Between Sisters (22 page)

‘No, just beside it, working,’ said Ruth. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Just off to Ma’s to sort out the garden for her.’

‘Fabulous,’ said Ruth, sounding pleased. ‘She was onto me the other day saying it was a mess and what was she going to do. I said not to ask me. Hardly my strong point.’

‘I don’t know a weed from a flower,’ Shay said, ‘but she’ll just tell me what to do.’

‘How’s Cass and the kids?’ said Ruth, sounding as if she was still working, despite talking to her brother.

‘Fine.’

Not that fine,
said the tiny little voice in Shay‘s head. He knew he ought to get his sisters to share the burden, as Cassie so often said, but Ma rang and asked
him
, and he felt such guilt that she was lonely.

‘Listen, Ruth, can you spend more time with Ma these days? She’s going through a lonely patch right now and—’

‘She’s been going through a lonely patch since Dad died and that’s over four years ago,’ Ruth interrupted. ‘I have taken her to places, to exhibitions, to comedy shows, to the concert hall, to a fashion show once … She’s not interested. She wants everything the way it was before when she was belle of the ball, when we were kids and she was young, when Dad was alive, and that’s not happening anymore. I’m forty-one:
I’m
hardly the belle of any ball,’ Ruth said with a hint of bitterness. ‘So she can forget it at her age. She needs to make a new life for herself, do charity work, do something, and stop moping about the past—’

‘Ruth!’ interrupted Shay, but there was no stopping his sister now.

‘Shay, we can’t all have what we want. I wanted a husband but I didn’t get one, so I have to live with that. Ma doesn’t think normal rules apply to her. She thinks that if she wants it, she can have it because that’s what life was like when Dad was around. He indulged her and you know it.’

‘Yeah, but they had a good marriage—’

‘Fine, they did, but sadly Dad is gone now and while that’s horrible for
all
of us, especially her, death is part of life. She has to understand that and stop pretending you’re him. So you run after her all you want, but I won’t.’

‘You’re hard, Ruth,’ said Shay in dismay.

‘I live in the real world,’ said his sister grimly. ‘Ma wants what she wants and she doesn’t care who or what she goes through to get it, so watch out.’

Shay didn’t feel up to phoning his younger sister after that, although Miriam would have a welcome for him because she was a million miles away from Ruth, who’d always been the toughest of the three Reynolds children. It was being the eldest, Ruth said when they teased her: being the one responsible for making sure the other two had their teeth brushed in the morning and had their shoelaces tied before school.

Ma had looked lovely in the mornings, Shay could remember. She had a flowery dressing gown with pale pink ruffles around the neck, she’d have tied her hair up prettily and put on lipstick, and she’d stand at the door and wave at them as they walked down the street under Ruth’s strict guidance.

Ruth had only been two years older than he had, he realised now with a start. It was like relying on Beth to take care of Lily, but times were different then. There weren’t predators like there were now – no stranger danger. Kids walked to school with their brothers and sisters even though loads of mothers didn’t work; they cleaned and baked and took care of things. His mum had been brilliant at that. He owed it to her to take care of her.

Cassie would get it. He knew she would.

Thirteen

Phoebe had phoned Tommy Joe about picking her up from the bus station.

‘No bother,’ he’d said, ‘seeing as it’s you. Have you got citified, Phoebe? Will you be looking at us like we’re all muck savages from now on?’

Phoebe had laughed.

‘I shall always think of you as the debonair Tommy Joe who brings my luggage right up to the bus,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Go away out of that, Phoebe,’ he’d said, obviously pleased.

As the bus neared the village, Phoebe felt the excitement heighten. She was going home and she could hardly wait.

But once she’d hauled her stuff off the bus, there was no sign of Tommy Joe’s bright red head of hair above the crowd. He was so reliable, he’d never forget. Something must have happened to him …

‘Surprise!’ roared Mary-Kate and Ethan, jumping out from behind a sign. Their mother followed, beaming.

‘We couldn’t resist,’ said Mum, as all three of them tried to hug Phoebe at the same time. ‘I squared it with Tommy Joe; he knows he’s getting his fare to bring you back.’

‘You have no idea how good it is to see you all,’ said Phoebe, breathing in the scent of her beloved family: the deodorant Ethan was using by the bucketload, Mary-Kate’s modern floral Body Shop scent, and the lavender smell that seemed to emanate from her mother’s very pores from evenings spent sewing it into embroidered little bags for sale in the craft shops in Wicklow town.

They all chattered nineteen to the dozen as Mum drove Doris, the family’s big old jeep, up the village and into the hills where the McLoughlin farm lay.

‘Sabrina from his class fancies Ethan,’ said Mary-Kate, earning herself a thump from her younger brother. ‘Well, she does!’

‘Mary-Kate wants to get her belly button pierced …’ began Ethan, before getting an even harder thump.

‘You
promised!
He overheard me and Jen talking, and it was only an idea anyway,’ said Mary-Kate mutinously.

‘Everyone’s fine,’ said their mother serenely, concentrating on the road, which got quite potholed up their way as they were high in the Wicklow Hills. When there was a dusting of frost in Dublin, Wicklow got snowfalls that slowly and inescapably ripped its way through the roads and made potholes from hell.

Phoebe listened to talk of school, friends and how well the hens and ducks were, and gazed out of the jeep’s grimy windows at the fifty-five acres her father’s family had farmed for at least a century. It was rocky, hilly land and nothing but hardy Wicklow Cheviot sheep could be reared there.

The family owned sixty ewes with two breeding rams, and the work was endless. When the sheep were grazing out on the common ground in the good weather, farmers needed to get their hay ready, fertilise the grass for when the sheep were back on it, repair fences, gates and walls, get ready for the sheep dipping and, later, the sheep shearing. There were vet bills from scanning the sheep when they were pregnant and constantly taking care of sick animals. The shearers needed to be paid, as did the men with the heavy machinery for cutting and baling the hay for winter feed. When the sheep gave birth after Easter, the farmer would be up morning, noon and night in the shed for lambing, hand-rearing any whose mothers had died. In October, those same adorable lambs were big enough to go off to market to be sold – something Kate McLoughlin had always found hard, despite the fact that she was a farmer’s wife and that was where the family income came from.

Other local farmers, a kind and tight-knit bunch, had helped so much when her husband had his accident, but at the end, coming in and out of the consciousness of the drugs, he’d been aware enough to know that Kate wouldn’t be able to manage the farm on her own.

‘Get your mother to sell up, Phoebs,’ he’d told Phoebe, his big strong voice gone to a whisper.

‘Dad, you’ll be back in no time,’ began Phoebe, holding back the tears.

‘I won’t, my darling girl. I won’t. Please make her sell.’

‘But you love the land, Dad,’ Phoebe had said, tears coming now.

‘I love the land but the land isn’t what’s important, my darling: people are. You mother will kill herself farming it out of loyalty to me. She’s not made for this life. None of you are. It’s backbreaking and we could do it when I was there, but not now I’m going. You must sell.’

‘You’re not going,’ sobbed Phoebe, and her father had looked at her with great sadness, too worn out after his speech to say more, but telling her that he was going.

He’d died that night. When the funeral was over, and the McLoughlins, white-faced with grief, had gone back home, Phoebe finally repeated this conversation to her mother, who’d instantly lost her temper – an unusual occurrence.

‘I’m not selling the land your father loved so much!’ she’d said furiously, then burst into tears. ‘It’s all we’ve got left of him.’

Today, looking at the land and the sheep spread out on it, Phoebe – recently used to the pretty gardens of Silver Bay – realised how harsh a landscape it was up here. You got used to the land when you came home to it everyday, but now she could see it.

The Wicklow Hills weren’t plump with grass like some parts of Ireland, where lush fields reared fat livestock. Here it was untamed and beautiful, but the height above sea level and the wildness of the countryside meant vicious winds, lashing rain, and a landscape that fought with you even as you battled to save fences, mend walls and breed sheep.

When Phoebe had been there to help, her mother had been worn down with it all. Now Phoebe wasn’t there and the job somehow seemed impossible.

At night, to makes ends meet, Mum managed – if she wasn’t too tired – to indulge in her first love – sewing – yet even that was to make money. She harvested lavender from her kitchen garden and sewed the dried lavender heads into little linen bags that she’d dyed pale pink with beetroot dye, tied with heliotrope velvet ribbons and sold to some local shops. It was all natural, all handmade, and it was what Kate McLoughlin had really wanted to do when her children were old enough. She’d had a business plan in place, enough ideas in her creative head for ten people, and a light in her eyes at being able to make money for them all. But that was before her husband had died and all their lives had changed.

Every animal in the place appeared when they drove up to the old homestead. Phoebe got out, picking up her beloved chicken, Donna, and crooning nonsense to her. A troupe of wildly clacking ducks emerged too.

‘Giorgio,’ said Phoebe, delighted with her welcome, and ran into the shed to get some feed to give the ducks as reward.

Prince danced around her, muddy paws up to her ribs, barking until he was hoarse.

‘See how much we’ve all missed you,’ said Ethan, holding on to his sister in a way he’d never have admitted to in school, because hugging family members was so uncool.

After the time spent this morning in Pearl Keneally’s beautifully painted little house, Phoebe was startled at how run-down the homestead actually was. Nobody on Delaney Gardens had much money. Pearl was an old lady with a verandah, she’d proudly told Phoebe, which had been made of old packing cases by her husband many years ago. Nothing in her house was new and yet it was all beautifully maintained and painted well. By contrast, the old McLoughlin place that Phoebe adored was shabby and hadn’t seen a lick of paint in years. There were cobwebs in the corners, because who had time to get up there with a duster and clear them away?

Phoebe was both ashamed of herself for noticing this and angry that circumstances meant her family had to live in a home that could have been beautiful if only for time or money.

Mum was making tea, Ethan was telling some convoluted story about a hurling match in school, and Mary-Kate was showing how she’d been transforming some of her clothes with the skills Phoebe had shown her.

‘I took apart a necklace and sewed it on the collar of this sweater, see?’ said Mary-Kate proudly.

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Phoebe, but she was only half-listening to any of it. Instead she was seeing the peeling wallpaper her mother had tried to glue down, and how the tiles on the floor were chipped and cracked because they’d been ancient before Dad had died, and after that nothing got done anymore.

She had time, too, to really look at her darling mother and see, with the fresh eyes of someone who’d been away a few weeks, that her mother was no longer the beautiful, fresh-faced woman she had in her mind’s eye but was thin, far too thin, and her hair was limp from no time to wash it.

But when would her mother have a moment to herself anymore? Never, was the answer.

Kate McLoughlin’s clothes were threadbare, her jeans had been patched many times, and they were now held up on the tightest notch of her belt. There were lines on her face etched in as though Rembrandt had wanted to paint a servant woman with exhaustion written all over her.

Keeping this farm alive was killing her mother, and it had taken Phoebe going to Dublin to college to realise it.

Phoebe did all she could on Saturday: cleaned out every bird shed until it gleamed, walked the land with her mother, and helped repair fences and clear ditches.

‘You’re down here to relax,’ said her mother as Phoebe threw herself into the work like a woman possessed, but Phoebe could see she was grateful for the help.

Ethan and Mary-Kate, despite having homework to do, trailed them, eager to spend time with their big sister. Finally Phoebe suggested they go in and get started on dinner. She’d brought cream cakes for dessert, she said, from money eked out of her college savings, and that had them racing in to have a look at the cakes, with Prince racing after them, always eager for a game when he’d rounded the poor sheep up to his satisfaction.

‘How’s it going?’ asked her mother when they were alone, fixing a gate where a second person was needed to hoist the iron gate off the ground in the first place. Phoebe knew that if she weren’t here, that gate might never be fixed, because neither Mary-Kate nor Ethan had the strength to lift it.

‘It’s going fine, I’m making friends,’ said Phoebe, and told her mother some more about Ian, her new best friend, about college, and about how she might be moving out of the bedsit from hell and into somewhere nicer.

‘I’m so glad you’re happy,’ said her mother.

‘I miss you all.’

Phoebe watched as a tear dripped down her mother’s face.

‘Yes, but that’s to be expected,’ said Kate, wiping the tear away with the sleeve of her ancient fleece, as if tears had no place on this windswept hill. ‘This is your dream, Phoebe.’

‘Mum,’ said Phoebe cautiously. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, but coming back makes me think we should sell up, the way Dad wanted us to.’

Her mother stopped what she was doing and was uncharacteristically still.

‘Sell? How can we sell? This land has been in your father’s family for years. We can’t. It was his birthright; it’s yours too. Mary-Kate’s and Ethan’s …’

‘It’s killing you, Mum. Look at how shattered you are. I didn’t really see it when I was here because I could help, but when I’m not here … Mum, you can’t go on doing this. You’ll keel over and have a heart attack or something. Please …’

‘Oh Phoebe,’ said her mother, white-faced. ‘
Don’t
, OK, just don’t. I know you mean well but I’ve got to keep going. You can’t understand what it means to me.’

Phoebe backed off. For now.

‘I love you, Mum,’ she said simply. ‘I want what’s best for all of us, and that means you too. I don’t want to see you run yourself into the ground.’

‘I’m not,’ said Kate staunchly, standing there as thin as a wraith in her old clothes. ‘I want you to have every chance you’d have had if your father was still alive. That’s what he’d have wanted too.’

Phoebe nodded. She didn’t trust herself to say anything else.

Normally Cassie hated arguments, but tonight she felt as if she wanted an argument with just about everyone who lived on the street. Bring it on!

Shay came back from his mother’s at six on the nail, filthy dirty and with a Tupperware container full of scones.

‘Ma made them,’ he said, putting them down on the counter, where Cassie was angrily dishing up the Thai green curry the girls loved. With one move, Cassie shoved the container to one side and went on dishing up silently.

‘She made them for all of us,’ Shay said, determined not to have any arguments.

‘She made them for you,’ hissed Cassie. ‘And don’t think you’re going to sit and eat with us when you’re covered in muck from her garden.’

At this, Shay put the small bouquet of flowers and the bottle of Spanish red wine down on the table too. Cassie looked at them and then glared at her husband.

‘You’re gone all day, after everything I’ve said to you about your mother trying to drag you back into her life, and to make up for that,
this
is what I get?’ Cassie said with fury.

At the table, Lily and Beth traded silent, stunned gazes. This was a side of their mother they’d never seen before. Mum never got really angry or shouted, or if she did, it was for something rare, like that time they were late for school because they’d overslept and she’d had an important meeting that morning, which she was now going to miss because everyone was dawdling. Beth had yelled: ‘Chillax, Mum!’ and Cassie had laughed and instantly said sorry.

Mum had yelled at Lily the time she’d nearly been hit by a car because she let go of Mum’s hand and ran across the road. That had been yelling, but it was different.

‘She asked me nicely,’ said their father, sounding as if he was losing his temper too, which never happened.

‘Why can’t she ask Ruth or Miriam nicely? Better still, why can’t she pay for someone to do it or get up off her precious backside and do it herself, like Pearl does? Pearl is fifteen years older and she does her own garden!’ Cassie was roaring now. ‘I told you before, Shay: I am fed up with your mother! She needs her own life! She needs to let you go!’

‘Maybe you’re the one who needs to let go,’ said Shay quietly. ‘It’s not a battle between you and my mother. Why are you making it into one? I’m going to shower,’ he added, and left the room.