Promised Land (27 page)

Knocking before she had time to change her mind, Ella stood on the doorstep of her old family home unsure of what kind of reception she might
receive
. Mary answered the door, her pretty face creasing into a huge grin the second she recognized her.

‘Daddy, it’s Auntie Ella!’ she called.

Liam himself came out a second later, pulling the door wide open. She wasn’t at all sure what his reaction to her presence would be. They stood looking at each other for a second, neither saying a word.

‘So you heard!’

Ella nodded. ‘I visited her in the hospital earlier on, Liam.’

She could see her brother trying to contain himself. ‘I suppose you’d better come in then.’

‘I want to help Liam, really I do.’

The little girls looked at her in the kitchen unused to seeing her there, not knowing what to make of it, little Sally’s eyes almost popping out of her head, whispering to Mary.

‘I was going to get the tea.’

‘Here let me help Liam, what were you getting?’

‘Bread and honey, that’s what Daddy always gives us when Mammy’s in hospital,’ Sally blurted out.

‘Sometimes Daddy cooks us beans on toast or a sausage or a rasher,’ added Mary loyally, glaring at her sister.

‘Some bread, that’s all.’

Liam looked weary, she could see it in every muscle and bone of his body. He put on the kettle and took a pan of bread from the bread bin. Ella
could
see the two pairs of eyes watching his every move, dependent on him.

There was a bowl of eggs on the dresser and she wondered if the flour bin was full. Lifting the lid she was glad to see that Carmel still used it.

‘Is there milk?’

Liam shrugged. ‘There’s always bloody milk!’

‘What about if I make us some pancakes!’

‘With sugar on them!’ insisted Sally.

Mary looked at her father. ‘We like bread Auntie Ella, honest we do.’

She caught Liam’s eye. ‘I think pancakes would be nice for a change, Mary, and anyhow I want to see if Aunt Ella can actually cook them.’

Ella got out the heavy black pan and set it to warm as she mixed the batter, praying the pancakes would turn out. The golden butter had melted as she dropped the circles of batter into the pan and watched the pancakes take shape, tossing them quickly out onto the waiting plates. Mary sprinkled them with sugar and the girls and Liam ate them as quickly as they could. Ella eventually got some for herself. Liam made two big mugs of tea and they sat at the table talking.

‘Do you want me to run you into the station or up to Rathmullen later?’

Ella looked at Mary’s eyes watching them. ‘If it’s all right with you Liam, I’d like to stay.’

‘We managed fine the last time on our own!’

‘I know that, but it would only be for a day or
two
. I just want to help.’ She could see him considering her offer, trying to make up his mind what to do. ‘I could stay with the girls while you go and visit Carmel.’

‘Aye, I suppose. I was going to get the young O’Grady one to come up and sit with them.’

Relieved that he had accepted Ella tidied up, changing the girls into their night clothes while he was out. It was strange to her to see the rooms now crowded with all the children’s toys and clothes. The old house had become a family home again. They wanted a story, they wanted to be tucked in and they both demanded a goodnight kiss. She thought of Carmel and knew how much she and the children must be missing each other.

She stayed till the end of that week phoning Kitty to check that all was going well in the shop. She was exhausted between the cooking and cleaning and helping in the dairy and found herself yawning and nodding off at night. Carmel was too sick to transfer as the condition of her lungs had worsened.

Ella had gone in one afternoon to visit her with Aunt Nance and Uncle Jack, telling her all about the children and their antics, noticing that Carmel was so drowsy that her eyes kept on closing. They were trying her on some new sort of antibiotic treatment and everyone was praying that it would work. Liam was beside himself and walked the
fields
at night as she watched from the windows, frightened for him.

‘She’s not going to make it this time Ella! She’s not!’

Ella didn’t know what to say, hearing the despair in his voice.

Her brother had been right, as Carmel lost her battle for life that weekend. Liam was distraught with grief and Ella absolutely filled with sadness at Carmel’s death. Liam was the one who sat down with his small daughters and told them that their mammy had been too sick and had gone to heaven. Seeing the misery in his eyes and hearing the gentleness in his voice earned him a new respect from her. Mary bawled her eyes out, and little Sally neither believed him nor understood at all.

It was a simple funeral in accordance with Carmel’s wishes. She’d already discussed it with Father Hackett. Her mother and two sisters and a brother came over from Liverpool, still shocked by the news.

Ella did her best to organize the house and the funeral the way her sister-in-law would have liked it, regretting that they had not got to know each other better or become the firm friends they might have been. Kitty had closed the shop and come back home. Brian and all the girls were as supportive as they could be. Sean Flanagan appeared, kissing her cheek gently in the church,
holding
her elbow at the graveyard and following her with his eyes back at Fintra.

She was aware of his presence the whole day as she served meals and poured drinks and held Sally in her arms when she fell asleep. Sean stayed there, watching her.

Chapter Thirty-six

LIAM HAD SLEPT
for almost two days, the blankets pulled up over his head, barely stirring, not wanting to eat or drink or talk to anyone. On the third day Mary and Sally stood outside the bedroom door in their nightdresses.

‘Your daddy needs you girls,’ Ella whispered. ‘He’s sad and lonely without your mammy but he’s a lucky man because he’s got the two of you.’

‘Maybe Daddy needs to sleep some more and he’ll be angry with us for waking him!’

Ella could see how concerned Mary was about doing the right thing. ‘He’s had a really long good sleep, Mary, and now it’s time for your daddy to wake up. Tell him breakfast will be ready in about fifteen minutes.’

She opened the door, watching from the landing as the children sneaked into the room. Sally, curious, clambered up onto the bed first, ignoring his protests and orders to go outside and not disturb him, then pulled the blanket off and asked
her
daddy to ‘Wake up! Wake up! like Ella told her to. Mary fetched his clothes and shoes from the wardrobe and told him about breakfast.

Ella stayed downstairs out of the way and eventually was rewarded by the sight of Liam dressed and shaven sitting across from her, as the girls ate the toast and scrambled eggs she’d prepared. Soon, she hoped, she’d be able to go back to Dublin.

‘I don’t want the bloody place, Ella, honest to God I don’t!’

‘You’re in shock, you’re just saying this because of Carmel, Liam. This is your home now and the girls need you.’

‘I can’t stay in this place, Ella. If I’d never brought Carmel back to Fintra she’d have never got sick. She’d still be alive.’

‘You can’t say that, Liam. Carmel told me herself that lots of neighbours where she grew up in Liverpool had TB! Her getting it might have had nothing to do with coming here to Ireland, honest it mightn’t.’

‘I don’t give a shite about that, any of it! I’ll sell off most of the bloody place. ’Tis cursed anyways! It killed our mother and now my wife. It’s too hard a life for a woman. I’ll go back to sea.’

Ella stared at her brother. She could see it in his eyes, he was getting set to run again. Ready to take off and disappear just like he’d done before.

‘What about the girls?’ she reminded him.

‘Naturally, the girls will come into it. They’ll be looked after while I’m away.’

‘They’ve lost their mother, Liam. You can’t just run off and leave them, they’re too small.’ She could see it, he wasn’t thinking straight. He was in pain and wanted to remove himself from it.

‘Christ Ella, what am I going to do?’ Her brother sat with his head in his hands. ‘It’s all turned out such a mess!’ He was trying to control his emotions, overwhelmed with grief.

‘It’s all right Liam, it will be all right.’ She put her arms round him and held him, cuddling him like she would Mary and Sally. ‘It’s all right, Liam pet.’

Tears welled in her own eyes, words of consolation useless as her brother cried.

‘I’m sorry Ella, sorry for everything,’ he said afterwards. ‘I should have shared this place with you, no matter what the bloody will said. I knew how much Fintra meant to you. Carmel was always telling me how unfair it was.’

‘You got the farm,’ she reminded him. ‘You were the one chosen to inherit it.’

‘A hundred bloody acres! Ella, you wanted to buy it off me years ago, buy it off me now. I don’t want the shagging place.’

Ella gazed around at the green fields, and the expanse of good farm land that her father and his father before him had worked, the potato drills, the pasture land, acres of flat fields and hillside
slopes
, tillage, the yard and outhouses, not knowing what to say. She had wanted to own it so much, grieved for it, but now that circumstances had changed so much she wasn’t sure.

‘I owe money to the bank, Ella. Theo O’Grady and the Flanagans have been asking me to sell off bits of land to them for years.’

Ella stared at him in disbelief. Now he was prepared to sell the place, break up her father’s landholding. She wouldn’t stand for it!

‘You could buy it and move back here where you belong.’

Ella didn’t know what to make of his proposition. Back here with a landholding of her own she’d be able to have her own small farm and watch the girls grow up, but what about the shop and her life in Dublin and Sean Flanagan?

‘Liam, you’re upset and tired. We can talk about this tomorrow or the next day when we’ve both had time to think.’

Kitty had sent word from Dublin asking when she was coming back. Sean Flanagan had been in and out looking for her and demanding to know when she was returning from the country. Some of the commercial travellers had made appointments to see her, and Kitty couldn’t fend them off much longer. The shop had been busy and the stock levels were low and in need of reordering.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ she promised her cousin.

* * *

She had taken the girls for a walk down to see the new calves in the lower field, the animals sucking at their fingers as Sally and Mary squealed with delight. The calves butted and nudged for attention, as the girls dipped their fingers in a little milk. They were such dotes, so different from each other, and she was broken-hearted at the thought of them not having their mother Carmel there to raise them, remembering the awful loneliness of her own childhood after her mother’s death. How history had repeated itself with Liam now in the same situation her father had faced. Liam was a good father, she had seen plenty of evidence of that, and she would do everything to help her nieces, giving them the love and support and care they deserved, just as Aunt Nance had helped to raise her.

After all, it was what she had promised Carmel. She petted and tickled the calves one last time and tried to stop Sally climbing onto one of their backs by explaining that the calf was still only a baby.

‘Will we go down and say a prayer at The Grotto!’ she suggested, leading them back down towards the roadway.

‘Mammy loved this place,’ Mary confided, as they stood in front of the high rock formation, the hillside’s quiet broken only by a thrush in a nearby tree.

‘Then we’ll say a special prayer for her here.’

Mary knelt down looking up at the statue of our Lady amongst the stone and rocks, Sally, bored
after
a few seconds, hopping up and down along the rail and step making up some secret sort of game. Ella let the still and peace of the place wash over her as she prayed. Mary had her hands joined, concentrating.

‘Are you all right, pet?’

‘I’m praying to Mammy, in heaven and that Daddy won’t go away and leave us too!’

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ she said reassuringly.

‘He wants to go back to the sea, I heard him telling Uncle Jack,’ she murmured softly.

‘Your daddy wouldn’t do that!’

‘What’ll happen to Sally and I?’

Well, probably the same thing that happened to me, pet, when my mammy died; your daddy will stay and mind you and look after the farm. It’s what my daddy did. And what Liam will do.’

Mary seemed satisfied with that answer.

‘And I’ll always be close by to love you and help you both,’ Ella promised.

The girls looked at her understandingly, Mary hugging her tightly. Walking back towards the farmhouse Ella made her mind up, knowing that with her help and the loans paid off Liam could stay here at Fintra and raise his children. It was their home.

On the Friday evening Sean Flanagan had driven into the farmyard, surprising her as she trimmed the girls’ hair in the kitchen. He parked his big car at the back door. Sally was wriggling and
squirming
about like a puppy dog as Ella cut some of her long trail of curls.

‘I waited for you back in Dublin.’

‘I’m sorry, Sean, but I just couldn’t get away. Liam needed me here.’ She could see Mary watching them, and calling her brother, put on her coat and slipped outside with Sean.

The night was still, only the sound of their footfall breaking the silence. The grass was already damp with dew.

‘Remember how I used to walk you home,’ Sean reminded her as they crossed through the fields.

She remembered all right, the kissing and the fumbling and the play-acting and how much she’d loved him even then. Now they were grown-up! This time he kissed her lightly.

‘Ella, what’s happening between us?’

She closed her eyes, not knowing what to say or do. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, for truthfully she didn’t know. She told him about her brother’s offer to sell her part of the farm and for her to move back down to Kilgarvan.