Hide Her Name (18 page)

As Kathleen’s glasses had steamed up, she took them off the bridge of her nose to wipe on her apron.

‘Uncle Liam is the chairman of the angling club, which is very useful now as we know the gillie rota and when it’s safe or not to fish. As the salmon swim up through the farm, we take a good catch for ourselves and, sure, ’tis our land they are on, so why shouldn’t we? The angling club think they own the waters God put here. They make me sick.’

Kathleen and Joe had fought many a battle with the authorities over the fact that the best salmon river in the West of Ireland ran twenty yards from their own back door and across land their family had owned for generations. Kathleen wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron as she remembered her late husband Joe. He had worked so hard to make the farm what it was today and had poached many a huge salmon, sometimes with the help of his young sons, from a curragh, teaching them the way, just as his father had before him and his own before that.

‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Kathleen. ‘Never mind me, ’tis just the tiredness and the journey home, it always gets to me.’

Kitty asked Liam, ‘Ah, was that your footsteps I heard in the night? Were there other men with ye?’

‘Aye, five of us last night. John McMahon, his nephew Aengus and a few others,’ Liam replied. ‘Now, away with ye, girls, and get dressed.’

Once both girls were dressed they ran through the kitchen and out to the cowshed at the bottom of the path, where Maeve was now sitting on a stool, milking.

Kitty was nervous. She had never seen a real cow before, never mind stood so close to one, and she had certainly not smelt anything quite like this. She didn’t say anything, but this was the first morning she hadn’t wanted to be ill as soon as she opened her eyes.

‘Shall we carry the bucket, Maeve?’ asked Nellie.

It was a sunny morning and the midges swarmed round their heads, stuck inside their hair and flew down the collars of their blouses.

‘God, don’t they drive you mad,’ said Kitty.

‘They will be gone by the time breakfast is over,’ said Maeve, ‘and ye will be used to them by tomorrow. They sleep on the bog all day but, mind, they will be back out as the sun goes down for another bite at ye.’

The girls deposited the milk in the dairy, a concrete shed to the side of the back door where Maeve made her cream and butter. Kitty was amazed that the milk in the bucket was warm.

‘Is this what we drank in our tea last night? It smells disgusting,’ she whispered to Nellie. ‘It smells like the cow.’

‘I know, but you will get used to it and you won’t know any different soon, I promise,’ Nellie replied.

Kitty wasn’t convinced and was dreading having to drink the milk at breakfast.

Uncle Liam was heaping bacon rashers from the griddle onto a plate as they walked back into the kitchen.

‘Now, girls,’ he shouted, ‘we have a big day today, we have the harvest to come in. Kitty, I’ve assigned that job to ye and Nellie. We need the peat cut whilst it is dry and so we have left that one to ye.’

He looked at the girls. Yes, just as he thought, Kitty’s expression was bewildered and serious. The harvest wouldn’t be ready for a good few days and he was, as usual, fooling around.

He carried on. ‘The two of youse can start work as soon as ye have eaten and we will just away down to the pub for the day now. Ye give us a shout when ye are all done. Is that all right there, Nellie? If ye puts yer back into it, ye should be finished by six tonight.’

Nellie playfully punched Liam in the arm.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Liam, rubbing his arm. ‘I thought that was why ye had come, to give Uncle Liam a rest. Mammy, I’m shocked. Ye have brought these wastrels here under false pretences.’

He took a sideways glance at Kitty, who was now laughing along with the rest. Getting that child to laugh is hard work, he thought.

‘They have a busy day ahead, Liam, sure enough, without help from you,’ said Kathleen. ‘We are going to introduce Kitty to Bangornevin.’

‘Ballymara will take only two minutes,’ said Liam, ‘so ye may as well or the girls will be driven crazy with the boredom by tonight and begging me to let them stack the hay, so they will.’

Pots of tea now appeared with piles of bacon and sausages cooked with sliced potatoes and heaps of bread. Kitty had never seen or tasted butter like it. It was a thick, creamy yellow and salty.

She thought about everyone at home, who at that very moment would be tucking into pobs. White, stale leftover bread from yesterday, soaked in milk with a sprinkling of sugar and warmed in the range. Or boxty, which was made with potatoes and flour, rolled round and flat, the size of a dinner plate. If there was butter to be had, Maura would scrape it on and then back off again and cut the boxty into quarters.

How could she ever eat that again and not think of this morning and this wonderful breakfast?

‘Can you imagine what Angela would be like, if she could see me eating this breakfast?’ she said to Nellie. ‘If she knew what I was eating right now, Holy Mother, she would give out something wicked altogether. I can’t understand why so many people leave here to go to America and England.’

‘Well, Kitty,’ said Kathleen, ‘it’s about work and money and being able to live. There is no work around for people and so they have to leave. Most farms can’t support an entire family.’

‘Aye, Mammy, but the wages in England, now, they are fantastic for working on the roads and the construction trade is roaring,’ said Liam. ‘That’s why everyone is leaving. We have men here every month coming into Murphy’s pub, looking for new men to sign up and take on.’

Liam’s brother, Finn, who lived with his wife in Bangornevin, had joined them for breakfast. Now he looked irritated. ‘Only the fools stay in Liverpool and work for the English. America is the country to be.’

Finn was as serious as Liam was funny.

The atmosphere round the table became tense and Kathleen leapt in.

‘Hush yer mouth, Finn. Jerry has made a good life for himself and Nellie. You should be grateful there are jobs there for people to go to, because this farm would struggle to feed all of ye. What would ye be doing if Jerry and Bernadette had decided to return and work the farm, as was their right, him being the eldest, an’ all? Jer went to England because he could and you were younger, to give ye a chance because he knew he could get work. Ye may not be in England, Finn, but ye are reaping the rewards because yer brother is.’

Finn looked sheepish. Nellie was surprised. This was the second time she had heard Bernadette’s name mentioned openly. She was learning things she never knew before.

Maeve was already on her feet, choosing the moment to end the tension.

‘Right, all of ye. I have a home to run, so will ye all away to whatever trouble ye want to make today and leave me to it.’

‘Right, five minutes and we are off,’ said Kathleen as the girls began to clear the table. ‘We will be so busy today, we won’t have the time to bless ourselves. The first thing we have to do is pop in and say hello to all the relatives, so they can see we are here, but first we have to use the phone in the post office and to let Maura know we have arrived safe and sound. And watch that nosy parker Mrs O’Dwyer doesn’t earwig in. I will keep the nosy bat talking, whilst you girls call the Anchor and send a message home. God cannot have known what he was doing when he gave the nosiest woman on the planet control of the phone in Bangornevin. She doesn’t even have to squeeze the information out of people now or eavesdrop in the shop, she just picks up the bleedin’ phone.’

‘Jump in the van,’ shouted Liam from the hallway. ‘I’m off to the village for feed from Carey’s.’

Kitty again sat by the window in the van and, as they drove down the road, realized she was keen to reach Bangornevin and to explore Ballymara properly. She knew, without hardly having set foot in either, that she was falling in love with a place that a week ago she hadn’t even known existed. Tommy had forewarned her.

‘I don’t know what it is, queen,’ he said, ‘but home, Ireland, it does this strange thing, it keeps hold of your heart and never lets you go. There is this feeling just here,’ and he clenched his hand into a fist shape and gently punched himself in the gut. ‘Some say it’s grief for all we have loved and left behind. Others say it is the spirit of our ancestors pulling us back and holding onto us. For sure, I have worked with men from all countries on the docks and none have the same longing in their hearts that we Irish have for our home.

‘But do you know what I think it is, eh, queen? I think it is the suffering. I think so many Irish hearts have suffered and died on our soil that the souls of those before have joined up into something powerful, which can keep a grip on ye. Ireland needs Irish hearts to keep her safe and to protect her and she feels it when we go. I believe she cries for the loss of those of us who desert her and is always trying to pull us back home. But I know this: I am glad of it, and I would rather have it and know where my heart truly belongs, than not have it at all and be an exile in doubt.’

Maybe it was in the blood, thought Kitty. If it was, it was only in her blood. Neither Angela nor the twins seemed the slightest bit interested. Maybe that was what God did. Maybe he just passed the ache on to the eldest child in each family, to ensure that one day they would return home to Ireland.

Bangornevin was built on a crossroads adjacent to the river. The spur road to Ballymara joined it once it crossed the Moorhaun and hugged the river down to the McMahons’ farm, where the road became a dead end. No one had any reason to walk down the Ballymara road unless they were visiting one of the two farms or using the field just before the turning that had been set aside as a football pitch.

“Ah, Jesus, the lads in Bangornevin are mad about the football,” Kathleen explained as they passed.

The Moorhaun river was rich with Atlantic salmon and at the crossroads to the village the torrent roared so loudly you could barely hear yourself speak.

The drive into Bangornevin took all of five minutes.

On one side of the crossroads was the grocer’s, which sold everything from sweets to sheep-dip. Jerry and Liam’s cousin owned the shop and on her last visit he had even allowed Nellie to serve the customers.

On either side of the road stood a row of very small whitewashed houses. Directly across from the grocer’s was the church. On the opposite side of the crossroads stood the village school, a tailor’s shop, the tobacconist’s, the post office, a hardware shop and a butcher’s. The back half of the butcher’s, which was divided off by a hessian curtain, was a pub. There was also a full-time pub in the village, but nothing sold there was as home-made or as strong as that sold at the back of the butcher’s.

People made their own bread and what they didn’t make was bought at the market on market day and stored in damp straw in the cold press.

Liam now turned left and pulled up outside the post office.

‘Good luck,’ he shouted as they all piled out of the van. ‘Shall I call back for ye later, Mammy?’

‘No thanks, Liam,’ Kathleen shouted. ‘We can walk back, or Pat will give us a lift.’

All three stood and waved as the van disappeared down the high street, Liam beeping the car horn and raising his hand to everyone he passed.

The post office was full of women gathered round the counter. As the bell over the door jangled and Kathleen and the girls walked in, every single person at the counter ceased talking and turned round.

Kathleen scanned the shop.

‘Morning, Mrs O’Dwyer, morning, ladies,’ she boomed.

In no time at all the women gathered round Kathleen and began asking questions.

‘How much wages are they paying in Liverpool to work on the roads now, Kathleen? Is it true a man can earn a hundred pounds a month?’

‘Are ye staying home for good now?’

‘How is that crazy wife? Is she a patch on Bernadette?’

The questions came thick and fast, but Kathleen answered none of them.

Kitty was amazed that every person recognized Kathleen and Nellie, and that they even knew who she was too.

As the women kept Kathleen busy with what seemed like a hundred questions a minute, a very shabby-looking lady, dressed from head to toe in ragged black, much poorer than anyone Kitty had ever seen in her life, approached her.

‘Ah, now, ye must be Kitty, come to keep Nellie company on her holiday, are ye?’

‘Yes, I am.’ Kitty smiled.

She noticed that the woman’s shoes and clothes were in a terrible condition. What teeth she had were broken and nearly black.

‘I know ye mammy’s mammy, she’s a Fahey from Killhooney, is she not, and her sister and all. I know her too.’

Kitty had heard her mother speak of Killhooney Bay but had never visited and had no idea that her nana’s name had been Fahey.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Kitty, smiling at the lady and feeling very sorry for her. She glanced nervously at Kathleen, not wanting to say the wrong thing or anything more than she should.

Kathleen was revving up to challenge Mrs O’Dwyer.

‘We have come to use the phone, Mrs O’Dwyer,’ said Kathleen with an authority in her voice Nellie had never heard before.

The truth was that not many people could walk into the post office and command any degree of respect. The doctor and his wife, who lived in the big house built especially for him and his family on the outskirts of the village, could speak in the same tone as Kathleen, when resisting the nosiness of Mrs O’Dwyer, but precious few managed it.

‘Of course, Kathleen,’ trilled Mrs O’Dwyer. ‘Will it be the pub now in Liverpool ye’ll be wanting?’ She picked up the phone and began to dial.

‘Aye, but not for me. Kitty here just needs to leave a message for her mammy, who will be waiting at ten o’clock for the call.’

Mrs O’Dwyer scared Kitty. She was staring and grinning in a fixed manner that was most disconcerting, all the more so because she had very few teeth. As Kitty moved towards the phone, she smiled slightly nervously back.

Mrs O’Dwyer beckoned Kitty behind the counter and handed her the phone. To Kitty’s shock, Maura was on the other end.