Across the River (5 page)

“And where do you think that the money is going to come from?”

“I have never poked my nose into the finances here since Nellie died, because Ned was well able to manage them, but he never made a secret of how things were going; so I would have a fair idea how things are financially here, and I know that we can well afford to get this tractor without breaking the bank.”

“Good God,” she exclaimed in annoyance, “this place is like living in a glass bowl.”

“Martha, be reasonable. Most farmers know exactly
how the others are doing. We have only to watch the harvesting and the churns of milk going to the creamery. There are no big secrets.”

“So the general consensus is that I have the money?”

“That’s right,” he agreed and waited for her to make the next move.

“Did it ever dawn on you that I might have other plans for that money?” she demanded, eyes blazing across the table at him.

“But what?” he asked in amazement.

“You will all find out in due course,” she told him, getting up from the table and stacking plates with a clatter to indicate that the conversation was at an end.

A
S
J
ACK
WALKED
up the boreen from Mossgrove to his own cottage, he was deep in thought. Martha had closed the conversation decisively without giving anything away, and when he had met Peter out in the yard afterwards he was like a red devil with bad temper.
Between the two of them you’d want to be God to keep the balance
, he thought. But whereas Peter was all steam and fire, Martha was a dark horse. Sometimes it was very hard to know what she was at. What on earth could she want with the money? Would she have it in her head to buy more land? But that did not make sense because there was no land for sale near them, and sure if she wanted more land she could be working the Lehane place, because her own family, Mark and Agnes, had no interest in farming. It would be Peter’s some day anyway because he would probably be the only one for it. Mark never took his nose out of the paints long enough to look at a woman. There was a time when he had thought that Kate and himself might have had something going for them, but that was when they were very young. Just as well that did not work out, because the union of Ned and Martha had been complicated enough without making it a double bill.

The Lehanes were an ordinary run-of-the-mill family. Martha and Mark could have come from different planets. Mark was for the birds, a genius of an artist but not at the races at all. He was on a winner now all right, with Rodney Jackson selling the paintings. Kate was a mighty woman to have brought that about, but then Kate was extraordinary in many ways. They would have no secondary school in the village but for her. She had really sorted out old Fr Burke and wiped out his opposition. The fact that her old
friend, Sarah Jones, had a leg of the bishop had made all the difference.

Of course, Sarah had half reared Kate, always down in Mossgrove with Nellie when Billy was drinking and times were troublesome.
There is no doubt but that some of the neighbours around here are mighty, but of course we have the other kind too
, he thought as he turned around and looked across at Conways’. Over the years Matt Conway had made it rough in Mossgrove, and only for Ned being so quiet there would have been real trouble. Matt Conway had opened gates at night and let cows into meadows and let dogs loose in fields of sheep. It had nearly driven him demented, but Ned had held his head and there had been no more court cases. Conway had been quiet since Ned died, so maybe he was after calming down. But he still kept vigil at the fencing stake above Yalla Hole. When he reached his own cottage at the entrance gate to Mossgrove, Jack stood and looked down over the Clune field. What a great field that was. Old man Phelan used to say you could feed a parish out of a field like that, and he was right. The young wheat was just a few inches tall and there was a green sheen on it right across the field. You could feel the vigour and growth to come. It did his heart good to look at it. The Well field behind it was a good field too, but not as good as the Clune. You could not go wrong in the Clune; any seed you put down there seemed to multiply. As far as the fields of Mossgrove were concerned, it was the flower of the flock.

He closed the gate of Mossgrove firmly behind him and then turned into his own haggard. The hens were locked up for the night, so he knew that Sarah Jones must have been around, but when he went in to the kitchen he found she was still there, sitting by the fire.

“I knew that you wouldn’t be long,” she told him, “so I decided to wait and have a cup of tea with you.”

Sarah must have something on her mind,
he decided,
because it is a bit unusual for her to be here this late.

“Put on the kettle so,” he told her as he took off his jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door.

He was always glad to see Sarah, a small, neat, fresh-faced woman with short-cropped grey hair. They had been friends since childhood and had a healthy respect for each other. As the district nurse, she had delivered the whole parish and laid out what was gone of them before Kate came on duty, so Kilmeen had no secrets from Sarah. They were quite safe with her.

Jack sat at the head of the little table and Sarah with her back to the kitchen so that she could enjoy looking out the window down over Nolans’ fields.

“There is a great view from this window,” Sarah told him.

“There is indeed,” Jack agreed, “but this is a cold spot on a windy day. Before the trees grew up, you’d be blown out of it. Mossgrove down below now is like a bird’s nest, tucked in at the foot of the hill and still with a fine view down over the glen. That house has the best situation of any around here.”

“They had a lot of sites to choose from when they built, away back whenever it was,” Sarah said.

“Well, they picked the best,” Jack assured her. “The old man did a lot of work on that house when I came here first. It’s a fine, dry, sound structure.”

“There’s a bit of bother down there with you at the moment?” Sarah enquired.

“How’d you hear that so fast?” Jack smiled.

“Peter was in with Kate,” she told him.

“Poor Peter,” Jack sighed, “blessed and cursed with the
impatience of youth. What he wants, he wants now and not tomorrow.”

“So you don’t agree with him?”

“Oh, I agree with him all right, but you must cut your cloth according to your measure, and Martha is measuring very carefully at the moment,” he told her.

“That’s nothing new.”

“I know,” he agreed, “but the only thing that has me worried is for fear he’ll get fed up and bail out altogether. Then we’d be in a real pucker.”

“She’d never sell, would she?” Sarah asked.

“No,” he told her empathetically.

“You seem very sure.”

“I am,” he told her. He did not want to say any more because it was not his business to disclose and he was not too sure that he should have let it slip to Martha. However, Sarah took him by surprise.

“It’s Nellie’s will, isn’t it?” she said quietly.

“You knew about that?” he asked in surprise. “Did Kate tell you?”

“No, but I remember Nellie talking about her visit to Mr Hobbs and how he had covered so many eventualities in the will that she was a bit mesmerised by it. So when Martha changed her mind about selling, it was so out of character of her that I thought of Nellie’s will and was sure that it had something to do with it.”

“Sound woman.”

“Did anyone read that entire will?” she asked. “Well, I don’t rightly know,” he said thoughtfully. “Kate was with him, but whether she got to read it all or not I don’t know. She was so delighted that Mossgrove could not be sold that she wasn’t concerned with anything else. But surely Old Hobbs would have filled her in.”

“You must be joking,” Sarah told him. “Hobbs would only tell you what you needed to know at any given time. He is second to none but measured, down to the last dot. If Kate did not ask, he did not show.”

“And Martha did not go to him at the time,” Jack remembered.

“Well, that cooked her goose anyway, because his crowd have always acted for the Phelans and they look after their own.”

“I remember Kate quoting him at the time about the making of a will, that it needed to protect the wishes of the dead, the rights of the living and the interests of the unborn.”

“Some job that,” Sarah smiled, “but Old Hobbs probably succeeded. It might be no harm if Kate called to see him and got the lie of the land.”

“Might be an idea,” Jack agreed, though he felt that as smart as Old Hobbs was, even he could not have anticipated a problem between Peter and Martha away back before Peter was even born.

Sarah’s next question was thrown out so casually that he knew straightaway that it was the reason she had stayed on.

“Hear anything about Kate lately?” she asked lightly.

His heart leapt with anticipation: maybe Kate was expecting. It would be the best news that he could hear. He knew that not having children was a huge disappointment to her, but of course being Kate she did not make a meal out of it. Time was running out though, and if it did not happen soon they could forget about it.

“She’s in the family way?” he asked hopefully.

“’Fraid not, or at least not that I know of,” she told him.

“What is it so?” he asked worriedly. It wasn’t in Sarah’s
nature to be hedging around, so it had it be something unpalatable.

“There is a strange rumour going around about herself and Fr Brady,” she said quietly.

“What!” he demanded in amazement, and his cup clattered into his saucer. “How could a shagging lie like that get out?”

“Well, the dogs on the street don’t have it, but it’s there.”

“But who has it?” he demanded.

“I think that it came from Julia and Lizzy.”

“The two poisonous old bitches,” he pronounced with feeling.

“Julia, of course, living across the road from Kate, watches every stir, and Lizzy being Fr Burke’s housekeeper has it in for Kate since the trouble about the school, and needless to mention himself had no love for her either,” Sarah said.

“How did you come to hear it, because there’d be no way that they’d say that to you?”

“Jim in the post office tipped me off,” she told him.

“Good man, Jim, because the sooner this is shot in the head the better,” he said. “Are you going to tell Kate?”

“No,” she told him to his surprise.

“But how are you going to get around it so?” he asked.

“I think that Fr Brady is the right angle to come at it from,” she said slowly.

“Why so?”

“Well, he’s always in and out of the house. Kate can’t stop him, but he could slow down on the visiting,” she said.

“But himself and David are great friends, and he trains the school teams, and they are both caught up in that. It’s understandable that he would be in and out of the place and he living up the street.”

“I know all that, Jack, but people will talk, and you can’t
give them anything to say.”

“Well, it’s a fierce state of affairs when we can’t visit each other now without some bitch putting a quare face on it. Is anybody safe from them?” he demanded.

“When you’re gone past it like the two of us, Jack, you’re dead safe,” Sarah told him.

“I’m not sure if that’s a comfort or an insult.”

“Anyway,” she assured him, “the whole thing is no big deal, but I wanted to find out how far it had gone. If Martha had it, you’d have got a slap of it across the face, so obviously it hasn’t got that far yet.”

“So you’re going to talk to Fr Brady? I don’t envy you your job. A fine young man like him who has done more for the young of the parish than anyone we ever had before him. There’s a begrudging shower of old whores in there in the village, and all they have to do is tittle-tattle.”

“Calm down, Jack; it’s the nature of people to talk. I know that this kind of thing drives you mad, but we’ll get over it,” Sarah told him.

She was right, of course, and when a few minutes later she pulled back her chair remarking, “Better be going, Jack, in case we’d be the cause of scandal,” he had to smile in spite of himself.

On his way back from walking with her to the gate, he spotted a few weeds trying to strangle his young cabbage plants, so he brought out his old weeding cushion and got to work. After an hour, when his annoyance had evaporated, he knelt back on his heels and surveyed his cleaned patch with satisfaction.

The following morning he awoke to the sun warm across his face. They were going to have a great day for saving the river meadows. His heart lifted in delight. He had always felt that those few moments before you
actually woke up properly and got out of bed were a great barometer of how the day was going to go. How you felt in your gut was the important thing, and he felt that this day was going to be good.
Thank God for that
, he thought.
A good start is everything.

After a quick cup of tea and bite of brown bread, he was on his way down the boreen to Mossgrove. The rising sun was shimmering across the dewy wheat of the Clune field, and the ferns on the ditches of the boreen were clothed in silken cobwebs. What a lot of silent activity went on at night. The sight of these morning cobwebs was magical. He loved the quiet of the dawn fields when he was out alone and monarch of all he surveyed.
Nobody owns this land
, he thought,
neither Martha nor Peter nor I. It belongs to those gone and those coming after us, as much as to us who are here now. It is greater than any of us.

He rounded up the cows in the field above the house where they were gathered, patiently waiting to be brought in for milking.
Cows are grand creatures
, he thought as he went around and encouraged them to get up. There were the frisky ones who jumped up as soon as they saw you, and they reminded him of Peter, but there were a few Davy Shines in the herd as well that waited until the last minute to disturb themselves. But the sight of Bran bounding across the field brought them hurriedly to all fours.

“Good boy, Bran,” he praised as he ran his hand along the bouncing sheepdog’s back.

He was on his second cow when Peter joined him with a scowl on his face.

“You musn’t have gone to bed at all last night, Jack. Every morning you’re earlier.”

“How’d you mean, early?” Jack demanded. “With the
river meadows to be saved today, sure it’s hardly lying in bed I’d be.”

“Sure the birds are only just up.” Peter sat under a cow further up the house and Jack could hear the milk dancing off the tin bucket.

“The birds have a morning’s work done,” Jack asserted.

“Did you never hear the dawn chorus? They give a recital before they begin their day and that was hours ago.”

“I’d say they didn’t have a big audience.”

“Probably the only time you ever heard it was before you went to bed, and then your sense of appreciation would not be too sharp.”

“God, Jack, you’re so bright in the morning you are enough to depress anyone. No wonder Davy starts in the other stall so that he doesn’t have to be listening to you.”

“No trace of him yet then,” Jack said. “The mother’s gone to her mother for a few days, so there is no one to get him out of bed.”