“It doesn’t matter, pet!” Mother would say, hugging her close, but heartbroken at the bewildered face of little Nora Pat, who only wanted to be out and about with that yoke of a dog. Esther was the one who would sit for hours with Nonie, endlessly patient, trying to explain things to her: using a spoon, buttoning her cardigan, tying her laces. It was Esther who had got her three-year-old sister walking, by refusing to lift her.
“Nora Pat! You are far too heavy for me to carry any more!” she had insisted, watching proudly as, screaming angrily, Nonie had tried to follow her outside to the garden. Ever since she had mastered those first steps her little sister had become her constant shadow, always in her way, trying to copy her making bread, washing the clothes, demanding attention. She knew that Nonie adored her, but often wished for some peace away from her and the demands of the family.
Her mother had sought consolation in the arms of the Church, and was a daily mass-goer, praying constantly for her retarded daughter and for the soul of her husband. Her life had become a round of novenas and the rosary and benediction and special intentions. She looked forward to the annual retreat and the pilgrimage to Lough Derg. “Don’t tell me she’s gone off praying again!” Their Aunt Patsy sighed, exasperated by the overzealous behaviour of her sister.
Esther did as much to help with the running of the household as she could, her mother coming to rely on her more and more. She did admit that at times it was boring, doing the same humdrum work day in, day out, her brothers gobbling the food she put on their plates as fast as she served it, their clothes soiled within hours of being put on. Still and all, what else would she be doing? Often she felt taken for granted, her brothers never giving much thought to her constant hard work at home, Ger even complaining about the pocket money he gave her every week.
Outside the sky was speckled blue, the day rather unsettled, as Seamas Murphy arrived to instruct her brothers with the clipping and shearing of their few sheep. The old man had a large flock of his own, and didn’t begrudge a few hours of his time to teach and supervise Dermot Doyle’s young lads. Thomas, Liam and Paddy scattered wide to drive the flock to the small side field, where their twelve woolly sheep bleated frantically, bewildered by the shouts and running of the boys. Seamas produced shears and clippers, Esther watching as Gerard dragged the oldest of the ewes from the front of the group, tugging at her tough grey fleece.
Her older brother didn’t usually take instruction kindly, but she could see that for once he was intent on listening to the old man and following his example, gripping the ewe between his sturdy thighs and knees, Donal helping to hold the struggling animal still. The thick, matted fleece peeled away, revealing the pale pink-white of the sheep’s skin, with barely a skim of wool. The old ewe suddenly seemed small and young and vulnerable as her heavy layer of protection fell away to the ground. Gerard had made two or three small accidental nicks on her skin, but otherwise the sheep was just fine, bleating and snorting disdainfully as she leapt away from her brother.
Nonie watched wide-eyed. “The poor baa-baa! Poor sheep-sheep!”
“It’s just her wool, pet!” hushed their mother as Nonie tried to get even closer to watch.
Esther and Liam helped to gather up the huge pile of dirty-looking wool, rolling it into a big pile as Ger, encouraged by Seamas, began to clip the next ewe.
“That’s it, lad. Hold her firm!” The sheep bleated pathetically, as if it were going to be slaughtered. Nonie darted in and out among the long-haired sheep, petting and whispering to them. “Will someone lift that child!” urged Seamas. “Before she gets hurt!”
“Come inside, Nonie, and give me a hand!” pleaded Esther to no avail, knowing full well that Nonie was far more interested in what was going on outside than anything inside. It was strange, Nonie’s mind was usually flibbertigibbet-like, unable to concentrate on one thing for any length of time, unfocused, forgetful even, and yet there were times when she set her mind on things, and could not be budged or persuaded away from them, like the time she made Esther put her hair in plaits every day for a period of about two months, or would only eat her breakfast, dinner and tea off a small blue china plate.
“I’m staying with the sheep,” she announced firmly. “Why are Ger and Donal hurting them?”
“They’re not, Nonie,” explained Esther. “The sheep’s coats have got too long and heavy for them, sure the poor creatures can barely move with them, so they’re just getting their hair cut, and then they’ll feel much better, and Mammy will use their wool to knit a fine cardigan to keep you warm in the winter. D’e see, pet!” Nonie seemed puzzled. Esther hoped that something of what she had said had soaked in. Trying to explain things to Nonie could wear you out at times. Often it was easier not to bother. “See, Nonie! Tom is taking away her dirty old heavy coat, and she’ll have a nice light short one for the summer.”
Nonie seemed doubtful, her eyes fixed on the newly shorn sheep. Liam and Paddy were wrapped up in a game pretending to be cowboys lassoing part of a herd on an imagined Wild West ranch, while her older brothers engrossed themselves learning about the handling of their reluctant animals.
“Esther, come and give me a hand with the meal!” bossed her mother. “The men’ll be hungry and I’ve a nice bit of corned beef nearly ready, so we’ll not be wasting the rest of the day watching a few stupid sheep.”
By the time the dinner was ready the rain had begun to spatter from the now inky sky, the day turning fierce, cold and blustery. Ger insisted on trying to finish the job, ordering Donal to stay outside with him. Seamas had come inside out of the wet, and sat by the fire shaking his head. “Majella, I told Ger we’d finish the job tomorrow or the next day, but that son of yours is as stubborn as they come.”
At least Nonie had been persuaded indoors, and sat all the while at the window, watching the others. By midafternoon the headland was blasted by howling winds and Gerard was glad to join them at the fireside, Nonie quiet and uncommunicative, lost in some secret space of her own.
Just after sunrise Esther realized that Nonie was missing from the bed they shared, her pillow and side of the blanket cold. Nervous, she checked her brothers’ and mother’s rooms. They all still slept; Nonie must be somewhere close by. Feeling panicky and frantic, Esther raced outside, searching and calling for her little sister, pulling open the creaking wooden door of the deserted water closet; she tried the outhouse, and round by the back of the house. Ignoring the rain-soaked ground, she began to run, searching. Relief filled her veins when she spotted Nonie not too far in the distance, safe … she was with the sheep. Something about the animals looked strange, different. Perturbed, Esther quickened her pace.
“Nonie! Are you all right?”
A single ewe bleated plaintively in the early-morning air. The sheep looked even more stoical than before. Esther couldn’t help herself from bursting out laughing as she came closer, for across the frame of each animal dangled a fleece, like rough grey rags flung over their clean white bodies. One small sheep stood dwarfed by the massive fleece that had been flung over her; others had become tangled underfoot.
“They were cold and wet, Esther! I was right worried about them. They needed their coats back. Ger shouldn’t have cut them.”
Patches of sheep’s wool clung to Nonie’s shoes; she must have fetched the fleeces from the outhouse where they had been stored.
“What the hell’s going on?” demanded Ger, who had raced across the fields, breaking out laughing the minute he saw the sheep. “God almighty, Nonie, you gave me the fright of my life when I saw those fleeces gone. I thought someone had stolen them.” Esther and Ger fell around the field laughing, almost hysterical, as the bewildered sheep sniffed and bumped into each other, confused by the smell of another’s fleece. The noise roused the rest of the family, who joined them, her mother tramping across the field worried.
“‘Tis all right, Mammy! Nonie’s here. She was only trying to help the sheep keep warm!”
“Will you look at the
creatures! Honest to God, Nonie Doyle, you’re the kindest girl any mother could have.”
Paddy and Liam chased among the sheep, pulling off bits of the wool and flinging it at each other, while Nonie vainly tried to keep the fleece in position. Tom knelt down beside her, trying with infinite patience to explain yet again about the sheep not needing their wool. “They won’t be cold,” he promised.
“But they were shivering,” she insisted stubbornly.
“I promise it’ll all be grown back by the time winter comes, and they’ll have huge new woolly coats. Mammy needs the wool, else we’ll be the cold ones. Humans don’t grow coats, Nonie.”
This seemed to finally satisfy her, and she helped her brothers to lift the pieces of fleece and shaggy wool from the sheep and carry it back down to the outhouse, racing and running in her nightdress among the boys.
“She’s so funny, Mammy. She’s such a cute wee thing.” Esther smiled, linking her arm in her mother’s. Her mother looked tired, worn out like a lot of the women in the area. Her hair had already started to lose its colour and was streaked with fine lines of silver, her skin taut and reddened by the constant winds and rain.
“Aye, she is that, right enough, funny, silly, whatever folk like to call it, Esther. She’s a small girl with big blue eyes and nobody’s going to get cross with her when she does daft things but ‘twon’t always be like that, Esther, folk won’t be half as kind when she’s a lump of a girl of seventeen or twenty. It’ll be hard for her then.” Esther stopped walking, noticing the tears welling in her mother’s eyes. “Think on then! How will the neighbours treat her when she’s a grown woman with the mind of a simple child?”
There was no denying her mother’s worry, she obviously fretted about Nonie constantly. Nonie looked back up the field towards them and suddenly raced back, flinging herself into Majella’s arms.
“I love you, Mammy,” she shouted. The words came so easily to her little sister.
Majella held her tightly as Esther looked on. “And I love you too, pet.”
Esther had to turn away to hide her own emotions.
Chapter Seven
Saturday night was the one night that Esther longed for all the week. Sometimes her girlfriends would call and they would chat until late. All their lives seemed to be moving forward while hers remained stagnant and the same. They all plotted and planned to escape the parish, hoping that romance and money were only around the corner once you got away from the boundaries of Connemara. Margaret O’Sullivan was the first married, and Anna was doing a strong line with one of Donal’s friends. The only excitement there was, as far as she was concerned, the local dances.
“Are you going dancing?” Nonie was sitting on the bed watching as Esther brushed her hair and dabbed some eau de Cologne behind her ears and on her wrists. “Give us a bit!” demanded her little sister.
“Come on, Nonie, out of my way! The boys will be cross if I hold them up.”
“Want ta dance too!” pleaded Nonie.
Esther took a final glance at herself; she had caked a bit of mascara on to her long brown eyelashes and used a bit of her mother’s eye-pencil to line her eyes. She wished she had a lipstick of her own, her mother’s was too red and she’d had to blot it off and run some Vaseline on to her lips to make them seem glossy. Her long wavy brown hair tumbled to her shoulders, framing her heart-shaped face and wide hazel-coloured eyes.
Majella stood at the door watching her. “Esther, dote, you look lovely!”
“Thanks, Mam.” Esther grinned. Her mother rarely paid compliments, believing that they swelled people’s heads and made them too big for their boots.
“When did you grow up so quick! I only wish your poor father was here to see what a beautiful daughter we have. I’d have been lost without you these past few years, you know that!”
“I know, Mam.” Esther smiled, throwing her arms round her mother, giving her a hug.
“You’ll ruin your make-up and hair!” joked Majella, stroking her shoulders. “Away off with you now, the boys are outside like hens on hot griddles waiting for you.”
“Do I look all right, are you sure?” Esther smiled, twirling around in the pale pink skirt that her mother had made for her. There was her white blouse with the pearl buttons and a soft pink cardigan that her mother had knitted as a birthday surprise for her.
Donal and Tom were out in the kitchen, combing their hair and polishing the mud and dust off their shoes.
“Hurry on, Esther!” shouted Gerard. “I’m going in a minute.”
Esther suddenly felt guilty about leaving Majella and Nonie, the two of them stuck at home while she went off and had a good time.
“Hurry along, pet, or you’ll all be late!”
They all crowded together at the door, their mother fussing and Nonie hopping in and out between them. “I want ta go too! Want ta dance!” Nonie began to scream and grab at Esther’s skirt.
“Don’t be so bold!” scolded Majella, trying to prise the chubby fingers off the pink material before Nonie destroyed it.
“Listen, pet, we’ll dance ourselves tomorrow, I promise!” pleaded Esther, trying to escape. She hated it when Nonie got upset or threw one of her tantrums.
Tom and Donal solved the problem by lifting the child and moving her out of the way, while at the same time propelling Esther out of the door. Determined, Esther climbed up into the truck, pushing in alongside Gerard. “It’s just she hates me leaving her!” She sighed, as from inside came loud sobs and screams as their mother tried to cope with the six-year-old’s upset.
“She’ll be all right, Esther, she’ll calm down in a few minutes when we’re gone,” assured Donal, “so don’t you be worrying yourself. We’re out to enjoy ourselves tonight.”
Esther knew her brothers were right. Excited, she crowded into the front seat between them as Tom jumped into the back, hoping above hope that the smell of fish from the truck wouldn’t cling to her hair and clothes and spoil the effect. She needed a break from the house, and tonight the whole district was going to the dance. They’d all been planning and looking forward to this for weeks. There hadn’t been a dance for ages, what with Lent and the Easter ceremonies, so now everyone was dying to make up for lost time.
A huge white marquee had been erected in a field near the crossroads. Gerard stopped the ramshackle truck outside McEvoy’s. The bar was so crowded that the customers had spilled out of the doorway and were standing outside in the warm evening air.
“Run in and set up two pints for us, Donal, while I park this yoke. Get the youngsters two glasses of lemonade. We all have a thirst on us with the night that’s in it!”
Donal jumped down and disappeared inside the bar. They all followed him in, pushing and shoving through the swell of young and old men all waiting to be served, Esther joining the other girls in the small snug, where she chatted to Carmel and Helen Quinn, two sisters she knew from school. Fidelma was all dolled up winking at her. “I love the pink!”
They all agreed they had never seen such a number in McEvoy’s. The publican moved among the tables and the long wooden counter, clearing glasses and cracking jokes, his cheeks ruddy with the heat and the extra custom that a dance night always brought.
“Will you look at the fellahs!” jeered Carmel, tossing her thick curling black hair behind her shoulder. “They’re like Arabs who’ve just come across the desert! Honest to God!”
“The poor divils, sure most of them have been on the dry for weeks. Father Devaney’d have killed them if he caught them drinking during Lent.” Her sister Helen laughed. Esther had another drink of lemonade with them before joining her brothers in the truck.
The marquee was like a huge cream-white palace glowing in the evening light. A row of lights illuminated the entrance and the queue waiting to purchase tickets. Wooden slats covered the ground, with only the odd blade of grass peeping through. Up at one end sat Louis King and his Dance-Hall Band. They wore cream evening jackets and played away as if they were centre
-stage in a glitzy hotel nightclub, rather than McGrane’s old sheep paddock. Magic was in the air. Walking in with her brothers, Esther realized how handsome they had become, as she could see the girls looking at them. Donal sloped off straight away, holding hands with a petite fair-haired female whom she had never seen before.
Tom dragged her up to dance. Her younger brother had got so much taller and so handsome, she could see some of the girls putting their eye on him. They danced easily together, both keeping time to the music as they got their bearings and had a look around. Spotting the Quinns arriving, Esther went over to join them, watching out of the corner of her eye as Tom tried to get up the courage to ask a tall girl with sparkling eyes, who was about his own age, to dance. Carmel and Helen introduced her to some of their crowd. The girls all admired each other’s clothes while all the time watching the huge numbers arriving and filling the edges of the tent. Three old bachelors came up and asked them to dance. Tears ran down Esther’s face as she watched Carmel trying to put a distance between herself and her partner.
Her own fellah was about the same age as her mother at least! “I live up tha Carraroe way,” he mumbled, “‘tis a small piece o’ land.” Esther nodded politely, trying to appear interested while at the same time noticing that he was missing a tooth. “The mother died a year back so’s I’m on me own now.” Esther tried to be nice and listen but found he mumbled so much that she could scarcely hear him. The poor eejit! she thought, thanking him when the band finally took a break. For the next hour Esther was whirled around the room by a succession of partners. Then the band went outside for a smoke and a drink, while inside the crowd laughed and joked and introductions were made. Gerard had appeared over with a pal of his.
The Magdalen Page 5