YEARS ago, before I knew that people called things by different names, we knew an American person named Martha and she used to talk a lot about the fall. I didn't know it was autumn for ages because she had so many other marvellous expressions and dramas in her life that the thought of a huge upcoming fall off a roof or a wall or something was only too likely. After all, her father had lost all his money in the Crash, and we thought it was a car crash and asked why he didn't go back to the scene where the crash had happened and look for it. And when she talked about little cookies we thought she meant small people in chefs outfits.
I call her a person, not a girl or a woman, because we thought she was oldish, almost bordering on being an adult. She was the cousin of a neighbour and she came to spend four weeks vacation every year. She used to clean the house from top to bottom as payment for her keep. She talked about Jello and turnpikes and trash cans and how her uncle used to take the paddle to his sons if they behaved badly.
Mostly we didn't know what she was talking about, but she seemed to treat us as equals, which was great. It was a time when it was much more important that people were of goodwill and occasionally had candy to offer than that we understood what they were talking about. We were always pleased when Martha arrived, and we listened, bewildered, to some of the things she said.
Like, back home she worked for a tightwad who ran an old folks' home, and her brother hoped to hang out his shingle and her sister had saved for a muskrat coat. And always she said she wished she could stay in Ireland for the fall. She would love to see just one fall in this part of the world. It would be wonderful what with there being so much greenery already.
I didn't ask anyone about it because, to be honest, I got the impression that the grown ups thought Martha was a bit soft in the head and I didn't want to let her down and I thought it was odd to look forward to and be wistful about seeing a fall of any sort. And I had no idea what greenery had to do with anything.
And the years went on and her uncle's wife died and he didn't see any need to drag the unfortunate Martha back to be a skivvy in the house. Those were his words. His late wife had always referred to it as giving the girl a holiday. But anyway, Martha didn't come. And sometimes she sent us the funnies from American newspapers Blondie and Dagwood and things and we got a lot of the jokes in them.
And one, day some years later her uncle said that some people were just born for trouble, and that Martha had all the hallmarks of that kind of person. It wasn't bad enough that her father had lost all his money on some cracked stocks and shares her brother had been forbidden to practise law because of some, misunderstanding, per sister had left home without a forwarding address. Martha's mother was in a decline, so they had arranged that the memory of her go in to the home where Martha worked no wages for Martha, but then no fees for the mother.
I was about 14 then.
"It's not fair," I said.
Martha's uncle said that in his opinion life was rarely fair.
Martha didn't remember what age we were or else she thought we'd still like the funnies, and when I was about 16, I actually got her address and wrote to thank her. She wrote back to tell me she was in love.
And this was fantastic. Firstly nobody talked much about love, no one old like in their 20s, which Martha was, and she told me that his name was James and his aunt was a patient in the home and that when his aunt died James would be very rich and they would get married. And I was very excited by this and asked what kind of things James said, and Martha rather innocently wrote and told me and I told them to the girls at school.
And Martha said that when she and James got married they would come to Ireland for a honeymoon they would come for the fall. I knew what the fall was now but I didn't rate it much in those days. I wrote and told her that she shouldn't bother, the summer was nicer, and of course she wouldn't have to clean her dead aunt's house now. I even said that she had been very good to do all that years ago. And she wrote an odd letter saying that she looked back on those days like heaven, the work was so much easier than here in the old people's home. She would love to leave but of course there was her mother to support there, and then James coming in twice a week to see his aunt.
I always thought she was a nurse there but she was a lowly cleaner, she explained. She said that she had never claimed to be anything else. She asked for a picture of Ireland in the fall.
We didn't have colour films in our cameras in 1956 and our garden looked desperate anyway, and my mother said why wouldn't I take a snap of it when there was something to see instead of everything straggling and dying. I found a wet looking picture postcard which looked as if it were taken in Famine times and sent it to Martha. She didn't reply and then we lost touch.
AND when I was 20 and saw the colours of my first fall in New England I remembered Martha and wrote to the old people's home that the tightwad had run. I didn't know his actual name, but a woman wrote back and said that Martha didn't work there any more, adding that the management had entirely changed.
And I felt somehow that Martha had been annoyed with me for sending her that horrible postcard so I wrote again and wondered did they know where she was, because I wanted to send her a proper picture of Ireland.
And the woman wrote to say Martha was in a penitentiary, she and a young man had been convicted of the unlawful killing of the young man's aunt ... It had always been thought that Martha was very much under the young man's influence.
Martha's mother had died shortly after it, her brother had been in some kind of trouble and there was no trace of her sister.
Her uncle in Dublin is long dead.
Martha would be 65 now.
It's not her real name, but if she were out there and on the Internet? Maybe.
On this lovely autumn day when the fall in Ireland never looked better, I would love to find her, and to take her back to see it just once. I don't want to hear about James, I don't imagine she sees much of him.
There are greater coincidences in the world than that I should find her and show her the Irish autumn she wanted so much to see.