Christmas Wish (25 page)

Venetia was no longer listening. She had turned in the
direction of the track leading down to the farm and the unmistakable sound of a lorry. ‘It’s him,’ she said, her eyes shining.

Anna Marie had no need to be told who she meant. The Caseys were coming to repair the stone wall that had come down in the gale. Patrick would be driving.

Venetia tore off her overall and brushed at the straw that had fixed to her dress.

‘How do I look?’

Anna Marie told her that she looked fine.

Their conversation was at an end. Venetia’s eyes were bright with interest and her thoughts were with Patrick Casey.

She was about to dash out from the barn when she saw her grandfather standing with his hands through his braces, chewing the fat with Patrick’s father. His presence brought her to an abrupt stop.

‘You can’t go over there,’ Anna Marie whispered over her shoulder.

‘No matter. There’s a lot of wall came down in the gale. There’s a lot of work to be done on it and I’ll get the chance to talk to him direct. Be sure that I will.’

‘I don’t know why you’re bothering,’ said Anna Marie shaking her head. ‘He told where we’d gone, yet you’re still sweet on him.’

Venetia tossed her head. ‘Perhaps the truth was beaten out of him. If so, you can hardly blame him for speaking out in order to avoid the pain.’

Anna Marie was not convinced. ‘You may not have noticed it, but Patrick is broader and taller than his father. I would think beating him was an uphill struggle.’

Venetia glowered at her sister. It wasn’t often that Anna Marie spoke so boldly or hit the nail on the head. For a moment Venetia was thrown off balance, but she couldn’t get
Patrick out of her head. There was only one conclusion she could reach.

‘And what’s going on might I ask? You’re jealous! That’s what it is, isn’t it?’

‘No! No! Not at all!’

‘Well, you seem to be noticing a lot of things about him of late. I’ll thank you to mind your own business. Stick to your hens and your pigs. You suit them well with your fluffy ways and your feet in the mud!’

A pink flush travelled up her sister’s neck and onto her pale cheeks.

‘I’m not jealous,’ pleaded Anna Marie.

‘It wouldn’t do any good if you were. He likes a lively girl, does Patrick. Not a meek little mouse with chicken feathers in her hair and muck on her boots.’

‘That’s not fair!’

Anna Marie looked as though she were about to burst into tears.

‘Oh shut up,’ snapped Venetia, turning away, her attention fixed on Patrick.

He was helping his father unload the mortar, sand and tools from the back of the lorry.

There was no need to worry about whether he was still in love with her or not, she told herself. She’d heard no rumours that he was sweet on anyone else. Not that much gossip reached them on the farm, but plenty went on before and after mass. Before was best because at least you could go in and confess you were a gossip afterwards.

If her sister was sweet on Patrick, well, what did it matter? Patrick loved her, Venetia. He’d often commented on her raven hair, ravishing figure and flashing eyes. Anna Marie was her exact opposite; pale faced, light brown hair bordering on mousey. Pale blonde her grandmother called
it, but at this moment in time Venetia preferred to call it mousey.

She sank back into the gloom of the barn, hoping her grandfather hadn’t seen her. Patrick was setting his cap more firmly onto his head. Following that he took his coat off, throwing it over the tailboard.

His shirt was taut across his back as he bent and lifted more items from the rear of the lorry whose paintwork was not as bright as it had been. At the sight of those more defined muscles her breath caught in her throat. Before Queenstown he’d been less muscular than he was now. If only she was closer. She felt a great urge to reach out and touch him, even to smell him. My, but there was something delicious about a man’s fresh sweat.

So why hadn’t he been willing to go with her to America? Back then she had been fully convinced that he loved her enough to miss her if she left. Getting to Queenstown and seeing the big ships berthed there should have been enough to send his pulse racing; it had certainly got hers racing.

Despite what he’d done, she still wanted him. At night she dreamed of him and that moment in Queenstown when he’d thrown his arms around her and declared that he would miss her. Immediately following that he’d got in the lorry and headed home. She hadn’t expected him to. She really hadn’t.

But you still soldiered on, she thought to herself; whilst he betrayed you.

Her dislike for being dumped back with her grandparents in the hated countryside was undiminished. She didn’t like doing the things country girls were expected to do; feeding pigs, storing hay, driving cows and like she was doing now with her sister, plucking and drawing the chickens after their grandfather had slit the poor birds’ throats.

And the weather. Surely America had better weather than this? Even England did, or so she’d heard.

Today was as wet as only Ireland could be, the sky overcast and a cold wet wind blowing in from the south west.

‘I hate Ireland,’ she grumbled, one hand holding the warm breast of a chicken, the other up its rear end groping for entrails.

‘It won’t last forever. And anyway it’s nearly the weekend and we’ll have a good lunch after mass. Granfer’s always in a good mood after a good roast. And it’ll be a fine day on Sunday; I’m sure of it. Everyone will be happy.’

‘Except for these chickens,’ muttered Venetia.

‘I wonder what Magda and Michael are doing now,’ Anna Marie whispered as they prepared the birds for the table.

‘Not doing what we’re doing, that much is for sure,’ Venetia said glumly.

She felt Anna Marie’s eyes regarding her. ‘You’re not going over there to speak to him are you? Granfer will be fair mad with you if you do.’

‘No. Of course not!’ Venetia snapped.

‘You mustn’t.’

Venetia looked over at her sister who seemed so content with her lot in life, while she was anything but.

‘I’ve hardly said a word to him these past two years except for a brief
‘Hello’, ‘Nice to see you’, ‘Wasn’t that a good sermon Father Anthony gave us’
. That’s all! It’s not enough for me, Anna Marie. Not enough at all.’

‘If our grandfather …’

‘I know,’ she responded, kicking the invasion of chickens back out of the door. ‘I know.’

The following day turned out a bit drier. The sun dared show its face between the flock of clouds the wind was chasing across the sky.

Best of all, the stone wall was still in the process of being
rebuilt and Dermot Brodie had hitched a caged trailer onto the back of the tractor. Today was the day he was taking three sows over to the Morans’ place to mate with their boar.

‘Now’s my chance,’ whispered Venetia to her sister.

Alarm lit up Anna Marie’s face like a light bulb.

‘What if he comes back whilst you’re over there?’

Venetia was adamant. ‘I’ll deal with that particular problem when it happens. But look! How can I go over there looking like this? You’ll have to help me tidy myself up.’

They were still in the process of plucking the last of the chickens.

Anna Marie eyed the fluffy feathers that had floated up from the birds being plucked and settled in her sister’s hair. Her hands too were bloodied and her chin smeared with it.

After she’d washed the blood from her face and hands and Anna Marie had picked the feathers from her hair, Venetia took off the sack apron.

On hearing the cranking of an engine, both girls turned round in alarm.

‘No. They can’t be going already.’

Venetia was beside herself. She edged towards the door. Patrick’s father was cursing the starting handle, which had jerked in his hand hard enough to break his arm.

‘He’s going.’

Venetia’s voice and face were united in dismay. The effort of tidying herself up had come to nothing.

‘He’s going,’ she said sadly. ‘And he didn’t even see me.’

‘Never mind.’

‘I do mind,’ she snapped. ‘I mind a bloody lot!’

All day she kept looking out, fully expecting him to come bumping back down the lane to continue with the wall. She guessed her grandfather had sent them away on account of he wouldn’t be there himself. He was going to great pains to keep
her from Patrick Casey; great pains not to leave either of them alone with any man.

The feeling of being ill-treated by her grandfather festered in Venetia’s mind all day and half the night. The rest of the night she dreamed of Patrick coming to her, climbing into bed beside her as a husband might do.

Imagining how it would be was a bit like writing a story or play, steering the characters to do what you wanted them to do. And she was centre stage of course, the most beautiful woman in the world married to the most handsome man.

Sometimes she dreamed it was daytime, the sun shining and she would run into his arms. Leaving the job of repairing the stone wall, he would declare his undying love for her on bended knees. Unable to curb their desire, they would throw themselves into the straw.

‘Blow the old stone wall,’ she would breathe into his ear. ‘I’ve missed you, Paddy.’

He would be lost for words, his hands fumbling beneath her blouse, clasping her breasts, fondling her nipples and raining kisses and excuses onto her face as to why he’d betrayed her and why he couldn’t go to America.

‘My dear old dad hasn’t got long to live.’

She told herself it was all right to say this because Mr Casey was in vital health, but this was her dream and in her dream she could do exactly as she pleased.

‘Besides which,’ he said to her once the run of the mill excuses were brushed aside with Venetia’s hungry lips, ‘your granddad would make mincemeat of my wedding tackle if he sees us together.’

This particular statement was unwelcome, but in her dream she placed a hand over his mouth and smiled into his face.

‘Now that would be a shame. P’raps I’d better check that everything is still in working order, don’t you think?’

On waking she recalled that they really had said that and blushed with pleasure on remembering what followed.

They’d been lying in the long grass in Two Acre field. He’d gasped when she had the temerity to grope between his legs and had looked at her with a stunned expression and hardly able to catch his breath.

‘No girl’s ever done that before.’

‘Well. There’s always a first time.’ She paused. ‘Patrick Casey, I’m going to marry you,’ she finally said to him. ‘And then we’ll go to America.’

Laughing at her suggestion, he’d thrown himself back into the sweet grass of Two Acre field.

She’d groped him often; the field again, the hay barn or even the seat of his lorry; anywhere they happened at that moment to be ‘canoodling’ as her grandmother would say.

His laughing had annoyed her.

‘You’re not the only fish in the sea, Patrick Casey,’ she’d told him. ‘And I’m going to find the one that’s got the ambition and the nerve to cross the ocean with me. That I am!’

There’d been no turning back after that. Patrick was the one for her and she was the one for him – or so she’d thought. That was until she saw him yet again looking at Anna Marie in that special way she’d seen him look at her down at Queenstown.

Anna Marie Brodie kept telling herself that she had no interest in Patrick Casey, yet every time he looked at her she felt herself blushing.

He’d smiled at her when she’d gone shopping with her grandmother for flour and the other things the farm did not produce. He’d also helped her get aboard the pony and trap, holding one of the big canvas shopping bags whilst she climbed aboard.

Her grandmother hadn’t heard him tell her what a pretty
girl she was becoming and wouldn’t it be nice to meet up some time.

She’d felt more and more foolish as her face turned to flame. Why did she have to blush so much?

Anyway, she kept the encounter to herself and tried to convince herself that she felt nothing for him. But at night he came to her, smiling through her dreams. My, but Venetia was right about one thing; he was the best-looking lad around. Nobody could deny that.

‘The Caseys’ work on the wall is almost complete. They deserve a bit of cake and tea before they leave. And it’s a hot day today. A little time in the shade will do them good.’

The news that they were to have a little tea party to celebrate the imminent rebuilding of the wall came as a surprise.

‘You don’t have much of a social life. Not the way things are.’

Their grandmother’s eyes had twinkled when she said it. Anna Marie thought she detected a sudden dropping of one eyelid in a secretive wink. Had she heard Patrick’s comment that day outside Flynns’ grocery store?

Venetia bubbled with excitement as she set out the crockery whilst her grandmother made the tea. First Anna Marie placed a paper doyley on a glass cake stand. She’d made the cake herself and set it down proudly, looking like a mother with a new-born infant.

Determined to hide her enthusiasm, Venetia darted about, setting out one set of tea plates, deciding they weren’t quite good enough, and then returning them to the dresser to be replaced by another set.

‘One set will do,’ her grandmother proclaimed. ‘Keep going as you are, something is bound to get smashed.’

Venetia avoided meeting the look of distrust in her
grandmother’s eyes. It was pretty obvious a close watch was going to be kept on her, more so than Anna Marie.

‘What will I say to him?’ she whispered to Anna Marie.

‘You might not get to say anything,’ her sister whispered back.

Leaving clods of mud on the cast-iron scraper outside the door, father and son entered the kitchen along with Mr Smiley, a strange, silent man who trimmed the hedgerows and never said much, and Barry Gallagher, the butcher from Dunavon who’d arrived to take away a delivery of plucked chickens and cured hams.

They brought the smell of earth, blood and dusty hedgerows with them, shook the dust from their caps and remarked how good it was of Mrs Brodie to make them tea, and wasn’t that a wonderful cake on the table.