The Mersey Girls (13 page)

‘Aye; leppin’ like a – a leprechaun and swearin’ like a trooper and cacklin’ like a hen going to lay an egg,’ the boy said, suddenly good-humoured. He grinned at Lucy and she saw that he was good to look at when he grinned, with the very dark eyes narrowed into shining slits and a long laughter dimple in one thin brown cheek. ‘Scare you, did she?’

‘Only for a moment,’ Lucy said stoutly. ‘It was the shock – we’d got used to thinking there was no one here, you see.’

He nodded, then bent down and picked up his string of fish. He walked over to the pile of hay and swung the fish ruminatively, then bent down and spoke. His voice, which had seemed harsh and rather angry to Lucy, went very soft and deep.

‘Come along out wit’ you, Gran, tis meself out here, wit’ the younglings.’

The hay shook and Granny Mogg emerged. She was grinning, showing her pink gums and her tooth, but there was a wariness about her, as though she secretly doubted her welcome.

‘Twaren’t my fault they finded me,’ she squeaked. ‘They come on me sudden like, when the thunder was roarin’ too loud to hear a scream o’ mortal terror. You shouldn’t ha’ leaved me, you should ha’ stayed by me.’

‘I’ve got six trout,’ the boy said ruminatively. ‘Two each for you an’ me, Gran, and one each for these spratleens. Shall we tek ’em down to the fireplace and fry ’em?’

I just hope he means the trout and not us, Lucy thought fervently, whilst the old lady nodded, grinned, and shook the hay off herself, then began to hobble at a fair speed across the floor towards the open door.

Lucy went to follow her, but the boy put an arm across the doorway, barring her.

‘Not so fast, girleen; now you can tell me, slow and quiet-like, what you’re doing here and how you came to find me gran.’

‘We live over there,’ Lucy said, waving a vague hand in the direction of the farm. ‘My grandad owns all this land, though not the castle, of course. He grazes his cattle on the sea marsh and the meadows leading down to it. We came down here last summer and we thought then that there was someone here, but we couldn’t find you. Only the curragh.’

He nodded, thoughtful now, gazing absently past her, his eyes fixed on the window-slit behind her head.

‘Aye, last summer . . . there was someone, I remember Gran saying. But she’s kept well hid, until now.’

‘Why does it matter if anyone sees her?’ Caitlin said from behind, giving Lucy quite a surprise. So involved had she become with the boy that she had almost forgotten her friend. ‘No one would really hurt an old lady.’

The black eyes left Lucy’s face for a moment and fastened on Caitlin’s, with a mocking look in their depths.

‘Would they not? Have you never met an Irish tinker, girleen? There’s good and bad amongst them but Granny Mogg was with the Duveen tribe, and they’re rough, real rough. A year gone she sickened and Vorth, the boss, decided she was dying. He left her, wrapped in a soaking wet blanket, under a hedge. She should’ve been dead by morning but Mogg’s a tough old bird. I found her and carried her to where she’d be safe, gave her water to drink, put her deep in the hay and waited. She slept and snored for two days, half-waking to drink, and on the third day she sat up and demanded food. You could say she’s never looked back since.’

‘But why should the tinkers care whether she’s alive or dead?’ Lucy demanded. ‘She’s just an old woman, she can’t hurt anyone.’

‘True. But she’d make a liar of Vorth, she would indeed, and he’d never stand for that. Told the tribe she was dead, see? So as far as Vorth’s concerned Granny Mogg’s dead and should stay so. Which is why she dives into the hay and keeps out of sight most of the time, though I tell her the tinkers may not come this way again for many a long year.’

‘Or they may come back tomorrow,’ Lucy said in a hollow tone. ‘Scared I am at the thought – they might kill us all!’

‘Not me,’ the youth said. ‘Nor the old’un whilst I’ve breath in me body to defend her. She’s a good old gal, no one shall hurt her. But the Duveen tribe’s a bad lot, I don’t mind tellin’ you, and Vorth – he’d murther the lot of yez if he took it into his head so he would. And come to that, if either of you say a word about Granny Mogg to your mammies and daddies, sure and won’t Finn Delaney slit your little t’roatsies for you from ear to ear?’

‘Are you Finn Delaney?’ That was Caitlin again, peering out from behind Lucy’s shoulder. The boy nodded.

‘That’s me. And who are you two? Not sisters – friends? In the same class at school, mebbe?’

‘That’s right,’ Lucy said since Caitlin simply mumbled something beneath her breath. ‘I’m Lucy Murphy and me friend’s Caitlin Kelly. So now we all know each other can we go down to your gran? I’m longing to see where she puts the fire, so I am, for divil a sign of new ash did we see.’

The boy chuckled but stopped barring the door and went ahead of them to the top of the stone stair. ‘And see you shall. Now I’ll go first so’s if you fall you’ll have a soft landin’ on me back, though I hope you won’t fall – you’re neither of you feather-weights by the looks.’

‘You’re heavier than the both of us,’ Lucy said stoutly, eyeing the broad back and shoulders before her as they began to descend the stairs. ‘A nice dint in the ground you’d make if you fell.’

He turned to grin at her. ‘Aye, but Finn Delaney’s never been known to fall – I climb like a goat, run like a racehorse and fight like a tiger, so show me respect and you won’t go far wrong.’ He glanced past Lucy to Caitlin, clinging once more to her friend’s skirt. ‘What’s wrong wi’ you, Caitlin? Open your eyes, woman, or you could kill the t’ree of us.’

‘She doesn’t like heights,’ Lucy said calmly. ‘If she looks she freezes and divil a down will she go. And if you keep turning round . . .’

She said nothing more since Finn, still staring at Caitlin, bounced a shoulder on the wall, staggered and fell off the step five but one from the ground. Being a feller he pretended he’d done it on purpose, of course, and held out both hands to Lucy to jump as well, but Lucy knew it had startled him and gave him a told-you-so smirk before ignoring his outstretched hands and going demurely down the rest of the flight.

‘We’re there,’ she told Caitlin, preventing her friend from continuing to grope for the next step with one foot, and Caitlin opened her eyes and gazed round in a dazed sort of way.

‘So we are indeed; where’s Granny Mogg, though?’

‘In the sod hut,’ Finn said briefly. ‘Come on.’

He led the way out into the now tenderly falling spring rain and dived into the turf hut. Sure enough, there was Granny Mogg lighting her fire which she had set right in the middle of the long-dead ashes. She blew on it, and ash floated into the air, making her sneeze, but even as the girls watched a steady red glow began to invade the peat and Granny Mogg reached into the pile of dead bracken and produced a frying pan, blackened and heavy but obviously still very much in use, an ancient iron trivet and a kettle.

‘Never saw ’em, did you?’ she cackled, turning to grin at the girls. ‘Ah, younglings never look beyond their little noses, never!’ She picked up the kettle and began to fill it with water from an old milk churn pushed well into a corner and disguised by a pile of ancient turves, then she hung it over the fire. ‘We’ll eat an’ drink when the kettle boils,’ she stated calmly. ‘I’ll make us a wet o’ tay.’

‘Where do you get the tea from?’ Lucy asked as Finn, hunkering down, began to gut the fish and throw them into the blackened pan. ‘You can’t find tea, you have to buy it!’

‘I get it for her, sometimes from O’Rorke’s in Cahersiveen or from a nice little shop I know in Caherdaniel village,’ Finn put in. ‘Granny Mogg stays here when I’m away, so she has to have supplies to keep her goin’.’ He looked speculatively at the two girls, but his eyes rested longest on Lucy. ‘Ye wouldn’t like to look in on her from time to time?’ he wheedled. ‘She hates to be left so she does, but I’ve our livings to make.’

‘What do you do?’ Caitlin asked inquisitively. ‘You don’t work on any of the farms round here or we’d have recognised you. And you don’t work in the shops in Caher, either, I’m sure. Well, it isn’t everybody who would . . .’

She stopped short. Finn finished the sentence for her. ‘It isn’t everybody who would employ a tinker, Caitlin, is that what you were goin’ to say?’ he asked softly. ‘Sure and you’re right, but they’d take a one-legged Protestant negro on the fishing boats if he could haul a line and trim a sail and pull an oar. And I can look as respectable as – as a farmer when the harvest needs all hands.’

‘But not round here,’ Caitlin persisted. ‘You don’t work round here, do you, Finn? Because Lu and me, we go round the other farms when they have the Stations, or when they need help with the harvest, and we’ve never seen you, have we, Luceen?’

‘Divil a once,’ Lucy said cheerfully. She picked up the panful of fish and pushed it into the heart of the red-hot turves. ‘I’ll see to the fish, Finn, whilst you find us something to drink out of – you don’t take your tay from the kettle, do you?’

Finn laughed. ‘We’ve two tin billies which do duty for all,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But you’ll have to sup hot tay from your cupped hands and eat fried fish with your finger-ends. Unless there’s something in the blue bag?’

‘Of course!’ Caitlin said. They had left the bag in the castle and she turned and went out of the hut. ‘I’ll fetch our bottle, Lu, that should do for us.’

As soon as she had gone Finn turned to Lucy. He put a strong brown hand on her upper arm and gripped it, urgently but with care and gentleness. ‘Lucy, I want speech apart. Where can we meet where Caitlin won’t follow?’

Lucy stared at him, a frown knitting her brow. ‘You could come to my house,’ she said slowly. ‘When it’s evening time. But whether Maeve or Grandad would let you in I can’t say.’

He laughed with a trace of bitterness. ‘Let a tinker into a farmhouse for to visit the farmer’s daughter? Is it likely, alanna? Can you not come out, say you want to be private? Pay a visit?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Lucy said doubtfully. ‘For why don’t you want to see Caitlin at the same time, Finn? She’s me best friend.’

‘I’ve got something for you,’ Finn said after a short pause. ‘Only one I do have, Luceen, so none for Caitlin there is. And soon I’ll be gone from here. Where shall we meet?’

‘Tonight, do you mean? After it’s dark?’ She was tempted to say she did not dare, did not know him well enough, but then she heard Caitlin’s step returning. He seized her hand, his fingers hard now, and urgent.

‘Your home?’

‘The big farm built of pale stones with the ivy round the front,’ Lucy whispered rapidly.

He nodded, the dark eyes still fixed on her face. ‘I know it. In the big barn just inside the gate . . . tonight.’

He moved away from her but she followed, anxious. ‘What time, Finn?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t go by clocks. When the moon is high . . . when all the eyes in your house are closed and the windows of your farm are in darkness. I’ll wait for you.’

She barely had time to nod, to say she would do her best to be there, before Caitlin was back, the blue bag in her hand. They shared out the sandwiches, drank the lemonade between them, then had the fish, so hot that Lucy and Caitlin wrapped theirs in their sandwich paper and even then squealed whenever they took a bite. Granny Mogg and Finn ate theirs unconcernedly with their fingers, and drank the tay from their tin billy cans, so hot that it hurt Lucy to watch them. And presently Finn took them down to the lough to see the curragh whilst Granny Mogg had a snooze in the sun and then it was time to go, because though the soft rain had not ceased to fall all day, it came down from a darkening sky.

‘Shall we see you tomorrow, Finn?’ Caitlin asked, as he waved them off.

He shrugged. ‘Mebbe. But I’ll be gone before long; you’ll visit the old ‘un for me? And say no word, for fear of Vorth comin’ to know she’s alive?’

Both girls promised they would, then began to cross the marsh, scampering through the puddles and pools, intent now on getting back home before they were late for their tea. But Lucy, at least, did not forget Finn for a moment; whether he was good or bad she did not yet know, but he fascinated her. She knew she would meet him tonight, if it was humanly possible, even if it meant lying to Grandad and deceiving Maeve. After all, there’s the old ‘un to consider, she told herself righteously. You can’t let an old lady down. But inside her head it was Finn’s dark eyes which danced, Finn’s curving mouth which smiled . . . and the recollection of the feel of Finn’s hard brown hand on her arm which brought that shivering pang of excitement darting through her.

Finn stared after them until they were just dots crossing the lushness of the distant meadows. What luck that they should have come today, when he was beginning to think that he must leave Granny Mogg alone here whilst he went foraging for food! They would look out for the old ’un, he had no doubt of that, and because they were now thoroughly frightened of Vorth, whatever they might pretend, they would give neither Granny nor himself away.

Not that they had any idea that he, too, was in hiding of a sort. But when all was said and done they were only a couple of children, and you couldn’t tell children too much or they would get in a panic and tell their parents and then where would he be?

He liked the little fair one, though. There was something about her, he did not know what it was, which made him want to look at her and go on looking. It was strange really, because she had fair hair and he liked dark women, and she had grey-blue eyes and he admired a passionate, dark-brown gaze. What was more she was a child, no more than thirteen or fourteen, and he was a man – sixteen at least and not interested in children.

Finn had had his first woman over a year earlier, after his mother had died and his father had remarried, choosing Eilis of the Duveen tribe, a woman as voluptuous as his mother had been slender, as bawdy as his mother had been gentle.

The marriage had been a success in that Eilis had made Paddy happy, but she resented having a stepson only half a dozen years younger than she and made no secret of it. And the Tuam people did not take to Eilis and did not trouble to hide their feelings, which was why the Delaneys had moved in with the Duveen tribe and why Finn had come across Brónach one fine April morning just after Easter. The two young people had seen each other often enough before, but had never so much as spoken until they had chanced to meet on Church Island, in Caherdaniel Bay. It was a small island almost completely taken over by the local churchyard and Finn had been digging cockles on the long sea strand and had come up to the island to sit on the grass and drink from his bottle of cold tea. He came over the ridge, his cockles in a bucket, sweat beading his brow, and the first thing he saw was Brónach, with a mass of flowers by her side, sitting on the green spring grass between the graves. He could see she had been stealing the Easter flowers to sell in the nearby town, an activity of which he disapproved, but she smiled at him so he walked over to her and, as he felt courtesy demanded, wished her top of the morning.