Ruby Flynn (6 page)

Ruby smiled up at him, sheepishly. She already liked Jack.

She threaded her fingers around a leather strap attached to the side of the cart and shifted up on the sack, closer to him, in order to see better. She let the oilskin slip from her shoulders and breathed in the earthy smell of the bog. She felt exhilarated and alive. The rain-soaked fields were the deepest green and the clouds were parting to reveal blue sky above, as the sun became even stronger. She relaxed and let her anger fall away, soothed by the rhythm of the horse’s trot.

Despite her fear of travelling to a new home and a new life, her heart could not fail to be lifted by the sound of the birds, by the green fields rolling away into the distance and by the rough cragginess of the land.

In every village they passed through, people came out of their cottages and waved. Dogs ran after the cartwheels and barked and children shouted questions up at Ruby. Women stood at their doors with babies in their arms and smiled.

A man cycled past the cart with a sack of potatoes precariously balanced over his handlebars and also held his hand up in greeting.

Ruby asked ‘Do you know everyone in these parts.’

Jack laughed. ‘Well, I was born here over forty years ago. People leave, but no one ever moves to these parts, so I guess ’tis true, I do know everyone.’

Ruby watched the countryside and the cows grazing and thought about her act of defiance, her final goodbye.

‘What you thinking about so much?’ Jack shouted, as he slowed the horse and lit his pipe.

‘I’m really mad with myself for losing me rag with the reverend mother, because if I ever want to visit Sister Francis, she will never let me through the door again.’

Ruby felt the familiar pain of rejection and hurt throb in her chest. ‘She is a truly wicked woman, you know,’ she said indignantly to Jack.

Jack puffed on his pipe.

‘Well, I was never spared the belt by the nuns when I was a child meself, but I would say now that it never did me no harm.’

This was not what Ruby wanted to hear and she gave a slight snort. ‘Will we pass Doohoma on the way?’ she asked. She had no idea of her bearings or even where the castle was.

Jack held the reins with one hand and grinned.

‘Doohoma, not likely. ’Tis a fair way from the castle but both are near on the shore and face the ocean.’

That news instantly made her feel better. To see the ocean again, where her father and brother fished day after day. Ruby’s thoughts of Doohoma sustained her for the rest of journey.

How do I find our house?
ran through her mind, over and over.

And even though she knew none of the houses they passed, any one of them could have been her own. She strained to look for her parents and her brother behind the half-open doors or through the small windows.

Ruby’s nightmares had lessened over the years and they were replaced by dreams of her future. One in particular disturbed her more than most. She would share it with Lottie when she woke and it was always the same.

‘I fancy myself married to a handsome man in a big house with lots of children and I see my little girl running across a lawn and my sons climbing up great big trees. I’m definitely rich and there’s a big picnic on the lawn, laid out on a blanket under a tree and my husband, he is very good-looking, Lottie, looks a little bit like the clerk who rescued me and we are watching our children and we are laughing, so we are. Just like my mammy and daddy used to. My husband chases the children and I walk away from them to a place on the lawn where you can see the ocean. I turn back to shout for my husband, but he has gone and the children have disappeared and I run back along the lawn, past dead flowers and bare trees and I start to panic, because I can’t find them anywhere.’

As Ruby spoke, Lottie would imagine herself pouring tea into china cups on the blanket under the tree. Sometimes, she saw herself with a baby and her own husband, watching the children.

‘Ruby, you have an imagination like no other. Listen to you with all your grand words. ’Tis just a dream. We are poor and have nothing of our own. Though, you are the one with the looks and the hair, ’twould be easy for you to marry, I would be thinking, and a miracle for me.’

The smell and the sound of the ocean hit Ruby as the horse began to slow to a walk. With the scent of brine in her nostrils, she wanted to catch sight of the ocean the second it came into view. When it did so, her heart stopped bleeding and she felt as if she could jump with joy.

‘My daddy used to fish in that ocean,’ she shouted up to Jack, pointing and jabbing her finger. Then her heart leapt again as a battered old tank of a fishing trawler pulled out across the horizon and she saw that it was a boat that she recognized.

‘I know that boat, I know that boat.’

‘Aye,’ Jack replied, unimpressed. ‘It leaves Belmullet every day and always has. You would have seen it from Doohoma Head.’

The sight of something so familiar from Ruby’s childhood made her feel light headed and giddy.

‘Can you imagine,’ she said, grinning. ‘I used to wave to it every day,’ and she began to wave again furiously, to the rusty hull.

Jack shook the reins and pulled the horse into a trot around to the right. Soon, the lodge house and pillars came into view and a long driveway meandered ahead.

‘Here we are then,’ shouted Jack, waving to the porter in the garden of the lodge. ‘Welcome to Ballyford Castle.’

Ruby stared straight ahead with her mouth slightly open. She had almost stopped breathing.

Jack, with his horse and cart, had driven Ruby straight into her dream.

‘Do we have any idea at all when Jack will be here with the flour?’

Amy Keenan was the cook at Ballyford Castle and she was addressing Mrs McKinnon, who was sitting at the end of the kitchen table, drinking her tea.

‘I have no idea, Amy, but he wasn’t too long after ourselves. I wish he would get a move on, he has the new girl with him and I have a hundred things to be getting on with, which I can’t begin until she is settled in.’

Amy Keenan brought her bread dough down on the table with such a thud that it became difficult for Mrs McKinnon to see her through the cloud of flour.

‘Mary, in the name of Jesus, why is it taking ye so long to pluck the chickens? Get a move on, girl.’

‘Yes, Amy,’ shouted Mary. She was a slight girl who hardly spoke, but she responded to the wink from Mrs McKinnon with a wide and near toothless grin.

‘Ah, the new girl,’ Amy continued. ‘I don’t suppose she’s been brought to help me in the kitchen, has she?’

‘No, I’m afraid not, Amy. She’s for the nursery.’

‘God in heaven, why would that be? There is no child in the nursery. He’s dead. They’re all dead, God rest their little souls.’ Amy blessed herself as she spoke.

Amy had worked in the castle since she was a girl and had acquired a degree of confidence typical in a woman who rules her own domain. Amy’s realm was the kitchen and woe betide anyone who helped themselves to so much as a cup of buttermilk or an oat biscuit without first seeking permission.

‘Aye, they are all dead,’ said Mrs McKinnon. ‘God bless them. Lady FitzDeane was asleep in the nursing chair when I popped my head in this morning. Heartbreaking it is. She’s lost so much weight. I’m feared she will snap in two if we don’t have someone to help her. Someone who could do a bit of everything including writing the odd letter because she is far too melancholy to write any herself.’

Amy looked dumbfounded. ‘Does Lord FitzDeane know?’

‘How could he Amy? He’s back in Liverpool. He’s gone into a new business and bought a ship, so Mr McKinnon tells me. He is living in the big house in Sefton Park now too, so I’m told. He has had it decorated from top to bottom. I don’t like him staying in Liverpool. There has been a telephone in this castle for almost five years now, he should be able to work from here.’

‘’Tis all changing if you ask me,’ said Amy. ‘Things are so different here now altogether. No fishing parties, no shoots, no balls. It’s as if the lady has been in mourning forever and him, Lord Charles, they were his babies too but no one frets about him do they? I’ve seen the difference since the last one died, he’s moving further and further away from us and I will tell you something else too: I reckon that if they had a baby girl, it would live. There is a woman in Waterford, lives in the same village as my mammy’s cousin, ten dead boys she had until the girl came along and now she’s going as fit as you like. They have her milking and cutting the turf too and they say she’s as strong as the ten boys would have been.’

‘God help her,’ Mrs McKinnon replied wryly. ‘I cannot imagine how the mother kept going, losing ten boys. We had five years and five losses and a funeral for each one of them here and I can see the effect it has had on the lady.’

‘Mary, stop earwigging and pluck!’ Amy shouted.

She turned and filled the kettle at the enormous stone sink and as she did, she thought she heard the sound of the cart in the distance. She immediately stood on tiptoe to look out of the window.

‘God in heaven, you don’t think he has another woman do you, Mrs McKinnon? I mean, in Liverpool? Maybe that’s why he is setting up a new house there. He wouldn’t take a mistress in Liverpool, would he?’

Amy turned back and put the kettle onto the range. She had meant to whisper her question. It was one that had been playing on her mind for some time. She felt for Lord FitzDeane. It appeared to Amy that all the attention and sympathy focused on Lady FitzDeane and that the man they all knew with affection as Lord Charles, was forgotten about.

‘I don’t think so, no,’ Mrs McKinnon said impatiently. She looked towards the servants’ stairs nervously, to see if anyone was hovering.

‘Mr McKinnon is off to Liverpool sometime soon with two chests and papers from the study for Lord Charles. We had thought he was returning to Ballyford shortly, but it would appear Mr McKinnon has to take Ballyford to him.’

Amy took a handkerchief out of her apron pocket and wiped the flour from her eyes.

‘’Tis a sad state of affairs. I think of those fabulous dinner parties I used to cater for and now, I make pies for the staff meals. Five children born into Ballyford and five children dead. Who would have thought we would be saying that when they first married, eh, and what a day to remember that was? It took me three months from beginning to end to make that cake.’

Mrs McKinnon looked towards the window as she heard the sound of hooves on the cobbled path leading through the arch to the kitchen garden from the main drive. She saw Jack’s cart turn the corner and slowly make its way down the path as the wheels dipped in and out of the grooves.

‘Here’s Jack, so, let’s put on a brave face shall we? You know the man has a soft spot for you. Mr McKinnon reckons the reason he fixed up the thatch on that cottage of his is because he is working himself up to make a proposal.’

Mrs McKinnon laughed as she waved out of the window to Jack and went to open the back door.

‘Merciful God, he would be a foolish man indeed to do that at our age. That’s the notion of a young man. What would he be thinking of?’ Amy blushed as bright as the beets she had simmering on the huge kitchen range. ‘I’m too old for any of that nonsense and that man surely has more sense than wanting to spend what’s left of his life with a woman bigger, stronger and cleverer than himself.’

Amy wiped her floury hands on her powdery apron as she and Mrs McKinnon grinned at each other.

‘Can I see the new girl,’ said little Mary, hovering behind Amy.

‘No, you cannot, not until I have. Get back to the chickens.’ Mary scuttled off to sit back on her upturned pail.

Mrs McKinnon opened the door and the first sight to greet her was Ruby Flynn, standing on the doorstep with a white face and a bag in her hand.

‘Goodness me, child, you look as though you are about to faint, come away inside,’ she said.

Mary, ignoring Amy’s warning, rushed forward to greet Ruby and, taking her hand, led her into the kitchen.

‘Have ye made me another one of those pies, Amy?’ said Jack, lifting his cap in greeting.

‘Get off, you cheeky bugger,’ said Amy.

‘You are a hard woman, Amy. Ye steal my heart by charming my stomach and then ye starve me of the pleasure I have come to enjoy. I dream about your pies, Amy.’

Bustling and blushing, Amy placed a hot potato pie in Jack’s hand, then, with a tilt of his cap and a wink at Mrs McKinnon, Jack was back out of the door.

Before he left, he whispered, in an altogether more serious tone, ‘The girl, she had a funny turn as we came up the drive, I thought she was about to fall clean off the wagon. She had been right as rain all the way here. I reckon maybe ’twas the size or the sight of the castle that did it. Had to stop for a second, I did. Maybe she needs a bit of Amy’s food in her belly. Don’t think convent food is up to much for those girls, all stick thin they are.’

‘Aye, we will feed her, Jack,’ said Mrs McKinnon. ‘I treat all my girls well, as does Amy. We look after each other.’

Mrs McKinnon turned to Ruby, as she closed the kitchen door. ‘Sit down, girl, and let’s get a cuppa and a meal inside you. You have lots to learn over the next few weeks. Now, are you feeling all right?’

Ruby nodded. ‘I am fine, thank you, Mrs McKinnon. I think it was the cart, the wobbling back and forth, it made me a bit sickly.’

Mrs McKinnon handed Ruby a cup from the staff press as Amy waddled around the table with a teapot and a slice of the hot pie, baked to perfection with its brown and glazed crust.

‘Eat up,’ she said kindly. I’ll butter you a slice of bread to have with it. Ruby, is it?’

Ruby nodded in response. The smell of the hot pie was reviving her and her mouth began to water.

‘I’m away to fetch your uniform Ruby,’ said Mrs McKinnon. ‘Amy will look after you for a few minutes and no doubt, by the time I return, you will be twice the size you are now.’

‘I feed all the staff well here. God knows, there’s no one else to cook for,’ Amy sighed. ‘I reckon I’ll have a nice bit of fat sticking to those skinny ribs of yours before the month is out. Drink up and eat the pie now. I’ve a nice stew for supper. That Mrs McKinnon will have ye run off yer feet by the end of the day. She may be fair, but she expects hard work for her consideration.’