Woman of the House (16 page)

Nora knew that this was true, but she did not want to be last in today so that they’d be all looking at her. Rosie strode in ahead of her, and as Nora followed her to the front seat Miss Buckley turned around with a frown on her face.

“Nora Phelan, you can go back to your old seat now,” she said. “I think that you’ve learnt your lesson.”

Nora could hardly believe her ears. How could this be happening to her today of all days? She slouched over to the back seat and perched on the very edge of it, as far away from Kitty Conway as she possibly could. Kitty looked straight ahead and gave no reaction to Nora’s return. All morning Kitty never looked in her direction and Nora began to wonder if she were invisible. Kitty never acknowledged her return one way or another. Nora was amazed
and relieved, but she was afraid to relax as she thought apprehensively that there was a long day ahead.

At the break, when the rest of the children gathered around curiously asking questions, Kitty sat in the far corner of the playground eating her lunch by herself.

Rosie asked, “Did you say something to Kitty?”

“No, nothing,” Nora told her, “but she’s never said a word all morning. I can’t believe it.”

“What’s come over her?” Rosie wondered.

“Don’t know,” Nora said, “but the sewing class is this evening. She’ll murder me then.”

When the tin boxes were distributed along the desks they all took out their pieces of sewing and knitting. Nora was endeavouring to turn the heel of a sock, a complicated procedure which required all her concentration. Kitty had a grubby piece of pleated cotton which she was trying to top-stitch as neatly as possible. Both kept their heads down, intent on their work, and when the girl at the other side of Kitty attempted to chat to her she was ignored.

What’s come over Kitty, Nora wondered, but she was afraid to say anything in case she might trigger off the usual torrent of criticism and abuse. She decided that she would leave well alone, keep her mouth shut and give all her attention to her knitting.

At first she thought that she imagined the whisper beside her, but then it came again a little louder.

“Your Aunty Kate is very nice,” Kitty whispered.

Nora was so surprised that the knitting almost dropped from her hands. Kitty was looking at her with such a changed expression on her face that she looked like a different person.

“When did you meet her?” Nora asked, gathering her wits about her.

“She calls to our house to look after Nana’s leg,” Kitty told her, “and I’m helping her because I sleep in my Nana’s room now, in case she would want something at night.”

Nora thought of big, heavy Mrs Conway who always smelt as if she needed a knickers change, and thought that she would not like to share a room with her. But she was Kitty’s Nana, so she was fond of her, and that was different.

Nora was not sure what to say next. This new Kitty was such a change from the old one that she was afraid that any minute she would dissolve and the old one slip back into her place. But a bigger surprise was yet to come.

“I hope that your mother won’t sell Mossgrove,” Kitty said.

“But your father wants to buy it,” Nora exclaimed.

“I know,” Kitty said, “but I hope he wont get it.”

“So he won’t bid for it?” Nora said hopefully.

“Oh, he’ll bid all right,” Kitty said bitterly.

Nora was finding the conversation a bit confusing, but there was no doubt but that Kitty had changed towards her and it had something to do with Aunty Kate. Kitty, who had always looked at her with such dislike, was now actually smiling at her. Nora felt a great sense of relief: she had never wanted to have Kitty as an enemy, but Kitty had been hell bent in that direction. Now, for some reason, it was all changed, and Nora wanted to keep it that way.

“Will we be friends from now on, so, Kitty?” she asked.

“I’d like that,” Kitty told her quietly.

“It was like a miracle,” Nora told Rosie later as they walked home together. “She wanted to be friends and that was it.”

“When I looked behind me in school I could see the two of you talking and smiling and I could hardly believe my eyes,” Rosie told her.

“It must have been Dada,” Nora decided. “No one else could have sorted all that out so well. This morning I had my doubts about him, but now I’m sure again. Now I have only one more job for him and this is the big one. He must stop Mom from selling Mossgrove.”

T
HE DISPENSARY WAS
always quiet on Tuesday mornings. People seemed to find Monday difficult, but by Tuesday they had decided that they were sufficiently recovered to face the week. So Kate decided that she would go to Mossgrove that Tuesday morning. The children would be in school, Jack would be at the creamery and Davy would be busy with the yard jobs. There would be nobody in the house but Martha. She felt that for the first time she would be facing Martha with no fetters attached. But she did not relish the thought of confronting her. The stakes were high: the future of Mossgrove.

She knew that Jack and the children, and even Davy, were depending on her. So she had to get it right, or at least as right as possible. It might make little difference to Martha’s decision in the end. But at least she wanted to come out of it feeling that she had done her best and not
lost her head as she had done with the old P.P. David, despite his disappointment, had been very gracious about the whole thing. But then she would not have expected anything else from David: he was his father’s son in every way. Sarah had listened grim-faced while she had related the story, and then she had told told her, “There is no doubt about it, but you’re not Edward Phelan’s granddaughter for nothing.”

When she arrived at the gate of Mossgrove she decided to leave her bike against Jack’s wall and walk down the short boreen. The walk would help to steady her nerves. The sun warmed her face and lit up the entire countryside. Some of the brown ploughed fields were fringed around by whitethorn hedges, and on the steep hill across the river the grass was spattered with splashes of yellow furze. On the broad ditch beside her the young leaves swayed in the breeze and the birds, though in a fever of nest building, still took time to sing. It should be a good day to be alive, she thought, no matter what the problems.

She decided to go to the front door of the house in case it annoyed Martha if she walked in the back door. She knew that Betty Nolan would call this pussy-footing around Martha, but she desperately did not want to get off to a bad start. After knocking on the front door a few times she tried turning the knob, but as she expected the door did not open. Just as she was about to go around and try the back door, Martha’s voice from inside ordered, “Go around to the back door.”

Here we go again, Kate thought, as she went around to the back and found that door bolted as well. She stood waiting patiently and after a while the door opened and Martha stood there with a questioning look on her face.

“What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“I want to talk to you, Martha, please,” Kate said.

“What about?” Martha demanded.

“Can I come in?” Kate asked, feeling that they would get nowhere standing on the doorstep.

“Very well,” Martha said with a sigh of annoyance, opening the door just wide enough for Kate to fit through sideways.

That’s twice in one week, Kate thought. She went into the kitchen and sat at the table, while Martha turned her back and busied herself at the fire.

“Martha,” Kate began, “can we sit down and talk this out?”

“What is there to talk about?” Martha demanded over her shoulder.

“I want to discuss the selling of Mossgrove,” Kate said quietly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Martha told her firmly, turning around and standing with her back to the fire.

“There is no harm in talking it over…”

“Oh, I know what your talking it over means,” Martha said, her hands on her hips. “You want to talk me out of it, but you’re not going to succeed.”

“Why are you selling?” Kate asked.

“That’s none of your business,” Martha told her.

“Maybe not,” Kate agreed, “but this was once my home and…”

“Well, it was never mine!” Martha cut in, her face suffusing with anger.

“But why not?” Kate asked.

“Because you and your mother made damn sure that it never was!” Martha spat.

“But how?” Kate asked in bewilderment.

“Because it was always more yours than mine.” Martha walked across the kitchen and faced Kate. “Phelan furniture, Phelan pictures, Phelan everything in every damn corner!”

“But what else did you expect?” Kate protested. “We lived here.”

“I know that, but even when ye were dead ye still lived on.”

“But how?”

“Take that old dresser,” Martha said bitterly, pointing to the bottom of the kitchen, “that Grandfather Phelan made, and Ned thought was perfect. I could not even think of throwing it out in the shed where it belonged. We had to keep that old hearse of a dresser that filled the entire wall of the kitchen. Just because it was made by Grandfather Phelan! Phelan pictures everywhere, and your mother with a pained look on her face if I even moved one of them half an inch, and even her bloody roses outside the front door that I could have cheerfully dug up and flung out on to the dung hill. All Phelans, Phelans, Phelans! I’m shit sick of Phelans and everything belonging to you!” she shouted, striding up and down the kitchen.

“But Martha, we had no idea that you felt like this,” Kate protested.

“Oh, of course not,” Martha said angrily, “because you were so bloody busy thinking how perfect you all were and how wrong I was. I could do nothing right. I was not good enough for the Phelans. The perfect bloody Phelans.”

“But we never thought we were perfect.”

“Don’t you be trying to fool me,” Martha shot at her,
standing now with her hands on the table, glaring down at Kate. “From the first day that I came in here I was second best.”

“But nobody ever said that.”

“There was no need to say it. It was made clear from the beginning.”

“But I wasn’t even here at the beginning,” Kate said. “I was working in England.”

“You mightn’t have been here but you were always talked about here,” Martha told her, “and when the letters arrived your mother had to read them out at the table for Ned and Jack, and you’d swear to God that she was reading the gospel. I sometimes felt that I should be standing up for the reading. We had you for breakfast, dinner and supper until I was tired of the sound of your name.”

“I could hardly help that,” Kate said in exasperation.

“No, but your mother could, and she never lost a chance to sing your praises and to belittle me.”

“I don’t believe that. My mother wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh no, your mother wouldn’t do that,” Martha said fiercely; “your mother was perfect. But let me tell you that from where I stood she was far from perfect. Her husband might be dead but she turned her son into a substitute husband, and of course she had Jack, who was blind to her faults because she had him wound around her little finger. The sainted Nellie who behind it all was a right bitch. Living in the same house as her was like living in a bloody shrine. The shrine of St Nellie. Why do you think your father drank? He couldn’t stand it, so he buried himself in a whiskey bottle.”

Kate felt a slow rage beginning to simmer in the pit of her stomach. Old Molly Conway was right. Martha hated
them all, and it was part of her reason for selling, if not all of it. How had the old woman worked it out so astutely?

Martha had gone to the window and was breathing heavily, looking down over the fields.

“The Conways can have it,” she said bitterly, “but they’ll pay dear for it. They’d pay any price to get Mossgrove and now is their chance, and by God I’ll make them pay dearly for their chance to get even with the Phelans.”

“And what about the Phelans?” Kate asked bitterly. “Your children are Phelans.”

“Only in name,” Martha pronounced, still looking out the window. “Your mother tried to come between me and my children, but she failed because I knew what she was at even though I could not make Ned see it.”

“Maybe there was nothing to see.”

“Oh yes, there was plenty to see, but she knew that I was clever enough for her and in the end she gave up and withdrew to the parlour entirely, where she should have been put the first day I came here.”

“So you got your way in the end,” Kate said. “Did that make you happy? She is dead with two years and you’re still full of bitterness. What do you want from her? Do you know that she never once complained about you to me even though I guessed what was going on.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Martha swung around from the window and stood glaring down at her. “As soon as she got sick you were back snooping around here. I had no privacy, my children were not mine any longer…”

“You wanted to possess your children,” Kate told her angrily. “You were married to a Phelan on Phelan land and you had Phelan children, and yet you wanted to wipe out
any trace of Phelan in them. You wanted the impossible. You were the outsider and we were ready to welcome you, but you wanted to make us the outsiders. You had no welcome for us. When you married Ned you became one of our family, but you never wanted that. We never knew what you wanted, and I’m beginning to think that neither did you.”

“Well, now I know what I want,” Martha told her vehemently, “and it’s to get rid of this place as fast as ever I can and to move away from this hole where everywhere you go everybody knows your business.”

“You’re full of bitterness, and wherever you go you’ll take it with you,” Kate told her, “because you’re not running from the Phelans or Kilmeen, you’re running from yourself.”

“So, you’re coming clean at last and laying all the blame with me,” Martha challenged.

“Maybe that’s where it belongs!” Kate asserted. “Once you got your legs in the door here you were determined to cause trouble, and by God but you caused it. My mother was a saint, so she put up with you. Above all else she wanted you and Ned to be happy, so she was prepared to sacrifice her own dignity or anything else that was necessary to achieve that end. But nothing would satisfy you! You wanted to make her crawl. And you used your emotional blackmail on Ned to bring him to heel. You’re a pathetic bitch with a warped power complex.”

Kate was standing now facing Martha across the table with all the buried frustration of past years boiling to the surface. So often had she suppressed her unspoken thoughts because she had not wanted to upset Nellie and then Ned. Now there was no more need for restraint. Martha could not damage the dead!

“Oh, it’s all coming out now,” Martha taunted her.

“Yes it is,” Kate told her fiercely; “for so long you had the whip hand because you were prepared to hurt Nellie and Ned with anything that I said. You were even prepared to twist it to do damage. But they’re gone now, so I’m free from you petty tyranny. You can no longer hurt them, and by God anything that you say will certainly not hurt me now. I got immune to your jibes years ago, but it broke my heart to see how you hurt Nellie, and I will never forgive you for that.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness.”

“Maybe you don’t, but before you’ll ever have peace of mind you need to forgive yourself for the way you treated my family. And selling Mossgrove is not the way to do it. You’re just putting another nail on your martyr’s cross, because that’s what you always thought you were, a bloody martyr.”

“I don’t have to stand here in my own kitchen,” Martha said angrily, “and listen to this ranting.”

“Oh yes you do,” Kate shouted at her, “because all this needs to be said. It should have been said a long time ago. Old Molly Conway told me that when we got you in here we got a cuckoo in the nest. By God, but she was right.”

“So you’re going around discussing me with the neighbours,” Martha said.

“I wasn’t discussing you.” Kate told her. “Molly Conway was only too happy to voice her opinion when she saw that Mossgrove was for sale. It didn’t surprise her that you were selling. She had your measure from the beginning, and now she’ll have your farm as well. You played it right into their hands.”

“Stop twisting everything,” Martha cried.

“Oh, I’m not twisting anything,” Kate told her, “but you don’t want to hear the truth. You never faced the truth – it was always a made-up version of what you wanted to believe.”

“Oh, and you are so smart, of course, that you could see it all clearly,” Martha declared with rancour.

“I didn’t have to be very smart to see what was going on. And now in your vindictiveness over your imagined wrongs of the past, you are going to deny your children their birthright. This land is their land. It was the land of generations of Phelans before them and Ned meant Peter to carry on when his time came. Have you no respect for Ned’s wishes?”

“Ned is dead, dead, dead!” Martha cried. “I can’t spend my life living for the dead. I saw enough of that here. Old Grandfather Phelan was dead and buried before I ever came here, but he was never allowed to die because every day here he was remembered. Ned never said that he wanted Peter to carry on.”

“Of course he did: he told me the day before he died that he wished that Peter would have the love of Mossgrove that he had.”

“Typical,” Martha declared; “you poking your nose into the future of Mossgrove when it was none of your business.”

“I wasn’t poking my nose, as you put it; we were just talking and it came up in the course of the conversation.”

“And what else came up in the course of that conversation?” Martha demanded.

“Nothing much, except that Ned wanted Peter to have more schooling than he had.”

“Fat chance of that in this hole.”

“If there was a secondary school started in the village…”

“You put paid to that on Sunday when you insulted the P.P.”

“News travels fast around here.”

“That’s right, especially if somebody makes a fool of themselves,” Martha remarked acidly. “You were not content with insulting the parish priest and messing up David Twomey’s plans, you’re trying to mess me around as well.”

“I was only trying to make you stop and think before you do something that you might later regret,” Kate told her and, suddenly feeling saddened by the whole upheaval, she sat down wearily on the chair.

“I won’t regret it,” Martha declared.

“What about Nora and Peter?”

“Nora and Peter are my responsibility,” she said coldly, “and I will take care of them.”