House of Memories (7 page)

Gently Danny moved his hands over the door. Behind this door was all that Nana Molly had lost and had pined for right up to the day she died. Many times she had told him stories about this house. Now at last he was here, and he was not sure if it was the memories of the past or the hopes for the future that were causing the tumult of emotions churning in him.

“He is dead almost a year now,” Danny whispered, “but I never came in here since he died. I could have come, but I didn’t. Was it guilt?”

“The time was not right,” Jack assured him. “You have gone through a lot, lad, and the mind can only cope with so much at one time.”

“You knew that she did it?” he asked.

“I thought that she might have,” Jack told him.

“I could have saved him,” Danny said.

“But sometimes life steps in and we can only stand back and allow things to take their course.”

“She had nerves of steel,” Danny said quietly.

“He went a step too far when he attacked Nora,” Jack told him, “and sooner or later she would have got him. You could not have prevented the inevitable.”

Now Danny dragged away some of the overhanging greenery and viewed the heavy old door with a hundred questions running
through his mind. This was the door that his grandmother used every day when she was his age, and from all the stories that she told him, he knew that she had loved this place and been happy here. When she had had to lock it up and walk away from it, she had left the best part of her life behind her. He stood back and looked up at the arched fanlight.

“There is not even a crack in the glass,” he whispered in an awed voice.

“Nobody would dare come near this place with your father and his dogs,” Jack told him, “so everything will be just as it was left, with only the passage of time doing any harm.”

“Everything will probably have rotted with damp and dust,” Danny decided.

“Maybe not,” Jack told him. “This was a fine, sound, well-built house.”

“But, Jack, it’s been closed up for years,” Danny protested.

“Well, we’ll find out when we get inside,” Jack told him.

“It seems to be locked up solid,” Danny declared. He gave the door a firm push but it remained motionless. They went back to a window that was boarded up on the outside. When Danny prised away a piece of the weathered timber and peered in, he discovered that the window was boarded up on the inside as well.

“We will go around to the back,” Jack decided, “because there is no hope of getting in the windows without damaging them, and that would be a shame.”

“The place is like a bloody fortress,” Danny declared. “’Twas locked up with the intention of it never again being reopened.”

“Don’t think so,” Jack said thoughtfully. “This place was locked up by two very different men. At the time they were
friends, but they had very different reasons for turning this place into a fortress, as you call it. Your grandfather Rory Conway wanted rid of the place and could not lock it up tight enough, but his friend Edward Phelan wanted to preserve it. He had tried to persuade your grandfather not to leave this house, but when he failed in that he wanted to preserve it for your grandmother’s sake because he knew she dreamed that one day she would return. In later years, of course, the split between the two men happened and Molly turned against the Phelans, but she never gave up on her dream of one day coming back here.”

“But though she fell out with the Phelans,” Danny said, “in another way she admired them, especially Kate.”

“You’re right there,” Jack said breathlessly as they forced their way through briars and branches along the side of the house. They finally rounded a corner and found the back door, but that too was as impenetrable as the front and had sheets of corrugated iron nailed to the outside.

“By God,” Danny declared, “there is no getting in this way either.”

“I can see old Edward Phelan’s hand at work all over the this place,” Jack said with a smile on his face. “No short cuts were taken with this job. It was done to mind the house and to stand the test of time, and it has done all of that.”

“How the hell are we going to get in?” Danny wanted to know.

“Well, we’re not going to break in like common thieves,” Jack declared. “The man that took such care in the closing up of this house deserves that we take the same care in getting back in.”

“But how?” Danny demanded.

“There must be a key,” Jack declared.

“A key after all these years,” Danny gasped. “Sure, that’s daft.”

“Not so daft,” Jack told him. “I’d say that your grandmother locked that door and took the key with her.”

“But where the hell could it be now?” Danny demanded.

“Did your grandmother have anything belonging to this place over in the poke?” Jack asked.

“I don’t think so,” Danny said, slowly trying to think back over the years of all his grandmother’s stories. Sometimes he was only half listening to her, but he felt sure that she had never mentioned a key.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I’m not, but I think that I’d remember if she ever mentioned a key,” Danny said slowly.

“I’m not talking about a key,” Jack said impatiently. “I’m talking about a press or furniture or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Danny said with surprise, “there was the bed. A big monstrosity of a timber bed where we all slept with her at different times when we were small. It was in that bed she died.”

“So the chances are that the key is stuck somewhere in that old bed.”

“Holy God, Jack, it couldn’t be, because after she died my father tore it asunder looking for money, and all he found were diaries, and then he burnt the diaries and the mattress because he said that it smelt of piss. Not that it was the real reason because, as you probably know, bad smells did not exactly bother him, but he burnt everything.”

“And probably the history of half the parish with them,” Jack concluded, “but that key is somewhere, and we must find it,
because that was the way she would have wanted it.”

“How do you know?” Danny asked, mystified.

“Because my old bones tell me, and I always listen to my bones,” Jack told him.

“Well, I’ll listen to your bones as well,” he decided, “because from what I can see they have never led you astray.”

Later, when Jack had gone home, Danny walked slowly back into the yard. He looked around at the dilapidated farm buildings, but in his head there was now a different picture. Jack’s plan had taken shape in his mind. This was all going to be transformed. There was no more money now than yesterday, but he had a plan and a belief that it was possible. A new sense of excitement was throbbing through him. He was going to turn the tide of bad fortune that had flowed over Furze Hill since his grandmother had left the old house. Now they were going to go back there and have a whole new beginning. His mother would have a new life. It was good to feel that the tide was about to turn. He whistled happily to himself as he approached the open kitchen door. But as he came through the doorway, the tune choked in his throat. Rory was sitting in his father’s chair.

K
ATE SAT IN
the ticket office of the village hall. The small, cramped corner where forgotten coats and cardigans had accumulated over the years hardly deserved the title ticket office, but it occupied one side of the short passage into the main hall, from which it was divided by a timber partition incorporating a small sliding perspex door and through this opening tickets were doled out and money taken in for any functions in the hall, which were mostly local concerts or travelling shows. The one advantage the ticket office had was a raised floor and a window running the entire length of the side looking down into the hall, so that the occupants had full view down over all the activities going on inside. This was a compensation for long hours doling out tickets to latecomers. It was Kate’s first time in charge here for a dance. She was still a bit surprised that she had let herself be talked into it, but Rosie had coaxed and conjoled, assuring her that it would give the first effort of the youth club an air of mature
responsibility to have herself and Fr Brady at the door. It would reassure parents who were dubious of this new enterprise run solely by the young teenagers. With this Kate had to agree. On her rounds of the parish she had to reassure many doubting parents that this was going to be a well-run club that would be of great benefit to their sons and daughters, who had often complained of the lack of entertainment for their own age group. Many of these parents were prepared to go on listening to the complaints, believing that what was good enough for them was good enough for the young ones, but Rosie had no intention of listening to them.

Kate had been impressed as Rosie had taken the idea of the youth club on board with enthusiasm. Even at the very first meeting, she had stage-managed the whole thing so that she had been nominated and voted in as chairman before most of the others had settled into their seats. Kate suspected that Rosie had lined up her brother Jeremy, Nora, Peter and Davey to get her into the chair as fast as possible, from where she could mastermind her strategy. She had planned this dance with meticulous detail, putting up posters all over the parish. A local band who normally played for parish events was set aside, and an outside group with more appeal to the young, but costing double the price, was engaged. Rosie was prepared to take her chance that the more trendy band would bring in a bigger crowd and so cover the higher expenses. This had raised a few disapproving eyebrows, but Rosie backed off the opposition in her determination to make life more exciting in Kilmeen.

Now she was busy in the middle of the dance floor scattering crystals around. Kate smiled as she watched her waltz in a circle by herself, testing the smoothness of the floor, and then, not
satisfied, gave it another swish of crystals. Kate drew back the shutter and called down, “Easy on the crystals, Rosie, or you’ll turn it into a skating rink and they’ll all crack their necks slithering around on it.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Rosie called back. “Once we have a crowd in I don’t care. If I can’t make the price of this band, I’ll be listening to ‘I told you so’s’ for the rest of my life. Will we have a crowd, do you think?” she finished worriedly.

“You will,” Kate assured her. “They’ll be hanging off the rafters.”

“God, I hope you’re right,” Rosie said grimly, “but where the hell are the others? They were all supposed to be here before nine to get everything ready before the band came on stage.”

“They’re coming, they’re coming,” Kate called down to her as Nora and Peter appeared in front of the hatch.

“I suppose you’re free,” she asked them, “as you’re on the committee?”

“No such luck,” Peter informed her. “Madam Chairman passed a resolution at the last meeting that everybody pays, and you’re lucky if it does not include you for the pleasure of collecting the money.”

“At least, Aunty Kate, you’ll get to see all the action from your little cubby hole,” Nora grinned in at her.

“I doubt that there will be much action,” Peter said dismissively, opening the door into the hall. “This is Kilmeen, you know.”

When he had gone through, Nora looked at Kate anxiously. “Do I look all right, Aunty Kate?”

“Stand back a bit so that I can see you properly.”

Nora stood back against the wall holding out the sides of her
flowing skirt. In her white dress scattered with pink roses and its little standing-up collar and puff sleeves, she looked so young and vulnerable that Kate felt a lump in her throat.

“Do I look like a bit of a baby?” Nora wanted to know. “Mom made the dress, and I know that it’s perfect, but is it too childish for a dance?”

Kate wanted to run out and put reassuring arms around her but knew that it would be the wrong thing to do. Tonight Nora wanted to feel grown up, and the last thing she would appreciate was to be treated like a little girl.

“You look just right: cool and inviting like a breath of fresh air,” Kate assured her, and a more relaxed Nora followed Peter into the hall where Rosie immediately had them dimming lights and testing the crystal ball that she had procured in Ross during the week. She had confessed to Kate that it had cost more than she had dared mention at the meeting. She would tell them that when they had made a profit at the dance. If they made a profit!

“For God’s sake, Rosie, we can’t keep the lights that low,” Peter protested, “or we’ll be all falling over each other. At least give us fellows a chance to see what we are dancing with.”

“Peter, I’m trying to create an atmosphere,” Rosie wailed.

“There is atmosphere and there is half dark,” Peter complained.

As Kate listened to them arguing back and forth about lighting and angles, she heard a screech of brakes outside the hall and looked out to see a black van with orange writing along the side screaming “The Vikings”. The band had arrived. They poured out of the van with a clatter of instruments and black boxes. Kate smiled as she viewed their quiffed haircuts and white satin suits. Kilmeen had never seen anything like these.
Where had Rosie found them? But knowing Rosie, the chances were that they were super musicians. These were going to be a big change from Tom Murphy and his middle-aged group of violin and accordion players. There appeared to be about six of them in all, and as they came towards the hall they were almost obscured by their large instruments and leads draped over their shoulders and the heavy black boxes they carried between them. Kate dashed out to hold the inside door open for them. They packed the narrow corridor with their gear, and she breathed a sigh of relief when everything seemed to fit and they made it through into the hall where they were able to spread out and approach the stage like a tidal wave.

It took about an an hour to get all their gear up and do test runs on the stage, and during that time Rosie made several visits to the door to see if there was any activity outside. She was not reassured by what she saw, and in her desperation she confessed to Kate what the band was costing and the minimum number she needed in the hall to clear all her expenses. Kate was gobsmacked by the price of the band but did her best to hide her dismay from Rosie.

Finally the band were ready, and the first blast of sound hit the hall. Kate felt the walls shudder around her and thought that she could be blown across the road by the force of the music. Were they a good band? She honestly did not know. All she knew was that she had never heard the likes of it before. But it had some magic, because faces began to appear in front of her, and soon a queue filled the little corridor and quickly backed out into the street. She was glad when Fr Tim arrived, and the two of them doled out tickets and took in money so fast that there was no time to do or think of anything only keeping
the queue moving. Finally there was a lull and they looked at each other in disbelief.

“Phew,” Kate grinned, “that was some avalanche! Where the hell did they all come from?”

“Apparently the Vikings are a big name out there with the young ones,” Fr Tim told her. “I’ve asked around, and they are the new rock and roll wonder band.”

“Well, Rosie got it right,” Kate said, “and I’m delighted for her, because she took a big chance.”

“I think that Rosie will always take chances,” Fr Tim smiled. “That girl likes excitement and challenge.”

And with that the door out of the hall burst open, and Rosie was dancing around in front of their little office. She was glowing with achievement, and her blonde hair that had started the night in an elegant knot on top of her head had now fallen down around her shoulders, and her bright red dress showed patches of perspiration under her arms. She was a picture of vibrancy and delight.

“We made it! We made it!” she chanted. “We’re home and dry with money to spare.”

“Well done,” Kate said warmly, “and now we must make sure that everything goes well and that they all go home having had a great night. That will send out the right signal about the new club.”

“But why wouldn’t they?” Rosie asked in surprise, looking down through the glass partition into the hall. “They’re all having a ball.”

Kate had to agree with her as she looked in over the scene of swirling young bodies who seemed to be able to achieve any conceivable dancing angle a supple body could master.

“I’m glad that they stopped coming,” Kate said, “because you would not like to refuse anybody, but to let in any more could be dangerous.”

“Oh, I never thought of it like that. I just thought that if the crowd got any bigger that we wouldn’t have enough room to enjoy the dancing,” Rosie told her happily, pointing down to where Nora and Danny Conway were clapping their hands in the air and dancing in an energetic circle of movement. “You need space to dance properly to the Vikings. They are an art form in themselves,” she enthused, “and whoever would have thought that Danny Conway could move like that? He is full of rhythm. It’s so good for Danny to forget that bloody farm for a change; he was turning into an old man before his time. And now I must test Peter Phelan’s rhythm,” Rosie declared and disappeared back into the hall.

“I’ve a feeling,” Kate told Fr Tim ruefully, “that I’m gone over the hill. The energy that’s being expended down in that hall makes me feel old just watching it.”

“They’re great, aren’t they?” he said enthusiastically. “You know, I really miss dancing. I just loved it. That crowd in there are having the time of their lives, and I don’t think that we’ll have a bother in the world with them. I’d say that they’re all in now so we can relax. One of us should take a break. Why don’t you walk down home and have a cup of tea with David, and then I’ll go when you come back.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kate told him, but just as she got up from her chair there was movement outside the hatch. She heard Fr Tim’s quick intake of breath and she opened the door to find Kitty Conway smiling up at her. Kitty’s rich auburn hair fell in profusion down around her small golden-brown elfin
face, and her green scanty dress matched exactly the colour of her green eyes. The short clinging dress displayed her beautifully shapely legs, and her golden strapped sandals were the most elegant that Kate had ever seen. She was stunning.

“Kitty, how lovely to see you,” she said warmly. She knew what Kitty had endured as a young girl and was glad to see her looking so beautiful. Kitty Conway was going to create quite a stir when she made her entrance into the hall, and Kate had a tiny suspicion that Kitty had come late with just that in mind. She was delighted that Kitty was here, but her delight was
short-lived
when a dark form came in the door behind her and she turned around to be confronted by Rory Conway.

“Hello, Rory,” she said quietly.

“Huh,” he grunted at her, and she could smell drink from him.

“Well, go ahead and enjoy yourselves,” she told them, and she noticed that it was Kitty who paid for the two tickets. When they had gone in, she returned to her seat by Fr Tim.

“I think that I’ll stay put,” she told him grimly. “Why do I always smell trouble when I see Rory Conway?”

“I don’t think that he can cause any trouble here,” Fr Tim assured her.

As Kate had expected, all eyes in the hall turned towards Kitty Conway. She stood alone and composed just inside the door. Rory disappeared into the crowd of men at the other side of the hall. Kate had thought that when the music started up there would be a rush in Kitty’s direction, but it did not happen. She realised that many of the young fellows were too self-conscious to break ranks, and Kate was just beginning to worry about her when Peter strode forward, and after a short chat they danced
into the crowd. Good for you, Peter, she thought. But her satisfaction was short-lived when, after succeeding dances, they stood side by side, then danced again, and it looked as if they were going to spend the entire night together. If word of this got home to Martha, there would be hell to pay. She had been so intent on Kitty and Peter that she had forgotten the other dancers, and suddenly her eye was caught by Rosie, who was looking daggers at the pair in the middle of the floor. Poor Rosie, who had decided that Peter was going to be the love of her life. Kate turned to Fr Tim and surprised him by singing, in Maurice Chevalier tones, “I’m glad I’m not young any more.”

“You’ve changed your tune pretty fast,” he told her.

“You know, when you look at the young enjoying themselves you forget about the accompanying pain, but looking down there I can see Rosie suffering,” she said.

“Nora and Danny seem to be having a great time,” he remarked.

“Nora loves dancing,” Kate told him, “and I’d say that she is delighted with Danny’s skill on the floor. At least I hope that’s all it is, because one complication is enough not to mind having two to cope with.”

“You’re probably right about Nora, though I’d not be so sure about Danny,” Fr Tim said.

“Oh, thank goodness, Davey Shine is after asking Kitty to dance,” Kate said, watching the action down on the dance floor. “It might break that up for a bit anyway.”

“Shiner is always on the lookout for Peter,” Fr Tim smiled. “Maybe he thought that Peter needed breathing space.”