Tessie’s previous husband had been a hard worker, and had provided well for her and the children. But a year of struggling on a widow’s pension had taught her that her only chance of survival now was to find another man. Although Shay had a bit of a reputation as a drinker, she was confident she could knock him into shape. A good dinner every day, and a warm bed every night would keep him a satisfied and happy man.
“You’ll have some cakebread and a bit of ham?” Tessie asked Shay, handing him a mug of steaming tea.
Shay had to think for a moment, as his stomach was unusually full with all the festive food. “Go on,” he said, giving her a wink, “you’ve twisted me arm.”
She ruffled his boyish dark curls. “A growing man like you needs to be kept well-fed.”
“And no better woman to do it!” he said, gripping her hand playfully. He then proceeded to demolish the plate of bread and meat she put in front of him.
“How soon d’you think the wedding will be?” Tessie asked when Tara took the younger children to play outside.
“As soon as things are fixed up at the factory, then we can chat the priest about the arrangements,” Shay said, stretching his feet out in front of the fire. “A month or so should see everything fixed up.”
“Won’t it be great for you, to be able to walk up the road to work? Sure, you can fall out of bed and straight into the factory.”
The mention of bed brought Shay up on his feet and over to the table, where Tessie was sitting. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, and he bent down to kiss her cheek. She gave a little moan, which encouraged him more, and his hands slid further down her arms, and then moved to cup her voluptuous breasts. When her face turned up towards him, Shay crushed his mouth down hard on hers.
God, it was ages since he’d been with a woman – over three years! Although they hadn’t had much time on their own, from the response he had from Tessie, hopefully, it would be well worth the wait. After a promising start, Tara’s pale, delicate mother had not been great in that department. She was either pregnant, or recovering from the birth or the loss of a child. Out of six pregnancies, she had only managed to give birth to Joe and Tara, and then she had gone down with scarlet fever.
Shay felt Tessie was promising in more ways than one. She was only twenty-six, and her full, firm figure had hardly been changed by childbirth. By the looks of the house and the children, she was also a good housekeeper. And by the way she was pushing her breasts against him and opening the buttons on his shirt, she was likely to be good sport in bed.
As the sound of children’s voices came nearer the house, Shay suddenly reckoned that the answer to all his problems was to get married.
To get married – and as quickly as he possibly could.
Chapter Three
There had never been such activity and excitement in the Flynn spinsters’ house, except perhaps when it was their turn to host a Station Mass. But even so, this particular occasion outshone any other, for it singled the family out from the common herd in Tullamore. To have a priest in the making was the highest honour any Irish Catholic family could wish for. And no price was too high to pay for someone who forgave sins.
For months, Molly and Maggie had been gathering up the things for the trunk which Joe had to take to the seminary in Dublin. They had dragged the whole procedure out much longer than was necessary, substituting the trunk for the bottom drawer they had never had as brides. They picked sheets and blankets and pillowslips for Joe’s bed, sets of stripy towels and soaps, and pyjamas, vests, underpants and socks. And every assistant, in every shop they patronised, was told in great detail about the contents and the quality of the stuff in Joe’s trunk, and how his great-aunts had spared no expense.
“He has the loveliest uniform of a dark green blazer,” Molly elaborated to Mrs Finlay in the drapery shop, “and a matching cap with a badge.”
“And a gabardine overcoat,” Maggie added. “Everything has to be the best of quality.”
“And aren’t they entitled to it?” Mrs Finlay said with a grim look on her pinched face. “The poor little gossuns! Away from their homes and families from eleven years of age, to have their lessons beat into them by those cruel priests.” Mrs Finlay had a son who had attended a seminary some years ago, and had been devastated when he was sent home with ill-health.
He had since left Tullamore for England, and rumour had it he was now married to a Protestant girl and that the wedding ceremony had taken place in a registry office.
The Flynn spinsters were both aware of this fact, and Mrs Finlay was painfully aware that they knew it, too. Nothing was said for a moment while Molly re-positioned her pearl-encrusted hatpin and Maggie examined the quality of a boy’s grey schoolshirt.
“Father Higgins was very careful when he picked the seminary in Dublin for us,” Molly gushed in the high-pitched girlish tone she used when talking about the clergy, “and we were delighted with it when he took us up on a visit in the spring.”
“We were assured that Joe would be more than looked after,” Maggie added, “and if there were any problems they would inform us immediately.”
Mrs Finlay reached across the shop counter and almost pulled the shirt out of Maggie’s hands. “Do you want the shirt or not?” she said in an uppity tone. “It makes no odds to me. I have plenty of customers who know good quality when they see it, without having to study it for half an hour.”
“We’ll take one, thank you,” Molly said primly. “We’ll see how it washes. Then we’ll decide about buying another one.”
“Sure, won’t it give you more time to save for it,” Mrs Finlay said, wrapping the shirt in a piece of brown paper. “It makes it easier on you, buying the odd item every now and then.” Her voice took on a nasal tone. “It’s all right for the well-to-do families buying these expensive uniforms and the rest of the stuff for the seminary – but it’s not easy on the likes of you.”
Then, the wrapped shirt was clapped down on the counter in front of the two sisters.
Molly took her purse out of her bag and put a ten-shilling note down on the counter. “Isn’t it amazing the short memory some people have?” she said to no one in particular. “And how they can forget the ordinary families they came from, themselves?”
“It is,” Maggie agreed, starting towards the door. “At least any money we have is our own, and we were never tempted into marrying for it. Nor do we have to rely on the good humour of a man to give it to us, instead of giving it to other women.”
A dreadful silence descended on the shop while Mrs. Finlay fiddled around at the till with her back to the two sisters. Then, she turned and came back to the counter, her face like thunder and her mind full of dire thoughts. She heartily wished she had never made the biting comments about the seminary which had started this diatribe off. But it was too late now. After all these years, she had never got over the disappointment of nearly having a priest in her family. It was a wound she would carry to the grave.
But, the gloves were off now and she had to defend her corner.
She banged the change down loudly in front of Molly. “Those who have never had a man shouldn’t comment. Marriage is an area two oul’ spinsters like yourselves know nothing about.”
Molly scooped the coins into her neat little purse and put the brown paper parcel into her shopping bag. “True,” she agreed, “and from what we’ve heard of your husband at the weekends with other women – younger women – it’s just as well we know nothing about it!”
Having had the last word – and before Mrs Finlay could catch her breath – the victorious spinsters made a quick but dainty exit from the drapery shop.
* * *
The Sunday evening in September that Joe left his great-aunts’ house in Tullamore for the junior seminary in Dublin was the climax of months of preparation. Noel and Mick Flynn, plus Tara in a new straw hat, had made their way out on the ass and cart from Ballygrace after their dinner. Shay and Tessie, his wife this six months, and not
iceably pregnant with their first child, were also there. They had walked the half-mile from their own house, leaving Tessie’s three children in the care of a neighbour, to wish the boy farewell.
“Doesn’t he look lovely in his uniform and cap?” Molly gushed, as she handed tea round in the parlour that was only used for special occasions. There was a great smell of spicy furniture polish and floor wax that helped to cover up the usual musty smell.
“He certainly does, begod!” Shay said, loosening the tie which Tessie had forced him to wear. He was unusually dapper, clad in the suit he had worn to both his weddings and his first wife’s funeral.
As he looked across the room at Joe now, he felt slightly in awe of this smartly dressed young stranger who was his son. “And how does it feel,” he asked, “to be goin’ to an important place like Dublin . . . and to be amongst the likes of all those clever priests?”
Joe looked down at his black shiny school shoes and shrugged. “I . . . I don’t really know.”
“I don’t think I’ve been in Dublin more than half a dozen times in me life,” his father elaborated, “and that was enough. Cars and people everywhere, and the price of everythin’ in the shops! Sure, ye couldn’t look at anythin’, far less buy it.”
“Sure Joe won’t be anywhere near the shops and cars,” Molly cut in hastily, lest the boy should have fears setting in at the last minute. “It’s the grandest seminary in Dublin. Father Higgins said it himself. Isn’t that right, Maggie?”
“Indeed it is,” Maggie called from the kitchen, where she was carefully cutting up a newly baked currant cake, which would be handed round when the priest arrived. She came into the parlour, where some of the adults were seated on straight-backed chairs, and others on a highly polished, folded-up settle bed. Tara sat, unusually quiet, on her grandfather’s knee, with her thumb in her mouth. On this unheard-of occasion, Joe was allowed to sit on the wine, velvet-upholstered rocking chair, which had belonged to the aunty who had left the house to the two sisters.
“Joe’s a lucky boy to have the chance of such a good education.” Maggie said to the group, then she nodded over to Noel. “Your granda had high hopes of going to a seminary when he was a boy, but there was no one in the family who could afford to send him there. That’s the truth – isn’t it, Noel?”
“That was a long time ago,” Noel said quietly, shifting Tara onto his other knee. “And it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Well for it!” Shay laughed out loud. “Where would me and Mick and the rest of us be, if you’d gone in for the priesthood? What d’you say, Mick?”
Mick grinned and rubbed his hands together in embarrassment – but he said nothing as usual.
Molly shook her head, her mouth laughing but her eyes serious. “There was never any fear of you having any vocation, Shay. And if you had, God help the parish that would have been landed with you!”
“What’s this I’m missing about parishes and priests?” a voice beloved by Molly and Maggie said from the half-opened front door. It was Father Higgins.
The atmosphere in the house became distinctly tense. Shay straightened his tie, and Joe moved out of the chair to offer it to the Parish Priest.
“Good man yourself!” the priest said, giving the young boy a pat on the head. “You’ll do fine in the seminary if you keep up your manners.” He sank down into the rocking chair. “Sure, isn’t this the happiest day there ever was for the Flynn family?”
“Indeed it is!” the two elderly sisters chorused, while Noel nodded his head slowly and Shay and Tessie grinned ingratiatingly at the priest, as they did with anyone they considered to be their ‘better’.
Father Higgins graciously accepted the china cup of tea that was thrust into his hands, and the plate of buttered soda bread and currant cake that was placed on a little table by his left elbow. “Currant cake!” he exclaimed in mock delight. “You ladies have certainly risen to the occasion today.”
Molly’s heart soared and her cheeks flamed at the priest’s compliment, while Maggie scurried about refilling empty cups and offering the celebratory cake to everyone else, now that the priest had been attended to.
“Do you know something, Joe?” Father Higgins said, wiping a stray crumb from his black jacket. “I have a feeling – a very strong feeling – that your mother is watching down on you from heaven today.”
A gasp went around the room. For the first time during the proceedings, Tara Flynn’s ears pricked up, and her eyes travelled to the ceiling, as though expecting to see her dead mother’s face smiling down.
“I have a feeling,” the priest elaborated in the same tone he used for his sermon at Sunday mass, “that she is celebrating with the family today. Celebrating the fact that her son – Joseph Flynn – has been chosen to join the priesthood.”
All eyes descended on Joe, who shifted uncomfortably in his new uniform. The shirt was rubbing against his neck, and the elastic garters that his Auntie Maggie had made to hold his socks up were pinching him because they were too tight.
For the hundredth time that afternoon, he ran a finger under his collar to ease the chafed skin, and said another silent prayer that he would like the seminary, and not get teased by the other pupils, as he had been at National School in Tullamore.
Joe had always been different from the other children his own age. When the other boys were out kicking football and going to the cinema, he had been at home quietly reading his books and playing the piano in the musty, damp parlour.
He hoped and prayed with all his eleven-year-old heart that things would be better in the seminary, and that the other boys who were training to be priests would be nicer than the ones in his school.
Several cups of tea and half an hour of awkward chat later, Father Higgins and Joe waved goodbye to the Flynn family and an assembly of neighbours, and set off in the priest’s car for the seminary in Dublin. The two spinsters’ feelings swung from elation because of Joe’s great public send-off, and abject misery every time they thought of the big void he would leave in their daily life.
“D’you think Joe will settle in all right in the seminary?” Tessie asked, as she and Shay walked back to their house.
Shay shrugged, loosening his tie and opening the top button on his shirt. “You wouldn’t know what’s in that fella’s mind,” he said. “You’d never really get to know him. He was a bit of a mammy’s boy, and he did nothing but cry for weeks when she died. That’s why Molly and Maggie took him. They said he needed a woman to mind him more than Tara did.”
Tessie pulled her cardigan across her ample chest. “You wouldn’t believe Tara and Joe were brother and sister. They don’t look a bit alike, Tara with the red curly hair and him with the black straighter hair. And they have different ways altogether.” She stopped when they reached the corner of their road. “You know, Shay,” Tessie said quietly, “I sometimes feel a bit guilty when I think about Joe and Tara. Maybe if we hadn’t got married, you might have had more time with them. It’s sad for them both to be livin’ with elderly people, and not having a mother or a father to see to them.”
Shay shrugged again. “I’ve done my best by them both – how many fathers can say that their son has gone to be a priest? Molly and Maggie are good to Joe. Did you see the way they had him dressed up? And everythin’ in the finest of material too.”
“What about Tara?” Tessie said. “I felt pity for the poor child, sitting up on her grandfather’s knee. It’s sad to think of her with no womankind in that cottage. How will she manage when she gets older, and she has no woman to talk to?”
“Tara’s grand,” Shay said, feeling uncomfortable with the conversation. For all he had an ever-increasing houseful of children and was on to his second wife, he felt lost when presented with any kind of a problem. “It’s her own choice to be living with me father – we gave her a fair crack at our house, and the little divil wouldn’t stay.” He paused for a moment. “But if you like, we could always encourage her to come back to our house again.”
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“You could go across next weekend and see yer father about it,” Tessie said. “They can’t blame you then for not asking. Even if she doesn’t want to come, our consciences would be clear.”
“Grand,” Shay agreed, for the sake of peace. Tara was fine where she was. Sure, didn’t she have her own room and half-decent furniture and everything? She wouldn’t take kindly to being put into a room with Tessie’s children again. She hadn’t taken to it the first time, and she was unlikely to take to it now. She was that determined she wouldn’t sleep with the others, that they had ended up making up a bed on the floor for her. Sure, Tara had everything she needed out in Ballygrace. At his father’s cottage they had plenty of milk and eggs, and butter and spuds, without having to buy them at the shops in Tullamore like he had to do. Many’s the night Shay wished he could just go out to the cow and bring in a pitcher of milk, instead of having to find the money to pay for it. And he was often glad to bring a bit of butter or a bag of spuds or carrots back from his father’s place, when he visited Tara at the weekends. Every little helped to make the wages go that bit further.
Tara was far better off living in the cottage in Ballygrace, Shay decided. He found it hard going feeding all the little mouths that he had in Tullamore, without adding her healthy appetite to them. If the truth be told, if he had to make the choice again, he would have stayed in the cottage himself and forgotten the idea of a second marriage.
He had been well off then, with his father and Mick – and he didn’t know it.
It was a terrible pity, that in order to get a bit of sport with a woman, you had to be shackled with all the other responsibilities that went with marriage. Shay shook his head. Men were the greatest eedjits going – led by their mickeys instead of their heads.
“What are you muttering and shakin’ yer head about now?” Tessie suddenly demanded.
“Nothin’,” Shay replied. “Sure, I was only trying to remember the words of an ould song.”
Tara Flynn Page 3
