The Woman from Kerry (22 page)

‘Have you told Mary-Anne?’

‘She’s not there to tell. I went up when school was out an’ wee Annie came to the door. She says she’s at Battlehill at some class or other. She’ll not be back till the night.’

‘What did ye say to Annie?’

‘I said nothin,’ for the poor wee thing was half afeerd to open the door. She didn’t ask.’

Peggy was pouring tea as they stepped into the kitchen.

‘I heard the trap,’ she said, ‘or rather Sam did. So we made the tea,’ she said cheerfully, her eyes meeting Rose’s, full of the question she would not ask in front of the children.

‘Poor Uncle Thomas’s has had an accident and he’s got a bad head,’ Rose said, as four pairs of eyes met hers, ‘but they’ll make him better in hospital.
I’ve heard they give patients oranges every week. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

She put out her hand for her tea and saw for the first time the blood that had trickled down her arms.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said, as she made for the wash house. As she shut the door behind her, her hands began to shake uncontrollably as she’d known they would if she’d tried to take the cup of tea Peggy had held out to her.

‘Come on, Rose,’ she said to herself as she washed. ‘If Peggy Donaghy can do what
she
did this afternoon, you can keep up a bit longer.’

John got up early next morning, put on his Sunday clothes, walked into Armagh, and was just about to knock at the entrance door of the hospital when it was opened by two night nurses coming of duty. They pointed him to the Matron’s office. The news was encouraging, she said. Thomas was conscious but confused. He told her he’d had a headache after he fell, but his mother had come and kissed it better and he’d slept the best at all. She’d told him about the visiting hour that afternoon and wished him good morning.

By eight o’clock, he was back in the forge. Rose was sure she could hear the relief in the rhythm of hammer on anvil as he began the days work on his own, for the first time in years.

She spent most of it sewing, grateful to be sitting
down, for she felt so weary, her mind preoccupied with going through every minute detail of yesterday’s calamity.

After she’d managed to drink her cup of tea, she and Peggy had taken a little walk down the common, both of them glad to leave the children to their books and be quiet together.

‘Peggy, I’ve thought of you so often,’ said Rose. ‘Is there anything in the world I can do to help you?’

‘Thinkin’ about me
is
a help. If I didn’t know there was a few people knowin’ the hurt of it, I couldn’t keep goin’. An’ as for ministers and priests, they should be banned. Tellin’ ye the man ye love is in a better place when all he ever wanted was to lie in my arms. That was his heaven, he said. And mine,’ she added, tears tripping down her face unheeded.

They put their arms round each others waists like old friends, though they had only been friends at a distance until now.

‘The only people who understan’ are people like you and Mary that love their men. My mother’s sorry enough for me, but she’s forgotten what it was like to love my father. An’ to tell you the truth, lookin’ roun’ me I don’t see many that loves their husband more than they love themselves, though maybe I shouldn’t say it.’

‘Say what you feel, Peggy. That’s what a friend is for.’

They turned back at the bottom of the common,
the air beginning to cool. Already dew was forming on the bright bunches of hawthorn berries and the fronds of golden bracken in the hedgerow.

‘Promise me, you’ll come up again soon, Peggy, and we can talk properly. You were wonderful today. You gave me such courage.’

‘Me? Me give
you
courage? I thought it was the other way round.’

Rose shook her head and kissed Peggy on the cheek.

‘I’ll be thinking of you
and
Thomas tonight,’ she said as they parted at the foot of the lane.

Now that he was in safe hands and there was little more that she could do practically, she found the evening the hardest part of the day.

Being on his own, John had to use all the hours there were and besides, this evening he had to wait for Mary-Anne to come home. She knew he dreaded telling her of Thomas’s injury, but she had to leave that task to him.

‘Well, have you seen her?’ she asked, when he came in at last, threw his cap on the settle and dropped down beside her.

‘Aye I saw her, an’ short shrift she gave me,’ he said, his face stiff with anger.

‘What did she say, love?’ she asked gently, putting a hand on his.

‘I had to go up to the house, for she lit past the forge so fast I coulden catch her,’ he explained. ‘She
said the Lord’s will would be done an’ as much as closed the door in my face.’

‘And did you explain the blow to the head nearly killed him?’ Rose went on, hardly able to grasp what John seemed to be saying.

‘She diden give me half a chance. I said, “I’m afraid Missus Scott, Thomas has had a bit of an accident,” thinking maybe she’d say “Come in, John and tell me what’s happened,” but no, not a word. I must have told her he was in the hospital, but all I mind now was her saying about the Lord’s will being done. As if the Lord would strike down a good man like Thomas. Is it any kind of a religion at all that wuman has?’

‘People believe what they want to believe, John dear. Now go an’ have a wash while I heat up your dinner. Sure you must be starving and it nearly nine.’

The week passed and by the end of it there was no doubt at all about Thomas’s well-being. When it became clear that Mary-Anne had no intention of going to see Thomas in hospital, they took it in turns to visit him on the few days visiting was allowed. His head was swathed in bandages and his leg in plaster, but he was already out of bed and walking on crutches. Rose sat with him in the glass veranda that looked out over the city and told him the news, and the names of all the people who’d been to the forge to ask after him.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever known Thomas talk so much,’ she said that evening when John asked her how she’d got on. ‘He’s looking really well, if you can forget the bandages and so on. He says the food is great and the nurses are kind.’

‘Well, he’d better enjoy it, he’ll not get much kindness when he comes home,’ said John sharply. ‘She’s been down to the forge each day to collect the takings, an’ divil the enquiry about him. She must have some of her own people goin’ to ask about him, but wouldn’t ye think she could just ask if I’ve heard anything fresh from anyone whose been in town?’

By Friday, George Robinson brought back the good news that Thomas would be allowed home sometime the following week if he continued to mend as well as he was doing. John walked over to the house at once to tell Rose.

It was a pleasant autumn day and after she’d heard the good news, everything she did seemed to go well. Her spirits rose and she sang as she went about her work. Even the bread turned out nicer than usual. She hoped John might get in a little earlier than he’d been able to do all week, but she knew he was trying to keep up with the most urgent work, so that Thomas wouldn’t be anxious about letting their neighbours down. But he was late and when he did step into the house and she greeted him with a smile, he hardly managed to return it.

‘James and Hannah, time you were off to bed now,’ she said easily.

They kissed their father and left him sitting dispiritedly on the settle.

‘What on earth is wrong, love. It’s not Thomas, is it?’

‘No, Thomas is fine. It’s that wuman, Rose. God forgive me the thoughts I have about her. She came down a while ago and gave me my pay,’ he said, his face tight with anger.

‘Did she say that?’

‘No, she didn’t have to. I don’t mind the word, but the face said everything. She was treating me like you wouldn’t even treat an apprentice.’

Rose saw him drop his head in his hands.

‘Maybe I was wrong to leave Sir Capel, just because I wanted to be my own man. When it’s brought us to this.’

‘To what, John?’

By way of answer, he put his hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out some money.

‘To that, Rose. For a week’s hard work. Count it.’

But she didn’t need to count it. One glance told her it was the amount she usually set aside for the milk, eggs and butter from the farm.

‘Was it a bad week, John? Did no one pay for anything?

‘No, there was money in every day. I didn’t take
a note of it when she came askin’, but there was a fair bit. People made sure they paid up, knowing Thomas was in hospital.’

‘And did you ask her how it came to so little?’ said Rose gently, not wishing to upset him more than she need.

‘Aye, I did. She said there was bills to pay. That I needn’t think the work was all profit.’

‘And were there bills?’

‘Surely, there’s always bills, but Thomas spreads them out. She must have paid the whole lot at once. You’d a thought she’d know better,’ he said bitterly.

‘Oh yes, John, she knows better,’ said Rose, nodding her head. ‘She’s done it deliberately. That woman would starve us out of here if she could. But we’ll not let her. If we go, we’ll go of our own free will. Now don’t worry,’ she said, squeezing his hand, ‘I’ve a bit in the top drawer and Thomas will be home next week. He may not be working, but he’ll not let her do that again.’

She took up the shillings, made a little pile of them and set them in the window ready to go to the farm in the morning.

‘Next week, keep a wee note of what comes in. We’ll not let her beat us, John, will we?’

After the continuous bad news of the summer and the shock of Thomas’s injury, his return from hospital was one of the happiest moments in a difficult year. Throughout the townland, Thomas’s progress was a daily topic of conversation and many of his neighbours would tramp down to the forge simply to ask for news of his progress.

When Rose saw him go down to the forge on crutches on his first afternoon home, she slipped over to ask him how he was.

‘Ach sure it’s a good thing me curtin’ days is over,’ he said, ‘I’d have to go about it at nights or I’d frighten the girls away.’

Sitting later with her sewing, she realised he’d actually laughed about the fierce looking scar that arced from his temple across his right eye. He’d been full of wry humour about his accident, and greeted the men who’d come to see him with far more warmth than usual. Yes, there was no doubt about it. He seemed a much happier man, despite
his ordeal, quite changed from the Thomas whose growing silence and withdrawal had so dampened even John’s habitual good spirits.

‘Well, there ye are, love. That’s a bit more like it,’ he said, as he came through the door that evening and handed her a grubby envelope with his name written on it. ‘He gave me that as soon as we were on our own.’

Rose was relieved and delighted as she tipped the battered note and the grubby coins on to the kitchen table. She’d be more than able to replace her tiny reserve in the top drawer, but she was puzzled nevertheless.

‘Was this week a very good week, John?’

‘No, not that I could see. Not much different to last week. But then, there’d have been no bills to pay. Or at least nothin’ pressin’.’

Sitting by the fire late in the evening, enjoying the quiet hour after the children were asleep and the day’s work done, he looked across at her and nodded.

‘There
is
somethin’ strange about the money this week, Rose,’ he began, fidgeting with the books he’d been working with earlier in the evening. ‘I don’t know where the extra came from, but there’s a kind of a smile Thomas has when he’s pleased, an’ it was there when he gave it to me. I asked him how it came to be so much an’ he really didn’t answer me. He just smiled to himself.’

‘To tell you the truth, Rose, I think he had it out
with Mary-Anne for what she did last week,’ he continued after only a slight hesitation. ‘I saw her comin’ back home early this evening and she gave me a good day like she hasn’t done in years.’

‘Maybe he asked her what she thought wou’d become of her if he’d died and her with three we’eans,’ he suggested, with a grim shake of his head. ‘There’d be no help from Battlehill for all her runnin’ to these classes of hers, for there’s no love lost between her and her mother, so I heer tell.’

‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with her, John,’ she suggested. ‘If her mother was hard on her, maybe she knows no other way to behave.’

‘Aye, they say “like mother, like daughter”, an’ I suppose there’s somethin’ in it, but surely a grown woman of her years shoulda learnt to think a bit for herself as to how she treats others.’

‘Well, maybe and maybe not. Remember the men who came after you and Thomas to join the lodge. They were in their fifties and still hadn’t much time for anyone who wouldn’t see things their way.’

‘You’re right there, Rose,’ he said sadly. ‘An’ I don’t think we’ve seen the back of them. Our wee ones are lucky to have you to teach them what’s right an’ wrong. But even you can’t do it all for them. They’ll have to make up their own minds as they get older. Ah hope to Heaven they don’t end up like some o’ the ones we’ve had talkin’ at us and arguein’ the bit.’

She finished her seam, concealed the end of the thread and clipped off the remainder neatly with tiny scissors.

‘They’re getting older every day,’ she said, laughing across at him. ‘This time next year, if we’re spared, James’ll be ten and wee Sarah’ll be at school.

She wrapped up her work in its cloth and fetched a candle from the dresser. John waited till she’d lit it and then put out the lamp.

‘Long days for you, love, till Thomas is mended,’ she said, as she led the way to the bedroom door.

But the days weren’t as long as Rose had expected. Even before Thomas was fully recovered and able to start work, the seasonal dip in work began. And it was worse than usual. Agricultural prices were down, said the Robinsons, and many small farmers were in difficulties once more. With many references to past years, the newspapers began to report the return of evictions and the violence they led to, though there were few from their own part of the country.

In the months before Christmas, farmers delayed the maintenance work usually done after harvest, bent teeth on the reapers, missing points on the harrows, worn winding gear on the hay floats. Horses were put out to grass for the winter to avoid the expense of shoeing. To make matters worse, work that did come in was often not paid for when
it was collected. To press old customers in difficulties was not something Thomas or John would have thought right, but the bills for iron, horseshoe nails, and coal, came in regardless.

But that was not the worst of it. After Christmas, the weather turned cold. There were high winds and snow and the water froze in the pails in the wash house. Three times in as many months, Rose went to the bank and drew enough money for a fresh load of turf from Annaghmore. Each time she hoped the cartload would see them through to the warmer weather, but it didn’t. There was still snow on the ground in early April and only a few pounds of Sarah’s little legacy left.

Sadness and loss had punctuated the winter months. Maggie Robinson had found old Sophie dead in bed one bleak, cold morning. The adults of the community had celebrated a long life and an easy going, but little Sarah had wept day after day, old enough now to feel her loss as she’d not felt it when her beloved Granny Sarah had died.

Hard as Rose found it to comfort Sarah’s loss, she found it almost impossible to sustain her poor friend, Mary, as she nursed little Jane. When Dr Lindsay had shaken his head sadly and spoken the dreaded word, ‘tuberculosis’, Mary was devastated. The ordeal that followed, as Jane faded before her eyes, left Mary failing herself in both body and spirit.

The little girl’s death brought on anew all Rose’s anxieties about her own children. Every time one of them caught a cold or started coughing, she felt panic stricken, as if she could not bear one more blow.

Day after day, she’d do her best to raise her spirits. She told herself there was little use spending good money to keep up a bright fire, if there was no warmth and welcome to go with it. But little came to help her. Everyday tasks seemed harder when the cold bit to the bone, the snow lay piled deep in the orchard and you had to take a hatchet to break the ice on the well before you could fill a bucket of water. Mary was so locked in grief over Jane that Peggy had to look after her children as well as her own baby, just when she felt strong enough to look for work. The roads were so treacherous, visits to Armagh were rare, even changing the library books became infrequent. Necessity drove her to do more and more sewing and turned it from a pleasure into a wearying chore.

Spring came, late and cold, the trees still not in leaf at the beginning of May. For the first time since she’d had a garden to tend, some of her precious plants failed to appear despite the layers of straw she’d put down to protect them. Work in the forge picked up only slowly, hard frost and then heavy rain making it impossible to begin work on the land.

When Rose looked out through the open door
on the first damp, but mild morning in the middle of May and saw the postman heading toward her, her heart leapt at the thought of news. Even letters had been rare over the long winter. Her sister Mary had been ill for weeks, her brothers silent. Lady Anne was unusually silent, though there’d been a handsome monogrammed card at Christmas with a hasty message of love and remembrances to all the family. Sam had returned to America on League business for a second time.

‘Here you are, Missus Hamilton. Someone has news for you,’ said the postman cheerfully, as he handed her a fat letter.

Rose beamed at him. She could not possibly mistake the great sweeping curls. The postmark was Dublin, but the hand was Lady Anne’s.

My dearest Rose
, she read, as she settled herself by the window.

She dropped the letter with a little cry.

‘Oh no, not Currane too … and poor Thomas …’

She saw herself standing in the tiny sitting-room she’d shared with her mother in the rooms opposite the new stable block. Empty rooms now. Dust and
sunlight in their small room, dust and sunlight in the great rooms where glass chandeliers hung above fine furniture and family portraits.

Try as she might, she couldn’t prevent tears welling up as she thought of all the people who would now have to find new work and a new home. She imagined the house shuttered over as it sometimes was when the family were in Dublin, the carriage yard empty, the stables silent. The clock stopped.

Gone. All gone. That world which had seemed so stable, so fixed.

The letter continued, but she had no heart for any more of it, just at that moment. Lady Anne had tried to cheer herself by telling Rose the good news from the Sligo estate, the results of her own hard work with the school and Harrington’s efforts to improve farming practice, but she hardly registered
it. In the quiet hours before the children came home from school, all she could think of was Currane, as it had been all through her growing years, and as it was now, empty and desolate, but for the floating memories of days that would never come again.

‘Are ye very tired this evenin?’ John asked, as Hannah and James closed the bedroom door quietly behind them.

‘No, no I’m not tired,’ she said quickly.

She went on with her sewing, then sighed suddenly and put it down.

‘No, not tired.’ She stood up and fetched Lady Anne’s letter from the windowsill. ‘I’ve had news today that’s made me so sad. Will you read it yourself, or will I tell you?’

‘Ye’d better tell me. She has so many curlicues on the words that I lose the thread o’ what she’s sayin’ by the time I’ve puzzled out what the words are.’

She laughed, grateful to feel a spark of pleasure return.

‘Lady Caroline died in the autumn and Sir Capel’s signed over Currane to the cousin, but the cousin doesn’t want to live there,’ she began. ‘The place is empty, boarded up since before Christmas. He’s hoping to let it.’

‘Is that the English cousin? Hertfordshire or thereabouts?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. How did you know?’

‘Old Thomas. I learnt a lot from the man, sittin’ waitin’ for my lady love to come from her work,’ he said, smiling slyly at her.

‘I seem to remember you did a great job putting the world to rights that summer,’ she retorted. ‘Young Tom was as deep into the Land League as our Sam and no doubt a few of those visiting grooms carried it back to their own places.’

‘Who knows what was started there, Rose. But you and I had some grand evenin’s, along by the lake, diden we?’

‘We did,’ she said softly, wondering if he could understand what the loss of so well-loved a place really meant to her.