The Bright One (6 page)

‘There!' she said, breaking the silence ‘That's as far as I can go! Will I make a cup of tea, then?'

‘'Twould be very welcome,' Kieran said. ‘Have you much more to do?'

‘On Moira's dress, not a lot. But then don't I have to start on Breda's? 'Tis a great pity there was nothing in Aunt Cassie's last parcel suitable for the occasion.'

They were going to Dublin, going to visit Kathleen for the first time; she and Kieran, Moira and Breda. Since there wasn't enough money for all of them to go it was just as well that Patrick and Colum couldn't get time off their work, and James said he'd have to be at home to look after them. That last fact did not ring true. They were old enough to be left, but James said there was no telling what they'd get up to, and who would there be to stop them?

He didn't have to spell it out. She could sense that James didn't want to go. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Kathleen, though there had always been a little distance between them. His relationship with each of his children was different. Molly knew, without anything being said, that he didn't fancy too much time spent in the convent. He did his religious duty, went to Mass, but he shied away from anything too holy. Molly let it lie. In any case, there just wasn't enough money.

‘Are you having a new outfit for yourself, Mammy?' Kieran asked.

‘Indeed I am!'

She stirred the low fire under the big black kettle which hung there, ready filled, most of the day. It would take but a minute to come to the boil.

‘A new dress, at least,' she said. ‘I have my eye on the material at Kitty Shelley's. She's promised to put a length by.'

She had been saving for at least three years for this event, a penny here, threepence there; whatever and whenever she could, not always telling James. From time to time there had been extra work at the Big House, especially in the summer and at Christmas when the family came, and she had taken every scrap of extra work she could get. Then, of course, for almost a year now, Patrick and Colum had been in jobs, and though the money was small, and hardly kept them in food and clothes, it all helped.

The twins, leaving the National School, had gone on to the technical school at Molly's insistence. She wanted them to get on in the world. So far, the opportunities in Kilbally being what they were, they had not gone far, and it seemed uncertain that they ever would.

Patrick had taken the job which she had hoped Kieran might have had. Indeed, after two years of holiday work Luke O'Reilly had offered it to Kieran.

‘You'd do well,' Luke said. ‘I'd teach you all I know.'

But Kieran had politely refused. He could not be deflected. It had been Molly herself who had asked Luke O'Reilly to take on one of the twins.

‘Either of them would serve you well,' she said. ‘I'd see to that.'

She would too, Luke thought. She was a woman who had her family well in hand. She was also exceedingly pretty, more so in his eyes than any of her daughters.

‘Well, I suppose I could give one of them a try. Is it to be Patrick or Colum?' he'd said. ‘Who would be best?'

‘That's for you to choose,' Molly said. ‘And I'm very grateful to you! I'll send them both along tomorrow.'

What a pity, she thought, that his business wasn't big enough to take on both of them. She knew they would hate to be separated, but there was no help for it. There wasn't a concern anywhere which would hire the two at once.

Luke O'Reilly, after an interview in which he found it impossible to make a choice, left it to them.

‘One of you turn up at eight o'clock sharp on Monday morning,' he said. ‘I'll give whoever it is a month's trial.'

He wondered if he would be able to tell which one it was. They were like two peas in a pod.

In the end, back at home, neither of them enamoured by the thought of the job but knowing it was needed, they tossed a coin, heads to take it, tails to look elsewhere. It fell to Patrick.

‘And what will you do?' Molly asked Colum.

He shrugged. ‘Whatever I can!'

In the end he got a job with Eddie Murphy, blacksmith-cum-garage-owner. In the last few years Eddie had diversified into car repairs and the sale of petrol. Horses didn't attract Colum, but the prospect of messing about with cars appealed to him. One day, he was sure, he would have a car of his own.

‘You do realize, don't you,' Kieran warned his younger brother, ‘that there are going to be precious few cars around? You'll be back to nothing but horses in no time at all.'

He had been proved right. The war in Europe – which in neutral Ireland was known as ‘the Emergency' – had brought rationing, and not only of foodstuffs. There was almost no petrol, and by the time Colum had been in his job a few months most cars were off the road, on blocks in barns and sheds for the duration.

What worried Molly about the twins was that one or other of them would get fed up and bored with his job and would be tempted to cross the water and join the British army. If either of them did this, the other would follow as night follows day. They would never let themselves be split between two countries.

Colum would be the one to start it, she thought. His job was marginally less to his liking than Patrick's to his. There were fewer people in and out of Murphy's all day long.

‘In any case, it's my opinion he's afraid of horses!' James said when Molly confided her fears to him. ‘I reckon they both are.'

He was good-naturedly contemptuous of this fear in them. It made for a distance between him and the twins. Horses were part of his life, together with fishing, shooting when he could get it and, truth to tell, a bit of poaching on the side. And, of course, a pint or two of Guinness whenever he could afford it. It was something the two didn't appreciate. They were a bit young, but hadn't he, at their age, already had the taste?

The only sport in which they would ever join him was the sea-fishing, though not because it was sport to them, but to make up a crew and earn a shilling or two. But James, even if he could not have made any money from it, would have done it for love. There was nothing he enjoyed more than a night's fishing, no matter what the weather or the state of the sea. He was good at it too, worth his weight in any crew. His own father had taken him out fishing when he'd been a small boy, born and bred in Galway.

Right up to the time he'd left home to marry he had felt that Galway Bay was his. It would always come first with him, though the coast here, with its rocks and its great cliffs, was not to be despised. Far from it. The sea here was changeable, unpredictable, to be treated with respect.

‘We can't all be alike,' Molly defended the twins. ‘They're good lads, all the same.'

‘Did I ever say they were not?' James answered.

‘Too good for the Army,' she said.

‘Sure, there is nothing that's wrong with the Army,' James said. ‘'Tis a man's life.'

‘And there speaks a man!' Molly retorted. ‘Would you ever be hearing a woman talk so?'

‘Here is your tea, then,' Molly said now to Kieran. ‘And a scone with it.' She cleared a space beside his books. ‘I shall buy you a new white shirt to go to Dublin, and a tie if it will run to it. I dare say I could make a tie if I found the right material. It can't be too difficult.'

Kieran bit into the thick, fluffy scone. No-one made them like Mammy.

‘There is no need for new clothes for me,' he said through a mouthful.

‘There is so!' Molly was firm about it. ‘We have to be a credit to Kathleen. Isn't it a new suit I'd be buying you as well, if I could afford it?'

‘Can I have another scone?' Kieran asked. ‘Will you send me a tin of them when I'm in the seminary. And your soda bread?'

She turned away quickly, made heavy weather of splitting another scone and buttering it, not wanting him to see her face. She wished he hadn't spoken so. She wanted, for the few weeks left, to pretend that he wasn't going. There was so little time, she couldn't do enough for him. It was her way of getting through it, of stifling her resentment at the feeling that he was being taken from her. Her feelings had been bitter, so much so that they had troubled her, and she had taken them to Father Curran.

‘You have it the wrong way round, my child,' he'd said. ‘He's not being taken. You have given him. You have given him to God!'

‘Does it count as that,' Molly asked, ‘if I don't want to give him? If I do it all unwillingly? And I would stop him if I could?'

‘It counts even more, child,' Father Curran said. ‘It counts double. God sees your sacrifice. You will be blessed.'

She had yet to feel that, she thought, handing Kieran the second scone.

‘I will send you whatever I'm allowed to,' she told him. ‘You know that. But I daresay you'll be amply fed there. And now I must clear my things away, and so must you before long. They'll all be in for tea.'

So, she would put everything except the present moment out of her mind.

While he drank his tea and ate his scones, Kieran watched his mother. She was forty years old, he knew that, and it was middle-aged, but she looked exactly the same to him as she always had.

Her hair, thick, straight, as black as night and with no hint of grey, swung in her face as she bent over the table. She raised an arm to put it back and anchor it behind her ear. The flesh of her arm was firm and creamy, her face glowed with health, the skin tight over cheekbones and jaw. Only a fine line or two at the corners of her mouth, and smudgy shadows beneath her clear eyes, hinted that she was no longer a girl. Otherwise, and in every way that mattered, she was ageless.

He wanted to stretch out and stroke her face with his finger, as he might have done when he was a small boy; but now he was too old.

He knew she hated the thought of his leaving. So often he watched her trying – and failing – to hide her feelings about it. But did she know that, though he was set on what he was doing, with part of him he hated the thought of leaving her? He would not say so; it would make matters worse.

Molly, had she known, could have told him he was wrong about that, that such an admission would give her comfort.

He took refuge now in talking of everyday matters. She was folding Moira's half-completed dress, looking critically at it.

‘The colour will suit Moira,' Kieran said.

‘I hope so,' Molly said. ‘I'm doubtful that bright red is the right colour for a visit to a convent, but you know Moira! 'Twould break her heart, she declared, if she had to choose differently.' She had given in over the colour – she knew that Moira would look good in it – but she intended to be quite firm about the neckline.

‘And yours and Breda's?' Kieran enquired.

‘Light blue for Breda,' Molly said. ‘Blue is good with red hair, much more subtle than green – though if I manage to buy the material,
I
shall have green. It has a small, white spot in it. Very smart!'

She put away her sewing in the sideboard cupboard.

‘I'll move the sewing machine,' Kieran said. He picked it up as if it weighed no more than two ounces and carried it to its shelf in the corner.

‘You'll have to put your books away before long,' Molly repeated. ‘They'll be home soon.'

Moira was home first. She usually was, never working a minute longer than she had to. For Moira, life started when the day's work was over and she was free, though never free enough. She longed for the day she would be free to leave Kilbally, which was the most boring place on earth. Failing that, and until that day arrived, she longed for the chance to get away just for the evenings. She had several friends of both sexes. If her parents – well, it was her mother really – were not so strict, so stick-in-the-mud, she could go with her friends to Ennis. There was dancing in Ennis; dancing and singing, and far more exciting people.

‘Hello there!' Molly said. ‘Is it a good day you've had, then?' She spoke cheerfully, trying to set the mood.

Moira flung herself down in the armchair. ‘Would you call washing people's dirty hair, sweeping the floor, cleaning the basins, a good day?'

At fourteen, there had seemed no point whatever in Moira going on to the technical school. She wasn't interested in anything school had to offer, and when she wasn't interested she wouldn't work, not at lessons, not at anything. Molly didn't want any of her children to stop learning at fourteen. She did her best to persuade Moira otherwise, but James thought that that was a waste of time.

‘'Tis certain sure that not another thing is going to go into her head at school,' he said. ‘Won't that one do most of her learning out in the world?'

He grinned at Moira when he said it. It was his own philosophy. And anyway you only had to look at her to know that she'd be married before you could turn round. If there was to be a couple of years when she could earn a few shillings before that happened, then why not?

Moira had smiled back at him. He was on her side, so he was. Inwardly she asked herself how anyone could describe Kilbally as being ‘out in the world'? Outside the world, more like. But she was glad to be leaving the National School and she hated the thought of technical school. ‘I'd rather sweep floors than go there!' she said passionately.

In fact, when the chance of working in Glenda's Hairdressing Salon came up it had not sounded so bad though, as Miss Glenda said, she could not expect to be earning more than pocket money because wasn't she being taught a trade? Moira had seen herself creating wonderful hair styles, far too good for Kilbally, as the first step to being sought out and whisked away to a career as a top hairdresser in Dublin. She had not expected to be cleaning floors, sweeping up the clippings every time a customer had a cut. She had tried, when she thought Miss Glenda was too busy to notice, letting the hair lie where it fell. It didn't work. The door would open, a gust of wind would enter and the hair would blow all over the place, including in her mouth and up her nose.