Promised Land (4 page)

Ella stopped her questions, suddenly awkward remembering that he had never found the time over all those years to visit home.

Liam blushed slightly and she knew he had read her thoughts.

She filled him in with small talk of the neighbours and locality as they drove the rest of the way, directing him through the town of Wexford towards the small local hospital. She could sense his nervousness at the thought of his impending visit to their father. She had no pity for him. The prodigal had returned, and she could only witness their first meeting.

Chapter Four

THEIR FATHER WAS
awake. Ella was very relieved to see his eyes open and take in the sight of Liam standing at the end of the bed. Agitated, Martin tried to speak, to express all the words lost to them over the past number of years. However the stroke had left his speech useless and unintelligible.

‘Hush, Daddy! Liam’s here, he knows you’re glad to see him.’

‘It’s all right, Daddy, I’m back! Everything’s going to be all right.’

Ella noticed her brother neither made any apology nor gave any reason for his long years away. Martin Kennedy’s eyes raked over his son’s features as if trying to reconcile the man who sat beside him with the angry young lad who had run away to England years before.

Clumsily father and son embraced. Seeing him circled in Liam’s arms made her realize how frail their father had become, how wasted his muscles. He took a grip of Liam’s hand and would not let it
go
, her brother sitting hunched over on the edge of the hospital bed. Once or twice her father tried to speak, the two of them bending close trying to decipher what he was saying.

‘Is it about the farm, Daddy?’ sighed Ella, running her fingers over his cheekbones, wondering what he was so concerned about. ‘Don’t be worrying about the farm, Daddy, everything is fine there, honest to God it is.’

‘Ella,’ he kept repeating. She could tell how fretful her father was; seeing Liam had obviously upset him, and he must be frustrated from trying to tell them something and not being understood. She hated seeing him in such a state, the saliva dripping from his lips and at times barely able to swallow it.

‘’Tis all right Daddy, Liam and I are here together. All we want is for you to get well again,’ she said, trying to soothe him.

Her father looked exhausted, all the colour drained from his face, with the effort of trying to talk to them. They passed the rest of the afternoon by his bedside, the nursing staff diplomatically ignoring them. For the most part Martin slept and the two of them kept a vigil, reminiscing about life at Fintra and filling each other in about their lives.

They talked and talked. She wondered if their father heard. At times he opened his eyes and twice they welled with tears. Ella, unsure if he was crying or not, wiped them away and gently kissed his forehead. The hours dragged by and the other
visitors
began to trickle into the ward, laughter and noise disturbing the earlier peace. Martin snored heavily, his face turned to one side, his grip finally loosened.

‘We should go home,’ she suggested. ‘He’s too tired, Liam. We’ll come back in again tonight.’

Driving home Ella reflected that she was glad to have her brother back; at least there was someone else to share the worry of her father’s illness, and make the house a little less lonesome. She knew that Liam must be weighed down with guilt and regret after seeing the old man, but she was not prepared to comfort and absolve him of the neglect he’d inflicted.

Back home, she was glad to busy herself with routine chores, checking on the ewes and lambs and filling the water troughs, with Liam insistent on helping her. He hadn’t a clue about farming and seemed to have almost forgotten anything he’d ever learned.

‘I’m used to being away at sea, Ella, but just you wait, I’ll get my land legs back!’

The seed potatoes were ready to go down, and the top field needed turning. At least Liam would be able to give her a hand with some of the jobs. Ella set the table for three and prepared a simple meal of ham with potatoes, cabbage and carrots. She’d no time to be making fancy desserts and was glad of her aunt’s confection in the pantry, serving
the
tart with a dollop of cream. Carmel praised her cooking and once again offered to clear away the plates and do the washing-up afterwards; Ella made no objection as she pointed out where everything was stored to her new sister-in-law.

Carmel came to the hospital with them later that night, as she was keen to meet her father-in-law for the first time. She pinned up part of her hair, and patted her face with tinted powder, and used a cheerful red lipstick to make her lips look even fuller and bigger. She pulled a shiny silk red and ginger scarf from her handbag and wrapped it gaily round her neck. She suddenly appeared much younger and prettier than she had first seemed, and Ella could understand how Liam had fallen in love with her.

The English girl had hugged Martin the minute she was introduced to him, and treated him as if he were at home sitting in front of his own fire instead of an invalid confined to a hospital bed. She told him about England and how she’d been born in Liverpool, the daughter of a Galway woman who’d fallen for an English shipping clerk.

‘Five children they had, Mr Kennedy, and I’m the youngest. I like big families, coming from one myself.’

Ella could tell that her father had warmed to Liam’s wife, as he was concentrating hard trying to take in her words. He was attempting to show
some
sign of approval for his only son’s marriage. She was glad that the old man had been given the opportunity to meet this daughter-in-law.

‘So the prodigal has returned!’ murmured Una Flanagan when she heard that Liam was back home. ‘Let’s hope that he’s not left it too late to make his peace with your poor father.’

‘Daddy saw him in the hospital, Mrs Flanagan, and they seemed to be getting on just fine,’ Ella insisted loyally.

The neighbours were an inquisitive lot, wanting to know what was going on in the Kennedy household, and how long her brother was going to stay. He and his bride were the talk of the place. At Sunday Mass the whole congregation nearly fell out of their pews when Carmel and Liam walked in and sat down in the seat beside her. Carmel’s face looked white and strained and Ella was so annoyed with them all that she could have screamed at them to stop tormenting her sister-in-law. Those good Christians, staring at them over their prayer books and watching them all through the mass!

Father Hackett made mention of Liam’s return after his sermon, saying how it made a change to welcome an emigrant home instead of saying yet another farewell to a parishioner taking the boat to England.

Afterwards, outside the church, a crowd had gathered round the two of them, seeing for
themselves
how Martin Kennedy’s boy had turned out. Sean Flanagan joined them.

‘Sean, this is my brother Liam, do you remember each other?’

The two men looked at one another, Sean standing a good bit taller than her brother as they shook hands. Ella noticed the slight enmity between them.

‘I’m sure Martin’s glad to see you,’ said Sean politely. ‘You’ve been away for so long.’

‘Too long,’ agreed her brother, ‘but at least I found this wonderful lass on my travels.’ Carmel smiled as she was introduced to Sean, realizing immediately who he was and his importance in Ella’s life.

‘Sean, isn’t it great to have Liam back home,’ sighed Ella. Her brother had moved away slightly and was engrossed in conversation with the parish priest.

‘Aye, great if that’s what you call it, him turning up out of the blue when Martin’s so sick! More’s the pity he didn’t remember Martin and youself before now.’

Ella was surprised by his sarcasm and could see her brother annoyed him. A few minutes later he made some lame excuse about having to get back to the farm; Ella felt furious with him for not staying and talking to her or even offering her a lift home, wondering why Liam’s return home to Kilgarvan had upset him so.

* * *

Liam and she visited the hospital as often as they could. Ella sat and let Liam talk, and make up those lost conversations. She watched as their father slipped in and out of sleep, day by day letting go of his grip on life. The colour bleached from his face, his skin turning the colour of yellowed newspaper, shadows painting the contours of his face. Only his eyes stayed the same, piercing and blue, the eyes of a young man not ready to leave the world of earth and roots and green grass, not believing in his fate.

He died on a Tuesday, both of them bearing witness to that last breath of life.

Martin Kennedy had died with dignity in the way he wanted, he’d had full absolution and Ella was sure he was relieved to have seen his family reunited.

Afterwards she had clung to Liam, broken, craving his strength and acceptance in her wild-eyed grief. The pain of it tore her to bloody bits as she looked at that husk left behind by her father’s spirit, knowing that she would never see him again.

Good-hearted Aunt Nance and Uncle Jack had taken over, organizing the removal of the body, and the funeral. She was grateful to them for doing what was needed and expected. She had no stomach for it. Carmel had made sandwiches and baked cakes and polished, and cleaned the front parlour and hall and kitchen till they gleamed. She was grateful to this stranger who had known to do the right thing.

* * *

They had brought her father home to Fintra, laying him out in the parlour for friends and family and neighbours to pay their respects. Ella could hardly bear to be in the room with his corpse, as she still wanted to believe that he was somewhere off out in the fields working, and would appear in calling her name at any minute.

The Kennedy clan had come from every corner of the country. Her Aunt Maeve who had arrived from Edinburgh with her husband Tom. Some of her mother’s people had come too, Shipseys from West Cork. Ella was glad to see her long-lost cousins and hugged them all fiercely.

‘He was a good man!’ said Tom Brennan over again. ‘As good as you’d ever find.’

‘What a worker! From dawn to dusk, digging and ploughing and tending the animals, sure he put the rest of us to shame,’ murmured Fergus Flanagan, who had held his neighbour in high regard.

Ella took some comfort in their words. The house was packed with people and she longed for peace and quiet to grieve her father on her own. She watched as Liam went around shaking the men’s hands and introducing Carmel to their wives.

‘Blessed is the corpse that is rained on’ had been one of her father’s sayings. Well, he must be truly blessed because rain soaked the mourners
escorting
the coffin from Fintra to their parish church in Kilgarvan. She had never seen such rain, drenching rain running down the mourners’ faces, soaking coats and hair and skin, everyone having to shake themselves off like dogs as they entered the small grey stone church.

Father Hackett was there to greet them. He and Martin had been great friends and she could hear the emotion in his voice as he welcomed his old friend’s remains to the altar.

Somehow or other she had got through the funeral day. Listening to the Latin Mass, the small church packed with everyone she knew as well as old acquaintances of her father’s. Aunt Nance, wearing a navy suit, bosoms heaving, kept blowing her nose loudly as tears streamed down her plump face.

Liam sat beside her, his hand gripping the wooden church bench, his knuckles white.

Ella just sat there letting the words and the music and the smell of incense wash over her, as the rain lashed against the church windows and rattled on the roof.

It was a short walk to the parish graveyard and Ella held Liam’s hand tightly as they followed the coffin. The wet didn’t bother her, not at all. A low stone wall edged the graveyard and at one end a deep hedge of whitethorn and fuchsia clustered together. It was a peaceful spot, the gravestones standing in quiet rows. Father Hackett led them all in the prayers as they laid her father in the grave,
the
people around her snuffling and crying. She concentrated on the blackbird singing on a bush, not wanting to hear those final parting words as Martin was reunited with her mother Helena.

Back at the house afterwards she’d run upstairs to change, as the rain had soaked through her blouse. Liam stood at the front door welcoming their relatives and friends and neighbours to Fintra, thanking them for coming to his father’s funeral, organizing drinks and getting young Slaney Kavanagh, their cousin, to take the coats and umbrellas and put them away as the visitors laughed and joked. The men took hot whiskeys to warm themselves up, the women sipped glasses of amber-coloured sherry and ruby port.

Ella washed her face, and brushed her hair, which the rain had made wavy. She took a few big deep breaths before rejoining them. Liam suggested she give Carmel a hand with the food. The guests ate everything she, Aunt Nance and Carmel put in front of them. Her cousins Constance and Teresa served the food, the others running in and out with plates and glasses and salt and mustard and cups of hot tea. Every now and then she caught Sean’s eye, or would find him standing near her protectively.

‘Are you all right Ella?’ asked her cousin Marianne, all concerned. ‘You look a bit tired.’

‘I’m fine.’ Ella nodded.

‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened
to
Daddy,’ Tears welled up in her thirteen-year-old cousin Slaney’s eyes. Her fair wavy hair was pulled back into a controlling chignon that was already beginning to unravel.

‘Uncle Jack’s fine, Slaney!’ said Ella nodding in the direction of the corner, where her balding uncle, dressed in his best dark suit, stood with a bottle of Guinness in one hand busily discussing the merits of some racehorse with two other men.

Slaney’s sister Kitty was sitting close by, on the arm of the couch, chatting to one of the neighbourhood farmers and his son. Her rich red hair cascaded down over her shoulders, her green eyes flashing as they always did when someone paid her attention. Her lips curved into a constant smile. Kitty didn’t believe in mourning and had put on an apple-green dress that she knew her uncle had liked on her.