Authors: Alice Taylor
W
HEN
THE
DINNER
was over and she had tidied away, Martha looked around with satisfaction. She liked a spotless kitchen with everything in its place. Untidy people annoyed her, and she had long ago decided that those who lived in confusion usually finished up confused. When she thought of confusion a picture of Mark’s studio always came to mind, because there was no denying but that he lived in a muddle. How he produced anything out of that jumble was beyond belief. Her mother never interfered with him, but then Agnes was easygoing and it did not seem to bother her; and she was so proud of him now that he was doing well.
It was strange the way Rodney Jackson had come back into their lives after all those years. Since those childhood visits to his aunts, they had not seen him again until eight years ago. When he had come then, this extremely tall, good-looking American had created quite a stir in Kilmeen, and since then he had returned regularly, much to the interest of the female population of the village. This Rodney Jackson had a strange idea that Mark was something special, and the price he had paid Mark for all those pictures that were hanging in David Twomey’s school was amazing. But then, the Miss Jacksons had been into that kind of thing as well. They had looked after Mark well when they were alive, and even now that they were dead he was still benefiting. Mark had always got the good end of the stick!
As children she and Mark had never been close and this gap had widened in recent years. Ned and himself had been close friends, and Kate and himself had been buddies for years. As children Peter and Nora had loved
him because he was almost of their world, and when his pictures were hung in their school and impressed all their friends, they hero-worshipped him. If ever Martha criticised Mark, they all sprang to his defence. It annoyed her intensely the way that he was inevitably on the opposite side to her whenever there was a conflict of opinions in Mossgrove.
She was now about to walk back to her old home to discuss with Mark and Agnes whether she could have the use of their land to supplement the loss of the river meadow hay. Agnes and Mark wouldn’t mind, but she disliked being in the position of having to ask. She had expected that they might have offered, but it probably had never crossed their minds. She knew that they had not sold off the meadows as yet this year, so she was going to pay them whatever they had earned last year. She was not coming to them cap in hand, as Jack would term it.
It was such a lovely day that she decided to take the short cut through the fields instead of going around by the longer road. The only people using this short cut were themselves and the Shines, but the path was well worn as Nora and Peter were always back and forth to Mark and Agnes. As she walked along the hilly field behind the house, she saw Matt Conway leaning on his stake over Yalla Hole, looking across. The sight of him and the black circles in the meadow rekindled her anger. So he thought that she was of no consequence and that she did not rate very much because she was a woman and not a Phelan? Even though it had prevented him from making a nusiance of himself during the last eight years, his reasoning irked her. He might discover that she was of more consequence than he thought.
It had surprised her greatly that Fr Brady had brought up
the subject of the hay burning at mass on Sunday. She would not have thought that he had the courage. He was too good-looking for his own good, but apparently there was more to him than a handsome exterior. When Lizzie had passed that smart remark behind her back in the post office, she had ignored her, but it was no wonder that there were rumours going around about himself and Kate. If he had been an overweight, plain-looking man like Fr Burke, there would have been no gossip. She knew Kate well enough to know that Kate would not dream of having a fling on the side. Besides, she had been long enough setting her cap at David Twomey before they finally got things sorted out. It just went to show that people could get any kind of a rumour going. Still, it amused her that do-gooding Kate could be the victim of wagging tongues. She followed the path at the bottom of the field down into the small wood overlooking the river. The trees were like huge umbrellas screening out the sun, and she was glad to walk along in the cool green shadows. She had often played here as a child, solitary games with imaginary people who lived under the trees. As a teenager this had been her refuge when she had found it difficult to be one of the crowd. If Mark and herself were different from each other, they were also different from other people. But whereas Mark was tolerant of people, she, for the most part, found them slightly irritating. To go her own way and do her own thing had always been her choice.
She might never have got married if Ned had not come to the house most nights with Mark, and slowly she had found herself looking forward to seeing him. Once she had decided that Ned was the one she wanted, she went about achieving her aim with single-minded determination. They had been very happy together. Ned had never
opposed her because when he did she made life so uncomfortable that he soon fell into line. Although her father had died when she was young, she had seen him getting his own way and Agnes agreeing for the sake of a quiet life. She had been determined that she would be the one in control if she ever got married.
Leaving the river behind, she climbed up the steep path using the tree trunks as hand rails. How quiet it was in here with only the birds and the occasional rustle in the undergrowth. She came out of the wood into the field below her old home, and as she followed the winding path she thought over what she was going to say to her mother and Mark.
The house was an extraordinary colour. How Agnes could have let Mark put that amazing yellow on the house and that crazy red on the door she could never understand. Agnes opened the door with a welcoming smile on her face. When Martha thought about it, which was seldom, she wondered how a pretty, small-boned little person like Agnes could be the mother of herself and Mark. She had once heard old Molly Conway say that “all the oddness came from the Lehanes”. That old lady had been a bad-minded cow!
“Martha, it’s great to see you; you seldom call by at this time of day,” Agnes greeted her.
“I have a reason,” Martha told her. “Is Mark here?”
“He’s out in the back painting. I don’t like to disturb him when he’s stuck into something,” Agnes said gently.
“Won’t do him any harm,” Martha told her, going to the back door and out into the garden.
Martha could just see Mark’s back through the high flowers down at the bottom of the garden. She wound her way down through Agnes’ idea of a garden towards
him.
What a mix up,
she thought as she viewed the potato stalks, cabbage, rhubarb and flowers all growing through each other.
How can anyone tolerate a garden like this?
Her father had had such law and order here in his day, but her mother had let it go higgley-piggley and all over the place. She watched Mark for a little while. He was completely engrossed in what he was doing and had not heard her coming. On the canvas a butterfly was taking shape, and then she noticed that there was one flitting around a bush just in front of him. How could he stand here so still, just watching a butterfly?
“Mark,” she said sharply, “I want to talk to you and mother about something.”
He remained standing with his back to her, and she could sense his annoyance at the interruption, but when he turned towards her, his face was expressionless.
“Butterflies are so delicate,” he told her mildly, laying his brush and palette on the low hedge. “We’ll go in and have a cup of tea together.”
“I have no time for tea,” she told him.
“Well, I have,” he said evenly, following her up the garden.
Agnes had the cups on the table and was making the tea as they came into the kitchen.
This kitchen has become more cluttered over the years
, Martha thought as she viewed her mother’s sewing machine in the corner with half-finished work draped over it, knitting needles stuck in a ball of wool on the windowsill and sketches finished and unfinished propped up in different corners.
“This place could do with a good tidying,” she told them.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mark smiled. “Agnes and I know where to lay our hands on everything.”
“You’re two of a kind,” she told them.
“That’s why we live in such harmony,” Mark told her.
“Nothing allowed to interfere with your creative talent, you mean,” Martha told him.
“The creative muse is disturbed by discord,” Mark smiled, “so we don’t upset each other.”
“Aren’t you so lucky that you can keep it all outside the door. Some of us don’t have that choice.”
“Well, I suppose with neighbours like the Conways it isn’t that easy,” Mark agreed.
“It’s as a result of them that I’m here,” Martha told him.
Agnes, having poured the tea, had put the teapot back by the fire and joined them at the table.
“You know that Mark and I will do anything we can to help,” she told Martha, handing around a plate of scones.
“If that’s the case, why have you not offered the meadows here to us?” Martha demanded.
“But we have …” Mark began and stopped at a warning glance from Agnes, but Martha had seen the exchange of looks and cut in.
“How do you mean, you have?”
“Well, Peter was here after the fire and we told him,” Mark said decidedly.
“You did what?” Martha demanded.
“Oh, for goodness sake, Martha! Peter was here that night and, of course, we offered him the meadows.”
“But that decision is not Peter’s to make,” Martha told him.
“Don’t be ridiculous, what decision was there? We have uncut meadows and you need hay, so there was no decision involved, just plain common sense,” Mark said.
“You should not have discussed this with Peter behind my back. He is not in charge of Mossgrove, and I’m having problems enough with him without you two making it
worse.”
“Did you ever think, Martha, that you might be making a problem out of nothing?” Mark asked her.
“It’s none of your business. I will pay you for the meadows, the same as you got from the Nolans last year.”
“You will not,” Agnes put in firmly. “We don’t need the money. Family is family, and there is no way that Mark and I would charge you and Peter for the use of land that will probably be his anyway.”
“How do you mean, his anyway?” Martha exclaimed.
“Are you going to hand this land over to Peter?”
“More than likely, unless I get a sudden urge in my declining years and take unto myself a wife, which I don’t plan to do,” Mark smiled.
“So you would give the land to my son and not to me?” Martha demanded.
“We’ll see,” Agnes put in quietly, “and anyway, it’s nothing that’s going to be done today or tomorrow.”
“Well, when it is being done, I think that you would do well to remember that a daughter and sister is closer than a grandson or a nephew,” she told them.
“We will,” Agnes agreed, but she knew that her mother was just placating her for the moment.
“Cutting the meadows here is going to be a lot of extra work,” Mark said.
“There are enough of them there to do it,” she asserted.
“Well, you know that Jack will insist on doing all the cutting,” Mark told her, “and he really is pushing on a bit for that.”
“Jack does as Jack wants,” she told him, “and that’s it.”
“If there was a tractor on the farm,” Mark suggested, “he would hand over a lot of the work to Peter and Davy, and if you are working the two places, they would really need
one.”
“And, of course,” she said acidly, “Peter has not been talking to you about it.”
“Well, he did mention it, and I must say that I agree with him,” Mark admitted.
“Needless to mention you agree with him! But then it’s not going to cost you anything to agree with him, is it?”
“I’d be glad to help,” he told her.
“Keep out of my family,” she warned him.
“But is it only the cost that’s the problem?” Mark persisted.
“Well, of course, it’s only the cost,” she told him in an annoyed voice.
“But, Martha, you’re not short of a bob,” he said.
“Well, if I’m not, I’ve some other use for it,” she retorted.
“Like what?” he persisted.
“You’ll find out in due course.”
“Interesting,” he smiled benignly. “You are always interesting, Martha.”
“And I wonder where Peter brings it from?” she snapped.
As she walked home across the fields, she thought back over the conversation. Peter getting her home farm without any consultation with her was a bit high-handed of Mark and Agnes, and she knew by the way they reacted that the decision had already been made. It was a small farm compared to Mossgrove, but it was very good land that had never been properly farmed since her father died. Mark didn’t have a clue about farming! If Peter put his mind to it, there was a good living there. It was a disquieting thought.
Just as she turned in the last gap for home, a movement down by the wood caught her eye. A man was walking along in the shadow of the trees. He must have come out
of the wood, which meant that he had been just below her path, hidden behind the trees in the undergrowth. As he turned to cross over the ditch, he looked in her direction. It was Matt Conway.
T
IM
B
RADY
HAD
never intended to be a priest. One of a family of five boys, he enjoyed dancing, football and girls. He and his brothers helped out after school in the family pub where they argued and fought over hours on and off, arguments usually settled by their mother, who was an expert on calming troubled waters. Being the youngest, he was constantly accused of getting special treatment as his mother’s pet. His father was a quiet man who opted for leaving the decisions to his wife, and it was only when things tended to get out of hand that he was called in to voice his opinion. As he generally backed up his wife, the boys had discovered early in life that it was their mother who had to be convinced if they wanted to do anything that needed parental consent.
One night, the year Tim was seventeen, she had gathered them all together into the kitchen behind the pub and told them that she had bad news. Nothing could have prepared them for the shock: she had been diagnosed as having cancer, with only months to live. Their world crashed in around them. There followed months of black despair with occasional rays of hope that were quickly obliterated by deeper despair. Finally it was all over and they moved around the house like shadows in a morgue. For Tim it was a torturous time. His mother had been the glue that had held them all together. Now he was cut adrift in a world that had no centre, as if he had been hurled up into the air and had splintered into many fragments that would not come back together again. During all the trauma, his father had remained silent and bewildered. Sometimes Tim would come on him staring into space, but as soon as he became aware of Tim’s presence he would try to pull
himself together. Every morning his father crept quietly out of the house for early mass and every night he knelt to say his rosary. Tim watched him and felt that he was beginning to cope because he had access to a spiritual seam that Tim could not understand.
“Boy, when the world is a black pool, you’ve got to look up or else you’ll drown,” he told Tim.
If in later years Tim ever questioned himself as to why he had become a priest, and he had often had reason to question himself, he knew that it had something to do with his mother’s death. It had turned him into a different person. At the seminary he had often clashed with the powers in charge. One dean had told him, “Brady, you will always be on the edge of trouble.” But despite everything he had come through, though he still asked himself at times if he was the right man in the right place. He had found it very difficult to come to terms with the fact that being a priest set you apart from the ordinary people. It was difficult to understand how it happened, but once you were ordained, you were different. People assumed that you were in some way holier and better than them. It might suit some to be on a pedestal, but not him. He had often found it a lonely, frightening place.
The Wednesday morning after his “hay sermon”, he thought back over his life since ordination and wondered if he was ever meant to fit into the priestly straitjacket. Burke was designed for the job; he loved the power and the respect his collar earned him and listening to himself pontificating off the altar every Sunday. Tim constantly found himself unsure of how he should be handling the problems that were thrust upon him as part of his parochial duties. Sometimes he felt that no one man could have the wisdom to be what a really good priest should be, but he
did the best he could and often prayed to his mother for guidance. He thought of Kate’s opinion that he should not have given the “hay sermon”. She was probably right, but then if you were hidebound by too many rules and regulations, you lost your natural instinct.
As he was about to leave the house to say mass, the phone rang and it was Kate.
“I had a chat with Sarah Jones, and the rumour about us is going around, though not widely, but Lizzy is in on it so Fr Burke will know.”
“I’m for the high jump this morning after mass, and it’s best to know in advance if he has a joker up his sleeve.”
“Well, he has that joker anyway and he might have a few more, knowing him,” Kate warned, “but whatever you do, don’t lose your cool and tear into him, because then he’ll be laughing all the way to the bishop.”
“I could be going down that road anyway,” he said ruefully.
“If you can get it sorted out with him, he will have no reason to go to the bishop,” Kate advised.
“Time will tell.”
“David thinks that it’s much ado about nothing,” Kate comforted him.
“I hope he’s right.”
As he picked up his keys, he glanced around his small hallway with its flagged floor and thought that he would hate to leave this old house into which he had accumulated all his books and bits and pieces over the years. There was something about the essence of this little house that soothed him as soon as he opened the front door. It had a comforting spirit. His father had given him some surplus furniture from the old home when one of his brothers got married. It felt good to have his
mother’s special pieces around him. Some of the village women thought that he should have a housekeeper, but he liked having the freedom of the house to himself and he enjoyed cooking. When he had moved into the house, every room was painted magnolia, but he had brightened the whole place up with vivid colours. Mark had given him some wonderful pictures and over the years he had got endless pleasure from them.
At least,
he thought,
I can take them with me.
When he came on to the altar to say the mass, there were the usual few people scattered around the church. He liked the weekday mass. There was something calm and unhurried about it, and he felt, too, that the people who came were there because they wanted to be, though it was probably true that for some of them it was more a habit than anything else. But then who was he to judge? Sarah Jones was there most mornings, having cycled in the few miles. There was a great serenity about her and he felt that she had an unshakeable faith.
I wish that I had her confidence,
he thought. His father had it as well. Was it going to disappear with their generation? But then he doubted that the PP had it. If he had he would have been a kinder man. After mass Tim walked down the street to his own house and had a quick breakfast. The time on his summons was 10am, so he had best not be late. As he walked in around the back of the church to the parochial house, he envied the birds singing happily on the trees. It was such a lovely morning that he felt cheated to have it blighted by the encounter ahead. He looked up at the fine old trees that lined the avenue into the house and smiled to remember the row when Fr Burke got a notion of cutting them down a few years ago and Kate and David had opposed him.
He lifted the heavy black knocker and could hear the loud clang echoing back the long hallway. After some time when nothing happened, he was just about to lift it again when he heard bolts being pulled and Lizzy’s beaky nose peered around the edge of the door. It always annoyed him the way she never opened the door back properly, almost as if she were expecting an attack or to find someone unpleasant on the doorstep. When she saw him it was as if her suspicions were confirmed, and she withdrew slightly with a look of disapproval.
“He’s expecting me,” he told her, suppressing an impulse to push the door open wide and stride past her.
“I’ll see,” she sniffed and disappeared. He pushed in the door and walked into the drab brown hallway.
What a depressing hole. It had not got a lick of paint since he had come to the parish, and that was probably because Fr Burke never even noticed it. Perhaps he wanted to portray the image of self-denial and austerity. As Lizzy, thin and drably dressed in tight black clothes, came back into the hall, Tim thought that she blended into it.
“Fr Burke will see you now,” she told him, stabbing a purple finger to a door back the hallway.
Fr Burke was a large man who had obviously never denied himself anything at the table. Sitting behind an enormous desk, his recent summer bug had not paled his heavy red face that swept upwards into a glistening bald head edged around with white bristle cut to the bone. As Tim looked at him, he remembered his mother’s remark about anybody she considered to be powerfully strong, that “they were fit to plough”. Fr Burke fitted the bill.
He continued to write when Tim came in, and the only acknowledgement of his presence was a thick finger pointed at an isolated chair in the middle of the room.
You’re being cut down to size, Brady boy
, he told himself.
Burke is really going to enjoy this and he has the stage set for the performance.
He sat on the hard bentwood chair that creaked in protest. Then there was complete silence in the room but for the scratching of Fr Burke’s pen.
This silent treatment is to unnerve me
, Tim thought,
so I had better not fall into that trap.
He tried to force his mind back to the mass that morning, but it was difficult to prevent the tension from gripping him.
“Well?” Fr Burke barked.
Tim felt like saying, “Well what?” but knew that it was better to try to keep things as pleasant as possible.
“You sent for me, Father,” he said.
“And did that surprise you?” Fr Burke demanded, laying down his pen and settling him with a steely glare.
Now will I start playing his game of dodging around the issue or go straight to the point?
Tim decided on a middle course.
“Maybe not,” he said.
“So you have some realisation of what you have done?”
“I suppose it all depends on the way you look at it,” he ventured.
“Well, there is only one way to look at it and that’s the right way. You beat up a parishioner when he came to voice an opinion and …”
“He came to do more than that, I’m afraid,” Tim interrupted. “He charged into the sacristy and attacked me first.”
“Well, that’s not the way I heard it,” Fr Burke said heavily.
“Depends on who you believe,” Tim said, feeling that he had a right to defend his corner, “and the altar boys saw what happened.”
“We won’t be dragging the altar boys into this mess. They
have been scandalised enough already,” Fr Burke told him.
“Now, even if the parishioner arrived in the sacristy in an excited state, it was your duty as a priest to calm him down, not to beat him out the door unheard.”
“I don’t think that he came for a reasonable discussion,” Tim said, “and if I had not defended myself, I would have finished up in a pretty battered condition.”
“Better you than the parishioner.”
“Well, maybe,” Tim agreed.
“Now the cause of this argument was the subject of your sermon, which was ill-advised to say the least of it.”
“I don’t agree with burning the produce of the earth.”
“Nobody does, but when the produce in question comes from fields that are the subject of a deep-rooted feud in the parish, you should have kept your mouth shut.”
“Maybe in retrospect it might have been better,” Tim agreed.
“Much better,” Fr Burke confirmed, beginning to look less confrontational and pleased with the way things were going.
Tim began to relax, thinking that maybe they might be able to sort things out.
“So you will go to that parishioner and apologise,” Fr Burke told him.
He was just about to open his mouth to protest when his father’s advice in a similar situation came back to him:
No skin off your nose, my lad, and a meal of humble pie is very good for the spirit.
“Very well,” he agreed and almost smiled at the surprise on Burke’s face, who had been beginning to look like the proverbial cat with the saucer of cream. His next shot was direct, no beating about the bush.
“What’s this about yourself and Kate Twomey?” he
demanded.
“Gossip,” Tim told him.
“A priest cannot afford to be the subject of parish gossip.”
“When there is no truth in the gossip, it burns itself out,” Tim asserted.
“By then it will have done a certain amount of damage by breaking people’s trust and respect for their priest.”
“If someone decides to start a malicious rumour, there is very little that can be done.”
“There is, by not giving any grounds for talk in the first place,” Fr Burke pronounced.
“So what do you suggest?” Tim asked.
“No more visiting Kate and David Twomey.”
“But they’re my friends,” Tim protested.
“Well, that’s the source of the gossip, and if you want to nip it, that’s what you have to do,” Fr Burke told him.
Tim was taken aback. David and Kate were part of the reason that he liked Kilmeen. David and himself got much enjoyment out of training the teams and spent many pleasant hours fishing together, and it was great to be able to pop in and out of their house. They were like his extended family. But on the other hand maybe Burke was giving him a way out of the dilemma and was prepared not to take it any further. Maybe if they sorted it out here and now that would be the end of it. He felt that he was being cornered, but decided to give in.
“All right,” he agreed, “if that’s what it takes.”
“I’m glad that you’re being sensible about this,” Fr Burke said, smiling sourly.
“That’s all right so,” Tim said. Thinking that they had finished their business, he rose to his feet.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Fr Burke told him, “but you are to see the bishop tomorrow morning at 11am.”
Tim stared at Fr Burke in disbelief. He had thought that the PP was giving him a chance to sort the problem out between them, but all the time he was only leading him up the garden path. What a two-faced old devil he was! Tim’s temper began to simmer and his self-control slip.
“You mean to tell me that you put me through all this and that you had already contacted the bishop?” Tim demanded, and before Fr Burke could say anything, he grasped the back of the bentwood chair and thumped it off the floor. “You’re some hypocrite!” he blazed. “You can forget all the high-minded promises you extracted under false pretences. That malicious rumour that’s going around probably came from you or Conway, and one of you isn’t much better than the other.”