The Celtic Knot

Scarlett O’Hara

As Kathleen runs home, she makes a new bargain with God. She apologizes to Him for praying for a dancing costume in the first place. She promises she’ll pray for the Conversion of Russia next, but right now what she really needs is for Mam to get better. If He’ll only make Mam well again, she’ll forget all about the costume and the feis, and give up dancing altogether, and stay home on Wednesday afternoons to help Mam with the mending instead.

When Kathleen gets home, Polly is there, sprinkling sugar on bread for the little ones. Kathleen shouts her name and flings herself into Polly’s arms. Polly laughs that she knows Kathleen is fond of her, but she’s all over her like a big sheepdog. She’s worse than Bill. Kathleen needs to stand back a minute until she gets her breath.

Kathleen apologizes with a gulp and sits down at the kitchen table, pushing aside a slice of bread and butter, folding her arms on the table and burying her head in them for a good cry. Polly just sits and watches her for a minute, murmuring “there, there.” Then, she shoos the younger ones out to play on the street, puts Madge in charge, and tells them to be home by seven o’clock when she’ll have their tea ready.

Kathleen explains that Mrs. O’Brien called the Jubilee nurse, and that the nurse confirms Mam is not dying, only getting better, and they’ll all look after her and get her well again, since she’s the most popular woman in all of Pimlico. Three of the neighbors have already been round with beef tea and barley water and the devil knows what else, and a relic of Father Charles from Mount Argus tucked under her pillow for good measure. Polly says she’s well looked after, and she’s going to be fine. She won’t need to be sent to a sanatorium.

Kathleen looks up. A sanatorium is where they send you if you get tuberculosis, or “TB,” as everyone always calls it, too dreadful even to say the whole word out loud. “Sanatorium?” she screeches at Polly. Polly reminds Kathleen that she just said no sanatorium. Confused, Kathleen is unable to work out whether Mam actually has TB or not. She can’t ask a question like that outright, since there isn’t a ghost of a chance of getting sent to a sanatorium unless a family member actually has it, but there isn’t much comfort in that either, if you don’t know for certain. It is worse than mentioning childbirth.

Kathleen cries that if they don’t send her to the sanatorium, she’ll die. Polly gently keeps telling her that Mam isn’t dying. Kathleen presses that surely they should pray, even though praying doesn’t seem to be effective.

Polly asks how Kathleen came to be so late getting home, though she doesn’t really want to know, Kathleen can tell. She’s only trying to think of something to talk about to stop the crying. Kathleen dries her eyes and tells her about the material at Frawley’s, about how she’d been watching it every single day, and now it was gone, and she wasn’t going to be able to have her costume after all. “It’s just as well,” Polly says, tossing her hair. “You couldn’t have got up on the stage in a sky blue costume—you’d have made a holy show of yourself. Costumes are green, everyone knows that.”

Kathleen admits that’s what she thought, too. But Mam had her convinced it would be lovely, and she’s off in a fresh fit of crying, thinking of Mam so sick and now there being no costume either. Polly strokes her hair for a while, and after Kathleen calms down a bit, she starts to chuckle softly.

Kathleen asks what Polly is chuckling about. Polly declares she’s after having an idea. Does Kathleen know that book she’s reading? Kathleen grumbles that she couldn’t possibly know what Polly is reading, and Polly reminds her that she told her about it. Scarlett O’Hara?

Kathleen tells Polly not to mention the O’Hara’s to her, thinking of Tess. But then she asks who Bill is. She remembers Polly mentioning that name earlier.

Bill, Polly informs her, if she must know, is the person Polly is walking out with, and he’s the handsomest man that ever walked on shoe leather, with big broad shoulders and dark, smoldering eyes, just like Mr. Rhett Butler in the story. Kathleen is rather startled by all this enthusiasm. Polly asks whether Kathleen wants to hear about her idea or about her love life, because she can’t talk about two things at the same time. Kathleen chooses the idea.

Polly’s idea, it turns out, is about the book, Gone with the Wind. In the story, Scarlett O’Hara needs a fancy outfit but has no money. Kathleen points out that Scarlett lives in a gorgeous big house, which sounds like she does have money, and Polly explains that the family used to be rich but lost it all in a war. That doesn’t matter, though. The point is that Scarlett has no money for an outfit, but she has a brainwave. She eyes up the lovely velvet curtains hanging in the drawing room of their mansion, and quick as a flash, has them off the window and made into a beautiful gown, with a matching muff and the cutest little hat.

Kathleen stares at her, her brain moving slowly. They don’t have any fancy velvet curtains, only blinds. “But I have!” Polly practically shouts. She has lovely green wool curtains at home.

Polly made them last year when Uncle Pat won a bit of money on the horses and gave her some, since she was tired of the draft whistling through the front window. She lives nearby with another uncle and aunt of theirs who have no children of their own, and always seemed rich to Kathleen, though really it’s only that they weren’t quite as poor as the rest of them.

Kathleen protests that Polly needs those curtains to keep the draft out. Polly shrugs and suggests she can just hang the lining, that’ll do the trick. Kathleen objects that she couldn’t possibly let Polly cut up her own lovely curtains to make her a dancing costume. Polly insists she doesn’t need Kathleen’s permission. They’re her curtains, and she’ll do what she likes with them.

Suddenly Kathleen gets a fit of laughing, and Polly, who always loved a laugh, wants to know the joke. Kathleen explains that Sister Eucharia had told her God would be cross with her for praying for a dancing costume, and made her promise to give up dancing and the feis altogether instead. If Sister Eucharia ever heard that Kathleen went to the feis dressed up in a pair of curtains Polly made with money Uncle Pat won on the horses, she doesn’t know what she’d say. Polly laughs, too, and they hug, and afterward they wet a fresh pot of tea to bring in to Mam.

Kathleen carries the cup in herself. Mam is looking a lot better, very pale, very tired, her eyes huge in her head, but able to talk a little. Kathleen tries to make a joke, and Mam, in a whispery voice, tells her not to give cheek, though she’s clearly delighted to be well enough to make one back. She says she’s that pleased to get a proper cup of tea, since she’s blue in the face drinking beef tea, terrible stuff, though it’s supposed to keep her strength up.

Polly asks why communists drink beef tea. Kathleen has no idea what she’s on about. Polly jokes that proper tea is theft, a play on “property,” before collapsing onto the end of Mam’s bed in a fit of the giggles.

Mam protests and tells Polly to get off. She’s sitting on her bunions. Polly scooches farther down the bed, saying she’s an awful elephant.

Mam gives the girls a faint smile. Kathleen has no clue what the joke was, but she’s delighted to see Mam smiling again. Maybe she’s really going to be all right.