The Bright One (2 page)

‘Where's Dada?' she demanded.

‘He left an hour ago,' Mammy said. She spoke calmly. Only the extra vigour she gave to kneading the dough for the soda bread hinted that she was not as calm as she sounded. She had told James that there would be trouble.

‘You promised her!' she had told him.

‘'Twas not serious,' he replied. ‘She knew that. I did not promise the day.'

‘You said, “Next time I'll be after taking you with me.” Today is the next time. You should never had said it, putting ideas into her head!'

It was entirely like James O'Connor, Molly thought. Wouldn't he say anything to please? Would he not charm the birds off the trees or the ducks off the water? Had he not done it to her when they had met eighteen years ago at Ballinasloe Fair in the autumn? And he had been doing it ever since, and she still falling for it. Still, it was wrong to do this to Breda.

‘The races is no place for a child of eight,' James said.

‘Then you should have said so to the child,' Molly persisted.

‘In any case it's fast asleep she is. Why would I want to be waking her?' he asked.

He kissed Molly – after eighteen years of marriage not many Kilbally men kissed their wives on parting – blessed himself at the small font by the door, and left.

‘God go with you!' she said.

She watched him stride away down the street, to the corner where his mates would pick him up in the trap. He was thirty-eight and looked ten years younger. She looked all of her thirty-seven years. But then hadn't she borne seven children and raised six, though thankfully it seemed as if Breda was to be the last. The priest had stopped coming around asking wasn't it time there was another to fill the cradle. She did not know why there wasn't. She and James had never ceased to be lovers.

‘'Tis the will of God, no doubt!' she'd said to Father Curran, though not admitting that she was pleased.

‘Where is Dada?' Breda repeated.

‘He's gone.'

Breda looked at her mother blankly.

‘What do you mean? Where would he have gone?'

‘To the races. He left an hour past. 'Tis a long way to Galway and his friends were waiting for him. You were asleep.'

‘But why would you not have wakened me?' She was shouting now, distraught, unwilling to believe it.

‘We thought it better not. 'Twas Dada's belief that the races were not suitable for a little girl of eight. I had the very same thought myself.' She sounded unconvincing even to herself, nor was Breda to be fobbed off.

‘But he
promised
, Mammy! He
promised
!' Breda persisted.

‘'Twas not for today he meant it,
dote
,' Molly said. ‘'Twas for some other time, when you are older.' She spoke gently, quietly, her own heart aching for her daughter's disappointment. If I had the man here, I would hit him, she thought – though she knew she would not.

‘Will we go for a picnic this afternoon, then?' Molly suggested. ‘You and me and Moira? Perhaps the twins?'

‘And why should I want to go for a picnic with my sister and my brothers when I was to go to the races with Dada?' Passion rose in Breda to boiling point.

‘I hate him!' she cried. ‘I hate you all!'

Tears of rage pouring down her face, she ran out of the house, not stopping to bless herself, and away down the long street towards the sea.

‘Come back!' Molly cried. ‘Not a bite of breakfast have you inside you! Come back!' She freed her hands from the dough and ran into the street.

Her words were wasted, carried away on the air. She went back into the house, set the dough to rise, and went to waken her other four children still at home, though how they had slept through the last ten minutes she could not imagine.

For a minute, before waking them, she paused to look at her children. So innocent they looked in sleep, so good! Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths now, but when they were up and doing it would be different.

Kieran, the eldest of those left, would be the easiest to waken. However quietly she spoke his name, he would open his eyes and be immediately in the world. He slept at the top of the double bed and the twins, Patrick and Colum, slept top-to-tail at the bottom. It had been all right when they were small, but now they were growing like weeds and their legs tangled and kicked half way up the bed, regularly causing trouble. And since the twins were two to one, and Kieran was gentler, they always won, always, too, had the best of the bedclothes.

This morning Kieran's thin shoulders were bare, while the twins were comfortably covered, but wasn't it always the way? And it was summer, so it was all right.

‘Time you were up!' she said to Kieran.

Blue eyes met hers, and he smiled.

‘As for these lazy lumps . . . ' Molly said.

She included Moira, spread out fast asleep on the second bed, now that Breda had left it. The girl's dark hair spread out across the pillow; long eyelashes lay against cheeks rosy with sleep. Moira was, Molly admitted, the beauty of the family, yet she never felt totally comfortable with her, never felt quite in control as she did with her other children, however naughty they were.

Moira was the difficult one. From the earliest possible age, from babyhood, she had made her wishes known and had managed to get what she wanted.

‘And is it not your own fault?' James always said when his wife complained about Moira's selfishness. ‘Did you not always give in to her, right from a baby at the breast?'

‘You were no better,' Molly said. ‘Did you ever say “no” when she was little?'

‘It was not my job to be bringing up the children,' James had said. ‘It is the mother's job. My job is to earn the living.'

He was right, Molly conceded. It
was
her fault. She had had a difficult pregnancy with Moira and she was tired after the birth. Also she had four other children, the eldest, Kathleen, not yet six years old. They took her energy and needed her attention. Then to her dismay, though not to her surprise, she became pregnant again with Maeve before Moira was six months old.

What could be said about little Maeve, since she had lived less than two weeks? The other children could not remember her, except Kieran just a little, and Kathleen who, like Molly, would never forget.

Very early one morning – James was out fishing – Molly, roused from her sleep after a bad night caused by Moira's teething, took the new baby into bed to feed her. The baby nuzzled into her breast and started to feed. Molly fell asleep. When she waked an hour later the baby was dead, suffocated against her breast. It was Kathleen who had run, in her nightgown, to fetch the doctor, though too late. Everyone said it was not Molly's fault and hadn't it happened before to others, though Molly, when she thought about it, could not but feel guilty. It was this way there was a four-year gap between Moira and Breda.

‘Moira!' Molly called now. ‘Waken now, Moira. High time you were up and doing.'

Moira groaned and turned over, burying her face in the pillow. With one swift movement Molly pulled all the bedclothes off her, before turning her attention to the twins.

By the time they were all downstairs Kieran had pumped the water and refilled the kettle.

‘Where's Breda?' he asked. ‘Did Dada take her to the races after all?'

He knew his little sister had been on about it but he had not taken her seriously. Nor, he had thought, had Dada. It was just one of those things Dada had talked about. You had to understand that Dada talked about lots of things which, in the end, didn't happen. He meant nothing by it, but you had to understand, and Breda took him seriously. But had he kept his promise this time?

‘Indeed he did not,' Molly said. ‘It was never on the cards. Wasn't he gone an hour past when she came down, and all dressed up, the poor child?'

‘So where is she?'

‘Ran out of the house as fast as her legs would take her, and not a bite inside her. It is my notion she has gone down to the strand. When you have had your breakfast, will you go after her? You and Kathleen were always the best to calm her down.'

She missed Kathleen, her eldest. She missed her sorely, but she had always known that this would happen. It came as no surprise that at seventeen years old Kathleen had joyfully and eagerly entered the novitiate of the Convent of Our Lady of Lourdes and was away in Dublin.

Even as a small girl she had been devout. When she played with her dolls it was to take them to church services, to baptize them, read the scriptures to them. Not that she had ever been a melancholy child, not by any means. The lark on the wing was not happier than Kathleen. But she was closer to God than the other children.

Well, Molly had thought, quite early on, there is no higher calling than for a girl to give her life to God. A Catholic mother must give thanks for having any child with a true vocation. She had not doubted once that Kathleen would be a nun.

Breda was born when Kathleen was nine years old, and from the first there had been a special bond between them. Kathleen had cared for her sister like a little mother. She had all the caring qualities of motherhood.

‘It seems sad that she will never have her own children to care for,' Molly had said to James.

‘It's too soon to know that,' James protested.

‘Oh no it is not!' Molly contradicted him. ‘I am certain sure. As certain as that the sun will rise tomorrow morning!'

And so it had been. And so it was Kieran she sent after Breda now. But as she watched him walk away down the road there was pain in her. She knew, as she had known with Kathleen, that one day
he
would walk away from her, for Kieran had a vocation to the priesthood. As with his sister, his future path had shown at an early age. Wasn't it because of that, because it was so clearly recognized, that the Parish was paying for him to be educated by the Christian Brothers in Ennistymon? And would see him through the seminary, for there was no way James O'Connor could afford this.

When Kieran was out of sight Molly turned back into the house. Am I to give all my children to God, she asked herself, not for the first time? It was too much. It was cruel.

When she saw the twins scrapping on the floor, Patrick astride Colum, holding him down, she was momentarily reassured. These two were not for sainthood, that was for certain! As for Moira, was there ever an easier target for the temptations of the Devil? Twelve years old and parading in front of the boys whenever she got the chance!

Breda was different again, different from any of them. She was one on her own. In spite of the morning's tantrums, Molly's heart lifted at the thought of Breda. She was like the sunshine itself, even though, like the sun, she was sometimes behind a cloud. But when she came out she lightened the whole world. And that, thought Molly, was not just the opinion of a fond mother. Wasn't it Father Curran himself who had said, ‘When she comes into the room, she lights it up. The Bright One! She is beloved of God.'

But not
too
beloved, Molly thought fearfully. Not Breda!

‘Of course, you must never tell her so,' Father Curran said. He was not a man who believed in praise.

Molly had told James.

‘The Bright One!' he said. ‘Isn't that entirely right!'

Kieran knew just where Breda would be. It was the place they all went, the unofficial meeting place of the children of the neighbourhood. He'd been there himself a thousand times, though less so now than when he was younger. Sixteen was too old for it. Though still at school, to his own mind he was no longer a child. Some of his friends had left the National School at fourteen, others had gone on to the technical school, but in either case they had jobs, or were looking for jobs, to earn a bit of money for the family purse.

It was a sorrow to him that he could not do this, at least not permanently, though he always tried for jobs in the school holidays. He hated watching his mother struggle to make ends meet, to feed and clothe them all on his father's small, and erratic, earnings. His father had no trade; he relied entirely on casual work: farm labourer, drover, fisherman, odd job man. But to give him his due, Kieran thought, when he was in work, he worked hard. He knew that to leave school now would be to deny his vocation. That he could not do, it would be a sin. God had called him, he knew that for certain. Nor would his mother have expected or wanted it.

After half a mile, the unmade road petered out, dividing into two rough tracks, the one sloping down to the strand, to the firm beach with the sand, where the sea had not yet reached it, of so pale a gold that it was almost white, the other track climbing to the cliff top.

He saw Breda before she spotted him. She was sitting on the grass, her knees drawn up to her chin, gazing out to sea. So small she looked against that wide background, and she was too young to be there on her own. Though the wind had dropped for the moment, it could spring up again just as suddenly along this coast, blowing with strong, sharp gusts. She was also much too close to the edge.

Later in the day there would be other children there, but it was still early, not long after nine o'clock, and they would be at their chores, or running messages. Since there was no school some would still be in bed, but his mother did not allow that except for illness.

He quickened his pace, though not calling out. His feet made no sound on the short grass and the second after Breda heard him he flopped down beside her on the ground.

‘So what are you doing here, so early in the day?' He asked the question pleasantly, no criticism in his voice.

She looked at him solemnly.