Rainbow's End (3 page)

‘You’re living a lie,’ Fidelma warned her. ‘No good will come of it; tell Dadda, alanna!’

‘I will. But not yet,’ Grainne said. ‘We’re young, still. And William’s not asked me, not properly.’

And still the time went by and Grainne continued to meet William, to grow steadily more in love with him and to say nothing to her father.

Things finally came to a head just before Christmas. William had given her a present which she could not, in all conscience, hide. A gold signet ring. A token, as she knew well.

‘It’s the McBride ring,’ William said. ‘Look – see the initials – it’s old and valuable. It will do until I can get to town to buy you something proper. Tell your dadda,’ William said, putting the ring on her finger and kissing the side of her mouth. ‘Tell him, then we can start to plan for our own lives.’

‘But he can’t manage wit’out me,’ Grainne said sorrowfully. ‘We’ll be waitin’ many a long year, William. You want a wife who’s young, wit’out responsibility for a family of children.’

‘I want a wife who’s you,’ William said. ‘My father has another son. If your father will only accept me, I’d work for him whiles we save for a wee place of our own.’

So that evening, as her father sat by the fire mending a net and she sat opposite him darning, Grainne showed him the ring and admitted that it had come from William McBride.

‘But you don’t know the feller,’ Paddy had said, staring from her face to the ring and back to her face again. ‘Oh, you could have seen him in the market, but you’ve not so much as exchanged a word wit’ him.’

‘I have. We’ve been meeting,’ Grainne said. ‘Dadda, we love each other. We – we want to marry. Oh, not yet, I know it wouldn’t do, not yet. But – but some time.’

‘And what’ll his parents say?’ Paddy asked. ‘They’ll never agree; they’ll send the lad off wit’ a flea in his ear, an’ he the eldest son.’

‘He doesn’t care,’ Grainne said. ‘He loves me, Dadda, so if his father turns him out it’s wit’ us he’ll make his home.’

‘Alanna, William lives in a big farmhouse, wit’ a younger brother an’ sister. That’s
t’ree
childer against our seven, an’ the McBride childer is all grown, useful. Then they’ve money . . . their flock of sheep is
trible
our flock . . . and they’ve several donkeys, carts, a jaunting car . . . why, they’ve horses, even. There, the lad will want for not’in’. Why should he t’row all that away for the daughter of a feller wit’ ten acres of the Burren? I own me own land and proud of it I am, but we work hard, I sometimes t’ink, to stand still. We’ll never own a proper cart, even.’

It was the first time Grainne had ever heard her father sound wistful and it made the tears come to her eyes. She jumped to her feet and put her arms round his shoulders, giving him a hug. ‘Dadda, we don’t want a damned cart, nor a great flock of sheep! You’re the best father a family ever had, an’ so I’ve told William, often and often. But wit’ William livin’ here, helpin’, don’t you t’ink we’d get on better, easier?’

‘He won’t be used to the sort of work we do, child,’ Paddy said gently. ‘The McBrides have farmworkers for the mucky jobs.’

‘He doesn’t care,’ Grainne said earnestly. ‘He’ll do what we do, Dadda.’

‘Mebbe you’re right,’ Paddy said, doubt in every syllable. ‘Jaysus, Mary an’ Joseph, I hope to God you’re right. But we’ll see, alanna. When your William tells his own family, then we’ll see.’

All might have been well, Grainne thought, had the two older men not met, nose to nose, a few days after she and William had broken the news to their respective families. Paddy Feeney had gone into Ballyvaghan for the wake of a local farmer and Fergus McBride was also there. Paddy assured Grainne afterwards that he had fully intended to shake McBride’s hand and demand that they let bygones be bygones now that the young’uns had become rather more than friends, but he never had a chance.

McBride came straight across to him, his large face reddening, his eyes bright with spite. ‘You’ll be against it, as I am,’ he asserted, before Paddy had so much as opened his mouth. ‘My wife is distressed; I can’t have her distressed. William’s me eldest son, I need him as, no doubt, you need your gorl.’

‘I do need me daughter,’ Paddy had said. ‘But they’ll wait, they won’t be jumpin’ into marriage for a year or so.’

‘A year or so! I’ll not have it, d’you hear? William could marry anyone, anyone at all. You want to find a workin’-class lad . . . the Casey boy would suit, I imagine . . . then she’ll stop dreamin’ about catchin’ her betters.’

‘I didn’t hit’m,’ Paddy said defensively, when telling Grainne what had transpired. ‘I just told’m neither himself nor his son was any better than the Caseys. An’ I torned me back on him, so I did.’

It was only when her father began to tell her of Mr McBride’s disapproval that Grainne realised what William’s love had done for her. It had changed her from a shy and diffident girl into someone who was self-confident, sure of her worth. Once, she might have given in, told her father it was all right, she and William would just have to wait until Mr McBride softened towards them. Now she knew that she and William must go their own way. And if it meant William marrying her and moving into their cottage then she was willing to put up with that for a few years, rather than lose him.

But that had been before Christmas, and now it was Twelfth Night and she was looking forward to William’s very first proper, official visit to her home, for he was coming for the celebrations, her very first proper guest. He had met Sean and Maura a few days ago, because they had been with Grainne and the dog Tinker, fetching in the cow and her calf, but he still hadn’t met her father or the rest of the family. It will be nice for them to know each other, Grainne thought, putting the potatoes into the big cauldron and pulling it over the fire. The fire heated the wall-oven beside it, and presently it would be hot enough to cook the soda bread and also the fish which she was about to prepare. Whilst she cleaned and gutted the sea bass her father had caught she went over her preparations in her head. The brack was made and ready to be cut and buttered, the poteen which her father made in his still in a small limestone cave a mile from the house was to hand, and the special cake, made with flour, eggs and dried fruit, was in the cupboard by the back door. She had brought down some apples and last time her father had gone to Ennis market he had bought chestnuts which they would roast in the embers . . . it was a real ceilidh, her very first ceilidh with a proper guest!

But before the ceilidh could start she would have to get the children and Fidelma in to help or they’d not be sitting down before midnight. She went to the door and called, her voice echoing weirdly round the snow-covered countryside, and saw Fidelma coming across the yard towards her. Fidelma smiled and waved and Grainne thought how very pretty her sister was becoming. She began to wonder whether William would notice her sister and hoped, unkindly, that he would not. Then she felt guilty for the thought and told herself that if he preferred Fidelma to herself she could scarcely blame him . . . and as Fidelma got closer she noticed how becomingly flushed she was and wondered whether it was the coming ceilidh, or whether she had met one of the Caseys, because there was no denying that that Durvan Casey was more than a little interested in the sudden blooming into womanhood of Fidelma Feeney. And then she noticed something else – that there was an odd light out there, a sort of sulphur yellow, a hell-light, which sometimes presages a storm.

Then the first child came in, red-cheeked from the cold, and Grainne set her to lay the table, and the second child was sent to fill the reed basket with turves for the fire and the third filled the water bucket, and the family swung into their evening routine as Fidelma, still prettily flushed for whatever reason, came in and said wasn’t it a strange light out there, now, and had anyone brought the donkey into the byre, for sure an’ the poor thing would freeze into a block of ice in the field tonight.

‘I’ll fetch Darky,’ the eldest boy, Sean, said, carefully pouring water from the bucket into the big iron kettle. ‘He’ll come quiet for me.’

‘I’ll come wit’ you,’ Kieran, the youngest of the family and just six years old, said eagerly. Plainly, he wanted another chance to be out in the snow. Grainne was about to say that one was enough to fetch any donkey and wasn’t Darky a dote then, who would come in for anyone, when Maura said someone should fetch down some hay from the loft and it might as well be herself, so the three of them went out into the dusk – though you could see clear as noon still because of the reflecting snow and the odd light in the sky.

Paddy came in, drooping with weariness, and was starting to ask if water had been brought in, when he was interrupted by a terrific bang which made everyone jump. One of the shutters had blown loose from the hook which held it back and was flapping freely, swinging into the room.

‘The wind must have got up,’ Grainne said, crossing to it. ‘That’s very odd, it was still as death out there five minutes ago. But we’d best close up for the night; fasten the other window, Fid.’

She leaned out to catch the erring shutter just as another gust of wind, stronger than the first, slammed it shut so she seized the second, slammed that shut too and dropped the wooden bar across the inside, which would keep them closed and barred until morning.

‘What’s that noise?’ Fidelma said, having fixed her own shutters. ‘A sort of howling . . . where’s Tinker?’

Tinker was a lurcher, a fine dog for the rabbits and a good friend to the Feeneys, for he lived outside most of the year and could be relied upon to bark whenever strangers were near.

‘The children will have taken him to fetch Darky,’ Grainne said. ‘Not that they’ll need him; Darky likes the byre, so he does.’

‘I’ll see if Tink’s outside . . .’ Roisin said. She was ten and sensible. She crossed the room and cautiously opened the door a crack.

Several things happened at once, then. The tallow candles, which Grainne had lit as soon as it grew dusk, went out, plunging the shuttered cottage into pitch darkness. And the door blew wide, crashing back against the wall, allowing a gale to sweep through the room, a gale so strong that it sent Grainne, who had stepped into its path, reeling into the solid wooden table and bowled the door-opener head over heels across the earth floor until she collided with her elder sister.

‘Shut the door!’ Paddy Feeney bellowed and sprang to obey his own command, for though Grainne had heard him, she had been unable to do anything against the force of the wind which held her pinned to the table. But even as he plunged at the door the shutters blew in, and one of them sailed across the room, catching Paddy a wicked blow across the side of the head. He fell to the floor as if poleaxed and the wind rolled him across the room as though he had no more substance than a day-old chick, until he fetched up against the wall with a dull clunk.

But at least the wind’s bursting of the door and shutters meant that Grainne could now see again in the faint light from the grey clouds overhead, though what she saw was daunting indeed. Fidelma was crawling towards the doorway, the younger children, no doubt terrified out of their wits, were crouching behind their father’s big old rocking chair and Paddy Feeney lay still as a stone where the wind had carried him.

‘Fid . . . can you close the shutters?’ Grainne shouted. ‘If we could close up again, mebbe we could keep the storm out.’

‘They’re broke,’ Fidelma screamed back. ‘They’re in bits, so they are. Where’s the boys? And Maura?’

‘They’ll have sheltered,’ Grainne said with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘What’s happenin’, in the name of God?’

‘It’s the turblest storm ever,’ Fidelma said, beginning to sob. ‘I’m frightened, Gr––’

One minute they were crouching in the cottage, listening to the wrath of a storm they had not even seen approaching, the next the roof had gone. There was a bumping, screaming noise and the thatch, the ropes, the big rocks from the seashore, simply took wing and flew into the night.

And now they were at the mercy of the elements indeed! Grainne had once pushed her spade into a nest of field-mice whilst lifting potatoes and now she knew just how those terrified little mice must have felt. One moment safe and secret, secure in their neat little home, the next revealed in all their pitiful inadequacies as the spade sliced through the sod. Staring up, aghast, she could see that not only had the thatch gone but the old timber rafters were creaking and groaning . . . one was breaking loose . . .

‘What’s wrong wit’ Daddy?’ screamed Sorcha suddenly, peering out round the chair. ‘Why don’t he move?’

‘He’s stunned,’ Grainne shouted, just as a beam fell from the roof, narrowly missing her head. She felt it skim her right ear and tried to scramble under the table. ‘Oh, my God!’

The exclamation was torn from her; the great wind must have got into the chimney and suddenly the stove front was hurled open and long tongues of flame, scarlet, yellow, blue, were being driven across the room by the force of the gale. Orange sparks flew and before she had moved a muscle the rocking chair caught fire and a wooden bucket began to blaze. Ashes and embers took to the air, a burning grass-tuft landed in Fidelma’s hair and Grainne had to crawl across to her and pluck it out before it set fire to her sister’s locks.

‘Out, everyone,’ Grainne shrieked, trying to outdo the wind. ‘Get out of here before we’re kilt stone dead!’

It was no exaggeration. Two of the rag rugs were blazing and even as she tried to hurry the children out the curtains caught, the flames whooshing up them in seconds. Another beam broke loose and fell and promptly caught fire too, the flames licking eagerly along its dark, bone-dry length. The heat was enormous, and when the wind caught them, the flames and embers moved restlessly, one minute streaming in one direction, the next changing course entirely.

‘Take the childer, Fid,’ Grainne shouted now. ‘I’ll fetch Dadda out. Where’s Tink?’