by Therese Down
“Who are you?” he asked, more gently.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” she replied. “Please just let me go. I have taken nothing. I want nothing. Just let me go.”
“What were you doing in this barn?” Donal took a few cautious steps towards her. She was young, that much was clear. And she had thick, dark hair which fell about her shoulders in profusion. Her voice was assured. If she had been afraid, she was recovering composure fast. He was interested now beyond the need to establish her reason for trespassing.
“I was sleeping – that is all,” she replied. “It was wet and I was cold. I couldn’t get further.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, all the while slowly walking towards her. Caitlin had to think quickly. If she were rude he could get rough and trap her, call the gardai. She could not be honest with him, for he would surely stop her or tell someone to come and get her.
“I am trying to get to Limerick,” she said. “I have an aunt there – she’s sick.”
“Why didn’t you knock on the door and ask us for help?” Donal was now standing before her, his torchlight etching the contours of her pale face from the darkness.
“Sure why would I disturb ye in the night – and the wind and rain?” she responded. “I only needed a bed. I had food.” Donal stared at her. Even in the garish light of the torch it was clear she was pretty.
“Come in for some tea,” he said gently. “Get warm, have something to eat.” Caitlin hesitated a moment.
“I will,” she said. “Thank you. Would you ever get the light out of my eyes? Please?” Donal lowered the torch and offered her his hand.
“Here,” he said, “take my hand. There’s a lot of stuff to fall over around here.” In no hurry to risk physical ensnarement, Caitlin avoided his outstretched arm and came forward as confidently as she could, tripping over potatoes and extending her hands to steady herself, touching the man and pulling away as if burnt.
“Wait now till I get a few briquettes for the fire,” he said and walked away from her. He stooped towards the turf footings to his right, putting the torch on the ground. As he did so, Caitlin bolted past him and out of the open door, into the dark January morning.
Once on the road, she crossed it and made for the ditch, crouching low, heart hammering. She heard him shouting, but after a while he walked away from her and all was quiet. She crept along the sodden ditch, cold seeping through her clothes and through her skin to her very bones. Her woollen gloves were in the bag she wore strapped across her body, but as she fumbled for them, her fingers met their sodden limpness and pulled away. She scrambled out of the ditch and through a hedge into a field. She would tramp through the grass parallel with the Cashmel road for as long as she could to avoid easy detection.
As dawn’s pallor began to rub out the black morning, Donal Kelly lifted the pony trap away from the hedge and, standing between the shafts, pulled it into his father’s yard. Then he went into the barn and considered the pony. Why had she run off without her trap? How was she going to get to Limerick without it? He stroked the animal’s smooth silver flank, soothed it with his voice. When he finally fondled its head, his fingers met with the paper beneath the animal’s forelock. He pulled out the paper and shone his torch on it: “I BELONG TO PAT MAHER OF DUNANE,” he read aloud. Then he muttered to himself, “Well, I’ll be…”
It was with a potent mixture of relief and indignation that Pat Maher threw open his kitchen door some five hours later, as the clatter of hooves in his yard announced the return of his pony and trap, driven by a girl and followed closely by a young man driving a donkey and cart.
“Flynn, Flynn!” Mick Spillane arrived in Flynn’s yard once more, the day after Caitlin absconded. His eyes were bright with happiness. “We’ve found Caitlin!”
Jack was pumping water over his rubber boots in his yard to get the worst of the cow manure and mud off them before he went in for a cup of tea and a break. He stopped as Mick’s horse reached him and turned to face Spillane where he sat grinning in his cart.
“Where was she?” he asked, pushing a strand of straggly grey hair from his eyes.
“She was at Limerick Junction, boy! She’d taken Maher’s pony and trap and travelled half the county to get there.” Jack turned back to the pump, looked at both boots, decided they were clean enough.
“Have you nothing to say?” demanded Spillane. “Are you bothered about this girl at all now, Jack?”
Sighing and turning again to Spillane, Jack replied, “She is found, Spillane; the wedding will happen. Is there more you want?”
“You could show that you care a damn about my daughter!” Mick’s horse champed its bit and stamped skittishly at the tone of his voice.
“Is that what you expect, Spillane?” Jack’s own features darkened with anger as he spoke. “Is it? That I should care about her? And will you stop the wedding if I don’t?”
Mick eyed Jack furiously from the vantage point of his cart, steadying his horse. “Perhaps I will!” he shouted.
Jack made a face that suggested that seemed reasonable enough, and nodded, saying, “OK, so if that’s what you want.” He began to walk towards his front door.
“Well, is it on or off?” bellowed Mick. “There’s only five days to go, Flynn!”
At his door, Jack watched Spillane turn his horse so that he could exit the yard but twist on his seat to look back. “Well?” he shouted.
“I’ll be there, Spillane,” answered Jack, “and so will you.” He went into his house and shut the door.
* * *
It had taken Caitlin hours to walk and hitch donkey cart rides to Cashmel. She had made straight for the station on arrival in the town. There was a small café beside the station where she had bought fried eggs, bacon, and bread and a mug of steaming tea. Ravenously, she had consumed her breakfast and then gone into the outside toilet behind the café and straightened her clothing as best she could, brushed her hair, and washed her face in a small basin. Then she had headed for the station, heart thumping with fear and excitement. She had no definite idea of what she would do when she got to Dublin. She would find a job of some sort; beyond that she could not plan. At the station, she went to the ticket office and asked for a single ticket to Dublin. “Sure there’s no trains from here to Dublin, alannah,” replied the woman behind the glass. “You’d have to go from Limerick Junction. That is the only place in Tipperary you can get a train to Dublin.”
Caitlin looked in disbelief at the woman, tears springing to her eyes. The woman got down from her stool and exited the ticket office, came around to the front, and stood before Caitlin. She was wearing a dress with a thick coat over it and she had on woollen gloves with no fingers in them. Her grey hair was pinned back to a knot behind her head. She looked pityingly at Caitlin. “Is it Dublin you have to get to, pet?” Caitlin nodded, tears flowing down her face. She sniffed and lifted a hand to wipe her face. “Here, here, pet,” said the woman, delving beneath her coat to a pocket in her dress. “Take this,” she said, offering Caitlin a handkerchief. “’Tis clean,” she added. “I only put it in yesterday.” Caitlin was past caring. She blew her nose and tried to recover her composure. “Is it important, like,” the woman prodded, “getting to Dublin?”
Caitlin sniffed again. She didn’t know what to do with the handkerchief and offered it to the woman, who took it and put it back in her pocket. “Where can I go from here?” she managed at last.
“What?” The woman looked puzzled.
“Where do trains from here go to?”
“Well, they go to Limerick Junction,” said the woman, “or the other way, to Waterford.”
“Then I can get a train to Limerick Junction and from there get a train to Dublin?” Caitlin asked, returning hope evident in her voice.
“Yes, pet,” said the woman. “You could do that, right enough. Is it relatives you have in Dublin?”
Caitlin wanted the woman to go back into the ticket office and stop asking her questions.
She already felt far too conspicuous.
“Yes – a sick aunt,” she replied. “And I have to get there quick – before she dies.”
“Oh!” The old woman gasped and her eyes widened. “Isn’t that a terrible thing for you!” She showed no signs of going back to the office. “What age is she, your aunt?”
“Sixty-two. Please, can you give me a ticket to Limerick Junction? I’m in sort of a hurry,” pleaded Caitlin.
“I can,” complied the woman. “Give me a second, now.” She turned away, reappearing a few moments later behind the glass.
After a torturous ten minutes, Caitlin finally had in her hand a ticket to Limerick Junction. An hour later and she was on the train, heart once more filled with anxious anticipation of a future alone in the capital city.
But when she enquired of the station master’s wife who worked in the ticket office of Limerick Junction how much a ticket to Dublin might be and when the next train was, the woman asked Caitlin to “hold on a minute now” and left the booth. When she returned, it was with her husband.
“So, you’re wanting to go to Dublin, are you?”
“Yes,” said Caitlin, instantly on her guard.
“Why might that be?”
“What?” asked Caitlin, indignantly. “What does it matter?”
“Well,” replied the station master, “a young girl, on her own, off to Dublin… doesn’t happen every day.”
“I am visiting an aunt,” said Caitlin flatly.
“Ah,” said the station master, looking knowingly at her. “An aunt, is it?”
Caitlin said nothing, though her quick breathing and facial expression were close to betraying her fear and mounting anger. Why could she not purchase a train ticket without this ceaseless interrogation? All the while, the station master’s wife stared at her, arms crossed.
“The next train to Dublin is not for another hour,” said the station master. “Sit yourself over there now.” He nodded towards a bench on the platform. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No! Thank you,” said Caitlin. “I want a ticket. Please.”
“Have you the money?” asked the station master.
“I do, of course!”
“Right so, then I’ll bring your ticket over in a little while. You’ve plenty of time.” He walked away; his wife smiled at Caitlin briefly, nodded, and followed him.
“That’s her,” he said to his wife as they got out of Caitlin’s earshot. “Ring the gard in Dunane.”
And so it was that Sergeant Carmody, Mick Spillane in the passenger seat of his car, got to Limerick Junction well before the Dublin train and took Caitlin home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“If anyone knows just or lawful impediment why these two may not be joined in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
Rain drizzled down the windows of the Dunane chapel. Only one window was of coloured glass, an arched one behind the altar, depicting the Virgin Mary standing on a snake, eyes heavenward, holding out her hands as if in supplication. No one spoke. Jack coughed, doing his best to mute the sound. Anyone who might object to this wedding wasn’t there. Maureen stood pale and serene in her flowery blue dress and a best coat handed down by two sisters before her. She was the closest thing to a bridesmaid Caitlin had. She had followed her sister up the aisle, holding a small bunch of artificial flowers which Mrs Spillane had found in a trunk in the loft. There were no fresh flowers to be had in Tipperary in wartime January.
Caitlin had refused to hold Mick’s arm as he had accompanied her awkwardly to the altar. He was shaven, hair slicked back, wearing the only suit he owned. The waistcoat no longer fitted him and, some time ago, Mrs Spillane had added a bit of elastic to the waist band. Jack waited for his bride at the altar. He did not look at her until Father Kinnealy pronounced them man and wife and even then it was a fleeting, burning steal of a glance. Caitlin did not lift her veil nor look anywhere but straight ahead. Caitlin’s two oldest sisters had not been told about the wedding until Christmas, and both had been issued with strict instructions – underlined and in capitals on their Christmas cards – not to speak with Caitlin about it. Neither had responded. Mrs Spillane cried quietly into a handkerchief as the wedding party turned silently from the altar and headed for the door.
“Will you come back to the house for a bit of breakfast, Father?” she offered through her tears as the priest saw them into the narthex.
“No, thanks, Missis,” he declined. “The housekeeper has my breakfast all made, now. Good luck.”
Outside in the drizzling rain, Caitlin hitched up her dress, pulling away her arm from her father’s hand as he offered to help her climb onto Jack’s cart. Her mother handed her a blanket while Mick loaded onto Flynn’s cart a bulging suitcase full of Caitlin’s clothes and a second bag full of other possessions. Once he had the horse’s reins in his hand, Jack reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He threw it to Spillane, who caught it, nodded wordlessly, and shoved it into his own inner pocket. If Caitlin detected what they were doing she did not betray it. Ignoring her mother’s pleas to say goodbye or come and visit soon, ignoring Maureen’s quiet wishes of good luck, Caitlin drew the blanket around her shoulders and continued to stare straight ahead. Jack clicked on the horse, and the cart pulled away from the church.
Never so bedraggled and desultory a bride and groom reached their married home after a wedding. Jack drove the cart as close as it was possible to his front door then dismounted. He unloaded Caitlin’s luggage and took it into the kitchen. She remained on the cart several moments after it had become essential for her to dismount, the blanket around her shoulders and over her head against the rain. Jack said nothing, standing at his horse’s head and stroking the animal’s face, waiting. At last Caitlin got down. Jack did not attempt to help her, for he had noted well her earlier disdain for Spillane’s help. As she backed down the two steps of the cart to the yard, Jack noted how the frothing lace of her hem was swallowed by mud and his heart was filled with pity for the girl who wore it. And so, Caitlin entered Jack Flynn’s kitchen, as his wife.
He had made some effort to address the cumulative effect of years of grime and neglect on the sink, the range, the walls and floor. But Jack had never scrubbed or blacked a range, scoured pots or washed a floor, and neither had his father before him; so the wet rags he had applied to various surfaces had only served to make arcs in the dirt or had not disturbed the grease which had hardened to a black crust on the range. The floor was cursorily swept only when the mud on it had dried sufficiently to allow this and, at present, was distinguishable from the yard outside only in the depth and consistency of the dirt which covered it. The absence of electricity was familiar to Caitlin as no one this far outside Tipperary or Limerick towns was on the grid. In any case, the soft light from the several kerosene lamps placed strategically around the kitchen was merciful; it was impossible for Caitlin to appreciate the full extent of the filth in the kitchen on that sullen January morning.
She stood beside her cases, pulling the damp blanket tight around her shoulders and shivering with cold. Jack could not think what to say or do to alleviate the tension or bring comfort.
“I’ll make some tea,” he announced at last, lifting the griddle cover and placing the kettle on the hob. Caitlin said nothing but watched his self-conscious movements, how he avoided looking at her, how he stood, hands on hips, back to her, watching the kettle warm. She let the blanket drop and her hands hung by her sides. It was very cold in Flynn’s kitchen. There was no sign that he had prepared anything for her to eat. She looked down her body from the bodice of her dress to the mud-heavy hem and could not understand that it was hers. Her presence in this scene, where she stood in a wedding dress, married to a man as old as her father, was the result of little more than consciousness. She was alive elsewhere, in a dream. She did not want tea. More than anything, she wanted to get out of the dress.
“Where am I supposed to put my thin
gs?”
Jack spun around as if shocked, and looked at her. Indeed, she was like a ghost, standing in her white dress, long dark hair clinging damply to her shoulders, her face an impression of beauty in the lamplight. For a moment, he could not think how to answer her. And then he moved towards her, picked up the suitcase, and said only, “I’ll show you.” He crossed the kitchen to the wooden stairs, heaved the case in front of him, and began to climb. Caitlin took a few steps after him, then stopped. She did not want to be upstairs with him. She waited for Jack to descend. He picked up her bag and re-crossed the kitchen, took it upstairs, came down again. The kettle hissed and spat on the hob as the water boiled. While Jack tended to the tea making, Caitlin lifted her dress and climbed upstairs.
From the narrow landing stretched a short passageway in worn boards and on either side was a room. The door to the room on the left was shut and the other stood open on flickering lamplight. She approached the one on the right as if to certain execution. There was a double bed, but apart from a narrow wardrobe in one corner, a wooden chair, and some shelves on the wall, the room was empty. There was no sign of male habitation – no clothes strewn on the floor, no boots – and the room smelt damp but no distinctive male odours were detectable. And it was relatively clean; the floorboards had been swept and were discernible, not caked in layers of trodden grime like the rest of the house, as far as she could tell. Flynn had set a fire in the iron grate and had put her suitcase and bag on one side of the bed. Cautiously, Caitlin approached the bed, then doubled back and shut the door.
Downstairs, Jack made two cups of tea then sat at the kitchen table, unable to lift his mug for the tremor in his hands and the distraction of his thoughts. What the hell happened now? The situation was as unreal to him as it was to Caitlin. He had willed this to happen, and now he was clueless to direct things further. On his wall was an ancient wooden clock which had hung there as long as he could recall. It needed winding each evening and was the only way, apart from the crowing of cocks and nuances of light in darkness, that he could tell time in his house. As he sat at his table listening to Caitlin moving around in the room upstairs, Jack marvelled for the first time at how loudly it ticked.