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his sermon he had asked for donations of cutlery and glasses and cups and saucers and plates to add to his store. He also made clear that the parish hall would be open from eleven in the morning until nine in the evening on Christmas Day and anyone passing, irrespective of creed or country of origin, would be welcome in God’s name; even those not in need of food or refreshment could drop by at any time to add to the day’s cheer, but not, he added, between twelve thirty and three, please, when Christmas dinner would be served. He also announced that, beginning in the middle of January, he was going to run a dance in the parish hall every Friday night with a live band but no alcohol to raise funds for the parish and he would like everyone to spread the word.
As soon as Eilis had pushed past the men setting the tables and benches down evenly in rows and women hanging Christmas decorations from the ceiling, she saw Father Flood.
“I wonder would you count the silverware to make sure we have enough?” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll have to go out into the highways and byways.”
“How many are you expecting?”
“Two hundred last year. They cross the bridges, some of them come down from Queens and in from Long Island.”
“And are they all Irish?”
“Yes, they are all leftover Irishmen, they built the tunnels and the bridges and the highways. Some of them I only see once a year. God knows what they live on.”
“Why don’t they go back home?”
“Some of them are here fifty years and they’ve lost touch with everyone,” Father Flood said. “One year I got home addresses for some of them, the ones I thought needed help most, and I wrote to Ireland for them. Mostly, I got silence, but for one poor old divil I got a stinker of a letter from his sister-in-law saying that the farm, or the homestead, or whatever it was, wasn’t his, and he wasn’t to think of ever setting foot in it. She’d scatter him at the gate. I remember that. That’s what she said.”
Eilis went to midnight mass with Mrs. Kehoe and Miss Keegan, discovering on the way home that Mrs. Kehoe was among the parishioners who were roasting a turkey and potatoes and boiling a ham for Father Flood, who had arranged for it all to be collected at twelve.
“It’s like the war,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “Feeding the army. Has to be done like clockwork. I’ll carve what our own small needs will be from the turkey, the biggest one I could get, it’ll be six hours in the oven, before I send it off. And we’ll eat, just the four of us, myself, Miss McAdam, Miss Heffernan and Miss Keegan here, as soon as the turkey is off our hands. And if there’s anything left over, we’ll save it for you, Eilis.”
By nine o’clock Eilis was in the parish hall peeling vegetables in the big kitchen at the back. There were women working beside her whom she had never met before, all of them older than she, some with faint American accents but all of Irish origin. Most of them were just here for this part of the morning, she was told, before going home to feed their families. Soon it became clear that two women were in charge. When Father Flood arrived he introduced Eilis to them.
“They are the Miss Murphys from Arklow,” he said. “Though we won’t hold that against them.”
The two Miss Murphys laughed. They were tall, cheerful-looking women in their fifties.
“It’ll be just the three of us,” one of them said, “here all day. The other helpers will come and go.”
“We’re the ones with no homes to go to,” the other Miss Murphy said and smiled.
“Now, we’ll feed them in sets of twenty,” her sister said.
“Each of us prepares sixty-five dinners, it might even be more, in three sittings. I’m in Father Flood’s own kitchen and the two of you are here in the hall. As soon as a turkey arrives, or when the ones we have cooking upstairs are ready, Father Flood will attack them and the hams and carve them. The oven here is just for keeping things hot. For an hour people will bring us turkeys and hams and roast potatoes and the thing is to have vegetables cooked and hot and ready to be served.”
“Rough and ready might be a better way of putting it,” the other