Across the Divide

by Brian Gallagher

‘I’ve to meet up with my friend. He’s staying at Hazelwood Farm near Ballinacargy. Do you know it?’

  ‘I do. That’s a fair distance.’

  ‘Can you take me there?’

  ‘Who’s paying?

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re travelling alone?’

  ‘Just till I meet my friend.’

  The man seemed to think about this, then he looked at Nora.

  ‘I’d need to see the money before we go.’

  ‘That’s all right. On one condition.’

  The man looked irritated. ‘Since when do girleens like you make conditions?’

  Nora held his gaze. Some instinct told her that it would be important to keep the upper hand here. She knew how her mother would respond, and copying her, she spoke as calmly and with as much assurance as she could muster.

  ‘I’m making a condition seeing as I’m the one paying.’

  The man looked her in the eye, as though gauging her, then he nodded. ‘All right, what is it?’

  ‘I’ll show you the money before we leave. But you have to tell me exactly what it will cost – also before we leave.’

  The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know how long it will take me to get there. I’ve to charge you for my time.’

  Nora knew that if she agreed to this there could be trouble later, so she shook her head. ‘No. I need to know now what it will cost me.’

  The man said nothing, and Nora grew impatient.

  ‘If you don’t want to take me I’ll go to someone else,’ she said.

  ‘All right. I’ll do it for a shilling,’ the man said.

  Nora raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s more than I expected.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like me to take you for nothing?’

  ‘I can afford eight pence,’ said Nora.

  The man breathed out in disgust, then looked at her and sighed as if in resignation. ‘I’ll do it for ten pence, and that’s as low as I can go.’

  Nora thought that ten pence wasn’t too bad, but the man’s attitude had been unpleasant from the start, and something in her wanted to best him. ‘Nine pence is the best I can do.’ She opened her purse and took out a three penny bit and a sixpence. ‘That’s to show I have it. I’ll give you three now and the other six when we get to the farm. All right?’

  The man hesitated, then held out his hand for the three pence. ‘Right.’

  Nora gave him the money, and he dismounted, pulled down the step and helped her into the back of the cart. He indicated a heavy blanket for Nora to wrap around herself, then without another word, he remounted the cab.

  Pleased with her bargaining skills, Nora enveloped herself in the heavy blanket, then she sat back in the cart as the driver cracked his whip and they made for the station exit.

  Liam decided that he needed to stop. He had turned another bend and all he could see ahead of him were foggy, snow-covered fields on both sides of the road. He was cold, tired and hungry, so he crossed to a low stone wall and sat on its uneven surface. The wall felt hard and icy, but it was a relief to take the weight off his feet. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the sandwiches, wrapped in greaseproof paper, that Tim Morrissey had given him before he left Mullingar. The thick, chewy, buttered slices of loaf bread were filled with home-made blackberry jam and they were a treat that Liam had been saving for when he really needed it.

  The full, warm feeling he had experienced on finishing breakfast had long since worn off, and now Liam ate the sandwiches hungrily, washing them down with milk from a small rinsed-out whiskey bottle that Tim had given him.

  The food lifted his sprits a little and he shifted on the wall, trying to get more comfortable as he considered his situation. He still wasn’t sure if he was on the right road for Ballinacargy. The only roadside cottage that he had seen in a long time had had no smoke rising from its chimney, and when he had knocked on the door there had been no answer. If he was travelling in the right direction he should reach Aunt Molly’s in the next hour or two, but if he had gone astray the situation was worrying. The light was going to go very early in these conditions, and unless the fog lifted he might not be able to locate a farmhouse where he could appeal for help.

  He had read stories where people sometimes slept in haystacks, but this was the wrong time of the year for that. More worryingly, in a boys’ adventure novel that he had enjoyed recently one of the characters had been stranded during a Canadian winter, and had fallen asleep, exhausted, in a ditch – with fatal results.

  It needn’t come to that, though. If the worst came to the worst he should be able to retrace his steps and seek refuge in a small townland that he had passed through some time after leaving Mullingar this morning. But that would mean another day lost in his bid to get the food for his family.

  He considered his options for a moment, then rose from the wall, wiped the jam from his lips and drained the bottle of milk. Then he stretched his limbs, wrapped his coat tightly around himself and started off again on what he hoped was the Ballinacargy road.

  Nora stamped her feet on the floor of the jolting cart, trying to keep warm as they passed through the wintry landscape. After travelling through the outskirts of Mullingar it had become a blur of snow-covered, foggy fields and ditches, and she had lost track of time as they had trundled through the silent countryside. She was dressed in her warmest clothes and had wrapped the coarse woollen blanket provided by the driver tightly around herself, but still her face, hands and feet felt cold.

  Nora shifted in her seat, easing her cramped muscles, then she got a shock on seeing a ghostly figure ahead of them in the mist. It was the first person she had seen since they had left Mullingar, but no sooner had she caught a glimpse of the figure than it disappeared again into the fog where the road rounded a bend.

  The cart travelled on, and Nora sat upright now, the cold temporarily forgotten as she looked ahead while waiting to overtake the walker. The cart rounded the bend, and Nora could just about make out the figure through the fog. He had stopped, presumably on hearing the sound of the approaching vehicle. The person turned around, and as the cart drew near Nora saw to her amazement that it was Liam.

  ‘Stop! Stop the cart!’ cried Nora, rising from her seat even as the driver called out ‘whoa’ and pulled on the reins.

  Nora could see the look of shock on Liam’s face, then she quickly climbed over the edge of the cart and jumped to the ground. ‘Liam!’ she cried, running across the snowy road towards him.

  ‘Nora?’

  Nora reached him and without stopping to think she threw her arms around him and hugged him. Even though they were good friends she had never hugged him before, but somehow it seemed the right thing to do now. His face felt even icier than her own, and she drew back and looked at him.

  ‘You’re freezing!’

  ‘I’m fine, but I … I can’t believe you’re here!’

  ‘I know you told me not to, but I had to help. You’re not angry, are you?’

  ‘No! No, I’m delighted. I just … I can’t believe you’ve come all this way – and found me out here.’

  ‘Well, it is the road to Ballinacargy.’

  ‘Is it? I wasn’t sure if I was lost or not.’

  Nora turned to the driver. ‘We are definitely on the road to Ballinacargy, aren’t we?’

  He nodded curtly. ‘About a mile, mile-and-a-half to go.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Liam.

  ‘How come it’s taken you so long to get here?’

  ‘I had a few problems – you won’t believe the adventures I’ve had, Nora.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ve been sleeping on boats and everything. But what about you? How did you get away?’

  ‘They all think I’m singing at the Mansion House.’

  ‘How long are we going to stop here?’ the driver complained.

  ‘Not long,’ answered Nora, then she turned back to her friend. ‘Do you want to hop up on the cart, and we can catch up on everything?
’

  Liam looked at her and grinned. ‘Sounds good.’

  Nora smiled back at him, then they both crossed to the cart, ignored the grumpy face of the driver, and climbed eagerly aboard.

  Liam felt a sinking feeling when he saw that up ahead the main gate to the farm was closed. He had been delighted by Nora’s surprise appearance and the knowledge that he hadn’t been lost after all. That and knowing that he had a friend to help him get the supplies back to Dublin had lifted a weight from his shoulders.

  They had chatted excitedly about their mutual adventures, and the time passed quickly, but now Liam was worried. When he had stayed on the farm during summer holidays the main gate had always been left open. It would be a disaster if, after all his efforts, Aunt Molly turned out not to be here.

  The cart came to a halt, and the cranky cab driver immediately turned around and held his hand out to Nora.

  ‘Right, the other sixpence please,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ answered Nora, rising stiffly and unwrapping the blanket to get at her purse.

  While she did so Liam unwrapped the spare blanket that the driver had give him and looked again at the closed gate.

  ‘All right, Liam?’ asked Nora.

  ‘Yes, it’s just I’ve never seen the gate shut before. I hope they’re here.’

  ‘If there’s no one there I can bring you back to Mullingar,’ said the cabman as he took the money from Nora. ‘Provided you have another nine pence.’

  ‘You have to go back anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean I’ll bring you for nothing. It’s another nine pence if you want to go back.’

  ‘Forget it!’ said Liam, jumping down onto the frozen ground and facing the driver. ‘Even if they’re not here, we’ll sort out something. We’re not paying you twice.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said the man, then he looked down at Nora as she got off the cart. ‘Are you sure about this? I’ll wait a minute if you want to check.’

  Nora turned around and looked enquiringly at Liam.

  He shook his head at once. Money was far too precious to squander like that, he reckoned. And besides, he wasn’t going back empty-handed, even if Aunt Molly wasn’t at home. He turned back to the driver. ‘Thanks for the offer, mister, but you’re grand. Safe journey,’ he added with a hint of sarcasm.

  The driver looked coldly at him, then he cracked his whip, turned the cart around and headed back towards Mullingar without another word.

  Now that he had burned his bridges, Liam felt a stab of anxiety, but Nora turned to him and smiled.

  ‘Well done. I really didn’t like that man,’ she said. ‘And I was thinking, Liam. You were probably only here in the summer, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe they close the gate in the winter. To keep the animals from wandering out in weather like this.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Maybe. Let’s head up the drive and find out.’

  Chapter 21

  Nora felt the pain throbbing through her toes. But it was a pleasurable pain like you got when your hands turned purple from throwing snowballs and then you heated them at a fire. Nora’s feet were thawing out now in front of a blazing turf fire and she sat forward in her chair, revelling in the heat of the farmhouse kitchen.

  Liam’s aunt Molly was bustling about the room, organising food, drink and dry clothes for Liam, whose outer garments had become damp from hours of exposure to the freezing fog. Nora had taken at once to Molly, who had been shocked to find her frozen-looking nephew on her doorstep. Quickly recovering, she had then made a great fuss, ushering Liam and Nora into the warmth of the kitchen and accepting Nora as she would a niece, on hearing that she was Liam’s friend who had come all the way from Dublin to help bring back the food supplies.

  Molly was a pretty woman with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes like Liam’s, and although she was of slight build she seemed to have boundless energy. She would have needed it, too, to look after three young children and run the farm single-handedly when her husband Mattie was away from home – as he often was, due to his work as a drover.

  ‘It’s an awful shame Mattie’s not here,’ Molly said now. ‘He could have met ye at the station.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Liam, ‘we got here in the end.’

  ‘Looking like a couple of frozen mice!’ said Molly, then she quickly turned to Nora. ‘No offence, Nora. You’re very well turned out, lovely outfit,’ she said indicating Nora’s clothes approvingly. ‘But you both could have caught your death of cold.’

  ‘Well, we’re getting nice and warm now,’ answered Nora, ‘so it worked out OK.’

  ‘Sure God is good,’ said Molly. ‘And so is your mother, Nora. It was very decent of her to give you the train fare to come down and help Liam.’

  ‘Yes, well, she … she believes in doing right.’ Nora caught Liam’s eye, and seeing him trying to hold back a smile, she quickly looked away. She felt bad about misleading Molly, but she and Liam had decided that it would be best not to reveal that Nora was here unbeknownst to her family.

  She thought about her family now while Molly laid places at the table and Liam chatted with his shy country cousins, a little boy of about four, called Michael, and the six year-old twins, Ellen and Bridget.

  There was going to be terrible trouble with Mummy, Nora knew, because it was obvious that they weren’t going to get back to Dublin tonight. Liam’s clothes had to be dried out, Molly was insistent that they needed a hot meal, the food supplies had to be parcelled up, and in the present weather conditions it wasn’t possible to set up transport to Mullingar easily, which meant that they weren’t going to make the Dublin train.

  Mary would deliver the letter, so at least her parents would know where she had gone. But still there would be hell to pay. She had lied about what she was doing, she had disobeyed her mother in remaining friends with Liam, she had put herself at risk travelling unescorted to a place she didn’t know. And she had – as her parents would see it – betrayed her class in the battle between employers and workers. But in spite of everything, Nora had no regrets. She had done what she thought was right and she would take the consequences.

  She wiggled her toes now, the feeling coming back into them. She had originally been fairly hopeful that she could make the trip to Ballinacargy and back on the same day, but since she couldn’t, there was no point fretting. The important thing now was to get the precious supplies back to Dublin – otherwise everything would have been in vain.

  She shifted again in her chair, savouring the heat of the big turf fire, then she thought about Liam’s plan for tomorrow and prayed that it world all work out.

  The only light in the darkened kitchen was the dim red glow from the embers of the turf fire. Everyone except Liam was gone up to bed, and with Nora installed in the only spare bedroom, Molly had set up a mattress and blankets for him in front of the kitchen fire. It was the second night in a row that he had slept in a makeshift bed, but Liam had no complaints. He knew that it was freezing hard outside, but the kitchen was still warm, and as he stretched out under the comforting weight of the blankets he felt a delightful cosiness.

  Molly had insisted that after getting cold and damp from his long walk he needed a hot bath, and she had dried his wet clothes at the fire while Liam luxuriated in a tin bath that Molly had set up in the scullery and then filled with kettles of hot water.

  The bath, followed by a big meal of bacon and cabbage, had made Liam feel full and contented, and he envied his country cousins, who, although they might not have much money, were never going to go hungry while living on the farm.

  All the more reason, Liam knew, why he had to get the food supplies back to his own family in Dublin. But that was a challenge for tomorrow, and tonight he felt warm, and dry and full.

  Even sleeping on the kitchen floor with the soothing red glow of the fire and the scent of turf was an enjoyable novelty – Nora had said it reminded her of a scene from an adventure book, and Liam knew what she m
eant.

  Thinking of Nora, he reflected again on what a good friend she was. His father had always claimed that rich people were pampered and weak, but for once Da was wrong. Nora was strong and brave even though she was rich. And working people weren’t always kind and decent, Liam thought, remembering the ticket collector on the train and the money-grasping cab driver. But of course other people like the bargemen more than made up for that. The trip to Ballinacargy had been an eye-opener, though, and the more he looked back over his adventures the more he realised that things rarely turned out as you thought they would. What should he expect tomorrow then, when he tried to get the supplies back to Dublin? Whatever he planned, he sensed that things would happen in ways he couldn’t anticipate. So why worry now? he thought. Instead he breathed in the aroma of warm turf, curled up even more under the blankets and let his eyes lazily close for sleep.

  Chapter 22

  The argument was over now, and as Nora prepared to return to Dublin she knew that she had been right to challenge Liam.

  She had risen early to a crisp winter’s morning, with yesterday’s fog and snow replaced by bright sunshine. It had still been really cold as Nora dressed, and the early morning sunlight sparkled on the frosty farmyard implements, while the surrounding countryside had looked magical as the sun cast a yellow glow on the snow-covered fields.

  Liam had risen early also, and he had drawn Nora aside in the farmyard, wanting to talk to her out of earshot of Molly.

  ‘There’s something I don’t want Molly to know,’ he had said.

  Nora looked at him with interest. ‘What?’

  ‘She’s given me whatever money she can spare,’ said Liam. ‘As a loan to Da and Ma,’ he added hastily.

  ‘And what do you not want her to know?’

  ‘That I won’t be wasting any of it paying a train fare. Every penny counts back in Dublin.’

  ‘But mightn’t you be caught again by the guard if you’ve no ticket?’