‘And his age?’ Fintan butted in.
‘The thing is, Fintan,’ Sophie went on, ignoring his point, ‘I think he actually loves her and she definitely loves him. I can see it staring out of her eyes.’
Fintan made the grunting noise again. ‘And if we stop her from seeing him, she might never meet anyone as good again. She might never meet anyone that would love her as much or look after her as well.’ Her voice dropped now. ‘And worse still – she might hold it against you for the rest of her life. Oh, it might not seem like it now – at this minute she’s downstairs doing what you want. But it might rebound on you in years to come . . .’
Sophie got up from the bed and went to the bedroom door. She turned around, and looked at the forlorn figure on the bed. ‘And don’t forget, Fintan – I was only seventeen when I met you. There might not be the same age difference between us as there is between Kirsty and Larry, but you were no different from any other man. If you’d had your way, I might have been in the same boat poor Liz Mullen landed in.’
‘That’s blidey hittin’ below the belt, Sophie!’ he gasped.
There was a deadly silence as they both realised the inappropriate words he’d used to describe the situation. Normally they would have dissolved into laughter, enjoying the slightly risqué double meaning. But there was no laughing about it tonight.
‘Imagine bringin’ up something like that!’ Fintan blustered on. ‘And maybe that’s exactly what I’m worried about – her landing in the same boat as Liz.’
‘Well, don’t worry about it,’ Sophie told him. ‘Kirsty has a lot more oil in her can than that. Apart from anything else, she has big ambitions about her singing – and there’s no way she’s going to spoil that.’ She rested her hand on the doorknob. ‘Larry Delaney’s the best chance our Kirsty will ever get – he’ll look after her in every way we could ever want. We’ll never need to worry about her being out on her own at night, or going short of anything. I’ve just spoken to him outside, and I can tell just by the way he looks at her and talks to her that he loves her with all his heart. He’ll always put her first.’ She paused to catch her breath now. ‘And I don’t think any reasonable father could ask more for his daughter.’
Chapter 68
Kirsty and her mother were sitting opposite each other at the fire, one reading the Sunday Post and the other reading the Sunday Mail, when Mona came knocking on the front door. She had stopped going around and letting herself in the back door after dark since that poor family had been butchered – you never knew who could be creeping around. And Sophie had taken to locking the kitchen door when it got dark for the very same reason.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Sophie said, glad of something to do.
Mona stuck her head in the sitting-room as she followed Sophie down to the kitchen.
‘Well, Miss,’ she said, smiling at her favourite niece, ‘any news?’
Kirsty shook her head, and forced herself to smile back. ‘Not a ha’porth,’ she said – a jokey retort they often used. She wondered if Mona knew about Jim Murray doing a bunk. She would soon hear if she did.
‘Ah well,’ Mona said, arms folded in the doorway, ‘I suppose we’ve all had more than enough excitement, one way or another, since the New Year. We could do with things being quiet for a while.’ She left Kirsty to her newspaper and went into the kitchen.
‘Your Kirsty’s awful quiet,’ she remarked as she sat down at the table. ‘Is she all right in herself?’
Sophie turned the tap on, letting the water drum into the empty, copper-bottomed kettle. She put the whistle in place and then put the kettle on one of the gas rings, all the while debating whether to trust Mona with the situation between Kirsty and Fintan. She decided against it.
‘Och, she’s fine,’ Sophie said, striking a match and lighting the gas under the kettle. ‘Just the usual Sunday night when they’re not going out. The thought of getting up for work on these dark January mornings isn’t very inspiring.’
‘Oh, tell me about it,’ Mona agreed. ‘It’s pitch black when I’m up and trying to get fires lit and everything done for the boys getting up and out to work or school.’ She paused. ‘So you won’t have Heather to get up for work in the morning?’
‘That’s right,’ Sophie said, folding her arms. She had already been through this conversation with Mona on Friday when she told her that Heather was staying the weekend at Claire and Andy’s house.
‘It’s to be hoped that she doesn’t come back skin and bone with all they’ll feed her out there,’ she said, her mouth turning down at the corners. ‘Oul’ blidey nuts and glasses of wine.’ She shook her head disapprovingly. ‘And your Heather doesn’t need that – she’s lost enough weight recently and it doesn’t suit her one bit. She needs feeding up now, and proper meals instead of all that nut and crisps nonsense that goes on out there.’
‘I’ve told you already, Mona,’ Sophie said with a definite edge to her voice, ‘that that’s their way. They just have a different routine. We can’t all be the same – and anyway, plenty of people like that kind of thing, it’s fashionable. They have their main meal later in the evening. Andy prefers to relax with a wee drink after a hard day at work, then have his dinner. Is there any harm in that? You had a priest a few years ago that had you over cooking dinners at seven o’clock in the evening and you didn’t seem to mind.’
‘That’s different,’ Mona stated, ‘priests are from a very different class from the rest of us.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You know fine well that Claire Grace wasn’t brought up to all those things – sure, she grew up in the same oul’ farmhouse in Ballygrace as Jimmy, Fintan, Pat and Tommy. They don’t carry on like that, do they? They’re just ordinary working people, the same way we were brought up ourselves, who have their dinner the minute they walk in the door. And in my opinion, that’s what any decent working man deserves.’
‘Horses for courses, as far as I’m concerned,’ Sophie stated. ‘I couldn’t care less whether they have champagne and frog’s legs for their breakfast. It’s their own business.’ She ignored the tightness around Mona’s mouth and the narrowing of her eyes. ‘How’s Lily doing?’ she asked now, pointedly changing the subject. ‘Has she adjusted to being back at home yet?’
‘Adjusted?’ Mona said, raising her eyes to heaven. ‘She’s ruling the blidey roost over there. She has the boys driven mad wi’ getting them to switch the telly on and the radiogram off and vice versa, dependin’ on her moods. She has them dancing to attention day and night. And if the telly money dares to run out when she’s watchin’ one of her programmes, there’s hell to pay. She’s screeching like a banshee for somebody to come and put the money in quick before she misses anythin’.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m waitin’ on one of the lads turning on her one of these days. They’re so meek and blidey mild and patient with her – big hulking fellas as they are.’
‘She was always well able to twist them around her little finger.’ Sophie laughed and shook her head. ‘She’s moving around a lot better though, isn’t she? She’ll soon be able to do all those things for herself.’
Mona smiled. ‘Oh, thanks be to God an’ his Blessed Mother, she has improved.’ She put a finger to her lips now, thinking. ‘I was wondering if you’d mind me droppin’ her over here for a few hours during the week? You see, I’m supposed to be up at the priest’s house at lunch times, and Pat’s on the early bus shift and the boys are all out. It’s the time that Lily would normally be in school.’
‘No problem at all,’ Sophie said. ‘I’d be delighted to have her. She can sit up at the fire doing her reading or drawing or knitting, and I’ll be up and down the stairs checking on her.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ Mona said. ‘That would be a great help.’ She made a little grimace of annoyance. ‘It’s that Cissy Dunne – you know, the one that’s been covering for me when Lily was first in hospital then again since she came out of the hospital and couldn’t be left?’
Sophie nodded t
hat she knew the woman.
‘Well,’ Mona said, prodding her finger on the kitchen table for emphasis, ‘she seems to think she has her feet well under the table in the Chapel House now, and I’m going to have to put in a few more hours to put her back in her place.’
‘But surely Father Finlay wouldn’t allow it?’ Sophie said, surprised.
‘You never know,’ Mona stated. ‘You can never take anythin’ for granted when it comes to men – even if they are priests. They’re very easily swayed with the forward, bossy types of women like that Cissy Dunne. Oh, if she got the chance to get my job full time she’d jump at it, and make no mistake.’
Sophie turned to the cupboard now for mugs, trying not to laugh in spite of all her own troubles. How on earth could her sister-in-law use words for someone else that exactly described herself and not notice?
‘Where’s Fintan?’ Mona asked, noticing that Sophie had only put three mugs out on the table.
Sophie poured the boiling water into the teapot, then set it back on the edge of the gas ring to brew. ‘Oh, he’s upstairs at something,’ she said vaguely. ‘If he doesn’t come down soon, I’ll make him a fresh pot later.’ She started rummaging in the cupboard to see what biscuits and cakes she had to offer her guest.
The sound of a key in the front door sounded and both women turned to look at each other. ‘Who could that be?’ Sophie said, looking alarmed. She moved across the kitchen floor towards the hall.
‘Maybe Fintan went out and you didn’t see him,’ Mona suggested, sitting forward to get a good view of whoever it was.
‘Hi, Mammy,’ Heather said, letting herself in. ‘Claire said she’d run me home tonight so that I could run up and see Liz.’ She held back the front door to let her aunt in after her.
‘I hope you don’t mind us landing on you unexpectedly,’ Claire said, ‘but I thought Heather would be worrying all day tomorrow if she didn’t see her friend . . .’
‘Of course we don’t mind, it was very good of you bringing her out all this way.’ She moved down the hallway. ‘I’ve just made tea . . . and I must give Fintan a shout. He was just upstairs fixing something.’ Oh God, she thought to herself, this above all nights for everyone to land in on the house, when Fintan was lying upstairs in the depths of despair over Kirsty and Larry Delaney. And lying down was a thing he never, ever did unless he was sick.
‘It’s lovely and warm coming into the house,’ Claire said. ‘It’s turned very cold outside – I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a heavy frost later on tonight.’
As Heather followed her mother towards the kitchen, she glimpsed the heavy figure of Mona sitting at the kitchen table and her heart sank. This was all she needed. The plan was that Sophie was going to ask Fintan to go across to his brother’s and check if Claire could come over for a few minutes to see Lily. She felt it was better than knocking at the door and having one of the boys answer it and then be put in an awkward spot. She had brought a box of Cadbury’s Roses and a fancy little mirror for Lily to hang on her wall.
There was a silence as Heather and Claire walked into the kitchen. Mona immediately got to her feet, her roundish face stiff and grim. ‘I’ll leave youse all to it,’ she said, bustling by on the opposite side of the table to where the two others were standing.
‘Hello, Mona,’ Claire said, stepping to the bottom of the table to bar her sister-in-law’s way. ‘I’m delighted to see you, because I had intended to drop over to see Lily while I was here.’ She paused. ‘I take it you won’t mind?’
Mona came to a standstill in front of the taller, slimmer Claire – her gaze fixed somewhere around the chest area, refusing to meet her eye. ‘She’ll be getting ready for bed now, so it’s not a good time.’
‘I have a couple of little things in the car for her,’ Claire said, standing solidly, ‘and it won’t take me a minute. It’s a while since I saw her, and I told Pat I don’t want things to start back the way they were. I don’t want this barrier back down again that was there for the last two years.’
Mona’s face turned an angry red. ‘Well, that’s just the way things are . . .’
‘Well,’ Claire said, in a firm, unwavering voice. ‘It’s not the way that the rest of us want it in the Grace family. From what Fintan and Pat and Sophie told me a few weeks ago, they want to have peace and harmony in the family as well. I also know that Heather and Kirsty and little Lily are delighted that most of us are back being friends again.’ She paused. ‘From where I’m standing, it seems that you’re the only one, Mona, who is happy to keep this bitterness going on – and I want to know why.’
There was a creaking of floorboards in the hall as Kirsty came to stand at the door, having obviously heard the visitors arrive.
‘This is neither the time nor the place,’ Mona blustered. ‘And I don’t have to give you any reasons for anything.’
‘Oh, but you do,’ Claire told her, ‘because this affects me directly. What you’re doing is ostracising me from my whole family and I won’t have it.’
Heather moved out from the table and went towards the door. She gave her sister a small comforting pat on the arm as she passed her by then she went straight upstairs. Her father should be here, she decided. He should know his sister was here for the first time in years and that there was a very serious row brewing. Her mother couldn’t go for him as she was trapped at the sink, and in any case she wouldn’t want to leave the situation in case it got very serious.
‘Nobody ostracised you,’ Mona said, deliberately mimicking Claire’s use of the big word. ‘You ostracised yourself when you took up with Andy McPherson. You knew perfectly well what that would mean in our family.’
‘No,’ Claire said in a low voice, ‘I did not. It was my business and Andy’s what happened when we got married – it has nothing to do with you or anybody else.’
‘And what about the Catholic Church?’ Mona said, her eyes moving up to meet Claire’s for the first time. ‘Did you not think you marrying somebody that wasn’t a Catholic had anything to do with the Church?’
‘That’s my business,’ Claire said, a steely, unflinching look in her eyes. ‘And I don’t think you’re a fit person to be quoting the Church to me, Mona Grace.’
‘What?’ Mona said, astounded. ‘What the hell are you sayin’ now?’
‘I’m saying that people in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones,’ Claire said. ‘Or if you want me to quote the Bible, I’m saying “let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”.’ She bent her head down to Mona’s level now, her dark bobbed hair swinging as she did. ‘You cannot afford to throw stones, Mona – and if you don’t stop this nastiness and bitterness, I’m going to land a very big stone down on you, and I don’t care who hears it!’
Mona’s face went chalk white. ‘You’re talkin’ complete rubbish . . .’
Claire turned to the doorway. ‘Go into the sitting-room please, Kirsty. I don’t want anyone other than your mother to hear this.’ As soon as Kirsty had gone, she whirled back to Mona. ‘Galway,’ she stated, ‘when you were a young girl helping out in the priest’s house . . .’ She paused, waiting for the penny to drop.
‘Rubbish . . .’ Mona said, her hand coming down on the table to steady herself. ‘You’re talking absolute rubbish. You know nothing about me when I was growing up in Galway . . .’
Claire gave a big sigh. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t make me do this, Mona . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Do you remember when me and you were over in Ballygrace with the children about five years ago? Do you remember the woman we met outside the church – the woman from your parish in Galway? The one you cut short and tried to ignore?’
Mona’s face blanched, and her mouth opened and shut like a fish without a word coming out.
‘Well,’ Claire continued in an even voice, ‘I met her again the following day up at the shop in Ballygrace, and she asked me if you were as friendly with the priests in Scotland as you were in Galway. And then she was delighted to te
ll me all about the newly ordained priest that had to be moved to another parish because –’
‘We’ve heard enough,’ Fintan’s voice came from the door. ‘I don’t think we need it spelling out, Claire . . .’ He walked over to put an arm around his shocked wife’s shoulders.
Mona lifted her apron skirt up to her face. ‘You’re cruel!’ she said to Claire in a shocked, horrified tone. ‘Pure cruel – there was no need for that!’ Her voice took on a hysterical note. ‘Bringin’ all this up after what me and Pat have gone through wi’ Lily!’
‘I could have brought this up five years ago and I didn’t,’ Claire stated. ‘I could have brought it up two and a half years ago when the family turned against me – and I didn’t.’ She paused. ‘You forced me to bring this up, Mona. I asked you to be friends the nice way and you wouldn’t have it. What I’m trying to tell you now is that I had the power to hurt you and cause mayhem in your family by telling Pat and I didn’t. I chose to keep my mouth closed and my nose out of other people’s business.’
Mona collapsed into a chair now, sobbing her heart out. ‘I was only a young girl . . .’
‘I’m aware of that,’ Claire said in a softer voice, ‘and I had no intentions of ever telling you or anybody else what that woman said.’ She looked around the room. ‘There’s only me and Sophie and Fintan that heard this tonight, and I’m quite sure it’s not going to go any further.’
‘There won’t be a word from me,’ Fintan said.
‘Nor me,’ Sophie added in a whisper.
Mona’s shoulders shook.
‘I’m truly sorry for upsetting you,’ Claire said, ‘and I don’t ever want to have to do it again. But,’ she paused, taking a deep breath, ‘you will never know the number of nights I lay in bed breaking my heart crying because I couldn’t see my own brothers and their children. Just as recently as last month, I cried the whole night after I visited Lily. I cried that hard that I got sick and Andy nearly had to call the doctor.’
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