The Mersey Girls (31 page)

‘Sure an’ he’s comin’ this way,’ Granny Mogg whispered slowly. ‘Ye know the lakes? Where the old Quane stood wit’ her ladies? He’s passin’ by there this minute . . .’ she leaned forward, her eyes fixed, intent. ‘Oh come to me, me lovely lad, me broth of a boyo, come to Granny Mogg for her eyes long to see ye!’

‘Lady’s View! But that’s miles and miles away, up by Killarney,’ Lucy said. ‘It’ll take him a month o’ Sundays to get here, unless . . . is he on foot, Granny? Or is he after gettin’ a lift?’

‘He’s on foot,’ Granny said. ‘You’ll bring him to me, alanna? You’ll not let me die wit’out seein’ me boy?’

Lucy smiled at the old woman and took her hand. Useless to deny that she was dying when her face was like a fine, crumpled lawn handkerchief and her eyes already had that vague, other-worldly look. But Granny Mogg did not fear dying, she just dreaded going away without saying goodbye to her boy, Lucy knew that.

‘I’ll fetch him back, Granny,’ she promised. ‘Caitlin will give you your bread and butter, I’ll leave right now. And I’ll be back before the cat can spit; you know me, I get things done!’

‘Aye, you’ll be back,’ the old woman said. ‘He’s doin’ ’is best but foots is slow. You fetch ’im for old Granny.’

Lucy nodded again, smiled, and left the room, her mind whirling. She could fetch him back now they knew where he was but how? If she rode down to the lakes on either of the carthorses it would be quicker than walking, but not, surely, quick enough? Granny was mortally ill, she knew that, her life was moving rapidly towards it close. She must get Finn back, she must!

She went through into the kitchen and her grandfather raised his head.

‘Has she gone?’ he asked mildly. ‘Poor old ’oman, has she taken her leave of us?’

‘No, but it won’t be long now. She told me where Finn could be found and she wants to see him,’ Lucy said. No point in explanations. ‘He’s up at Lady’s View, on the lakes. Grandad, how can I get there quickly?’

‘In Tommy Muldoon’s delivery van,’ her grandfather said at once. ‘It’s new, but he’d drive you there as it’s an emergency, I daresay. He goes up to Killarney now and then.’

‘Oh bless you, Grandad! I’m off; I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Lucy said. ‘Pray God she lasts!’

Finn was walking at his best pace, arms swinging, legs going like clockwork. He calculated that if he continued at the same pace all through the day and night he might, just might, get to Ivy Farm in time. So when a brand-new delivery van, coming from the direction of his destination and heading for Killarney stopped beside him, his only thought was to wish it had been going the opposite way. He knew he would be hard pressed to arrive in time and a lift right now would have been a gift from the gods. When he looked up at the cab, however, expecting to be asked the way to Killarney or some outlying village, there, smiling down at him, was Lucy: guinea-gold hair gleaming in the sun, so many freckles that you couldn’t put a pin between them, long grey-blue eyes narrowed into slits because she was so delighted to see him.

‘Finn! Oh, thank God! This is Mr Muldoon, he’s very kindly brought me to fetch you. Granny Mogg’s . . . she’s . . .’

‘She’s dyin’,’ Finn said, when Lucy’s voice was unaccountably suspended. ‘Poor old gal, but sure an’ isn’t she a good age.’ He turned to the van driver, a well-set-up man in his thirties who was smiling down at him. ‘Nice to meet ye, Mr Muldoon; you have my thanks for this day’s work.’

‘A pleasure, Finn Delaney. Hop aboard and we’ll be off.’

‘How did you know she was dyin’?’ Lucy said. Tears stood now in her long blue-grey eyes. ‘We couldn’t find you, Finn, we were so worried.’

‘I knew she’d not last much longer, so I set out as soon as I could. How did ye know where to find me, alanna?’

‘I didn’t;
she
found you in the . . . the seein’ bowl,’ Lucy said, leaning well out of the cab and whispering the information. ‘Finn, do answer me – how did you know when the time had arrived to come to Ivy Farm?’

He grinned up at her, then set his foot on the step and swung himself into the van beside her. ‘Move up, don’t be hoggin’ the seat,’ he said briskly. ‘Sure an’ Granny Mogg isn’t the only one who can see further than most. And there’ll be others comin’ from the countryside around, later. Tinkers take care of their own.’

Lucy looked at him, her eyes rounding. ‘But they don’t know where she is,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve kept her safe all these years because they don’t know where she is.’

‘Some of ’em know,’ Finn told her. ‘Some of ’em, the old’uns, they know all right. How’s she been?’

‘Cheerful. But frail . . . very frail.’ Lucy reached out a hand and took his fingers in hers. ‘Oh, Finn, you’ve been gone a long time, we’ve missed you turble, Granny an’ me.’

‘I had money to earn,’ Finn said shortly. ‘I’m glad o’ the lift, though. I wouldn’t want to fail in me obligations. Whose idea was it to bring the van for me?’

The engine was noisy so speaking softly, almost into each other’s ears, they could be sure of a private conversation, particularly as Mr Muldoon seemed to enjoy a tune and accompanied every mile of the way with loud and continual song.

‘A bit of Caitlin and a bit of me grandad,’ Lucy said at once. ‘What were you doin’ this summer, Finn, to stay away so long? Did you find a good-payin’ job at once?’

‘I’ve been drivin’ a jauntin’ car in Killarney and makin’ the visitors laugh,’ Finn said proudly. ‘Me and Derry Crewe bought the jauntin’ car between us, but I drive it mostly. A lot of Americans I do drive and they’re generous to a poor Irish tinker so they are. I tell ’em stories, I sing ’em songs, I advise ’em where best to fish for trout an’ salmon. Finn Delaney’s a name to conjure wit’ in Killarney, an’ long may it stay so!’

‘You’re a divil of a feller, Finn Delaney,’ Lucy said rather sourly. ‘And were many of the Americans young and pretty – and female?’

‘Divil a bit of it – ugly old maids every one,’ Finn said, untruthfully but with considerable tact. ‘Not a sweet little colleen amongst ’em to rival the rose of Cahersiveen.’

As they drove along the pretty winding roads, the hedges heavy with wild roses and honeysuckle, Finn thought about the girl who sat beside him, with her burden of golden hair, the dusting of freckles across her little nose, the sweet, mischievous smile. And when he told her that there wasn’t a girl to rival herself he saw that smile break out, saw how she cast her eyes down so that the expression in them was shielded from him by her long, curling lashes. And it made him smile, in his turn.

Women! They were all the same, and most of ’em were after Finn Delaney, with his strong, supple body and needle-quick mind! He was always willin’ to oblige ’em, of course, particularly the lovely, wayward tinker girls with their long black hair and generous ways. But Lucy Murphy was safe from him; she was a young lady, a rich farmer’s granddaughter and the apple of her grandad’s eye. Finn Delaney had more sense than to meddle there, no matter how tempted. So he smiled at Lucy and squeezed her hand and then leaned across her and started to tell Mr Muldoon all about the summer he’d spent driving his jaunting car round the streets of Killarney, out under the strawberry trees to Lady’s View, and further afield still. And Lucy listened and smiled peacefully now and then and it occurred to him that she was a very restful female, that she made no demands on anyone, that he could not have chosen a better person to care for Granny Mogg.

One day, he found himself thinking, one day, when I’m old and want to settle down . . . but he killed the thought, because he knew he would never be old, never want to settle down. He was a rover, an adventurer, and once Granny Mogg was gone he would go, too, and probably never come back to the flat watermeadows and the good fishing, to the old, ivy-clad farm in the hollow of the hills. Never again would he see the colleen with the long, blue-grey eyes and the sweet smile, because he could not take her from her rich farmlands and her loving family and give her nothing in return but a campfire, a ragged sacking tent, a jaunting car and the love of a feckless, faithless tinker.

They arrived in time. They entered the room, Lucy clutching Finn’s sleeve, and Granny Mogg was sleeping, smiling in her sleep. But she woke at once when Finn spoke her name and began to talk to him, though in Gamon which was the tinkers’ own tongue and not a language which Lucy understood. She spoke fiercely at first, then more mildly, and Finn knelt by the bed with her little, bent claw in his big, tanned hand and nodded, shook his head, answered in the same tongue.

‘What does she say?’ Lucy asked at one point, and saw that Finn’s eyes, which were darker than the darkest peat-pool on the marsh, had filled with tears. But he answered her patiently and seemed to feel no shame to let the tears run down his lean cheeks since he did not bother to wipe them off.

‘She’s arrangin’ her will,’ he said quietly. ‘She has property – oh, not the sort of property which you mean, but property, nonetheless. She has told me who is to have what and now she is content. Very soon she’ll start on her long journey.’

Granny Mogg died that night, though Lucy was not present when the old woman breathed her last. Finn told her to go to bed, said he would watch with Granny Mogg all through the night, and next morning, very early, when Lucy peeped into the small parlour, Finn turned and smiled at her and came over to the doorway in which she hovered.

‘She’s gone, and gone whilst she slept with no pain or fuss,’ he said simply. ‘Just before midnight, it was. Don’t fear that she died within doors, either, for that she would not have wanted. I carried her outside, for she weighed no more than a tiny child, down as far as the gate which leads to the watermeadows. And there she breathed two harsh, hard breaths and then no more. Peaceful, she went, which was as she would have wanted it.’

Lucy looked at the bed; very tiny and wizened did Granny Mogg look as she lay there, on top of the covers now with her limbs straight, her arms crossed on her breast, her eyes closed, her mouth, which had laughed so much, severe in death.

‘She looks peaceful,’ she breathed. ‘Shall I fetch the midwife, to lay her out?’

Finn laughed. ‘A midwife, for a tinker? No, there’s no need. The others will be here by now, I’ll go out and fetch a couple o’ wise women in to her. They’ll do what’s necessary whilst you an’ I make tea and take it out to the rest. The pyre will be the sod hut, of course, and as many branches as they’ve brought with them.’

‘There’s no one outside . . .’ Lucy began, and stopped. She could hear small sounds now, which had not been there two minutes earlier. A mule shifted its feet and whickered and a donkey answered. A shod animal, a horse probably, clinked its hoof against the paving stones and a child called out in a shrill, carefree tone.

‘That’s the Tuam tribe; the others will follow before noon,’ Finn said. ‘They’ll collect wood for the pyre, though the hut will catch easily; we’ve had no rain for ten days, a fortnight. And they’ll have to set up camp, of course.’

‘Right,’ Lucy said. She bent over the bed and kissed the still, small face. ‘Goodbye, dear Granny Mogg; you’ll be sadly missed.’ She turned and went before Finn out of the room, along the passage and into the kitchen. To her surprise the fire was already blazing and as she and Finn entered Padraig Murphy turned to face them. He smiled.

‘Sure an’ isn’t it a grand sight, all those people an’ animals assemblin’ in me haggard wit’ the sun comin’ over the top of the hills an’ the mist risin’ from the water?’ he said, gesturing through the low kitchen window. ‘And won’t Granny Mogg have a send-off to be proud of indeed indeed, and her only a bit of a woman?’

‘Thanks for putting the kettle on, Grandad,’ Lucy said. ‘Finn thinks we ought to make tea for them because he says they’ll be busy now, finding wood for the pyre and setting up camp. And he’s gone to fetch two of the women to – to lay Granny Mogg out.’

‘Aye, aye. No confinin’ coffin for a tinker, just a winding cloth,’ her grandfather said absently. ‘An’ the warmth of the fire on your old bones to speed you on your journey. It’s not such a bad way to go, alanna.’

‘I know, but I’m going to miss her,’ Lucy muttered. She was not ashamed of her tears, but she was afraid Finn would think less of her for them. Granny Mogg was out of pain and had passed over; there should be no need to cry for her now. ‘I’ll go and fetch more water.’

And for half an hour she and Finn carted water, made tea in the buckets which the tinkers brought to the back door, and kept themselves busy.

‘I don’t know that I want to see . . . the other business,’ Lucy said, when Caitlin came over to help her to prepare breakfast for the farmhands. ‘I think it will upset me . . . and they don’t show much emotion, do they? Tinkers, I mean.’

‘I’m going,’ Caitlin said, surprising Lucy, for of the two of them Caitlin was usually the one to shrink back from unpleasantness of any sort. ‘I want to say goodbye to her. It’s – it’s the last thing we can do, to give the old girl a send-off.’

‘I wonder, will they have a ceilidh afterwards?’ Lucy said. ‘Folk do, though it’s called a wake. And you’re right, Caitlin; I’ll come with you.’

So the two girls were present when the sod hut was pulled down, the fire lit, the delicate body consumed by the flames. And Lucy voiced what they both thought when they returned to Ivy Farm.

‘It was beautiful,’ she said wonderingly. ‘I never thought it would be, but it was. I’m glad I went, and one day, when I’m really old, I shall ask if what’s left of me can be turned to ash and spread on the waters of the lough whilst all around people mourn and tear their clothes and let their tears flow without shame.’

It was over and Finn knew that he should go. But before he could leave there was the bequest to Lucy, for she was to have Granny Mogg’s ancient gold necklace, and that necklace could not be handed to a buffer woman, a woman who was not of the tribe whilst the women of the tribe could see or there would be trouble. The necklace had been passed down, from mother to daughter, for centuries, probably. But Granny Mogg had no daughter and her granddaughter-in-law had let her husband cast Granny out to die alone in a ditch, so she deserved – and would get – nothing.