December Girl

by Nicola Cassidy

  ‘Why not?’ she asks, even though she’s heard me say it before.

  ‘Because Mam, I don’t want to be a wife. I want to be free, like I am now. I don’t see why I have to get married if I don’t want to. I’m not like those ladies or Nora or,’ and I pause, ‘you.’

  ‘Don’t you think your father and I had a good marriage?’ she says and I’m shocked that she would bring Daddy up. We’ve never spoken like this before. She rarely mentions him, rarely brings him into conversation or lets me talk about him at all.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, considering. ‘You did. You had a wonderful marriage. You were kind to each other.’

  I look at her and I see tears are welling in her eyes.

  ‘I miss that,’ I say.

  I know she knows what I mean. That she and Daddy truly loved each other. That she could never love Mr McKenna the way she loved Daddy, not in a million years, no matter how hard she tried.

  ‘I miss it too,’ she says and I realise it’s the first time that she’s lifted the veil. It’s the first time she’s let me see the hurt and despair she feels over Daddy, the

  predicament she’s gotten herself into, the marriage of convenience with Mr McKenna and his bristly moustache.

  ‘I’ll never get married,’ I say, making my voice as prim as possible. ‘Never.’

  Mam looks at me, almost sadly. ‘Just because you think something when you are young, doesn’t mean your circumstances won’t change. You say you don’t want to get married now, but that could all change in the future.’

  She purses her lips.

  I don’t like this talk at all.

  ‘I told you,’ I say, my teeth gritting a little. ‘I’m not getting married.’

  She looks disappointed and sighs and then she strains her neck to look over at the waiter and puts her hand in the air and rubs her fingers, as if the first one has an itch, to get the bill.

  We leave the hotel and I am glad to get out into the air outside. We walk the short distance home, up the street, past the shops and the people on their bicycles and the carts doing their evening deliveries and collections in the dimming light.

  ‘One day it’ll make sense,’ she says.

  As we near the house, I see her stiffen, and when we get inside she tells me to start peeling the potatoes for dinner. Mr McKenna will be home soon. We must never be late putting his food on the table. He told us that from the start. It’s one of his rules. And you must never disobey Mr McKenna. That, we had learned.

  * * *

  For years we had farmed our small holding, not bothered by anyone. We had a milking cow and sheep, a hemp field and a vegetable field, potato beds and a little pond where ducks fed and watered and splashed and we harvested the reeds, making small baskets out of them and St Brigid’s Crosses in spring.

  The farm had been passed from Daddy’s father and his father before him. It was rented from the Trust, but it had been in the family for so long and had so many improvements made over the years, that it always felt as though we owned it. The house was extended with a little pantry out the back. The sheds were renovated and a proper dairy put in, where I would be sent most days to swing back and forth on the churn.

  I didn’t like dairy work. Even in the summer, when the room was welcoming and cool, I longed to be out of it, playing in the fields. Sitting on top of the mound, my face to the sun, reading the Argus I’d stolen from the mantelpiece, looking at the advertisements for all

  manner of items on sale in town. Bone manure. Indian tea. Blancmanges and biscuits and boots and boating shoes.

  As well as the farm, we inherited a linen hall, a large warehouse along the quays in Drogheda, a bustling town of factories and shops and the biggest port this side of Ireland. Daddy spent most of his time working there, organising large shipments in and out of the port, supplying cities in England with giant bales of linen and wool.

  Every day when Daddy returned home, pulling up in the tub trap, the horse foamy and thirsty, I’d run from the dairy and greet them and help him unload the horse into the stable. I’d go with him to the back hall where I’d bring a bowl of boiling water, his towel, and soap.

  I’d watch as he scrubbed at his hands with the nail brush, splashing the water back and forth, waiting to see if he was in the mood for talking or not. I could judge my father like no other, even better than my mother. I felt I always knew what he was thinking, that really, we were more or less of the same thoughts, the same brain, him and I.

  If he was in the mood for talking he’d tell me about the orders coming in, about the paperwork problems in Liverpool, about the suppliers, always cribbing,

  looking for more. He’d tell me where they’d exported linen to, which ships were buying, problems with taxes and charges that sometimes wiped out the entire profit on a bale of linen in one swoop. I learned that being in business was a complicated thing, that you could work for weeks and still come out with not a lot to show for it. No wonder Daddy always looked worried.

  The outhouses on our farm were built over a number of years. They were an investment, Daddy said, a place to store the linen if the prices were low. He built them himself, slowly, carting the large stones from the quarry at the Dowth mound, where an explosion years ago had sent tons of flat grey granite rock into the field.

  I’d helped Daddy mix the render, watched as he lifted the stones and set them in the walls, stood back as the building went up around us. Instead of thatching the roofs he put flat, black slates on, protecting it from the weather, securing them for years to come.

  He was proud when they were all finished,

  extending out our yard, set against our lovely whitewashed house. Soon the stock built up in them, valuable linen and sometimes wool and he made sure to lock it all up so that it was safe at night.

  ‘You can’t be too careful,’ he said.

  He said the same thing about Flann Montgomery. ‘You can’t be too careful with that fella.’ And he was right. It was Montgomery who was the biggest robber of them all.

  ‘They’re fine outhouses you’ve built there, Thomas.’ He was sitting on his horse, in our yard, the poor mare squirming under the weight of him.

  ‘Aye,’ Daddy answered. ‘A lot of work gone in.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Montgomery. ‘Where did you get the stones?’

  ‘From the quarry,’ my daddy said.

  Montgomery dismounted and walked over to the barns, feeling the stonework with his gloved hands. ‘The quarry at Dowth that belongs to the Trust?’ he asked, a slight smirk on his face, as he if he was trapping Daddy with his words.

  ‘The quarry that every house and pier is built from on this road,’ replied Daddy.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Montgomery. ‘Very interesting indeed.’

  They stood, not saying anything, my daddy with his hands on his hips, Montgomery, still smirking,

  looking at Daddy like a cat spying the cream.

  When he left, whipping at the bay’s flank so hard I thought the skin might split, I asked Daddy what it was all about.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘Just that bastard sticking his nose in again. Can’t bear to see someone doing well for themselves. Wants everything for his own greedy little hands.’

  I listened to the clip clop of his horse going back up the lane before I turned to go and do the butter in the dairy. I hoped swinging on the churn would take the worry from my mind. I needed something to distract me from the awful feeling of foreboding I got when thinking about Flann Montgomery.

  Chapter Four

  HENRY

  Brabazon House, Co. Meath, Ireland, June 1895

  Henry had hoped to have secured his place with Lewis, Clayton and Thornhills by now, but they were dragging their heels and not making any announcement as to their new recruits. Anxiously he watched the post, standing by the window every morning as the postman on his bicycle pushed up the driveway and delivered their post to the back door.

  He’d wait for the footsteps of Mrs Johans
son. He’d hear her open the door to his father’s study and come back again. He waited for her to put her head round the door and announce there was a letter for him. But the only letters he had received were from the other students who he was friendly with and who had also applied for a position at the firm. No news yet, they wrote. No news is good news.

  He toyed with the idea of travelling to London himself, calling to the offices again, letting them know he was keen. He could perhaps take the opportunity to meet with some other firms if Lewis, Clayton and Thornhills wasn’t going to go his way. But, it was an incestuous business and he feared word would get back. He hated having his heart set on anything, it left him so vulnerable. The only thing he could do was wait.

  Part of him had believed that he wouldn’t have even needed to return to Ireland. He thought that if he could get the apprenticeship set up in London, straight after his exams, he could travel the short distance from Oxford to the capital and stay there. It would have pleased him to write the letter home to his father. ‘Secured apprenticeship. Will visit at Christmas.’

  Instead, he was at Brabazon at the height of summer. And that meant summer garden parties and regattas. Weeks of his father trying to convince him to forget his apprenticeship and work locally.

  ‘Why don’t you try Faber’s?’ Seymour asked him one morning over breakfast.

  ‘Faber’s?’ said Henry. ‘Why would I want to work there?’ He was scowling, a habit he was prone to around his father, thinking of the small solicitor’s office housed above a hardware shop in the centre of Drogheda.

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ said Seymour. ‘Good a training as any.’

  ‘Sheep theft and vagrants. Hardly the crime apprenticeship I’m aiming for,’ said Henry.

  ‘Crime? What about land law? Property rights? Why don’t spend your time on the law that matters. Not fighting for petty criminals. Faber’s would give you a grounding in the work that needs to be done locally. And what you learn, you could put into practice here.’

  ‘Yes, always about here, isn’t it, Father? Did you ever think that maybe I’d like to have something outside of here, something of my own?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Seymour. ‘Some day you’ll appreciate what you have here. You’ll stop trying to turn your back on us.’

  ‘I’m not turning my back on you,’ said Henry, sighing into his black coffee. ‘But I want to learn about the world. I’ll spend the rest of my years at Brabazon. At least let me have some of my youth in the city.’

  ‘You’ve had four years in the city, at Oxford,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Yes, but this is London, Father. London. I’m sure what I could pick up there could help the estate, eventually.’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ said Seymour. ‘You belong here. In Ireland. Why don’t we meet with Faber and see what he has to say? I’m sure he’d open up a position for you.’

  ‘I’m not interested in damn Faber’s!’ said Henry, his voice coming out in a shout.

  His father put his paper up in front of his face and cleared his throat.

  ‘I’d like you to meet with Montgomery today,’ he said from behind the print.

  ‘Today?’ said Henry. ‘But it’s the regatta today.’

  ‘Yes, it’s not till noon, I’m sure you can fit in a meeting between now and then.’

  ‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ asked Henry.

  ‘No, get it out of the way. He’s been hounding me for days. You’ll need to go up to his house, he wants to show us something.’ Seymour poked his head out from behind the paper. ‘Why, had you better plans?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Henry, wishing that the bloody letter would come from London letting him know one way or the other what his future would be. The training he’d get in London would stand to him for the rest of his life. The thoughts of Faber’s made him want to run down to the river, jump in and never surface. It was a pity he was a good swimmer. Drowning was never an option for him.

  * * *

  It was the first time he’d travelled these roads since the night of the eviction. It seemed shorter now, with the light and the sun, the greenery at the edges, birds flitting in and out. They sang loudly, chirping and twittering, their chorus peppering the sound of the flow of the river.

  There was something about this land. Every time he travelled along it, he felt like it was taking him in. It was what he thought of when he was away; the valley and the fields, the patchwork of yellow and greens, criss-crossed with hedgerows up to the narrow horizontal sky.

  He wondered what Montgomery could want. He had seen nothing of him since Christmas, heard nothing from him either. It was as though he had gone into hiding after the eviction, like a dog that had bitten a child. Today was to have been a good day, a day for sportsmanship at the regatta, a day for not thinking about London and his apprenticeship escape. Montgomery had not featured in that.

  ‘Master Brabazon,’ said the agent, his eyebrows raised in surprise. He was standing in the field which ran alongside the old Thomas property, three men working to dig a ditch out in front of him.

  ‘I hadn’t expected to see you,’ he said. ‘It was your father I was expecting.’

  ‘He asked me to come,’ said Henry. ‘You wanted to show us something.’

  ‘Well,’ said Montgomery, clearing his throat and driving his foot into the ground a little. ‘Yes. I did, actually. It’s this.’ He pointed at the three men digging the ditch.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Henry, dropping down off his horse and walking over to where Montgomery stood.

  ‘We’re clearing out this ditch, making the field bigger and I wanted your father to check it over.’

  ‘Why would this concern my father?’ asked Henry, looking at the sweating red-faced men, who were throwing pick axes high over their heads and bringing them down with force at the base of the mud and trees. ‘Isn’t this your job, Montgomery, as agent. To manage ditch clearing?’

  ‘Well it’s just with the sensitivities involved,’ he said quietly, looking at Henry’s face, but not quite at his face. More like at his cheek.

  ‘Is that the Thomas land?’ Henry asked, the situation now dawning on him. ‘Are you clearing the Thomas land for your own?’

  ‘It’s not Thomas land,’ said Montgomery. ‘It used to be Thomas land, but it’s not any longer.’

  ‘And since when is it yours?’ asked Henry, an anger now building in his stomach.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to discuss with your father. To show him,’ said Montgomery. ‘It would make sense to expand this field and the next. To make the whole lot bigger. Plots are getting smaller and smaller, I’m making an investment here, improving the land overall.’

  ‘I’d like to look at the Thomas property,’ said Henry. He walked back to his horse, fixed her reins and led her by the bridle out of the field. Montgomery, half running, followed him.

  ‘Oh, it’s a grand bit of land,’ said Montgomery, panting now. ‘They say there’s tombs there too,’ he said as they passed by Dowth mound. ‘Wouldn’t you love to get a look inside, see if there’s any treasure?’

  Henry didn’t answer. It was typical of Montgomery – he had an obsession with wealth and money. They walked down the lane towards the old Thomas house, Henry remembering how he’d passed by it on St Stephen’s night with the silent girl, how she had looked away as the trap sailed by the darkened home, tears growing cold in her eyes. The boreen looked deserted now, the ditches on each side swollen into the gravel.

  When they got to the house, Henry was surprised to see a thin line of grey smoke wisping from the chimney.

  ‘Someone’s living here?’ said Henry, looking to Montgomery, to see if it was a shock to him too. For a moment Henry thought that maybe the girl and her family had returned.

  ‘Yes,’ the agent replied and he opened the gate to let Henry and the horse walk in.

  The yard was fresh and clean looking, with a pile of logs against a wall, two hens pecking round the door. From the stable he he
ard a horse whinny.

  ‘It’s my son,’ said Montgomery.

  Henry paused. ‘Does my father know about this?’ he asked, flatly.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Montgomery.

  ‘You’re not sure?’ said Henry.

  ‘I don’t report every little detail,’ said the agent. ‘My son’s looking after the place. Till it’s all fully decided. Can’t let the place go to rack and ruin.’

  Henry led his horse through the yard, past the outhouses and to the two large barns built by Oliver Thomas. The doors were open and inside he could see wood stacked to the ceiling. Henry walked over to the barn and touched the wall, fingering the smooth stones set in the render.

  ‘These stones,’ said Henry. ‘Where did they come from?’

  Montgomery was squirming now, wishing Seymour had come down as expected, and not his meddling son. ‘I believe Oliver Thomas put them there,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘I remember.’

  ‘They were stolen,’ said Montgomery. ‘Taken without consent and used to add value and profit to Mr Thomas’s holding.’

  ‘And now yours?’ said Henry. Montgomery didn’t answer, but shrugged, his wide shoulders hunching into this neck.

  ‘This is justice?’ said Henry.

  Montgomery shrugged again.

  ‘What’s done is done. Nothing has been decided with this land yet. As agent, I am duty bound to make sure everything is looked after, maintained,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘Maintained for yourself.’

  Henry marched from the barn, holding the horse’s reins in the air and pulling her into a trot.

  ‘I’ll be speaking to my father about this,’ said Henry. ‘Tell those men digging that ditch to go home.’

  As he passed through the yard a woman came to the door, dusting white flour from her hands. She nodded her head at Henry but he ignored her, mounting his horse and kicking her in the flanks into a canter up the road. Maybe leaving for London was a bad idea after all. He would come home to find Montgomery had wheedled the entire estate out from under his father’s very nose.