Woman of the House (18 page)

“Now, Kitty, I’ll wash your hair and then you can soak for a while and enjoy yourself.”

It took two rounds of shampooing before she felt that Kitty’s lovely red hair was clean, and then she soaped her down with a big soft sponge.

“Now you’re squeaky clean, so we’ll run off that dirty water and fill the bath up again with clean warm water.”
Kitty laughed with delight as the water gurgled out of the bath and then the steaming taps filled it up again.

“Are you all right now?” Kate asked her.

“Grand,” Kitty grinned up at her. “I love the warm water. I feel like a fish.”

“Stay there as long as you like. I’ll be up to dry you off, or if you want to do it yourself the towels are there.”

“Can I lock the door when you go out?” Kitty asked timidly, fear lurking at the back of her eyes.

“Of course you can, and I’ll knock when I come up,” Kate told her.

Downstairs Fr Brady had refilled their cups with cocoa.

“I’m an old hand at this,” he told her. “My grandmother loved cocoa and got me into the habit of it, so now I make it every night. I heard running water – were you giving Kitty a bath?”

“She asked for it herself and is having a good soak above now. She’s a grand little girl and I hope that she’ll recover from what she’s been through.”

“What are you going to do about her now?”

“Sarah is going to send a telegram to Mary, so she’ll probably take her back with her after the funeral.”

“It will be a huge change for her,” he reflected, “and a big responsibility for Mary, who cannot be that old herself.”

“There are aunts up there as well,” Kate told him, “and Mary has a good job. Molly sent up money to send her to school.”

“She was an amazing old woman, wasn’t she?”

“She was indeed,” Kate agreed. “The better I got to know her, the more she surprised me.”

“That sometimes happens with people, but not often,”
he reflected. “You had a bit of a run-in with the P.P., I heard.”

“The whole parish probably knows it at this stage.”

“Probably,” he agreed, “but I think that Lizzy was secretly very impressed by your performance.”

“Really?” Kate smiled.

“The P.P. is not an easy man to work for, and I think she might have enjoyed seeing him get his comeuppance,” he said grinning.

“I think I may have blown David’s chance of getting his approval for the school, though, and I do regret that.”

“But his opposition is ridiculous!” he said vehemently.

“I knew that you’d be in favour.”

“Any right-minded person would be, and if you want to go against him I’ll back you up.”

“Thanks,” she said gratefully, “but we could never put you in that position. He’d make your life a misery afterwards.”

“He probably would; he’s acting very strange at the moment, and for some unknown reason the bishop is calling tomorrow.”

“Does that happen often?” she asked in surprise.

“It’s the first time he’s visited outside of confirmation,” he told her, “and your man is all in a tizzy about it.”

“Does he know what’s bringing him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will you meet the bishop yourself?”

“Hardly,” he said rising, “I’m only the boy. Now, I had better get moving or Kitty will be after going down the plug hole upstairs.”

“I’m glad you were with me tonight,” she told him as they went out into the hall; “it made it easier. Matt Conway
might have been more difficult if you had not been there.”

“Thank God it worked out so well,” he said. “At least now Kitty will get a chance of a normal life.”

Upstairs Kate knocked on the bathroom door. “Kitty, you’re going to turn into a duck if you stay in there much longer,” she called out to her.

“I’m coming,” Kitty shouted back, and after a few minutes she opened the door wrapped in a big towel. Kate lifted her up and carried her into the spare room where she rubbed her dry and slipped an old nightdress of her own over her head.

“In you go now,” she told her, turning back the bed clothes, “and sleep like a bug in a rug.”

Kitty snuggled down, her face flushed from the warm bath and her red hair glowing like a furze bush against the white sheets. She is going to be a beautiful girl in a few years time, Kate thought.

“Will my Nana be all right?” she asked in a worried voice.

‘Your Nana will be fine,” Kate assured her. “You had a wonderful Nana and she has arranged that you will go back to Dublin with Mary when she comes down for the funeral.”

“For good?” Kitty asked in amazement. “To stay with Mary and my aunties in Dublin for good?”

“That’s right.”

“Nana fixed all that up?” Kitty asked in wonder.

“She did.”

“She was a good Nana,” Kitty declared.

“The best,” Kate told her.

When she looked in a few minutes later Kitty was fast asleep, her lovely hair flowing out across the pillow.

She decided that it was not worth her while going to bed, so she went out into her back garden. She sat under the apple tree and watched the cobwebs glistening in the early morning sun. After a while she got up and walked around the garden looking at her flowers and plants.

“You’re doing well,” she told them, then decided that she would do some gardening.

An hour later she stood back to admire her work. Suddenly she heard a suppressed cough at the other side of the hedge and she froze to the ground. She remained motionless for what seemed like a long time and then gently eased the greenery of the thick hedge apart with her hands. Matt Conway was walking away from her, along by the ditch towards the gap at the bottom of the field behind her garden. She felt fear tighten in her stomach.

The quicker I get Kitty out of here, the better, she thought, and at least then I’ll only have myself to worry about.

W
HEN KATE OPENED
her front door on her way to the first mass on Sunday, Sarah was passing by.

“I’ll be with you,” Kate told her, closing the door behind her.

“Well, Kitty went off in great form,” Sarah remarked.

“It’s supposed to be for a holiday,” Kate said.

“Easier for them all that way.”

“Mary is a grand girl, isn’t she? I had kind of forgotten her, because she grew up while I was away.”

“Both girls have a lot of old Molly in them, but the boys are all Conways through and through,” Sarah said as they turned the corner towards the church.

“It’s a relief to have Kitty gone. Matt Conway has been hanging around the back of my place lately.”

“I don’t like the sound of that at all. He tried that on me after we shifted Mary, but one night two of my fellows were home from England and they beat him solid. He’s a bully, but a coward too.”

“He mightn’t come any more now with Kitty gone,” Kate suggested.

“Keep your doors and windows firmly locked at night anyway, because with Molly gone now there is no control on him any more.”

“Where did Molly get her money?” Kate asked in a puzzled voice.

“She had her own sideline,” Sarah said.

“What sideline?”

“Ever wonder where Jack and all the rest of us got the cure from?”

“Molly Conway!”

“Had been doing it for years, and her mother before her. They made the best in the county.”

“How come I never knew that?” Kate asked.

“Only the old stagers like myself know these things,” Sarah told her smiling.

“This is a strange place: there are layers upon layers of hidden things that nobody talks about.”

“Why should they?” Sarah said. “There is no virtue in having your business on the top of every tongue in the parish.”

“There are people around here,” Kate decided, “and their right hand hardly knows what their left hand is doing.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that, because there will always be the likes of Lizzy and your neighbour Julia to balance things out Everybody’s business is their business.”

“Martha was complaining about that the other day, saying that nobody had any privacy around here.”

“Well, if ever there was a closed book, she’s one. Jack told me that you drew a blank.”

“That’s right,” Kate sighed. “I think that I’ve given up hope of Mossgrove at this stage.”

“Never give up, Kate; life is full of surprises.”

“At the moment all mine are unpleasant, and the reason I’m going to first mass today is that I don’t want to be listening to old Fr Burke shoot down the school at second mass.”

“Will he shoot it down?”

“Be in no doubt about it,” Kate asserted; “he even had the bishop over during the week to back him up.”

“Was the bishop over?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“Fr Brady said that he was coming and that Fr Burke was all in a tizzy about him.”

“That’s very interesting.”

“You could say that I suppose,” Kate said bitterly as they went up the steps at the church gate. “Thanks be to God that I don’t have to listen to him this morning. At least Fr Brady talks about things relevant to the world we live in.”

“I’ll see you later,” Sarah whispered as they joined the stream of people going in the door.

Kate dipped her finger in the stone holy water font and filed in behind a large man who smelt of cows. He must have been milking before leaving home and that special smell of milking cows still clung to him. She smiled to see that Lizzy and Julia had taken up their usual position in the back seat under the gallery, from where they had a good view of everybody coming in. Sarah went up the aisle ahead of her to her usual seat. She always sat six seats from the back on the right hand side; Kate had never seen her sit anywhere else in the church. Nellie used to sit on the left by the confession box, and now Kate sat in the same place. We’re a bit like the cows, she thought, all going to our own stalls.

The church had just one aisle with a gallery overhead at the back and stained-glass windows along the sides and behind the altar. The altar had elegant white turrets of marble which contrasted vividly with the richness of the windows. The early morning sunlight poured through the stained glass and cast coloured shadows over the seated congregation.

She watched others file in. Betty and Con Nolan with Rosie and Jeremy in tow went up the aisle. Betty looked flamboyant in a fur coat that her sister had sent her from America. Some women would have toned down the glossy fur with sedate accessories, but not Betty, who had dressed it up with a dashing red hat. Kate always thought that Betty’s clothes reflected her personality, and Rosie was going to be a carbon copy of her mother, whereas Jeremy, like Con, was quieter and more restrained. She had always thought that the Nolans were an ideal couple. They were two strong personalities but neither dominated. If she ever got married, that was the one thing that she would need, the independence to be herself. She saw Ned’s and Martha’s relationship as claustrophobic. Martha was what Betty Nolan termed a “grow-off-the-arm job”, and Kate knew exactly what she meant. Martha wanted to be inside in his head, and she had seen Ned lose a lot of his freedom to accommodate Martha’s demands. I could never put up with that, she thought.

Just then the bell rang and Fr Brady swept out of the sacristy ushering a cortège of altar boys ahead of him. There was exuberance in his entry as if he was the bearer of good news.

He launched into
“Introibo
ad
altare Dei Ad Deum
qui
laeti
fiat
juventutem
meum”
with fervour.

When he climbed the altar steps and started the mass, Kate felt that it was a celebration of joy, and his movements on the altar were almost a dance of delight. Will his enthusiasm and idealism survive, she wondered, or will he be crucified along the road and have the spirit knocked out of him? The stained-glass window above the altar depicted the last supper. The same celebration, she thought. Jesus the enthusiast and his fishermen, and beneath him today his successor and his congregation off the land. Both peoples close to nature. Are people in touch with nature closer to reality, she wondered, and was that why Jesus started with the fishermen? Had they the joy of creation locked in their hearts?

At the consecration she thought of her parents and Grandfather Phelan, and now Ned as well. They had all been so close to her in life, and now in death they were so untouchable, and yet at the most unexpected times she had felt her mother’s presence, although during the struggle to save Mossgrove there had been no sense of that comforting presence. Now she closed her eyes to better experience the miracle of what was happening on the altar.

“Dear Jesus,” she prayed silently, “help me to bear with courage the loss of Mossgrove and comfort Nora and Peter, and help me not to feel bitter towards Martha, because at the moment I am finding that very difficult.”

After the consecration the congregation sat down to listen to the sermon. Because it was Fr Brady they were alert; he usually said very little, but what he did say was always interesting. But today, instead of standing with his back to the altar, Fr Brady went down the steps and sat on a chair to the side. A ripple of surprise went through the congregation.

The sacristy door opened and Fr Burke emerged purposefully and strode slowly up the steps of the altar. He wore a long white alb belted tightly at the waist, and his ample proportions swelled out above and beneath it like billowing hills. He stood silently and viewed his curious parishioners. He’s enjoying this, Kate thought; he should have been an actor! She felt a knot of apprehension tightening in her stomach. This had to be about the school. She would not put it beyond him to name names off the altar and to tell how he had been insulted in his own house by a parishioner. She felt her mouth go dry and perspiration come out on the palms of her hands. Still he stood there silently with his hands clasped across the rise of his stomach. His eyes swept over the seats until they came to rest on her. He stared malevolently down at her and she stared back, determined that she was not going to be cowed. Then he noisily cleared his throat and raised his eyes to the gallery overhead.

“My dear brethren, for many years as your parish priest I have sought to do the best thing for this parish. I have always put the needs of you the people before every other consideration. I have given this parish the best years of my life. The nuns in Ross have also served this parish well and educated your children when there was nothing else available to them. When they came here twenty years ago, I gave them to understand that theirs would be the only school in this parish and I have honoured that agreement.”

Here it comes, Kate thought, wishing that she was anywhere else but sitting in the church in Kilmeen. She had come to the first mass to avoid this. He never said the first mass. Then she became aware that he had started again.

“…Things change, and an agreement made in good faith so many years ago is no longer applicable today, and that is why I took it upon myself to ask the good nuns to release me from that agreement and to allow me to give permission for a new secondary school in the village. This secondary school will bring education to your children and give them choices that are not now available to them. I give it my approval and my blessing.”

Kate could hardly believe what she was hearing. What on earth had happened? He looked benevolently over his congregation and lumbered down the altar steps and disappeared into the sacristy.

Fr Brady came lightly up the steps and smiled down at them. “This is wonderful news,” he told them; “let us praise the Lord.” He concluded mass for a bemused congregation.

Outside the church people stood around in groups avidly discussing the news. It was the first that some of them had heard about it, and since what the others had had mostly come from Lizzy, the approval of the parish priest was the last thing they had expected. It just went to show, they decided, that you could not believe everything you heard.

Kate made a beeline for Sarah. “You are coming home with me for the breakfast,” she told her, “because if I don’t talk this out with someone I’ll simply explode.”

“You got a bit of a surprise,” Sarah said smiling.

“A bit of a surprise!” Kate gasped. “I’m absolutely thunderstruck with amazement. I simply can’t believe it. It’s just great!” And she did a little dance around Sarah.

“Come on home quickly,” Sarah told her smiling, “or word will go out that Kate Phelan was drunk after mass and was dancing outside the chapel.”

As they walked down the churchyard the Nolans caught up with them.

“Great news, Kate,” Con told her, his normally serious face breaking into a smile.

“Good for you, Kate,” Betty declared; “about time someone backed that fellow into a corner that he couldn’t get out of.”

“Who did Kate back into a corner?” Rosie wanted to know, and Con put his hand in his pocket and handed her some coins with instructions to get herself some sweets.

“Neither David nor his father were at mass,” Betty said, “so they won’t have heard the news yet. They’ll be delighted.”

“Hannah was there, so they’ll know soon,” Sarah remarked.

Betty and Kate walked ahead and Betty said in a relieved voice, “Well, the school solves our problem of what to do with Jeremy next year, and I suppose Peter will go as well.”

“If he’ll still be here,” Kate said.

“Where is he going to be gone to?” Betty wanted to know.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Kate told her, “but with Mossgrove sold the Lord only knows where they’ll be.”

“Is she planning to leave Kilmeen as well?”

“I don’t know and I doubt if she knows herself,” Kate said.

“Bloody woman!” Betty fumed.

“Don’t let’s spoil the joy of today’s good news by talking about Mossgrove,” Kate pleaded as they waited at her door.

“Do you want a lift home?” Con asked Sarah as they came abreast.

“I’ve been invited for breakfast by my old neighbour to
help her to digest the good news,” Sarah said. “I think that she is finding it hard to believe.”

“Well, we’ll leave you to it, so,” Betty told them as they parted company, “and we’ll see you during the week, Kate.”

Seated across the kitchen table from each other, Kate asked Sarah, “Did you ever have the feeling that everything did not quite add up?”

“Yes,” Sarah smiled.

“Well, I feel that there is a missing link somewhere in this chain of events and I can’t seem to find it. One and one does not quite make two in some way. Betty thinks that I bulldozed the old P.P. into this, but I know that she could not be further from the truth. He does not tick like that. The more you’d oppose him the more you’d get his back up. It was not me, of that I’m sure. So there is some other factor here that we’re not taking into the reckoning.”

“What about the bishop?” Sarah asked.

“I thought of that, too, but the only reason that he could have known was if Fr Burke told him, and I doubt that he did that.”

“Maybe someone else went to the bishop,” Sarah suggested.

“No, no,” Kate said with conviction, “the people around here would not dream of doing that. As well as that, he lives miles away and no one here would know him well enough to chance visiting him.

“I would,” Sarah told her quietly.

“You would!”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about it,” Sarah began, “but I can see now that you’re like a dog with a bone and you’re going to keep chewing until you arrive at some conclusion, so it might as well be the right one.”

“But how did you do it?” Kate asked.

“Well, it all goes back a long time ago,” Sarah told her. “When I was young there was a big crowd of us there, and when I left national school I was sent working to the local presbytery. That was all of fifty years ago. There was a young curate there at the time: it was his first job and my first job and he was one of a big family as well. We were both lonely and maybe a bit out of our depth. He was a Fr McGrath.