Katie's War

by Aubrey Flegg

  Pandemonium broke out. It was impossible to hear what was being said. The two clusters of candles broke up, amalgamated, and then began to stream towards the entrance. Katie turned and groped for the way out, guided by the blue glow of daylight. When she emerged she was dazzled but there was no sign of the man. She looked at her fingers. They still held the feel of his clothes as he had brushed past. He had been wearing a trench coat.

  * * *

  Father sat looking into his cup at tea-time as if it were a bottomless well. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Fair dues to them, they came up, to a man, and said how he had no right to say those things about me, even old Paddy Scully, but it was like a wake or people shaking hands at a funeral. The quarry is dead, Mary. They said, “Just wait till the fighting is over,” but I wonder. I’m tainted after the war, I carry an English smell. Anyway, they think there’s too much work in moving that waste. We need a miracle, Griff, don’t we? The whole bloody country needs a miracle.’

  * * *

  Evening. Katie had washed up and was in the yard throwing out the water when she realised that Father was gone. She went into the byre to where Peter was finishing milking, stripping the last drops from the teats.

  ‘Where’s Father?’ she asked.

  ‘Haven’t seen him,’ Peter said without looking up. Father wasn’t in the house either, but she came on Dafydd, sitting on his bed, writing.

  ‘What do you write in that copy-book?’ she asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Where’s Father?’ Dafydd didn’t know. He put his book under his mattress and joined her in her search. She was suddenly very frightened – she didn’t know why but she felt cramped in her chest. They found Mr Parry in the yard. She asked him if he’d seen Father.

  ‘He said he wanted to see that the cave was walled up properly again,’ Mr Parry said.

  ‘I think I’ll wander up and see how he’s getting on,’ Katie said tightly. Mr Parry looked at her. ‘We’ll come too,’ he said.

  There was nobody in the quarry yard, and the sheds were empty.

  ‘Father!’ she called. Mr Parry walked to the quarry edge and looked down. Katie steadied herself on one of the cables and leaned forward. All at once Father’s voice came welling and booming up from the quarry below. Mr Parry grabbed Katie as she swayed. She couldn’t make sense of what Father was saying. She looked at Mr Parry in dismay, but he was listening too. Then she realised Father was calling out names, names of people, name after name after name: ‘Michael Feron – David Goodbody – Kevin O’Hanrahan – Sean Lyness … ‘at first the names were clear and loud, like a schoolmaster taking the roll-call in class, but then the echo in the quarry caught up with the names so that they overlapped one another in a continuous stream.

  ‘What? What?’ Katie found herself saying.

  But Mr Parry was drawing her back from the edge. ‘It’s all right, Katie, I know those names.’ He was trying to reassure her. ‘It’s all right, but I think you should go down. I’ll tell you about it later.’

  ‘To him you mean? Go down to Father?’

  ‘Yes, can you face it?

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because I think you can help him, like you have in the past.’

  Katie glanced at Dafydd – had he been giving her secrets away? But he was looking as dismayed as she.

  She walked through the cut alone with her Father’s voice booming louder and louder – magnified, distorted, urgent – still listing name after name and never once hesitating. The light was failing as she emerged but she could see that he had turned so that he could hear the echoes as they bounced back to him. She walked steadily towards him not daring to stop in case her courage failed.

  He ceased shouting as suddenly as he had started. But the names lingered on, echoing and echoing, until eventually they faded into oblivion. She halted and they both listened. When she could hear nothing more she reached out for his hand.

  ‘It’s time we were going home, Father,’ she said. He let her take his hand and lead him from the quarry. Tears were streaming down his face.

  * * *

  The lamp cast a pool of yellow light over the kitchen table. Mother had gone to help Father to bed.

  ‘Whose were all those names?’ Katie asked Mr Parry as she stood beside the range, her teeth still chattering with shock.

  ‘Those, child, were the names of his friends, the men in his regiment killed in the war.’

  ‘So many!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, so many.’ Mr Parry paused. ‘You know, Katie, that man who spoke out in the cave today, he got it wrong. We didn’t go out to die for king and country, we went out as living ordinary people to try to make a better world for living ordinary people: you, our children, everyone.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Secrets in Welsh

  Dad spoke to me in Welsh today. Worried like hell he is. He wants to know what she’s told me about her Father, but it is washday and she is busy. I can’t get near the house, let alone ask her what to say. Full of steam and women it is – terrifying.

  * * *

  It had rained in the night. Marty and Dafydd went off early on the creamery run with sacks over their heads like two monks. Katie went to fill the kettle with spring water from the bucket in the porch. When she came back Father was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She closed the lower part of the half-door, watching him as she did so. He was staring straight ahead. His eyes didn’t follow her as she moved. It was as if he were blind! Katie stood still, kettle in hand, remembering when she was eleven and running down the platform at Nenagh with her arms out to greet him.

  Huskily she said, ‘Father?’

  Slowly, very slowly, he began to thaw, his shoulders slackening. He rubbed at his neck. He smiled, but it seemed to hurt. Then he sat down at the table. Katie walked over to the range and lifted the kettle on to the hot-plate. She stood then with her back to him. Her future seemed to hover over her like a great black crow waiting to settle on her shoulders. She had it all to do all over again! Nursing, listening, cajoling, nursing, listening … The pattern seemed to echo endlessly into the future.

  She heard Mr Parry come downstairs, but she didn’t turn to greet him. She remembered his concern last night, but she was hardening herself again. If she was going to nurse Father she’d do it on her own; she didn’t need anyone else. All she needed was her own armour of misery.

  They were still sitting over the remains of breakfast when they heard the wild clanging of empty milk churns as Marty turned the cart down the ramp from the road into the farmyard.

  ‘We take it in turns with the neighbours to go to the creamery,’ Mother explained to Mr Parry. ‘Marty likes to go down during the holidays and get all the news. He sits there on a milk-churn with his cap on the back of his head and a straw in his mouth chatting about milk yields. I wonder how Dafydd got on? Wait now and we’ll get the news off them.’

  Katie filled the teapot from the kettle, then lifted the copper boiler on to a hot-plate and started filling it with rain-water. The water would have to be boiling when Breege arrived to help with the washing.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be thinking of going now, Griff?’ said Father. His voice sounded tight and he swallowed as if there was something hard in his throat. Katie stopped pouring; it hadn’t dawned on her that they might leave. Water splashed on to the hot-plate where it hopped and fizzled. ‘It seems a shame to have dragged you all this way. I think we could have got Paddy Scully behind us if it hadn’t been –’

  Mr Parry cut in. ‘If we could stay for another day or so, we’d like to. Dafydd says he wants to show me something he and Katie found up at the quarry and he’d be disappointed to go at once. Perhaps it’s the secret of Paddy’s magic goats?’ he smiled.

  ‘Oh! The blessed goats,’ said Father absently. Katie crossed from the range and put her hands on his shoulders; the muscles were like bars of steel. He smiled up at her. ‘Stay as long as you can, Griff, we’d miss you both if you went now, wouldn’t we, Kati
e?’ She looked across at Mr Parry and found herself suddenly wanting them to stay. She started massaging Father’s neck and shoulders.

  There was a scrape of boots at the door. ‘Nobody will be going anywhere just now,’ said Marty dramatically, ‘the country is besieged.’

  Mother froze, a sheet limp in her hand. ‘Not invasion!’ she gasped. ‘Not the English … they threatened …’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Marty cheerfully. ‘But all the roads to Nenagh are blocked with trees, and there are trenches dug across them too. There have been no trains since Saturday and they say the telegraph wire is cut. I think it’s great, like a bad snowfall. Dafydd will be able to help me bring in the hay from the wet meadow now – it’s beautifully dry, the rain was nothing. I’ll make a farmer out of him yet.’ Dafydd appeared behind Marty in the door.

  ‘Bang goes your chance of posting your journal to Megan, Dafydd,’ said Mr Perry, ‘but keep on with it, this will soon be over.’

  ‘Go and wash your hands, both of you,’ said Mother, relieved. ‘You can tell us all about it then.’

  Katie, who had stopped, began to work her fingers into Father’s neck and shoulders again. Marty returned in no time, drying his hands on his trousers and fishing in his pocket.

  ‘Wait till you hear this. You know John Doran up at Knock? Well, in the middle of the night, John woke up. He had heard a noise in his yard, so, creeping out of bed he drew back the curtains, just a chink, to take a look.’ Marty, the born actor, lowered his voice. ‘There in the moonlight he could see someone moving about his hen-house. Now, John will tell you himself that he is a brave man, but the more he thought about it, and the more he took into consideration the times that are in it, the more his bed seemed a safe and comfortable place. Come morning he’d forgotten all about the incident in the night and went down to let the hens out. Horror! The door of the hen-house was swinging open and not a hen in sight. Inspecting the scene with caution he discovered, pinned to the door, a piece of paper on which was written this very message,’ Marty held up a scrap of paper and read:

  ‘Good morning John,

  Your fowl are gone,

  Your cocks will crow no more,

  You went to bed, you sleepy head,

  And forgot to close the door.’

  ‘Is he raging?’ asked Mother when they had stopped laughing.

  ‘Divil a bit. He was just laughing at himself for a fool. He was showing the paper around himself, so I made a copy.’

  ‘Perhaps it was in a good cause,’ said Mother. ‘Nevertheless, you’ll take him down a couple of pullets next time you do the the creamery run. He’s a decent soul and there’s two hens about to lay.’

  Marty had more to tell, but Mother was impatient to get the men out of the house. It was washday and Breege Connaughton, who came in to help each Monday, was edging in the door, trying to look invisible.

  ‘Out, all of you, out now,’ Mother commanded. ‘Just because you’re men doesn’t mean you have to keep the chairs warm. Come on,’ she cajoled, ‘Marty, Dafydd too, snatch a slice of bread, the pair of you, and you can tell them the news outside.’

  It was already raging hot in the kitchen. Katie was glad enough to have something to occupy her mind. The huge copper boiler that she had been filling was now steaming on the range. Upstairs the house looked like a swan’s nest with blankets in heaps and the clean sheets folded on top, ready to be made up when the urgent task of washday was done below.

  As the last of the men left, Breege became a different person. She lost her invisibility and burst into action, bossing both Mother and Katie as she tore into the weekly wash. They poured and carried, and steam billowed, and foam rose to Breege’s elbows as she fished for items in the tub with a bleached stick and then worked them to the death, up and down, up and down, on the rippled surface of the washing board. Katie turned the handle of the mangle, watching the plump stream of wet cloth disappear, to emerge like a stiff board and crumple into the basket on the kitchen floor. Soon every bush in the garden was a mound of white and Katie thought her back would break.

  ‘Look to the irons, Katie,’ Breege ordered, and Katie took the heavy wedges of metal and arranged them on the hot-plate. In winter you could see the plate glowing red.

  Breege dipped her head on to her shoulder to wipe away the sweat.

  ‘Mary Mother of God,’ she prayed, ‘look on our souls and make them as white as our wash today.’ She spat on the iron and noted how the spit hopped on the hot shiny surface. The oil-cloth had been taken off the kitchen table and the bare wood covered with an old blanket and then a sheet. Most of the brown stains on the sheet could be traced to Katie’s experiments and moments of forgetfulness with the iron. For Breege, ironing, like everything else to do with the wash, was a steady flow of movement fuelled by tea.

  ‘Would you wet the tea again, Katie dear. I’m parched with the drought and could soak up an other cup.’ Katie had once counted the cups Breege drank, but Breege seldom actually stopped working. Just now she helped herself from the pot while Katie, using the fire tongs, drew out the cooling metal wedge from the back of the iron, slipped another blazing hot one in and slid closed the little door at the back of the iron. As she turned to the table with it, Breege’s cup was down and her hand was out.

  ‘I’ll need the shirts next, Mrs O’Brien,’ she called. Mother came in with an armful from the line and Breege spread the first of them on the table. ‘It’s a lonesome washing that there’s not a man’s shirt in,’ she said and whammed the iron down. There was no man in Breege’s house; she was an only child and her mother was a widow.

  ‘You’d think,’ Mother often said, ‘with a fine stretch of land like that, some lad would have snapped Breege up years ago.’ But Breege put all her energy into her washing. Without a flatiron in her hand, as Father said, she became as invisible as the fairies.

  By the time Katie got to sit down and Breege was tidying up, her head was swimming. The men began to appear, like hens at the door, taking a peek to see if it was safe to come in. The beds were made and the ceiling was hung with clothes and sheets airing. In winter they would have had to duck to avoid getting a slap from a wet sheet, but in summer everything was dried and folded.

  ‘Doesn’t it all smell nice and clean!’ said Father. ‘Breege, you’ve done us proud.’

  But Breege was already invisible, pulling her coat over her sweat-stained dress. ‘Good evening now, Ma’am,’ she said as she sidled towards the door. ‘Slán libh.’

  ‘Slán agat,’ Mother replied, saying to Mr Parry after she had gone, ‘there’s not so many have Irish around here now, more’s the pity, but Breege and her mother have it still.’

  * * *

  Dinner and tea became one on washdays, with cold meat from Sunday. It meant a nice long evening. Katie longed to get out of the house, which smelt oppressively of steam and Sunlight soap. Father and Marty went off to look at the wet meadow to see if it was hard enough to take the wheels of the hay float, Mother had gone to lie down, and Katie wasn’t sure where the others were. She fed the chickens and stood in the door of the house undecided about what to do next. It was oppressively quiet. What now? Father’s hopes of opening the quarry were gone. The elation she had felt after her talk with Dafydd had disappeared like the bubbles from stale lemonade. The black dogs were back, soon she would be on her own again; her talk with Dafydd had solved nothing. Father might be a hero but she had felt his muscles under her fingers and had seen his stare. Nothing had changed; just because Father had a medal didn’t mean that he wasn’t mad. Men in white coats could still come and take him away. The only comfort was that she had sworn Dafydd to secrecy. He was still the only other person who knew about Father’s madness. Washday would come again and again and she would fade like Breege until she too became as invisible as a woodcock, to be brought to life just once a week in a sea of tea.

  At that moment she heard voices approaching along the road. She strained her ears but couldn’t catch what was being
said. She had taken a step or two forward so she could see who it was when Dafydd and Mr Parry appeared, talking earnestly. They were speaking Welsh. Katie took a step back, feeling a sudden stab of suspicion. Talking Welsh was taboo according to Dafydd. She took another step back but was too late to dodge into the kitchen. They both saw her at the same time. No nod or wave of recognition; they just went on talking, looking in her direction. At that moment Katie knew, knew with absolute certainty, that they were talking about her. Dafydd had split on her. The chinks in her armour gaped. Her finger-nails bit into her palms. What were they saying? Mr Parry turned as if to retrace his steps towards the quarry and gave Dafydd a little push in her direction.

  He had betrayed her. She waited, seething.

  Dafydd walked carefully down the ramp into the yard. He was in bare feet. She felt a moment of scorn for a boy as old as herself who could not walk on stones. She turned, took off her apron and threw it into the kitchen, then she pulled the half-door closed to keep the hens out. She could feel her anger welling inside her. He had been talking! Let him come every painful step of the way.

  He looked up from his passage across the cobbles. He had caught the sun over the last few days, or perhaps he was blushing. When he saw the look on Katie’s face, however, he paled visibly.

  ‘Dad asks … would like …’ he stammered. Katie wanted to hit him but he was too big. ‘Dad insisted … he brought it up, I couldn’t …’ She waited for him to go on, but he was stuck.

  ‘Come on,’ she said grimly and marched out of the yard after Mr Parry.

  ‘I only …’ came his voice from behind.

  Katie whipped around. ‘Shut up, you streak – shut up!’

  Mr Parry was sitting on the bank beside the road between the farm and the quarry where the view opened up in a broad sweep – to the meadows below, then to the village cresting the hill, and beyond it to the wide expanse of Lough Derg. As Katie approached he got up, just as someone gets up for a visitor. He didn’t smile but offered her a seat on the bank as if it were an armchair. She sat, and stared grimly out over the lake. He sat down beside her; Dafydd moved to sit on his far side. Katie was aware of her heart beating. When Mr Parry started speaking she could barely listen at first.