House of Memories

by Taylor, Alice

  “My God, Bill,” she said in awe, “no germ would dare raise his cheeky head in here, and to think that I dared to question Ellen’s wisdom.”

  “You were lucky that you didn’t get a belt of a brush,” he laughed.

  “I almost did,” she told him as she walked around in wonder, admiring the laden dressers where everything sparkled in the glow of the range, and then went into the long narrow pantry where the shelves were stacked with pots and pans that Ellen had scoured to perfection. She had been delighted to find most of the old pots and ware still in the kitchen. They had probably been unsuitable for the open fire in the poke, and of course the poke was so tiny that most of the things had to be left behind. It was ironic that in turning the house into a fortress old Rory Conway had guaranteed their survival. Now with this fine kitchen and the range back in action, they were coming into their own again.

  What a dream of a place to work, she thought as she came back into the kitchen and looked around. She envied the woman who would work in this wonderful place. Then she smiled as she thought that it was probably the first time in her life that anyone had ever envied Brigid Conway.

  As the cleaning continued around the house, faded wallpaper emerged, and Kate decided that this would be the colour guide to each room. She noticed that Danny and Bill had got the message loud and clear that their place was outside the front door. Inside it was Ellen who was in charge. Out in the yard, Bill’s two friends had returned, and the farm buildings were being repaired and enlarged. The barn was now reroofed and the piggery was double the size. The hens had moved into luxury accommodation compared to their previous tumbled-down shack. The men had begun at one end of the yard and were working their way around it, and now next in line was the poke. One morning she found Danny viewing the poke thoughtfully, and she said impulsively, “Why don’t we demolish it?”

  “Would it be fierce extravagance, Kate?” he asked worriedly. “As a building there is nothing wrong with it.”

  “Maybe not as a building,” she agreed, “but it’s full of bad memories. I’m not saying that wiping that out will wipe them out, but I think that in some way it might help.”

  She knew what they had all suffered in there, but especially the girls, with whom she had kept in touch as she had been instrumental, with their grandmother, in getting Kitty out. Mary had at first gone to a convent in Dublin, where a cousin of Molly Barry’s was reverend mother, and later Kitty joined her there. Now Mary was teaching and they had their own flat, but Kate still worried how they would survive the abuse they had suffered and had arranged with a friend of hers to keep in touch with them. But now she felt that wiping out the poke might be a good thing for all of them, including Brigid.

  That evening when she came back the poke was razed to the ground. She knew by Danny’s face that it gave him a sense of release that a reminder of all that they had endured was finally gone.

  “The new stable for Rusty and Bessie is going there,” he told her enthusiastically, pointing at the cleared site, “and we’ll use the old stone of this place for the new calf house beside the cows.”

  “Where will you sleep tonight?” she asked, smiling at his delight.

  “The barn,” he told her, grinning at the prospect.

  Gradually, Furze Hill began to emerge from beneath its decades of dust, and shining windows let in the sunlight. Every evening when the women were gone home, Danny, Bill and herself did a tour of the house. Bill was delighted the evening the two fireplaces in the front rooms were revealed in all their simple elegance. He ran his hand lovingly over the white marble of the one in the dining room and grimaced in annoyance that the mirror on the other was, as he had expected, slightly tarnished.

  “Let’s look at it this way, Bill,” she comforted him, “it gives it an aged look.”

  “This house does not need that,” he told her indignantly.

  When the cleaning was finished, she persuaded Danny to bring in a plumber and electrician and have the house wired and plumbed, and the little boxroom on the back landing became a bathroom. She knew that he was more than a little apprehensive about the amount of money they were spending, and on Saturday nights they sat down and added up their figures. It surprised her that he was so reluctant to spend, and she secretly worried that he might turn into a skinflint. But maybe it was understandable, she told herself, that he would have a tight grip on money having been without it for so long. They spent nights planning colour schemes, and he surprised her by how much he remembered of his grandmother’s descriptions, which she kept in mind.

  When the decorating began, the house became a hive of stepladders and white-overalled men. She had brought in Johnny the Post and his brothers, who decorated the houses of the parish for the stations. As this was such a big job, she had told Johnny to bring in his uncles, who painted in Ross, to help them. The window shutters turned from a dull brown to a gleaming ivory, and the oak floors that had absorbed years of dust and grime were polished to a golden hue. Bill was everywhere, seeing that things were done properly, and he moved between the building in the yard and the house. With the departure of Ellen, he was back with a free run of the house. His delight in the restoration of the staircase and the doors was infectious, and he gathered them all into the dining room to view the long table the evening that he had finally got it to his satisfaction.

  The day the decorating was finished, Kate and Danny stood in the front hallway. It was transformed. As Bill had anticipated, the graceful staircase had come alive, and now the polished curved rail carried your eye upwards to the tall window that poured light down into the hall below. The pale grey flagstones complimented the rich oak doors and staircase. They went into the dining room where the white marble fireplace was reflected in the polished wood of the long table. The theme in here was blue, as dictated by the old wallpaper, and Kate had searched the shops in Ross to come as near as possible to the original. Now the embossed blue paper showed up the delicate cornice-work around the ceiling, and she had splurged out on a beautiful chandelier with a glint of blue. She knew on the day that Danny thought it was a step too far, but looking up now he smiled ruefully and admitted, “You were dead right!”

  “Jack always said that you had to pay for quality,” she told him.

  They went into the drawing room, which was bare of furniture but for the black marble fireplace. In here she had replaced the soft rose wallpaper with one that was almost identical. Sunlight shone off the wooden floor. Upstairs the shining floors reflected the cream paintwork, and the sound of their footsteps echoed through the empty house.

  “This house needs furniture,” she told Danny, “but maybe you want to wait until your mother and the girls come home.”

  “They know nothing about all this,” he told her.

  “What!” she demanded.

  “It’s going to be a surprise,” he announced.

  “They’ll die of shock,” she declared.

  “Well, Mary might have an inkling that something is going on, because she wanted to come down before they went to see my mother’s sister in London. I put her off and she was a bit suspicious, but my aunt had sent them the tickets and put pressure on them to move once Kitty had her exam done and Mary had her school holidays. She had not seen Mom for years, and they were all so excited about it, that it kind of distracted them.”

  “So will we move on the furniture?” Kate wanted to know.

  “But where will we get it?” Danny asked nervously, “and would it cost a fortune?”

  “Not at all,” she assured him. “You can be very lucky at auctions, and we’ll watch out for a parish priest’s auction because they always have quality stuff. Old furniture rooms are great too, and you can get fine pieces there. People are throwing out good stuff, and it’s going much cheaper than the new ply and dye.”

  “But how come?” he asked in amazement.

  “New money, new women, new taste,” she announced.

  “Furniture good enough for this house?” he queri
ed.

  “You’d better believe it,” she told him, delighted at the prospect of old musty furniture rooms and auctions.

  Kate enjoyed introducing Danny to a whole new world, and they spent enjoyable days at auctions where she watched him learn the procedure and develop an eye for a fine item. Soon he was no longer deceived by dust and grease. They got a splendid oak bed for his mother’s room and two brass ones for the girls. Bill came on board if they brought home any piece that was damaged or ruined by paint or poor restoration. He polished the two brass bedheads until they shone, and the transformation that Bill could bring about was a constant source of wonder to Danny, but Kate assured him, “If you get the real thing, you can’t go wrong.”

  Then one day the much-awaited parish priest’s auction arrived when the PP of Ross died. She knew the house because she had visited it years ago with Nellie, to whom he was related. He had been a collector of pictures and nice furniture, and she knew that he would not have sold a thing over the years. She could picture the wonderful oak sideboard that would be perfect with the long table in the dining room of Furze Hill. The morning of the auction her mind was full of excited anticipation.

  From across the breakfast table, David viewed her with amusement.

  “Kate, you look as if you are going on a treasure hunt.”

  “Feels like it,” she assured him blithely, and later as she left the house he called after her, “Have a good day, as Rodney Jackson is for ever wishing me.”

  “You can bet on it,” she assured him.

  “We could be lucky here,” she told Danny as they went into the impressive parochial house. “If the damn dealers are not here we’re flying.” Amazingly they were not. How had this one escaped them? They usually came like wasps around a jam pot to priests’ auctions. She could not believe her luck when the huge sideboard, which came up early, did not go as high as she had expected, and she almost lost her composure when a row of dining room chairs were knocked down to her at a good price. The chairs matched perfectly the dining room table in Furze Hill.

  While she was inspecting an enormous oak bookcase, she saw Danny searching around for something. This was unusual. Finally he seemed to find it, a heavy gilt-framed picture stacked up with a row of other pictures. She saw him take a note of the number. It was a spectacular frame, but she wondered about the austere bishop behind the glass. Normally she did the bidding, but when the picture came up she told Danny to bid. He had to go a bit more than he had anticipated, and when he hesitated she egged him on, as she knew that the thin woman from Ross who was bidding against him would not keep going. Mrs Hobbs was a seasoned performer and never lost her head. Kate knew from experience that men were more likely to go stubborn at auctions and refuse to be outbid. Sure enough, Mrs Hobbs bowed out and Danny got his picture. It was his first independent purchase.

  “Where are you going to put My Lord Bishop?” she asked.

  “He’s surplus to my requirements,” he told her.

  The bookcase that she had judged ideal for the drawing room was next up. She had seen a well-heeled, middle-aged couple examining it earlier, and sure enough when other bidders dropped out they stuck with her. She had to go more than she had planned to get it.

  “That’s the way it is at auctions,” she told Danny afterwards, “and the secret is not to lose your nerve or your head.”

  When others left they stayed on late at the auction because she had decided that when the parish priest’s bed and bedroom furniture came up she would go for it. It was a wonderful oak bed with two matching wardrobes and a dressing table that she knew in a few years time would be a collector’s item. She was hoping that it might be too big for the houses of most people present, because on the instructions of the deceased it was going as one lot. Wise man, Fr Kennedy, she thought. He wanted his wonderful pieces to stay together and go to a good home, not be split up and scattered around the country. A collector to the end! Because she thought that Danny might put her off, she sent him out to the car for the flask and sandwiches just as the bidding began, and when he came back the bedroom set was his for a fraction of what it was worth. But she felt sure that Fr Kennedy would have been delighted that she had got it.

  She looked forward to the arrival of the parish priest’s furniture to Furze Hill with rising excitement, and the day it came Bill was in his element. As the delivery men unloaded, Kate directed them to the correct locations. She put Danny’s picture under the stairs, and she was glad that he was out the fields as she led the men up to the front right-hand bedroom. The entire bedroom set looked magnificent, and Kate knew that she had struck oil. When she told Bill the price, he whistled in appreciation. Then they walked around the house admiring all the pieces, and she was thrilled at how they complimented the place.

  “No touching up needed with these,” Bill said with relish. “All in mint condition.”

  “Priests’ furniture is always in great nick,” she smiled.

  “You’re getting this place spot on,” Bill told her appreciatively as they stood in the hallway with the doors open into the different rooms. “What’s the secret of being able to get it so right?”

  “Anticipationary visualisation,” she informed him loftily, and laughed heartily when he told her dismissively, “My mother put that outside the door once and it melted in the frost.”

  He had a wicked sense of humour, and working with him over the last few weeks had been such a pleasure. The better she got to know him, the more convinced she became that he was the ideal person to live in Jack’s cottage. He was turning it back into a welcoming place. It was what Jack would have wanted.

  “Do you think, Bill,” she asked him now, “that Jack would have approved of how I am doing things here?”

  “Without a shadow of a doubt,” he assured her. “There was a touch of class about Jack, and he would only have settled for the best.”

  “Sometimes, you know,” she worried, “I get the feeling that Danny thinks that I’m a bit of a big spender. But he has the money, so why can’t he let it go?”

  “You know, Kate, spending money is a new experience for our Danny,” Bill said sympathetically. “You never knew what it was to be hungry, but I think that he got a flavour of it over the years.”

  “Is that it?” she wondered.

  “I could be wrong,” Bill said thoughtfully.

  “Well, anyway,” she said, brightening up, “let’s have tea in Ellen’s immaculate kitchen.”

  “We’d better not dirty it,” Bill laughed as they walked back the corridor. “You know, I suggested putting in a big comfortable chair in the corner where you could read a book. She nearly had a fit, telling me that a kitchen was not for lounging around in but for cooking.”

  “Oh, I got that lecture too,” Kate told him, “but we might slip it in later. Anyway, there is what used to be the morning room straight across from here. I think that will really be the living room, so I furnished that with mostly comfort in mind.”

  “Weren’t they smart long go with their morning room for the breakfast and always facing east to catch the morning sun,” Bill said, laying cups on the kitchen table.

  “Easy for them,” she declared, spooning tea into the big ware teapot, as Bill liked his tea strong. “They probably had retinues of servants to drag things back and forth.”

  “But ’twas good thinking all the same,” Bill declared.

  “Jack thought like that,” Kate said thoughtfully.

  “Still feeling the loss?” Bill said kindly.

  “Yeah, but I think that he sent me a bit of a healer with the project of this house,” she said quietly. “Bill, do you believe in the power of the dead?”

  He watched her pour out the tea and waited for her to come back and sit at the table before answering.

  “There was a time when I would have told you no,” he told her slowly, “but over the years I know that Lucy helped me in many ways. When she was with us, she was the one who kept the show on the road. Calm and easygoing, s
he loved books and music and always had time to sit down and discuss everything. She was great with the lads, and when she died they were all fairly young and I was left high and dry. But I sensed over the years that at certain times she was around.”

  “I think that Jack is not far away either,” she said quietly.

  “Kate, you asking me to live in Jack’s house was one of the nicest things that has happened to me since she died.”

  “You’re making his not being there easier,” she told him.

  “He has lovely bits and pieces in that little cottage,” he said.

  “He taught me to appreciate so many things,” she said, looking around the kitchen, “He would have loved this place.”

  “You are really enjoying the restoration here?” Bill asked.

  “Loving it,” she declared. “When I go into an auction or into an antique shop, I can feel my adrenalin rising.”

  “You’d love the antique business,” Bill declared.

  “Love it,” she told him; “I have always been fascinated by old things.”

  “Maybe one day the two of us might open an antique shop,” Bill said slowly. “You could do the buying, and I’d do the touching up and repairing.”

  “You mean it, Bill?” she asked in amazement.

  “Well, we could think about it anyway,” he told her.

  Later, when Danny came in, they walked around the house. She could feel his mounting appreciation of how all the pieces fitted in so well. As they went up the stairs, she wondered how he would react to the appearance of his own room. When she opened the door, he gasped in amazement.

  “My God, where did these come from? They’re magnificent.”

  “Remember going out for the flask and sandwiches?” she asked mischievously. “Well, that’s when I did it.” She added hurriedly, “But they did not cost a fortune, you know.”