Tara Flynn

by Geraldine O'Neill

  Father Daly also added that he hoped that she was behaving herself like a good Catholic girl. He reminded her about the evils of the pubs and the clubs in England, and said not to forget to attend Mass and confession. Going to confession he underlined in his letter, was particularly important. Even priests were tempted by sin.

  Confessing regularly, he wrote, gave everyone a clean page on a regular basis.

  Biddy turned over on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. Tonight at work, she was going to tell Fred she had made up her mind about her Christmas present. This afternoon when they were in Stockport, he had stood outside a jeweller’s shop, pointing out diamond engagement rings. When he was met with complete silence from Biddy, he suddenly changed tack and started suggesting real gold watches or fancy charm bracelets instead.

  Most girls started off with a bracelet with one or two charms, and then added the others as they could afford them – or received the little trinkets as gifts. Fred told Biddy that he would buy her a bracelet so heavy with charms that she wouldn’t be able to lift her wrist up. He could easily afford it he bragged. All the money he had made from wrestling – the money he never had the time to spend – was gathering interest in a local building society. The money was waiting patiently, until he found the right girl, to put down as a deposit on a nice little two-up, two-down.

  He had then gone on to say that maybe she would like to go out to Preston with him over the Christmas holidays, to meet some of his family. Fred was the youngest of a family of five, and his parents were getting on a bit.

  Biddy had told him that although they were courting, she didn’t want him to think that she was really serious about him at the moment. She said it might be best if they left visiting his family for a bit longer, and if they bought each other something small for Christmas, and not too personal. After all – Biddy pointed out – she wasn’t even twenty yet.

  Fred had muttered. “I was only thinking . . .,” and then blushed to the roots of his thinning hair.

  Now – after receiving Father Daly’s letter – Biddy knew the answer she should have given Fred Roberts. She realised now that she needed this big, kind bear of a man to act as a barrier between herself and the awful – sometimes, unspeakable – things in life. She had already seen the effect Fred’s presence had on the lads in Ruby’s. They now looked at her with respect, and where they had often laughed and jeered at her, they now took her opinions more seriously. They treated her more like Tara now – more like the decent girl she always wanted to be.

  With Fred by her side, Father Daly would have to take Biddy more seriously too. He would soon realise that when she said ‘no’ she meant it. If he persisted in his ungodly attentions, then he would have to face the consequences.

  When she arrived in the Grosvenor for her eight o’clock shift tonight, she would tell Fred that she would be delighted to choose an engagement ring for her Christmas present. She would also tell him that she would be proud to marry him, as soon as he liked.

  Then, tomorrow morning, she would sit down and write a letter to Father Daly, telling him all about her wonderful news.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Having barely recovered from the shock of her father’s arrival, Tara received two more surprises the week before Christmas. One was unbelievably wonderful, and the other rather disturbing.

  A huge lorry had appeared outside Tara’s house around nine o’clock on the Saturday morning. She was in the process of drying her hair when one of her nursing lodgers came tearing upstairs calling that Tara had to come to the door to sign for a delivery.

  “Tell them it’s a mistake,” Tara called back from her bedroom. “I haven’t ordered any furniture.”

  The man at the door was insistent. The item most definitely had to be delivered to a Miss Tara Flynn. He had winked at the nurse, saying that it was a surprise Christmas present.

  Eventually, a harassed Tara came flying down the stairs in her dressing-gown. “I did not order anything,” she said breathlessly. “It must be a mistake.”

  But it was no mistake. The black-polished baby grand piano, decorated with a huge pink ribbon and a bundle of mistletoe, was addressed to Tara Flynn.

  “There you go, love,” the delivery man said, handing her a fancy envelope. “That’ll solve the mystery for you.” He raised his eyebrows. “And when we’ve brought in the piano, you can sign the documents and we’ll be on our way. I’ve a boss who times every bloomin’ delivery.” He motioned to the other men in the lorry to get started. Moving a grand piano – albeit a baby grand – was a delicate and intricate manoeuvre.

  Tara opened the envelope with shaking hands. It was an old-fashioned Christmas card, with a picture of a Victorian family gathered round a piano singing Christmas carols, with the words ‘To a very special person’ inside.

  The handwritten part said: ‘Looking forward to many pleasurable hours, listening to your sweet music . . . Love, Frank.’

  He called round later that evening to check that the piano had been delivered in perfect condition and that it was to Tara’s liking. She ushered him into the dining-room, where the baby-grand piano stood in the huge bay window – as though it had been lovingly crafted with that particular spot in mind.

  “Not being very cultured in the music department,” Frank explained, with that confident smile of his, “I simply asked them to send the best piano they had in the shop.”

  “Oh, Frank!” Tara said, running her hand over the creamy ivory keys – the keys of a brand new piano she had never expected to own for years. “It’s far too expensive . . . I really feel –”

  “Do you like it?” Frank said, his eyes dark and serious.

  Tara looked up at him, her own green eyes shining more brightly than ever before. “Good God! Of course . . .”

  “Then in that case,” he said simply, “you must have it.”

  And then later, after all the talk about the piano had been exhausted, Frank sat Tara down on the matching black-polished stool, and told her the bad news.

  “I have to go home for Christmas,” he said, looking down at the pattern on the large fringed rug. “I’m booked on a flight on the twenty-third.”

  Tara’s heart sank like a stone. “But that’s only a few days away . . .” She looked at his troubled face. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “My mother,” he said quietly, “she’s very bad. She’s had a couple of small strokes in the last week or two. It’s probably all the business with my sister that’s brought it on.”

  Tara sat in stunned silence. All the weeks she had looked forward to this special Christmas. The first Christmas they would have spent together. She had imagined sparkling winter afternoons where they would go for walks in Bramall Park or maybe they would drive out to the Lake District. Frank had suggested that the other night. Then she had pictured them dining in dimly-lit restaurants with real Christmas trees twinkling in the corner. And then the other evenings – when she had imagined them curled up together in front of a log fire in her sitting-room, and then later perhaps . . . curling up together in the same bed.

  This Christmas, Tara had decided to give herself to Frank. To give herself in the loving, physical way a grown woman gives herself to a grown man. Because she knew now – long before the baby-grand piano had arrived – that, without a shadow of a doubt, she loved Frank Kennedy. It was not been the besotted, girlish love that she had felt for Gabriel Fitzgerald. And, although Frank was certainly handsome and charming, it had not been love at first sight. It had been a slow-burning, gradual kind of love . . . the kind that just crept up quietly on you.

  Frank lifted his head and met her tearful gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice.

  “It’s all right,” Tara told him. “I understand.”

  *  *  *

  Tara’s first Christmas in England, was the strangest Christmas she had ever spent. She rose early and walked down to first Mass. Afterwards, she came back to her empty house, and op
ened three small presents she had been given by Frank, a parcel which her brother Joe had sent, and a card with money from Mick and Kitty.

  ‘Pick yourself something nice’, Kitty had written. ‘You have much better taste than me’.

  She had also written on the card that poor Mrs Kelly, Tara’s old neighbour, had been taken into hospital. If and when she got better, she was expected to move to her daughter’s in Dublin, as she wasn’t fit to be left on her own. Kitty finished by saying the old cottage was all closed up, and looked very lonely.

  Tara fought back tears as she thought of how kind Mrs Kelly had been to her when she was a child, but she pulled herself together, reminding herself that it was Christmas Day.

  Frank’s presents were next. She gasped at the silver and jade green necklace, which reclined in a satin-lined box with matching earrings. ‘To match your unforgettable eyes’ he had written on a small card attached to the box. She then unwrapped a bottle of expensive French perfume, and a box of handmade chocolates. Whatever about his humble Clare origins, Frank Kennedy knew all there was to know about sophistication and style.

  Joe had sent two books by Irish authors. ‘In case you forget your Irish connections!’ was written on his card. Tara was delighted, and planned to start both books later on in the day. There was a letter inside, saying how well Joe had done in his autumn exams, and how he was spending Christmas as usual back in Tullamore. He sounded brighter and better than he had in some of his previous letters, which made Tara feel relieved.

  She smiled as she turned the books over in her hands. Coincidentally, she had sent Joe books as well, but they were music scores that she had come across while in a shop in Manchester.

  She mused to herself a while, thinking how different were the lives she and Joe led. Her thoughts wandered on to consider the vastly different lives that Shay and Tessie’s family led – the mixture of half-brothers and sisters, and step-brothers and sisters. While Tara and Joe had been brought up without their parents, they had been taught and encouraged to read from an early age. Both of them seemed to have been born with a love of books and music, and her granda and his two maiden sisters, had provided the environment for that cultured side to grow.

  There were no signs of any of the young Flynns leaning towards the more artistic side of life, as the elder two did. Tessie – a decent and hard-working mother – could just about manage to put a letter together, and that was the sum of her literary achievements. Shay had long left behind the interest in reading instilled in both him and Mick by their father. In the earlier days of his second marriage, any books he borrowed from his father or the library invariably ended up torn to bits or scribbled on by the kids. Shay gave reading books up as a bad job, settling for the odd edition of the Irish Independent when he was flush and the local weekly paper.

  *  *  *

  Tara was seated at Ruby’s kitchen table with Biddy and Fred, three of the working lads who had not gone home – and her father.

  “Isn’t this grand?” Shay said, grinning at everyone, a paper hat balanced on his black curls, and a well-scraped plate in front of him. He held high his glass of beer. “A toast to the fine cooks!” he pronounced loudly. “That was the best Christmas dinner I’ve ate in me life – and cooked and served by the two loveliest girls in the country!”

  Tara cringed, but smiled and held up her glass along with the others. She knew she should be more grateful to Ruby for asking her, but she would have preferred to spend the day on her own. Unfortunately, Biddy had told the landlady about Frank’s untimely departure to Ireland and she had been railroaded into coming down to Sweeney’s for her Christmas dinner.

  It was very kind of Ruby, but Tara could not help feeling out of place. Biddy and Fred – who had announced their surprise engagement on Christmas Eve – were sitting making sheep’s eyes at one another.

  “You’ll be the next one,” Biddy prophesied, her eyes gleaming with pride at the diamond ring on her left finger and the two bottles of Babycham she had just drunk.

  Tara nearly said, ‘I’m too young for engagements yet,’ but thought better of it, in case Biddy was offended. Instead, she smiled, and let Biddy think she was one up on her, having captured the burly Fred.

  “By the way,” Shay suddenly said, “did I tell you what happened about yer fine friends the Fitzgeralds?”

  Tara’s stomach did a somersault. “No,” she said quietly, “you haven’t mentioned them.”

  “Begod!” Shay said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Well, I meant to tell you, as soon as I arrived.”

  Tara waited patiently, like someone waiting to have a tooth pulled.

  “Well now,” Shay started, “it would seem that the house is to be sold.”

  “Ballygrace House!”

  “Ballygrace House indeed,” he confirmed. “The mother had the other child lately – a boy be all accounts. I think it was not long after the funerals, for she went up to Dublin shortly after it. The young lad – Gabriel – wasn’t that it?”

  Tara’s cheeks flamed. She nodded, willing Shay to hurry up.

  “Well, seemingly,” Shay said, dragging the story out forever, “he was going backwards and forwards from Dublin regularly over the summer. In fact,” Shay pointed his finger accusingly at Tara, “he called out to Mick and Kitty, shortly after the funerals, lookin’ – by all accounts – for your address in England. He said he had something belonging to his poor dead sister – the young mad one – that he wanted to give to you.”

  “I never heard from him,” Tara said. “He never got in touch.”

  Shay shrugged. “Maybe he left somethin’ for you out at the cottage with Kitty – you’d never know. I wouldn’t imagine it would be much. The Quality are renowned for bein’ mean outside of themselves.”

  “You were telling me about Ballygrace House,” Tara urged through gritted teeth. “When did it go up for sale?”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s anythin’ official like, but that’s the talk around the place.”

  “What about the auctioneering offices?”

  “I know nothing about the others – but one in Tullamore is still carryin’ on. I believe they have some young scut down from Dublin runnin’ the place.” He looked over at Ruby. “You know the type, have hardly finished havin’ their arses wiped all, and they think they know it all.”

  “The type that would try to teach their granny how to suck eggs!” the landlady added for good measure.

  Tara struggled on for a few minutes more, trying to get more information out of Shay. But it was like getting blood out of a stone. He had told her all he could remember, and had then launched into a tirade of abuse against the gentry in general. It was a well known fact, he stated, that the gentry had been the downfall of the poor hard-working man in Ireland. Tara bit her tongue once again, amazed that her father had such an inflated opinion of his working capabilities.

  The three lodgers had been in the pub since lunchtime and were struggling to speak in coherent sentences of any great length. The Geordie lad seemed to be having some difficulty getting the festive food from plate to fork, and then in the direction of his mouth.

  This all went unnoticed by Shay and Ruby, who had downed a few drinks earlier on in the sitting-room, while Biddy had basted the turkey and roast potatoes under the proud gaze of Fred.

  Shay had never looked so well. He had spent some of his hard-earned money on a new suit and a shirt and tie, and he had also got a decent haircut. He was well settled in Ruby’s now, and had determinedly stuck with the labouring job out in Preston. “You see, Tara,” he had explained a few days ago, “it wouldn’t be worth me while goin’ over to Tullamore for Christmas. Sure, the money I’d spend on me ticket would cover the few bits and pieces from Santy.” He managed to look downcast for a moment. “Needless to say, I’ll be lonely without Tessie and the childer over the Christmas – but sure, isn’t it solely for their benefit I came over?”

  There were no sig
ns of loneliness about Shay from what Tara could see. He looked more at home in Ruby’s than he’d ever looked in his own house in Tullamore. Thankfully, he hadn’t been the nuisance about her own place, as she had first feared. The frosty-mannered teachers had kept him at bay, and – as Frank had forecast – he was too tired from work in the evenings to be bothering her. Shay assured Tara that he was content enough with a few harmless pints of beer at the weekend with the older lads, or to join Ruby for the odd game of bingo.

  “As long as everything is all right with Tessie,” Tara had ventured.

  “Oh, indeed!” Shay confirmed. “There’s no need to be worryin’ about Tessie. She’s the finest. I phoned her at the hotel last week and she sounded in great oul’ form – great oul’ form altogether!”

  The letter in the Christmas card Tara had received from her stepmother seemed to confirm Shay’s words. Tessie had thanked Tara for the money and gifts for the children, and said between that and the money Shay had sent she’d never been so well off for a Christmas in years. Reading between the lines, it sounded as if Tessie was enjoying the benefits of Shay working in England – both from the money angle and the rest she was having with him not being around the house.

  All seemed well indeed according to both Shay and his spouse. Tara would have liked to have felt reassured by that, but was somehow prevented by the lingering looks that passed between her father and Ruby Sweeney.

  Tara pushed aside her suspicions, pinned a festive smile on her face, and reached for the other end of a cracker that Fred had just thrust in her direction.

  *  *  *

  Although let down by Frank’s absence, Tara found she actually enjoyed the peace and quiet on her own. The days slipped away in a melody of beautiful music played on her wonderful piano at any time of the day which took her whim. The feelings which ran through her as she played her favourite pieces gave her great comfort. The piano became her substitute lover, bringing a surge of delight every time she walked into the room and beheld its beauty framed in the large bay window. Nothing – not even the day she realised she owned the house – compared with the pleasure Tara derived from owning such a superior, beautiful instrument.