Rainbow's End (2 page)

Paddy often talked of his brothers, who had gone so far away, and he told the children that, had his brothers known there would be work and a place for them on the farm, they would never have left, but Grainne doubted it. Feeneys, it seemed to her, were natural wanderers; she saw it already in Sean and had little doubt that her father, too, would have left the place had he not married his Bridget young and settled down.

Farmers’ children always work hard, be they boys or girls, but Grainne and Fidelma Feeney worked harder than most. Grainne had been eleven and Fidelma a year younger when their mother had died. Now they were sixteen and seventeen, old enough to be a very real help to their father, and indeed he often remarked that he could never have managed without them. There was no task they could not undertake on the farm, they sewed and cooked, kept the house decent and managed the small amount of money which came their way when Paddy drove his cattle to the November market, making it stretch to cover everything a lively young family could not do without. Indeed, since their mother’s death they had done more, for they had schooled their younger brothers and sisters, teaching all of them, even Sean, who boasted that he didn’t have a brain at all under his mop of curly brown hair, to add up, divide and multiply as well as to read and write a little.

Now, having satisfied herself that she had done all she could to stock up for the coming months, Grainne picked up the overflowing pig-bucket from beside the door and carried it out to the fenced-off bit of rough ground with the old stone pigsty at one end where the pigs lived with their bonaveens. They rushed towards her, snorting and grunting with pleasure as she tipped the food out on to a cleared patch of ground, and began eating at once. There was a big old sow and three youngsters snouting at the potato skins and the cabbage leaves, all looking healthy enough despite the cold. Paddy had killed the young boars in September, because he always put the sow, known to one and all as Bessy Lug, to his neighbour’s boar, so the bonaveens left were all she-pigs, which would produce bonaveens of their own in time. Or if we run short of food for them we can sell them at the market, Grainne reminded herself, aware that a hard winter would stretch their supplies to the limit. There was always someone wanting a healthy young gilt in the spring to start off their own litter.

Having satisfied herself that all was well with her pigs, Grainne checked on the children, who were making a slide on the empty potato patch, shouting and yelling as they careered down it on a flattened piece of tin. It was a still, overcast day, almost uncannily still, Grainne thought. Her younger brothers and sisters were making a good deal of noise, but nevertheless she could hear the shouts of the Casey family carrying across the flat limestone and the little fields which separated them from their nearest neighbours. Indeed, when Dervla came out of the cottage to call the children indoors and slipped, every imprecation reached Grainne’s ears as clearly as if the older woman was no more than a couple of yards distant, instead of a couple of miles.

‘Is it indoors you want me, Grainne?’ Maura, who was twelve, said reluctantly when she looked up from the game and saw her sister watching. ‘I’m just havin’ a bit of a game wit’ the others, but I’ll come, if you need me.’

‘No, stay out for a while,’ Grainne said. She was glad to see them playing because it kept them warm, for the good God knew that their clothing was a poor protection against cold such as this. It was hard work, making clothes for six children who ranged in age from five to twelve, and often boots were a real problem, for though Paddy Feeney had his own cobbler’s last and mended boots until they were more patch than anything else, new boots were more than the Feeneys could manage. But this year, with a fair price for the cattle sold for the Christmas market, a good crop of potatoes and winter cabbage and with Bessy Lug producing two large litters, everyone had pretty respectable boots. We’re managin’ well, so we are, Grainne told herself and turned back towards the farmhouse.

They called it a farmhouse, but Grainne reflected it was more like a cottage, with a thatched roof which was held down by ropes flung across it and anchored with great rocks from the beach so that it stayed in place even during stormy weather. The glassless windows were set a couple of feet into the thickness of the whited cob walls and there were stout wooden shutters which could be closed across at night and in rough weather. It was low-built, as were all the dwellings on the Burren, and it always looked to Grainne as though it had pulled its thatch low over its eyes to save itself from the bitter winds which roared inland from the Atlantic, all but tugging the small dwellings from their moorings. For though the Feeneys farmed a dozen acres, which was quite a good-sized property for the Burren, their neighbours further inland, the McBrides, owned thirty acres and had a far larger flock of sheep than the dozen ewes and the evil-eyed ram which kept the Feeneys supplied with both wool and mutton.

There was, however, bad feeling between the Feeneys and the McBrides. Fergus McBride had an exalted idea of his own importance – did he not own his farm, and had he not married a woman who had brought a substantial dowry with her when they wed? Perhaps, but everyone knew that the McBrides’ first child had not been of Edward McBride’s getting, that Fergus’s mother had been pregnant by another man when they married. No one thought it a matter for shame, but neither did they expect Fergus McBride to take the attitude that he was, socially, far above his neighbours.

And then there was the matter of the spring lambs. Paddy had taken his lambs into Ennis on market day and Fergus McBride was buying. He liked the look of the Feeney lambs and had been about to purchase them when someone had said they were Feeney lambs, raised on the Burren, and weren’t they just grand, now? Fergus had drawn himself up to his full height, looked down his nose at his informer and had deliberately snubbed Paddy before all the world by saying that he’d changed his mind; he wouldn’t buy Feeney lambs because sheep reared on the poor grazing offered by the Burren had thin, rickety bones and never prospered.

Paddy, not to be outdone, had said how strange it was that McBride had been admiring the lambs for their fat sides and strong bones . . . until he had heard they came from the Burren, of course. And wasn’t it stranger still that the McBride farm was right on the edge of the Burren too, which didn’t say much for his own stock, did it now?

The argument had ended in a scuffle during which Paddy, very much smaller than his opponent but also square and pugnacious, had landed a good punch on his rival’s high-bridged nose.

The two families had ceased to speak to each other from that day on.

With the Caseys and O’Hares, however, who were the Feeney’s neighbours in the opposite direction, a much easier relationship existed. Grainne and Sammy O’Hare had often gone egg-hunting on the cliffs, for she could climb every bit as well as he, and as she took over management of the house she and Mrs O’Hare exchanged recipes and complained when the hens weren’t laying or the cow went dry.

The Casey family had sons a-plenty, unlike the Feeneys, and the oldest boys, Evlin and Durvan, were a couple of years older than Grainne and Fidelma and hung around, making sheep’s eyes and frying to interest the girls in shared pursuits. But though Fidelma was friendly enough and rather liked Durvan, Grainne refused to encourage either boy. She had ideas of her own regarding marriage which certainly did not include an alliance with their neighbours.

But thinking about their neighbours would not get the evening meal. Grainne put her hand on the latch to let herself into the farmhouse, then paused. Last spring, she had planted a climbing honeysuckle right by the door, and now she looked at its dry twigs and tried to imagine how it would look in summer, with the pink and gold of the flowers against the white-washed walls and the green of its leaves making a good background colour. It’s withstood the wind so far, Grainne thought hopefully; it may yet flourish. Life on the Burren was harsh, but . . . it’s a grand place, so it is, Grainne thought, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else but here for twenty pound. But of course she might not be able to live in this particular place for ever. Not if she married.

Grainne went into the kitchen and threw potatoes into a bowl, then poured water over them and began to scrub off the worst of the dirt. Marrying was a knotty problem, for the Feeney girls always seemed too busy with their own family to think about much else. Indeed, Grainne sometimes thought that the older they grew, the less time they had to themselves. Now that they were keeping hens, her father frowned on the collecting of seabirds’ eggs, saying that it was too dangerous, that they would fall to their deaths and then where would he be? This meant that the friendly rivalry between Sammy O’Hare and herself had stopped, and though they met various young men from the area when they took the donkey down to the seashore and collected seaweed to fertilise the land, the boys were working as hard as they and could not stop their labours for long. Certainly there was chat, flirting even, but Grainne, at least, did not take any of this seriously. It was not courtship; they knew each other too well, Grainne supposed.

Another reason for going down to the shore was the Feeney fishing currach. On fine summer evenings Grainne and Fidelma would set off, sometimes with some of the younger children aboard, sometimes alone, and cast out the nets, which they made on winter evenings before the fire. They followed the herring, or the mackerel, and did as well as the O’Hares or the Caseys or any of their neighbours, Indeed, the girls cut peat, swinging the big slane as expertly as many a man, piled the turves in the old tumbril and brought it down to the cabin to add to the turf pile behind their dwelling, and took no longer over it than the Casey boys. And year in, year out, they planted, tended and harvested the potato plot and grew from seed such things as cabbages, swedes and turnips to help feed the family – and all this in addition to what would have been called women’s work about the farmhouse.

Despite the hard work, which started before daybreak and went on until dark and beyond, Grainne had always enjoyed her life, especially that part of it which she spent out of doors, with the wind from the sea ruffling her hair and her healthy young body rejoicing in its strength. She would have liked more freedom, but all around her people worked from dawn till dusk so why should she be any different? And then an event had occurred which was to change her life, though at first she had not recognised it as anything out of the ordinary.

It had happened last June, when Grainne had been at work hoeing the potato field. At the end of the last-but-one row she looked up and saw a young man leaning on the dry-stone wall, watching her. He was tall, with dark-auburn hair and when he grinned at her his teeth were very white and even in his brown and merry face.

‘Aren’t you doin’ a fine job, now?’ he said as she approached. ‘If you’ve a mind to carry on workin’ for a while, how about comin’ over to me father’s farm an’ givin’ us a hand wit’ the hoein’?’

‘I’ve not finished here, yet,’ Grainne said. ‘Seein’ as how you’re here, though, ’tis you ought to be helpin’ me, not the other way around.’

She hadn’t meant it seriously, but he had jumped over the wall, seized her hoe and worked his way along the last row, talking as he did so.

‘Well then, that’s easy fixed! Here I am, doin’ your work for you, so mebbe you’ll take a walk wit’ me when this is over and done? We could go down to the shore, see if we can pick us some mussels.’

‘Who are you?’ Grainne had said, suddenly seized by an unpleasant suspicion. ‘What’s your name? What are you doin’ here?’

He finished the row and bowed, flourishing the hoe at her so comically that she had to smile. ‘I’m William McBride, missus. And you’ll be Miss Feeney, I dare swear.’

‘I’m Grainne Feeney,’ Grainne had said stiffly. ‘Does your dadda know you’re consortin’ wit’ a Feeney, Mr McBride?’

‘Divil a bit does he know,’ came the airy response. ‘And why should I care what me dadda thinks, an’ me a man grown? And you, Grainne? What would your dadda say if he knew you was consortin’ wit’ a McBride?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grainne said slowly. ‘But . . . there’s no harm in talkin’, nor in walkin’. And I’m mortal fond of mussels.’

It had been the start of what rapidly became not just a friendship but a courtship too. Only it had to be kept secret, because when Grainne had sounded her father out, mentioning the McBrides, Paddy had responded with something akin to violence.

‘
Them
?’ he had said and spat into the fire. ‘They’re dort beneath me feet, so they are – dort! Don’t you have nothin’ to do wit’ that fambly, alanna. They’re all bad, all the way t’rough. Leave ’em alone, no good ever came of consortin’ wit’ folk like that.’

It didn’t make any difference, of course, because William told her roundly that he did not intend to let two old men ruin their lives. ‘You’re me choice of ’em all, alanna,’ he had said as they couched themselves down in the lee of a haystack and watched the sun sinking in the west in a glow of flame and gold. ‘You’re everyt’ing I ever wanted, an’ you feel the same about me, so you do.’

‘I do,’ Grainne had admitted. ‘But me dadda won’t say we can wed, you know.’

‘Then we’ll wed wit’out ’em,’ William said and squeezed her hard. ‘I can’t live wit’out you, Grainne me little beauty, nor do I want to. And don’t worry, now, because we’ll work it out, so we will.’

Fidelma knew about the friendship, and thought her parent was being foolish and her sister sillier for not bringing it out into the open. ‘Dadda will shout and rave an’ then won’t he be huggin’ you an’ sayin’ he’s an ould fool an’ only wants your happiness,’ she prophesied. ‘But don’t let Dadda find out for himself, alanna. Tell him straight.’

And the truth was that it was becoming more and more difficult to hide what was going on. A man in love is a generous creature and William was no exception. He was always turning up at some point in her working day, handing over small gifts with a diffidence which touched and delighted her. A box of day-old chicks, a length of ribbon, a grey kitten to live in the donkey’s stable to keep the mice and rats down. Grainne loved the presents but allowed her father to think that it was Evlin Casey who was courting her.