The Woman from Kerry (19 page)

She’d read her letter through when she’d finished and decided she was being a bit hard on Sam, but she didn’t change a word of it. He’d always been honest with her and she knew he’d always acted for the best, but deciding what the best was, was another matter. Sometimes she just didn’t know what to think herself. However important it was to have general principles, there must always be exceptions, surely. You couldn’t label people ‘bad’ because they were Protestant landlords, or ‘good’ because they were poor Catholics. It was never as easy as that.

Sam had written by return. He’d explained the way the League was organised, decisions were made locally. Someone in Sligo would have listed Harrington as a big landowner. Possibly as an absentee if he didn’t know about the split nature of his estates. Harrington might even have been listed by someone who had a grudge against him.

Rose always passed her letters to John. Those from Hannah and Lady Anne, he could sit back and enjoy, but he’d take up a letter from Sam with every sign of trepidation and read it with fierce concentration. When he’d finished, he’d shuffle the pages, and ask a question, not quite unrelated to what he’d just read.

More than once, Rose had questioned him closely. Did he think Sam was right? What did he think the Orangemen would do if a Home Rule Bill was passed? But John would shake his head and refuse to engage with it.

‘Some things I can grasp just fine. I see what’s fair and what’s not fair. But the more ye go inta things the more difficult it is. I wish I could live in a world with no politics, an’ no religion. No people taking sides, arguin’ and fightin’ about the rights and wrongs of things. Sure what’s the point? Why spoil the time we have when we’re on this earth so short a while?’

Rose had every sympathy with his agitation and distress but she wasn’t sure it made sense to try and shut the door on what was happening when it was so near at hand. Like Mary-Anne Scott, sooner or later the threat out there in the world would come
knocking and you had to be ready to cope with whatever it threw at you.

By noon, the thaw had advanced so far that only where the forge itself and the pear tree on the path to Thomas’s house cast a deep enough shadow were small patches of snow able to survive, lying like flour spilt from a sack. From the mended thatch of their own cottage, a row of drips splashed down on the layer of gravel John had laid in a shallow trench across the front of the house the previous autumn. The whitewashed walls gleamed wetly in the bright light.

She stood at the open door, took a deep breath of the mild air and peered down into her flowerbeds, now carefully enclosed by fine netting wire to protect them from the depredations of Mary-Anne’s hens.

‘My goodness, I wasn’t expecting you so soon,’ she said aloud, as she recognised vigorous grey-green shoots of aquilegia pushing upwards out of the dark earth and unfurling their first new leaves. ‘Mary-Anne didn’t get you after all,’ she added in a whisper, with a cautious look towards the closed door of her neighbour’s house.

The house always looked so dead, even when the smoke of a new fire rose each morning. Mary-Anne often kept her door shut, even in good weather, and she wondered what she did all day, apart from read her Bible and the sermons that the Methodists circulated.

She blinked up at the sun, grateful to feel its warmth on her face. In a moment, she would step back into the kitchen to put the kettle down for making tea and butter bread for John who’d be over soon for a quick bite. But not just for a few more minutes. She smiled to herself. Mary-Anne hadn’t yet accused her of being idle, standing at her front door looking round her as if she had no work to do, but that might well come.

Nothing would surprise her, after the criticisms of the last months. Allowing her children to sit in the seats of the reaping machines awaiting repair, or to cluster round the stone circle when a turf fire burnt all the way round an iron rim before it was shrunk onto a wheel. Her children shouldn’t be allowed to play outside on Sundays and certainly not to laugh. Nor should she let them talk to the two serving girls from Robinson’s, who took it in turns to deliver the milk each day.

Sometimes she would actually respond to her hostile comments, even though she knew well enough neither quick retort or logical argument would have the slightest effect. More often, she would merely smile, hear her out and quietly shut the door. She never ceased to be surprised, however, at Mary-Anne’s cunning. She always timed her visits when both hammers were going at full tilt so Thomas remained ignorant of her sorties, for she and John had long since agreed he was not to be told.

‘Sure the poor man has enough to put up with,’ he said, when she told him of the latest visitation. ‘Can ye imagine getting’ inta bed with yer wuman,’ he went on, as they got into bed themselves, and he put out his arm to hold her close. ‘Ah can’t understan’ meself how they come to have three childer.’

She smiled to herself. John’s way of coping with Mary-Anne was to make fun of her behind closed doors, but they both knew Mary-Anne was no joke. Often enough she caught sight of Annie, the eldest girl, carrying out the slop bucket to empty in the privy. A poor, sad looking child with drooping shoulders, tall for her eleven years, but with no spring in her step.

The worst tirade in the winter months had followed a visit from Bridget, who had brought their weekly butter over one pleasant morning after the churning. Bridget and her sister Maggie came from a part of Donegal unknown to her, an Irish-speaking area around Dunlewy. Neither girl had much English and were delighted when they discovered Rose had Irish. Whenever they came over they would question her about words new to them.

‘What is dishabels, Rose?’ Missus said to Old Missus Robinson that she was ‘caught in her dishabels’. We didn’t like to ask.

‘Dishabels’ is old clothes, Bridget. What you wear to do the dirty jobs in the morning, before you dress yourself properly for the day,’ she explained in Irish.

They’d stood laughing and talking by the door for five minutes or so, but hardly was Bridget out of sight before Mary-Anne was knocking fiercely at the open door, though Rose was plain to be seen inside.

‘Mrs Hamilton, I’ll thank you not to stand out in the street talking in a foreign language,’ she began as she raised her head at the intrusion. ‘It’s bad enough that our neighbours employ these chits of girls that can’t even speak the Queen’s English without you encouraging them,’ she went on, as Rose crossed to the door. ‘I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking the language of servants, now you’ve come up a bit in the world. I won’t have my children hearing it,’ she said, with her usual tone of complete finality, as she turned on her heel and stalked off.

She’d been tempted to curse her roundly in Irish as she departed, but she’d restrained herself for the hammers had stopped momentarily and Thomas had stepped out to fetch another bar of iron. She’d slipped back into the house before he caught her eye and taken out her frustration by pounding the sheets.

The last thin icing of melting snow slid down the roof of the forge and landed squarely in front of the open door just where the regular passage of feet had made a shallow depression in front of the threshold. On wet days, John and Thomas had to sweep it dry with a stiff broom, but today the drying wind
had mopped up the moisture from each succeeding fall. Even as she watched, the tangled tufts of grass between bits of machinery straightened up as they shed their moisture. A few days of this and the trees might begin to leaf. Then she could really believe spring had come.

Just as she was about to go back indoors, she saw a carrier’s cart come up the slope of the hill from the direction of Armagh. To her surprise, the heavy vehicle drew to a halt somewhere beyond the end of the lane. She looked down towards the road, but the cart had stopped out of sight, hidden behind the great ivy covered elm that stood a little way beyond their own gable. She turned away, but the voices she heard drew her back to the door.

She stood listening unashamedly as the conversation floated up to her, borne on the still air. Two men were speaking Irish with a familiar ring that took her straight back to the stable yard at Currane Lodge. The older, rougher voice, perhaps one of the carters that delivered for Turners or Hillocks of Armagh, was bidding good day and good luck to a younger voice who responded warmly, thanking him for the lift and for his conversation.

Moments later, the young man himself appeared outside the forge, his back to her, as he looked through the door into the dark. The shoulders were broader, the red hair less unruly, but there could be no doubt about it. It was Sam. The hammers fell
silent and her young brother, now a grown man, stood talking to John and Thomas.

Every part of her wanted to run across and throw her arms round him, but she was so surprised to see him she just leant against the doorpost and stood staring at him.

He turned away, caught sight of her at once and came striding across.

‘Rose, Rose, it’s wonderful to see you.’

He held her so tightly and kissed her cheeks so gently that she knew something was wrong.

‘What is it, Sam, what is it?’ she said, as he released her. ‘Are you in any kind of trouble? Tell me. Tell me quickly.’

‘I’m fine, Rose,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘It’s Ma.’

‘Is she ill?’ she asked, a terrible feeling of dread passing over her.

‘She died last week, Rose. I hadn’t the heart to write you a letter, so I came as soon as I could.’

Sam’s story was quickly told. The previous Friday, Hannah had been on her way downstairs to the servants’ hall for the evening meal when she’d fallen. Not a bad fall, Cook had explained to Sam, for she was only a few steps from the bottom of the staircase when it happened, but there was just enough noise to bring Mr Smithers hurrying from his room. She was unconscious when they picked her up and at first everyone thought she’d hit her head. When the doctor arrived and found her still unconscious an hour later, however, he’d said ‘No’. The fall itself had caused no great injury. He was more concerned as to what had caused the fall.

Hannah had been put to bed in her own small room and throughout the night her friends took it in turns to sit with her. She never became conscious again, but died peacefully just before six in the morning.

Rose listened dry-eyed. She could see so vividly the narrow wooden staircase, the dim corridor
leading to the servants’ hall, but she couldn’t yet grasp what had happened. She’d tramped up and down those stairs thousands of times herself and her mother many thousands of times more. She knew them so well, she’d never have tripped and fallen.

‘How did you find out, Sam?’ she asked, agitatedly, springing up from the chair by the kitchen table she’d dropped down into only minutes earlier.

She walked unsteadily across the room and sat close to him on the settle.

‘Sir Capel sent me a telegram in Dublin and I got the train down first thing on Saturday,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘The service was in the parish church where you and she used to go with the family. Every single person went from Currane Lodge. The church was so full they had to stand at the back.’

She saw the building again, so vividly, with its box pews, high pulpit and single stained glass window, a memorial to some previous Molyneux. For all of the years Hannah had been at Currane, she’d worshipped there and she’d gone with her every week. They’d sat side-by-side in their Sunday best clothes, their boots well polished, their stiff black skirts equally well-brushed, their best blouses starched and ironed. They’d sat with the family in the big pew below the pulpit, the only servants that weren’t Catholic, apart from Mr Smithers, who insisted he wasn’t anything and Sam, who had announced at fourteen he was an agnostic.

So often still on a Sunday morning, she’d thought of her mother as she and John walked up the lane to their much larger church, built by another Molyneux, a man, like his relative in Kerry, who’d also provided a chapel for his Catholic tenants. When she thought of her mother on a Sunday now, she’d have to think of the churchyard, not the church.

‘So you’re on speaking terms again with Sir Capel,’ she said suddenly.

‘Yes. He shook my hand when I arrived and asked me to forget the hard things he’d said when I joined the League. I dined with the family after the funeral and we drank port in his library. He said he still wished I’d come back to the estate. Even Lily was being nice to me,’ he added, with a wry smile.

‘Was she indeed, Sam?’

‘Yes,’ he said, stroking her hand. ‘Do you remember me breaking my heart over her ten or eleven years ago?’

‘Eleven now,’ she nodded. ‘And Ma was never able to come. I haven’t seen her since my wedding day,’ she went on, her thoughts following their own logic. ‘We made so many plans, but either I wasn’t well enough to travel or one of the children fell ill.’

‘But you wrote, Rose, and she knew everything about your life. Whenever I had letters from her or got down to see her, she was always full of what you were doing and how the children were. You were never out of her mind.’

‘And she was never out of mine. Time and again I imagined myself talking to her …’

She broke off as John’s tall figure stooped under the lintel and came across to where they sat. She got up and put her arms round him.

‘Did Sam tell you?’

‘No, but I guessed. Is it yer Ma?’ he said gently.

‘Aye. Sam’ll tell you while I make us tea. It’s a poor welcome, Sam, and you on the road since goodness knows when,’ she said, picking up the wheaten bread from the stand and carrying it to the table.

‘It’s only bread and jam, I’m afraid, but I’ve a bit of bacon and cabbage for tonight,’ she added, apologetically, as she put the lid on the teapot and they drew over to the table.

‘The bread smells great, Rose,’ Sam responded, as she cut thick slices of fresh wheaten and pushed the dish of butter in his direction. ‘Ma always said there was no bread as good as bread cooked over a hearth.’

‘She’s a great han’ at the bakin’, Sam,’ said John, spreading his piece with damson jam. ‘She’s great han’s altogether,’ he added quietly. ‘Just like her Ma.’

Whether it was the softness of John’s tone, or the words themselves, or merely the passage of time since Sam had brought his news, but she felt tears spring to her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but
they wouldn’t stop. As they dropped like rain on her clean apron, she felt a pain rise in her throat. She put her head in her hands and cried as if her heart would break.

The tears brought some relief. Although she still couldn’t eat, she was grateful for the tea John poured her. When she was steadier, he gathered up little Sarah, who’d fallen asleep over her reading on their bed, and told her he’d take her over to Sophie and go on back to work. He’d tell Thomas the sad news himself.

What no one knew was that Mary-Anne had returned from Armagh just as the carter dropped Sam at the end of the lane. She’d slowed her step, seen and heard all that had passed, then waited her moment to pass the forge when no one would see her.

Through the long afternoon, she seldom left her window.

‘What time do the children get back at?’ Sam asked, as he watched her clear away the remains of their meal. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting my nephews and nieces.’

‘Shortly after half three. Sometimes I can’t believe how fast James and Sam get here. Hannah takes a bit longer.’

‘I’d have liked to bring them presents, but I just hadn’t time,’ he said apologetically.

‘But you’ve brought yourself. They’ll be very excited about that. They’re not used to presents. They never expect them, even at Christmas.’

‘Are times hard for you, Rose?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘not compared to some. We’ve enough to eat and the children have shoes for Sunday. We’ve a little money in the bank from Sarah’s burial fund, but I’ve not been able to add anything to it since she died. The forge isn’t doing quite as well as it should.’

‘I wondered about that,’ he said sharply, casting his eyes round the room for the first time since he arrived. ‘Rose, we’ve not much time. I have to catch the last train to Dublin from Portadown at seven this evening, so I’ll have to be in Armagh for six,’ he said hurriedly, looking at his fob watch. ‘There are things I need to know from you and other news I want to give you. You can tell me what the Orangemen are up to and I’ll tell you what I can’t put in my letters. It’s hard on you with the shock of Ma’s death upon you, but she wouldn’t be well pleased with me if I didn’t think to our future.’

They sat side by side on the settle, the glow of turf at their feet, the light haze of smoke winding its way straight up into the broad canopy and on into the blue sky that arced above the low chimney. They spoke quickly and urgently about Sam’s immediate concerns, about Parnell’s plan to persuade Gladstone to bring in a Home Rule Bill in the summer, about
the failure of the Land League to hold the support of the Protestant farmers in Ulster, who’d backed them in the early eighties and about the sectarianism growing again in Ulster after a period of calm and relative prosperity.

‘
Are
they really drilling, Rose?’

‘Oh yes. And it’s not just lodge members. They’re trying to draft in all Protestants.’

Sam shook his head.

‘We’ve tried to tell him, but there are times Parnell simply doesn’t listen. He still goes around saying it would only take a thousand RIC men to deal with the Orangemen if they give trouble, but if they do hold out against Home Rule it leaves three quarters of Ireland still a part of an empire instead of being its own country. That can’t be fair, can it?’

‘No, it can’t, Sam, I grant you, but do you really think life can be? Is there any way of creating a world in which one group doesn’t exploit others? Where no one imagines they’re superior because of birth or wealth, or what they think, or even how they worship?’

‘Yes, but then one has to ask, “
Is it worth trying
?”’

She studied her brother’s face closely. Apart from her parents, Sam was the first person she had ever loved. The creamy skin and the light freckles had changed little with the passage of time. At twenty-seven, his bright eyes and open look still
made him seem younger than his years. Suddenly and unexpectedly, she thought of the child she’d held in her arms, in a turf cart, sheltered from the sleet by her mother’s shawl the day they were evicted and had to face the bitter chill of that April day. Twenty-five years ago, this very month.

‘Sometimes I think I don’t understand anything, Sam,’ she began slowly. ‘I read the papers and talk to John and borrow books from the library. The more I read, the less I’m sure of anything,’ she said sadly. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, but what matters to me is living and loving and hoping for better times for the children. It’s a weakness I’m sure. I can bear things for myself, but I cannot bear to think of those I love being ill, or hungry, or made homeless.’

‘That’s why I fight, Rose. I can’t bear it either. I have to fight against greed and exploitation, though you’re right, it’s not as simple as I thought it was. I’m in two minds about the way things are going, but I have to give it one more try. I’ve been commissioned to go to America in September for the League to take letters to our supporters there and to raise money. I’ll be gone for two months. Things may be clearer by the end of the year for both of us,’ he said, dropping his voice, as a shadow fell across the floor.

‘Hullo. You’re Uncle Sam, aren’t you?’

‘I am indeed, young man. How did you know?’
said Sam, smiling as he stood up and offered his hand to his eldest nephew.

‘I’ve seen your photograph in the book Mr Blennerhasset sent of Ma and Da’s wedding. You were the best man. I didn’t know you had red hair same as mine.’

‘I told you he had, James,’ Rose protested.

‘Yes, you did, but I’d forgot,’ said James cheerfully, as he shook hands with the only one of his uncles he’d ever met.

While James went to fetch Sarah from the Robinsons, Sam and Hannah settled down to question their new-found uncle about Dublin. Hannah wanted to know where he lived, what it was like and whether he was allowed to have a kitten. How wide was the river in Dublin? How long had it taken him to get to Armagh? Sam’s questions were even more specific. He wanted to know what engine had pulled the train. Did it have a name? If he didn’t know, then did he remember its number?

When Uncle Sam admitted he didn’t know where to look for either, young Sam, not yet seven, surprised even his mother by telling him where he could find them next time he came to see them.

‘James and I are both hoping to be engine drivers when we grow up,’ he informed his uncle solemnly, as Rose began preparations for a very early meal.

With such a very short time before Sam had to
go, she decided not to tell the children about their Granny Hannah’s death there and then. She thought she’d say he was going to America in September and had come to tell them, but in the end she offered no explanation for his sudden appearance. Happily, the children were so totally absorbed by the excitement of having a real live uncle over for supper, they required none.

When Sam rose to go and said his goodbyes to the children, the thought of saying her own goodbye, so suddenly, almost overwhelmed her. How could she let him go with so much unsaid?

‘James and Hannah,’ she said quickly, as inspiration came to her. ‘I want to walk to the station with Uncle Sam. Will you look after Sarah for me? I’ll only be about an hour and Da’s in the forge if you need him. All right?’

They assured her they’d be fine. Hannah fetched her shawl from the bedroom, while James took down one of Sarah’s story books. Sam picked up the bag he’d put down on the settle and extracted a heavy, awkwardly-shaped parcel of things he’d brought from Kerry and left it where he’d been sitting.

‘They’re grandchildren, Rose. All different and all lovely. They’d tempt a man to find a wife,’ he said cheerfully, as they strode down the lane after they’d looked in at the forge and spoken a few words to Thomas and John.

‘You know, Sam, it’s the first time my children have seen anyone from my family. Isn’t it sad the way we’re scattered to the four winds. And John’s side’s no better now we’ve lost his mother.’

‘He has brothers, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, two of them. But they never write. When Sarah died, John wrote to the last address he had for them, but there’s been no reply. Ma always said there are some who go away and try to pretend the past never happened.’

‘You can’t do that, Rose, can you? Your past shapes you whether you like it or not. And if it’s given you a bad hand you’ll not improve it much unless you know you have it.’

‘We didn’t do so bad, did we?’ she said, taking his arm.

Sam kissed her cheek.

‘No, we didn’t. We might be dead and gone, perished in Derryveagh, or in Letterkenny workhouse, or buried at sea from the
Abysinnia
. But we’re not. We’re walking into Armagh on a lovely April evening, full of your good dinner. Ma would be pleased to see the pair of us.’

Rose nodded, afraid the tears might catch her again just when she had no wish to be sad. In the small piece of time they now had left to them before they reached the station, she wanted them to be happy.

‘Rose, there’s something I must ask you. I’m sure I ought to know, but I don’t. When I was sitting
in the church last week, I suddenly thought. ‘Why Kerry?’ I know what happened when Adair put us out and the Rosses in Ramelton gave us their barn and fed us. But how did we come to Kerry, Ma and you and me?’