by Therese Down
“Would you please call me Caitlin?”
“Caitlin.” Dan smiled again, contemplating the girl before him – the spirit in her blue eyes, the way she had folded her arms and stood straighter as he had grappled for the right words. He could see why Donal had fallen for her, and disliked Mick Spillane even more. Caitlin still did not know why this man had come to her house. She waited.
“You probably know,” went on Dan, “that Donal has… disappeared. No one knows where he is.” Caitlin unfolded her arms and gestured to the table. Dan pulled out a chair, sat down. She did likewise, refolded her arms. In spite of her attempts to dismiss Donal Kelly from her life and thoughts, she was interested.
“He wrote us a letter, some days ago now. He mentioned you.” Caitlin could not disguise her surprise. “Yes, he said he had to accept that you are married but that he needed to… distance himself from it all…” Dan was reddening and very aware that there was a dying man in this house and that whatever the circumstances of the marriage, he was this woman’s husband. He stopped. Looking earnestly at Caitlin, he suddenly asked for the information which was originally his quest. “Do you know anything of where he is, Caitlin, or when he might be coming back?”
“I know nothing!” she exclaimed. “I barely spoke to him. You’ve just told me more than I knew.”
Dan nodded, looked down at his cap. “I’m very sorry,” he said, “but I know you’ll understand how worried I am.” There was a long silence. The clock ticked as it had through sixty years of nights and days in this house. Dan put on his cap and rose from his chair; Caitlin rose with him. She had been studying his face. She could see the resemblance of Donal to his father but the eyes were very different. She wondered if Donal got his brown eyes from his mother. But instead of proceeding directly to the door and letting himself out, Dan stopped, turned to face Caitlin again, and removed his cap.
“I knew your husband’s mother,” he said, as if it were a confession.
“What?”
“This is Jack Flynn’s house, right? Sean Flynn’s son?” Caitlin had no idea who Jack’s father was. She shrugged, nodded. “Well, your husband had an aunt. A great-aunt, actually – Maisie, Maisie Kelly. She was my grandmother – my father’s mother.”
“Why are you telling me this?” asked Caitlin. Dan was very red and appeared agitated.
“Because your husband – Jack Flynn – is dying. Mick Spillane told me he has only days left. I have something to tell him. May I tell him?”
Caitlin was intrigued but wary. “It’s not about…”
“No, no, no” – Dan shook his head – “nothing to do with Donal, I can assure you. No. It’s to do with Jack’s mother.”
“I’ll go up and see if he’s awake. Often, he’s not conscious for hours at a time now.”
Flynn was sleeping but Caitlin could wake him. She called his name several times, gently pushed his shoulder, and lit the lamp by the bedside. At last, his eyes opened, flickered for a while, and then he turned his head to look at her. “You have a visitor,” she said, “a man named Kelly. He wants to come up and see you.” Flynn frowned with the effort of remembering. Kelly. Then his eyes became angry, which Caitlin had expected. “No,” she said emphatically. “Not him. His father.” She added quickly, “He says he has something to tell you – about your mother.” Flynn’s breathing stopped. His eyes widened as though he was shocked. He began to cough but lifted his head as he did so, gestured to the door, and nodded. Caitlin went back downstairs. “He says to go up,” she said.
As Dan Kelly’s silhouette appeared in the open doorway, Flynn raised himself on one elbow, trembling with the effort, and peered into the evening gloom to make out his visitor. Slowly, Dan came forward.
“Good evening, Mr Flynn,” he said softly. “I am truly sorry to disturb you, now.” Dan was clearly very affected by the sight of the dying man. This skeletal figure bore no resemblance to the strapping, surly Jack Flynn he had avoided at markets, whose temper was legendary.
“You know something about my mother?” gasped Jack, struggling for the words between breaths. “What do you know?”
Dan stood close to the bedside. “This is difficult for me – Jack, is it? This is hard. It’s a confession of sorts. I never knew how to tell you before. I was afraid to. I hope you can… forgive me, now.” Jack could not remain on his elbow. He fell back on the pillow and closed his eyes. His heart was racing so that he could barely concentrate on Kelly’s words. The pain in his chest was increasing and soon he would have to cough. He dreaded the agony and this man would see the blood. Jack was desperate for Kelly to say what he had to say.
Dan saw Jack’s agitation and was worried. He spoke quickly. “My grandmother was Maisie Kelly of Golden.” In spite of the pain and the coughing which had started, Jack fixed Dan Kelly’s eyes with a look of sorrow and disbelief combined. “I was no more than a child, now, when this happened, but my father told me later that when your mother… left this house…” Jack opened his mouth wide, trying to breathe over the coughing, desperate to hear. “She walked for a few miles with a child in her arms, and when dawn broke, a man on his way to market in Cashmel picked her up and dropped her off near Golden. She turned up at my grandmother’s house, the child wrapped in a shawl. It had been dead for hours.” Dan stopped talking. Jack’s eyes were overflowing with tears and there was a tiny rivulet of blood seeping its way from his open mouth to the pillow. Every breath the man took seemed to be causing him pain. Dan was terrified he was killing him. “Will I stop?” he asked.
Jack shook his head from side to side on the pillow. “No!” he uttered.
“My grandmother took her in – called the doctor. Your mother was in a terrible state – obviously. My grandmother kept her above, looked after her. I think she had a complete breakdown, like…”
Flynn closed his eyes. The tears found their way out, spilled down his face like ice melting.
“After a long while, she got well enough to try and see you but she never wanted to come back to your father. Anyhow, my father told me that she tried many times to see you but your father wouldn’t let her, if she didn’t come back to him, like. And although my grandmother tried to fetch you up to the house at Golden, he wouldn’t let her bring you there – in case you never came back, he said. My father came here, too, to try and reason with him, but he would have none of it.” Dan could not tell how Jack Flynn was taking all this. He kept his eyes closed. Only the tears and the way his brows came together or his breathing changed indicated he was listening. “My father, at the time, was working in Tipperary. We had a house in the town. He was a dairy manager. I had an uncle and an aunt too but none of them wanted the farm. My uncle went to America and my aunt married a chap in Waterford. When my grandfather died, my grandmother sold off acres of the place, keeping only enough that she could manage – a few cows, chickens. Anyhows, your mother stayed with her and together they looked after the place. Then my grandmother got ill.” Dan paused. The next bit was the part causing him most difficulty. “Mr Flynn – Jack – I am sorry to say this now, because it does not reflect well on my father or me – but you have a right to know. Especially now.”
Jack opened his eyes, turned his head towards Dan, and waited.
“My grandmother – Maisie Kelly – left the house to your mother. She didn’t know what would happen her if she did not. My father was not pleased, I have to say. Your mother – the daughter of Maisie’s dead sister, I understand – looked after my grandmother till she died. But being in the house on her own, not able to see you… the loss of Maisie. It was all too much. She had another breakdown, and this time there was no one to see her through it. Sure my father lived miles away and our house was tiny. By this time, I had four brothers and sisters as it was…”
There was another long pause. Jack could not speak but his eyes pleaded with Dan for the final piece in this puzzle he had been trying all his life to complete. Whatever this man had to say next was better than the emptiness in his he
art.
“My father had her removed to St Joseph’s Asylum in Cashmel. To my shame, I don’t know to this day if she’s alive or dead. We moved back into the house in Golden and my father bought back several acres of land with the money he got from selling the Tipperary house. And there I have been, as the eldest son, ever since.” Dan stood, head bowed, at Flynn’s bedside. Flynn raised a trembling right hand. Dan looked at the hand then at Jack’s face, understood, and moved to tears himself, took the offered hand. Jack smiled at him and nodded briefly. Dan gripped his hand then covered it with his other. “Thank you, Jack,” he said. “Thank you. And may God bless you.” He held on to Jack’s hand a moment longer then laid it carefully on the bed and took his leave.
It was Caitlin who discovered that Jack’s mother had died the year before, aged sixty-four and lost in a world more conducive to happiness than the real one. She had been lovely, the nurses assured Caitlin – a gentle soul who smiled and sang her way through most days and had imaginary conversations with children named Irene and Jack. The husband, it was understood, had been brutal, and she had never wanted to go back to him, so no one tried to contact him. No one visited her. There were days when she sat staring at the rain on the windows and cried, rocking and talking quietly to herself. She liked a hug on those days and could be comforted with kind words.
Caitlin had asked Mick to take her to St Joseph’s in his truck. On the way back, neither spoke, each lost in thoughts of how senseless it was to bring suffering to your own house when there was plenty of it queuing up from outside to be let in. And Mick’s thoughts wandered on to whether or not Caitlin would let him organize things on Flynn’s farm after the funeral. It would make more sense to unite the dairy herds in any case. Surely, she would see that. McCormack’s lad could continue to help about the place – they could bring the pigs together, too. Flynn’s barn was bigger – it would make sense to keep them there. And McCormack’s lad could use Spillane’s horse to go up and down the lane. And then Caitlin would be back with her family again and the wife would leave him alone. She was driving him mad with the nagging to make amends with Caitlin.
“Your mother is dead, Jack.” Caitlin sat at his bedside and broke the news gently. His mouth was very dry. She dipped a handkerchief into a cup of water and ran the cloth over his lips. He blinked, nodded. Then he beckoned her closer.
“Box,” he said, and gestured feebly towards the brown box in which he kept cash, the deeds of the farm, Land Act Registrations, other official documents. She fetched it for him, opened it. “Will.”
“You want me to find your will?” He nodded. She riffled through yellowing papers, envelopes stuffed with cash and labelled variously “Feed – cows”, “Blacksmith”, “Feed – Pigs”, “Crops”. There were immaculately kept ledgers which recorded the outgoings and income of the farm over decades, and finally, there was a white envelope among the brown and yellowing ones sealed and marked “Will 1944”. And there were wads of notes, carefully bound by elastic bands. It was impossible to estimate their cumulative worth.
At an encouraging nod from Jack, Caitlin opened the envelope. Another nod and a feeble lift of his hand and she began reading. As she did so, Caitlin thought how neat and effortless was his hand; how incongruous with his character and his life. “I leave all I own to…” – and she hesitated, looked at him, shocked – “Caitlin Flynn, nee Spillane, my wife.” She held his gaze for a long moment, frowned in confusion. He smiled and closed his eyes, lifted his hand again. She continued reading. “She may dispose of all fixed and moveable assets as she thinks fit.” And that was it. It was dated 8th January 1944.
“Why?” asked Caitlin. “Sure we weren’t even… married at that stage.”
“After that first meeting… at your house… you said you were a slave. Then you ran away… Spillane said you dreamed of university.” He paused, waited till he had enough strength to continue. “I pitied you. I knew I was dying. I could have stopped the wedding.”
“Why didn’t you?” Her question was not just born of curiosity but profound resentment, which she could never quell. He concentrated on breathing as evenly as possible, closing his eyes as he did so. Then he opened them and turned to her.
“I bought you, Caitlin, to set you free.”
There were not many at Jack Flynn’s funeral. Caitlin stood pensive and gaunt at the graveside. Her parents stood behind her. The Mahers were there and so were Malachai Brett and his wife. Father Kinnealy said a few words about the sorrows and trials which had beset Jack’s life and how short-lived his happiness had been since Caitlin had come into his life. The most memorable thing he said was that Jack Flynn was a much misunderstood man. Caitlin handed Mrs Maher an envelope with twenty pounds in it, “for looking after him so well,” she said. Then she pulled her black shawl close around herself and began the walk home. She did not even look at her parents.
April came blue and sweet and full of birdsong. Caitlin was working hard for her exams and the horse was well enough that she could ride him to and from school. She turned him out in one of her father’s fields each morning before walking on to school, and brought him in from the field to be bridled and ridden home each afternoon. Always, he neighed and whinnied in greeting when he saw her, and came trotting to the gate.
One sunny Saturday afternoon, Mick Spillane pulled into Flynn’s yard, tooting his horn. Caitlin was washing clothes in the kitchen sink.
“Well,” he said, and sat down at the table, “is there any tea in it?” Caitlin did not lift her arms from the sudsy water. She blew a strand of hair from her eye as she turned to look at him.
“There is if you make it,” she said. Mick sighed, tapped the table rapidly with a forefinger, and began to speak.
“Have you thought what you’re to do with this place, Caitlin? Eh?”
Caitlin continued scrubbing, did not respond immediately. She had been waiting for that one.
“Oh, I have,” she said at last. Mick frowned, remembering his wife’s stern injunction not to get angry or pushy.
“Well,” he persisted, “I thought it might be a good idea to put the two herds together, like. It’d make sense. I could milk them below with McCormack’s help. The calves need to go to market now. Sure we may as well get on with it as soon as that’s done. What do you think?”
“I think,” said Caitlin calmly, letting out the soapy water and starting to run cold, clean water over her clothes to rinse them, “that if you pay a fair price for each cow, you can have them.”
“What?”
“You heard.” She agitated the clothing beneath the running water till there were no more suds, then set about wringing each item separately, placing it on the draining board.
“But sure I’ll be doing you a favour!” exclaimed Mick. “What do you want with cows? I’ll cut you in on the dairy payment, fair and square.”
“I’m selling the cows,” she replied, turning to face him and drying her hands on her apron as she did so. “And the pigs. And the house. And the land. Everything. I’m selling it all.” She looked levelly at her astounded father.
“What?”
Caitlin smiled. “You heard me well enough, Daddy. As soon as I have my exam results I am leaving here and I am never, ever coming back.”
“What?”
“Now, do you still want tea?”
THE BOY WHO LOVED RAIN
They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. They’re wrong.
GERARD KELLY
“A compelling debut novel… combines elegance and passion.”
– Derek Wilson, historian and novelist
The anger runs deep; from some untraceable darkness; and it is stealing his will to live.
Colom had the perfect childhood, the much-loved only child of a church pastor. Yet he wakes screaming from dreams in which his sister is drowning and he can’t save her.
Fiona turns to her husband, desperate to help their son. But David will not acknowledge that help is needed – and certainly no
t help from beyond the church.
Then they find the suicide pledge.
Fiona, in panic, takes Colom and flees… but when will she acknowledge that the unnamed demons Colom faces might be of her and David’s own creation?
This beautifully written and searching novel by poet Gerard Kelly explores the toxicity of secrets, the nature of healing, and the ever-present power of rain.
ISBN 978-1-78264-129-2 £7.99, US $14.99
THE VICAR’S WIFE KATHARINE SWARTZ
“A warm, wonderful, emotional read.”
– Sarah Morgan, USA Today bestselling author
Jane is a New Yorker to the core, city-based and career-driven. But when her teenage daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at her Manhattan school, Jane’s British husband Andrew decides to relocate from New York to a small village on Britain’s Cumbrian coast, buying a vast and crumbling former vicarage.
Jane hates everything about her new life: the silence, the solitude, the utter isolation. Natalie is no better, and their son Ben struggles in his new school. Even worse, Jane’s difficulties create new tensions between her and Andrew.