by Kim Kelly
They owned their little plot of land, the Kennedys. It was bought in 1903, by Nell’s dad, who was the village blacksmith. He, like many others in the county, took advantage of new laws that had just come in to enable ordinary workingmen to own their own little bit of what their families had dug and ploughed for centuries, since before the English Earls of Desmond took it all up for themselves in 1703, stealing it from the Kings O’Brien. It wasn’t worth much. In fact, the minute Dan Kennedy put the money down for it, it was worth quite a lot less, but at least it was theirs. Unfortunately, though, with twelve sons born ahead of Nell, the land was always going to be too small to hand on to them. The sons would need other means of providing for themselves and their future families, and much discussion was had about sending them across to Dublin for work in the factories there, seeing if the sons could be got into trades. But Dublin was expensive, and a risk with too many unknowns: Daniel and Brigid Kennedy didn’t want their sons to travel so far away. They’d heard too many stories of boys getting into terrible strife there in Dublin. It was a dilemma.
The eldest of the boys, Dan, was sent only as far as Tralee when he turned sixteen, and for a while the arrangement seemed the ideal thing. Dan could walk the seven miles in to work there on the shipping canal and be home in time for tea – or nearly every day, except for midsummer when the days were long. Gradually, though, as the shipping moved from Tralee canal further round the bay to the new docks at Fenit Harbour, the work began to dry up. By the time his brothers were ready to follow young Dan into Tralee, there were hardly any jobs to be had at all. Their mother and father wondered if they should move the family round to Fenit village, but Fenit already had three blacksmiths, ticketed smiths, working on the wharves – they didn’t need another, one who didn’t have any formal schooling in his trade, and besides, Fenit was too far away for them to keep their little farm going. They would have had to break up the family somehow, and they just couldn’t see their way to doing that. They thought about moving into Tralee itself, so that then the boys could work at Fenit or on the canal – Tralee was a county town of near ten thousand, so surely something would come up for them there. But what if it didn’t? What if they sold their plot and ended up with nothing and no jobs? The dilemma deepened.
Brigid and Daniel Kennedy decided there and then to pray not to have any more children – thirteen of them was blessing enough, if they didn’t think about the reputation of that number too much – but apart from that, they didn’t know what to do, except for continuing to enjoy the oversupply of farm labour they increasingly had on their plot. The boys competed with each other as to who could grow the fattest parsnip, or the reddest carrot, and they’d spend hours trying to coax Stanley the old stag-pig into saying hello, which occasionally he did in his grunty way, but apart from that, not much else went on in Ballymacyarn – not for years.
Nell was five, just about five and a half, when Dan came home from Tralee one day, at almost twenty-one years of age, and he told his parents: ‘Mam, Da – this is no good. I can’t keep going on like this, looking for work that isn’t there. My life is passing me by.’
Poor young Dan was in a state of depression about it. He wasn’t even in love with any girl to distract him – there were no girls in Ballymacyarn to be distracted by. Year after year, families were moving off their farms and into the towns and the cities; year after year it became more and more difficult for a lad with too little education to get anywhere at all. In fact, it was fairly impossible. The Kennedys knew they would have to do something for their boys, all of them – they would have to make a move sooner or later – but they just couldn’t decide when or how. They didn’t want to decide – they didn’t want to leave their beautiful home.
Why would they? It was paradise on earth in so very many ways. This land gave them so much of all anyone ever needs in nourishment and in beauty. The hill that rose up above the village from behind that gave protection from the gales and trapped the sun upon their fields; in summer the whole of the rise blushed all over with the rainbow splashes of a million wildflowers, and for those few sparkling months of the year, even the Atlantic Ocean would turn on a show: with the brightening of the sky it changed to a deep sapphire blue, and the only grey thing in it would be the whales travelling north on their holidays.
Nell loved to see those whales making their way along the Kerry coast. At first sight of them, she would stop whatever it was she was doing and she would run harum-scarum through the fields and up to the very edge of the cliff, standing on her tiptoes to see them go by. They were called humpback whales in English, and she thought that was an ugly name to give such wonderful creatures. Once, when she saw one of them jump right up out of the sea, she knew she had witnessed the power of God and the love of God in one. Míol mór, they were called in Irish, all of the whales. She loved it when her mother spoke that language, but she didn’t speak it very often; you didn’t want people thinking you were a backwards cottier whose family had made it through the Great Famine by falling down a well and eating frogs, even if that’s what you were, so reckoned her mum. Nell reckoned Irish was prettier in every way; she thought their cottage was the prettiest in the village, too.
She’d look back at their place from the cliff-top, the walls of the house bright white against the green hill no matter the weather. Even on the darkest, greyest day, their house was jolly, with the windowsills and the front door all painted red inside the white. All the other houses were just plain stone.
‘And where do you think you’re going, little Miss Kennedy?’ These were words she hated more than any other, for they came from Mrs O’Neill, whose vegetable plot ran beside her own family’s. Mrs O’Neill would always grab Nell up under the arm as she said those words, too. She’d reckoned Mrs O’Neill was a witch, because she never saw her coming for her, either. Nell never meant to trespass on her field, but especially with there being no hedgerow between the plots here, she’d just forget where she was sometimes, when she was running, with her head full of wonders and dreams. She had a different engine in her from most others, did Nell: her thoughts would always be running full steam and her stomach would always be churning with some kind of excitement, over and over, round and round, like the way ducks’ legs go under water: all the action is happening beneath the surface; but above it you wouldn’t know all the effort she was making. When Mrs O’Neill would stop her, witch-fingers pinching in under her arm, Nell would stop still and stare at her. She would stare and stare, wondering at her stupid question: where did Mrs O’Neill ever think Nell might be going? To the moon? She would wriggle in the witch’s grip and tell her: ‘Let me go!’ And with her arms so skinny and her legs so springy and spry, she would always break free and run home.
‘That daughter of yours has been tearing up my patch again,’ Mrs O’Neill would be banging on the door for her mother to come out.
It wasn’t true. Nell never tore up anything. She hardly weighed more than ten feathers in a paper bag, so her dad would always say. ‘She couldn’t tear a spider web if she ran through it with a hammer,’ her mother would tell Mrs O’Neill at the door.
But this wasn’t what Mrs O’Neill was so cross about, not at all. The O’Neills were in the same predicament as the Kennedys – too many sons and not enough land, not enough jobs in the towns to go to, either. The only difference was, Mrs O’Neill was a widow, and she was bitter about it. Her husband, Liam, had died from an abscess on a rotten tooth four years ago; Dan Kennedy had offered to get the tooth out for him, as, being a blacksmith, he was the one in the village most expert and best equipped at such things, but Liam had refused, fearing the pain, and so had paid that most terrible price. As well, all four of the O’Neill sons were lazy and wouldn’t walk into Tralee if you paid them; they wouldn’t chop kindling for their mother, either; they would hardly lift a finger to help her bring in her crop; they certainly wouldn’t dare milk the cow. So, any chance she got to rail and rant, she’d take it.
And so Brigid Ken
nedy would try to keep the peace with her: ‘Mrs O’Neill, if my daughter has done any damage, she will right it for you. Show me, what has she done?’
Of course Nell had done nothing, and Mrs O’Neill would stamp off muttering: ‘You just keep that girl off my field.’
‘Don’t you worry about that silly old biddy,’ her father would take her up on his knee when he’d come in from the forge and she’d jabber all about it at him. ‘And don’t you repeat what I just said.’ He’d wink. He had the bluest eyes of all the Kennedys, her father did – brightest blue as forget-me-nots. He was the tallest, too, and they were all tall, except for Nell. Her dad was skinny like her, though, while all the others were broad and meaty. He was as skinny as ten pieces of string chucked together, but his arms were strong from his work, belting out rings for the cooper, horseshoes for the farrier, and mending old shovelheads and ploughs. Every fair day he was the man to beat at the arm wrestle. He never lost. In fact, he snapped a man’s wrist one time, just like a twig, and shame made him pay the poor fellow’s doctor bill before it was even asked for.
Like so many men who are physically strong, Dan Kennedy was gentle in his ways, reluctant to start any fights, too, lest he end up finishing them with consequences he didn’t intend. He taught all his sons to be the same: if it wasn’t worth going to prison for, it wasn’t worth arguing about. And, most importantly, never argue with a woman: no matter what you do, no matter what you say, you’ll never win.
He never argued with his wife, Brigid, and that wasn’t all because she was his one true darling. He knew that a woman scorned could be terrifying, especially with so many cooking implements always so handy about them – any and all sensible Irishmen knew that – and he thought now that the situation with Mrs O’Neill might be starting to get out of hand. He was also, at the very back of his mind, a little bit concerned that Mrs O’Neill might well have been a witch, as he’d never once seen her cross herself when passing the old oak up at the road going towards Dingle, and so he told his little Nell here on his knee: ‘You keep away from Mrs O’Neill, keep off her field, my love, and all will be well.’
‘But I don’t mean to go there,’ Nell whined and squirmed off his knee with a stomp to the floor.
‘There’re lots of things we don’t mean to do that can get us in hot water,’ he sympathised, but he insisted, patting his daughter’s little shoulder with his great coal-dusty hand: ‘Try harder not to go on Mrs O’Neill’s field, all right?’
‘All right, Daddy,’ she told her father, but she screwed up her nose in disgust. Why her father wouldn’t march over there to the O’Neills’ with a pitchfork was a mystery to her. Mrs O’Neill was not just a witch – she was a liar.
The resentment bubbled and brewed in Nell Kennedy’s heart; it swirled and churned inside her belly and her brain. She might only have been five and a half years old, but she could hold the grudge of someone twice that age and ten times the size.
She became extra careful at not putting a foot in Mrs O’Neill’s field. She would skip and dance and sing her way up the little dirt path between those two vegetable plots that ran out up the front of their houses towards the sea, and she’d do it just to taunt the woman, but only when her mother or her brothers were looking.
‘Oo, Ellen Kennedy,’ her mother would rouse, but with half a smile curling on her face: ‘You will tempt the Devil in with that act. You stop it, girl.’
She didn’t. Her dancing got madder and sillier every time she took that path, and she’d do it now just to make her mother laugh.
Mrs O’Neill would peer from her window, watching the little girl’s every step. Mrs O’Neill could hold a grudge for all of Ireland, in her hurt and crumbling heart.
Until one day, finally, Mrs O’Neill got what she was waiting for.
It was the brightest and prettiest midsummer of 1911, and the hillside was awash with all the pinks and lilacs of the wildflowers, little dashes of yellow splashing about there, too, and Nell had gone up behind the fields to fetch a posy of them for her mother’s kitchen table. There were rosy trails of bindweed, and clumps of soft violet cuckoo-bells; there were golden buttercups squiggling everywhere as well, and, if you looked very, very carefully, tiny scarlet pimpernels. Nell spent hours up there choosing exactly the right combination of blooms good for picking – she had quite a knack for such artistic things, an eye for colours and shapes that went well together, and such a posy as she was picking now was the one thing her mother was always pleased about her bringing home.
But there was something missing from this posy, Nell thought to herself when she’d got a good handful of flowers in her little fist. She turned it this way and that, and it was certainly a lovely bunch, a tiny tree of pinks and golds and purples; it just needed – she didn’t know what.
‘Nellie!’ That was her mother calling from the back of the house, from where she was working by the chicken shed. It was time for Nell to get back home – the sun was starting on its way down to the west, scattering spangles all across the sea, and Nell was to help her brothers, Frankie and Chris, at the milking. She was only learning at the milking, but she was already good at it, her small hands swift and strong – and she was keen, so she didn’t waste any time skipping back down the hill.
When she got near to the bottom, though, she saw a little flicker of something blue in the scraggedy grass behind the O’Neills’: forget-me-nots. A little pocket of those sweet sun-centred blossoms were swaying softly in the breeze over in the shade cast by the back stone wall of the house. That’s what was missing from her posy. She couldn’t see any face at any window; she couldn’t see anyone about at the O’Neills’ at all, so, quick as a pixie, she darted for their yard, across the lane and over the stile in the hedgerow that ran at the backs of all the fields. She leapt over a pumpkin patch and round the wood pile, and there they were – her forget-me-nots. She snatched up half a dozen stalks, roots and all, and back she ran.
Heart thumping and lungs bursting, she skittered back into her own rear yard and into her house, to place the posy in her mother’s white vase. She smiled to herself, Nell did, as she plucked away roots and trimmed off leaves: she hadn’t gone into Mrs O’Neill’s patch, not technically, she hadn’t gone anywhere near her vegetable rows, and she hadn’t even really stolen anything, either. These forget-me-nots were just a bunch of weeds. But she had a little shiver in there, too, as she arranged the flowers in their vase just right: she couldn’t believe she’d got away with it.
Because she hadn’t. Mrs O’Neill had seen the whole thing from behind the curtain over her kitchen window. She’d seen the little girl take the flowers from almost right under her nose, and even though they might have been more pests in her string beans than anything else to her, Mrs O’Neill considered that they were her forget-me-nots, and that this was a felony of the worst order. But Mrs O’Neill didn’t march straight up to the Kennedys’ door. No. She waited this time. She waited until Mrs Kennedy was finished her work. She watched the other woman at her business: taking a chicken with her hatchet. She certainly wasn’t going to pick a bone with Mrs Kennedy while she was armed. She waited until Mrs Kennedy was busy plucking. She knew that Mrs Kennedy enjoyed sitting there in the summer sun of the afternoon, plucking, plucking, contented in the warmth. It would be the perfect time to interrupt her for maximum annoyance – for, oh, Mrs O’Neill was spoiling for a fight.
By this time, Nell was way over the other side of the back of the Kennedys’ yard, sitting there on the milking stool and tending to one of the cows; two of the boys – the older twins, Frankie and Chris – were working with her.
Mrs O’Neill didn’t knock on the front door as she usually would. She just appeared, like a tortured otherworldly apparition, waving her arms and bawling: ‘Thief! Thief! You wretched little thief!’
At which all four Kennedys – Brigid, Frankie, Chris and Nell – looked up from their work. Even the chickens pecking round the yard stopped to look.
Brigid Kennedy s
tood, a small cloud of feathers about her: ‘To what do we owe this pleasure, Mrs O’Neill?’
‘Pleasure?’ The woman was insane with rage. ‘Your daughter stole flowers from my yard.’
They were all still stuck in silence at that, especially Mrs Kennedy, for although she’d surely scold and spank her daughter if this were true, the rage in Mrs O’Neill’s eyes did not seem quite warranted in the situation.
After some moments of the two women staring at each other, one insane, one querying, Mrs Kennedy said: ‘Well, all right, now, Mrs O’Neill. Let’s see if we can’t sort this out. Ellen Mary!’ she called and moved towards her daughter, shouting out her whole name to show that the girl was in a big fat pot of hot water.
But only Frankie and Chris stood up from their milking, as if she might have shouted Francis-Joseph-Christopher-Luke, as she often did. Nell stayed sitting right where she was, on her milking stool. Her little heart was banging again, and her belly was churning in seventeen different directions, but she kept on at the milking, as if she didn’t hear. Maggie the brown cow’s teats were the easiest of all, and she loved milking her. She wasn’t stopping for anything. She listened only to the ping and splosh of the streams of milk hitting the side of her bucket. How she loved milking. She loved the smell; she imagined it was the smell of crushed up, munched up wildflowers.
There was now a small but fierce war broken out behind her, though.
‘Forget-me-nots?’ her mother was shrieking, feathers now flying off her apron as she threw her arms up in the air. ‘You’ll get a policeman round for this, will you? Well, go on then, we could all do with a laugh!’
‘You’ll be laughing round the other side of your face if you’re not careful,’ Mrs O’Neill threatened back, and it was a menacing threat of violence.
