Christmas Wish (27 page)

Venetia connived to spend most of her time out of the house and in the barn, sometimes scratching for things to do. All the time she waited for the opportunity to get closer to him, to speak, even to touch him if she could.

Grandparents as watchful as ever when Patrick was around, she sat frustrated on a bale of straw, kicking her heels and feeling badly treated by them that should love her and therefore let her have her own way.

Anna Marie was pitch forking fresh bedding out for Merrylegs, the pony that pulled the gig. Once that was done she filled the feed bucket with corn for the hens.

She was thinking deep thoughts. ‘Have you ever wondered why our father never writes to us?’

‘He can’t be bothered?’

‘Or he can’t write. I mean, even a little note would have been lovely. Just a line or two says it all, don’t you think?’

She looked up from what she was doing to see her sister staring at her as though she’d said something terribly profound.

‘I’ll feed the chickens today.’ She grabbed the bucket of corn from her sister.

Anna Marie looked at her in amazement.

‘I thought the chickens made you sneeze.’

‘That depends.’

Anna Marie saw her sister look to where Patrick and his father were taking down the stone wall. The lorry was parked between the wall and the barn where she and Venetia were sorting out animal feed. For a moment her sister disappeared and seemed to take a while reappearing.

Anna Marie sucked in her breath. Her sister could be wild at times, but in this instance she really should be careful.

Her attention switched to the house. Her grandmother, barely five feet tall and as round as a turnip, was feeding wet laundry through a mangle, the water splashing over her black stockings and her working boots.

The mangle turned more slowly then stopped altogether as Molly Brodie’s blue eyes followed the provocative sway of Venetia’s hips.

When Venetia veered away from the pigsty, the turning of the mangle resumed, Molly Brodie assured that her granddaughter was not heading for Patrick Casey.

Aware that she was being watched, Venetia had purposely headed between the barn and the lorry where the hens were pecking in the earth.

Anna Marie watched with her heart in her mouth. For a moment her sister disappeared behind the lorry, which was now between her and the pigsty. There was no chance of her having a private conversation with Patrick. He was too far away.

She was up to something; Anna Marie was sure of it.

Venetia scattered the corn too quickly so it fell in great heaps. The chickens fell onto it in great heaps too, fighting and clucking with indignation.

‘Done!’ Venetia exclaimed.

There was a jaunty air to the way she sauntered back, head high, shoulders back and a definite spring to her step.

Anna Marie’s blonde eyebrows almost met when she frowned. Her blue eyes were full of puzzlement. Something was going on here. She hadn’t had time to scatter a whole bucket of corn, yet it appeared she had and was heading back and looking mighty pleased with herself.

‘Here,’ said a smiling Venetia swinging the bucket at her so she had no choice but to grab it. She strode off with her hands in her pockets and whistling a saucy song.

Bucket bumping against her side, Anna Marie ran after her.

‘What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve fed the hens, of course,’ smirked Venetia with a toss of her head.

Just for once, Anna Marie bridled at her sister’s dismissal.

‘Don’t treat me as though I’m a fool. You didn’t go out there just to feed the hens. And anyway, judging by how fast
you came back, you left the corn in a mountain, you didn’t scatter it as you should have done.’

‘They won’t mind. It’s corn. What should I do, hand it to them on a silver plate?’

Anna Marie persisted.

‘Gran was watching. If she thinks you’ve been talking to him …’

Venetia’s huge dark eyes were like candles glowing in the dark. Her complexion, usually so creamy and unblemished with the kind of blushing Anna Marie was plagued with, had a rosy hue.

‘I couldn’t talk to him could I, you silly goose. He was with his father on the other side of the truck. I couldn’t
talk
to him.’

Her sister eyed her warily, not sure whether she was being duped or not. From where she was standing it seemed indeed that she couldn’t possibly speak to Patrick.

‘You did something …’

She said it slowly, her eyes scrutinising her sister’s face for some kind of explanation.

Venetia lifted herself onto a pile of straw and giggled. ‘Promise you won’t tell on me?’

‘On the Blessed Virgin …’

Venetia’s expression turned taut.

‘No. On our mother’s grave. I know you’d swear on the Blessed Virgin and then likely confess your sin to Father Anthony. Swearing on our mother’s grave is a different matter.’

Anna Marie bit her bottom lip as she always did when she was undecided or nervous. She felt both at the moment, weighing up whether she should swear, a thing the church said they should never do under any circumstances, and nervous because she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her sister’s confidence; doing so might well get her into trouble. She’d gone through enough beatings thanks to her twin.

‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

‘Yes you do. I’ll take it that you have sworn and tell you. It’s simple. I nodded at Patrick before going behind the truck, and then I flipped a note into the back of it. He saw me do it.’ She frowned. ‘At least I think he did.’

Anna Marie sank down onto the hay bale beside her, fearful of a future without Venetia, without her twin.

‘Are you going to run away with him?’

Venetia laughed and looked at her derisively. ‘Don’t be such a daft duck! Well, that is, not first off. I’m going to meet up with him, use my charms and get him to go with me to America. And before you say, what about me, it’s up to you whether you come with us or not. But this time he has to marry me first.’

Anna Marie bit her bottom lip again, wishing she hadn’t asked and wishing she could make up her mind whether she wanted to go to America at all. She quite liked the farm and loved her grandmother. Her grandfather wasn’t worthy of love but he was due some respect and certainly she feared him. There was also the matter of being attracted to Patrick. If he ran away with her sister, then that would be the end of it. The funny thing was she didn’t know whether to be glad or sad about it.

Venetia’s expression turned from happy to devious.

‘I’ve got another secret for you. I’m not spending all Monday and Friday cleaning the rectory. It might have taken Mrs Moran all day to clean it, but I can speed through it in half the time. The rest of the time I’ll be with Patrick. That’s what I’ve told him.’

Although the priest’s house had many rooms, only a few were used, occupied as it was by just one man. Father Anthony only used the ground floor front-of-house rooms, the kitchen and scullery left to Mrs Moran and now Venetia. He slept in a front bedroom and had the luxury of a bathroom just across the landing. The other rooms were cold and filled with unused furniture, some covered in dust sheets and the less attractive pieces shoved into one corner.

‘A priest should live in an impressive house,’ stated Mrs Moran when Venetia had suggested he should live in something smaller. ‘He’s the most important man hereabouts so should have the biggest and the best.’

Mrs Moran followed her around on that first day, her voice a drone of information. Chief amongst it seemed to be remembering to water the huge aspidistra that sat in a pot at the bottom of the stairs.

‘And be careful with that pot. It’s Delft. Worth a fortune that pot is.’

‘It’s chipped,’ said Venetia, fingering the rough edge that had been hidden by a dark green leaf.

‘What? Well, that wasn’t there before,’ declared Mrs Moran with a loud snort of indignation.

Venetia wasn’t fooled. She saw spots of red flare in the old woman’s cheeks and knew where the guilt lay.

Just as she’d supposed, Mrs Moran was painfully slow, rubbing her bowed legs and rolling from side to side because her hips were as bad as her legs.

She was careful that first Monday to take things easy and make the work last all day. The same on the Friday of that week.

The following Monday, after she’d convinced Mrs Moran that she could polish, sweep and dust to her own high standard, she was all alone.

The old lady’s last warning was that she should never clean the study when Father Anthony was in there.

‘That’s where he writes his sermons and deals with parish business. You’ll not go in there when he’s busy. The good father has to concentrate. He’ll ask for you to give it a clean when it’s needed.’

That was fine with Venetia. The sooner she could get the work done, the better.

She raced round the house like a whirlwind, doing what had to be done. Father Anthony kept to his study except when she prepared him some lunch. Mrs Moran hadn’t mentioned preparing the priest’s lunch was one of her duties, but he disappeared into his study afterwards or went out to visit a sick parishioner or the well-to-do family that sponsored him.

Mid-afternoon, once she was sure the coast was clear, she set off to see Patrick. Checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she brushed her hair, took off her apron and pinched her cheeks to make them a little pinker. She’d brought with her a stub of red lipstick she’d had forever, just enough to slither along her lips.

Her blue dress was far from her best, but she’d ironed it
before leaving this morning and the whiff of beeswax wasn’t too obvious. It would have to do.

It was no more than a hundred yards along the back lane to the builders’ yard and workshop where Patrick dabbled in carpentry.

The smell of new wood pared by a hand-driven lathe floated out as particles of sawdust on the air.

Patrick was bent over the lathe, intent on forming a chair leg from a piece of virgin wood.

‘Patrick?’

He spun round immediately, the chair leg spinning along the workbench like a stone from a catapult.

At first he looked at her as though seeing a ghost.

She smiled whilst inhaling the scent of him, taking in the broadness of his shoulders, his need of a shave and the scent of fresh sweat.

She lingered by the door, her voice as seductive as her demeanour – a bit like that Maureen O’Hara, the American actress she’d seen at the pictures. My, but those film stars could be so enticing!

‘Patrick. It’s been nearly two years and more since Queenstown. Did you know that?’

He nodded. ‘Ahuh.’

‘And then you drove back here and told my granfer that me and Anna Marie had run away and were in Queenstown.’

‘Ahuh.’ He nodded again. ‘I’m sorry That I am. Truly sorry.’

She shook her head at him as she might at a small child.

‘You have to make up for what you did, Patrick Casey. So! What are you going to do?’

He looked at her as though he were groping for the words to say when all she wanted was for him to reach out, to grope her for God’s sake!

‘Venetia.’

He took a step towards her.

‘Patrick,’ she said, barely able to control her amusement. This was lovely, but at the same time so funny.

She took a step towards him, he did the same and then they both did a couple more.

The crashing together was inevitable. The warmth of his body seemed to draw hers in until it felt as though they were melded together.

Like drowning, Venetia thought, feeling as though she were sinking into a blue-black void as they kissed and sucked on each other, groped, fondled, stroked and caressed.

It was as though there had been no intermission between their meetings before he’d taken her and her sister to Queenstown and the period of purgatory that had passed since.

‘I might just as well have been a nun,’ she said to him as they clung to each other in the lorry cab.

‘You? Never!’

She couldn’t exactly recall climbing up there because how they got there was not that important. It was the bit before and the bit they were now experiencing.

So they were lovers again – only more so because they were both that much older.

The haunts in which they’d canoodled were restricted by the fact that they had little time to spare and this was where the old lorry came in handy. It was their very own love nest, the little place where they could hide from the world and nobody knew they were there.

The windows got steamed up but that was fine with Venetia because it meant they wouldn’t get cold when they took off their clothes.

She didn’t protest when one thing led to another and his hot kisses swallowed any protest she might make – if indeed she wanted to protest – which she didn’t.

‘Do you love me, Patrick? Do you love me more than all the tea in China?’ she asked him, her long tanned arms entwined around his neck.

‘More than all the wood in me old man’s shed,’ he said breathlessly, and tried to kiss her.

She jerked her head away. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I love the smell of wood; the feel of it too. Just like a woman’s body. Like your body. Soft, silky and shapely.’

For a moment she looked at him as though he were slightly mad in comparing a woman to a piece of wood; then she laughed.

‘Go away with you. You’re a fool and that’s for sure,’ she said, though she could hardly control her giggles.

He pretended it hurt when she slapped his shoulder.

‘I can hardly go away dressed like this,’ he answered with a wicked grin.

‘That’s true.’

He was lying on top of her, his loins between hers and his legs and backside bare. Every so often she caught a peek of him in the rear-view mirror above his ass. It made her grin, but she daren’t burst out laughing. The last thing she wanted was to make fun of him. It was imperative that he loved her. It was imperative that he couldn’t possibly do without her.

She asked him if he was happy. He said that he was.

‘Are you?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes, Patrick Casey. I’m very, very happy.’

Pressing her hand against the back of his head, she brought his lips down to meet hers.