Across the River

by Alice Taylor

  But it was Nora who was the one she would prefer not to upset. Though if it had to be done, it had to be done! Then, of course, there would be Kate putting in her three and fourpence, as if she were still living here. It was a pity that she did not have children of her own, because if she had it might distract her from Mossgrove. She knew that Kate would have loved children, but Martha could not find it in her heart to feel sorry for her. After all, she had everything else: independent job, nice home and good-looking husband who thought she was God’s gift to him. How he still thought that, after eight years of marriage to her, amazed Martha. She felt that Kate should be grateful, especially when she thought of the hassle that Peter was causing herself.

  Kate would have to mind her own business regarding the house. But, of course, Kate would have Mark and Agnes on her side. It annoyed her the way Mark backed up Kate in any argument against her. Her own brother never supported her! Kate could always wind him around her little finger, and of course Agnes thought that Mark was infallible, so that brought them all together against her. Kate was the one who had got Mark going with his paintings, and now he was making more money than any of them. The new school that Kate’s husband had started had given Mark an opening, and afterwards Rodney Jackson, who had leased them the school building, seemed to have endless avenues for Mark’s pictures in America. Everybody seemed to think that Rodney Jackson was God’s gift to Kilmeen, and he took it all in his stride. There was something about his calm acceptance of all the good things in his life that irritated her. She remembered that perfectly dressed little boy who had visited his aunts and who had got on so well with Mark, but even then she had been wary of him. Now whenever she met him with Mark he seemed to go out of his way to be charming to her, but she kept him at a distance. Every fool in the parish was falling over him, and she was not going to be one of the crowd. How could somebody who was supposed to be as wealthy as he was spend days rambling around this place and spend hours chatting with anybody who came his way? Granted, he was good-looking, very pleasant and rich, but in her opinion there had to be a catch somewhere. Nobody could be that bloody perfect! All the same, she had to admit he had been a real help to Mark, not that it had made any difference to Mark’s lifestyle except that he now seemed to spend all his time painting.

  It was the only interest that he had ever had, and as a child it had annoyed her intensely that he was always locked up in his own world where he appeared to be totally happy. Maybe that was why she too became a loner. But they were very different from each other. Mark had no drive, content to spend his life mixing and daubing. It was ironic in one way that what she had most despised about him now provided a regular source of income. He had always been Agnes’s white-haired boy and of course she was delighted now that her belief in him had been justified. Why they still lived in that old house when they could have built a better one, Martha could not understand. She went over the plans again, just for the sheer enjoyment of looking at them. The steps up to the front door would make the house impressive, then the large hallway with the wide sweeping stairway would give a great sense of space. She hated the way you had to come into the kitchen in Mossgrove to go up the stairs that were so steep and narrow. It was like that in all the farmhouses around, except in Nolans’ down the road who had built a new house when Tom and Betty got married. Admittedly they had no choice but to build, as there had been no house on that farm, but she always envied Betty Nolan her new house. Now at last she would have one of her own. She would have two big rooms at either side of the front door and a large kitchen to the back. It would be such a relief to have a fine big back kitchen as well, for all the working clutter. The fact that the house would be so far away from the farmyard would keep everything much cleaner, with all the disorder well away from the house. She knew that Peter and Jack would think that it was crazy to be that far away from the yard, but they were simply stuck in a groove. Upstairs, she was going to have four big bedrooms. Every ceiling in this house was going to be high. She had had enough of low ceilings; they gave her claustrophobia.

  But her proposed site for the house was going to cause more opposition than the house itself. She was planning to build it in the Clune field, the big field just inside the gate of Mossgrove. It was going to be at the top of the field, facing the road, and she would fence off a good section for a garden and orchard. Jack was so proud of that field, always proclaiming it to be the finest of the farm with the best soil. The thought of losing some of it for a house would really drive him mad, but it was her land and she wanted to live up there beside the road.

  Some day next week she intended to take the plans over to a builder in Ross and discuss things with him. She could not go local because it would be all over the village and the neighbourhood, and that was the last thing she wanted. Everything had to be right before she broke the news to the rest of them. That should be interesting! When she heard movements in the kitchen, she rolled up her plan and pushed it into the deep drawer of the sideboard.

  Peter and Davy were seated around the table and Jack was making tea at the cooker.

  “I’ll do that,” she told him, taking the teapot and going out to the scullery to rinse it.

  “We’re having a great run of good weather,” Jack said with satisfaction as he sat at the table. “We’ll be able to save the river meadow tomorrow, with God’s help.”

  “Must be saying your prayers right,” Davy told him.

  “It wouldn’t do you any harm to say a few more, lad,” Jack retorted.

  “Nobody knows what goes on between a man and his God,” Davy proclaimed with a mischievous grin on his face, raising pious eyes to heaven.

  “There’s not very much going on in your case, and you sitting on the gallery steps last Sunday telling yarns during mass,” Jack declared.

  “Well, Davy Shine, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Peter scolded.

  “Weren’t you with him!” Jack exclaimed. “Two pagans, enough to bring the rain down and the river meadows not saved yet.”

  “Jack, is it the fear of the rain or the love of God that takes you to mass?” Peter wanted to know.

  “That’s enough old guff out of you now, young fellow. As Davy said, what goes on between a man and his God is his own business.”

  “I’m honoured to be quoted.” Davy sighed in mock appreciation.

  “What a lot of rubbish you three talk,” Martha told them sharply as she poured out the tea. “Are the river meadows ready for saving?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll get going,” Jack told her.

  “The Conways might come over to help,” Peter laughed.

  “The Conways are no joke, my lad,” she told him sharply.

  “Well, they’re jokes of farmers,” Peter declared. “That place over there is falling down around them and they’re years behind the times. That’s what happens if you don’t keep up to date.”

  “Did you hear the forecast, Martha?” Jack interrupted hurriedly.

  “No,” she told him sharply. She knew what he was at all right, trying to head Peter off so that he would not cause an argument, but she was well able to manage Peter without help from Jack. That was the problem with Jack, he thought that he knew the best way to handle everything.

  “It isn’t equipment that the Conways are lacking,” she told Peter, “it’s know-how. It’s not much good having up-to-date equipment if you don’t know what to do with it.”

  “But could you imagine the great job that could be done if you had the know-how and the equipment?” he asked her.

  “Well, they have neither,” she told him.

  “That’s right,” he agreed, “and we have only one side of the equation here, because we have the know-how but no equipment.”

  “There is good farming being done here at the moment,” she told him. She could see that Jack, having tried to divert the argument, was now going to keep out of it, and of course Davy Shine was hoping that Peter would get the better of her.

  �
�But we’re slipping,” he told her. “The Nolans are away ahead of us in the saving of their hay, but of course with the tractor they get things done a lot faster.”

  “But they don’t have as much help as we do,” she told him, “so maybe you think that we could do without Davy if we got a tractor and cut down on overheads.”

  She could see Davy’s face turn a deep red as he looked at Peter in consternation. Jack looked out the window as if the view were something that he had never seen before. But Peter was not going to be sidetracked.

  “Oh, you’re clever, Mother Martha,” he taunted, “divide and conquer, but you know that I would never let Davy go.”

  “But you do not have the right to make that decision,” she told him firmly. “I’m in charge here and I do the firing and the hiring, and you would do well to remember that, Davy Shine.”

  “Didn’t say a word,” Davy protested in alarm.

  “You have no right to threaten Davy like that,” Peter said angrily.

  “I have every right,” she asserted, “and you’d do well to remember that, my boy.”

  “Come on, Davy,” Peter said angrily, getting up from the table and pushing back the chair with such force that it crashed to the floor, “we don’t have to sit here and listen to this ranting.”

  When they were gone Jack and herself sat in silence. The only sound was the ticking of the clock hanging on the wall above them. She could sense his disapproval, but she was not going to give him the opening to start giving advice. Eventually he cleared his throat and said, “He is only a young fellow.”

  “And a young fellow who’s got a lot to learn,” she told him sharply.

  “Doesn’t every young fellow?” he said evenly. “And the only way they learn is by experience.”

  “Experience keeps a dear school and a fool won’t learn in any other,” she told him, “but I’m not prepared to foot the bill for his foolishness.”

  “Peter is a long way from being a fool.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she snapped.

  “He was one of the best students they had in that farming school, and that head man said that he had great potential,” Jack reminded her.

  “Book farming,” she said contemptuously.

  “A bit more than that now; after all they have a fine farm there.”

  “Easy for them and we all paying for it,” she said.

  “Well, the young fellows have to learn somewhere.”

  “Peter’s father learned at home.”

  “But he was very anxious that Peter should have everything that was available.”

  “I can’t spend my life being dicticated to by the dead,” she told him. “I’m on the ground here and I have to work with what I have.”

  “But the Phelans were never behind the door when it came to progress,” Jack said.

  “I’m not a Phelan,” she told him.

  “But Peter is,” he said, “and if he doesn’t get his head he could jump over the traces and be gone.”

  “Well, so be it,” she said firmly.

  “Maybe so be it at the moment,” he told her, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, “but what about down the road in a few years time with no young blood around the place, because if Peter goes Davy will go with him, and selling is not an option.”

  He slipped in the last statement without any change of tone but she got the message.

  So Jack knew that she could not sell Mossgrove, and if Jack knew then Kate knew as well, because the only way that he would know was through Kate. They had kept a very tight grip on that bit of knowledge for the last eight years. She had often wondered. Kate must have gone to Old Hobbs the solicitor and found out. So Kate had known even before they had that big spread in the parlour where she had told them all she had changed her mind about selling. God, Kate was some bitch! She must have been smiling up her sleeve all these years.

  “So you knew all these years about the provision in Nellie’s will that Kate had the right-of-residency here and that I couldn’t sell,” she said.

  “We did,” he told her.

  “You played your cards very close to your chest.”

  “No point in upsetting everyone,” he said quietly.

  “Peter does not know, I assume?” she asked.

  “No, and he won’t either,” he told her, “or at least I hope that he never needs to know.”

  “Is that a threat?” she demanded.

  “No,” he said, “but in the heel of the hunt, the future of Mossgrove is at stake and the security of the Phelan family.”

  “And nothing must come before that,” she said bitterly.

  “But surely,” he reasoned, “something can be worked out to the satisfaction of everyone. After all, a tractor is not going to cost a fortune, and later on the milking machine could be got.”

  “And where do you think that the money is going to come from?”

  “I have never poked my nose into the finances here since Nellie died, because Ned was well able to manage them, but he never made a secret of how things were going; so I would have a fair idea how things are financially here, and I know that we can well afford to get this tractor without breaking the bank.”

  “Good God,” she exclaimed in annoyance, “this place is like living in a glass bowl.”

  “Martha, be reasonable. Most farmers know exactly how the others are doing. We have only to watch the harvesting and the churns of milk going to the creamery. There are no big secrets.”

  “So the general consensus is that I have the money?”

  “That’s right,” he agreed and waited for her to make the next move.

  “Did it ever dawn on you that I might have other plans for that money?” she demanded, eyes blazing across the table at him.

  “But what?” he asked in amazement.

  “You will all find out in due course,” she told him, getting up from the table and stacking plates with a clatter to indicate that the conversation was at an end.

  Chapter Five

  AS JACK WALKED up the boreen from Mossgrove to his own cottage, he was deep in thought. Martha had closed the conversation decisively without giving anything away, and when he had met Peter out in the yard afterwards he was like a red devil with bad temper. Between the two of them you’d want to be God to keep the balance, he thought. But whereas Peter was all steam and fire, Martha was a dark horse. Sometimes it was very hard to know what she was at. What on earth could she want with the money? Would she have it in her head to buy more land? But that did not make sense because there was no land for sale near them, and sure if she wanted more land she could be working the Lehane place, because her own family, Mark and Agnes, had no interest in farming. It would be Peter’s some day anyway because he would probably be the only one for it. Mark never took his nose out of the paints long enough to look at a woman. There was a time when he had thought that Kate and himself might have had something going for them, but that was when they were very young. Just as well that did not work out, because the union of Ned and Martha had been complicated enough without making it a double bill.

  The Lehanes were an ordinary run-of-the-mill family. Martha and Mark could have come from different planets. Mark was for the birds, a genius of an artist but not at the races at all. He was on a winner now all right, with Rodney Jackson selling the paintings. Kate was a mighty woman to have brought that about, but then Kate was extraordinary in many ways. They would have no secondary school in the village but for her. She had really sorted out old Fr Burke and wiped out his opposition. The fact that her old friend, Sarah Jones, had a leg of the bishop had made all the difference.

  Of course, Sarah had half reared Kate, always down in Mossgrove with Nellie when Billy was drinking and times were troublesome. There is no doubt but that some of the neighbours around here are mighty, but of course we have the other kind too, he thought as he turned around and looked across at Conways’. Over the years Matt Conway had made it rough in Mossgrove, and only for Ned being so quiet t
here would have been real trouble. Matt Conway had opened gates at night and let cows into meadows and let dogs loose in fields of sheep. It had nearly driven him demented, but Ned had held his head and there had been no more court cases. Conway had been quiet since Ned died, so maybe he was after calming down. But he still kept vigil at the fencing stake above Yalla Hole. When he reached his own cottage at the entrance gate to Mossgrove, Jack stood and looked down over the Clune field. What a great field that was. Old man Phelan used to say you could feed a parish out of a field like that, and he was right. The young wheat was just a few inches tall and there was a green sheen on it right across the field. You could feel the vigour and growth to come. It did his heart good to look at it. The Well field behind it was a good field too, but not as good as the Clune. You could not go wrong in the Clune; any seed you put down there seemed to multiply. As far as the fields of Mossgrove were concerned, it was the flower of the flock.

  He closed the gate of Mossgrove firmly behind him and then turned into his own haggard. The hens were locked up for the night, so he knew that Sarah Jones must have been around, but when he went in to the kitchen he found she was still there, sitting by the fire.

  “I knew that you wouldn’t be long,” she told him, “so I decided to wait and have a cup of tea with you.”

  Sarah must have something on her mind, he decided, because it is a bit unusual for her to be here this late.

  “Put on the kettle so,” he told her as he took off his jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door.

  He was always glad to see Sarah, a small, neat, fresh-faced woman with short-cropped grey hair. They had been friends since childhood and had a healthy respect for each other. As the district nurse, she had delivered the whole parish and laid out what was gone of them before Kate came on duty, so Kilmeen had no secrets from Sarah. They were quite safe with her.