A Song Across the Sea (2 page)

“You’ve never seen the likes of it,” she told her rapt audience. “The floors are of polished marble, brought over from Italy on a ship as big as a field. The staircase is as wide as this parlor. And more rooms than you can count, even. I do none of the cookin’ meself, don’t you know. I have a cook for it, and maids for bringin’ it to the table and servin’ it to me. And when I’m finished eatin’ me dinner—I prefer sirloin steak and sherbet for dessert—the maids clear the dishes away and wash them.”

Tara’s mother gasped at the notion. Aunt Bridey, bless her heart, looked unconvinced.

“You don’t…wash your own dishes?” she asked hesitantly.

Brigid Connelly threw up her arms in disdain. “And why should I? Why should I, when I worked and saved enough money to buy a grand mansion and the servants to go with it?” She made a great show of smoothing out the voluminous fabric of her long skirt. “But I think it’s the clothes I like best about America. Everything in the latest fashion—dresses and hats from Paris, even.”

Tara could imagine the effect this bit of news had on her mother, who made all of the family’s clothing. She was about to ask Miss Connelly how much such a dress would cost (even though her mother would frown at such a rude question), when James barged into the parlor again. This time, he bumped up against the little table upon which her mother had set the currant cake, knocking the cake to the floor.

“Kevin fell in some cow dung!” he shrieked excitedly. “And Sheila’s found a beehive in a tree. She’s throwin’ stones at it to get ’em to come out!”

“James—,” Aunt Bridey began, her voice mild.

What those children needed, Tara thought, was a good spanking. She was glad when her mother cleared her throat with unmistakable firmness.

“James!” Unlike her sister’s
her
tone was sharp-edged. “You’re stompin’ and shoutin’ like a hooligan. You’ll not raise your voice again in this house.”

James was stunned into silence. He lowered his head and stared at the floor, his lower lip trembling.

Little Padraig, meanwhile, sat down on the floor and began helping himself to the fallen currant cake. Tara’s mother was too busy with James to notice.

“And there’ll be no more runnin’ in the parlor.”

Far from taking offense at another woman disciplining her child, Bridey was clearly grateful that her stronger-willed sister was taking charge. Small and soft-spoken, with light brown curls framing her round, pleasant face, Bridey relied on her husband to make the children mind at home. Tara’s Uncle Kevin was a sturdy, hardworking man, quick to take a hand to his children when his temper was aroused.

Brigid Connelly, her performance interrupted, observed the exchange impatiently. Tara’s mother bent down to pick up the currant cake from the floor. Tara sensed her distress; the tea party was close to becoming a shambles.

Regretfully, because she dearly wanted to hear more of Miss Connelly’s narrative, Tara offered to take the children outside.

“I’ll show them how to catch minnows in the river,” she said. She’d learned to do it by dangling a jam pot by a string into the water and waiting for the quicksilver things to dart into it.

Her mother looked relieved. “That’d be nice, Tara. And take your brother with you. The lad’s been inside too long on a fine day like this.”

Cake crumbs dotting his mouth, Paddy took her hand unquestioningly and toddled after her into the kitchen, followed by a greatly subdued James. She found a bit of twine in a drawer and an empty jam pot on a shelf over the fire. It was out of her reach. Sheila, apparently having tired of throwing stones at the beehive, came into the kitchen and watched with interest as Tara dragged a chair over to the wall. Paddy, always fascinated by anything his older sister did, edged in closer for a look.

Tara climbed onto the chair and stretched her arm upward, but the pot was still too high for her to grab.

“I’ll help you,” Sheila said. She started to clamber up onto the chair with Tara, but the extra weight made it teeter dangerously. Quick as a cat, Sheila jumped down, but as she did so she clumsily kicked over the big iron pot of potatoes that was boiling over the fire for the evening meal.

Tara, trying to regain her balance on the chair, heard Padraig’s screams and jumped down, terrified.

Paddy howled in pain. He held his right hand out in front of him as if it were an unfamiliar object, not belonging to him. The boiling water that had splashed on it had already turned the skin an angry red. He lifted his arms up beseechingly to Tara. She snatched him up and held him close, near tears herself.

Her mother and Aunt Bridey hurried in from the parlor and her father from the cow barn, to see what all the noise was about. Even Brigid Connelly stood in the doorway, gaping. Having lost her audience, her haughty composure had slipped out of place.

Tara’s mother sized up the situation quickly. She took Padraig from her and plunged his hand into a bucket of cool water standing at one end of the table.

“There, there, little man,” she soothed him. “You’ll be all right.” After a time, his sobs began to subside.

Tara spun around and glimpsed Sheila. The clumsy girl was crawling on the floor, picking up the potatoes that had spilled from the pot.

“You wicked, stupid girl!” Tara said, so choked with anger she could barely speak. “Look what you’ve done!”

Sheila looked up at her, mute. Tara felt just a little sorry for her harsh words. Sheila’s face was pale with contrition, her lips bloodless. Tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.

“That’s enough, Tara,” her father said. “I’m sure it was an accident. Your cousin didn’t mean any harm.” He took Padraig in his strong arms and rocked him rhythmically.

“I was only after helping you get the jam pot down from the shelf,” Sheila mumbled hoarsely.

Aunt Bridey looked at her sister in consternation. “Kitty, I think we’d best be leavin’.”

•  •  •

And so it hadn’t been a perfect day, after all—not one to be captured in a glass paperweight and stored in the shadows for later. There’d been tears, angry words, and pain.

Tara thought about it all as she leaned back in the big timber tub that had been dragged in front of the fireplace. Her bath water was getting cold.

“Will there be a scar, d’ya think?” she asked her mother.

“There will. It was a bad enough burn.” Her mother was tatting lace in the soft glow cast by the peat fire. Tara knew with pride that her mother made the finest lace in two counties. She would take it into the village next market day and sell it to a shopkeeper for a little extra money.

Tara made swirls in the tepid water with her hand and looked over at her brother. Padraig, asleep now in his cot, seemed not to be overly worried about a scar. His burn had been lovingly tended to. Tara could see the white dressing on his hand from across the room. Exhausted from crying, he’d allowed himself to be put to bed soon after supper.

Tara finished her bath and went to bid goodnight to her father. She found him sitting in the big leather chair near his bed, peering at a newspaper through spectacles perched precariously on his nose. He lowered the paper when he saw her.

“Ah, well, here’s me lass,” he said, and offered her a windburned cheek to kiss.

Unwilling to go off to bed just yet, she sat at his feet.

“Did you hear what Miss Connelly was sayin’ about America?”

“Missus told me all about her extravagant stories, and I don’t believe the half of it.”

“But it sounds so grand!”

“No better than a fairy story. And no more truth to it, either.” He reached down and gently lifted her chin so that her eyes met his. “You’re not thinkin’ of leavin’ us to go off to America?”

She giggled. “Sure and I’m off tomorrow. I thought I’d swim there, carryin’ me clothes in a bag on me head.”

He smiled and took his newspaper in hand again. She stood and hugged him, whispering in his ear: “I’ll never leave you, Da.”

But as Tara carried her candle in its tin sconce up the dark stairs toward her bed, her mind buzzed with excitement. America! Even the word had a wondrous sound to it. She drifted toward sleep as if carried there by a tranquil current, humming to herself and dreaming of America.

S
ummer’s spun-gold days slipped away. Autumn was fast upon them. Tara’s chores around the farm increased, but she didn’t mind. Joyfully she helped her father dig potatoes out of the earth, thin the turnips and cut the turf that would be burned in the stove and fireplace in the long months ahead.

Padraig was often beside her. She’d give him a spade and laugh at his childish efforts to dig around the potatoes with it. He seemed to have forgotten his injury, but the back of his right hand still bore the memory: a vivid reddish patch of puckered skin.

After a round of visits and tales that left the villagers breathless, Miss Brigid Connelly had taken her leave and gone back to America. Back, Tara imagined, to her mansion and servants, to fine dresses and food too exotic to even imagine. On the eve of her departure, Brigid gave her brother enough cash money for a new plough horse. Tara’s father reported this bit of news one evening at mealtime; he’d overheard the brother boasting about it in the village pub the night before.

“I don’t think we’ll see the likes of her again,” he commented, while working his way through a plate of steaming cabbage. “Her Duchess Miss Connelly”—as he’d taken to calling her—”is too fine a lady for simple bog-pickers like ourselves.”

Tara’s days were too full for her to give much thought to Brigid Connelly. She arose before dawn and had a quick cup of tea to quiet her stomach before milking the cows. The white-legged Molly was her favorite. Sitting on an ancient three-legged stool in the cow barn, a bucket propped between her knees, Tara sang snatches of song while she squeezed the cow’s teats and sent long streams of milk into the bucket. Occasionally her mind would wander, and a jet of milk would miss the bucket and hit the straw-covered stall floor instead. Molly sometimes turned her head and looked at her as she sang. Even a cow could be cheered by a little music, Tara thought, then laughed at her own silly ideas.

Then the bucket of milk had to be carried over to the churn. She’d hoist the bucket up and pour the milk into the churn, through the muslin cloth used to strain the milk. The milk would be separated into cream and skim milk, and the cream put into the hand churn for the making of butter.

After feeding the chickens and helping her father catch the horse for his day’s work, Tara sat down to her own breakfast. Days when she wasn’t out in the fields she spent helping her mother. There was bread to be baked, with flour ground from grain threshed from the wheat grown in their own fields. Eggs had to be collected from the hen house, bedding washed and hung outside to air, clothing made and repaired.

Tara, under her mother’s watchful eye, was learning to rein in her natural exuberant energy for this last task. Sewing required patience and even stitches. She was, gradually, acquiring some skill at it. Her mother said Tara turned as fine a hem as she’d ever seen. On their last visit to the village, Tara’s mother had traded lace with a local shopkeeper for several yards of cotton, an apple-green fabric sprinkled with deep blue flowers that her mother said would bring out the color in her eyes. It was to be a dress for Tara. She insisted on making it all by herself.

Now, as Tara painstakingly cut out the pieces on the long kitchen table, she heard her parents talking outside. She tried not to listen to the voices drifting in through the open window—something in their tone hinted that the conversation was not for her ears. Tara wielded the scissors carefully, frowning in concentration, and tried to imagine herself in the finished dress. She pictured herself wearing it at a dance, the skirts swinging around in a green-and-blue-whirl as she danced a jig, all eyes upon her!

But it was hard not to shut out her parent’s voices.

“…and O’Leary says the taxes on the land are going to be raised again,” her father was saying. “I’d hoped to buy a new cow in the spring. Molly’s drying up. There’s barely enough milk left over after the household needs to take to the creamery.”

Her mother sighed. “The oats don’t look as full as last year.”

“Too much rain this summer. We won’t be fetchin’ a top price for them.”

Tara’s mother said something in a low voice that she couldn’t make out, but she heard her father’s reply clearly enough.

“No, no. Let the child have her music lessons.”

Tara put down her scissors and listened intently. Twice a week, she walked the three miles into the village and took music lessons from Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. Standing in a tiny parlor cluttered with furniture, Tara sang her scales and practiced phrasing and sight-reading while the gray-haired Mrs. O’Shaughnessy accompanied her on a rickety piano. The old woman’s bent, arthritic fingers wrung extraordinary sounds out of that dilapidated instrument in much the same way that her father coaxed crops out of his forbidding, rock-strewn fields.

These visits were a joy to Tara. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was firm yet encouraging with her. She opened up the world of music for Tara as if it were an enormous book, with each page yielding new treasures.

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy had studied voice in Dublin many years ago. She’d met a handsome young farmer visiting relatives in the town and married him, moving to this quiet village with never a backwards glance, but she’d brought her music with her.

Mr. O’Shaughnessy had passed on long ago. A large framed photograph of him hung on the wall over the piano, his austere gaze sometimes distracting Tara when she sang.

“What was he like?” she’d once asked, impulsively. “He looks so…serious.” Her youthful curiosity overcame any thought that the question might be a painful one.

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, however, looked up at the picture with a smile. Her fingers rested lightly on the piano keys as she considered the question.

“Ah,” she said. “That was the face he showed to the world, but to me he showed his gentle side. Don’t be deceived by appearances, Tara. That photograph doesn’t half show the man’s quick smile and ready laugh. When we lost the wee one—”—Mrs. O’Shaughnessy’s only child had died of a fever at the tender age of two—”—I thought the sun would never shine for me again. I sat in that chair by the window, day after day, never stirring. I looked out the window but saw nothin’, not ponies and traps passin’ by on their way to the market, not little children hurryin’ along to school. Not the mist, springin’ up in the fields beyond the village. Everything was dead to me.