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- Herausgeber: Brandon
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
The Phelans have owned Mossgrove for generations. The small, rural Irish farm has been the pride of them all until Ned's wife, Martha, arrives and begins to undermine generations of hard work and happiness. She resents the deep history of the place and sets about making it her own, shutting out what is left of Ned's family. She is particularly jealous of Ned's sister, Kate, a local nurse and doting aunt to Martha's children. When Ned dies suddenly, Martha puts Mossgrove up for sale in hopes that it will be bought by the neighbouring Conways, who have long coveted the Phelan farm. What she does not realize are the lengths to which Kate and the hired hand Jack will go to keep the land in the family ...
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ALICE TAYLOR
THE WOMAN OF THE HOUSE
ToGearforyourencouragement
Contents
Chapter One
THEREWASNO key for the front door of Mossgrove, nor had there been for as long as Kate could remember, but her grandfather had fitted a large iron bolt to stop the door shuddering on stormy nights.
The east wind would whip up along the valley and blow in underneath the heavy door, shaking it in its wooden frame and rattling the brass knob. With the first rattle her grandfather would get up from his armchair by the fire and go out into the front porch where he would shoulder the old door firmly into position and shoot the bolt. Then he would throw a knitted jumper that he had worn for many years during the winter ploughing along the bottom of the door. The heavy old jumper was a patchwork of darns, but it kept out the draught and soaked up the driving rain. He was an old man at that time and the cold chilled him. She had been eight when he died twenty-four years ago, but she could still remember him.
As Kate turned the brass knob with its familiar dents, and the door did not open she knew immediately that Martha had it bolted on the inside. The first time this had happened Kate had felt a sharp stab of rejection, for this had been the front door of her childhood and had always stood open in summer. Every year the ivy had grown down around it and her mother had peeled it back gently so that it had thickened to form a deep fringe above the lintel and two long curtains down the sides. Each time the stations came to Mossgrove it had got a fresh coat of paint. Over the years it had worn many different coloured coats, but when the hot sun of a few summers dried and split the top one, all the others hiding underneath peeped out and gave the old door a rainbow appearance.
Kate had felt some of her childhood carved away when Martha, soon after her arrival in Mossgrove, had stripped it of all its coats and painted it a pristine white. Now it was glossy and perfect, but it no longer smiled in welcome.
As a child Kate had sat on the warm flagstone outside this door doing her lessons. Her schoolbooks would be scattered on the step when she wandered out into the garden to pick some of her mothers Gallica roses. She would bury her nose in their dark velvet petals and breathe in their heavy rich fragrance. Sometimes she had eased the petals apart and laid them between the pages of her schoolbooks. There for a short while they would hold the musky scent, but gradually it would die and the petals crinkle up until all that remained of their former beauty was the faded pink colour. Other evenings she would pick daisies from around the garden and sit on the doorstep making daisy chains while Bran snoozed beside her. Often he would wake up with a start to snap at inquisitive flies who insisted on investigating the inside of his nostrils or the dark channels of his ears.
This doorstep had been her favourite place. From here she could watch the birds around the garden darting in and out under the hedges and bushes. She had discovered all their nests secretly tucked away. The wren had the best nest of all, a ball of feathery fur with her own front door knitted into the centre. When she sat on her eggs her brown beady eye peered out. Kate decided that she was far wiser than the crows who built their nests on the top of the beeches at the bottom of the haggard to be tossed back and forth on windy days.
Standing on the doorstep she could see down along the fields of Mossgrove and over to the farms on the hills across the river. The house faced south into the warmth of the sun and had its back to the cold north where Grandfather had planted sheltering belts of trees. The summer before he died, when she was seven, he used to sit out here in his chair and doze in the sun, his thick black stick against his large bony knees and his long white hair falling sideways like a pale curtain over his face. It was her job then to pick up his pipe when his grip loosened in sleep and it slipped to the ground.
Years later, when she returned on holidays while nursing in England, she had opened this door to feel the house welcome her back. She had loved to creep in quietly and take them by surprise. A flood of joy lit up their faces when they saw her and it washed away the loneliness of the big impersonal hospital in London. Her mother with her strong, kind face. A face that had endured suffering but had not been bowed by it. She would open her arms wide, and as they wrapped around her Kate felt the warm love fuse through her. Then darling Ned, tall and athletic, who to hide the emotion of his delight in her return would swing her around the kitchen to welcome her back. And always with them Jack Tobin, who had been her father figure in the world of Mossgrove and whose eyes glowed with joy to see her.
But now there was no warm feeling, no open door and no welcome. The door was not normally bolted but when Martha saw Kate coming she bolted it. She was deprived of the old freedom of just walking in. The neighbours had never knocked on the front door of Mossgrove or any other house in the townland. They just walked in and announced their arrival by whistling or singing or even talking aloud to themselves. It was one of the local unspoken practices that everyone observed. The only ones who knocked were strangers or people unsure of their welcome. The fact that she now had to knock forced Kate into that category. From Martha there was never a welcoming smile, only a lift of the eyebrows and a cool “Oh it’s you” as she would turn on her heel and Kate would have to swallow hard and follow her in.
Martha had started this practice soon after her arrival in Mossgrove. A few years later she had a porch built at the back of the house with a door out into the farmyard so that the farm traffic came in that way. Kate had made the mistake of thinking that she too could use it. Martha had informed her that she would prefer if she used the front door as the back way was only for the family, although sometimes Kate had found herself outside the front door being told from behind the bolted door to go around to the back.
This place where she had grown up had a deep grip on her. The little saplings that her grandfather had planted were now big trees, and she had watched them grow. Even to walk down the fields with the familiar names where she had picked mushrooms and blackberries stirred forgotten memories and made her feel at one with this place. Ned understood how she felt because he shared her feeling. It was an unspoken agreement between them that they never discussed Martha. She was his wife and would have to be accepted gracefully into the fold.
Now as the January east wind whipped up the valley Kate shivered and realised that she had been standing in the cold for too long. Just as she was about to put her hand up to knock at the door, it was whipped open. Martha looked down on her with veiled hostility. Tall and slim, she favoured long dark dresses and wore her glossy black hair caught back in a knot which accentuated her high cheek bones and large dark eyes. She always put Kate in mind of a graceful black swan.
“What are you standing there on the doorstep for?” she demanded now, looking down at Kate.
“Just thinking,” Kate told her evenly.
“Fine for those who have the time,” Martha said dismissively, sweeping into the kitchen ahead of her. Before every visit Kate had to brace herself not to feel cowed in her presence. Martha never showed the slightest interest in anything that she did or inquired about her work as district nurse.
“I’m going away on a course at the end of next week. “Kate attempted to make conversation.
“Nice for you,” Martha said sharply and continued to write on a pad at the table. She’s trying to freeze me out, Kate thought, before Ned and Jack come in. She knew that they had a cup of tea together in the kitchen every morning and she wanted to wait for them.
Kate looked around the spotless kitchen. Martha might not be a loving sister-in-law but she was an efficient housekeeper. The long dresser that stretched the entire length of the wall at the end of the kitchen was loaded with ware and beneath it the kitchen pots were neatly stacked. On one end of the dresser was a white enamel bucket full of fresh spring water that was drawn daily from the well and on the other end another gleaming bucket which was filled each morning with milk from the churn in the yard. To the left of the dresser the stairs curved upwards, and beneath them a door opened out into the back porch which had been rechristened the scullery. In the yard behind the scullery all the farm activity took place and could be viewed through the back window of the kitchen. Kate now sat on a chair beside this window and was glad of the warmth of the fire while Martha sat at the kitchen table beneath the front window that looked out into the garden.
As they heard the clatter of the pony and cart coming into the yard, Kate looked out the window. Across the yard Ned and Jack chatted as they unloaded the churn out of the creamery cart. As it was January and only some of the cows had calved, there was just one churn. The small wiry figure of Jack had an agility that belied his sixty-five years. He eased up the tight-fitting cover and wheeled the heavy churn full of separated milk to the edge of the cart and tilted it towards the big barrel on the ground. Ned reached up to steady the churn, lowered it slowly until a white river of milk poured down into the waiting barrel and then swung the empty churn out of the cart.
Years of physical work on the land had filled Kate’s slim brother out into a solid muscular man and turned his blonde mane of hair into a bronze thatch. Easy-going by nature he moved calmly and quietly through life. She was the one with the inclination to be hasty. Jack had said that they took after the two different sides of the family: Ned tall, calm and measured like their mother Nellie, and herself small and dark, with the impetuous nature of their grandfather Edward Phelan.
The back door opened and they came in together. Ned had to stoop to come in clear of the door, but Jack, who was at least six inches shorter, had no such problem.
“Hello,” Ned smiled at her. “I saw your bike outside. We seldom see you on a Friday morning.”
“I had to make a call back this way, so I thought that I’d hit the tea after the creamery.”
“Good,” he told her, going to the dresser and taking down some cups.” Do you want me to make the tea, Martha?” he asked.
Martha rose silently and catching the teapot off the dresser went to the kettle that was boiling over the fire. Kate caught Jack’s eye and understood that normally the tea would have been on the table for them.
“How are you, Jack?” she asked.
“Grand,” he told her. “We’re not too hard pushed at the moment though we have some of the cows calved.”
Most farm workers took the month of January off, but Jack was not the usual run of the mill and even helped out over Christmas.
“Aren’t you going away on your course soon?” Ned asked.
“The end of next week,” she told him.
“Will it be a bit of a holiday?” Jack smiled.
“I doubt it,” she laughed. “I haven’t studied for a good few years so my brain is probably gone rusty.”
“By God, Kate, if your brain is rusty I’d hate to see into my old model,” Jack declared. “It’s probably suffering from dry rot.”
“Jack, you’re as sharp as a needle,” Ned assured him.
“It’s well for some people who can have a few weeks off whenever they feel like it,” Martha intercepted coolly. “But then again when you haven’t husband or children there’s nothing to stop you from doing what you like.”
“It isn’t a holiday,” Kate said evenly; “it’s part of the job.”
“Well, some of us don’t have cushy jobs with plenty of time off,” Martha told her sharply.
Kate had to constantly remind herself not to rise to the bait. She had inherited the quick temper of her grandfather but so far had kept it in check where Martha was concerned. She could never let anything come between herself and Ned. With her father and mother gone he was the only family she had left, and they had come through a lot together, what with their father’s early drinking and sudden death and watching their mother struggle to keep Mossgrove going. Now thankfully times were good in Mossgrove. Ned was an excellent farmer, but of course Jack had trained him well. Kind and faithful Jack who was the backbone of the place. She looked across the table at his brown weather-beaten face and thought that they could never thank him enough for all he had done for them.
He had cushioned her against the reality of her father’s drinking. After his death, Jack had assured her that her father had been a good man, and he had related stories of their early days in school together. It had been important to her then to think well of her father. Her mother, like Jack, had never pointed out her father’s weaknesses to her, and for that she was grateful to them. Ned had woken up to the reality much earlier, but then he had been a few years older.
“What are you dreaming of, Kate?” Ned asked, smiling at her across the table.
“I was just thinking what a great job yourself and Jack have made of Mossgrove compared to the way it was when our father died,” Kate said.
“He wasn’t up to much by all accounts,” Martha commented.
“Well, I suppose,” Jack put in easily, “we’re all as good as we can be in one way or another.”
Good man, Jack, she thought, always the one to pour oil on troubled waters. She could see Ned’s jaw tighten so she rose from the table.
“I’d best be on my way,” she said, “but I’ll probably see you all again before I go away next week.”
“I’ll walk up the boreen with you,” Ned told her. “I want to check the sheep in the well field anyway.”
As they walked up the boreen her brother drew his pipe out of his pocket. When he had checked that there was still some tobacco in it, he lit up, drawing deeply until he was satisfied that it was lighting sufficiently well to keep going.
“You’d want to get a new pipe,” Kate told him; “isn’t there a crack in that one?”
“There is, and I’ll get a new one some time,” he smiled.
They walked on together in companionable silence, but she sensed that Ned was thinking out something that he was finding it difficult to say.
“Kate, I would never want you to feel that you aren’t welcome here,” he began slowly. “When we were growing up, you put in a lot of hard work to keep this place going. You’re entitled to be treated well here.”
She knew that he was apologising and her heart ached for him. She put a hand on his arm.
“Ned,” she told him, “it will never be a problem.”
“Thank God for that,” he said, his face clearing. “We’re the only two Phelans left, so we might as well stick together.”
“What about your children?” she smiled. “Nora and Peter are the next generation of Phelans and the future of Mossgrove.”
“That’s right,” he agreed cheerfully. “Peter seems to like school better than Nora, and I hope that when it comes to it that he will like the farming as well. Jack says that he’s more like our father than the old man. It makes me smile sometimes the way Jack always refers to our grandfather as the old man.”
“I suppose that’s because our father was never an old man. When Jack started here as a young fellow our grandfather must have been in his prime, and Jack saw him become an old man,” Kate said.
“As far as Jack is concerned, Grandfather was the one who created Mossgrove,” Ned smiled, “and he has kept him alive around this place by constancy talking about him.”
“He certainly did that,” Kate agreed, “but to me it was Nellie who gave the heart to Mossgrove because she was so easy and uncritical of everything that we did.”
“She was great,” Ned agreed; “she worked hard but she never became hard.”
“Strange how we always called her Nellie,” Kate mused, “almost as if she was a sister rather than our mother.”
“In a way she was a bit like a sister, wasn’t she?” Ned said. “And then of course Jack always called her Nellie, so we picked it up off him after our father died.”
“Jack and herself were a great team, weren’t they?”
“The best.”
“He loved her of course.”
Ned came to a standstill, his face full of surprise.
“I never thought of it like that,” he said slowly. “It never even crossed my mind.”
“Somehow I always felt it, and in the end I think that she grew to love him too. It was an unspoken understanding between them.”
“That’s a revelation to me,” Ned said quietly.
“I can never remember being surprised by it, because it was an awareness that grew on me over the years and it made home a warmer place,” Kate told him thoughtfully.
“Was I blind or something?” Ned asked.
“Not at all. Maybe because I was away from here I could see things more clearly.”
“When you were away they talked about you all the time, but of course when you got the job here they were over the moon. It was new life to them.”
“To me too,” she confessed. “I love nursing, but doing what I’m doing now is more than nursing. You’re going into people’s homes and becoming part of families, sharing their joys and their tragedies. You can work as many night hours as day, but I enjoy it.”
“It’s so good to be doing what you like,” Ned said seriously, stopping to relight his pipe. “I don’t think that our father liked the land and some day I must ask Jack about that But if ever I bring it up he kind of shies away from it,” Ned finished in a puzzled voice.
“Jack would be very slow to criticise Dad,” Kate told him. “But those few years before Dad died must have been a very rough time, with Dad squandering money that was needed for Mossgrove. Jack probably does not want to remember those days,” Kate concluded.
“But it would be well to know,” Ned said thoughtfully, “and we might learn from past mistakes.”
“Why, what makes you say that?” Kate asked curiously.
“I’m thinking of Peter,” he answered. “Jack says he’s like our father, so I don’t want history to repeat itself. I’d like Peter to have more schooling than I had, and there seems to be no way around it only boarding school. But he’d probably hate being away.”
“He’s finishing in the Glen school this summer, isn’t he?” Kate asked.
“He is, and the nearest secondary school is twenty miles away, so we’ll have to come to some kind of a decision over the next few months,” Ned said.
“Would anybody ever think of starting a secondary school in the village I wonder? The place around here badly needs one.”
“That would be too good to be true.”
“Well, you’ve six months to get things sorted out,” Kate told him, “and a lot can happen in six months.”
Chapter Two
JACK TOBINSAT on a sagging sugan chair in a shed in the yard of Mossgrove sorting out seed potatoes. He was getting ready for the cutting of the sciollans. It was a cold dry January evening and a north-east wind whirled sops of straw around the yard.
It ruffled the feathers of the scratching hens, hurrying the lighter ones along faster than they had intended. Only the younger hens were out in the centre of the yard, the older and wiser ones having abandoned it in favour of the hedge by the stable. I’m a bit like the old hens, Jack thought, in here taking shelter from the cold.
The cap that he seldom removed was pulled down firmly around his ears, and for extra protection he had wrapped an old jute bag around his shoulders and across his knees. Small and weather-beaten, he moved with agility and precision. Old man Phelan, who had liked things to be well made, had once said to him, “Jack, you’re well put together.” The comment had pleased him because he too liked a horse with a balanced gait or even a cow with good proportions. They were easy on the eye.
On one side of him was the bag of potatoes and on the other side an old tin bath half full of rejects that would be boiled later for the pigs. At his back a round stone boiler used to boil the potatoes still glowed warm from the morning fire and took the chill out of the air. He dipped into the bag with his left hand and rolled the dry potato around his palm, removing the outer layer of dry earth with his fingers feeling for the dip that denoted the eyes. Later when he would be cutting the sciollans he would run his knife between the eyes. He liked sorting the potatoes and cutting the sciollans.
Old man Phelan had taught him how to cut sciollans during his first spring on the farm. He could still remember the old man holding the potato in one hand and the knife in the other.
“You must go between the eyes, Jack,” he had instructed; “that gives you an eye on both sides. That’s the seed where the growth will come from. All life starts from a seed, Jack, human and otherwise,” the old man had proclaimed. He loved to hear himself talk and Jack had liked listening. When they sat down to sort the seed potatoes he would announce dramatically: “This is the first move in the resurrection of the whole farm from the dead of winter”. Jack smiled as he remembered.
That was a long time past. Must be all of fifty years ago and he had been a lad of fifteen then. He had come to work in Mossgrove straight from school where Billy Phelan, the old man’s only son, had been his best friend. Mossgrove had been in great shape at that time because the old man was a perfectionist. When he grew older and Billy had taken over, things had slipped, but now with Ned running the place everything was shipshape again.
He had worked here with three generations of Phelans. They were the owners and he never lost sight of that fact, but the soul of this land was his. He had dug drains down into her bowels to run off surplus water and make her rich and fertile.
He had eased the nose of his plough deep into her soft moist earth and had ploughed long straight furrows across her brown belly and deposited seed like semen into her waiting womb and year after year had watched the crops grow. His heart had gone into this land and he knew and loved every sod. It had taken the place of a wife and children in his life. Many of the fine elm and chestnut now straddling the ditches of the farm he had nurtured from spindly young slips. He could not imagine living outside of Mossgrove because it was the core of his being and had given a deep fulfilment to his life. The only time that he had ever even thought of leaving had been many years ago when Nellie had married Billy and come to Mossgrove as the woman of the house.
The three of them had gone to school together, and he had loved her since the day that she had come to his rescue when one of the big Conway boys had him cornered in the schoolyard. She was tall and slim with curly fair hair and a laughing face, but she had a serious side that was kind and sensitive.
He had been in Phelans’ for about ten years at the time of her marriage to Billy and had considered leaving then. He had thought that he would find it very difficult to watch her as someone else’s wife. But the reality was that there could never have been anything between the two of them. She was a farmer’s daughter and would bring a fortune on to Mossgrove while he lived in a labourer’s cottage and had nothing much to offer her. He had accepted that there was no way that he could cross that divide. Later there were times when he had thought that maybe it was better that way. Sometimes he doubted that he was husband material at all, and watching the Phelans’ marriages he felt that there was a lot to be said for the single state.
The old man had doubts as to the suitability of Nellie for the farm.
“A bit frail for farming, I’d say,” was his opinion.
“You’re wrong there, boss,” Jack had told him. “She may be tall and willowy but she could hold her own in any tussle. Came to my rescue once when one of the Conways was getting the better of me. So I’d say she’d be the right woman for this house.”
“You could be right there, Jack lad,” the old man had agreed; “anyone that tackled the Conways can only be good.”
Over the years it had become a bonus in his life to be near Nellie, and the fact that Billy and himself had always been such good friends had somehow made it easier. Sometimes he thought that Billy guessed how he felt about Nellie but it was never a problem between them. When Ned and Kate came along it had made things easier because it had broadened the circle. He was fond of both children but Ned was his favourite because he was so like Nellie.
Watching Ned grow up combining the shrewdness of the old man and the gentleness of Nellie had been like seeing two roses grafted together on the one stem. Nellie had been good to the old man, and over the years the old man had grown fond of her. When he grew frail and ill Nellie had nursed him, and when he died he was laid out in the big iron bed with the brass knobs in the parlour.
Strange, Jack thought, how sorting the seed potatoes always awakened memories of old Edward Phelan and of his own early days in Mossgrove. The old man had taught him all he knew about farming: how to help a cow with a difficult calving, how to know when a meadow was just ready for cutting and to judge the following day’s weather by the evening sky. The old man had tried to teach his own son as well, but Billy did not listen. Billy was more interested in horses and racing, and in later years when the old man was gone it was himself and Nellie who had struggled to manage the finances and succeeded in keeping the farm from going under. Billy had gambled heavily and drunk too much to ease the pain of his loss. He had always wanted more money and even accused them of ganging up on him. Those had been hard times in Mossgrove. He never liked to remember them. When Billy died suddenly it had taken a heavy financial drain off Mossgrove.
He had then taught young Ned all that the old man had taught him, and when Ned had finished school he had pulled in and worked like a man on the farm. In fairness to Kate she had not been afraid of work either. Nellie had been very proud of the two of them. Not that she was ever one to blow her own trumpet, but he could see it in her eyes. Pity that she had not lived longer. She was gone two years now and not a day passed that he did not think of her.
“Jack, you look as if you’re a thousand miles away.” Ned stood looking down at him with an amused smile. “You’re sitting there looking into space with a far-away look on your face.”
“Thinking of old times,” Jack smiled; “sorting the seed potatoes always makes me think of the old man.”
Ned smiled. “He must have been some man because people around here always talk about him. Much more than they do about my father.”
“Your grandfather,” Jack told him, “had an opinion on everything and usually a well thought one at that. He lived to be a good age whereas your father died a young man.”
“We’d never have managed only for you, Jack,” Ned said reflectively. “You really kept this place going against all odds.”
“Well, it’s all behind us now,” Jack said; “we’re up and running.”
“Well, we’re up, whatever about running,” Ned smiled, “but I suppose compared to my father’s time things are much better.”
“There were times then when I thought that we’d go under,” Jack said ruefully.
“He drank a lot, didn’t he, Jack?” Ned asked.
“All water under the bridge now.”
“I’d like to talk about those days, Jack,” Ned said, and Jack looked up at him from beneath the peak of his greasy tweed cap.
“Right, lad,” he agreed quietly; after all, he thought, the lad had a right to know about his own father.
“Your father never liked farming,” he began carefully; “he found it dull. There are men, Ned, who find fulfilment on the land. Your grandfather was one of them and you and I are like that, but your father wanted more excitement in his life. The horses provided that, but he was never lucky with them.”
“He gambled heavy?” Ned asked.
“Yea. Couldn’t seem to stop. I was very fond of him and it seems a hard thing to say, but if he had not died when he did I don’t know what would have happened. As it was we barely kept our heads above water. But then things straightened out because we were ploughing the money back into the land. Your mother worked very hard. She was a great woman, Ned.”
“When I was growing up my mother always seemed to have a bucket hanging off each arm drawing feed to pigs or hens or calves.”
“She worked day and night after the old man died because your father went to hell altogether then. But the strange thing was that she almost succeeded in keeping it from you and Kate. She said to me once, ‘Jack, I don’t want them to be ashamed of their father’; so she always put a brave face on things.”
“You know, Jack, for years I thought that he was great,” Ned said slowly, “but then little things did not quite add up. He in bed in the morning and yourself and my mother out milking. I was about twelve then and was beginning to ask questions. But for some reason Kate thought that the sun shone off him.”
“Fathers and daughters, Ned, are a strange combination; they only want to see the best in each other,” Jack said reflectively. “Mothers and sons can somehow love each other warts and all.”
“You could be right. Jack, can I talk to you about something else that has bothered me over the last two years since my mother died?”
Here it comes, Jack thought, and may God direct me to say the right thing. He had known that one day Ned would need to talk about his mother’s last years and now he had come around to it. Strange, Jack thought, how we can’t talk about things when the wound is raw. We have to wait until the healing has reached a certain stage. Ned had apparently now reached that stage, but he still began uncertainly.
“You know, when I married Martha I thought my mother would be able to take things easy and end her days in comfort, but it didn’t work out like that, did it?” he said regretfully.
“Not quite,” Jack said cautiously.
“You know, Jack, I always thought that it was mother-in-laws who caused the problems.”
“That’s the general idea,” Jack agreed.
“But I could see my mother bend over backwards not to cause problems for Martha, but it was no use.”
“I watched it too,” Jack said evenly. There was no point in telling Ned that it broke his heart to see Nellie become a shadow in her own house, afraid to open her mouth because no matter what she said Martha read it wrong.
“Why didn’t it work out, Jack? I tried everything but nothing seemed to work.”
“Jealousy is a very powerful emotion,” Jack said slowly. “Martha felt threatened by your mother. She knew that there was a very close bond between the two of you and she resented it, and then when the children came along she was afraid that they would become too fond of your mother.”
“I found that very hard,” Ned admitted, “because I have such good memories of the old man. I wanted my children to have good memories of their grandmother.”
“Ah well, I’d say now that Nora and Peter have good memories of their Nana Nellie,” Jack said.
He knew that Ned had had to put up a struggle so that his children could have those memories. In her later years Nellie withdrew to the parlour altogether and Martha would come up with all kind of excuses to keep Nora and Peter away from her and to turn them against her. He remembered Nellie at the end of her time up in the parlour like a visitor in her own house, but still she never complained.
“It doesn’t matter, Jack,” she had told him, “as long as they are getting on all right themselves. We had trouble enough here when Billy was drinking. All we want now is peace and quiet.”
In his estimation she had paid a high price for peace and quiet, but then that was her choice. And she had seemed contented enough in her own way. A good woman to read and to pray, she had an inner strength that could put up with a fair amount without retaliation. He knew that when it all got too much for her she visited Kate. But she never told Kate anything about what went on in Mossgrove because, as she had told him, “it would only cause bother”.
He looked up into Ned’s troubled face. The last thing that Nellie would have wanted was to have Ned’s conscience bothering him about her last years. He had done the best he could in the circumstances. Maybe Ned should have been a bit stronger with Martha, but then that was all right for himself to think because he knew nothing of the emotional intricacies of the marriage bed.
“Listen, Ned,” he said, choosing his words with care, “your mother was happy in many ways. Maybe herself and Martha could have got on better, but there is another side to that story. Martha has worked hard in Mossgrove and done a lot to improve the house and the yard and your mother appreciated that. She loved Mossgrove and would have hated if you had married someone who would have let the whole place go to wrack and ruin after all the effort she had put into building it up.”
“I never thought of it like that,” Ned said, his face clearing.
“Well, that’s the way to think of it,” Jack said, almost convincing himself. “And another thing, Ned: even though your mother is dead she still walks around here in your daughter Nora.”
“She’s very like her, isn’t she?” Ned agreed with satisfaction.
“That she is!” Jack declared.
And if right was done, he thought, she would have been called after her grandmother like every other child in the neighbourhood.
“Today is her anniversary,” Ned said, “but of course you never forget.”
“No,” Jack agreed,” I went over to the grave on Sunday after mass, and the daffodils are just peeping up.”
“They’re early. They could be buried under snow yet,” Ned prophesied.
“Do you remember about five years ago we had snow that lasted for weeks?” Jack said, glad to change the subject. “In all of my years farming I never experienced a winter like it. It will probably be remembered around here as White ’47. Peculiar in a way, when a hundred years ago we had Black ’47 with the famine.”
“Yea, it was an extraordinary winter,” Ned said and then smiled. “Nora and Peter had the time of their lives – it was nothing but skating and snowmen.”
Jack was glad that the conversation had veered away from the delicate subject of Martha and Nellie. What had needed to be said was now said. He had always known that the situation had caused Ned a lot of distress. Today was the first time that Ned had been able to bring it out into the open. That was a good thing, but it was as well to shut the door on it now and forget. Thankfully Ned moved on to another subject.
“I think that there is something bothering Nora at the moment. It’s something to do with school: she goes off there some mornings as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.”
“Could it be the Conways?” Jack asked.
“Every problem around here seems to begin and end with the Conways,” Ned sighed.
“It was the one thing that always worried me when times were bad, that they would get their hands on this place. The possibility of that happening would be enough to send me into an early grave,” Jack admitted.
“Well, that danger is past now, but I think that one of them might be getting to Nora,” Ned worried.
“Nora would find the Conways hard to handle,” Jack said; “she’d be too fine for them.”
“Oh, here she comes like a sióg ghaoth,” Ned exclaimed as the back door burst open and a little girl came running across to them, long fair hair flying behind her and strong boots clanking off the stone yard, scattering hens and ducks in all directions.
She looks as happy as Larry, Jack thought, but her opening remark explained why.
“I love Saturdays,” she announced, her small pointed face alive with excitement; then, seeing what Jack was doing, she demanded, “Jack, do you want help?”
“Who’s going to help?” Jack asked, looking up into the rafters of the old house where the cobwebs draped like grey cloths.
“Me!” she said indignantly. “Didn’t I help you last year too?”
“So that’s why some of the spuds grew upside down,” Jack declared.
“Dada,” Nora appealed to her father, “make Jack take me seriously.”
“When I was your age, Norry, he never took me seriously either,” Ned said, smiling down at her.
“Were you here when Dada was my age?” Nora asked in surprise.
“I was indeed, and I knew your grandfather when he was your age. We went to school together, and I remember your great grandfather when he was an old man and I was a young lad,” Jack told her.
“Jack,” she said in amazement, “you must be as old as the hills!”
“Older, I think sometimes.” He laughed and continued, “Do you see that oak tree up at the top of the haggard?” He pointed to a tree that they could see towering over the cow sheds. “Well, my first autumn here I planted an acorn in a tin bucket, and as it grew bigger over the years I transplanted it on and now look at it.”
“So you and that big tree grew here together,” Nora said with interest, looking from Jack to the tree.
“Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Jack said. “But whereas the tree is growing up I think that from now on I’ll be growing down.”
“I’ll soon be as tall as you,” she said, standing on her toes; then, swinging around to Ned she asked, “Dada, have you planted any trees?”
“All over the farm,” Ned said smiling down at her. “Jack taught me well.”
They’re like peas in a pod, Jack thought. He remembered the day that she was born and how it had thrilled Ned to have a daughter.
“Where’s Bran?” she asked.
“Probably up in the barn sound asleep. That’s the place for a dog to be on a cold day like today,” Ned told her.
“Mom says that he gets fleas in the barn and that we bring them into the house then,” Nora said.
“She could be right,” Ned smiled, “but what’s a flea between friends?”
“Is Bran your friend or my friend?”
“A shared friend.”
“I’d say he prefers you,” she said thoughtfully.
“What makes you say that?” Jack asked.
“Well, if he’s with me and Dada calls he runs away. But if I call him when he’s with Dada he won’t come. So I’d say that he prefers Dada.”
“He probably does,” Jack agreed, “because I’ve the same problem with him. But what about all this help that I was going to get with sorting my potatoes?”
“Do you really want help?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose and peering into the bag of potatoes, not so sure now that she wanted to help.
“Well of course I do. Two heads are better than one even if they were only pigs’ heads.”
“I haven’t got a pig’s head,” she told him indignantly.
“I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Ned laughed. “I must give hay to the cows.” As soon as he went out into the yard a black sheepdog with one white ear and matching front paws emerged to jump around him wagging his tail.
“Hello, old boy,” Ned said, patting his head and running his hand down along his broad glossy back.
“See what I mean,” Nora said; “when Dad is around he wants no one else.”
“Sheepdogs are like that,” Jack told her. “They have many friends but only one master. Your father reared him from a pup and fed him every day.”
“Why was he called Bran?” Nora asked.
“Every dog that we ever had was called Bran,” Jack told her.
“That shows that you had no imagination,” she told him.
“Where did you learn a fine big word like that?” Jack wanted to know.
“It was our new word in school last week, and I think that if you don’t have it you’re fairly dull.”
“That describes us pretty well around here, I suppose,” he admitted, trying not to smile at her serious face.
She had forgotten about her plans to help him and had seated herself on one of the bags of potatoes.
“How was school this week?” he asked, hoping that he could unravel the problem that was worrying her father.
“All right,” she said slowly, “but I prefer Saturday and Sunday best, especially Sunday ’cause I like going to mass.”
“Aren’t you the holy girl!”
“Ah Jack!” she protested, “you know that it’s going to town that I really like.” And then a new thought struck her: “But I like going to mass now too since Fr Brady came.”
Jack thought to himself that she was not the only one. What a relief this young priest was compared to the old parish priest who would put you to sleep for half an hour every Sunday.
“Do you know what I’m going to do in town tomorrow after mass?” she asked him.
“Do you want me to guess or will you tell me?” he asked.
“Guess.”
“Now, let me think,” he said, putting his hand under his cap and scratching his head. “Maybe you’re going to stand at the chapel gate and make a political speech after mass.”
“What’s a political speech? I’d have to know what it was if I wanted to do it.”
“Not at all. A lot of people do it and they don’t know what it is.”
“Jack, you’re fooling again. If you’re not going to talk serious, I’m going to bring hay to the cows with Dad instead of helping you,” she threatened.
“Right,” he said, “what are you going to do in town tomorrow?”
“I’m going to buy a new pipe for Dada because you know that the stem of his old one is cracked since he left his coat in the stable and the pony stood down on it, so,” she told him in a rush of words, “he needs a new one and you know that Dada never buys anything for himself.”
“Where did you get the money?” Jack asked. “Pipes are expensive.”
“Aunty Kate,” she told him. “I told her about his broken pipe so she priced one in town and gave me the money the last time she was here. But it’s a secret and it’s a surprise from me.”
Martha won’t be too pleased about that, he thought, because as far as Martha was concerned the farther away Kate kept from Mossgrove and the children the better.
