Two

Four days a week Molly went up to the Big House to give a hand with the cleaning. It was always known as the Big House, though by rights it was Adare House. From leaving school at fourteen she had worked there full time, but when she had met James O’Connor in the autumn of 1920, and married him by Christmas, he would have none of that.

‘Am I not able to keep a wife?’ he’d demanded. ‘Is that it?’

‘’Tis just that it would help until the children come,’ she had said, blushing at the thought. ‘Help us to get set up.’

‘I will not have it.’ James had been adamant. ‘Ours will be a proper marriage; me supporting you, you looking after me.’

In fact, the children had come quickly. Kathleen had been born nine months to Saint Stephen’s Day, and although Mrs Adare, not wishing to lose a good worker, had said that Molly might bring the baby with her, James had remained obstinate.

Well, she thought, climbing the hill to the Big House now, hadn’t seventeen years and seven children changed those fine ideas? And wasn’t the money, though only five shillings a week, the greatest blessing? She did not know how she would manage without it. The fact was that James, faced with a hungry brood, had either come to terms with his objections or, for a long time now, had kept quiet about them.

What would be the outcome today, she wondered? Would he come home with his empty pockets turned inside out, or would there be a bit of money in them? Not much, she reckoned. James’s gambling was small-time; had to be because he didn’t have much to wager, and she was glad about that.

For the next two hours she swept, scrubbed, dusted and polished. Polishing was the task she enjoyed most, especially the great table in the dining hall. More than once, when she had worked full time here, she had seen it ready for a feast: resplendent with fine china, sparkling with Waterford glass, groaning with food. She rubbed at it now until she could see her reflection in the surface, and that was the last of her jobs here for today.

Back in the kitchen, Mrs Hanratty, the housekeeper, said, ‘There is a bit of a parcel for you, so. The end of a joint. A few vegetables.’

Mrs Hanratty was unfailingly kind, though never talkative, never one for a gossip about what the Adares were up to.

‘How is your Mammy?’ she asked Molly.

‘Sure, she is well enough for her age,’ Molly said. ‘I am going to see her on my way home.’

If there was enough in the parcel she would share it with her mother. If not, she would send one of the children around with a dish of whatever she made from it.

Her mother’s house, low, whitewashed, with small, square windows, was exactly like Molly’s own, as were most of the houses in Kilbally. Entering from the sunny street, it was dark and Peggy Byrne, sitting in the corner, dressed in her usual black, was almost absorbed into the gloom.

‘There you are!’ Molly said. ‘It’s dark coming in. I hardly saw you.’

‘’Tis you,’ Mrs Byrne said.

‘Who else were you expecting?’ Molly asked, smiling.

The house seemed more spacious than her own, perhaps because it was so empty. There never had been much furniture, never enough chairs for them all to sit to meals, but it had been crowded with whichever of the nine children were still at home. It seemed strange, now, to see her mother entirely alone.

Michael Byrne had died a year ago. His chair, a cushion on the seat, a rug thrown over the railed back, was still never sat in by anyone else. It was as if his spirit still hovered.

‘’Tis handy you came,’ Mrs Byrne said. ‘There is a letter from Josephine.’

Josephine was Molly’s sister, older by fourteen years, Molly being the youngest of the family. Most of the others were scattered across the face of the earth, in the United States, in Canada, in England – and all doing well if their letters were to be believed. All, that was, except her brothers Sean and Paddy, who had died in the Great War, which had not been Ireland’s war, but they had volunteered. Josephine lived in Yorkshire, in Akersfield. Molly was the only one now living in Ireland.

Would the time come, Peggy Byrne had wondered, watching her children leave one by one, when there would be no Byrnes at all left in the county?

‘Isn’t it the truth that the Byrnes have lived in this place as far back as anyone can remember?’ she asked – inconsequentially to Molly, but she was used to that from her mother.

‘Indeed it is so,’ she agreed.

They were there before the time when the sailors from the Spanish Armada had been washed ashore from the wreckage of their ships in the stormy seas. They were already there even farther back, when the Vikings had scaled the cliffs, or sailed up the estuary.

‘I wonder what news Josephine has?’ Molly said.

Her mother handed her the letter. It had been opened, but not read, for the simple reason that Peggy Byrne could not read.

‘See for yourself. Read it out, and mind you speak up now! Will I not want to hear every word?’

Molly read in a loud, clear voice. Josephine was well, her husband was well, the children were well. Maureen was now engaged to be married, to a teacher. Kate was expecting her first baby.

‘So, I am to be a great-grandmother!’ Mrs Byrne said. ‘Will I ever be seeing the child?’

‘Of course you will!’ Molly said. ‘You know you can visit Josephine any time you have a mind to. She’s invited you often enough!’

‘I am seventy-five. I am too old to be travelling to the ends of the earth,’ Mrs Byrne objected.

‘Akersfield is not the ends of the earth, Mammy,’ Molly said. ‘And perhaps one of them would come over and fetch you.’

‘Get on with the letter,’ Mrs Byrne said. ‘What else does she say?’

‘Not much more. “The mills are busy again,”’ she read, ‘“making cloth for uniforms. Everyone thinks there will be another war with Germany.”

‘At least it will not be Ireland’s war,’ Molly said. ‘Ireland is neutral.’

‘And so she was before,’ her mother reminded her. ‘What difference did it make to me?’

‘I’m sorry, Mammy. Oh, there is a postscript. Josephine says she encloses a ten-shilling note! I don’t see it. She must have forgotten!’

‘I have it,’ Mrs Byrne said, smiling a secret smile. ‘I have it in a safe place.’

Ten shillings, Molly thought! What will she do with it? She never goes out, and she will not spend a penny unless she has to.

She folded the letter and handed it back to her mother, who she knew would peruse it many times, trying to connect the squiggles on the paper with the news she had heard.

‘Mrs Hanratty gave me a parcel,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I’ll open it up, so, and if there is enough to divide I will give you some. If not, I will send you a dish.’

‘Take it home,’ Mrs Byrne said. ‘It will save me the cooking of it.’

That would be as well, Molly reckoned. She doubted her mother ever took the trouble to make a decent meal, not now when she had no-one else to cook for.

‘Let Kieran bring it,’ Mrs Byrne said.

‘If he can, Mammy,’ Molly said. ‘He is working for Luke O’Reilly in the shop. But one of us will bring it.’ She rose to leave.

She had to hurry home. There was the midday dinner to prepare. Kieran would come home for that, with little time to spare, so it must be on the table, and it went without saying that the other children would be starving. Whether James would be home or not she had no idea. With part of her she longed, as she always did, to see him; with another part she dreaded it, for fear of the outcome.

Breda was sitting on the doorstep, apparently doing nothing, though Molly guessed that she was looking for her father, whether to carry on the feud or to make it up, she couldn’t guess. Either way, it would be a positive action. Breda was never one for hiding her feelings, good or bad. Of the other children, there was no sign.

‘Where is everyone?’ Molly enquired.

‘The twins have gone to the beach,’ Breda said. ‘They wouldn’t let me go with them, which is not fair.’

‘And Moira?’

‘I wouldn’t be knowing where Moira is. She just went off. She is full of secrets!’

‘Ah well, I dare say they will all be back the minute dinner is on the table,’ Molly said. ‘You children all have alarm clocks in your stomachs. Did you and Moira do the potatoes?’

‘I did,’ Breda said virtuously. ‘Moira went off and left me to do it. And I’ve put the pan on the fire.’

‘Good girl!’

‘But Moira will have to do them all on her own tomorrow,’ Breda insisted. ‘’Tis not fair otherwise. She gets away with everything, that one.’

‘She will not do so this time,’ Molly promised. ‘Won’t I see to that?’

Potatoes, which they grew on the scrubby piece of land at the back of the house, were the mainstay of their diet, day in, day out. Only on Sundays was there meat, and that in a good week. A rabbit, a boiling hen too old to be productive any longer; on the best occasions, a small piece of beef.

Molly knew a score of ways with potatoes: potato soup; boiled potatoes with onion sauce; potato scones cooked on the griddle to a golden brown, then drenched with butter (for she only made scones if there was butter in the cupboard); boxty – grated potatoes bound with flour and water and fried; potatoes mashed with scallions, or with carrots and turnips; and many others. Today, having stayed overlong at her mother’s, she was in a hurry. Boiled, with onion sauce, it would have to be.

Moira walked in at the door, and would have glided across into the bedroom except that Molly put out an arm and held her back.

‘You are just in time to peel me an onion!’

‘Oh, no, Mammy!’ Moira cried. ‘Not an onion! Won’t it make my hands smell all afternoon!’

‘Give them a good wash,’ Molly said, ‘and at the same time you can wash the paint off your face!’

She was stirring the thickening sauce, the smell of the onion and milk, sharply appetizing, filling the low-ceilinged room, when the twins rushed in, followed immediately by Kieran. Patrick and Colum at once took their places at the table.

‘Go and wash your hands!’ Kieran ordered.

Grumbling, they moved to obey him.

‘And see to it that you bring more water in before you go out this afternoon,’ Molly said. ‘I have washing to do.’

Breda and Moira were already at the table, both of them seated; Breda because she was too small to stand, Moira because, since her father was not present, there was a spare stool. The twins stood, as always, but Kieran, as the eldest, had a seat. Moira, with a wrinkled nose, sniffed at her hands.

‘Disgusting!’ she said.

‘There is nothing disgusting about the smell of good food!’ Molly said sharply, handing out the plates. ‘Patrick, do not start to eat until I have said grace!’

She said it quickly, not wishing the food to go the least bit cold. They murmured ‘Amen’, blessed themselves and began to eat. After a moment, Breda said: ‘When will Dada be back?’

‘Don’t speak with your mouth full,’ Molly said automatically. ‘How can I tell? I will expect him when I see him.’

‘Will he not be wanting his dinner?’ Breda said hesitantly.

‘He will so,’ Molly agreed. ‘Are you to save him some of yours?’

Breda put down her fork.

‘I will too.’ She said it reluctantly. She was very hungry. ‘But you must make Moira save some of hers!’

Molly smiled.

‘You can eat up, Breda,’ she said. ‘And you also, Moira, if you had thought of saving some. I have kept back enough for Dada. It was a kind thought, Breda, but did you think I would not save your Dada his dinner?’

Though it might well be dried up and hardly fit to eat by the time he decided to put in an appearance, she thought to herself. At least it seemed that Breda had forgiven him, though that did not surprise her. Breda’s passions were swift and strong, but in the end her loving nature overcame them.

‘How did it go in the shop?’ she asked Kieran.

‘Well enough. Would you be wanting me to bring you anything back this afternoon?’ He rose from the table and cleared away his plate.

‘Thank you, no,’ Molly said. ‘I will be down myself tomorrow.’

It was impossible to embark on her shopping until she knew what James would bring home, something or nothing. Would it be bread and lard they’d be eating the rest of the week, or perhaps rashers, or even, please God, a tin of salmon? In any case, she had a fancy to see Kieran at work. Just supposing he took a fancy to the job, and Luke O’Reilly, who had no children, to him, so that he forgot his vocation.

She was at once deeply ashamed of the thought, and swiftly put it away from her. May God forgive me, she chided herself.

‘I must go,’ Kieran said. ‘’Twould look bad to be late on my first day.’

He was stepping out of the house when, away at the top of the street, just rounding the corner, he saw him. Turning back into the house he called:

‘He’s here! Dada’s here!’

Molly rushed to the door, followed immediately by Breda, then Moira. The twins lagged behind just long enough to scrape their plates.

Molly took one look at her husband as he walked towards them, though he was still a way off. Her heart lifted. ‘Praise be to God!’ she murmured. She could tell at once from his jaunty walk, his head high, his shoulders back, that things had gone well. She knew the shape of him. But even if they had not, the sight of him, any sight of him, would have filled the longing she always had when he was away for more than a few hours.

Breda rushed up the street to meet him. Moira hesitated, wondering whether it was quite the thing to do at her age, then decided it was, and followed after, though more sedately. The rest of them stayed in the doorway, waiting. When he drew nearer they saw the wide smile on his face, and met it with welcoming smiles of their own. As he reached the door, a daughter on each arm, Molly stepped back into the house, else he would embrace her right there, in front of the whole street, and though she would be proud, it was simply not done. They would be a talking point.

‘So all went well?’ she asked quietly.

‘Well enough,’ James said. ‘Not a fortune, but well enough.’

‘Have you brought us presents, Dada?’ Moira asked eagerly.

‘What are they?’ Breda said.

James frowned at them with mock severity. ‘So that’s the way of it, is it? It is not your Dada you want home, ’tis what he has brought you! Supposing I say there is nothing, will I go away again?’

‘No, Dada!’ Breda said. ‘I am pleased to see you, even though you did break your sacred promise to me.’

‘But you forgive me?’ James said seriously. ‘Even if I’m empty-handed?’

Breda took a deep breath.

‘I forgive you.’

‘So do I!’ Moira said eagerly.

‘You have nothing to forgive him for,’ Breda said. ‘He did not break a promise to you, so!’

‘That’s enough talk,’ Molly interrupted. ‘Your Dada will do nothing, say not a word more, until he has had his dinner.’

She took a piled-high plate from the oven and set it on the table.

‘Get that inside you,’ she said to her husband.

‘I can’t stay,’ Kieran said. ‘I have to be back at the shop.’

‘Can we go out again now?’ the twins asked in unison. They were not bothered about gifts or homecomings. As always, they were contented with each other, following their own ploys. Even when they fought, which was not infrequently, it was their own private fight; they remained close in spirit as well as in flesh.

‘And you, Breda, and you, Moira, are not to sit there staring at Dada while he eats his dinner,’ Molly said. ‘You can clear the rest of the table and start to wash the dishes.’

All the same, she was as curious as the girls about what he might have brought them all; but fair was fair and a man must be fed. She looked for some small gift, but hoped that he would not have been too extravagant. What she needed most of all was money. She was trying desperately to save towards the new shoes they would all need to go back to school at the end of the long summer holiday. None of their present ones could be repaired any more, and she would never, unlike some mothers in Kilbally, allow her children to go to school barefoot, though in the holidays it was less important.

James scraped up the last of his dinner, patted his stomach, sighed with satisfaction, then pushed the plate away.

‘Come here!’ he ordered Molly.

She sprang to obey him, and he rose to meet her.

‘You have not given me a kiss,’ he complained. ‘Does a man not get a kiss at his homecoming?’

The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile, but before she could speak he had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her with passion. Her hands stole around the back of his neck, and she was returning his kisses.

‘Other mothers and fathers do not kiss all the time,’ Breda said sternly. It was so time-wasting when there were other matters of importance to come.

‘Then more fool they!’ James said, releasing Molly. ‘Now, dote, would you be waiting for something? Is that it? And what can it be?’

‘Oh Dada, you know!’ Breda said.

‘Yes, you know!’ Moira echoed.

‘Don’t tease them any further,’ Molly begged.

‘Or you?’ James said. ‘Aren’t you just dying to know? Tell the truth, now!’

He began to feel through his pockets as if he had forgotten exactly where he had put the gifts, pockets large and small, inside and outside his jacket. Breda stood close, jigging up and down in a flurry of impatience.

‘Why do you need so many pockets, Dada?’ she enquired impatiently.

‘Don’t they all have their uses?’ James said. ‘Now where in the world . . . ? I could have sworn . . . !’ He started the search again.

‘James!’ Molly implored.

‘Ah! Here we are then!’ he said, fumbling. ‘Now who should this be for?’

Breda stood on tiptoe, trying to see into the pocket.

‘No, not for you, Breda,’ he said. ‘’Tis for Moira. Yes, I distinctly remember buying this for Moira!’

From the large pocket inside his jacket he drew out a small hand-mirror. It was oval, with a handle, and pink-backed. Moira flushed with pleasure at the sight of it.

‘Isn’t it exactly the right thing?’ Molly said.

She’ll be able to put her lipstick on properly. The words rose to Breda’s lips, but she bit them back. This was no time to be ungracious, and perhaps Dada had also bought her a mirror, only a different colour. Blue would be nice. The thoughts flew round in her head while James’s hand strayed to another pocket.

‘Ah! ’Tis here,’ he said.

Then it couldn’t be a hand-mirror, Breda thought. That pocket was too small.

It was a hair slide, in the shape of a butterfly. Green with a design on it in blue. She drew in her breath sharply at the sight of it. It was entirely beautiful.

‘Oh, Dada,’ Breda said, ‘it is wonderful! It is just what I wanted!’ She hadn’t known that before she had set eyes on it, but now she was quite certain.

‘I knew it the minute I saw it,’ James said. ‘And now what are you going to give me?’

‘A big kiss!’ Breda said.

She raised her arms and he swung her up so that she was level with him. When she kissed him his face was rough and itchy on hers, like a scrubbing brush, and the breath of him was strong and sweet. Like cough mixture, she thought. Oh, he was the best of fathers, even though he had broken his sacred promise, for which she now totally forgave him, and God would too.

James put Breda down again, and bent so that Moira could kiss him also. She was getting too big, too much of a young lady, to be swung through the air. He hoped his little bright one would be a while yet before she grew up.

‘Thank you, Dada,’ Moira said. ‘It is just right. It will be very useful.’

‘Sure, you’re very welcome,’ James said.

Then he sat down, and stopped searching in his pockets, as if it was all over. Breda looked at him in dismay.

‘Mammy!’ she said. ‘What about Mammy?’

‘Oh!’ he said, straight-faced. ‘Was I supposed to bring something for Mammy? Oh, dear me!’

‘You forgot!’ Breda said in horror. She turned to Molly.

‘Then you can share my hair slide, Mammy,’ she said. ‘We can wear it in turn.’

‘And you can look in my mirror any time you want to,’ Moira offered.

‘You are good girls, both of you,’ Molly said, ‘but I’m sure Dada is teasing us again.’

‘Mammy knows I would never be forgetting her,’ James said.

He fished inside his waistcoat pocket and brought out a small, dark blue, cardboard box, which he handed to Molly.

‘It’s a lovely box,’ she said.

‘Never mind the box. Open it up!’ he ordered.

Inside, against dark blue velvet, lay a pair of earrings; tiny crosses, not more than half an inch long. Molly gasped.

‘Oh! They’re beautiful!’

‘Nine carat gold,’ James said proudly. ‘You’re to wear them all the time. You are not to keep them just for feast days. All the time, mind you!’

While Moira held up her mirror, Molly fixed the earrings. Hadn’t she always wanted some just like this?

‘But too fine for me!’ she said.

‘Nothing is too fine for you, sweetheart!’ James said. ‘So there you are! Everybody pleased! It was worth the money, all of which I spent, except for a few coppers to give to the boys. Oh, and a shilling left over, which is all yours, my Molly.’

With a flourish he handed her the coin. She struggled not to show her disappointment. Oh, the earrings were lovely, and wasn’t it true that they were what she had always wanted, but she did so need the money. A shilling would go nowhere. Still and all, he meant to be generous. His heart was in the right place, even if his head was not. She had best go down to O’Reilly’s now, not wait until tomorrow, but spend it before James asked to borrow it back to go out with his mates.

‘And how is Mrs O’Reilly?’ Molly asked.

‘Not well. Not well at all. She is a sorely tried woman.’

He weighed out a pound of sugar (to the last grain, Molly thought) and tipped it into a blue bag. And wasn’t he a sorely tried man, Luke O’Reilly asked himself? A man with a grocer’s shop to run and a wife who was always ailing, so that he had everything to do, in the house as well as in the shop.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Molly sympathized. ‘And what would seem to be the present trouble?’

She said ‘present trouble’ because Mary O’Reilly seemed to have been poorly on and off ever since Luke had brought her back from Dublin as his bride, more than a dozen years ago. There were those who said serve him right for not choosing a woman from the county when there were plenty who would have been willing to step into a nice little business, and serve him well, and have his children, which Mary O’Reilly had failed to do. Also, she had Dublin ways, she set herself above the people of the west, she did not stand and chat to anyone after Mass. That last was true, though the bit about Dublin ways was usually said by those who had never been there, nor ever would.

‘You may ask,’ Luke O’Reilly said. ‘But indeed ’twould be hard to tell you. Isn’t Dr O’Halloran entirely mystified?’

And no wonder at that, for one time it was her head and another time her back, or her legs, and all the times in between those mysterious things which went on in women’s bodies.

‘Dear me!’ Molly said. ‘Well, give her my best wishes. And I’ll take two ounces of tea, please.’

‘Ceylon?’

She hesitated. It cost more, but it made a better cup, which was important if you were going to use it twice over.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Ceylon it is.’

‘Ah!’ Luke O’Reilly said, ‘You know what’s best, Mrs O’Connor.’

‘It’s one thing knowing, another affording,’ Molly observed. ‘I hope Kieran is being a help to you?’ She looked around the shop for a sight of her son.

‘He’s doing well enough,’ the grocer said. ‘Inexperienced, of course.’

‘He’ll learn quickly,’ Molly said with confidence. ‘He’s a willing worker.’

‘I’ll give him that. He’s out at the back, unpacking goods. Would you be wanting him, then?’

‘Oh no!’ Molly said quickly. ‘I’ll not take him from his work!’ She would let Luke O’Reilly know that she would not be an interfering mother.

‘Will there be anything else, then?’

‘No. Nothing else.’

In fact, the shop was full of things with which she would like to have filled her basket: tinned peaches, chocolate biscuits, ox tongues, apricot jam. She averted her eyes from the well-filled shelves, picked up her purchases and left.

Luke O’Reilly, having no other customers to distract him, moved to the open doorway and watched her walk down the street, noting the free swing of her hips, her slender ankles, the way she held her head so upright on her shoulders, as if she was somebody. She was a fine woman, none finer in Kilbally. Why would a woman like her fall for a man like James O’Connor? She was wasted on him; he was not fit to tie her shoelaces.

It could have been different, he thought. Hadn’t he had his eye on her when she was sixteen? He’d been thirty then, already the owner of his own shop. He’d waited until she should be a little older, not wishing to frighten her off, but he’d waited too long. While he was busy, occupied in building up his business, she’d met James O’Connor, and that had been that.

He watched until she was out of sight, then turned back to answer a petulant call from his wife, who now appeared in the doorway at the back, which led into the parlour.

‘I’m parched!’ she said. ‘My head’s throbbing and I shouldn’t wonder if I have a fever. Wouldn’t you be making a cup of tea?’

‘Just coming!’ Luke O’Reilly said. ‘Just coming!’

Molly continued down the road. It was hot, the sun still high in the sky, but she liked it that way. She loved the long school holiday, the children all at home, under her feet. Except Kathleen, she thought bleakly. As well as shoes, she was trying to save enough money to travel to Dublin to visit Kathleen, even if she might only be allowed to see her for a short time.

A few weeks only and the others would all be back at school, Kieran cycling fifteen miles each day to school on a bicycle which was long past its best. He should be a boarder, but it couldn’t be afforded. Secretly, though she knew it was selfish, she was glad.

She put on a spurt now, remembering that she had left the bread to prove and it would likely be brimming over the top of the bowl.

Only Breda was in the house.

‘Where’s Dada?’ Molly asked.

‘Gone down to the harbour,’ Breda said. ‘He has to arrange about a fishing trip, he said.’

‘Is that it?’ Molly said. She had not thought he would want to go fishing, not his first night home. Perhaps it would be tomorrow night. It wouldn’t put much money in his pocket, but at least they’d get a change of diet.

‘Can I help you to make the bread?’ Breda asked.

‘Of course!’

Between them they shaped the loaves. Molly cut the cross in the top of one, and allowed Breda to do the other.

‘Why do you cut the cross?’ Breda enquired.

‘Why, to let out the Devil of course!’ Molly answered.