House of Memories (5 page)

“You make it sound as if it was a good thing that happened tonight, Jack,” she smiled through her tears.

“It was,” he assured her. She looked across at Jack and her heart overflowed with love for him. All her life he had been there when she needed him. He had been there to comfort her on the night that Nana Nellie had died. She had loved Nana Nellie and, with the unerring instinct of a child, sensed that Jack did too. Mom was no comfort then because she knew that Mom had never loved Nana Nellie. And on the terrible day when Dad had been killed and her whole world had been blown apart, it had been Jack who had comforted and sheltered her. Mom could not cope and had gone to bed, and it was Jack who had looked after herself and Peter and had kept the farm running.

“Was there a big argument in the kitchen when I left?” she asked hesitantly.

“Not a bit of it,” he assured her with a smile. “You put a stop to the whole carry-on. Shiner is free to do what he wants, and we’ll all do as we see fit. So now, girlie, you keep up the learning and get to teach this poetry thing that you have in your head.”

The following morning, as she walked up the boreen from
Mossgrove to Jack’s cottage, she thought back over his advice. He was right about the studying, or “the learning” as Jack called it. But besides that, her head was full of things that she wanted to do. If she came back teaching with Uncle David, she had a dream of putting on Shakespeare in Kilmeen and bringing him alive on stage. There were so many other things that she dreamed of, such as poetry readings, book clubs and plays. It would be lovely if they had a little theatre in the village. She had not discussed the details with anyone because she was afraid of getting her dream punctured. She was determined to hold on to that dream.

Toby was waiting at the gate of Jack’s cottage, and he went wild with delight at the sight of her. He was there every morning and evening without fail. “Toby, I think that you have a watch,” she told him as she leaned in over the gate to rub behind his ears. Jack’s haggard was full of scratching hens, quacking ducks and the gander holding court with his two geese in the far corner. It was a hive of activity. Jack had the gate into his vegetable plot wired along the bottom, but when everything was harvested in the autumn, the fowl got the run of the entire acre and were delighted with the extra territory. This morning they were engaged in their different pursuits around the small yard.

As she walked down the hill towards Nolan’s, she went over in her mind the poetry that she had learned off the night before. One morning the previous week she had been so intent on doing this that she had not realised that she was reciting out loud until an amused Sarah Jones had looked out over the small white gate in front of her well-kept cottage. Now she stopped to call good morning to grey-haired Sarah, who was feeding her hens in a corner of her well-manicured garden.
Sarah was a close friend of Jack’s and had been of Nana Nellie, and Nora knew that Sarah often called to Jack’s cottage to feed his hens and ducks if for any reason he was delayed in Mossgrove. She always wore a floral coat overall that somehow wrapped Sarah up in a small, clean, happy package. Now she looked questioningly at Nora’s bag of books.

“That’s a heavy load of books for a young one to be dragging along with her,” she said sympathetically, leaning over the gate.

“I don’t always have so many,” Nora told her, “but today all the subjects are on.”

“You’re a great girl,” Sarah assured her, “and I won’t delay you now because Rosie will be out at the gate waiting.”

“Rosie is never waiting,” Nora said. “She is always running after herself at the last minute.”

Sarah smiled with understanding as she slipped her hand into the pocket of her apron and produced a bar of chocolate. “You can share this between the two of you on the way in the road,” Sarah told her.

“That’s great,” Nora said, even though privately she thought that she might be getting a bit too old for this kind of thing. Ever since she was a little girl, Jack and Nana Nellie had always pulled small treats out of their pockets. Over the years since Nana Nellie had died, Sarah had slipped into her shoes. Sarah was very friendly with her other grandmother, Nana Agnes. These two women and Jack were the pillars of her life.

As she approached Nolan’s gate, she was surprised that Rosie was waiting, and she could see from her face that she was bubbling with excitement.

“You’re late,” Rosie accused.

“I’m not,” Nora protested. “I’m always later than this and
you’re never out at the gate.”

“Well, this morning is different,” Rosie announced.

“I know by your face that you have news about something. Your face tells everything that’s behind it.”

“Isn’t it terrible the way that I can’t keep anything to myself,” Rosie lamented, “because even though I might not want to tell it, my face tells the whole story before I open my mouth.”

“But look at it this way,” Nora comforted her, “you’d make a great actress because your face would be full of expression, and it will help with your singing too.”

“You’re a great comfort to me,” Rosie laughed, giving Nora a clap on the back.

“My God, Rosie, you’re as strong as a horse,” Nora told her, wincing under Rosie’s exuberance.

“Don’t say that,” Rosie protested. “You know that I’m trying to lose weight and become tall and willowy like you.”

“But, Rosie, you’re lovely and curvy, and all the lads think that you’re gorgeous.”

“I’m not interested in all the lads, only one, and he lives in a house where he has a mother like a model and a sister like a hunter, so he’s used to being surrounded by elegant females.”

“But why would Peter want a girlfriend like his mother or his sister?” Nora asked her.

“Don’t know,” Rosie sighed, “but whatever he wants, I must not have it because he treats me like he treats you.”

“But, Rosie, your brother Jeremy treats me like he treats you.”

“And that’s grand for you because you have no interest in Jeremy,” Rosie wailed, “but you know I’ve always had this big crush on Peter. I’ve had it for as far back as I can remember.”

“Don’t know what you see in him,” Nora said dismissively, thinking that compared with Uncle David Peter was as dull as ditch water, “but Aunty Kate says that boys are slower to develop than girls, and anyway you want to be a showband singer, so you will need time to concentrate on that.”

“Well, that’s rich coming from you and you ramming it down my throat every day to forget about singing and concentrate on my exams,” Rosie protested.

“Well, I didn’t mean to forget it altogether,” Nora explained; “just wait until the exams are over. Then you might be the next female Elvis. Did you hear him last night on Radio Luxembourg? He was on just after six.”

“No,” Rosie wailed. “Dad was in from the cows and wanted to hear the bloody news on Radio Éireann. Being an Elvis fan in our house isn’t easy. Mom is more interested in Din Joe than Elvis.”

“Same with my crowd,” Nora assured her, “but I suppose you were better studying instead of listening to Elvis.”

“You are so bloody sensible you make me sick,” Rosie told her in disgust.

“You don’t think that I’m sensible when I talk about my poetry plans,” Nora protested.

“Well, that’s your blind spot, and we are all entitled to one,” Rosie assured her blithely, “but now to get back to my news.”

“What is it?” Nora demanded, even though she knew from experience that Rosie was not going to just tell her straight out.

Rosie stood in the middle of the road, drawing herself up to her full five feet four, and with outstretched hands announced in a dramatic voice: “We are going to have a youth club in Kilmeen.”

Her announcement had the desired effect. Nora came to a standstill with a delighted look of amazement on her face.
“Wow,” she gasped, “that’s great! How do you know?”

“Well, that’s the embarrassing bit,” Rosie told her reluctantly.

“It must be to make you blush,” Nora declared.

“Well, this will sound worse than it really was,” Rosie assured her.

“Stop hedging and out with it,” Nora instructed.

“Why are you so damn honourable?” Rosie protested. “It always makes me feel so bad if I have to confess that I did something dodgy.”

“Come on,” Nora persisted.

“I listened outside your Aunt Kate’s door.”

“You what!”

“Well, it actually sounds worse that it really was,” Rosie protested. “You know that I had a maths grind with your Uncle David yesterday evening? Well, when I got to the door it was open, so I just pushed it in and before I could call out or ring the bell I heard him, Fr Brady, and Kate talking about the youth club. My ears stuck out, and before I knew what I was doing I was listening. I was glued to the floor with curiosity, and then I was stuck because I couldn’t go in as they’d know I was listening. So I had to steal out quietly and ring the bell and pretend that I had just arrived. I felt a bit bad about it, but it was worth it because now we know and can be prepared.”

“For what?” Nora demanded.

“To bag the important corners, and run the club our way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nora, sometimes I despair of you,” Rosie wailed. “What good is a youth club if we have a collection of old fogies or, worse still, a gang of yobs running it?”

“So we’ll be running it?” Nora asked.

“You got it! And the first thing on the agenda is a dance in the hall on Easter Sunday night,” Rosie declared.

“But how will we manage that?” Nora demanded.

“You just watch me!” Rosie told her.

J
ACK OPENED THE
rusty gate into the farmyard of Furze Hill. He stood for a long time surveying the scene in front of him. It was Sunday evening and he knew that Danny was playing a match with the Kilmeens, and he had come now because he needed time on his own to walk around and get a feel of the place, to form a plan. When the lad would eventually come to him, he wanted to have some ideas in his head. Since Kate had spoken about helping Danny, he had thought of nothing else. When he was a young fellow himself, he had always been grateful to old Edward Phelan for his encouragement. The old man had always talked over his suggestions and sometimes improved on them, and they had implemented their plan together. In this way they had improved Mossgrove. But it would be a big undertaking to turn Furze Hill around, especially when the cash flow was non-existent, although he had brought Mossgrove back on track himself after Billy had died, and money was scarce then too.

Now, as he looked around the yard, he realised that Mossgrove had never sunk this low. There was not one decent farm building in the yard. But the entire yard was well brushed and clean, and all the overgrowth and briars that he remembered since the day of Matt Conway’s funeral were cleared away, and the stone wall of the piggery just left of the gate was almost entirely rebuilt. It was obvious that Danny was making a huge effort to bring the place around. To have done this much in so short a time told of dogged hard work.

He inspected the piggery that was being restored and decided that Danny was getting that right, but when the walls were finished he would have to put in a new door instead of the broken iron bedhead that was serving as a makeshift door now. That door must make feeding the pigs a tough undertaking. Now the pigs, hearing the footsteps outside, were presuming that it was feeding time and were screeching and poking their snouts out through the bars of the bedhead. He could only imagine what a job it must be trying to get in through that contraption with the pigs screaming for food and jumping on you.

Next was the hen house, which was a bit of a shambles, but then hens had the ability to function in any kind of a
thrown-together
situation. They were scratching around happily, but laying boxes and perches seemed to be in short supply. Jack knew from watching Martha in action in Mossgrove that a well-
set-up
and organised laying unit repaid well, and he remembered that Nellie’s egg money had sometimes kept Mossgrove floating when times were tough. So something would need to be done to improve things here. This hen house needed to be enlarged and reroofed. As he went slowly along, he was doing mental
arithmetic as to the absolute minimal cost of turning things around.

Next on his pathway was the dwelling house. At right angles to the hen house, which made it the building that faced you as you came in the gate, was the long low house which, in the Barrys’ time, had been an old cow house. Conway had not even bothered to roof it properly. With its rusty galvanised iron, it must be bitterly cold in winter, and there had to be leaks. Windows that had been broken over the years were patched with bits of wood, and even the front door had been chewed at the bottom by his dogs and must cause freezing draughts on windy nights. Molly Barry had called it “the poke”. Looking at it now, he decided that she was right. Crazy Conway had moved his family in here and left a fine house empty. As he stood looking at the house where he knew a lot of family trauma had been endured, the seed of an idea ignited in Jack’s mind. But because the idea was so impractical, he was reluctant to let it come to the surface.

He continued onwards to the adjoining cow houses, where he decided that a few slates here and there was all that was needed, and again a rebuilding of sagging walls. But there was no proper calf house, and they were wedged in behind the cows, overcrowded and uncomfortable, which was a far from healthy situation. When they saw him they pushed and struggled with each other to try to reach the door, but there was very little room to even stand. Strong healthy calves could not be produced in such an environment, and that was good money going down the drain.

At right angles to these stalls were the stables, which he decided were not fit to house any kind of horse. Next was the
hay barn with its rusty sagging roof in which well-saved hay was bound to rot. He was now back to the gate, having gone all around the square yard. Then he retraced his footsteps to a hidden archway that stood between the barn and the stables. This archway told the story of how things used to be in Furze Hill. Through this archway, the Barrys had come into their farmyard from the walled garden that surrounded their old family home. Now the whole archway was overgrown with bushes and briars, and there was no sight of the house that must be buried inside. He remembered hearing that old Conway had fenced the entire place in with thorny wire to keep his own family and everyone else out. Few could understand his reasoning. He had proclaimed that he wanted to avoid paying the high rates on the big house, but most of the neighbours felt that he wanted to get back at Molly for a marriage gone sour.

Having calculated that he could not get in through the archway, Jack walked out the yard gate and a little way along the road by the high stone wall to what used to be the entrance to the old house. The rusted gates were smothered in briars blinding any sighting of what might be inside. He stood there trying to imagine the way it used to be. Then slowly, in the deep recesses of his mind, a buried memory began to stir. He was a little boy holding his mother’s hand and staring across a flower garden at a blue door of a big house clothed in ivy. The picture must have imprinted itself on the back pages of his mind. But now all was changed, buried in a scene of choked abandonment.

He returned to the yard and found a slasher, a hatchet and saw, and bringing them back he reached up and put them on top of the high wall. Having levered himself up by digging his
toe caps between the stones, he sat astride the wall and began to slash a hole in the thick undergrowth beside the stone pillar. When he had finally made an opening, he eased himself down inside the wall and arched his back low to get between the strands of thorny wire. It seemed like an impenetrable jungle, but he began to cut his way through. Briars tore his face as he wielded the slasher to create an opening through them. He used his saw and hatchet to remove the many interwoven branches that barred his way like a hedge. At times he wondered if he was ever going to get anywhere and occasionally had to sit down on a sawn-off branch to get his breath. His shirt clung to his back with perspiration, and the thought crossed his mind that if his dodgy heart decided to give up that he would never be found in here. But he kept on determinedly and finally, when he was beginning to think that his energy was not going to see him through, he reached what he judged to be the wall of the house. He leant against it in relief. Guided more by touch than direction, he inspected the wall and reached what could be a window, but he was not sure because it was sheeted over. By God, he thought to himself, this place was left well protected by old man Phelan. He kept walking in what he hoped was the general direction of the front door and was proved right when the wall suddenly disappeared and he stepped back into a alcoves. The front door was recessed back under an archway that had saved it from the worst of the elements. The thought that had come to him earlier kept floating into his mind, and although he would not allow himself to entertain it, it kept coming back.

He realised that he was exhausted and decided that it was time to go home. He needed to sit down and with the calm light
of reason slowly think the whole thing through. He retraced his way back through his burrowed pathway and replaced the tools in the barn and cycled home. As he passed by the village, he heard cheering from the pitch and wondered how the boys were doing. He hoped that Danny was having a good game. No doubt he would hear it all from Shiner and Peter in the morning.

After he had his tea, he sat looking out the window at his much-loved view, but he was not seeing Nolan’s cows in the field in front of his cottage or the village in the valley with its elegant steeple glinting grey in the early March sunlight. Instead his mind was across the river in Furze Hill. He was rearranging the farmyard and planning the best strategy with which to approach the entire project. But despite his best efforts to quell it, there was growing determinedly at the back of his mind an idea that he had already decided was not feasible. Finally he went to the drawer of his dresser and took out an old writing pad and rooted around in the bottom of the drawer until he found a pencil.

“Jack lad,” he told himself, “it’s tough lines when you are turning to pencil and paper to straighten out your thinking. Bad sign of the head!”

He made a list of expenses, but he was not too worried about these as Kate had said that Danny had shown her a list of what he had envisaged everything would cost him, and the lad was bound to have got all that right down to the last penny. At the same time, he would feel more on top of the job if he had his own costings, though it was the overall plan that was really bothering him. Old man Phelan had always advised having a planned strategy and doing it step by step rather than working in starts
and stops. With no plan, he had warned, you spent much more and ended up with a higgledy-piggedly conclusion, that was if you ever really reached a conclusion. So Furze Hill needed an overall plan, and that was why all ideas, feasible or otherwise, had to be incorporated from the beginning or not at all.

He was so immersed in his thoughts that he did not see Kate pass by the window, so when she pushed open the door she took him by surprise.

“Good God, Kate,” he told her in a startled voice, “you frightened the life out of me.”

“Jack, I looked in passing the window and it was as if you were in another world.”

“I was,” he smiled, “over in Furze Hill.”

“Oh,” she said with delight, “so Danny called.”

“No, but I’m getting ready for him,” he told her.

“But how?” she asked doubtfully.

“Well,” he told her slowly, “I went over there this evening and…”

“But Danny was playing a match today,” she broke in.

“I knew that,” he told her. “That’s why I went over, because I wanted to think things out in my own time.”

“Oh, I see,” she smiled in understanding. “That’s you all out, Jack; do it quietly in your own way, take your time and iron out all the wrinkles in advance.”

“Only this time I think that instead of ironing out wrinkles I might be creating a very big one, and I’m not sure if I should go down that road or not.”

“Oh,” Kate said in a surprised voice, “that’s not like you. Do you need a ‘Johnny sound all’?”

It was an expression they had picked up from David that he
used in the classroom to test if something had got through to the entire class. There would be one student who was neither too bright nor too slow, and if he got it the chances were that most of them had it.

“Well, I suppose you’re as good a ‘Johnny’ as I’m going to get,” he said heavily.

“Thanks for nothing,” she told him smartly, seating herself in the rocking chair in front of the fire and patting his own armchair. “Come over here to the fire. It’s getting too dusky now to be peering out the window, and anyway you always say that you think better looking into the fire.”

He sat into his chair and took out his pipe as Kate poked the fire and put on extra logs and, having settled herself comfortably, turned to him questioningly.

“Now what has you in such a quandary?” she demanded.

“Well,” he told her, “I went over to Furze Hill today with a certain plan of action in my head.”

“Not a good thing,” she assured him. “Perceived ideas blind you to new possibilities.”

“That’s just it,” he told her in surprise, “but this new idea that has forced itself into my mind is a bit preposterous.”

“Spit it out, as you say yourself, and I’ll soon tell you.”

“Well, Kate, when I stood in front of the Conway house, a thought came into my head from the Lord only knows where.”

“Jack, will you for goodness sakes just say what it is and stop meandering on about its source and how outrageous it is,” she demanded.

“That Danny Conway should move back into the old home,” he blurted out.

Kate looked at him in amazement but said nothing for a few
seconds, and then she nodded her head.

“Do you know something, Jack,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “that’s a bloody brilliant idea.”

“But it’s the practicalities that I’m worried about,” he told her.

“Well, whatever about the practicalities of the matter,” Kate declared, “it would be great for the Conways. Give them a whole new sense of themselves. The poke, as Molly called it, can only be full of bad memories.”

“You’re right there, but you know something, Kate, I was not even thinking along those lines. I was totally taken up with planning the yard as well and economically as I could, and then this idea came from nowhere and…”

“Not from nowhere, Jack,” Kate asserted smilingly. “That was old Molly Barry. You always had great time for her, and she saw her chance!”

“Could be,” he agreed ruefully. “I’m around too long now to question the power of unknown elements at work.”

“Would it make things that much more expensive?” Kate asked.

“I’ve been doing my sums, and it might not, you know. Because he badly needs a new calf house, and that would solve that problem because he could use the poke, so he would be saved from building that. Of course, it will all depend on the condition of Furze Hill itself. It has been locked up for years.”

“I never even saw it,” Kate told him. “Never knew for years that there was anything inside in that grove of trees.”

“The whole place is completely closed in,” Jack said, “but when I was over today I got as far as the front door with the help of a slasher, and do you know something? I was pleasantly
surprised at the condition of the place.”