Mary was the first to spot the man himself holding court, a rapt audience of Traveller girls gathered around him.
“That’s the horse that won him the Horse and Buggy Race last year,” Eileen whispered out the side of her mouth. “It’s a beauty isn’t it?”
Rosa shot a cursory glance over to where the gleaming white pony was tethered to the wagon. Its graceful neck was bent low to the ground to graze on the patches of grass. A horse was a horse the same as the next she thought, her gaze swiftly moving to where Jerry leaned up against the wagon. His freckled workers fingers raked through his shock of red hair and as his piercing blue eyes met hers she felt her face flush. The self-assurance she’d felt earlier vanished under his knowing stare. She could tell by the way his mouth curved into a half smile that he liked what he saw. It made her feel strange to think he might know what her da had in mind for them both.
“He’s looking at you. You should go and wish him luck with his race.” Mary’s girlish excitement was evident in her giggle.
“He can look all he likes, I’ll not be one of his hangers-on,” Rosa replied, her nonchalance a ruse to cover the butterflies fluttering in her belly.
“Ah go on Rosa he might be your husband one day soon. It’s your wifely duty to wish him well, so it is.” Eileen piped up.
“Shush keep your voice down Eileen Wall.” At thirteen there was only a year between herself and Mary but sometimes Rosa thought, shooting her a look, Eileen seemed so much younger. Gathering herself she tugged on both her friends’ arms wanting to move them on before Eileen opened her big mouth again. “Come on girls lets go back over to the other field to watch the tug-o-war. I reckon your man Niall Dunne will be over there Mary.”
Mary giggled again. “I don’t fancy him.”
“Ah, you do go on admit it. He makes you go all googly eyed like this.” Rosa made her own eyes big and staring.
Mary laughed. “I do not look at him like that Rosa Rourke.”
“Ooh, I hope Jimmy Barry’s entered. He’s a fine thing, so he is,” Eileen added not wanting to be left out.
***
The next time Rosa laid eyes on Jerry was later that day while she waited amidst the crowd for the main event of the racing week to get underway, the Horse and Buggy Race. As the starter gun signalled the race’s start and the thunder of hooves filled the air, she squeezed Mary’s hand.
“Come on Jerry. You can do it!”
“You’ll deafen me with that hollering,” Eileen said putting her hands to her ears. Rosa ignored her swept up in the frenzy of the crowd as she stood on tippy toes and craned her neck to see who was leading. Her cheering made no difference because this year it wasn’t Jerry’s turn to win. It was Michael Donohue who crossed the finish line first. Jerry Connors had been beaten by her father’s enemy, Martin Donohue’s eldest son, Michael. The ground that moments earlier had reverberated with horses’ hooves shuddered once more with the stamping of boots. A cacophonous mix of cheering and ear-splitting whistles filled the air at this outsider taking first place. Rosa looked up in wonder at the victoriously tossed caps filling the sky. Holding on tight to Eileen and Mary she nearly stumbled but with their help regained her balance knowing were she to fall she might not get up again such was the frenzy of the crowd. The girls felt themselves being propelled forward. As they spilled out onto the track, Rosa’s eyes locked for a split second with Michael Donohue’s as he sat tall and proud in his Sulky, his strong arms still holding the reins.
It was as though the noise around her dissipated like a fog being warmed by sunlight until it was no more than the distant roar of a faraway sea. For that moment, there was nobody else in the world except her and him.
She felt like she had been branded as she whispered, “Ah Mary that’s him, that’s the man I am supposed to be with.”
“Jaysus Rosa what are you on about? Your mam and da would go mad if they heard you talking like that. Sure you’re marrying Jerry Connors, so you are.”
“You only fancy him because he won the race.” Eileen said.
But Rosa wasn’t listening. Standing on the track that afternoon at Ballinasloe, she knew with an absolute certainty that no matter what trouble it brought to the Rourke family, she would not be marrying Jerry Connors.
Chapter 15
Face the sun but turn your back to the storm – Irish Proverb
1963
“Sure it’s just a touch of the flu. Didn’t the doctor say so? The medicine will make him better you’ll see.” Kathleen waved her hand to shoo her daughter away from where she, Kitty and Paddy were huddled outside the family’s wagon. Joe, a tangled and sweating bundle, lay on his mattress inside, writhing under a mound of blankets.
He had seemed to rally after his initial doses of the pink medicine Kathleen had gotten from the chemist in the village. It hadn’t lasted though, and they’d barely had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief at his improvement when his cough suddenly worsened. So, now as she herded her brother and sister away Rosa wasn’t appeased by their mammy’s words. She could tell things were bad, by the way, her parents’ faces had grown tight over these last few days. Joe’s cough, she knew was the kind that struck fear in the heart of Travellers when the air was damp and dense with the smell of burning peat. They’d all heard that kind of rasping, bark in the depths of winter before.
“There was blood on his hanky, Rosa, I saw it.” Paddy sobbed a day later.
Rosa dropped the sock she was darning and got up to cover Kitty’s ears. “Sure it’s dark in the wagon with the curtains closed Paddy. Don’t be saying things like that and upsetting yourself so when you can’t be sure of what you saw.”
Paddy wasn’t listening he was already off and running. Rosa sighed with the weight of it all. She watched him sprint down the lane toward the village until his dark hair disappeared from her line of sight. Where he was going, she didn’t know. She did know as she carried on with her task, ignoring Kitty’s whining for her mammy that she didn’t have the energy to go after him. The rhythm of her chores that afternoon was mechanical as she waited to confront Kathleen. At last her mammy left Joe’s side to tend to the dinner and Rosa asked the question that she had a sickening feeling she already knew the answer to.
“Is it the TB Mammy?”
The despair etched on her mammy’s face as she stoked the fire, staring silently at the flickering flames told Rosa all she needed to know. The consumption usually chose to take the older members of the community, mercifully sparing the young, but Joe had never been as strong as the other boys.
Later that night as she lay in a strange bed quarantined from her brother; Rosa felt burning tears slide down her cheeks. Joe’s awful choking sporadically broke the stillness of the night. He was in their wagon across the way with their mammy and da watching over him. The three other Rourke children had been sleeping in the Sheedy’s auld wagon these last few nights and Rosa pulled Kitty’s warm, slumbering body closer to her. She was grateful for the small comfort of it. She didn’t know as she hummed to herself to block the awful sounds out that it was to be her brother’s last night with them.
***
“Is he sleeping Rosa?” Kitty asked looking up at her sister from where she stood by the coffin. Rosa’s heart broke at the confused frown on her wee face, and she pulled her close to her before stroking her brother’s cold cheek. At least the terrible convulsions that had wracked his body this past while had stilled, and he was at peace. She tried to hold on to that thought as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She had cried so many tears these last few days that she wouldn’t have thought it possible for there to be anymore.
It won’t do Rosa, my girl, she told herself a moment later, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands before rummaging in her pocket for a hanky with which to blow her nose. Kitty needed her. They all needed her. It was up to her to be the strong one. “Sort of my love. It’ll be a big long sleep our Joe will be having now because his soul’s gone to heaven.”
“
Are the Angels looking after him now then Rosa?” Kitty’s dark eyes were wide at the thought of it.
“They are Kitty.” She stroked her sister’s hair before moving away from the coffin. It was time for the lid to be closed. Their da, Paddy, all of their uncles and cousins were going to raise Joe up onto their shoulders and carry him through the streets of Tuam as he made his final journey.
The news of Joe’s passing had spread quickly and within days members of the Travelling community had descended from near and far. They’d come to say their farewells to one of their own who’d been taken from them far too soon. The sky under which the procession set off that afternoon was leaden as befitted the sombre undercurrent of the mourners. Rosa barely noticed the local folk standing in their doorways keeping a respectful distance as they watched the spectacle pass by. She was too intent on keeping her weeping, wailing mammy upright, as she helped her along toward the church.
Sitting down on the hard pew, she listened as the Priest began to intone in his low and solemn voice. Kitty was huddled up to her as close as she could get without sitting on her knee. Her thumb had found a home back in her mouth in a habit she had fallen back on since Joe’s passing. Rosa twisted slightly in her seat to rest her hand on Paddy’s shoulder. He was rigid beneath her touch having barely spoken a word to any of them since Joe’s illness first took hold. She let her hand fall back to her lap and shivered against the draft the auld building afforded. As the foreign words of the Priest sailed over her head, she glanced down the pew to where her mammy and da sat. They were united in their grief, but their bodies were expressing it in very different ways. Her da sat straight-backed and stony-faced while her mam’s body was hunched over as though she were physically wounded.
Rosa was filled with an urge to stand up and shout to the heavens at the unfairness of it all. Just a few short weeks ago her lovely brother had been full of life, and now he was dead. All this palaver on the Priest’s part seemed irrelevant to Joe’s short life, and she willed him to finish. A stab of guilt shot through her then for thinking such a thing while seated in a place such as this. This service would see Joe safely on his way, and it was the right way to do things, she told herself. Still and all when it was over, she breathed a sigh of relief, getting up from her seat and moving outside to where the grave had been dug. As her brother’s body was committed to the cold, hard ground, she whispered a final goodbye before following her mammy and da across the road to the pub.
The pub was warm after the chill air outside but the atmosphere Rosa thought, huddled inside her cardigan, was heavy with the haunting sound of the Uillean pipes her Uncle Brendon was playing. Soon, she could tell by the way the pints were being sunk the ballads would begin. They would be maudlin, but she knew that by singing them there would be a sense of togetherness. It was their way. She was perched on a stool at a table with Kitty, who was stuffing crisps in her mouth like there was no tomorrow. Paddy had teamed up with some of his cousins and was making his way around the room clearing the pint glasses. She pretended not to notice them draining the dregs along the way. Rosa was worried about him, he wasn’t grieving like he should be. It was bottled up inside him like a bottle of fizz all shook up and ready to go pop as soon as someone took the lid off.
Her mammy and da were sitting at a table by the window illuminated through the smoky atmosphere by shards of winter sunlight making a last ditch effort to shine before nightfall. Different friends and family members were taking it in turns to sit down with them and offer up words of comfort. Every time Rosa looked toward them she saw that her da had a fresh pint glass in front of him, and a cold sensation filled her belly. Her mammy’s glass remained full and untouched.
The weeks and months that followed Joe’s death were hard ones for the Rourke family. Bernie, just as Rosa had fretted he would as she’d watched him knocking back the pints after Joe’s funeral, had turned to the drink. These days when her mammy sent her off to find him she didn’t have to look far. He could always be found in the nearest pub lamenting the harshness of life to any willing ears. She would have dearly loved to have taken him by the shoulders and given him a jolly good shake.
“Why can’t he see that we need him more than he needs the drink?” She asked Mary Wall as they sat on the stoop of her wagon making the copper wire flowers. The first breath of spring was in the air, and the girls were enjoying the feel of the sunlight warming their pale faces. Mary had shrugged her reply; her da liked a drink too. It was just the way it was sometimes.
“I don’t know where he’s getting the money from either because he’s not turning his hand to anything much other than the raising of his glass.”
“Shush Rosa, you’re asking for trouble talking like that, so you are.” Mary’s eyes darted nervously over to where her mam was hunched over a tub scrubbing at a shirt. Her hands, Mary saw were red and chaffed.
Rosa was past caring. “Paddy’s running wild too.” Her friend’s guarded expression didn’t escape her. “What is it? What have you heard?”
“Ah sure it’s just a rumor that’s all.” Mary didn’t meet Rosa’s eyes, concentrating instead on shaping the wire she held between her fingers.
“Tell me, Mary.” Rosa’s hands were still.
“I heard tell that there was a theft in town and that Paddy was involved. It’s probably not true.”
Rosa felt a chill run through her. “Sure it’s just a rumour that’s all. You should know better than to listen to talk like that, Mary Wall.” She dropped the flower she had been working on into the basket and flounced off leaving her friend staring after her.
Later when she cornered Paddy to ask him what he knew about the story going round, he denied knowing a thing about it. He couldn’t look her in the eye, though, and so she had not questioned her da when out the blue, he staggered home from the pub and ordered them to pack up. It was time to move on yet again. Rosa had no wish to lose her brother to the Gardaí that came sniffing round the camp that evening and so she had not argued. As Nellie pulled them toward the never-ending horizon, Rosa thought to herself that their mammy, sitting next to her da as he cracked the reins seemed not to care where they went or what they did. She had withdrawn from them all and went about the day to day motions with a lethargy that would not fill their bellies.
They journeyed late into the night, and Rosa had fallen asleep to the rhythmic rolling of the wagon wheels. The next morning as her mam and da slept on, tired from the previous days travel, she roused herself to make the breakfast. Paddy set about gathering some kindling for the fire while Rosa inspected the slim pickings in the larder. She sighed, knowing it would be a stretch to feed them all on the small amount of oats left in the container.
The three Rourke children ate in silence. Paddy finished his porridge first, and Rosa was tempted to scrape out what was left in the pot to give it to him. She hated knowing he was still hungry and that there was nothing she could do about it because mammy and da had yet to have theirs. They’d all go hungry come dinner time if she didn’t do something, she thought deciding that there was nothing else for it. She and Kitty would have to take themselves off to the nearest village and do the door knocking.
***
It didn’t feel good standing on a stranger’s doorstep with an upturned palm knowing times were probably tough for them too. Looking at her hollow-eyed sister steeled Rosa’s resolve and they worked their way down the street. They walked the mile or so back to the field where their da had decided to camp clutching five potatoes and half a cabbage. It wasn’t the makings of a feast, but it would have to do.
***
As the months past Rosa sensed a waft of change coming like the sheets she’d see snapping in the yards of the village houses. The spring breezes had begun to blow, and she would find herself stopping now and again to look at those sheets. She’d try to imagine what it would be like to sleep in a quiet room by herself with walls and a ceiling. Sometimes too, she found her thoughts turning to Michael Donohue. It was those thou
ghts that kept her warm at night and spurred her on of a morning to get up and face another day. There had been no mention from either her mammy or da since Joe’s passing about her proposed match with Jerry Connors and for that small mercy, Rosa was grateful.
Despite the better living conditions, the warmer weather always wrought there was still a sense of darkness hovering over them. It wasn’t just in the distrust on the faces of the people who lived in the towns and the villages they passed through either. Rosa had often heard her da, talk of how the Travellers did not believe in the settled folks system. She was beginning to understand too that sometimes people feared that which they did not understand. The Travellers lived the way they lived. It was outside the conventions of a settled life but in her da’s words that had once been proud, she could now hear dissatisfaction. It was there that Rosa thought the darkness was lurking.
“We deserve more Kathleen.” She heard him say to her mammy one evening and the defeat in his voice made Rosa sad. She wrapped her arms around her sister and pulled her to her. She held her tight not caring if she woke her. The darkness was creeping into their daily lives she could feel it threatening them. Her mammy and da’s faith in the old ways had been chipped away at by grief, and Rosa knew then what the darkness was, it was because she too had lost her faith.
Chapter 16
Your feet will bring you where your heart is – Irish Proverb
1964
“It’s money for jam,” Bernie Rourke said rubbing his hands together then with a flick of Nellie’s reins they were off. For the first time in a long while Rosa saw a light shining in her mammy’s eyes as she sat next to her husband. She recognized it for what it was, hope.
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