Across the River

by Alice Taylor

  Jack sat at the head of the little table and Sarah with her back to the kitchen so that she could enjoy looking out the window down over Nolans’ fields.

  “There is a great view from this window,” Sarah told him.

  “There is indeed,” Jack agreed, “but this is a cold spot on a windy day. Before the trees grew up, you’d be blown out of it. Mossgrove down below now is like a bird’s nest, tucked in at the foot of the hill and still with a fine view down over the glen. That house has the best situation of any around here.”

  “They had a lot of sites to choose from when they built, away back whenever it was,” Sarah said.

  “Well, they picked the best,” Jack assured her. “The old man did a lot of work on that house when I came here first. It’s a fine, dry, sound structure.”

  “There’s a bit of bother down there with you at the moment?” Sarah enquired.

  “How’d you hear that so fast?” Jack smiled.

  “Peter was in with Kate,” she told him.

  “Poor Peter,” Jack sighed, “blessed and cursed with the impatience of youth. What he wants, he wants now and not tomorrow.”

  “So you don’t agree with him?”

  “Oh, I agree with him all right, but you must cut your cloth according to your measure, and Martha is measuring very carefully at the moment,” he told her.

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “I know,” he agreed, “but the only thing that has me worried is for fear he’ll get fed up and bail out altogether. Then we’d be in a real pucker.”

  “She’d never sell, would she?” Sarah asked.

  “No,” he told her empathetically.

  “You seem very sure.”

  “I am,” he told her. He did not want to say any more because it was not his business to disclose and he was not too sure that he should have let it slip to Martha. However, Sarah took him by surprise.

  “It’s Nellie’s will, isn’t it?” she said quietly.

  “You knew about that?” he asked in surprise. “Did Kate tell you?”

  “No, but I remember Nellie talking about her visit to Mr Hobbs and how he had covered so many eventualities in the will that she was a bit mesmerised by it. So when Martha changed her mind about selling, it was so out of character of her that I thought of Nellie’s will and was sure that it had something to do with it.”

  “Sound woman.”

  “Did anyone read that entire will?” she asked. “Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said thoughtfully. “Kate was with him, but whether she got to read it all or not I don’t know. She was so delighted that Mossgrove could not be sold that she wasn’t concerned with anything else. But surely Old Hobbs would have filled her in.”

  “You must be joking,” Sarah told him. “Hobbs would only tell you what you needed to know at any given time. He is second to none but measured, down to the last dot. If Kate did not ask, he did not show.”

  “And Martha did not go to him at the time,” Jack remembered.

  “Well, that cooked her goose anyway, because his crowd have always acted for the Phelans and they look after their own.”

  “I remember Kate quoting him at the time about the making of a will, that it needed to protect the wishes of the dead, the rights of the living and the interests of the unborn.”

  “Some job that,” Sarah smiled, “but Old Hobbs probably succeeded. It might be no harm if Kate called to see him and got the lie of the land.”

  “Might be an idea,” Jack agreed, though he felt that as smart as Old Hobbs was, even he could not have anticipated a problem between Peter and Martha away back before Peter was even born.

  Sarah’s next question was thrown out so casually that he knew straightaway that it was the reason she had stayed on.

  “Hear anything about Kate lately?” she asked lightly.

  His heart leapt with anticipation: maybe Kate was expecting. It would be the best news that he could hear. He knew that not having children was a huge disappointment to her, but of course being Kate she did not make a meal out of it. Time was running out though, and if it did not happen soon they could forget about it.

  “She’s in the family way?” he asked hopefully.

  “’Fraid not, or at least not that I know of,” she told him.

  “What is it so?” he asked worriedly. It wasn’t in Sarah’s nature to be hedging around, so it had it be something unpalatable.

  “There is a strange rumour going around about herself and Fr Brady,” she said quietly.

  “What!” he demanded in amazement, and his cup clattered into his saucer. “How could a shagging lie like that get out?”

  “Well, the dogs on the street don’t have it, but it’s there.”

  “But who has it?” he demanded.

  “I think that it came from Julia and Lizzy.”

  “The two poisonous old bitches,” he pronounced with feeling.

  “Julia, of course, living across the road from Kate, watches every stir, and Lizzy being Fr Burke’s housekeeper has it in for Kate since the trouble about the school, and needless to mention himself had no love for her either,” Sarah said.

  “How did you come to hear it, because there’d be no way that they’d say that to you?”

  “Jim in the post office tipped me off,” she told him.

  “Good man, Jim, because the sooner this is shot in the head the better,” he said. “Are you going to tell Kate?”

  “No,” she told him to his surprise.

  “But how are you going to get around it so?” he asked.

  “I think that Fr Brady is the right angle to come at it from,” she said slowly.

  “Why so?”

  “Well, he’s always in and out of the house. Kate can’t stop him, but he could slow down on the visiting,” she said.

  “But himself and David are great friends, and he trains the school teams, and they are both caught up in that. It’s understandable that he would be in and out of the place and he living up the street.”

  “I know all that, Jack, but people will talk, and you can’t give them anything to say.”

  “Well, it’s a fierce state of affairs when we can’t visit each other now without some bitch putting a quare face on it. Is anybody safe from them?” he demanded.

  “When you’re gone past it like the two of us, Jack, you’re dead safe,” Sarah told him.

  “I’m not sure if that’s a comfort or an insult.”

  “Anyway,” she assured him, “the whole thing is no big deal, but I wanted to find out how far it had gone. If Martha had it, you’d have got a slap of it across the face, so obviously it hasn’t got that far yet.”

  “So you’re going to talk to Fr Brady? I don’t envy you your job. A fine young man like him who has done more for the young of the parish than anyone we ever had before him. There’s a begrudging shower of old whores in there in the village, and all they have to do is tittle-tattle.”

  “Calm down, Jack; it’s the nature of people to talk. I know that this kind of thing drives you mad, but we’ll get over it,” Sarah told him.

  She was right, of course, and when a few minutes later she pulled back her chair remarking, “Better be going, Jack, in case we’d be the cause of scandal,” he had to smile in spite of himself.

  On his way back from walking with her to the gate, he spotted a few weeds trying to strangle his young cabbage plants, so he brought out his old weeding cushion and got to work. After an hour, when his annoyance had evaporated, he knelt back on his heels and surveyed his cleaned patch with satisfaction.

  The following morning he awoke to the sun warm across his face. They were going to have a great day for saving the river meadows. His heart lifted in delight. He had always felt that those few moments before you actually woke up properly and got out of bed were a great barometer of how the day was going to go. How you felt in your gut was the important thing, and he felt that this day was going to be good. Thank God for that, he thought. A good start is everything.


  After a quick cup of tea and bite of brown bread, he was on his way down the boreen to Mossgrove. The rising sun was shimmering across the dewy wheat of the Clune field, and the ferns on the ditches of the boreen were clothed in silken cobwebs. What a lot of silent activity went on at night. The sight of these morning cobwebs was magical. He loved the quiet of the dawn fields when he was out alone and monarch of all he surveyed. Nobody owns this land, he thought, neither Martha nor Peter nor I. It belongs to those gone and those coming after us, as much as to us who are here now. It is greater than any of us.

  He rounded up the cows in the field above the house where they were gathered, patiently waiting to be brought in for milking. Cows are grand creatures, he thought as he went around and encouraged them to get up. There were the frisky ones who jumped up as soon as they saw you, and they reminded him of Peter, but there were a few Davy Shines in the herd as well that waited until the last minute to disturb themselves. But the sight of Bran bounding across the field brought them hurriedly to all fours.

  “Good boy, Bran,” he praised as he ran his hand along the bouncing sheepdog’s back.

  He was on his second cow when Peter joined him with a scowl on his face.

  “You musn’t have gone to bed at all last night, Jack. Every morning you’re earlier.”

  “How’d you mean, early?” Jack demanded. “With the river meadows to be saved today, sure it’s hardly lying in bed I’d be.”

  “Sure the birds are only just up.” Peter sat under a cow further up the house and Jack could hear the milk dancing off the tin bucket.

  “The birds have a morning’s work done,” Jack asserted.

  “Did you never hear the dawn chorus? They give a recital before they begin their day and that was hours ago.”

  “I’d say they didn’t have a big audience.”

  “Probably the only time you ever heard it was before you went to bed, and then your sense of appreciation would not be too sharp.”

  “God, Jack, you’re so bright in the morning you are enough to depress anyone. No wonder Davy starts in the other stall so that he doesn’t have to be listening to you.”

  “No trace of him yet then,” Jack said. “The mother’s gone to her mother for a few days, so there is no one to get him out of bed.”

  “I gave him a spare alarm clock last night,” Peter said.

  “’Twould take the Angelus bell to wake that fellow,” Jack declared.

  Just then they heard the rattle of a bucket and knew that Davy had arrived.

  “He’ll never start without some smart comment,” Jack remarked, and sure enough Davy appeared at the door swinging a bucket and with a milking block propped against his hip.

  “Do you know something, Jack,” he said solemnly, “before you die we’ll patent you and send out replica models and you’d run the country no bother before the rest of us would even be out of bed in the morning.”

  “And when you die,” Jack retaliated, “you’ll have contributed so little to the progress of the world that they’ll jump on the grave to make sure you won’t come up again.”

  “Oh boys, Jack, that was low,” Davy said in an aggrieved tone and disappeared from the doorway.

  “Jack, you’re not good for the morale in the morning,” Peter told him.

  “Never mind the morale,” Jack said, “there’s only one thing on my mind now, and that’s getting the river meadow into wynds. So straight after the breakfast as soon as things are tidied up, you and I are going down there, and we must tell Davy to call to the Nolans on his way home from the creamery and tell them what we’re at.”

  “They might be doing something else,” Peter said.

  “Whether they are or not, the Nolans would never let you down, and Jeremy and Tom would make a big difference to us today,” Jack declared.

  “Jack, you’ve tunnel vision.”

  “Not a bad thing to have because you arrive at your destination faster,” Jack asserted and continued, “It will be great to have Nora as well today, because she is as good Jeremy or Davy or yourself.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Peter said.

  “And maybe your Uncle Mark might wander over.”

  “For God’s sake, Uncle Mark is worse than useless, looking at the colour of sops of hay and the shape of frogs legs,” Peter protested.

  “Never mind, every pair of hands count in a meadow,” Jack told him. “It’s the one time that I’m all in favour of big numbers, because it’s encouraging. There is nothing that would get you down faster than the sight of a large meadow in the flat and facing it on your own. It would pull the heart out of you, and Mark is better than nothing.”

  “He’d be delighted to hear that,” Peter decided.

  After breakfast they did the yard jobs, and then Jack dispatched Peter to catch one of the horses and to tackle up the wheelrake.

  “Will you do the wheelraking, Peter?” he asked.

  “I will, of course, but you usually like to do that yourself.”

  “I’ll come down after you and rake out the dykes that Davy never got around to,” Jack told him.

  The sun was high in the sky as he walked down the fields with the rake over his shoulder. It was a day to do the heart good. There was no doubt but that June was the best month of the year. A good June and you could be sure of a full barn for the winter. If the weather came fine, the river meadows produced the best hay, that had body and substance and produced a good milk yield. When he reached the field, he bent down and felt the sward. It was crackling dry and ready for saving. It was a joy to be haymaking on a day like today.

  He went along by the dykes, raking back the hay into little piles to link up with the rows Peter was making. An occasional frog sprang long-legged over the hay on its way back into the moist dyke. There was no sound but the occasional thump of the wheelrake as Peter dropped the lever after each collection. They worked on steadily and were almost finished when Davy arrived swinging a gallon of tea and a basket.

  “Feeding time at the zoo,” he called out.

  “Are we not going up to the house?” Peter asked in surprise.

  “No,” Jack told him, “I asked your mother to send down some grub to spare time.”

  “You’re a real slave-driver,” Peter exclaimed.

  “Did you never hear of making hay while the sun shines?” Jack said. “Well, this is what it’s all about, so eat up fast now and let’s get started. And before you say anything now, Davy, I want no old guff out of you, only tuck in and get going.”

  “Wasn’t going to open my mouth,” Davy proclaimed solemnly.

  They had just started on the second wynd when Nora arrived with Tom and Jeremy Nolan.

  “Silence please,” Davy announced. “Jack is on the rampage and there is no time for talking.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” Tom Nolan agreed smiling. “We must make hay while the sun shines.”

  “Oh my God, not you too,” Davy groaned. Turning to Nora he instructed, “Get up on that heap of hay, my girl, and level it out in jig time to see if we can keep this silent order happy.”

  “Davy, you’d be thrown out of a silent order the first day,” Nora told him.

  They worked steadily all day, and the wynds rose slowly around the field. The day got warmer and perspiration ran down faces and backs. It was with great relief that they saw Martha arriving laden with a large white enamel bucket and an overflowing basket. Davy was the first to collapse into the nearest heap of hay.

  “I was never so glad to see tea in my life,” he declared, mopping the sweat off his face with the back of this hand. They all shared his sentiment, but as soon as they had finished eating, Jack had them on the move again.

  “Jack, you’re brutal,” Davy told him.

  “We’re going to have all this hay up before the cows,” Jack informed him.

  It was six o’clock before they put the cap on the last wynd and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. They were a mighty team to work, and the Nolans had made all the d
ifference, as Jack told them.

  “Glad to be a help,” Tom told him quietly while Jeremy and Peter were testing their fitness in a race up the field.

  “We’ll do the cows, Jack, if you want to finish up here,” Peter called from the gap.

  When they were all gone, Jack walked around the field, recapping the wynds and raking down the sides neatly. They were well-made wynds, towering over him and full of golden crackling hay. He loved this time alone at the end of a day in the meadow. The sun had gone low behind the hill sending shadows between the wynds, and it was pleasant to walk around in the cool of the evening. He tied the wynds firmly with binder twine. Now they were safe from any rain and wind that might come. It was a good feeling. In farming you could take no chances with the weather, though he knew by looking at the sky that there would be no break in the weather yet.

  He stood at the gap and counted the wynds: fifty in all between the two fields. It was a mighty day’s work! He felt satisfaction in every fibre of his being. As he walked up the fields, there was peace in his heart, because when the river meadows were saved the back was broken in providing winter feed for the cows.

  Chapter Six

  AT FIRST JACK thought that he was dreaming. Then suddenly he realised that there was somebody trying to knock down the front door with frantic thumping.

  “What in the name of all that’s good and holy is going on?” Jack breathed as he jumped out of bed, stumbled to the door and slapped back the bolt. A half-dressed Davy, gasping from running, nearly fell in on top of him.

  “Jack, the bastard is after burning the hay.”

  “Who? What?” Jack gasped, his mind not able to grasp what Davy was saying.

  “The river meadows are on fire,” Davy shouted at him. Then he was gone, belting out the path in unlaced boots. Jack caught the back of the nearest chair to steady himself. It couldn’t be the wynds that they had made yesterday!

  Was that what Davy was shouting about? Steady on now, Jack, he told himself, take this nice and handy and don’t lose your head. If it is what you think it is, there is no good in rushing, because once dry hay starts to burn nothing can stop it. So get dressed slowly and go down there at your own pace and take it easy. Kate had warned him about taking it easy. But despite all his instruction to himself, he was dragging on his clothes with a thumping heart. He ran down the boreen, feeling his way instinctively like a cat in the dark. He knew every stone of this boreen, but he still stumbled in his confusion. Maybe it was only some of the wynds that were gone up. The bastard would never burn them all. He turned into the Moss field where he could hear the horses snorting in the semi-darkness. The dawn was just breaking.