A Christmas Wish

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘Yes you do. I’ll take it that you have sworn and tell you. It’s simple. I nodded at Patrick before going behind the truck, and then I flipped a note into the back of it. He saw me do it.’ She frowned. ‘At least I think he did.’

  Anna Marie sank down onto the hay bale beside her, fearful of a future without Venetia, without her twin.

  ‘Are you going to run away with him?’

  Venetia laughed and looked at her derisively. ‘Don’t be such a daft duck! Well, that is, not first off. I’m going to meet up with him, use my charms and get him to go with me to America. And before you say, what about me, it’s up to you whether you come with us or not. But this time he has to marry me first.’

  Anna Marie bit her bottom lip again, wishing she hadn’t asked and wishing she could make up her mind whether she wanted to go to America at all. She quite liked the farm and loved her grandmother. Her grandfather wasn’t worthy of love but he was due some respect and certainly she feared him. There was also the matter of being attracted to Patrick. If he ran away with her sister, then that would be the end of it. The funny thing was she didn’t know whether to be glad or sad about it.

  Venetia’s expression turned from happy to devious.

  ‘I’ve got another secret for you. I’m not spending all Monday and Friday cleaning the rectory. It might have taken Mrs Moran all day to clean it, but I can speed through it in half the time. The rest of the time I’ll be with Patrick. That’s what I’ve told him.’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The Twins

  Although the priest’s house had many rooms, only a few were used, occupied as it was by just one man. Father Anthony only used the ground floor front-of-house rooms, the kitchen and scullery left to Mrs Moran and now Venetia. He slept in a front bedroom and had the luxury of a bathroom just across the landing. The other rooms were cold and filled with unused furniture, some covered in dust sheets and the less attractive pieces shoved into one corner.

  ‘A priest should live in an impressive house,’ stated Mrs Moran when Venetia had suggested he should live in something smaller. ‘He’s the most important man hereabouts so should have the biggest and the best.’

  Mrs Moran followed her around on that first day, her voice a drone of information. Chief amongst it seemed to be remembering to water the huge aspidistra that sat in a pot at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘And be careful with that pot. It’s Delft. Worth a fortune that pot is.’

  ‘It’s chipped,’ said Venetia, fingering the rough edge that had been hidden by a dark green leaf.

  ‘What? Well, that wasn’t there before,’ declared Mrs Moran with a loud snort of indignation.

  Venetia wasn’t fooled. She saw spots of red flare in the old woman’s cheeks and knew where the guilt lay.

  Just as she’d supposed, Mrs Moran was painfully slow, rubbing her bowed legs and rolling from side to side because her hips were as bad as her legs.

  She was careful that first Monday to take things easy and make the work last all day. The same on the Friday of that week.

  The following Monday, after she’d convinced Mrs Moran that she could polish, sweep and dust to her own high standard, she was all alone.

  The old lady’s last warning was that she should never clean the study when Father Anthony was in there.

  ‘That’s where he writes his sermons and deals with parish business. You’ll not go in there when he’s busy. The good father has to concentrate. He’ll ask for you to give it a clean when it’s needed.’

  That was fine with Venetia. The sooner she could get the work done, the better.

  She raced round the house like a whirlwind, doing what had to be done. Father Anthony kept to his study except when she prepared him some lunch. Mrs Moran hadn’t mentioned preparing the priest’s lunch was one of her duties, but he disappeared into his study afterwards or went out to visit a sick parishioner or the well-to-do family that sponsored him.

  Mid-afternoon, once she was sure the coast was clear, she set off to see Patrick. Checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she brushed her hair, took off her apron and pinched her cheeks to make them a little pinker. She’d brought with her a stub of red lipstick she’d had forever, just enough to slither along her lips.

  Her blue dress was far from her best, but she’d ironed it before leaving this morning and the whiff of beeswax wasn’t too obvious. It would have to do.

  It was no more than a hundred yards along the back lane to the builders’ yard and workshop where Patrick dabbled in carpentry.

  The smell of new wood pared by a hand-driven lathe floated out as particles of sawdust on the air.

  Patrick was bent over the lathe, intent on forming a chair leg from a piece of virgin wood.

  ‘Patrick?’

  He spun round immediately, the chair leg spinning along the workbench like a stone from a catapult.

  At first he looked at her as though seeing a ghost.

  She smiled whilst inhaling the scent of him, taking in the broadness of his shoulders, his need of a shave and the scent of fresh sweat.

  She lingered by the door, her voice as seductive as her demeanour – a bit like that Maureen O’Hara, the American actress she’d seen at the pictures. My, but those film stars could be so enticing!

  ‘Patrick. It’s been nearly two years and more since Queenstown. Did you know that?’

  He nodded. ‘Ahuh.’

  ‘And then you drove back here and told my granfer that me and Anna Marie had run away and were in Queenstown.’

  ‘Ahuh.’ He nodded again. ‘I’m sorry That I am. Truly sorry.’

  She shook her head at him as she might at a small child.

  ‘You have to make up for what you did, Patrick Casey. So! What are you going to do?’

  He looked at her as though he were groping for the words to say when all she wanted was for him to reach out, to grope her for God’s sake!

  ‘Venetia.’

  He took a step towards her.

  ‘Patrick,’ she said, barely able to control her amusement. This was lovely, but at the same time so funny.

  She took a step towards him, he did the same and then they both did a couple more.

  The crashing together was inevitable. The warmth of his body seemed to draw hers in until it felt as though they were melded together.

  Like drowning, Venetia thought, feeling as though she were sinking into a blue-black void as they kissed and sucked on each other, groped, fondled, stroked and caressed.

  It was as though there had been no intermission between their meetings before he’d taken her and her sister to Queenstown and the period of purgatory that had passed since.

  ‘I might just as well have been a nun,’ she said to him as they clung to each other in the lorry cab.

  ‘You? Never!’

  She couldn’t exactly recall climbing up there because how they got there was not that important. It was the bit before and the bit they were now experiencing.

  So they were lovers again – only more so because they were both that much older.

  The haunts in which they’d canoodled were restricted by the fact that they had little time to spare and this was where the old lorry came in handy. It was their very own love nest, the little place where they could hide from the world and nobody knew they were there.

  The windows got steamed up but that was fine with Venetia because it meant they wouldn’t get cold when they took off their clothes.

  She didn’t protest when one thing led to another and his hot kisses swallowed any protest she might make – if indeed she wanted to protest – which she didn’t.

  ‘Do you love me, Patrick? Do you love me more than all the tea in China?’ she asked him, her long tanned arms entwined around his neck.

  ‘More than all the wood in me old man’s shed,’ he said breathlessly, and tried to kiss her.

  She jerked her head away. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I love the smell of wood; the fee
l of it too. Just like a woman’s body. Like your body. Soft, silky and shapely.’

  For a moment she looked at him as though he were slightly mad in comparing a woman to a piece of wood; then she laughed.

  ‘Go away with you. You’re a fool and that’s for sure,’ she said, though she could hardly control her giggles.

  He pretended it hurt when she slapped his shoulder.

  ‘I can hardly go away dressed like this,’ he answered with a wicked grin.

  ‘That’s true.’

  He was lying on top of her, his loins between hers and his legs and backside bare. Every so often she caught a peek of him in the rear-view mirror above his ass. It made her grin, but she daren’t burst out laughing. The last thing she wanted was to make fun of him. It was imperative that he loved her. It was imperative that he couldn’t possibly do without her.

  She asked him if he was happy. He said that he was.

  ‘Are you?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh yes, Patrick Casey. I’m very, very happy.’

  Pressing her hand against the back of his head, she brought his lips down to meet hers.

  Just before their lips pressed together, Patrick said, ‘You’re a very clever girl, Venetia, throwing that note into the back of the truck.’

  ‘I know.’

  It was Monday afternoon and Anna Marie was helping to hang out washing that her grandmother had beaten and bashed into whiteness.

  The sheets cracked in the breeze and those items that should have shown some colour were almost white. Grandma Brodie prided herself on the whiteness of her washing even if it did mean boiling out the colour in the big old copper that sat above a brazier in the outhouse.

  Anna Marie found the smell of fresh laundry enticing and buried her face into a sheet. The sheets fluttered like clouds that might float away in the sky if they weren’t fixed with pegs.

  ‘Lovely smell,’ she murmured.

  ‘Will you stop wiping your nose in my washing,’ said her grandmother whilst wrestling with a patchwork quilt that she had high hopes of drying on a breezy day such as this.

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ she said on coming out from behind the sheet.

  Her grandmother responded that indeed it was. Enough to bring a smile to any face.

  Anna Marie’s smile froze on noticing that her grandfather was harnessing the grey pony to the small cart that he’d made himself and dared to call a gig.

  She recalled Venetia saying that gig was short for giggle. ‘That’s what it makes you do – giggle,’ she’d remarked – out of earshot of course.

  ‘Where’s Grandfather off to so early in the afternoon?’

  She asked the question casually as though merely curious as to his destination. The truth was that she knew that her sister darted off early from cleaning the priest’s house.

  Still determined to control his granddaughters’ lives, Dermot Brodie collected Venetia from the rectory on the days she was cleaning there.

  Anna Marie was privy to the truth.

  Molly Brodie, three wooden pegs hanging like teeth from the front of her mouth, went back to hanging out her laundry.

  ‘Into town. He’s off to pay Roger Casey for the wall he built for us. By the time he’s finished there, it’ll be time for him to fetch your sister. She’ll be finished by then and even if she’s not, he can doze while he waits in the gig. It won’t hurt him at his age.’

  Anna Marie stood frozen to the spot. The more positive side of her character advised her not to worry. The more instinctive side was curling around inside her like a cat that’s backed into a corner.

  Both the positive and negative slugged it out until she found herself breathing deeply as she reassured herself that all would be well.

  There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, she told herself. By the time he meets Roger Casey, joins him in a pot of tea or even something a little stronger, Venetia will be where she should be, waiting for him where she should be waiting.

  Besides, he and Mr Casey could talk the hind leg off a donkey whilst slugging back a whiskey. Only after that would he get round to picking Venetia up from the leafy lane a hundred yards along from the entrance to the rectory.

  She was reassured, but only for a moment. Everything depended on where Venetia and Patrick happened to be parked. The lorry, her sister had told her, was their little love nest. She’d also told her their favourite place.

  All she hoped was that her grandfather wouldn’t see the lorry pulled into a leafy glade just off the road into town. Best if they were parked on the other side of town out of the way. That’s where she hoped they would be; that’s what Venetia had told her.

  She bit her lip and felt hugely worried. Venetia didn’t always tell the truth.

  Chapter Thirty

  Venetia 1935

  ‘Kiss me again before I put me knickers back on,’ said Venetia through over-kissed lips. ‘Then I’ll tell you all about what we’ll do when we get to America.’

  Patrick’s passion abated at mention of leaving home and he tried his best not to pull a face. Venetia’s charms were the stuff of dreams and although he had a soft spot for her sister, Anna Marie, he gave in easily to temptation. And Venetia was extremely tempting.

  Venetia was his downfall. He’d do anything she wanted him to do – especially on the physical front. But this dream she had of going to America – well – that was a different matter.

  Suddenly she noticed that he was finding it difficult to meet her eyes.

  ‘Well? Are you coming with me this time, or not?’

  He scratched his head. He always scratched his head when he had a big load of thinking to do.

  ‘That’s a big decision – going to America. I’m not sure it would suit me. I’ve me father to think about. I’m all he’s got since me mother passed over.’

  ‘You can’t stay with him forever. You’re not a boy any longer, now are you? You’re a man. The man I want beside me for the rest of my days. And nights.’ She uttered the last two words whilst smiling and tracing circles over his bare chest. ‘Just think of those nights,’ she added seductively.

  He was thinking of them. She could tell he was. His lower lip hung loose and his eyes were fixed on her bare breasts rather than on her face. Despite his loose lips he couldn’t say a word.

  Venetia cupped his face in her hands and jerked him round to face her.

  ‘Look into my eyes and promise me we’ll go to America together or I’ll cover myself up right now!’

  Leaving go of his face she flipped the edges of her open blouse over her breasts.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that …’

  His fingers barely had chance to brush her bare breasts before the door of the lorry was hauled open and all hell let loose.

  Venetia screamed as Patrick was pulled away from her. A pair of strong hands had hooked into his shoulders and pulled him out head first, his shirt hiked up to his chest, his unbuttoned trousers falling down to his ankles as his ass hit the hard road with a thud that made him cry out.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Never mind Jesus! ’Tis me, boy, that you’re answering to!’ shouted Dermot Brodie as he yanked the boy to his feet.

  Grandfather!

  Venetia fought to cover herself up, but the buttons seemed to have acquired a life of their own, the buttonholes not seeming to be in the same places they had been.

  Fumbling at her buttons, she thought ominous thoughts; someone must have told him, she decided. Someone must have told her grandfather where she would be at this time of the afternoon – certainly not cleaning the house of that pompous priest! To her mind there was only one person who could have told on her, who knew one of the places she was likely to be. Anna Marie. It had to be.

  Dermot Brodie’s voice was as big as his hands and his movements were swift. Holding fast onto Patrick’s collar, he flung him round then slammed him against the side of the lorry.

  ‘Ya scum,’ he shouted, slapping the boy on both sides of his face.

  Patr
ick looked as scared as a rabbit facing a gun, clinging on grimly to his trousers, which he’d managed to pull up. Even when Dermot did let go of him, he was too scared to move.

  Venetia cowered in the lorry, fighting to make the buttonholes work with the buttons, but her fingers had turned to sausages and the buttons were still at odds with the holes. It was as though they’d had a quarrel and one had no wish to know the other.

  ‘Sir. I’m sorry. But the devil made me do it. I was tempted and couldn’t resist. Just like Adam I was, sir. Just like Adam when Eve offered him that apple!’

  With a sinking feeling, Venetia covered her face with both hands. She murmured Patrick’s name over and over again. How could he deny her like that? How cruel! A startling truth that she’d tried ignoring suddenly came to her; this wasn’t the first time he’d betrayed her.

  ‘And as for you …’

  Her grandfather’s big square shoulders filled the open door. Feeling totally helpless, she cringed beneath his thunderous countenance. There was pure disgust and outright anger, both hinting at a promise of the thrashing to come.

  ‘Look at you! Half naked and acting the part of the whore. Harlot!’

  Venetia’s glossy hair swung around her face as she shook her head emphatically.

  ‘No! I’m not a harlot! We’re going to get married. We love each other and then, once we’re married, we’re leaving this miserable place and we’re off to America. That’s for sure!’

  From what Patrick had just told her grandfather, it didn’t sound that way at all, but she had to hope. She had to dream.

  ‘Is that so?’ Dermot Brodie growled the words. At the same time his white brows dipped together like a pair of broken crows’ wings. ‘Well, until that happens you’re living under my roof, you’ll stay under my roof and you’ll not go out unless it’s with my say so. And that’s for sure on my part!’

  She gasped when he pulled her out by the hair. Her hands flew away from her blouse and to her head in an effort to assuage the pain.

  On sight of her breasts, her grandfather swore. ‘Holy Mother, forgive me.’

  Suddenly she remembered her knickers. God forbid that he found out she was wearing none.