Bessie and Tessie – two dumpy little ponies – became the focus of home life in Ballygrace House for the children. Gabriel, a quiet, sensitive boy, found confidence in his physical capabilities through learning to ride, even if both ponies were somewhat over the hill. Madeleine, slightly more adventurous than her brother, took to the saddle like a duck to water. Within a few years a larger horse, Daisy, was added to the stable, ostensibly between both children, but the younger sister was the one to use it most.
The horses and the brightly painted ‘jumps’ scattered over the fields drew great attention from the younger generation in Ballygrace. On warm spring days, when the idea of rambling further afield came into the minds of the children, groups of them made for ‘Ballygrace Castle’ and the excitement of watching as the Fitzgeralds put their ponies through their paces.
* * *
On one particularly warm afternoon in May, Tara Flynn checked her appearance in the old pine wardrobe mirror in her bedroom. She turned this way and that, making sure that the hem on her suit skirt was even. Her Aunty Mona in America – actually a younger cousin of Noel’s – had sent her a box of clothes, and for a change some of the things had fitted her without alterations.
Mona’s daughters had always seemed much older and taller than Tara, but she knew she must be catching up on them, as some of the clothes the thirteen and fourteen-year-olds had grown out of now fitted her.
Tara thought her new suit was lovely, though it was a pity it hadn’t come in time for wearing to church on Easter Sunday, a few weeks ago. Church was the best place to wear new clothes. It was like being on a stage, where everyone could get a good look at you when you walked up the aisle to receive Holy Communion.
The suit was intended for the American summer weather, made from a light silky material, with tiny flowers in blue and yellow on a pale green background. The blouse had a Peter Pan collar and gathered sleeves down to the elbows. It had the loveliest little pearl buttons all the way down the front, and a button on each of the sleeve bands. The skirt swirled down to mid-calf length, now that Tara had carefully lifted and hand-stitched the original hem. Her best cotton ankle socks showed up sparkling white against her cream, open-toed sandals.
She stepped away from the wardrobe to get a better look at herself, and then she smiled. None of the other girls in the class had a suit like this – apart from Madeleine Fitzgerald. And that made Tara Flynn feel very happy.
She wanted to look like the Fitzgeralds – or at least like a guest of the Fitzgeralds. It was very important to her, because she was going to visit their house. It was the first time that Madeleine Fitzgerald had officially asked any of her classmates to come to Ballygrace House, and Tara felt very privileged. Really, she was only going to help her friend with some mathematics homework. The blonde-haired Madeleine had ended up crying in class last week because she couldn’t understand how to multiply and divide fractions.
Being humiliated by the teacher in front of the whole class had been bad enough, but having to go home and tell her father that she was having problems at school was worse. Tara and Biddy had comforted Madeleine during their dinner-break, although Biddy had got even more sums wrong than the upset girl.
“My father will stop my riding lessons if I don’t pass the test next week!” Madeleine had wailed. “He went mad at my last test marks . . . he said I wasn’t concentrating enough in school because my mind was full of horses.”
“I’ll help you,” Tara had offered. “You could come to my house after school and I’ll go over the fractions with you.”
Madeleine shook her head frantically. “No . . . no. I’m not allowed to visit any houses in Ballygrace.” She had paused, not wishing to reveal anything about her father’s attitude which might offend her schoolfriend. “Anyway, Mr Molloy will be there with the pony and trap when school comes out, and I can’t keep him back from his gardening, or Daddy will go mad.”
And so, Tara had invited herself up to Ballygrace House, to tutor her friend in fractions, because she was top of the class in both maths and English. Tara was lucky. She seemed to understand everything easily.
The girls had decided upon Saturday afternoon, because Madeleine’s parents and Gabriel would be out of the house then. They were taking her brother for an interview at a boarding school for boys near the Slieve Bloom mountains. After September, Gabriel would leave Ballygrace National School, and would become a student there.
“If you come on Saturday afternoon,” Madeleine said, “we can have some cakes and lemonade while you show me how to do the sums.”
Tara brushed her red curly hair, which had now grown well past her shoulders. When she was younger, her granda had made her keep it on the short side because it was easier to manage. “You can grow it whatever way you like when you’re old enough to look after it yourself,” he had told her.
Tara had learned how to wash and brush her hair until it shone like burnished gold, and how to plait it and tie it up in a bun for school. It was simple, she thought, how you could learn new things when you put your mind to it. Tara put her brush back on the dressingtable beside its matching comb and mirror.
She checked that her bed was tidy, and then straightened the few things on her rickety old dressing-table. She wondered what Madeleine’s bedroom would look like. It would be a lot bigger and a lot grander than her little room. In fact, the whole of her granda’s cottage would probably fit into Madeleine’s bedroom.
She came back into the kitchen, and threw a few more sods of turf on the fire. She would be in trouble with her granda if she let the fire go out. It was the one thing he went mad about – especially on a Saturday. Mick baked the soda bread in the evening, to have it fresh for breakfast on the Sunday morning after Mass.
Everything was prepared for making the dinner when she came back in. There was a pot of stew already cooked this morning, and the potatoes and carrots were scrubbed, ready for boiling when she came back from Ballygrace House. She had got up early and cleaned the cottage from top to bottom in preparation for her afternoon out – and so that her granda couldn’t complain that she’d neglected the housework.
Tara gave a little sigh as she closed the door of the cottage behind her. Madeleine Fitzgerald wouldn’t have done any housework this morning. She had probably lain in bed for hours, reading books and comics, and then had her breakfast brought upstairs on a silver tray.
Tara would absolutely love a house with stairs in it. Apart from Doyle’s shop in Ballygrace, she’d never been upstairs in a house before. If you came in looking for something like thread, Mrs. Doyle often said, “Run upstairs, and you’ll find a box of coloured thread in the front room.”
It was only yesterday that Tara had gone into the shop looking for green thread, and had been sent upstairs to look for it. The rooms in Doyle’s house were really just an extension of the shop, because they were full of boxes and tea chests. Even their kitchen and bedrooms – which were disappointingly furnished like her granda’s rooms – were full of the boring boxes.
After closing the cottage door, Tara went round the back of the house to check on her chickens, and the three baby goslings that her granda had bought her at the market earlier in the spring. He had told her that she could sell any eggs they didn’t use, and keep the money for herself. The goslings would be reared until Christmas, when they would have a goose for themselves, and give one to the aunties in Tullamore and the other to Shay and Tessie. Tara was determined to save any money she made from the eggs. When she had a bit saved, she planned to dip into it, and buy some nice clothes from a new shop that had opened in Tullamore.
As Tara started on the mile and a half walk to her friend’s house, she wondered what Ballygrace House would look like inside. She imagined that it would have a big staircase and lots of fancy rooms with real carpets on the floor. It would be exactly the sort of house that Tara was going to have when she was older. She planned to study hard at school, and then get a good job in Tullamore or maybe even Dubli
n.
Her heart suddenly sank. What would her granda and Mick do if she went to live in Dublin? They were used to her doing all the woman’s work in the house now. How would they manage without her? Her granda was getting older . . . he was over seventy now. He could drop dead any day!
The frightening thought made Tara walk all the quicker. What would she do if her granda died? Who would want her then? Not her father, that’s for sure. He had enough to do, looking after the children living with him and Tessie. And anyway, Tara wouldn’t want to live with them. Sometimes her father and his wife argued and she couldn’t stand it.
Life with her granda and Mick was more peaceful, and she could come and go with her friends as long as she did her work about the house first. She hadn’t mentioned anything about going to the Fitzgeralds’ house, because she knew her granda would stop her. She couldn’t work out why he didn’t like them, but for some reason he seemed to have a grudge against them. He was always making comments about Madeleine’s father thinking he was ‘God Almighty, himself’.
As she side-stepped a muddy bit of the path, Tara thought how lucky Madeleine was living in a big house with servants, as well as having a mother and a father. She wondered if she would see Gabriel at the house, or maybe out riding his horse. Madeleine had said something about them taking him to see his new school. Tara quickened her steps – he might not have left the house yet.
The road out to Fitzgeralds’ was very quiet today. She had hardly met anyone, just the odd ass and cart and a few people on bicycles. Tara was hoping to get a bicycle herself for her next Christmas and birthday present together.
Her father had laughed out loud when she told him that she wanted one the other week. “In yer dreams, Tara!” he’d said, folding up his newspaper. “Sure I can’t afford to get me own bike fixed for work, never mind buyin’ one for the likes of you. You can start savin’ for one out of yer first week’s wages.” He’d pointed at Tara’s two half-sisters. “Have you any idea how much milk and bread we go through in this house? I’ve all this crowd to feed, plus helpin’ out with you and Joe. New bikes are the last thing I’ll be buyin’.”
Tara had flounced out of the house, feeling badly done by.
When she had gone, Tessie had rounded on Shay. “Maybe you could afford a bike for the girl if you didn’t spend so much on beer!” She pointed to her swollen stomach. “And maybe I could have afforded a new winter coat this year if there wasn’t another little Flynn on the way! Between your drinking and your carry-on in bed every other night – we’ll never be the penny better off.”
Shay had flushed at his wife’s coarse talk, and stuck his head back in the newspaper. It was no good arguing with Tessie when she was like this. Every feckin’ time there was a child on the way, there was no living with her. It seemed as though she was only gettin’ back to normal, givin’ him a bit of wifely affection, when she was down the same road again, expectin’ another one. He wondered again, as he did often, why he hadn’t stayed with his father and brother, and lived the lucky life of a bachelor.
Thoughts of a bicycle were forgotten as Tara enjoyed her walk to Fitzgeralds’ house on this sunny spring day. The thrushes were singing and the swallows were making dizzy circles in the sky, and then suddenly swooping down low. She walked along, looking at the fields of yellow gorse and the splashes of wild yellow primroses.
Tara loved flowers. When she grew up and had a fine big house, she was going to have flowers everywhere. She had nagged her granda last year, and he had put a few rose bushes and some nice shrubs round the front of the cottage. Some of the rose bushes had grown up the wall and trailed lots of lovely pink scented roses round her bedroom window. This year, he had planted some pansies and petunias, and had bought Tara a watering can when he was at the Tullamore fair a few weeks ago. They were going to have the nicest garden in Ballygrace if Tara had her way.
Tara suddenly noticed a cyclist coming towards her, and the nearer the rickety old bike came, the quicker her heart started to pound. She looked to the field on her left, and then the wood on her right. Then she looked back again as the figure started gesturing towards her, and a voice called out “Tara!” very loudly. There was nowhere for her to escape. She had to carry straight on. To the grilling that her father would give her, for being so far away from home, on her own.
“Where the hell d’you think you’re goin’?” he called, swinging one leg off his bike and coming to a halt beside her.
“Nowhere . . .” Tara heard herself say defensively.
“Nowhere?” Shay jeered. “She says she’s goin’ nowhere and her dressed up to the knockers!”
Tara looked at her father from under lowered eyelids. Who was he to question her? He didn’t live with her or look after her. He had no business asking her anything.
“What d’you think yer granda will have to say if he catches you round here?” Shay asked, as if reading her thoughts.
She took a deep breath, and then said in a haughty tone: “I’m only goin’ to visit my friend. Granda lets me visit my friends any time.”
“Does he now, begod? And does he happen to know who the friend is, that yer visiting today?”
“He was up the bog with Mick when I left . . . so I hadn’t time to tell him.”
“Indeed!” Shay said, holding his head to the side “So he doesn’t know that you’re visitin’ the Fitzgeralds?”
Tara flushed with annoyance at being caught out. “How do you know where I’m goin’?” she said cheekily.
“It doesn’t take much of a brain to work that out. Where else would you be goin’ around here?”
She tilted her chin defiantly. “I’ve been asked to visit Madeleine Fitzgerald, to help her with her homework.”
“And who asked you to help her?”
There was a little pause. “She did. Madeleine’s havin’ a lot of trouble with her homework, and she’s gettin’ into bother at home about it.”
“Is she now?” said Shay. “And what business would that be of yours?”
Tara gave a great big sigh and hugged the schoolbooks tight to her chest. “Sure I’m her best friend.”
“And does her father and mother know all about this? Did they ask ye to come up to the big house and help her?”
Tara shrugged. “I don’t know if she’s told them.”
Shay clapped his cap back on his head. “Up here,” he said, rapping his knuckle on the crossbar of his bike. “Get up here, and I’ll take you back home before yer granda knows you’re even missing. We’ll be home in a quarter of an hour, and there’ll be no more said about it.”
Tara backed away, holding the books behind her back. “I’ll not go home!” she said in a rising tone. “I’ve come this far and I’m not goin’ home ‘til I’ve visited my friend!”
Shay reached towards her, trying to keep his bike steady at the same time. “Come on now, Tara, and don’t be givin’ me any trouble. I’ve no time to waste. I’m supposed to be up the bog wi’ yer granda and yer uncle Mick. You can come up and help us foot the turf. All the other girls and lads your age will be up there.” He gave a conspiratorial wink. “Trick-acting and messin’ about on the bog would be better craic than goin’ up to Ballygrace House.”
Tara backed off further, her face determined. “Madeleine’s waiting on me. I won’t be long . . . only an hour or little more. I’ll have the meat and potatoes ready for ye all when you’re finished for the evening.” She turned in the drive of Ballygrace House. “I’ve some eggs and butter put by for you and Tessie an’ I’ll give ye them later.”
Shay shook his head and gave a deep sigh. “Fine feathers don’t make fine birds, Tara,” he called, repeating one of his father’s proverbs. “Yer fancy clothes won’t make the Fitzgeralds think any more of ye.” He pointed upwards. “The Fitzgeralds are up there with the Quality.” Then he pointed to the ground. “And we’re down there with the ordinary people. They’re only interested in you, if you’re off the right connections. If you
have big money and plenty of land. We have neither, so yer only wastin’ yer time. Ould Fitzgerald will run you, the very minute he claps eyes on you.”
Tara started to walk up the rhododendron-lined drive. “I’m just helpin’ Madeleine with her homework,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”
“You will,” said Shay, pushing off on his bike, “and yer granda will be seeing you, too.” He gave a salute of farewell. “Good luck to you!”
Anger and a determination to distance herself from her interfering father put a spring in Tara’s step. Before she realised it, she was halfway up the Fitzgerald’s drive. She suddenly stopped dead, an uneasy feeling creeping over her. What would she do when she got to the house? Supposing Madeleine’s mother and father hadn’t gone out? What would they say if they saw her?
All the thoughts and fears she had pushed to the back of her mind now stared her in the face. Her determination to see inside this huge elegant house, and to see with her own eyes the lives that the Quality led, now drained away. Just looking up the rhododendron-lined path made Tara feel nervous.
She stood debating whether to carry on, or go back as her father had advised. Then, a loud roaring noise coming from the direction of the big house suddenly startled her. Instinctively, Tara moved backwards into the rhododendrons.
The sound got louder and louder, and then a few moments later, a large shiny motor car came noisily down the drive towards her. Suddenly realising that it was Gabriel and his parents in the car, Tara pressed further back into the greenery. The bushes scraped against her bare arms and legs, and then a particularly thick branch made her drop the schoolbooks. The nearer the car came, the harder her heart thumped.
Although Madeleine hadn’t actually said it, Tara knew that her parents would not be pleased if they saw her anywhere near the house. Tara also knew that everything her own father had said was true about them – and true about her. But, as the car hurtled past her, Tara knew that she would continue up the drive and walk to the front door of Ballygrace House. She felt almost compelled to go, as though the house were beckoning her inside. Beckoning her to come and look at all the nice things she was missing, living the life of a poor child from a poor family.
Tara Flynn Page 6
