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By Root 668 0

I remember him talkin’ about a pair of actresses called the Allgood sisters. At the time, they were big stars by all accounts. Like them Beatles today! They’d arrive at the theatre every night, a flower pinned to their coats, given them by the flower sellers in the streets. I used to love to hear all that old stuff, all about the fancy clothes and the like. The very idea of sellin’ flowers in the streets amused me.” She laughed heartily. “They were just ordinary girls, he told me, but they had great talent and worked hard and the people loved them. One girl, Molly, I believe, married the famous man who wrote all the plays, John Synge. But you’d know all about that, Nora, comin’ from there.”

“No I don’t, Peg. Most of it is news to me.” Nora was enthralled, her attention now spinning between the collection of books in the spare room, the story of the Abbey Theatre, and to thoughts of her sister and what she might think now of her crazy old grandfather and the fabulous collection of rare books, some of them signed, all stacked in the room down the hall.

“Well, girl, I heard it all that many times I thought I knew them too. He was right in with that crowd, it seems. He had a little job evenings at the theatre just helpin’ out with things. He didn’t get paid or nothin’. He just liked to be around and I suppose he understood a bit of what was goin’ on too. He was there the night they had the big racket in the audience.” She threw a glance in Nora’s direction to see if she was still interested. “It was the second night after the opening of the play called The Playboy of the Western World, you know, the one Matt and I used read together, with Pegeen in it, the one you saw below in the room.”

Nora nodded eagerly.

“Here, when it was only halfways through, up she went! Seems the crowd started shoutin’ and bawlin’ and makin’ the biggest kind of a racket… didn’t like the way the ordinary people of Ireland was bein’ talked about in the play. It got so bad you couldn’t hear a word was being said. In the end the police was brought in to clear the decks. That was how it was every night until they shut her down altogether!”

He had been there, Nora thought, this hobo grandfather of hers, there in Dublin, right at the heart of that great revival of Irish literature and culture. She tried to picture him, to put him in the middle of all this excitement. A thought occurred to her. “Did he ever say if he’d met any of the writers, Synge or Yeats or O’Casey? Did he ever talk to them?” She leaned forward, willing a positive response.

“I don’t know, girl, but just the same, he said he saw the fella Synge or so he told me.”

“He did?”

“Yes, well sort of. There was one night he was in back of the stage helpin’ with the curtain. You know, haulin’ it back and forth at the right time. Well, standin’ in the shadows, right across from him on the other side of the stage, he sees this dark figure of a man. He just stood there watching what was goin’ on and then he disappeared. Now the man Synge was dead and gone at the time, but Matt said he knew it was Synge, by the look of him.”

“You mean he saw a ghost?”

“Yes, girl. That’s what he said.”

“And did he tell anyone what he’d seen?”

“That I don’t know, but he said there was others talked about seeing a strange figure around the stage after that and they all thought it was the same man.”

Peg saw the look on Nora’s face. “My dear, he was full of them stories.”

“And you remember so well, names, places, everything. I never knew any of this.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose I remember it all, but it was so interesting, see, and he could tell it so well and make it real. He showed me the old program from that night, all the names and the fine picture of Cuchulainn and his hound on the cover. How could I forget? They’re all below in the room, in the drawers, I believe.”

The hush in the little kitchen was soothing, dark and cool like the night, but inside, Nora was beginning to be aware of a deep sense of loss.

“I wish I’d known him, Peg. I wish he hadn’t run away.”

“I know, girl. I know what you mean.”

“Did you