“Michael,” called Brigid, and he turned to look at her. She hesitated. She did not know quite what she wanted to ask.
“What is it?” he said. “Do you want to go with me on the tractor?”
She pointed to her pyjamas, and shook her head again. “Michael,” she began once more, “could this farm ever be empty, ever be a ruin?”
Michael reached down to the place where the wall met the yard, and pulled out green leaves. “There’s some good mint for you,” he said. “That’s near as good for you as toothpaste.”
“Could it?” asked Brigid, again. The leaves did smell of toothpaste.
Michael straightened, looked up at the greying sky, raised his hand to the mizzling rain, and said: “That rain’s on for the day. No. Not while I’m alive, it couldn’t.”
Brigid was not quite satisfied by this answer. “Michael,” she said, “when you dream straight, do you know it?”
He said, steadily, no laughter about him: “When you dream straight, you know it.” He resumed his measured walk towards the haggard, calling back over his shoulder: “Still, you’re safer telling no one. People aren’t that happy with straight dreams, or the ones who dream them.” He moved on, leaning forward with a straight back, feet turned slightly out as if, already, he were behind his plough.
Soon after breakfast, Michael stood once more in the yard, checked that the boot was closed and pushed shut the doors of Rose’s car. “Safe home,” he called, and stood with one arm raised as the tyres crunched on the gravel. From the hilly lane, turning to wave, Brigid watched the farm go away from her with a rush of regret, the dream of the night before suddenly reality, and the firm certainties of her life elusive as shadow. White and clean as the house stood behind the apple-blossom, wiry and strong as Michael looked at the gate, she had seen the farm old and empty, broken and neglected, and no one could promise her it would not be so. Easter eggs, Easter House, dogs and tractors and the rooster’s crow could all disappear, like the life in the house of her other grandparents, lonely and empty by the water’s edge. And, mild though the morning was, Brigid felt cold.
The journey home was faster than the journey down, hedges filling with a fresh green, rooks building high, hidden birds sending one to the other their songs of the summer to come. The children were quiet: Francis thoughtful, Ned sleepy, his sharp shoulder turned from Brigid, no sound but the steady thrumming of the car’s engine. Yet, when they began to see the signs for home, Brigid felt gladness return.
As they stopped outside the house, and the engine died away, Rose turned round in the car. “Now Ned, hop in to Mrs Mulvey, like a good boy, and I’ll see you soon.” She smiled her wide smile. “Won’t I?”
To Brigid’s surprise, Ned, uncurling, leaned forward and placed his straight arms as near as he could round Rose’s neck, and kissed her cheek. Why everyone was going round kissing Rose, all of a sudden, was a mystery to Brigid, especially as Rose seemed to have no objection. She put her hand up to pat his cheek and Brigid saw, to her surprise, that she wore no sparkling ring. She forgot about it again, almost immediately, as Ned climbed over her to get out on the safe side of the car, scraping her knee with his sandal and digging his elbow into her ribs.
“Pig, Ned,” she spat, and he stood on her foot.
Ned turned as he got out of the car and suddenly, to her surprise and disgust, kissed her too, loudly and wetly. She drew her hand across her mouth. “You love it,” he said into her ear, then, “I’m going to see Davy Crockett, and you’re not, so there,” but before Brigid, red-faced, could register any protest, he had turned away. “Bye, Francis,” he said, sliding out of the car. Then he suddenly said: “Can I write to you from school?” and he caught Francis’ shoulder.
Francis said: “Yes, Ned, why not?” just as if Ned were not a horrible boy who was going to see Davy Crockett when they were not.
Rose was nearly as bad. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “But Ned, wasn’t there something you wanted to talk to Francis about today? Maybe Francis might bring your case up to your room for you?”
Brigid saw Ned Silver pause before nodding his head, and she saw Francis turn in surprise to Rose. He had rarely been in Ned Silver’s house, and he was obviously puzzled about why Rose wanted him to go now; but he said nothing, got out of the car with Ned, and went off into the next-door house with him.
Brigid, angry and once more excluded, made to follow the boys out of the car, but Rose did not move to go with her. Instead, she tapped her hand on the front seat, and said: “Hop in here a minute, Brigid.”
Brigid scrambled over the armrest and slid into the seat beside Rose.
“Rose,” she said, sure of at least some sympathy, “Ned says he’s going to see DavyCrockett. Ned’s going to see him and we’re not. It isn’t fair. He gets everything.” She put her hands to her eyes, knuckling the fists, conscious that a wrong had been done. She was put out when Rose lifted her hands away, quite firmly, almost impatiently.
“Brigid,” said Rose. “Stop your nonsense and listen. I don’t know anything about this Davy Crockett business. Stop it now. Listen. Mama is not at home at the moment, and I don’t need any fuss from you. No, don’t say anything till I’m finished. She’s resting.”
“Not in the house?” asked Brigid, puzzled.
“She’s in hospital for a few days,” said Rose. “She hasn’t been well, but she’s getting better, and she will soon be home.”
“But why?” asked Brigid. “She wasn’t sick when we went down to the farm.”
Rose paused, drew a deep breath, and swallowed. Brigid saw her neck, without ornament, move up and down.
“Brigid,” she said, “I want you to concentrate, and be a very big girl. God was sending a baby to Mama. You knew that, didn’t you?”
Brigid, suddenly clear, clapped her hands. Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, faded away. “And that’s why she’s tired? We have a baby?”
“Brigid, listen, please, and don’t interrupt,” said Rose, and Brigid could hear that her voice was weary. “The baby . . . stayed with God. She was not ready to come here, and God kept her with him.”
A stone dropped in Brigid’s heart. “She? We had a sister, and she didn’t come?”
Rose looked away, then back. She twisted with one hand the finger where her ring should have been, as if she thought it were still there. “She couldn’t come, Brigid. She wasn’t big enough or strong enough for the journey, and so, God kept her. And, now, your mama needs a rest, because she tried to help her come, to carry her through. Can you try to understand? She’s tired, and sad that your sister had to stay with God. You must be a very big help to her now.”
Brigid sat, cold and disappointed, and deeply afraid. If her mother could not help a little baby get here, how would Brigid herself be safe? How would Francis?
Rose sat silent, as though waiting for a response.
“Did she look like me? Did Mama say?” Brigid asked.
“No, she didn’t,” said Rose, “but I am sure she looked like you, and like Francis, too.”
“But more like me,” persisted Brigid, “because she was a girl.”
Rose said nothing.
“Will I ever see my sister? Will Francis?”
Rose paused, then pulled down the handle that opened the car door. “One day, Brigid,” she said, “when we go home to God, we’ll all be together.”
Rose stood up. Brigid, dissatisfied, saw that the conversation was at an end. She got out of the car, and turned again to Rose. Rose’s face was white and tired, and Brigid was quite sorry to trouble her, yet she had to ask another question. Something else was puzzling her.
“Rose,” she said, “where did Uncle Conor go? He wasn’t there this morning, and I thought I heard his car leave in the night.”
Rose lifted out the suitcase and pulled down the door of the boot. Her nose had become very sharp, pinched round the edge. “He had business to attend to,” she said.
The man about the dog again, prob
ably: not that anyone would explain what that was about.
Still. She was home again. Running up the steps, Brigid longed for small things, like Dicky scolding in his cage. When Isobel opened the door, Brigid found herself almost pleased to see her. Yet, as Rose stepped into the hall, she saw that Isobel looked for someone else behind her.
“All by your lone?” said Isobel.
Rose’s answer, floating back to Brigid as she ran into the kitchen, seemed cold, even harsh: “Were you expecting someone, Isobel?” and, for a second, Brigid was back in her almost-sleep of the night before, hearing Rose’s voice, sharp, accusing. Then, seeing at the table not only her father but also her grandfather, Brigid felt the world of the farm fall away into memory, and the night’s dark dream faded back into the shadows.
They were reading to each other from the paper; it was as if Brigid had never been away.
“‘Orange Band to march on Longstone Road’,” her father read. “Ah, Brigid. Good girlie. Come in, and get something to eat.”
“It’s bad surely,” said her grandfather. “They’ve no call to go that route again. It’s asking for trouble. Come over here, Brigid, and sit on my knee. Are you pleased to see your granda up again?”
Brigid, climbing up, nodded. Absently, her father reached over and stroked her hair.
“They are asking for trouble,” he said to her grandfather. “They’ll get it, too, according to Conor Todd yesterday.”
“Yes,” said her grandfather, settling Brigid against his chest. “That young man tends to be close to . . . whatever’s going on, does he not? Rather too close, you might say.”
“What young man is that?” asked Rose, coming through the door.
“Young Todd,” said Brigid’s grandfather. “Your fiancé, I believe.”
“Would you call Mr Todd young?” asked Rose, smoothing her skirt as she sat down. Her lips were pressed together. She said nothing more, and the men resumed their talk of marches and lodges and rights and wrongs.
Rose sat only long enough to take tea, and no one pressed her to stay.
Brigid, comfortably lodged on her grandfather’s knee, heard Rose say that she wanted to go and see her sister in the hospital.
“Can I come?” said Brigid, sliding from her perch.
“You can come later, with me and your daddy and your brother,” said her grandfather.
“Is that a good idea?” asked her father, over her head.
“Yes,” said her grandfather and Rose together, and Rose added: “I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
Brigid moved to stand beside her father, taking his hand. “I’m dying to see Mama, Daddy,” she said.
He looked at her over his glasses: “You hardly look dying to me, Brigid,” he said. His eyes travelled past her, out to the garden. Brigid followed his gaze. “What’s going on out there? Are those boys fighting?” He stood up, threw down his napkin, and striding to the window, rapped it sharply. “Stop that,” he called. “Francis, get in here at once!”
Brigid saw Ned Silver, his face red, his collar torn, standing belligerently at the foot of the garden steps, and Francis, equally flushed and dishevelled, pulling his own shirt back into shape as he disappeared through the back-yard door. When she looked again to the bottom of the steps, Brigid saw that Ned was gone.
Chapter 21: Wild Frontiers
The door opened. Francis came in, breathing hard, his hair standing away from his head, the collar of his shirt half torn away. In his cage, Dicky squawked, hopping in joy or agitation from one foot to the other. Francis turned quickly to Dicky, reached out one finger and stroked the bird’s curling claws through the bars of the cage. Then he withdrew his hand, and stood with his arms folded, looking at the floor.
“Francis,” said his father, “what in the name of all that’s holy did you think you were doing?”
Francis walked to the table and reached in his pocket. He took out a small red object, and Brigid, open-mouthed, saw that it was the lost Santa Claus from the Christmas tree.
Francis placed it on the table, without a word.
“Well,” said his father, “that’s a pity, but I don’t think it warranted that dogfight, Francis.”
Francis, chest still rising and falling, reached again into his pocket, but he did not take his eyes off his father’s face. He placed on the table before him his grandfather’s watch.
There was silence.
“My God,” said his father. “My God. The little thief.”
Brigid’s grandfather placed his hand on his son’s arm.
“Steady, Maurice,” he said. “I gave that to the child to play with when he visited us in Lecale. I daresay he forgot to return it.”
Brigid’s father said nothing, but his face had not lost its look of disgust.
“Francis,” he said, “I’m sorry to have been angry with you. I see why you fought with young Silver. I would have done the same.”
“I didn’t fight with him about the watch, Daddy,” said Francis, “or about the Santa. He gave those back. He wanted to give them back. He was sorry about taking them. It was all right. Everything was all right. And then . . .”
“What, then?”
Francis twisted his hands, as if in despair.
“Francis. Speak up,” said his father. “Why did you hit a boy younger than you?”
Francis’ head grew red, but he looked his father in the eye. “He said things, and I . . . I hit him.”
The words, the fact of what he had done, seemed to cause almost as much surprise to Francis as to everyone else.
“What things?” said his father, and his voice was quiet.
“I don’t want to say,” said Francis, and he lifted up his chin. “I dealt with it. He won’t say them again.”
“You will say,” said his father. “You’ll tell me, now.”
Francis opened his mouth, then closed it. “Granda mightn’t like it,” he said.
“Let me decide that,” said his grandfather and, for the first time, Brigid noticed not only how much alike her father’s and grandfather’s voices sounded, but also how their faces seemed the same, and how the young face of Francis, his high cheekbones and his straight mouth, had become a mirror image of both of them.
Francis breathed in, then out. “He has a picture of his mother in his room. I was just going out the door and I saw it, and I thought she looked lovely, but I didn’t say anything, in case it upset him. And then we came back here and I said did he want to go up the garden and have a game and he said he did. And it was still all right, I thought, except he kept starting to say something and then stopping, and then all of a sudden he asked me why I was looking at his mother’s picture, and I just said I thought she looked lovely. Then he said what did I mean by that, and I said I meant she looked lovely. She did. And then he said we were all the same. And I said what did he mean by that. And he said . . . he said that our Uncle Laurence ran after his mother, and that . . .”
“Go on,” said his grandfather, a warning hand on his son’s clenched fist.
“Brigid, leave the room,” said her father, but Brigid did not move, and no one made her go.
“And that we should all be ashamed of him, and ourselves. He said you could expect nothing more of Catholics and their priests. That’s when I hit him. I didn’t even know I was going to. I never hit anybody before. It just happened. I . . . I sort of wish I had just talked to him.”
Silence filled the room. Not even Dicky made a sound. From the corner of her eye, Brigid saw Isobel hovering on the other side of the door, listening. She did not think anyone else saw her, until her grandfather called out, “Isobel?” and she came in, busily dusting the door with the corner of her apron.
Her grandfather looked at his son, who seemed to be stricken dumb.
“Yes, Mr Arthur?” said Isobel, as though she had heard nothing, and Brigid thought again: I don’t like Isobel.
“If you’re not too busy,” said her grandfather, and his eye rested on the corner of the a
pron, idly bundled in Isobel’s hand, “would you go next door and ask if young Ned could come in here for a moment?”
Isobel’s eyes gleamed, and Brigid thought: she’s enjoying this.
“I will, Mr Arthur,” she said, earnestly, and went out.
Brigid heard her open the front door.
Several minutes passed in silence, until Isobel reappeared, Ned Silver in tow. He was still wearing his torn shirt, and a blue shadow was beginning to show on his cheek. His hand rubbed at dried blood by his nose. Otherwise, he was still and silent as Francis himself. Neither boy looked at the other.
Isobel took up a position by the door, until Brigid’s father said, “You must have things to do, Isobel,” and when, slowly polishing the doorknob, she left, he said, “Brigid, shut the door, please,” which Brigid gladly did.
“Ned,” said Brigid’s grandfather, “do you remember me?”
Ned nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Will you tell me why you and my grandson fought? No one will be angry. Just tell me, please.”
“I don’t want to, sir,” said Ned, “if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I mind!” said Brigid’s father, and he brought his hand down, hard, on the table. “Tell us, and be quick about it.”
Brigid saw that Ned had begun to shake, and she felt a little sorry for him. Then she remembered Davy Crockett, and the feeling vanished.
Francis looked sorry for him now, all his truculence suddenly gone. “Daddy, please,” he said. “I said I was sorry I . . .”
“Quiet,” said his father. “You’ve had your say.”
“No,” said his grandfather, lifting his hand and placing it again over his son’s. “You stay quiet this time, Maurice,” he said, and his voice was stronger than Brigid had ever heard it. “I’ll do the talking.”
There was silence. Outside, in the garden, a dove called; a train rattled by in the distance. In his cage, Dicky clucked.
“Ned,” said Brigid’s grandfather, “listen to me. Long ago, before you were born or thought of, we were all acquainted with your mother, God rest her. Her family lived quite near ours. She was a lovely young girl, and we sometimes had the privilege of hearing her sing. She had a beautiful voice, and it was properly trained.”
The Friday Tree Page 23
