House of Memories

by Taylor, Alice

  “And so it might well be,” Jack told her.

  “Now, Jack, you know and I know that if you put your back teeth into it you will make it work,” she told him.

  “Kate girleen, my back teeth are getting a bit worn down now for big projects,” he warned.

  “Yerra go on, Jack, you know that you love a challenge, and I’ll be right behind you on this one. Between the two of us we could turn water into wine.”

  “We might well need a miracle or two along the way,” he smiled, but he was secretly glad that Kate was showing such interest in the undertaking. He felt in his bones that he was right about Danny moving back into Furze Hill, but her encouragement made him feel more positive.

  “When are you going to meet up with Danny?” she asked.

  “I hadn’t thought that out yet,” he said slowly. “Do you think that I should go to him or wait until he comes to me?”

  “You know, it might be nice to offer,” Kate told him. “Isn’t it always nice when somebody holds out a helping hand instead of waiting for you to ask?”

  “You might be right,” he agreed. “He wouldn’t think that I was putting my nose into his business now, would he?”

  “Not at all,” Kate assured him. “Poor Danny has his back to the wall, and I’d say that any offer of help would be like manna in the desert.”

  “Right! I’ll walk over there some evening this week after the cows, and we’ll see how things go from there.”

  “Now that that’s settled, Jack, I’m going to make tea for the two of us. This farm planning is thirsty work,” Kate told him, going to the dresser and taking down two china cups and putting milk and sugar on to a tray. When he attempted to get up to make the tea she told him, “Stay where you are now, Jack, and I’ll tend you for a change.”

  As they sat by the fire in companionable silence, he saw that Kate was not her usual chirpy self. He had been so intent on Furze Hill that he had not noticed until now.

  “How are things with you, Kate?” he inquired.

  “Thought that you’d never ask,” she told him ruefully, “though I should not be bringing you my troubles when you are so taken up with Furze Hill.”

  “Kate girleen, there are no troubles in my life more important than yours,” he told her warmly.

  “You know something, Jack, I have always known that,” she said, putting her hand over his, “and it has turned you into my father confessor. When I have a problem, the first person that I think of sharing it with is you. Maybe not so good for you but great for me. But this problem is more David’s than mine, though of course when he’s upset so am I.”

  “So what’s causing this upset?” he asked gently.

  “Martha,” she told him grimly.

  “Martha?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

  “Well, maybe not on the surface, but without a doubt she‘s behind it,” Kate said, and she told him about the letter from Rodney Jackson.

  “So you think that Martha is up to her old tricks?” he asked. “And we thinking that all that was behind us.”

  “Could I be wronging her?” Kate asked doubtfully.

  “Hard to answer that now,” he told her. “Martha and I have worked side by side with years in Mossgrove, and just when I think that I have her measure, she throws a surprise punch out of the blue. Though since Matt Conway’s death I think that she has calmed down a lot. It was as if she buried some demons with him.”

  Later, when Kate had gone home, he went down into his little parlour and looked across the valley at Furze Hill. The high cliff over Yalla Hole was a pale bite at the bottom of the high field. The old house lay buried in the trees. Bringing it back to life was one half of his plan, and he was glad to have discussed it with Kate. But he had not told her the full story. The time was not right.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DANNY STOOD INSIDE his kitchen window and looked across the valley at Mossgrove. It was everything that he wished for this place: a fine, well-kept house surrounded by large green fields. He looked around at the small, drab kitchen with its stained walls. From as far back as he could remember, they had had buckets in strategic corners to catch the drop-down when it rained. When the old fellow died, the girls had cleaned it up as best they could, but there was no money to do any more. His mother had been so run down and exhausted that he was glad when the girls had insisted that she go back to Dublin with them, and she had not come home since. Now he kept everything that he needed on the kitchen table, which reduced housework to a minimum. All his energies were directed into the farmyard and the farm. If only he could get going, he had such plans for this place. His aim was to make it like Mossgrove. He felt that he knew every inch of the place across the river because Shiner was always talking about it. Peter and Shiner worked there like brothers, and Peter never “acted the big man”, as Shiner termed it. But, of course, Martha Phelan cracked the whip over the two of them, or at least she tried from what he gathered from Shiner. But she did not cross Jack, because as everyone in Kilmeen knew Jack was the real farmer in Mossgrove.

  So wrapped up in his thoughts that he never heard the footsteps coming across the yard, he swung around at the sound of the voice behind him.

  “Danny lad, can I come in?” Jack said quietly from outside the open door.

  Danny could hardly believe that Jack Tobin was actually standing here after all the trouble between the two families. This small, wiry man in his tweed cap was synonymous with Mossgrove and the Phelans, and it had been his father’s aim in life to destroy them both.

  “Jack,” he said in confusion, “I can’t believe you came.”

  For days he had been trying to pluck up the courage to go to see Jack, although he was afraid that Jack would find it very hard to help him after all that his father had done to them in Mossgrove. But now Jack was here.

  “Come in, come in,” he said eagerly, pulling out a chair.

  “I was half afraid that you might think that I was pushing my nose into your business, so it’s good to be made feel welcome,” Jack said in a relieved tone, coming into the kitchen and sitting into a wobbly súgán chair.

  “But sure, of course, you’re welcome,” Danny told him gladly, “because even though Kate said you’d help me, I was afraid that after all that had happened over the years you might not want to.”

  “All water under the bridge now, lad,” Jack assured him, looking out the window, “and do you know, I seldom see Mossgrove from across the river.”

  “And it looks good,” Danny said ruefully. “I couldn’t tell you how often I have stood here and envied you all over there.”

  “Well, lad, maybe we can turn things around here so that in time you will be proud of Furze Hill,” Jack told him.

  “Even hearing it called Furze Hill makes me feel better,” Danny said. “Nobody ever called it that only my grandmother, and she always had such pride in her voice when she spoke of the old days here.”

  “She was a great woman,” Jack assured him. “Went through rough times with your grandfather, but she never lost her spirit.”

  “She was too good for him, wasn’t she?” he asked.

  “She was,” Jack told him. “She fell from a high rookery, as old man Phelan used to say.”

  Since his father’s death Danny had a growing need to know more about his grandmother and how things had been in Furze Hill in her day. It was as if the roots of his own story stretched back to hers. Now here was a man who must have known her in her younger days and might even remember Furze Hill before it got swallowed up in briars and furze bushes. Jack was sitting at the side table looking out the window; Danny stacked some of the ware out of their way and took the chair at the head of the table. This had been his father’s chair, and since his death Danny had found that if he sat in any other chair, the image of his father was still in this chair.

  “Have you any memory of Furze Hill before it got grown over?” he asked Jack eagerly.

  “Strange thing is that if you had asked me that a week ago I wo
uld have said no, but when I was here last Sunday…”

  “Were you here last Sunday?” he asked in surprise.

  “I was, I’m ashamed to say,” Jack told him, “but I wanted to walk around and try to work out some kind of a feasible plan before you came to me. The peculiar thing was that when I stood outside the old gate down there a memory came back to me of standing in the same spot with my mother when I must have been a garsoon and looking in across a lovely garden at an ivy-clad house.”

  “God, imagine that!” Danny said with delight. “So it was lovely. Nana always said that it was a beautiful place, but I sometimes wondered if it was wishful thinking on her part.”

  “Oh, it was no wishful thinking,” Jack assured him. “Your grandmother was not one for wishful thinking. She was a strong, factual woman who weathered some storms in her day.”

  “What was she like when she was younger?” he asked curiously.

  “A beauty, with red hair like Kitty. But she was completely spoilt and stubborn as a mule. Molly was an only child and there was no shortage of money, so she got everything that she wanted. She was born when your great-grandparents were pushing on a bit, so when she began to go a bit wild she was more than they could handle. But, of course, marrying your grandfather turned her whole life upside down.”

  “He was very mean to her?” Danny asked hesitantly.

  “Dog rough! The Barrys were fine people and the Conways were rough,” Jack proclaimed, and then as if to soften his pronouncement, he continued, “but don’t you ever forget, Danny, that the blood of the Barrys runs through your veins.”

  “And what about the Conway side of the house?” Danny asked.

  “You’re a Barry,” Jack told him firmly. “You even look like them. The same fine, tall cut of them with the same rich, red hair. But Rory is all Conway — swarthy, black and mean. Some of the others are probably a mixture, but you are a Barry; always remember that.”

  “Jack, are you very interested in bloodlines?” Danny asked tentatively.

  “I suppose I am,” Jack admitted, smiling ruefully. “Comes with the territory, because in farming you are for ever watching pedigree and breeding in pure-bred cows and horses, and it always tells in the end. You can’t make a racehorse out of a donkey, Danny. If it was Rory was here now, I would not even bother to cross the river, because it wouldn’t be worth my while. It would be your father all over again.”

  “Rory is my other worry,” Danny told him, “because, as you probably guessed, I don’t own this place, and he is the only one who wants to make trouble. All the others have signed off their claim, but not him. So I’m going to have trouble with Rory, and because he’s the oldest he feels that he is entitled to the place.”

  “Well, laddie, let’s take it step by step. As old man Phelan used to tell me, ‘Worries are often overcome by events.’ So the first step is to get this place up and running.”

  “No small job,” Danny sighed. “I seem to be crawling at a snail’s pace here, and I look across the river and see you all galloping ahead over in Mossgrove. Though Kate said that there were hard times over there as well and that you pulled them through.”

  “Sometimes Kate thinks that I’m better than I am, but the truth is that old man Phelan had solid foundations laid in Mossgrove, and when things collapsed they were always beneath us.”

  “No such foundations here,” Danny told him bitterly.

  “You are wrong there, laddie,” Jack said quietly.

  “I am?” he asked in surprise.

  “The Barrys laid foundations, and we must take Furze Hill back to the Barrys’ time,” Jack told him.

  “But how?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

  “We must begin by opening up the old house,” Jack said.

  “What!” Danny gasped. “But that would cost a fortune, and I don’t even have enough to buy galvanised iron for the barn roof.”

  “You might not even need to buy it,” Jack told him.

  “What are you talking about?” Danny demanded in frustration.

  He was afraid to grasp the hope that Jack was dangling in front of him. Since childhood it had always been his dream to open up Furze Hill, and in her later years his grandmother had fuelled that dream. But in the struggle of recent months, reality had reared its head and the dream had died. Now practical Jack, of all people, was proposing what to him seemed impossible.

  “At first,” Jack said quietly, “I never even thought of going down that road either, but here last Sunday evening the idea came into my head, and the more I thought about it, the more feasible it became. Let me start at the beginning of my plan. You need a new calf house; this one where we are now would be just right, so that would eliminate the building of a new calf house. Then we could resheet the barn with the iron off Furze Hill and reslate the old house.”

  “But with what?” Danny demanded.

  “The slates are stacked up behind it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it was old Edward Phelan who stacked them there, and he told me.”

  “I can’t believe!” Danny gasped.

  His head whirled as Jack outlined his proposals. Was it possible that it could happen? He was almost afraid to allow himself to consider the possibility. But if Jack had worked it out, it must be possible, because Jack was no fool. A little spurt of joy kindled in his heart, and for the first time in years he felt the excitement of anticipation.

  “Come on, lad, and we’ll walk around outside,” Jack said, rising from the battered chair that rocked on its uneven legs as he got up. He went out into the yard, and when he walked as far as the gate, Danny knew that they were going to go through the yard in precise detail.

  “Now, laddie,” Jack said, looking at the piggery, “you’re getting this right anyway, and that’s a beginning.”

  “I love working with stone, but I’m no stonemason,” Danny said ruefully.

  “Maybe not,” Jack told him smiling, “but then neither are pigs, and as long as they are dry and comfortable they are not too worried about stonework, but that door must be a nightmare at feeding time.”

  “That’s for sure,” Danny told him, “but it’s one of the things that I can manage to do without.”

  “I can understand that,” Jack said, “but it all adds hardship to the daily grind, and we must try to ease that.” They were standing outside a dilapidated building with a sunken roof and a rotting door. “Now this hen house needs a major overhaul and extension.”

  Danny nodded in agreement, and then they came back to the poke. Up to now Danny had not looked at it with a view to doing anything with it, but Jack’s plan gave it a whole new aspect. Now he saw it as a potential house for the young calves, and straightaway he could see how suitable it was with its low ceiling and small windows. It could be made dry and the doors cut to make half doors dividing the older calves, and, of course, moving the calves in here would give more space in the cow stalls. That, too, needed an overhaul and extension if he was to increase the herd. Increasing the herd was his priority; a more a substantial milk cheque would be the lifeblood of the farm.

  When they reached the barn, Jack declared, “This barn cannot face another winter in this condition, so that must be the first step.”

  “Hard to know where to begin,” Danny said, scratching his head.

  “I think the place to begin is with the old house,” Jack told him thoughtfully, “because we must find out if the sheet iron off that is good enough for this barn. If it is, well, then that’s where we must begin. If it’s not worth moving, well, then that’s a different story.”

  “God, I hope it’s good enough,” Danny said fervently, “because I think that if moving into Furze Hill was part of the equation, it would make any hardship worthwhile. It has always been my dream.”

  “Well, laddie, we all need dreams,” Jack told him as they walked back to the old arch, “so hold on to that one and we might make it happen.”

  They stood in front of the s
tone arch. To Danny it was an entrance into another world that had always been beyond his reach. His father had tried to make them feel that it was a locked-up hell in there, but he had always felt that it was a lost birthright. Matt Conway had put it out of bounds, and none of them ever disobeyed, terrified of the consequence. But he had often wondered how his grandfather could have so poisoned his father’s mind against his own mother and the Barry family. She, in turn, had despised both of them and must have seen in himself her only chance to redeem the situation. Now he felt the responsibility of her trust.

  “Well, lad, some day you’ll walk through that arch, but at the moment it’s easier to get in the front way,” Jack said and headed off out the yard gate with Danny following. When they reached the old gate, he was surprised to see Jack climb up by the pillar and then disappear in over the wall. He followed, wondering how someone of Jack’s age could have climbed the high wall so quickly and got through the thorny wire. The briars and bushes were almost an impenetrable barrier, but he forced his way along the narrow opening that Jack had created. Jack must have sweated here on Sunday. Laurel leaves slapped his face, and having tripped over a tree stump he kept a watchful eye on the ground; there was no trace of Jack up ahead, but he followed on. The dense shrubbery seemed endless, and overhead trees clothed the whole area in semi-darkness. As he shouldered his way through, long sinuous briars scratched his face. Finally he caught up with Jack just as he reached the wall of the house. It was a strange feeling to be able to touch the house that for so long had been out of bounds. With Danny following, Jack edged along by the wall and then stepped back into an opening that was smothered in streams of ivy pouring down in front of it like dark curtains. He followed Jack into the alcove to the old door, weathered to a soft grey, but when he touched it the wood was firm beneath his fingers.

  “I remember this door,” Jack said quietly. “It was painted blue then.”