Across the River (18 page)

“You’re happy enough with that, so?” Tim asked.

“Delighted,” he was told, “absolutely delighted, and I won’t detain you another minute now, Father. I knew that you were the right man to come to. Priests are always wise in the ways of their parish.”

If only they were,
Tim thought;
if only they were.

When Rodney Jackson was gone, Tim decided to make himself a cup of tea. It had been an eventful evening. He had always felt that he would not like to go up against Martha, but he had never in his wildest imagination thought of her as taking the law into her own hands like she had. She would never tell anybody, and he hoped that Danny Conway would get over the whole incident in time. Jack, Kate and Sarah would probably figure it out, but hopefully it would go no further than that. He dreaded to think of the outcome if Rory Conway got hold of the details.

It would be interesting to know how Martha would react to Rodney Jackson’s invitation. One could never be sure what way Martha would jump.

M
ARK
HAD
INVITED
Rodney Jackson to Mossgrove for tea without even telling her about it and Martha was extremely annoyed. It was very out of character for Mark, who was a great believer in minding his own business and not interfering in other people’s lives. What on earth had prompted him to invite Rodney Jackson to Mossgrove? Mark and himself were great friends, but she had very little in common with him.

She remembered him as a pampered little boy when he had come as a child to visit his aunts. Then, of course, years later he had come back as the great benefactor of Kilmeen. This tall, thin, tanned American had also been the subject of great feminine interest in Kilmeen, and Martha thought that he probably was a bit full of himself.

But if Rodney Jackson was going to have tea in the parlour in Mossgrove, then she was not going to serve it in a room that was not up to scratch. The parlour was in the need of an overhaul. Always she had distempered the old walls, frowning at their irregularities, but now she decided that she was going to paper them. She returned in triumph from a visit to Ross with a heavy cream wallpaper embossed with a hint of pale rose. The price had made her cringe, but she was a firm believer that you had to pay for quality.

Martha began papering early one morning, and Nora took over in the kitchen. The one redeeming feature of Rodney Jackson’s visit was that Nora, for the first time since Conway’s attack on her, was showing some enthusiasm. The matching and hanging of the paper was tedious, but when Martha had a few strips up she knew that her choice
was right. After the dinner her mother came and Nora, having finished in the kitchen, joined them and the three of them worked together.

“How’s Ellen Shine?” Martha enquired of her mother.

“Oh, she’s much better,” Agnes answered, “almost back to her old self again. She really appreciated your calling to her.”

“I like her because she has great mettle,” Martha said.

“Ellen always had that,” Agnes said. “She brought cutting into the Shines. They were always a bit on the slow side.”

“You wouldn’t exactly call Davy a speedy operator,” Martha said wryly.

“Well, no,” Agnes admitted, “but he’s a sound little fellow all the same.”

“Not so little,” Nora remarked.

Agnes smiled and stood back to admire their efforts.

“Did you ever see such an improvement?” she asked. “It’s like a different room. You payed for that paper, Martha.”

“You can say that again,” Martha told her, “but it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

“Definitely,” Agnes agreed.

“Mom, you have great taste,” Nora told her quietly. She was still a long way from the old Nora, but at least she was showing interest in this undertaking.

Agnes was looking at the room with an appraising look on her face.

“I know exactly what this room needs,” she stated. “I have a pair of rich curtains that the Miss Jacksons left to me in their will, beautiful heavy cream damask. I think that they were family heirlooms. They would be just right here. I’ll measure the window and do whatever remodelling has to be done and bring them over tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” Martha asked doubtfully. “You have those in your trunk for years, and I always thought that
you were saving them for something special.”

“This is it,” Agnes declared. “I always knew that one day I would find a home for them. This room is transformed now and just the right background.”

“Well, I suppose the one good thing about Jackson’s visit is that it made me look at this room with fresh eyes,” Martha admitted, “though I still cannot understand why Mark decided to invite him.”

“I have no idea,” Agnes told her.

The following day Martha washed and polished the parlour floor. Old Edward had put down this floor and it was the devil to keep it looking well, but when it was polished, the rich glow was a compensation for the hard work. She polished the long sideboard and dining table and chairs. When the furniture was glowing, she stood and viewed the room. It looked good, but she needed something over the sideboard to balance the picture of Edward Phelan on the end wall. Many years ago when she came to Mossgrove, there had been a large gilt-framed portrait of Nellie Phelan hanging over the sideboard.

Americans are very interested in family history,
she thought.
I might as well give this American a view of the Phelan ancestral tree.

She went upstairs and found the picture at the back of an old cupboard. There was Nellie’s wedding photograph, and Kate and Ned as children with their parents, and smaller pictures of other Phelans. Carefully, she lifted out the heavy-framed pictures and unwrapped them. When she had put them away years previously, she had been very careful because the heavy gilt frames were so beautiful, but over the years the newspapers had yellowed and some had been torn away.

She brought them down to the kitchen and cleaned them
carefully and then carried them up into the parlour. Slowly she hung them on the walls and smiled. The old nails were still there because to pull them out would have meant a shower of mortar accompanying them. It amused her that she was using the Phelans’ portraits to impress Rodney Jackson. However, they certainly made the room more interesting.

The brass knob rattled and Peter put his head around the door, and when he saw the pictures he whistled in delighted surprise and then came fully into the room. “I’m glad they’re back,” he said appreciatively. “I often opened that cupboard upstairs and felt that they were part of our family relegated to the attic.”

“You never said.”

“No, they were better off above if they were not welcome down here,” he told her.

She knew by Peter’s tone of voice that he was not trying to annoy her. Despite all their clashes, there was between the two of them a strong bond, as if they were hewn off the same rock. He was direct and strong and deserved nothing but the truth. Maybe the time for truth had come. She walked over to the photograph of Nellie Phelan and, looking up at her, said thoughtfully, “I think that I may have wronged that woman.”

He came across the room and put his arm around her shoulder. “It takes honesty and courage to admit it,” he told her.

“Courage must be in the air around here these days,” she said ruefully.

The special tea was to be on Sunday and Martha spent Saturday getting ready. She had killed and plucked two large cockerels, and as they were having the supper on Saturday night, the smell of herbs and stuffing filled the
kitchen.

The following day when Martha had all in readiness, she stood back to admire the parlour. Agnes’s beautiful curtains billowed to the floor in a foam of creamy waves. She had really surpassed herself in her imaginative creation, with matching cushions on the low window seat and the old shutters painted the same shade as the curtains. The whole window area poured brightness into the parlour, which was continued in Martha’s rich cream wallpaper. For the first time ever, she thought that the old oak furniture was enriched and shown to advantage. Agnes had really brought a new dimension to the room, and with the leftover material she had made matching cushion covers for the dining room chairs. Martha had often been tempted to throw out Nellie Phelan’s down cushions, and now she was glad that she had held on to them because, with the new cream covers, they draped over the black leather seats of the oak chairs and softened their appearance. The long sideboard and the black marble fireplace were laden with vases of Nellie Phelan’s Gallic roses that filled the air with their rich musky essence, and arching ferns stretched themselves out of the deep fire grate and contrasted vividly with the black marble. The entire effect was a room full of light and elegance. Martha was glad that she had hung the old pictures because the deep gilt frames were rich against the pale paper, but apart from the fact that they enhanced the room, the effect on Peter was surprising. Over the years it had not occured to her that he had resented the fact that the pictures were upstairs.
Sometimes though living in the same house,
she thought,
we do not always know what is going on in each other’s heads.

Jack was first to arrive and stood gazing at the room in
silence as Martha watched and wondered what he was thinking. He walked over to the picture of Nellie and looked up at it, and suddenly it came to her with blinding clarity that Jack had loved this woman. What a lifetime of dedication to a woman and a place. She went across the room and put her hand on his shoulder, and when he turned towards her his eyes were full of tears.

“We’ve come a long way, Jack,” she said quietly.

“We have indeed, Martha,” he smiled through his tears, “and some of that journey took a lot of guts.”

She knew then that he knew the story of Yalla Hole and she was glad. The knowledge that Jack knew and was standing with her was a comfort.

Kate arrived soon after and stopped short at the door of the parlour.

“Oh,” she gasped, “the pictures are back and the whole room is quite beautiful.”

“Nana Agnes did the curtains,” Nora told her.

“They’re exquisite,” Kate said, fingering the heavy material and tracing the embossed satin designs with her fingers.

“They came out of the Miss Jackson’s old house,” Martha told her.

“How extraordinary that they will be hanging here now for their nephew’s first visit to Mossgrove. Well, you’ve really transformed the place,” Kate declared warmly, “and it’s good to see the pictures back.”

“They belong here,” Peter said, “and now we are going to get Uncle Mark to paint Mom’s and Dad’s wedding picture, and we’ll put it up as well.”

“I never thought of that,” Martha said in surprise. It was good to hear it coming from Peter.

“Rodney is gone back to collect Mark and Agnes,” Kate
told them.

“I can’t understand why Mark invited him here,” Martha declared.

“But it’s lovely, isn’t it?” Nora said.

“A bit of a family get-together is always nice,” Kate agreed.

“Well he’s not exactly family,” Martha objected.

“I suppose he is in a way, because his aunts, the Miss Jacksons, were distantly related to your family,” Kate told her.

“I’m not exactly family either,” Jack smiled.

“You’re more than that, Jack,” Kate told him. “You’re the heart of the whole place.”

“Davy would have been here as well,” Peter told him, “but you know that his mother has an old aunt home on holiday and she insisted that Davy be there for the dinner.”

A few minutes later they heard a car in the yard and Peter announced, “The Yank is here.”

“Don’t call him that,” Nora objected.

“Well, they all call him that in the village,” Peter told her.

“Well, we’re not the village,” Nora asserted with some of her old spirit.

Just then there was a knock on the door and they all stared at each other in surprise.

“God,” Peter declared, voicing all their thoughts, “we’re getting very formal around here.”

Hurrying into the porch, Martha opened the front door and had a huge bunch of flowers thrust into her arms.

“For the lady of the house,” Rodney Jackson announced. Martha was completely taken aback. It was the first time that she had ever been presented with a formal bouquet of flowers and she was rendered momentarily speechless, but
Nora had no such problem.

“Oh, aren’t they simply gorgeous?” she exclaimed, burying her nose in them and taking them from her mother. “What a lovely surprise.”

“Come in, come in,” Martha told them, regaining her composure, and Agnes and Mark followed Rodney Jackson into the parlour. He looked around in delight.

“What a room!” he enthused.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Nora told him. “We did it up specially for you.”

“How wonderful, and excuse me for saying so, but this is one superb set-up. Look at those drapes.”

“They actually came out of your aunts’ old home,” Agnes told him, and his face lit up with pleasure.

“How extraordinary,” he said.

“They gave them to me years ago,” Agnes told him, “and it looks as if they were designed for this room.”

“It’s almost as if the aunts are here to welcome me,” he said thoughtfully. He wandered around the room looking at the photographs, but suddenly turned around to apologise.

“I’m being very rude staring at your family portraits, but they are just great.”

Well, at least I got that right,
Martha thought ironically as she retrieved the flowers from Nora and took them to the kitchen to stand in water until she could arrange them later. They were a spectacular collection and she wondered,
Where on earth did he buy them? Must have cost him a pretty penny
, but it was a nice feeling to be at the receiving end of such a bouquet. She gave herself time in the kitchen to recover her composure.

When she returned to the parlour, Rodney Jackson was standing in front of Nellie Phelan’s portrait and
commenting, “Nora, you are so like her.”

“But she is lovely,” Nora protested.

“But so are you, my dear,” he drawled and she blushed with pleasure.

There was no doubt but that he was good for Nora.

As they stood around the room chatting, Martha realised that Rodney Jackson had everyone totally at ease in his company. He was a very charming man. Nora obviously thought that he was perfect and Agnes seemed to regard him as a second son, while to Mark and Kate he was a trusted friend. Peter alone was sizing him up with a quizzical look on his face.
I’m a bit like Peter,
Martha decided,
not so sure if this fellow is as perfect as he is painted.
He certainly looked good with his close-cropped dark hair and sallow complexion. She liked his lean look and decided that you could compare him to one of Davy Shine’s greyhounds, not carrying a spare pound but yet conveying a determined strength. He looked far younger than his age, which she had calculated must be at the wrong side of forty.

“Let’s all be seated,” Martha announced, drawing back the chairs, “and, Kate, as the original Phelan in the room, we’ll give you the head of the table.” She was amused to witness Kate’s expression and to see Peter cast a startled glance in her own direction.