The Mersey Girls (47 page)

‘They ain’t so small, now,’ Roddy said. ‘But me Auntie Bertha’s moved in – didn’t we tell you? – so she’ll give an eye to our kids. Oh aye, February sounds grand, eh, Linnie?’

‘It sounds lovely,’ Linnet said wistfully. She was finding it increasingly hard to see Roddy go off to the Kelly cottage each night, though Roddy had not once hinted that she could be a little more generous if she chose. It was as though being happily together all the time had made it easier for Roddy to wait whilst it became daily more difficult for Linnet.

‘Good. And Caitlin’s going to have her wedding dress altered to fit you, so that’s one expense you’re spared, Linnet’ Lucy turned a scorched face away from the flames and handed her twin a slice of lightly burned toast. ‘Here, you have this bit, and pass me another. Then Roddy had better drive into Caher tomorrow and see the priest. And you must write to Mrs Sullivan immediately, of course. And I shall start planning the wedding feast.’

Later that evening, Roddy and Linnet slipped into the moonlit yard and went for a bit of a walk, as they did every night It stretched their legs, got them ready for bed, and allowed them some privacy for a last goodnight kiss.

‘I wish your Lucy would tell Peder yes and gerron with it,’ Roddy grumbled as they walked, arms round each other, down the lane towards the lough. ‘He’s good lookin’, good company, he’s gorra nice bit o’ money tucked away . . . an’ the honest truth is that you an’ I and the fellers could make a go of this place. If your Lucy weds and moves away then there’s no end to the things we could do ’ere, you an’ me. Why, I’ve gor ideas for changin’ things which would suit the land, I reckon.’

‘But Lucy doesn’t love Peder,’ Linnet said sadly. ‘It doesn’t work unless you love someone, Roddy, so your plans will have to wait. She likes him all right – he’s a nice person – but she doesn’t love him. I mean how could you go into a bedroom and close the door and – and take your clothes off with someone you didn’t love? I mean no one could, could they?’

‘We-el, if she were pretty . . .’ Roddy began and got thumped for his pains by a giggling Linnet.

‘Roddy, how like a feller! A woman couldn’t, she – she just couldn’t. So don’t you try and persuade her, there’s a good feller. Because I’m ever so fond of Lucy and I wouldn’t want her to feel we wouldn’t mind if she moved on.’

‘I couldn’t persuade no one to do nothin’,’ Roddy said. ‘But if she won’t take the plunge with Peder, queen, there’s another what will. Did you see young Bridget O’Reilly makin’ eyes at Peder an’ teasin’ ’im to dance with ’er at the Christmas ceilidh at the O’Rorkes’? I tell you, if Lu doesn’t mek ’er mind up quick she won’t ’ave a choice in the matter.’

‘If Lu doesn’t want him then it’s only fair that someone else should get him,’ Linnet said at once. ‘But I’ll have a word with her, love.’ She pulled him round the corner into the warmth of the stackyard and cuddled against him. ‘Kiss me, then we’d better go in before we freeze to icicles,’ she whispered. ‘Oh Roddy, I can’t wait until February!’

They waited, in fact, until March. And then, on a wild, sweet day, with a boisterous wind tossing Linnet’s veil and sunshine gilding the churchyard one minute whilst raindrops sparkled down the next, they were married at last.

Linnet looked beautiful and no one knew – or cared – that she was wearing Caitlin Franklin’s altered gown. She carried a bunch of early primroses and had a wreath of snowdrops in her shining, fawn-coloured hair and Lucy, in deep blue silk, was her bridesmaid.

Mrs Sullivan cried, everyone threw confetti, and then they went back to Ivy Farm for the wedding feast which had kept both girls cooking for days. The neighbours brought gifts, a fiddler played for the dancing and Peder O’Rorke kept trying to get the bridesmaid into a corner . . . and Bridget kept trying to do the same to him.

‘We’re pulling Ivy Farm back into profit and we’re learning, all of us, how to live and work together,’ Lucy told Mrs Sullivan, after the bridal pair had departed, in the late afternoon, for a very short honeymoon – they were staying one night – in Killarney. ‘I honestly think that Roddy is a natural farmer and as for Linnet, it’s in her blood from not too far back at all. They’re going to make a go of it and I couldn’t be happier for them.’

‘You’re right there,’ Mrs Sullivan said. ‘Well, well, we can’t call you the Murphy girls any longer, Lucy. Though you’ll always be the Mersey girls, to me.’

Lucy chuckled. ‘I like both names,’ she said. ‘But I’m still the Murphy girl, and likely to be.’

‘And why is that?’ Mrs Sullivan asked. The guests had all departed and the two women were sitting in the kitchen with the fire banked down for the night, having a cup of cocoa before wending their way to bed. ‘You could marry that feller tomorrer, if you chose. Why doncher?’

‘Because I don’t love him and I think it’s important to love the man you marry,’ Lucy said baldly. ‘Respect is all very well, but I don’t think it’s enough, not in the long run.’

‘Sometimes love comes after the weddin’,’ Mrs Sullivan said presently. She sipped her cocoa. ‘I’ve known gels what goes to their weddin’ bed cryin’ for their mammy an’ spends the next forty years wit’ a smile from ear to ear.’

‘But not girls who were already . . .’ Lucy broke off. ‘Anyway, they must have been . . .’

‘Not girls who were already in love wi’ someone else?’ Mrs Sullivan said softly. ‘Are you in love, already, queen? Well, don’t the feller ’ave eyes in ’is ’ead? You’re as sweet as you’re pretty, so is the feller blind an’ deaf not to snatch you up?’

‘No. No, he isn’t blind or deaf, and I think he likes me a little. But he likes his freedom more,’ Lucy said rather bitterly. ‘He didn’t want to settle down, stay in one spot. So he left me, and he’s never come back, or at least if he has he’s never let me catch more than a glimpse of him. I tell meself that one day I’ll get him out o’ my system, out o’ my mind and my heart. But that day hasn’t come yet . . . sometimes I think it never will.’

The two women sat there in silence for a short while, and then Mrs Sullivan leaned over and patted Lucy’s knee. ‘You’ll find your path,’ she said. ‘Dunno where it’ll lead, or who’ll be there to ’old your ’and, but you’ll find it, one o’ these days.’ She stood up. ‘Bless me, I’m fair wore out – it’s been a long day. I’m for bed.’

‘I think I’ll just get a breath of air before I come up,’ Lucy said. ‘I shan’t set my alarm tonight, I think we deserve a lie-in tomorrow. And Kellach’s going to do the milking, so there’s no need for us to stir ourselves.’

‘Put a coat on; don’t go catchin’ cold,’ Mrs Sullivan said. ‘Eh, that pretty dress . . . it’ll get mired, tharrit will.’

Lucy was still in her blue silk frock but she laughed and shook her head at the older woman. ‘Oh, a bit of farmyard muck won’t hurt it and it’s a mild night. See you in the morning, Mrs Sullivan.’

As the moon rose in the sky Linnet and Roddy lay, for the first time in their lives together, in each other’s arms. The bed was big and soft, a feather bed into which they had sunk gratefully, and now Linnet put her hot face against Roddy’s cool, muscular shoulder and tried to relax and be natural with him, for they had known each other all their lives, so why should she feel so – so odd?

She hadn’t understood a good deal of the rich Kerry brogue being talked around them in the hotel dining room and had gradually become convinced that every eye in the place was upon her, guessing, speculating, and that every guest in the hotel was waiting for the moment when she and Roddy disappeared into the same room and closed the door behind them.

She had blushed and mumbled and hung her head and wished herself anywhere but in the smart dining room of the best hotel in Killarney, and now, in their bed, she clung to Roddy and admitted that she was afraid, that she did not know what to do next, was not at all sure she wanted to know.

‘It don’t matter, queen,’ Roddy said gently, when her painful whispers died away. ‘A weddin’s a weddin’, we’re man and wife. What follers is up to us, between us two, what no man may put asunder. Not now.’

‘And – and must we . . . ? I’m – I’m ever so tired,’ Linnet faltered. ‘I love you so much, Roddy, but I’m not at all sure . . .’

‘And I love you so much that if you’re tired we’ll go to sleep,’ Roddy said comfortingly. ‘We’ll ’ave a bit of a cuddle an’ then we’ll snore so loud they’ll think we’ve been wed for an ‘undred years!’

‘Oh, Roddy, I always knew you were the nicest feller in the world,’ Linnet said with an involuntary giggle. She relaxed against him, then leaned up on her elbow to kiss his cheek. ‘You understand me so well and you’re so kind to me!’

‘I know I am,’ Roddy said nobly. ‘There, sweet’eart, you go to sleep if you want to, but there’s no ’arm in a bit of a cuddle, first.’

Linnet agreed that there could be no harm in it at all, and so tenderly did Roddy cuddle, and so gently persuade, that long before the moon had begun to fade in the sky they were truly man and wife.

The moon was still climbing the sky when Lucy went out into the farmyard. It was very beautiful out here with a full moon shining down from the dark sky and the stars twinkling frostily. It made her think of another night . . . but she ignored the twinge of sadness and walked across the yard and out between the stone pillars, turning to her left along the lane.

It was, as she had said, a mild night, with a boisterous March wind blowing. Lucy walked steadily on, her eyes fixed ahead, her thoughts far from here. She thought about Linnet and Roddy, in their hotel in Killarney, savouring their love, their nearness. She thought about Peder, in his warm farm kitchen, stockinged feet stretched out towards the fire, hair rumpled, thoughts turning to the next day’s work, to his beasts, his fields. Perhaps to her in her blue dress, saying no she didn’t want to walk in the woods with him, no she couldn’t see him next day, and thank you but she was fond of her own company so she was and there was no point in him sitting here trying to talk to her when she had other guests . . .

Cruel, cruel to treat Peder so, but sometimes she was so lonely she actually ached with loneliness. Sometimes she longed for a hand in hers, a man of her own, someone who would be, to her, what Roddy was to Linnet. Longed, in other words, for Finn Delaney with his dark eyes and his black hair, with his charm and his iron will, even for his indifference.

She had walked further than she realised because she was at Barry’s Bridge. Too far; she should turn now, make her way back. Only she had such a longing to cross the bridge all of a sudden, to go at least to the middle, to look into the limpid dark waters and to see, at last, that little mermaid, combing her long, golden hair.

He came along the road in his jaunting car as he had come along half-a-dozen times a year ever since he’d left her, all those years ago. He had followed her in crowds, almost close enough to touch yet never touching. He had haunted the farm, watching from a safe distance as she went about her work. He had seen, with real dismay, the appearance of another man and had been prepared, almost, to throw off his disguise and step forward, challenge, declare himself.

But the feller wasn’t interested in Lucy but in the other girl, the one they said was her twin sister. Twin sister! She was nothing like his Lucy, nothing like at all at all. No, his golden girl had no match, no equal, and she would wait for him until he was tired of wandering, until he was old and grey and wanted to settle down.

But sometimes he almost couldn’t stand it, he wanted her so bad, so cruel bad! The touch, feel, sound, smell of her haunted him, her remembered face smiled at him, for him, with all its old sweetness and spirit. If only he could conquer the desire to move on, but he doubted he ever could and it wouldn’t be fair to a farmer’s girl to find herself with a feller who had no easement in him.

And besides, he mustn’t be tied down. He was Finn Delaney, the best driver of a jaunting car ever seen in Killarney, the only feller who could thatch a stack, plough a straight furrow, tickle a trout out of the brown pools and into his fry-pan, stand up in the jaunting car as it tore over ground so uneven and rough that others clutched at the seat in terror, or fell out onto the hard old earth below.

Oh aye, there was only one Finn Delaney. But – but he had to see her now and then, to calm his mind and ease, for a short time, the ache of longing for her.

So he came into Cahersiveen in his jaunting car and drove quietly through the moonlit streets and out to Barry’s Bridge. He planned how he would tie the horse up in the long meadow which led down to the lough and prowl around the farmhouse and hide up in the big old barn where once he had slept after Granny Mogg’s funeral. If he waited long enough she would come out, feed the hens, milk one or two of the cows to help out the farmhand, potter around and then go in to cook breakfast. He would see her, hear her – he would not touch her.

He turned the jaunting car onto the bridge and slowed the horse to a walk. The horse was not sorry; it was a good long run from Killarney to Cahersiveen and the horse would have much preferred its stable and a meal of hay, the harness hung up, a good stiff brush taking off the dirt of the day.

The moon was high in the sky, spreading its silver over the whole black landscape. The lough below him was as bright as a mirror, the moon swam on its surface and sent arrows and spears of white light dancing over the water.

He reined in and leaned over to look deep into the water, then looked away – and there was her face, not a foot from his, staring at him as though she could not believe her eyes. He stared back, taking in every detail of her from the dark, flowing dress to the smooth oval of her face, the lovely line of her throat.

‘Finn?’ It was scarcely more than a whisper but it thrilled through him like a lightning strike. ‘Finn, is it really you?’

‘Aye, my sweetheart, my dearest, it’s really me. Is it really you, little Lucy?’

She nodded, her eyes still fixed on his face. They were dark as pits, shaded by moon-shadow, and he saw, suddenly, that her face was sad where it had once been merry, that the line of her lips drooped, that beneath the dark silk of her dress her figure was less rounded than he remembered it.