A Song Across the Sea (3 page)

“But Dennis waited, and brought me tea, and told me news of the townsfolk that I wasn’t even hearin’.”

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy absentmindedly tinkled a few keys on the piano. Tara saw her suddenly as she must have been those many years ago: young and strong, her long red hair caught back in a bun, her green eyes aloof with grief.

“And what happened?”

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy smiled. “One day I looked at him and realized that he was sorrowin’ also. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a child. You see, in me grief, I selfishly believed that I was the only one in all the world who’d ever felt such a terrible ache. It was only together that we were able to go on.”

The old woman stared at the picture for a long moment then said softly, almost to herself, “I hope one day you’ll be lucky enough to find a man that good, Tara.”

So Mrs. O’Shaughnessy stayed on her in the village that had become her home. She gave piano and voice lessons to children—mostly children from town, whose parents had the funds to afford them. Tara, though, was her special project. The girl had a voice so pure and strong that it transformed a mere song into a wondrous thing that touched the heart of the listener.

None of this did Mrs. O’Shaughnessy tell Tara. It wouldn’t do to let the girl get too full of herself. For now, Tara sang simply because she liked to sing. That was enough for a child of twelve.

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy did, however, tell Tara’s parents about their daughter’s gift. She admired Kitty and Brendan McLaughlin for making room in their cash-strapped household budget for Tara’s lessons. It was her fondest hope that one day Tara could use her singing for something better than entertaining the cows during milking. The girl should be on a stage, singing to a vast audience. Still, the old woman knew it was improbable. Tara was a farmer’s daughter. She would most likely marry, bear children and stay close to the land, because it was the only life open to her.

Tara was aware of none of this. She knew only that the lessons so dear to her might be taken away. She held her breath and waited, still listening.

Her mother sounded worried. “But we can’t lose the land, Brendan.”

“Ah, the cost of the lessons isn’t as dear as all that. A small thing, really.”

“Sure and I’d hate for Tara not to have them. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy told me she’s never had a more gifted pupil.”

Tara felt a warm flush of pleasure at the pride in her mother’s voice. A gifted pupil! It was a surprise to her. During her lessons, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was not all that free with her compliments.

Her father was speaking again.

“And don’t you know, when she sings in church on Sunday, everyone else quiets so they can listen?”

So it was decided. The music lessons would continue. Tara bent down over her fabric as her parents entered the kitchen, pretending she hadn’t overheard. There was a lightness in her step the rest of the day, an appreciation of something precious that had nearly been lost. She surprised her mother with a hug and brought her father a cup of buttermilk—his favorite—as he sat reading the paper in his big chair that night.

How lucky she was to have parents like these!

Tara didn’t notice when, sometime later, her mother’s brass candlesticks and heirloom broach disappeared from the house. Her father stopped pulling out the gold watch and chain that he’d used to keep time with for as long as Tara could remember. He no longer went to the village pub for his weekly pint, and Tara’s mother worked later than ever into every night, tatting lace by candlelight to sell to the shopkeepers in town.

Tara noticed none of this. Her music lessons continued and the taxes were paid.

•  •  •

The river flowed down along the western boundary of the little farm, hugging the slope until it curved and disappeared under an arched stone bridge. In the spring, heavy rains turned it into a wrathful, swollen torrent that violently overflowed its banks and sometimes the fields around it, saturating the land so that it could hold no seed.

Now, however, the river was a gentle current, serenely coursing past the lush tangle of trees and coarse bracken blanketing its banks.

Tara slipped out of her dress and underthings, leaving them draped over some shrubbery. She was unselfconscious as she moved toward the river. There was no one about to see her. Indeed, at twelve years old, she was as unaware of the slender grace of her long limbs as she was of the world beyond her farm. Sunlight muted by the trees dappled her face. It was a child’s face, rounded and trusting, but with the promise of a woman’s ripe beauty in its future.

She knew every bend of this river. She dove from a mossy bank into the deepest part of the river and thrilled to the sensation of cool, clear water on her skin.

Tara had helped her father cut hay all morning. It was hot, sticky labor. Wisps of prickly hay had worked their way up her sleeves and down the damp back of her dress. Now, as she cut through the water like a fish, the morning’s exertions felt as though they were being washed away. She swam close to the bottom, willing herself to stay underwater as long as possible before finally rising to the surface.

Refreshed, she climbed back onto the bank and found her clothes. The warm sun quickly dried her skin; her thick chestnut hair was another matter. She wrung the water out of it as best she could, then dressed and started for the house.

Tara’s mother pretended to be taken aback when she saw the wet hair.

“Stopped for a swim, did you? And your poor, hard-workin’ father waiting in the field for his midday meal.”

Tara played along with the joke.

“He said he wasn’t hungry today. Said I should eat his dinner, along with me own.”

They both laughed at that. Tara’s father had an appetite that inspired awe in the rest of the family, though there was nothing fat about him. He was a tall, strapping man with work-hardened arms and a loping gait that looked slow going enough but was actually—Tara had found—very hard to keep up with.

Her mother took a knife and cut thick slabs of brown bread from the loaf she’d just taken from the oven. It smelled so good, Tara felt she almost could eat the whole loaf. She’d a healthy appetite herself. Tara poured freshly-brewed tea from the pot into an enamel bucket.

“Would you like to eat dinner here, before you go back out to your father?” her mother asked.

“No. I’ll eat with him.” That was the best part of her day, sitting with her father, eating and talking amid moist, sweet-smelling heaps of mown hay, the hay yet to be cut standing like golden sentries around them.

“Well take Padraig with you. Himself is not lettin’ me get to me chores today. He wants all the attention, he does.”

Paddy sat on a high stool drawn up to the table, a piece of brown bread in his chunky fingers. Whether he was eating it or simply pulling it to pieces for study was difficult to tell. Hearing his name, he looked up at them with a deceptively innocent expression on his face and gurgled happily.

Tara helped him down from his stool. She took the enamel bucket by the handle and carried her father’s dinner, wrapped in a linen cloth, in her other hand.

“Come along, Paddy boy. You’ve been banished to the fields.”

He slowed her pace and she worried that the tea would be cold by the time they reached her father. Looking at Paddy’s impish face, his dark blue eyes so like her own, she felt a surge of affection for him. Sure, her brother had more than a little of the devil in him, but she wouldn’t trade him for the world.

Her father was still hard at work. As she and Paddy drew closer, Tara could see him walking behind the horse that she’d helped him tackle to the mowing machine that morning. He saw them and waved cheerily.

Padraig, ambling behind her, chose that moment to stumble and fall to the ground. He lifted his face and frowned, trying to decide whether or not to cry. The taste of blood in his mouth decided him. He burst loudly into tears.

Tara put down her bucket and moistened her cotton kerchief in a nearby spring. She knelt down beside him, gently dabbing at the blood with her kerchief.

“There, there, little man. Such a fuss about a wee cut. It’s not so bad as all that.”

He sobbed a few sobs more, for effect, then allowed Tara to lift him to his feet. She brushed a few stray wisps of hay from his shirt.

But something else was wrong. She sensed it before she saw it. A sudden, hollow fear gripped her and made her breathless. She swung around, forgetting Paddy. Her father had stopped mowing, locked in a moment which she instinctively knew was all wrong, so wrong. He stood strangely still, then clutched at his chest and fell heavily to the ground.

“Da!” she screamed. “Da!” She’d never run as fast as she did now, her bare feet not even feeling the sharp stones in the earth.

She reached his side and turned him over gently. It gave her a shocking, sickened feeling to see his face suffused with a bluish tint, his mouth opening and closing weakly, as if he couldn’t draw in breath.

“Tara,” he gasped. “Me chest…so tight.” Again his hands went to his chest in a futile gesture.

It shook her to her core to see her father frightened. She tried to make her face a mask, showing only reassurance. She loosened his collar even though it was already loose, pulled off his cloth cap and lay it under his head, to cushion it a little.

This couldn’t be happening. Her strong, vigorous father could not be felled like a tree cut down in a forest. It
was
happening, though. Her father lay at her feet, gasping helplessly.

“Mother!” she screamed, without hope. The farmhouse was too far away for her cries to be heard there. The anguished wail welled up from inside of her again anyway. “Mother!” And then, in a desperate shriek: “For the love of God, SOMEBODY HELP US!”

Her voice rang out over the empty fields. There was no one there. The horse, busily sampling some newly-cut hay, looked over at her curiously then resumed eating. Padraig was chasing a rabbit, which dodged from the toddler’s outstretched hands and darted back down into its burrow.

Tara raged against her helplessness. She gripped her father’s hands fiercely. His fingers felt cool and clammy.

“Rest yourself now, Da. I’ll go and fetch mother and we’ll get you back to the house straightaway.”

“Tara, don’t—” He was struggling to speak. He tried to raise himself up on one elbow but fell back. When he spoke again, it was in a choked whisper.

“Don’t…leave me, child. It’s…a terrible thing…to die alone.”

Warm tears flooded her eyes. She knew death was close for him. She could see it in the waxy sheen of his skin, the gray hue of his lips, the eyes widened in pain. She felt as if her own heart were about to stop.

“Tara,” he whispered.

“I’m here,” she sobbed. “I’m right here, Da. You’ll be just grand, once we get you home and you have a rest in your own bed. That’s all you need. A rest.”

His gaze was distant. He didn’t seem to hear.

“Just remember…how much your father cared for you, Tara. And…and tell your mother…”

Then he died. As surely as a candle flame being snuffed out, the life in him flickered and was gone.

Sobbing uncontrollably, Tara threw herself on him, her tears dampening his shirt. She put her ear to his chest and listened for the generous heart that no longer beat there. After a long time—was it hours?—she sat up and gently closed his eyes with her fingertips, murmuring a prayer for his soul.

Paddy wandered over and sat down next to his father. “Bread?” he asked hopefully.

Tara felt herself giving in to tears again. At least she’d had a chance to know her father. To Padraig, he would stay locked within the small, dreamy scope of childhood’s memory. He would forever be just the big man who’d tossed the boy up into the air, who’d held him firmly in place as he sat proudly atop a horse, who’d scolded him gently when he’d caught him happily uprooting flowers in the garden.

Padraig would never fully know this man. Tara vowed to tell him all about his father, when he grew old enough to understand.

She stood up slowly, wearily, feeling a thousand years older than she had a few minutes earlier. She picked up the enamel bucket from where she’d dropped it on the ground. The tea had splashed out, soaking a small patch of earth around it. The cloth-covered lunch was, by now, a feast for the ants, no doubt. She didn’t bother looking at it. The bucket, the bread: her mind busied itself with details of no importance because she dreaded bringing her mother the news. Still, it would have to be done.

“Come, Paddy.” Having gotten no response from his father, the little boy got to his feet and followed her without hesitation.

Mechanically, she swung the bucket at her side as she climbed the hill toward the house. She saw the farm as if through a remote, unfamiliar lens. The hay still stood behind her, rustling in the tall breeze. Wildflowers peered at her from the hedges and the river still flowed implacably to the west. Yet the colors had drained from the day as if it were a painting left out in the rain.

It would never be the same to her. Tara sensed that much. She strode slowly toward the house, her little brother trailing behind her, with no inkling of just how different it would be.

1912

T
ara fumbled with the twine. Her chilled fingers would not work properly, but there was still too much to be done before she could go back to the house and wrap them gratefully around a steaming cup of tea. She glanced back over the meager rows of potatoes she’d already set and realized, miserably, that she was nowhere close to being finished. Struggling, she succeeded in tying the twine around a jute bag that protected the spud. Another one done.

Had it always felt this way, she wondered distantly. Was it just that when she’d been working alongside her father, she hadn’t noticed how sharply the bitter wind cut through a person on these broodingly dark spring days?

She moved further down the row, her knees protesting as they came in contact with sharp stones embedded in the earth. Thick clods of mud clung to her heavy boots and frayed tweed skirt. The bucket of potato sections next to her seemed to be growing no lighter.