘her circumstances’ – even though Miss Swanzy was shown into the good room in No 85 and was plied with tea from the silver service. Mrs Casey was impressed with Miss Swanzy’s regal bearing and afterwards remarked on how clever she appeared.
    ‘Miss Swanzy said you’d have something solid with the teaching . You cannot be dismissed and the position takes a pension.’
    It seemed Miss Swanzy had said all the right things, Bella thought. Her Pappie was already converted. He had always taken a quiet pride in Bella’s achievements. Her mother was more impressed with the financial prospects though she nearly had a fit when she looked at the list of apparel Bella would need for the College.
    ‘One Shawl or Wrap, Two Hats, One Jacket or Mantle, One Ulster,’ her mother began, her tone laced with indignation.
    ‘Two Dresses, Two Outside Petticoats, if you please, Six Pairs of Drawers.’
    She paused there, for effect.
    ‘Four Bodices, Two Pairs of Gloves – One Outdoor Woollen, One Indoor White, Formal With Pearl Detail.’
    She paused again.
    ‘I ask your pardon! Pearl detail, did you ever hear the like?’
    ‘Now Sue,’ Pappie interjected.
    ‘Is it some class of Swiss Finishing School we’re sending her to?’ Mother went on, undeterred, and Bella feared her fate might be decided on the strength of a pair of blessed