“Mrs. Halloran. Will Mr. Halloran be joining you?”
She told him the truth. The actual truth and nothing more. “Mr. Halloran fought in Spain.”
“But the war is over and…ah. I see. My condolences, Mrs. Halloran, and may God have mercy on his soul. You and your wee lad are welcome here. I lost my father in the Great War. Now I manage his property for my mother, who is a widow like yourself. Only older, of course,” he added with a self-conscious smirk. “You and I are about the same age, I should think.”
I should think not! Ursula grasped her thumbs to keep from saying something that would cost her the flat. As soon as a month’s rent was paid and the place officially hers, she installed a new lock on the door.
There was no unpacking to do. She hastily purchased clothes for herself and Barry, and Elsie Lester loaned her a few household necessities, including a gas ring and a teakettle, but the items that should have made the flat Ursula’s home were lacking. No books. No bridle.
She had Barry, though. That made all the difference.
With the problem of shelter solved, the larger problem loomed. Ursula’s savings would not last forever. The war was seriously interfering with postal services; Seán Lester’s new letter of reference might take weeks to arrive. Meanwhile she must seek employment armed with only her nerve and her need.
The French were doing all they could to hold back the Nazi tide, but it was apparent that while the Germans were in the war to win, the French were merely hoping not to lose.
On the twenty-eighth of May newspaper headlines screamed BELGIUM AND HOLLAND SURRENDER TO NAZIS!
Two days later British troops were fighting a desperate rearguard action on the French coast around Dunkirk.
In London, Sir Oswald Mosley was arrested and interned.
There was no work available in Dublin; not the sort for which Ursula was equipped. Any position that required intelligence or initiative was already filled by a man. The civil service was, of course, closed to her. An unwed mother had no hope there. She applied to every position advertised in the papers where it looked as if a woman could bring her child with her. In each instance she was told, “Stay home and tend to your baby, missus.”
No one suggested how she was to support that baby.
Ursula banged the door knocker several times before Louise Hamilton opened to her with a mop in one hand and a dust cloth in the other. She stared at her caller as if seeing a ghost. “Is that really you?”
“The one and only. May I come in, Louise, or shall we talk out here on the stoop?”
“Come in, come in of course, and welcome, but…” Louise was plainly flustered. “But who is this?”
Straddling Ursula’s hip was a child who looked to be around a year of age. Plump, rosy cheeks, eyes of storm gray, and a cap of silky red-gold hair gleaming in the morning sunlight.
Giving Louise one of his big grins, Barry reached toward her with a dimpled hand.
Louise melted as visibly as ice in the sun. She let him grasp one of her work-coarsened fingers with his own and gave him back smile for smile. “What a beautiful babby,” she said without taking her eyes from his face.
“Meet Finbar Lewis Halloran,” Ursula said. “My son.”
Seated beside his mother on the horsehair couch in the parlor, Barry was chattering to himself in a language all his own and playing with the tassel of a cushion.
Hector Hamilton was nowhere in sight. Five minutes before Ursula knocked on the door he had gone out to buy the morning papers, as was his habit. This always included at least an hour’s conversation with acquaintances along the way.
Ursula had timed her visit very carefully.
“God between us and all harm,” Louise ejaculated—for the second time in five minutes. “I just can’t believe you have a babby, Ursula.”
“I do, and there he is. Now are you going to offer me a cup of tea?”
“I will of course. But first you must tell me about your husband. I had no idea! Isn’t it amazing that his name is Halloran too? Did you meet him as soon as you arrived in Geneva? Did he sweep you off your feet and marry you at once? He must have done. Is he—”
“I’m not married,” Ursula interrupted to halt the spate of questions.
“But you told me the babby’s name is…”
“It is. There just isn’t any Mr. Halloran.”
“You don’t mean?”
“I do mean. Now what about that cup of tea?”
The color had drained from Louise’s face. Tea was the last thing in her mind. “God between us and all harm! You have a…a…”
“An illegitimate baby,” Ursula said calmly. “Though how Barry can possibly be called illegitimate escapes me. In the dictionary Henry gave me, the definition of legitimate is ‘proper, regular, conforming to standard type.’ Look at Barry. One head, one body, ten fingers, ten toes. Standard-type baby.”
She had long since looked up the word in the dictionary to use as part of her arsenal; responses she had rehearsed while Barry still lay safely in her womb. Responses to spike the guns of any who sought to attack him.
Ursula believed in attacking first.
“Mr. Hamilton’s going to be very upset about this,” Louise warned. “If it was up to me, you’d both be welcome to live here, but…”
“We already have a place to live. It may not work out, but if it doesn’t I’ll find another one.”
Barry doubled a little fist and punched his mother’s arm, a new exercise he was mastering. She smiled down at him and rumpled the silky hair.
Louise’s eyes were drawn to that hair. “The father…” she began. Stopped. Cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean to say, do you know who the father…”
“Of course I know who the father is. I’m surprised at you for even asking that.”
“Then who?”
“He’s out of the picture.” Ursula thrust her chin forward in an expression Louise recognized of old. The older woman knew there would be no more information given on that subject.
Louise felt impelled to ask, “Was the babby, I mean, has he been…”
“Baptized? He has of course. By a genuinely Christian priest who had no qualms about baptizing an infant whose parents aren’t married. That’s why I went to Switzerland to have my child.”
“You went to Switzerland to have him?” Louise echoed.
Ursula smiled. I can at least give her that much. “Barry was conceived here in Ireland.”
The blunt words turned Louise bright red with embarrassment. As Ursula had intended, she stopped asking questions and hurried out to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
Over several cups of tea and a plate of sweet biscuits, the two women plotted the future between them before Hector Hamilton returned.
They would let him make the same assumption Ursula’s new landlord had made. Widowhood was acceptable. “I won’t tell an outright lie, though,” Ursula warned Louise.
“You won’t have to. I’ll tell him you met a man in the Irish delegation in Geneva and were married at once, and then…well, something happened to him. That’s enough to satisfy Mr. Hamilton, he never questions anything very much if it isn’t about him.”
“I don’t like having you lie.”
Louise gave Ursula the look women have exchanged between themselves for millennia when discussing the opposite sex. “I’m married,” she said. “So it won’t be the first time.”
They arranged that Louise would keep Barry during the day while Ursula looked for work. It was obvious the two would get along. The older woman was charmed by the little boy and Barry liked everyone.
“You should leave now,” Louise said regretfully, “before Hector comes home, so he won’t have an opportunity to ask you too many questions. I’ll tell him all he needs to know and let him settle it in his mind.”
“You don’t know how grateful I am.”
It was hard for Ursula to tell Barry good-bye and leave him in the care of another woman for the day. Parting from her son was almo
st a physical pain.
My son. But not my possession, Ursula reminded herself sternly. Barry belongs to Barry. He’s a separate person.
Louise accompanied her to the door, then exclaimed, “Merciful hour, I nearly forgot in the excitement! A letter came for you yesterday. I was going to forward it on to Switzerland, but since you’re here, you can take it now.”
“If you sent it to Switzerland the chances are I’d never get it anyway, under the circumstances.”
“Wait here.” Louise disappeared into the back of the house and returned carrying an envelope. Carrying it gingerly, as if it might be hot. “Please God it isn’t bad news.”
The envelope bore the return address of a legal firm in Ennis.
“‘We regret to inform you of the death of Miss Lucy Halloran, spinster, of this parish, on the tenth of May,’” Ursula read. “‘An accident suffered on her farm the previous evening proved fatal.’”
“I’m afraid it is bad news,” Ursula told Louise. “Ned’s sister Lucy has been killed.”
“Godamercyoner,” Louise responded automatically, signing the cross on her bosom.
“Wait, there’s more. Listen to this. “‘Some time ago, Miss Halloran left the enclosed with us in the event of her death.’” And then there’s another letter.”
Louise could hardly contain her excitement. “Read it out! I mean…unless it’s too private.”
Ursula stared at the sheet of paper she held in fingers suddenly gone numb. Lucy had written, ‘To atone for a wrong I once did to Miss Ursula Halloran, I hereby leave her my farm and its income. I ask that she remember me kindly in her prayers.’
Lucy died on the tenth of May. The same day I knew it was time to come home.
11 June 1940
MUSSOLINI DECLARES WAR ON BRITAIN AND FRANCE
Confident That Germany Will Win, II Duce Enters the Fray
14 June 1940
PARIS FALLS TO HITLER
German Troops Parade Up the Champs Elysees
Two Million Parisians Flee City, Roads Clogged with Refugees
22 June 1940
FRENCH SIGN ARMISTICE IN COACH USED FOR 1918
GERMAN SURRENDER
Hitler on Hand to Witness French Humiliation
Chapter Forty-six
Barry loved the train. While Ursula read the newspapers, he alternated between babbling nonsensically to the other passengers and gazing out the window with rapt fascination.
One of Lucy’s hired men met them at the railway station with a wagonette drawn by a roan mare. A cushion on the driver’s seat indicated that this had been Lucy Halloran’s personal transport as well as an all-purpose farm vehicle. The roan mare had a sway back and was seriously over at the knees.
“Oorse,” Barry said when he saw her.
Gerry Ryan was a stubby, low-built man in his late forties, with a face, Ursula thought to herself, like a traffic accident. His weather-beaten complexion was blotched and mottled. His eyes were set at differing heights, half of his teeth were missing, and his huge nose sprawled across his face without any sense of discipline.
Lucy had hired Gerry and his brother George when she took ownership of the farm, and complained about them ever since. But never fired them.
On the station platform man and boy scrutinized one another. Barry with his head cocked to one side, Gerry unself-consciously scratching himself.
“Oogy,” Barry decided.
“Short,” Gerry retorted. Turning to Ursula he said, “This yours, is it?”
“He is mine.”
“Call everybody ugly, does he?”
“It’s a new word for him. He started to talk early.”
“Didn’t lick it off the ground though, did he?”
The exchange constituted Gerry Ryan’s sole commentary on Barry. No questions were asked about the child’s father or Ursula’s marital situation. Gerry Ryan was a man who minded his own business.
The farm looked as Ursula remembered; as she had dreamed during lonely nights in Geneva. The contours of the forty-seven acres, the beloved land, were as familiar as the palms of her hands. But as they drove up the long, deeply rutted lane toward the house, she noticed that the walls on either side had gaps like broken teeth. In the fields beyond, bits of abandoned farm equipment lay rusting.
“Are we making any money at all, Gerry?”
“Just about hanging on.”
“What crops are we growing?”
The hired man slanted a look in Ursula’s direction. He was not accustomed to a woman taking interest in the details of agriculture. “Barley,” he said, “and a few turnips. Ain’t had a good barley crop for several years, though. We’re too far away from the big buyers like Guinness and Murphys anyway. And turnips has got so watery it’s hardly worth takin’ ’em to market.”
“Did the government include this farm in the compulsory tillage scheme?”
“Thought they would, but they didn’t.”
“Then what about livestock? Cows and pigs make money.”
“Your aunt got rid of the livestock. She thought it was too much trouble.”
She thought one old horse was too much trouble. “Are you the one who buried my horse, Gerry?”
He nodded. “Me and George.”
“Was he…did he…”
“I don’t think he suffered none,” Ryan said gently.
At the end of the lane the farmhouse came into view. My house, Ursula told herself. Still not quite believing. A small cottage built of local stone in an earlier century, the house had been added to and modified as the Halloran family prospered. It now stood two storeys high, with a steeply pitched slate roof bracketed by brick chimneys and a porch to shelter the rarely used front door.
Behind the house was the barn. Saoirse’s barn.
“Could you show me where my horse is buried, Gerry?”
“Whenever you say.”
Ryan drove the wagonette around to the farmyard. He handed Ursula the reins while he stepped down and opened the gate. A broad, sturdy gate made of thick iron pipes.
“Is that new?” Ursula asked.
“Your aunt bought it in the summer of ’38. Old one fell apart completely, couldn’t even patch it no more.”
The heavy gate swung open with surprising ease. Ursula flapped the reins and drove the roan mare through.
“Your aunt had them special hinges installed,” Ryan remarked as he closed the gate behind them. “That’s what got her killed. She went to get the wagonette to drive into town, and a high wind slammed the gate against her and crushed her chest.”
How strange the house was, unoccupied! Silent. Dusty. The remit of the hired men did not extend to housecleaning.
Carrying Barry, Ursula wandered from room to room, soaking up memories. Inevitably she wound up in the kitchen. She sat the toddler on the floor and glared at the big black iron range. One challenge she did not relish.
Barry pulled himself to his feet by hanging on to the leg of the big old table. He threw his mother a triumphant grin. “ ’Tand!” he announced.
“I see you standing.” Ursula started to add, “Be careful,” then decided against it.
With the choice of all the bedrooms, Ursula took her old one for herself and Barry. When he was bigger she would move him into Ned’s room, she decided. Unless Ned came home.
If Ned ever comes home.
Once they were settled Ursula sent Gerry into town to buy the necessary supplies. Accompanied by his younger brother George, she began a systematic reconnoitre of the farm, field by field, building by building.
In the woodshed she found a neglected cider press bound to its base by a network of cobwebs. When she lifted the lid she caught a whiff of the faint, sharp sweetness of a long-ago autumn.
“George, were there many apples last year?”
George, who was as tall and gangling as his brother was short and squat, but no more handsome, shook his head. “Didn’t bother to pick ’em.”
“But they could have been so
ld in the market!”
“Trees’re too old, apples is small and wormy.”
“All those trees need is care,” Ursula replied, exasperated.
“Your aunt didn’t tell us to do nothin’ for ’em.”
His words gave Ursula a clear picture of Lucy Halloran in recent years. An aging, sour spinster, increasingly self-absorbed. Without supervision her hired men did no more than they had to do.
Things will be different from now on.
Saw in hand, Ursula scrambled up into one of the neglected apple trees in the orchard.
George was alarmed. “What’re you doing? You’ll break your neck!”
“I’m going to prune these trees.”
“Well get down and give me the saw. I’ll do it.”
“There’s another saw in the barn,” Ursula told him.
They worked in the orchard until dark.
The following morning, though her damaged thigh muscles were stiff and sore, Ursula loaded a wheelbarrow with well-rotted manure from the floor of the barn and spread it around the base of the apple trees. They would not produce much of a crop this autumn, but by next year the cider press could go back into service.
With the fall of France, the government of Éire had taken alarm. An official state of emergency was declared. Since the end of the Civil War the regular army had been largely stood down. Now the troops were called back and the force enlarged as rapidly as possible. Leading politicians of every persuasion urged the nation’s men to prepare to defend their country if an invasion came.
Within twenty-four hours, teachers and students and laborers and professional men and shop owners and businessmen were joining the Emergency Army in their thousands.1 The new recruits were known as “Emergency Men,” or “Durationists.”
Agricultural workers were deemed an essential part of the nation’s wartime economy. Although not actively encouraged to enlist in the regular army, they were urged to volunteer for the newly established local defense force. George and Gerry Ryan dutifully signed up. They were issued green uniforms, outdated rifles of dubious reliability, and given a drill schedule. No matter what else was happening at the farm, Ursula saw to it that they never missed attending drill. “Always be ready to fight for Ireland,” she told the brothers sternly. “And that’s an order from me.”
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