Woman of the House (15 page)

“He should get Mark in here to brighten up his colour scheme,” she whispered. “I never saw anything so drab.”

“Kate, we’re not here to redesign his house,” David said severely, but he smiled in spite of himself. “I feel as if I’m back in boarding school waiting outside the headmaster’s door to be reprimanded,” he added.

Just then they heard shuffling footsteps and saw Lizzy’s shadowy figure reappear.

“He’s ready now,” she told them in a prim voice, and they followed her thin form back the corridor.

“In here,” she said, knocking so timidly on a heavy door that Kate thought nobody on the other side could hear.
Nevertheless, a big voice boomed through.

“Come in,” it instructed with authority.

Lizzy inched the door open very slowly, and gradually the room inside came into view. The entire wall straight opposite the door was book-lined from floor to ceiling, and in front of it behind a large desk sat Fr Burke, his huge pudgy fingers interlaced and resting on the green leather top. A tall, north-facing window let in a grey light and there was no heating in the room.

Looking at his overheated face it was obvious that he had just vacated a much warmer room. We were brought in here to be intimidated, Kate decided.

“Sit down,” he instructed. Two straight-backed chairs were already in position, well apart, directly in front of him.

“Well, now, what’s all this about?” he enquired.

“I wrote to you about it, Father,” David began with determination. “It’s about starting a new secondary school here in Kilmeen.”

“For what reason?” Fr Burke barked, his folded chins shaking in annoyance. He was glaring at David, his purple lips pursed.

“The children around here need education,” David told him quietly.

“Are you saying that what the good nuns over in Ross are doing is not education?”

Careful, David, Kate thought, he’s going to turn this into a battle of wits and is trying to trip you up. But David said calmly, “The nuns are providing a very good commercial course, but it’s mostly girls who go there, and…”

“You can’t blame the nuns for that,” Fr Burke cut across him.

“It’s no fault of the nuns,” David agreed, “but even for the girls who go there it would be better for them to do their Inter and Leaving certificate before going on to Ross.”

“So you’re saying that what the nuns are providing is only second-rate stuff,” he barked.

“No I am not,” David told him firmly, “but there is need for more educational facilities here. Our children are emigrating uneducated, and it’s only manual jobs that are available to them wherever they go.”

“So you think that manual labour is beneath them? There’s nothing wrong with earning your bread by the sweat of you brow, my boy. Many a good Irishman did it before them.”

“I’m only saying that they should have the choice,” David told him.

“And you would take the bread out of the mouths of the nuns in Ross, who started their school here on the understanding that theirs would be the only school in this parish?”

“Things change, Father.”

“And some of them not for the better,” Fr Burke asserted. “You have a job in Dublin: why can’t you stay up there? Do you not know when you’re well off with a fine comfortable pensionable job. Your school here could fall through, and then where would that leave you?”

“It won’t fail,” David told him, “and even if it did I could always get another job.”

“Nobody likes to employ a failure,” Fr Burke observed.

“That would be my problem,” David said sharply, annoyance creeping into his voice. “And …”

“Well, the setting up of this school is my problem,” Fr Burke cut in, “and my first duty is to the nuns in my parish.
They are under my protection, and that’s the end of the matter as far as I am concerned.”

You arrogant old toad, thought Kate, I would not like to be depending on you for protection. She had planned to say very little in case of saying the wrong thing, but as she listened she could feel the school slipping away and her irritation mounting. She decided that they had got nowhere and that the time had come to get a few facts straightened out.

“So apart from the opposition of the nuns, you have nothing against the school,” she interceded.

For the first time he turned his small, piercing blue eyes on her, giving her his full attention.

“What do you mean?”

‘You say that your only opposition to the school is the protection of the nuns, is that right?” she shot back at him, sitting on the edge of her chair and looking him straight in the eye.

“Well, what of it?” he asked angrily.

“Is that the only objection that you have?” she persisted.

“That’s my business,” he told her. “I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.”

“Well, I can tell you,” she said, “that the nuns have no objection to the new school. As a matter of fact, they think that it will be good for their school, which it probably will.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you went behind my back about this?” he blustered.

“I did not go behind your back. I never went behind anyone’s back in my life,” she said, rising to her feet and striding to the front of his desk. “I went to school in Ross and loved the nuns there, and now I visit them regularly, and yes, I have discussed this with them, as I was quite
entitled to do. They are enlightened, forward-thinking women and want to see the children of this parish getting the best start that they can get in life. So they have no opposition to this school.”

“You had no right,” Fr Burke gasped but got no further, because Kate threw caution to the wind.

“I had every right because now we know!
You
are the only opposition.
You
are the only one standing in the way of progress.”

Fr Burke put his two huge hands on his desk and jumped to his feet with such speed that his chair tilted backwards and crashed to the floor behind him.

“How dare you speak to me like this!” he spluttered, choking with rage. “To think that a daughter of Nellie Phelan’s would come in to my house and…”

“Leave my mother out of this,” she said fiercely. “She was a lady who listened to your self-opinionated, pompous meanderings all her life and never criticised you. But if she knew what you’re doing now she’d turn in her grave.”

“Get out!” he shouted, pounding the desk with his ham fist. “Get out of my house!”

“You don’t need to tell me,” she replied, pounding the desk with her closed fist and pushing her angry face close to his. “And may God forgive you for your narrow vision, because I never will and neither will a lot of this parish.” And before he could say another word she marched across the floor and whipped the door open, nearly falling over Lizzy, who was standing there with a bemused expression on her face.

Kate banged back the big iron bolt of the front door and strode out on to the crunching gravel where she stood with her fists clenched in anger, and then headed for the
gate. As she cooled down she was aware that David had caught up with her and was walking silently beside her. She was afraid to look at him because she knew that she had burnt their boats behind them. Whatever hope he had had before, she had now put paid to everything. As they walked in silence around the side of the church, she sneaked a sideways glance at him. His face was white and his jaw was tight with anger.

“I blew it, didn’t I?” she admitted miserably.

“No, you didn’t,” David told her quietly. “He was against it anyway. I had hoped that he’d have been some way reasonable, but he was impossible. There is no way that he is going to agree to the school. He must really have it in for Dad. But, God, it was something to watch the two of you. It was like a terrier and a bloodhound in attack.”

“I lost the head totally,” Kate admitted.

“You did.”

“Are you angry with me?” she asked tentatively.

“Angry? There was enough anger in there to set fire to a hay barn, not to mind me adding to it, and the best part of it all was that you and Dad had warned
me
to keep cool.”

“I was a fine one to talk, wasn’t I, but he just drove me mad with his patronising attitude towards everything.”

“As soon as you started I knew that you were going to let him have it. I could feel it coming like a thunderstorm.”

“He’s been irritating me for years with his boring sermons and his overbearing attitude,” Kate declared, “but I never realised how much I had it in for him until I started.”

“Lizzy will have a great time telling the whole village what Kate Phelan said to the P.P.”

“Oh my God,” Kate gasped. “I never thought of that, and of course she’ll make me out to be a real demon.”

“Never mind. You only said what a lot of us are thinking.”

“But thinking it and saying it are two different things.”

“Well, maybe it needed to be said. He’s always got away with murder.”

“You must be very disappointed,” she said.

“I suppose I am,” he agreed.

“I wish to God that I had stayed out of it. You’d have had some chance without me.”

“If you hadn’t done it I might have lost my cool myself,” David admitted, “but I don’t think that I would have been as dramatic as you. I’d forgotten that you were so fiery.”

“Where do we go from here?” she asked.

“He’s going to make an announcement next Sunday off the altar,” David said. “He told me that after you stormed out, but I think that we’ve had it as far as he is concerned.”

“I think you’re right,” Kate agreed bleakly.

“It’s a shame, because our whole future hinged on his decision.”

Later that night, as she prepared for bed, Kate thought back over David’s words. What exactly had they meant?

Better not read too much into this, my girl, she told herself as she drew back the curtains before getting into bed. Suddenly she noticed someone move in the shadows of her back garden. She stepped back from the window and watched in the darkness, and just as she was beginning to think that she had imagined the whole thing, Matt Conway slunk out from under the hedge and disappeared through the gate. She crept downstairs and checked that every window and door was securely locked, but she did not sleep too well that night.

N
ORA LAY IN
bed and wondered if she could get out of going to school today. The thought of it nearly made her sick. Could she pretend that she was really sick? She was feeling terrible, but she knew that it had really nothing to do with being sick in the usual way, and it would be very hard to convince Mom. Especially when Mom already knew that she did not want to go to school. Mom did not understand that she dreaded going to school because all of them would be talking about Mossgrove being for sale. She never remembered anyone in school with their home for sale. Nobody that she knew had ever sold their house and farm. They would be looking at her as if she had two heads or something. She was not like Rosie Nolan, who loved being the centre of attention. She hated it.

It was bad enough after Dada had died, but at least people died in other houses too, but nobody sold their farm
and moved away. Most of her friends had their grandparents living with them or near them. She did not want to move away either. At least she supposed that they would be moving away, because why else would Mom be selling. She did not really know what was going to happen. Mom did not seem to know what they were going to do either, only that she was going to sell Mossgrove. It was all such a muddle. She could hardly believe her ears when she had overheard Jack and Davy talking about the Conways buying Mossgrove. The thought that the white worm would be sleeping in her bedroom nearly made her sick. The whole thing from the first minute that she had heard Davy shouting at Mom about it made her miserable.

Peter was in a silent rage and would not talk about it, and she knew that Davy felt uneasy talking to her about it. Mom just told her that it would be all for the best, but she did not believe that. Jack was the only one who understood, but she sensed that he was more upset that he was letting on. If only Aunty Kate would call. She was the only hope. Maybe she might be able to do something. Aunty Kate loved Mossgrove the way Dad and Jack did, so she would try to stop Mom if she could. But would she be able? Mom did not like Aunty Kate, and she had not liked Nana Nellie. Was that why she was selling Mossgrove, because they all liked it and she did not. Why didn’t Mom like Mossgrove? She could never understand that, but then there were a lot of things she could not understand and it made everything very complicated.

She wished that Dada could come back and straighten it all out Everything was upside down since he went He had kept everything straight, and you could talk to Dada and he understood. Why did he have to die? God was
mean to take him away. If he wanted somebody, why did he not take Nana Lehane. She had heard Nana herself saying that and it had surprised her. But maybe Nana was right. Uncle Mark could manage without Nana, but they could not manage without Dada. They had been in a terrible mess at the beginning before Aunty Kate came back, but now they were worse than ever again. She prayed to him every night but he did not seem to be listening. Where was he anyway? she wondered for the hundredth time since he had died. Surely if he could hear her he would not let Mossgrove be sold. Maybe nobody would buy it. If the neighbours like the Nolans knew that they did not want to sell, maybe nobody might buy, but then that would not stop the Conways. Nothing could stop the Conways.

She looked around her familiar room with the sloping ceiling and the window above the farmyard. She sat up in bed to look out and she saw Jack bringing a bucket of milk out from the stalls and pouring it in over the top of the churn. She could even see the white strainer cloth that Mom had tied around the top of the churn. If she lent sideways and hung out over the side of her bed, she could look out through the other window and down over the valley to the river and see Conways’ farm on the hill opposite. But she did not want to look out that window this morning. Instead she raised her eyes to the picture of St Theresa above her bed. It had been Nana Nellie’s picture and she had called it the Little Flower. Nora liked looking at her because she looked calm and serene, as if she had no worries.

Mom had wanted to put Nana Nellie’s pictures into the back of the old press in the landing, but Dad had asked herself and Peter if they wanted to hang any of them in their
rooms and she had taken the Little Flower. When Dad had suggested that they give the rest of them to Aunty Kate, Mom had frowned at him and said “they belong here”, and that had been the last she had ever seen of the pictures.

She wondered if the Little Flower ever had problems like she had. Then she looked over at the Child of Prague on top of the orange crate. He always looked happy, as if he did not have a care in the world, and yet look what happened to him. On the back of the door her green coat was hanging under an old coat to keep the dust off it. Mom had got it cleaned a few weeks ago, and it was as good now as it had been the night that she had finished making it. That night seemed like a long time ago.

She had felt like a princess that night in her bright green coat, and Mom had been so pleased. When Dada came in he had pretended not to know her, she looked so grand, and he had told Mom that she was a great woman. Mom was always delighted when Dada praised her. She loved the coat, and even though Kitty Conway had mocked it and made her feel bad about it for a while, she had got over that and now she loved it again. She did not wear it now because she wore the black coat that Nana had so miraculously produced the day of the funeral. But on Sundays after coming home from mass she sometimes put it on and walked around the room in it, and if she closed her eyes she could hear Dada’s voice saying, “I don’t know this grand stranger.”

Mom said that she could wear the green coat again when they came out of mourning for Dada.

“Nora, will you get out of bed, you lazy lump, or we’ll be late for school,” Peter burst in the door, his face full of annoyance that she was still inside in bed.

“Pete, I don’t want to go today,” she protested tearfully; “they’ll be all asking questions and I’ll hate it.”

“What about me?” he demanded. “Won’t it be the same for me?”

“I know,” she agreed, “but you won’t have…”

“Yea, yea, Kitty Conway,” he said impatiently, “but I’ll have the lads lording it over me. Can you imagine what Rory Conway will be like?”

“But you’re bigger than me.”

“Listen, Norry,” he advised, “it will be easier if you go today because if you don’t, tomorrow will be harder.”

“I suppose you’re right as usual,” she agreed, reluctantly turning back the bedclothes and sliding on to the floor.

“Move fast now,” Peter told her, “because if we’re late ’twill look as if we’re afraid to come, and if we’re early we’ll have the Nolans with us.”

“Right, I’ll be down in two secs,” Nora told him, whipping off her nightdress and starting to drag on her clothes in high speed.

Later they walked together silently up the boreen, each busy with their own imaginings of the day ahead.

“What does she want to sell at all for?” Peter burst out angrily. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” Nora sighed. Then, thinking of Kitty Conway, she added, “I wish that we were coming home.”

“Norry, you’re a great one for wishing things away, but that’s no good.”

“Makes me feel better, to think that in a few hours time we’ll be walking down this boreen and that the first day will be over.”

“Today is going to be the worst all right,” Peter agreed, “and do you know something: they’ll all be asking where
are we going and what are we going to be doing, and I haven’t a clue. Isn’t that stupid?”

“Could we pretend?” Nora asked.

“Pretend what?” Peter demanded.

“Pretend that we know but that we can’t say,” Nora suggested, brightening up.

“Norry, will you have a grain of sense – they’d know that we were only bluffing.”

“Well, it was only an idea.”

“And a stupid one,” he told her, closing the gate behind them.

As he heard the rattle of the gate Toby came bounding across Jack’s yard and put his head out between the bars of the gate to lick their hands in delight.

“I’ll miss Toby if we won’t be coming in and out this gate,” Nora said mournfully.

“What about Bran?” Peter asked.

“I’d die after Bran,” she told him, “but surely we’d take Bran with us?”

“Depends where we’re going,” Peter said darkly.

“’Tis true for Kitty Conway,” Nora said tearfully; “we’ll be out on the road like the tinkers.”

“Nora, will you shut up! We won’t be out on the road like the tinkers.”

“Do you think that Aunty Kate might try to stop Mom from selling?” Nora asked hopefully.

“She doesn’t seem to be making much of an effort so far,” Peter said bitterly. “She never even called after seeing it in the paper.”

“She called to Jack,” Nora said.

“Did she?” Peter asked eagerly. “Is she going to do anything?”

“She’s calling some day while we are at school.”

“That’s because she’s expecting a row and she doesn’t want us to hear,” Peter decided.

“I never thought of that,” said Nora.

“But of course there will be a row: Mom wanting to sell and Aunt Kate trying to stop her.”

“I hope that she can stop Mom.”

“I doubt it.”

They walked along the road beside Ned’s young beeches.

“The leaves are out on Dada’s trees,” Nora said with excitement.

“They’re out with a bit,” Peter said dismissively.

“I know, but they look all there this morning,” Nora said, and Peter laughed. “They’re sort of big enough to move in the breeze, aren’t they?”

Just then they heard a shout from behind and looked back to see the Nolans running to catch up with them. Rosie arrived puffing with exertion.

“You said that you’d be early,” Jeremy told Peter, “and you meant it.”

“He nearly rushed me off my feet,” Rosie protested.

“The exercise is good for you,” Peter told her.

“Cheek of you, Peter Phelan,” she said, sticking out her tongue at him. “I could beat you in a race any day.”

“Right,” said Peter, “race you to Sarah Jones’s gate.” And the two of them took off, school sacks flying behind them.

“I hope she’ll beat him,” Nora said with feeling.

“Are you and Peter having a fight?” Jeremy asked in surprise.

“He won’t talk since the thing in the paper and he’s awful snappy,” Nora told him.

“He was down with me on Saturday and we talked of nothing else,” Jeremy told her.

“Well, he won’t talk to me about it,” Nora declared.

“That’s because he’s afraid you’d cry,” Jeremy told her.

“I would too,” she admitted.

“Crying is no good Nora,” he said, “and whatever you do, don’t cry in front of the Conways today.”

“So you know about the Conways buying Mossgrove as well,” Nora said.

“Everybody in Kilmeen knows that; the Conways love boasting. Although my father says that normally when people are buying land, they tell nobody, but then the Conways are not normal.”

“I hate the thought of Kitty Conway sleeping in my room,” Nora told him sadly. Jeremy was good to listen and she could tell him about most things that bothered her.

“It might never happen,” he assured her; “my father says that land is never sold until you have the money in the bank, and ye’re a long ways from that yet.”

“Will you fight the Conways with Peter today if they have a row?” she asked him.

“Of course,” he said, “Peter and I always fight the Conways together, but other times we can be friends with them too.”

“Kitty and I are never friends,” she told him.

“Rosie says that she really has it in for you.”

“And I never did a thing to her,” Nora told him as they arrived at Sarah Jones’s gate where Rosie and Peter were sitting on the wall.

“Who won?” Nora asked.

“Do you mean to say that you weren’t watching?” Rosie demanded.

“I beat her sick,” Peter asserted.

“You did not, Peter Phelan,” Rosie declared. “I beat you with inches to spare.”

“It was only an old race, and you started ahead of me anyway,” Peter told her.

“Come on, Peter,” Jeremy said, “we’ll go on ahead because the two of them are too slow for us.”

“We could pass ye out if we wanted to,” Rosie called after them, “but we have important things to discuss.”

“Oh, we have indeed,” Nora told her as the two boys went ahead. “I’m dreading Kitty Conway today – she’s bound to get me in a corner at some stage.”

“Now, you listen to me, Nora,” Rosie instructed, “you will have to face up to Kitty Conway and stop being afraid of her.”

“Look what happened the last time I faced up to her – I nearly killed her.”

“She got what she deserved, and since then you’ve been avoiding her, so from today on no more avoiding. Just stand your ground.”

“Rosie, today is going to be hard enough without taking on Kitty Conway as well.”

“It’s your chance not to back down. Once she sees that she’ll leave you alone,” Rosie instructed with an air of authority; then, softening a little at the look on Nora’s face, she finished: “I’ll be there as well to back you up if you need me, but it would be better if you did it on your own.”

“But Rosie, I might not be coming to school here much longer anyway,” Nora protested.

“You will. My mother says that Mossgrove will only be sold over Kate’s dead body, whatever that means exactly.
But it sounds as if it might not be sold after all.”

“Oh, wouldn’t it be just great,” Nora breathed. “If only that could happen I’d never again be lazy, and I’d be out of bed like a shot every morning.”

“My mother says that your mother and Kate never got on and that Kate will tear strips off her about Mossgrove.”

“Oh, Aunty Kate wouldn’t do that,” Nora protested, “and I wouldn’t want Mom to be hurt.”

“Oh Nora! My mother only meant that Kate would argue with her about not selling Mossgrove.”

“Oh, that would be all right,” Nora said in a relieved tone.

They arrived at the school to find that the yard was empty and everybody had gone in.

“Oh, we were too slow,” Nora said in dismay; “the boys were right.”

“We’re not late,” Rosie said firmly; “we were often later than this.”