The Woman from Kerry (11 page)

‘Did ye buy me a gallon then?’ he said, looking at her sideways.

‘I did surely,’ she replied promptly. ‘And a top hat and tails, just in case you want to go for a groom again.’

He tightened his grip round her waist and hugged her.

‘I did look in Carson’s for some new boots for you,’ she said, still smiling, ‘but then I found a whole crowd of boot makers in Thomas Street, so I haven’t compared the prices yet. It was the groceries I needed today. Sarah says she can’t advise me on the shops any more. She only hears bits and pieces from the neighbours so I’m not buying anything else we need till I’ve looked at them all.’

‘An’ tell me, where did ye learn to go roun’ comparin’ the prices, an’ you had all found where ye worked?’

Rose looked at him in surprise.

‘John dear, did you not know the grand folk are just as sharp about money as we have to be? You should have heard Cook talk about some of the places she worked,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘She’d be up in front of the Master in his study, if she
paid a penny a pound more for beef, or a farthing more a yard on butter muslin, or cloth for putting over the steamed puddings, than she need.’

‘An’ you’d think they’d never notice it, bein’ rich,’ he said, a look of amazement on his face.

‘But don’t forget John, the quantity. A penny isn’t much, it’s what you multiply it by over weeks or months. It mounts up.’

He laughed and looked down at her.

‘I had a copy book at school,’ he said, nodding. ‘It was all good advice now I think of it. But I was so busy tryin’ to get the letters right I diden give much attention to what it said. Now ye mind me there was something about “Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves”.’

He stopped abruptly.

‘Are ye sure ye can manage on what Sir Capel gives me, Rose? I don’t want ye to go short. An’ I want ye to have nice things, like thon blouse with the wee pearl buttons, an’ the dress yer mother made for ye.’

‘We’ll manage fine, John,’ she said gently, seeing the anxiety in his face. ‘Sure, if we’re short I might go into business myself. In fact, I’m thinking of it anyway while I’ve time on my hands.’

‘What sort o’ business?’ he asked, the anxiety returning to his face.

‘Women’s business, John. What women have always done when they can. Hens for egg-money
and needlework to buy the children’s shoes and coats. The same as your mother did,’ she went on reassuringly. ‘Sprigging or embroidery, or drawn thread. Whatever’s the fashion. There’s nearly always someone wanting home workers. They don’t pay well, but it’s convenient.’

‘An’ you’d not mind doin’ that?’

‘No, why would I? Haven’t I time and company and my own fireside?’

‘An then you could buy your dresses at Leeman’s?’

‘Not if it’s the shop I think it is,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’d need to be Lady Anne to be a regular customer there.’

‘Expensive?’

‘Very.’

They walked in silence for a few minutes, pausing to watch a flight of linnets as they moved from bush to bush.

‘John, tell me, where does all the money come from? You can’t have shops like those in Armagh unless you have plenty of customers to buy. There must be a lot of people with money to spend.’

‘Aye, you’re right there,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘As far as I can see, it has to be the linen. There’s all these factories. Wherever you go, even places that were wee villages not so long ago like Milford, or Tassagh, or Darkley. You get a big mill and that’s employment. Two or maybe three in a family earning every week. And then there’s the bosses, of
course. Sure some of them’s so rich they can’t count it all.’

‘Wouldn’t that be strange, John?’

‘Wouldn’t what be strange?’

‘To be so rich you couldn’t count it all.’

‘Sure what would the good of that be?’ he responded promptly. ‘What’s the use of money if you can’t use it to some purpose. No good just hoarding it up.’

‘But what about a rainy day, John?’

‘Indeed, there was something about that in the copy book too, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.’

‘
Always put something by for a rainy day
. That’s what mine said,’ she replied thoughtfully.

‘But doesn’t everyone do that anyway?’

‘No, love, they don’t. There’s plenty live from hand to mouth and then there’s nothing for the day when there’s no money for bread.’

‘Well, we’ll not be like that. Don’t you worry your head. I’ll see we never go short, however hard I hafta work.’

He turned her round in the fading light and they retraced their steps towards home falling silent now. It was a fine, warm evening, the land settling into the deep quiet that only comes with the approach of night. She matched her pace with John’s longer strides and thought of his last words. At times, the things he said were so like what her father said to her mother.

‘
He was so concerned about you all. He wanted to make sure you always had enough
.’

Hannah always spoke with such warmth of their father and the efforts he made to provide for them, but each time she had added a note of warning. ‘
No one could have worked harder than your father, but he couldn’t foresee what came to him, either at the hands of others or of God himself
.’

Rose shivered in the warm evening air. Her mother’s words had reminded her of her blessings. Since she’d met John, so many of her wishes and dreams had become reality. She was happier than she’d ever been in her whole life. Yet it was scarcely possible life should go on just the way she wanted it. Sooner or later she might find circumstances took away her joy and no amount of striving could bring it back. She pushed the thought out of mind. Well, if that were to happen, she’d meet it when it did.

Rose looked out the window for the third time in ten minutes. The rain still poured steadily from a leaden, grey sky. The long, narrow puddles on both sides of the road had grown wider. In the deep herbaceous borders leading away from the front door, tall stems of delphinium, monk’s hood, foxglove and lupin dipped over, heavy with moisture, showers of fallen florets strewn across the paving stones of John’s newly-laid garden path.

She glanced at the clock. Nearly four and no sign of the children. She smiled suddenly. Of course, the new assistant would keep the children in the schoolroom till the rain was over. Master McQuillan would never think of the weather but May Todd was a local girl. She knew how many of her pupils had a mile or more to walk after school.

Rose pulled the kettle forward on the stove, sat down and picked up the child’s dress she was making. She stroked it smooth and sighed. She felt again the strange sadness that had come upon her so
often in the last weeks. ‘Are you lonely?’ she asked herself. No, she couldn’t say she was lonely. She’d made friends easily enough. There were half a dozen houses where she was warmly greeted, brought in to drink tea by the stove and share her news. She enjoyed her visits to Armagh, was well-known in her chosen shops. She enjoyed studying the fashion in the more expensive shops, seeing what was currently in favour. It reminded her of the days when she went shopping with Lady Anne in Dublin.

Then there was the library on The Mall. She’d made friends there too. When she’d discovered a whole section of books on machinery she knew would delight John, she’d paid her five shillings’ yearly subscription and brought them home for him along with her own. Often, they’d read together in the evenings. Sometimes John would move to the table and make sketches and plans. He was especially interested in the possibilities for self-moving vehicles and he’d explain to her the working of steam pistons or the use of heavy belts to transfer power.

She enjoyed listening to him, but, when he became absorbed in his study, her thoughts would often move back to Kerry, to her mother and Sam. Or she would think of Lady Anne’s new life in Sligo as Lady Harrington. In this year past, she knew she’d missed them in a way she’d never done before.

She put her sewing down and listened to the silence. The house was so quiet. Too quiet. The change in her
days was so obvious. Sarah was not well. The arthritis was not much worse, but she’d developed pains in her chest as well. When they came on, she found it hard to breathe, could barely walk at all.

The doctor had been sent for more than once. He said sadly the only advice he could give was that she should rest. The pain could be avoided, but not cured. So Sarah had done as she was bid and retreated to her own room. She said she didn’t want to cause Rose any extra work, for she’d enough to do, cooking and cleaning, making clothes for four little ones, milking the cow, feeding the hens and getting the eggs ready for the weekly collection.

She spent more and more time lying down and her youngest grand-daughter, her namesake, Little Sarah, insisted on keeping her company, even to the point of falling asleep on the bed beside her. With her other three at school, it was no wonder Rose had more than enough time for her own thoughts.

Restlessly, she put the small garment down on her worktable and went back to the window. There was no sign of the rain easing off and no sign of the children. Yes, children were hard work, Sarah had been right, but she never counted the cost. They were far too precious, for they had not arrived without much heartache.

Her first pregnancy had miscarried at three months. Sarah comforted her and said it often happened with the first and Rose trusted her long
experience. Then the second miscarried at six. Despite all Sarah’s reassurances and explanations, John had been distraught and when she became pregnant for the third time he was beside himself with anxiety. But this time all went well and she carried James to nine months, a robust little baby with red hair and bright eyes when he arrived. He was followed by Hannah a year later, then Sam, who had just gone to school, and little Sarah, who had been born on her own birthday, June the twelfth, just two years earlier.

Rose moved around the room, put coal in the stove, folded up some towels drying on the rack above. She looked at the child’s dress on her sewing table. It was so grey outside, it was almost too dim to see the fine work she was doing to complete the little garment. She went and looked up at the sky, a new anxiety stabbing at her.

This chill, grey rain reminded her of the summers of ’79, ’80 and ’81, when day after day was wet, there was little warmth and very little sunshine. Sarah had watched her geraniums die of cold and damp, something she hadn’t seen since the wet summers during The Famine. The farmers round about had had to keep the cattle indoors long beyond their usual time, buying fodder they could ill afford. The subsequent harvests were late and meagre. Hard enough years for many of their neighbours, but desperate for poor tenant farmers
elsewhere. Either they could feed their families, or pay the rent, but not both.

They themselves had not suffered hardship, for John’s wages were as steady as always. Her own small income from keeping hens was reduced when the price of eggs dropped, but from the time of her first pregnancy she’d made children’s dresses and the demand for them was as steady as John’s wages.

Her mind moved back to those hard years. She remembered how often she’d counted the shillings into her purse to go shopping and given thanks that their table was still well provided, the children properly clothed. As she set aside a little for unexpected bills each week, she thought of those left with nothing. Just like the 1840s, families faced eviction and the bitter choice between starvation and emigration. The newspapers were full of heartbreaking accounts of distress and the outrages desperation gave birth to. Rent collectors ambushed and beaten, big houses robbed or burnt, shops looted.

She’d her own sources of information too. Her mother wrote from Kerry and Lady Anne from Sligo, but it was her brother Sam, studying land management in Dublin under the sponsorship of Sir Capel, who had most to tell. He’d been drawn into the circle of the Land Leaguers and made friends with Michael Davitt. When the cold, wet weather and the downturn in prices began to take their toll in the late summer of 1879, his regular letters
suddenly became more frequent and more urgent.

Week after week, he poured out his troubles to her, for he was torn apart trying to decide what to do. Sometimes within the same letter he would resolve on two different courses of action, arguing clearly and lucidly for one, quite unaware he’d argued as clearly and lucidly for the other.

As a wet and cold autumn followed on from the disastrous summer and the shadow of famine loomed ever larger, suddenly his mind was made up. ‘
I can’t do it, Rose. I just can’t be Sir Capel’s land agent
,’ he wrote, his usual neat hand jagged and difficult to read from the speed with which he was trying to write it all down for her.

Within weeks of writing to her, Sam was travelling round Ireland, distributing money raised by the Fenians in America. Wherever he and his colleagues went, it was their job to encourage farmers to resist eviction, to support families who’d been evicted, and to show their hostile disapproval for anyone who tried to benefit from the eviction of others.

Soon Sam was writing in glowing terms about the success of Michael Davitt’s achievement. There was no repeat of the devastation of ‘the bad years’ of the 1840s. Through his success in raising money in America and distributing it where the need was greatest, the potential famine had been averted. Rose shared his delight in all that had been achieved, but for her, a dark shadow of anxiety lay over his part that Sam could not have appreciated.

Sam’s vigorous activity meant his name would now be linked inseparably with Davitt and therefore with the Fenians, who had made Davitt’s work in Ireland possible. Both Rose and Hannah knew the
threat of imprisonment, or exile, now hung like a shadow over him, whether he’d actually sworn the Fenian oath or not, just as visibly as the shadow of famine had hung over the tenant farmers to whom he was committed.

When Sam first joined Davitt, Rose wrote to Hannah and Lady Anne and spoke of her anxiety for him, but what made it worse for her was John’s reaction. He was quite distraught at the thought of Sam being jailed, or punished. When his letters came he’d read them over and over again, as if he were searching for some clue to relieve his distress.

‘Ah know he’s right,’ he said, shaking his head and shuffling the close written pages between his large hands. ‘An’ sure didn’t we talk about the whole land question in the stables with Old Thomas and the outside staff back in ’75. We all agreed then it weren’t right, but sure I niver thought young Sam would take it so much to heart. I’m afeerd Rose, he’ll get himself into trouble. Can yer mother not persuade him away from it? There’s some bitter men among the Fenians. They’ll do things Sam would never think of, but sure he may get tarred with the same brush. Has he thought of that d’ye think?’

‘I think he’s thought long and hard,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘And so has my mother for that matter. She says she’ll not stand against him. She knows she couldn’t anyway, now he’s made up his mind. But she also thinks he’s right,’ she went on,
calmly. ‘She says in her letter she’s told him that provided they use no violence, she’ll stand by him whatever happens.’

‘And so will I,’ she added, more softly.

He smiled bleakly as he folded the sheets, fitted them back into the envelope and tucked it behind the clock.

‘Maybe I’m a coward, Rose,’ he said slowly. ‘All I want is to live in peace. I want no argument with any man. Aye, or woman either. Sure what would ye do if I were out drilling with the militia or planning to murder some land agent or other an’ I was caught an’ put in prison? What would become of ye then?’

She’d no words to ease his distress, so she went across to his chair, leant over and put her arms round him. As she held him close, the child in her womb moved. He put his hand on her stomach and drew her head down and kissed her.

‘I’d lay down my life for you and for them, Rose,’ he said, his voice husky, ‘but I couldn’t go out to threaten any man. It just isn’t in me.’

Rose wondered if this were the first time in his life when John had met a problem he couldn’t solve by hard work or good spirits. She asked Sarah what she thought one morning after he’d gone off to work.

‘Perhaps our John
has
had his life too easy, Rose,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you can protect children too much and they think everything
will come their way. And often it does for a time,’ she admitted. ‘But sooner or later, they’ll come up against something they can’t mend. He’s a lucky man has you, Rose, to keep him straight. You and your mother had your share of troubles.’

‘We did, Sarah, we did. But compared to most folk, we had an easy life. The conditions weren’t bad or harsh. We always had enough to eat and wages that kept us in decent clothes …’

She saw Sarah watching her and paused.

‘But what you didn’t have, Rose dear, was your freedom. You were like a bird in a cage, well-cared for, much appreciated, but not free to fly. For some, that’s the most important thing there is.’

When she thought about Sarah’s words and the look that went with them, suddenly she saw a link with John’s distress and frustration over Sam’s situation. Did he feel caged, lacking in freedom to act on his own part? Could it be his work on Sir Capel’s estate was not all he’d hoped for? Was he was frustrated by the repetitiveness of the tasks when he had such an interest in doing new things?

She often asked him about what he’d been doing during the day, what jobs he was working on, the people who came to the workshop and forge, but he was reluctant to talk about his work. Only when there was some amusing story, or news from the big house, or from Dublin, or Kerry, did he talk at any length about the events of the day.

But then, one evening, there was a lightness in his step on the path and his eyes were shining as he walked into the house.

‘Rose, d’ye mind we met Thomas Scott last week when we went for that walk up by the church and round home by Riley’s Rocks?’

‘I do indeed. What about it?’

‘Ah, I’ve a story to tell you, but we’d best wait till we’ve the we’ans settled.’

She remembered the lovely summer evening only too well. The air warm and still, like some of those evenings they’d walked by the lake down in Kerry. They’d met Thomas coming up the hill as they shut the gate of the churchyard where they’d laid a posy for Sarah on Tom’s grave.

‘Ah, a great evenin’,’ Thomas agreed, when they stopped to talk. ‘But sad enough for some,’ he went on. ‘Did ye’s know our friend Alex is havin’ to give up the manufactory. ‘Tis a hard thing an’ him wrought there all his life an’ his father before him.’

‘Ach dear,’ said John, ‘is it the old problem with the back?’

‘Aye. He says he can hardly get outa bed in the mornin’, niver mind bend over the rings. An’ now he says he hasn’t the strength in his arm for settin’ them either.’