The Mersey Girls (6 page)

‘Good,’ Lucy said. Even to herself her voice sounded somewhat strained. English was no problem . . . but what about history, geography and the hated arithmetic? And then there was conduct, and the strangely named attitude. She’ll say something horrid, Lucy thought, and Maeve will be upset and she’ll keep me in tomorrow to think about things and . . . and . . .

Maeve was laying the sheet down on the table, pushing it across to Lucy. ‘You have done well, alanna! I t’ought you said Miss Carruthers didn’t like you – if she doesn’t, she certainly likes your work. She says you try hard at everything, even your sums, and she says a bit of after-class tutoring would bring you up to date with arithmetic, even. Now that’s what I call a good report, a real little beauty! When your grandaddy sees it he’ll be pleased, he couldn’t fail to be.’

‘What about conduct? And attitude?’ Lucy whispered, staring at the sheet of paper.

‘She says you’ve behaved pretty well on the whole and have the right attitude to work and to your fellow pupils,’ Maeve said. ‘Go on, take a look for yourself.’

Lucy looked and decided that Miss Carruthers was a saint so she was and she, Lucy, would make sure that no one ever tried the dead mouse trick on her, or the tadpole soup torture.

‘I’ll take on the after-class tutoring,’ Lucy said, dazed by the A grades which marched neatly alongside each subject on the report sheet, scarcely marred at all by the B for arithmetic. No one can be perfect, she told herself, beginning to smile. Well and haven’t I misjudged the woman after all? I almost wish I hadn’t tied her stockings into a knot the day she came and played hockey with us – though she couldn’t have known it was me or that conduct mark would have been a bit different!

‘Well, alanna, so you’re not wasting your time at school after all.’ Maeve pushed back her chair and smiled across at Lucy. ‘Now how about laying the table for me, if you’ve finished your bread and cheese?’

Because of the good report Lucy had no difficulty in abandoning the rest of her tasks once she had helped to clear away the tea things. Hurrying round to the Kellys’ cottage she found Mrs Kelly scrubbing the kitchen floor whilst Mr Kelly dozed in a chair.

‘Caitlin’s out the back,’ Mrs Kelly said before Lucy could so much as open her mouth. ‘Give her a shout, alanna, she’s givin’ me a bit of a hand cuttin’ mint, that’s all.’ Mrs Kelly was a great one for bottling and preserving, drying and jellying, and Lucy quite envied Caitlin, who would be somewhere out in the garden cutting the mint which would be hung in bunches from the kitchen ceiling beams throughout the summer and allowed to dry. Once it was like tinder it would be crushed, sugared, vinegared and packed into small jars which would last for the whole of next winter, enlivening mutton dishes and giving an added piquancy to vegetable stews.

‘Caitlin, is that you?’ Lucy said to a patch of vigorously shaking cabbage plants, but it was only Mrs Kelly’s one-eyed cat, who was sharpening his claws on a woody cabbage stalk. He gave her a mean look out of his one eye and stalked away from her, tail straight up, feet turned out, fur well fluffed, outrage in every line of his body.

‘Lucy?’ Caitlin’s head appeared from the middle of what looked like currant bushes. ‘Want to give me a hand?’

‘I don’t mind,’ Lucy said, pushing her way through the vegetables until she reached her friend’s side. ‘Your mammy said you were cutting mint. Shall I bunch them for you?’

‘Sure,’ Caitlin said, cutting another stalk and handing it to Lucy. ‘You’re early, aren’t you?’

‘It was me report,’ Lucy told her. ‘Me knees fair shook – ‘member the stockings? And the bits of chalk I nicked to make indigestion medicine? But she was really nice, she gave me all A grades except for sums, and she couldn’t have give me higher than a B for that, not without perjuring her soul, as the priest would say.’

Caitlin sat back on her heels and pushed her lank brown hair out of her eyes. She grinned up at Lucy. ‘Told you she wasn’t a bad woman,’ she said righteously. ‘I got mostly A grades as well, Mammy’s ever so pleased and Daddy, too. So d’you want to ask if we can go off for the whole day, tomorrow, instead of waiting until after our dinners? We could really cover some distance in a whole day.’

‘That’s why I came round,’ Lucy admitted. ‘I’ve already asked; Maeve said she was sure it would be all right. Go on, if Mrs Kelly’s in a good mood she’ll likely say yes as well.’

And so it proved. ‘But no drownin’ yourselves in the lough or gettin’ into bad company,’ Mrs Kelly warned. ‘Is Miss Maeve puttin’ up enough dinner for the both of you? Right, then you can have a bag of me dried apple pieces and a bottle of me lemon barley water.’

Polite thanks were chorused and then, as the sun was setting, Caitlin, as the elder, offered to see Lucy home.

‘It’s funny how your mammy always tells us not to drown ourselves or get into bad company, and Maeve always says to take care of each other and not to play with fire, isn’t it?’ Lucy said as they ambled across the farmyard in the dying sunset. ‘Yet it’s my mammy who got into bad company, and my daddy who was drowned. I don’t really understand grownups at all, do you?’

‘I don’t want to understand ’em; we’ll be grownup ourselves quite soon enough – too soon,’ Caitlin said promptly. ‘There’s your back door, alanna; get indoors, then I’ll run home and we can light our lamps and wave.’

This was another tried and true activity. Lucy had a little room up under the eaves of the old stone farmhouse with ivy constantly trying to block out her light. Caitlin was in an even smaller room in her parents’ cottage with a tiny window cut into the thatch. But when they lit their lamps the glow could be seen from both homes, and if Caitlin leaned out of her window and looked very hard to the left and Lucy leaned out of hers and looked downwards and to the right they could each see the lit-up square and the head and shoulders of the other.

Signals were many, including ones which needed a bit of curtain, some cardboard and a lamp held close to the window, but shouting beat them as a means of communication which could be immediately understood.

‘Night, Cait!’

‘Night, Lu!’

‘Where’s your cat, Cait?’

‘On the bottom of me bed, Lu . . . why?’

‘He pulled a rude face at me in the cabbages this evening. He’s a funny old devil, your cat.’

‘I know. As funny as your old Shep.’

‘My old Shep’s all right, but they won’t let him sleep on my bed, worse luck. Wish I had a cat, Cait. If I could have a kitten . . .’ there was a short scuffle and then a wail. ‘Oh, Maeve, you are mean to me! Don’t you love me? There’s something real urgent I’ve got to tell Caitlin before I close me window and get into bed!’

Caitlin heard mutterings which she guessed were being made by Maeve, then the slam of a window shutting. Presently, it opened again, with extreme caution, as she had known it would.

‘Sorry about that – see you in the morning, Cait!’

‘Aye, see you in the morning, Lu!’

It isn’t unknown for it to rain in Kerry in July and when Lucy woke at daybreak the following day, with the birds kicking up enough row to deafen you, especially in a room right under the eaves, she opened her eyes on the soft and misty rain which so often continues all day and ruins the best laid plans of mice and men.

‘Oh, not rain!’ Lucy muttered to herself. ‘It’s the first day of me summer holidays, God, you can’t mean to ruin it all with rain!’ She sat up on her elbow and peered out through the window once more. Rain was pattering against the window panes and a row of fat raindrops clung to the slate roof-edge, just waiting to drop. Outside, the big red cockerel, who was not above giving you a nip if you went near his harem of hens, cleared his throat and cock-a-doodle-doed; he sounded uncertain, as though he wasn’t perfectly sure whether day was really breaking, but was prepared to give it a go anyhow.

‘We were going to have a picnic,’ Lucy reminded her Maker, snuggling down the bed again. ‘It’s the first day of everyone’s summer holidays, Lord, so you’re punishing everyone by sending rain! I do wish you’d think again and give us some blue sky instead.’

With that she fell asleep once more and when she woke because Maeve was slamming about in the kitchen and Grandad was shouting to one of the men and Shep was barking, the sun was streaming in through her window and the sky was so blue it hurt her sleepy eyes.

‘Thank you, dear Lord, thank you,’ Lucy burbled, jumping out of bed. Ah, it wouldn’t do to leap into her clothes without a wash, not when God had been so obliging as to change the rain to sun just for her! She said a couple of Hail Marys under her breath as she washed and dressed, then ran downstairs, humming beneath her breath.

In the kitchen, Maeve had made Lucy’s breakfast; two fried eggs, a round of fried bread and a rasher of bacon, crisped just as she liked it. The tea in the pot steamed merrily and on the dresser were two greaseproof packets and a blue cloth bag which bulged in a satisfactory sort of way.

‘There’s your dinners,’ Maeve said, dishing up the food and jerking her head towards the bag and the greaseproof wrapped packets. ‘I’ve done your sandwiches in the greaseproof and you can get some water to drink, and there’s apples and some of my rich fruit cake in the bag.’

‘Oh, Maeve, you are kind to me,’ Lucy said rapturously. ‘This is the best breakfast in the world!’

She ate fast and very soon was poised in the doorway, bag in hand, looking rather guiltily back at Maeve.

‘Are you sure I can go? That you can manage without me?’

‘I’m sure; don’t I manage every day of the week and you in school?’ Maeve demanded. ‘Just go out and enjoy yourself, alanna, tomorrow we’ll talk about your house-jobs.’

It was a glorious day. Lucy and Caitlin strolled down the lane, wondering aloud which way to go.

‘I vote for the shore,’ Lucy said, but Caitlin shook her head.

‘No, not the shore, exactly. I’ve a better idea. How brave are you feeling, Lucy?’

‘Very brave,’ Lucy said stoutly, though a little shiver of unease ran along her backbone at the words. Hadn’t Caitlin said something the previous day about witches? But it was hard to believe in anything evil under a cloudless blue sky with the sun warm on your back so she smiled across at her friend with a fair degree of confidence. ‘Why? What’ll we do, Cait?’

‘We’re going to the castle,’ Caitlin said at once. ‘There’s a boat pulled up on the shingle, which means someone’s home. What do you say?’

The castle had long been an object of great curiosity not just for the two girls but for most of the children in the area. It stood in a commanding position beside a creek which ran into the lough, and from a distance it still looked impressive. To the left of it was a stand of trees, old and crabbed now and bent all one way by the prevailing wind, and all round it stretched that mixture of meadow and marsh which prevailed near the sea lough. Once, it had been a real castle, no doubt the towers had been manned by archers and men-at-arms had guarded the battlements against pirates and other invaders, but now it was a ruin and almost all that was left was a tower, part of the keep and a peat hut which crouched against the tower like a lamb against a ewe, as though seeking shelter from the old, old stones. Now it looked lonely and sad rather than sinister, Lucy told herself, so there was no need to feel afraid of it. Only it was a well-known fact that it was haunted, probably by the spirits of its one-time occupants, and not even the big boys went near if they could help it.

And there was the boat. If no one lived in the black hut or the old ruin, then why was the boat so often drawn up on the shingly strand of the creek? It was a curragh, made of willow wands and canvas and tarred to keep out the sea, not a proper, modern boat, but even so, who would leave it there, far from any proper habitation? No, the boys were right; someone was living in the tower – someone who did not want to meet his neighbours or want them to meet him.

‘Well, Lu?’ Caitlin said impatiently now, as Lucy did not immediately answer her query. ‘What do you say to visiting the castle?’

‘No one else does,’ Lucy said. ‘Not even the big boys. Not even Kellach has been to the castle.’

‘That’s why we ought to go, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps there’s a witch living in the peat hut,’ Caitlin said in her spookiest tone. ‘But if you’re afraid . . .’

‘On a day like today? I’d go anywhere in sunshine,’ Lucy said stoutly, though with fast-beating heart. ’Tis just at night I’d not go near the castle for a thousand pounds.’

‘Nor me,’ Caitlin said quickly. ‘Will we take your Shep with us, then? For company, like,’ she added.

At the words, Lucy realised that Caitlin, though a year the older, was as afraid as she and wanted Shep along just in case. Immediately she felt better about the whole thing, though quite determined that Shep should stay at home.

‘Shep’s working,’ she said. ‘But never mind, Cait, there’s you and me. If anything scares us we can run faster than most. And if one of us is grabbed the other can make off like the wind and bring help.’

‘Sure we can,’ Caitlin said, looking anything but reassured. ‘Will we have our dinners first, though, down by the stream?’

But Lucy, sensing that she had the upper hand, pressed home her advantage. ‘No, let’s go straight along there now; we can have our dinners later, when we’ve seen whatever there is to see,’ she said decidedly. ‘If there’s a stair that’s safe we can climb up and eat on top of the tower, perhaps. Come on, let’s hurry.’

If the look Caitlin gave her was less than friendly she did not care, for she sensed the underlying admiration. So the two of them set off along the winding little lane, dreaming along in the sunshine, with their eyes every now and then unwillingly drawn to the tower ahead whilst Lucy, at least, kept her imagination firmly under lock and key. But despite their wanderings in the soft, summery air, the castle got nearer and nearer, until at last only the marsh separated them from it.

‘We’ll go down to the creek first and have a good look at the boat,’ Caitlin said at this point. ‘Suppose it was a fairy boat, fancy missing it!’

‘Even an ordinary boat would be good,’ Lucy panted, following her longer-legged friend down onto the marsh. ‘I don’t suppose anyone would mind if we just sat in it?’