An Irish Country Girl Page 11

  Fidelma’s shoulders sagged. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.”

  “No. You shouldn’t, but I understand. It’s all right.” Maureen hugged her sister. “You did try to comfort me then, Fiddles. I’m only trying to help you now.”

  “I know, wee one. I’m sorry I shouted.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “And you’re right about me letting go for Connor’s sake. Everyone knows that if someone loves a ghost too much, its spirit can’t get away and find peace. If he’s still here on earth and it’s me that’s holding him, I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “But I can’t let go. Not just yet. I can’t.”

  Maureen held her sister until her shoulders stopped shaking and she stepped back. “I miss him so,” Fidelma said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Fidelma sniffed in a great breath, exhaled slowly, and said, “It’s all right.” She swallowed. “And I’ll be better after I’ve shown you something. It’s why I brought you here.” She started to walk along the short lane to the cottage.

  Maureen followed. Was Fidelma going to go inside? Just before the red door, Maureen stopped and tugged at Fidelma’s hand. “I don’t want to go in,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Da said the place was full of spiders’ webs. I hate spiders.” She thought of the room where a Charles Dickens character, Miss Haversham, kept her memories alive. The place had been all dust and cobwebs. Maureen screwed up her eyes and squeezed her elbows against her sides.

  “You needn’t worry.” Fidelma opened the door. “Look.”

  The sun’s rays spilled into the room. A few dust motes sparkled in the doorway. Maureen hesitated, then leant forward to peer inside. There wasn’t a web in sight in the kitchen, and the floor had been swept. The place smelt clean and fresh.

  “Will you come in?” Fidelma asked, smiling widely before she crossed the threshold.

  Maureen could see inside the whole room. The plates on a Welsh dresser were shining clean. There was no dust on a calico tablecloth covering the table. A white delft vase, the centrepiece, held a bunch of drooping bluebells.

  Places were set for two.

  “Are we going to have tea?” Maureen asked. “Or . . . ?” Ma had explained about the ancient custom of keeping a place for the departed. It was akin to setting an extra one for Christmas dinner in case Christ returned.

  “We’ll not be having tea,” Fidelma said and looked Maureen straight in the eye. Fidelma crossed the tiled floor to open the curtains, then took the vase to the sink. As she removed the dead flowers and poured the discoloured water down the drain, she said, “I put these here last Sunday. It’s time I got some new ones. Connor always likes bluebells.”

  Maureen took three steps into the room. It was cool inside after the heat of the day. She gazed at Fidelma washing and drying the vase, as if—as if this were her home and she was house proud. And Fidelma had said, “likes.” She should have said Connor “liked.”

  “Have a seat,” Fidelma said.

  Maureen moved to the table and pulled back a chair, avoiding the set places.

  Fidelma smiled and took the set place opposite. “I think,” she said, “that it’s such a tidy wee place it would be a shame to let it go to wrack and ruin, so I do a bit of housekeeping now and then.” She glanced at the empty chair.

  Maureen half turned—and stared. She felt the hairs of her forearms rise.

  It couldn’t be. She blinked, rubbed both eyes, and stared hard. The chair was occupied by the shape of a big man. But it was only the suggestion of a man, formed as it was by something no more substantial than the palest mist on a still, calm day.

  She stretched out one hand and immediately pulled it back to massage it with the other. It was as if she had touched a block of ice.

  Her mouth gaped. Her eyes widened. She pushed her chair away so forcibly it tumbled backward as she stood. It crashed to the floor. In her haste she tugged at the cloth, dislodging a plate and fork. The cutlery landed on the seat beside her, but the plate stopped a foot above the floor, grasped by a tenuous tendril. It hovered, then was gently lowered to land on the tiles.

  Maureen gasped, covered her face with her hands, and took two steps back. She turned to her sister. “Fidelma?” Her voice was shrill.

  Fidelma was already coming round the table. “whatever’s come over you, Maureen? Did you see a spider?” She looked at the fork on the chair’s seat and without hesitating bent over and picked it up.

  Maureen saw Fidelma’s arm pass through the smoky, icy thing. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t draw back. She simply put the utensil back on the table and said, “Pick up the plate, will you? It’s lucky it didn’t break.”

  Dear Lord, Maureen thought, as she did as she was told. Fidelma doesn’t see anything strange. Feel anything. Maureen set the fallen chair back on its legs. “Sorry,” she said. “Clumsy of me.” What am I seeing? she wondered, as she started to edge toward the door. “I really think we should be getting home, Fiddles. I think it’s . . . it’s spooky in here.” She tried with all her might to keep her voice from quavering. One glance confirmed that the mist had not left the chair. “I’m going outside.”

  “You go on then,” Fidelma said. “I’ll just be a little minute, so.” She sounded more like the old Fidelma. Perhaps, even if she wasn’t aware that she had company other than Maureen, it had been good for her to come here today and bring her sister. Perhaps, she thought, finally letting someone into the secret of her mysterious walks meant that Fidelma was starting to get better. That must be the change Maureen had sensed when Fidelma had suggested a walk together. Maureen hoped so.

  She stepped out into the bright, warm day. That had been scary a moment ago. She’d heard enough stories of the Shee and the Thevshee from Da to be convinced that Connor’s spirit had been taken by the faeries and forced to haunt his familiar places. It had to be him and Tess that left tracks on the upper pasture, his sheep that appeared on the hill from out of the mists, his pipes that Eamon MacVeigh had heard.

  That must have been him in the chair.

  But why could she, Maureen, see and feel him when Fidelma could not, even though she said she felt closer to Connor in his cottage? It must be, Maureen thought, she herself was more sensitive, the way Eamon was. Ma had said only some people could be aware of such things.

  She heard the door close and turned to see Fidelma leaving. Her sister took Maureen’s hand. “You’re right. It is time we headed home.”

  Should she ask Fidelma if she too had been aware of something?

  Fidelma stopped and Maureen turned to face her sister. “Thank you for coming, Maureen, and thank you for being honest. You’re right. I should try to let him go.”

  Maureen squeezed her sister’s hand.

  Fidelma’s fingers tightened in return. “I know it’s silly, because . . .” She sniffed. “Because I know Connor is never coming back. I know it for certain, but I told you, I feel closer to him in there.”

  Maureen took a deep breath, held it for a second, then asked very quietly, “Have you ever actually seen him, Fiddles?”

  “Sure, I told you, I have not. More’s the pity. I’d like to see him . . . just once more.”

  Maureen thought, you’ll never hear it from me, Fidelma, but I just did.

  “It was the faeries took him,” Fidelma said. “Eamon’s heard Connor piping in the high pasture. He must be near. If Eamon can hear him, why can’t I?”

  “Didn’t Ma explain that some folks”—like me, she thought—“can see or hear things others cannot?”

  “I suppose so,” said Fidelma. She turned, looked long and hard at the cottage, then turned away.

  Maureen saw the brightness in the corners of her sister’s eyes, heard the quaver in her voice when Fidelma said, “Come on. Home.” She started to walk, and Maureen, still holding her hand, hurried to keep up. She wanted to get home. She knew what she’d seen. She wanted to know why she’d seen it. Was she a bit like Eamon? Ma
would know.

  As the two girls trudged back along the hot dusty road, Maureen heard a familiar sound rise out of the summer music of bees and birdsong. At first it was discordant, as the musician warmed up his instrument. Then sweetly, tunefully, sadly played, Maureen heard the sounds of uillinn pipes coming from the cottage. And the tune the piper played was “The Star of the County Down.”

  16

  Fidelma was silent and she became more withdrawn the farther they walked from Connor’s cottage. Maureen knew she should be trying to lift her sister’s spirits, but she needed time to collect herself. She wanted to remember exactly what she’d seen and heard so she could tell Ma and have her explain what it meant.

  Her mental picture of the smoky shape in the chair was torn to tatters by a harsh, rapid chattering. A single large bird swooped past. Its head was glossy black with a metallic green sheen, its shoulders pure white at the bases of stubby wings, and its long tail feathers trailed behind.

  Fidelma ignored the bird. Although seeing a single magpie foretold coming sorrow, Fidelma must have been too preoccupied to have noticed, Maureen thought, as she whispered, “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.” When she was five she’d learnt the rhyme—and that a salute would ward off the sadness. She saluted. Everyone knew to do it.

  Like all Irish children, she’d grown up surrounded by stories of the supernatural; the Shee, the banshee, and the Thevshee. Then there was the Phouka, a friendly being who might help a farmer at his work.

  But there was also the evil eye, which was far from benign.

  When Maureen was seven, Ma had taught her about how the giant Balor, a Fomorian, the first race of people to live in Ireland, could turn his enemies to stone with a single glance.

  Even today, long after the Fomorians had faded into the Celtic mists, if someone possessed of the eye muttered a verse over a sleeping baby, that infant would die, for the verse was the curse of the devil and no charm could resist it or remove it. If the evil-eyed one stared at a cow, the beast was doomed.

  You must always observe certain rituals to prevent folks thinking you have the eye, Ma had said, and she herself had to be particularly careful because people knew she was a wise woman. To avoid suspicion you must never, never stare through nine fingers at anybody or any animal. You should immediately say, “God bless the child,” when you looked on a baby. And when you passed a herd of cattle, it was customary to intone, “The blessing of God on you and all your labours.” That was because the word “God” could not pass the lips of the afflicted, but the saying of it gave proof of your innocence.

  When she was little, Maureen had always paid close attention to Ma’s teachings and had followed her instructions.

  As she grew she’d begun to doubt some of the old beliefs but hadn’t discarded them altogether. And she had put away other childish things as well—the games she’d played with dollies, her skipping rope. She was experiencing so many changes. Hair on her body, budding breasts—she liked those—her monthlies—she definitely didn’t like those—and their cramps. But she was growing up, and as she did, she questioned the things she had been taught.

  She no longer always muttered “God bless the child” over a baby and had even toyed with the idea of no longer saluting birds, even though she found the ritual comforting. After what had happened earlier, she was certainly taking no chances with a single magpie today. The Lord alone knew what they might see next. The sooner they got home the better.

  “Let’s take the shortcut,” she said, as they came to a tumbled-down old wall.

  “All right.”

  Maureen led the way, scrambling over the moss-grown jumble of grey stones, then striding along a well-worn track down a gentle grassy slope where tufts of short rushes grew.

  She jumped when a loud rustling came from a clump of rushes not five paces away and a hare burst out to race off with huge bounds before vanishing into the glen ahead.

  She took a very deep breath and tried to control her trembling hands.

  “You’re jumpy today,” Fidelma said.

  “Och, sure the hare and the noise of it only startled me, so.” She forced a smile. Liar, she thought; you nearly wet yourself, girl. She lengthened her stride.

  They rounded a corner to where trees flanked the path. Their buds were ripe and bursting. The many-fingered leaves of a solitary horse-chestnut tree were in their first spring freshness, the old tree’s branches heavy with white candle-shaped blossoms.

  The ground beneath looked like a green lake where islands of flowers—primroses, wood anemones, sorrel—were painted in bold tones by the sunlight that made its way past the branches. In the shadows of the boughs, the blooms were drawn in muted pastels.

  Everywhere bluebells dozed under their neat bonnets, their heads bent in the warm afternoon. This must be where Fidelma had picked her bunch last Sunday.

  “Aren’t the bluebells lovely?” Fidelma said.

  “They are.”

  “I love this time of the year,” she said. “Everything’s so new. So clean. Everything’s getting a fresh start.” She sighed. “I wish I could get a fresh start.” She stopped walking and turned and faced Maureen. “Don’t you make the same mistakes I have, girl.”

  “I’ve no intention of—” Maureen started to say, but realised she really had no idea what mistakes Fidelma was talking about. She had meant to say she had no intention of falling in love, and it was the truth. She had big plans for her life, but perhaps this wasn’t the time to tell Fidelma about them.

  Fidelma shook her head, said nothing, stooped, and plucked a wood anemone. She tore off one small white petal, then another. “I wish I’d never gone to work at that stupid mill. I hate it.”

  “You never said so before. I thought you liked it.”

  “I do not, but it wasn’t worth the talking about.” Fidelma curled her lip. “It’s a job,” she said, “that’s all. It’s tiring, stupid, boring work. The mill’s dirty, smelly, and ferociously noisy. The looms clatter and thunder all day. They’re always breaking down. The building’s ancient. It was put up in 1820 by Doctor John Elmore, and because it’s so old it’s far too hot in the summer and icy cold in the winter.”

  Fidelma pulled at another petal. “I shouldn’t have gone there in the first place, but sure wasn’t I sixteen, and wasn’t I sick of school? I’m not like you, Maureen. I didn’t like the studying. And hadn’t half the other girls left as soon as they turned fourteen, so? We all thought a job like the mill or domestic service would do for a couple of years until we found a man. It was only Ma kept me at my books longer. But I’d had enough.”

  Maureen hesitated. “Fidelma, you’ll remember Miss Toner, the teacher from the north?”

  Fidelma shrugged. “The wee, mousy woman? Her with the thick ‘so I do’ accent? What about her?”

  “She says women should be able to do more than any old job and then just get married.”

  “And end up as one of nature’s unclaimed treasures? Would you like that?”

  “Being a spinster? No. But, Fidelma, I think she’s right. I don’t see why a woman couldn’t have an interesting job and a husband too.”

  Fidelma remained silent for a moment, then said, “Aye, I suppose so. Some of the mill girls do go on working after, although a job there is far from interesting. I don’t doubt the extra money would help at the beginning of a marriage. But they all quit once the family starts.”

  “I think that’s the right thing to do. Babbies need their mammies . . . but I don’t see why you couldn’t go back to work once the kiddies are all in school.”

  “Not me. Unless the man I marry is nearly penniless, even before I say, ‘I do,’ I’ll give that mill the back of my hand, so, and good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  Maureen smiled at her sister. “And I think you’d make some lucky man a grand wife, so.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” Fidelma frowned.
r />   “I am not. Not at all.”

  “All right. Thank you.” Fidelma smiled weakly. “I would have for Connor. I wish . . .” She pursed her lips, then swallowed. She shook her head. “Ah sure, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

  Maureen touched her sister’s arm, but said nothing.

  Fidelma kept her voice level. “So, I’ve no Connor. I’ve a horrible job because I didn’t even sit for my Junior Certificate. Don’t you make the same mistake and leave school too early.”

  Maureen cocked her head and looked at Fidelma. “I’ll not. I’ll do what Miss Toner says. She says the first step to having good employment is getting an education.”

  “Don’t I know it now?”

  “And she thinks women should be able to get good jobs too. Maybe even be doctors or lawyers.”

  “She’s some brave ideas, your Miss Toner.” Fidelma said. “So are you for being a doctor? First woman head of the new parliament, the Dáil Eireann? We’d all have to curtsey to you, Lady Muck.” Fidelma’s lip curled ever so.

  Eighteen months ago Maureen would have gone for her sister. Now she was willing to let the slight go by. Fidelma’s sarcasm was better than the horrible silences. Maureen shook her head. “Not at all. I’m not that smart.” Her a doctor? She laughed at the thought. “But I am going to stay on until I pass my School Leaver’s Certificate exam. And you know, Fiddles, women can rise in the world.”

  “Like who?” There was still a bit of an edge to the voice.

  Maureen kept on turning the other cheek. “Miss Toner’s been telling us about Countess Constance Markiewicz. Mister Yeats wrote a poem about her and her sister. Called her a gazelle.”

  “And who’s she when she’s at home, then? Some foreign high-heejin?”

  “She is not. She’s as Irish as you and me, even if she was born in England. She grew up in Lissadell in Sligo. She married a Polish count from the Ukraine, but she was born Gore-Booth.”

  “With a double-breasted English name like that, she must be upper crust.”