The look on the woman’s face went from one of shock to raging anger, when she saw Tara. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing in here?” she roared. “Who let the likes of you in this house?”
Tara straightened up quickly, her face chalk-white. She knew once the woman had a good look at her fancy suit she would realise that she was a friend of Madeleine.
“Well?” the woman demanded. “Are you going to answer me? Who let you in? You’ve no business being in this house.”
“I did, Mrs Scully,” Madeleine called in a breathless voice, as she came rushing down the hallway. “It’s my friend from school.” She came towards Tara, her arm outstretched with the glass of lemonade. She had moved so quickly that the liquid spilled out over the top of the glass as she handed it to Tara, and several splashes landed on the patterned tiles.
“Oh, no – you feckin’ well don’t!” the purple-faced woman said, grabbing the glass out of Tara’s hand. “I just mopped that floor this morning – an’ I didn’t mop it for the likes of you to be trampin’ in and out of here, as if you owned the place!” She turned to Madeleine, her stubby finger wagging. “You’re for it, me girl, when yer mammy and daddy gets home.” She whirled back to Tara. “What name have they for you?”
Tara put her hands behind her back, the way she did with the teachers in school. “Tara . . . Tara Flynn.”
“Flynn? Flynn . . . and what Flynns would that be?” Rosie Scully stared closely at Tara, as though she were examining an insect under a microscope. “Where are you from? Yer not one of the Flynns that owns the pub in Tullamore – that’s for sure. There’s no foxy-haired ones in that family.”
“I’m one of the Flynns from Ballygrace,” Tara said in a shaky voice.
“And who’s yer mammy and daddy? What’s their names? What’s yer mammy’s own name . . . and where are they from?” She fired one question after another, like shots out of a gun.
“My daddy’s Shay Flynn . . . and my mammy’s dead. I think she came from Edenderry.”
Mrs Scully stopped for a moment, the wind taken out of her sails. She gave a little cough, and then gathered her composure to start again. “So . . . would that make you ould Noel Flynn’s granddaughter?”
Tara nodded, afraid to say a word. There were plenty of women like this one in Ballygrace, and there was no point arguing with them. Her granda had warned her about them. They had a long memory, and made sure they got back at you every chance they got – even if it was years later.
The housekeeper turned on Madeleine again. “You’re a bold girl – bringing people in here, when yer parents are out. You’ll be in trouble when they get back and they hear all about this.” She pointed to the stairs. “Get up to yer bedroom until they come back in.”
“Goodbye, Tara,” Madeleine whispered, and then she ran up the stairs, two at a time.
The elderly maid marched forward to the front door, and opened it. She held the door wide and motioned to Tara to get out. “I’m sure yer a grand little girl,” she said in a strained tone, “but this house is not for the likes of you. We all have to know our stations in life.”
Tara passed out by the housekeeper silently, her eyes downcast.
“As I said,” the woman called after her as she descended the outside stairs, “I’m sure ye are a good enough little girl, but Madeleine’s father would ate you without salt if he caught you anywhere near the house. He could send the Gardaí out to yer family, if he took it into his head . . . he’s not the kind of man you could cross.”
When she reached the bottom step, Tara whirled round to face the elderly maid, a feeling of rage rising up inside her. How dare this cross ould cratur threaten her granda with the Gardaí! How dare she! Her granda was one of the finest and well-thought of men in Ballygrace. Even the parish priest had been known to come to him for advice. The parish priest . . . Tara suddenly remembered.
“In Ballygrace church, a few weeks ago,” she said in a loud, clear voice, “the priest gave a grand sermon.”
Mrs Scully’s face crumpled in confusion. “What?” she said, her voice on a rising note. “What nonsense are you talkin’ now?”
“The priest was explainin’ about what makes people good . . . and what makes them bad,” Tara went on. “He was sayin’ that just because some people have more money, that it doesn’t make them any better.”
Mrs Scully’s eyes bulged with rage, and for a few moments was rendered speechless. She stepped forward, planting both hands firmly on her hefty hips. “You . . . bold . . . girl!” she finally said, enunciating every word.
“It says in the Bible,” Tara continued in a high voice, “‘As a man thinketh in his heart – so he is.’ It means we’re all as good as each other, an’ that we should judge people by their actions – not by their money.”
“And there’s a sayin’ that springs to my mind,” Rosie Scully spat out. “‘Put a beggar on horseback, and she’ll ride to hell!’” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Now,” she said through clenched teeth, “go home, you foxy-haired, little oul’ brat – before I bring me sweeping brush down on the broad of yer back!”
“I’m going home this minute,” Tara said, turning on her heel, “and I’ll be lettin’ me granda know what you called me – and what you said about sending the Gardaí out to the house!”
Rage and indignation lent speed to Tara’s feet, and she was back home in half the time it had taken her to walk to Ballygrace House. She passed no one she knew, and was relieved that she had made it to the cottage before the men came home from the bog.
She quickly raked the fire out and got it flaming again in minutes, and then she rushed into her bedroom to take off the fancy suit and change back into her old clothes. As she pulled on her dark grey skirt and a green jumper that Mrs Kelly had knitted for her, she remembered Madeleine’s nice blouse and skirt.
Then, all the angry feelings about the housekeeper came flooding back.
“I’m as good as Madeleine Fitzgerald!” she said out loud, as she tied up her long red hair with a green checked ribbon. “One day I’ll live in a big house like hers, and I’ll have servants to look after me.” She paused for a moment. “And I’ll never treat anybody as terrible as I was treated today.”
Chapter Six
“You are not,” Noel Flynn stated for the third time, “going for piano lessons.”
“But I’ve already organised my first lesson,” Tara said calmly, taking a cake of soda bread out of the hot pot-oven. “I’ve to be at Mrs Foley’s house for seven o’clock tomorrow evenin’.”
Noel took off his reading glasses, and put his book down by the side of his rocking-chair. “Where’s the money to come from?” he asked quietly.
“I’ve saved up me egg money . . . I’ve enough put by to pay for lessons until September, and I walked out as far as the bike shop in Daingean to see about a cheap second-hand bike. He says I can pay it off at so much a week.”
Noel shook his head in exasperation. “When yer father suggested a second-hand bike before, you nearly took the nose off him!”
Tara sighed. “I know . . . but that was before I thought of the piano lessons. I don’t mind what sort of a bike it is, if it takes me as far as Daingean or Tullamore.”
“But, sure, you have no piano to play at home.”
“I was hopin’,” Tara explained, “that you might ask Aunty Molly and Aunty Maggie if I can use their piano to practise on. I thought we could go into Tullamore tomorrow after the dinner, and you could have a word with them then.” She smiled engagingly. “Once I have the bike, I’ll be able to go everywhere by meself. Sure, I’ll be no bother to you at all.”
Noel gave a deep sigh. “You have it all worked out, don’t you? Molly and Maggie could just as easily say ‘no’ about ye using their piano. They’re a fussy little pair – they mightn’t be in agreement with the idea at all. Where will you be with yer lessons if ye have no piano to practise on?”
Tara busied herself
wrapping the soda bread up in a piece of clean flour bag, hoping that her granda wouldn’t notice the delighted grin on her face. “Sure, the oul’ piano’s only goin’ damp and fusty from lack of use. It only gets used when Joe’s home from the seminary. They should be glad of someone to play it now and again.”
“I wouldn’t count yer chickens, mavourneen,” the old man said. “Those two women are not easily got round.” He reached for his pipe from the mantelpiece now, tapped the spent tobacco out of it into the fire and then proceeded to clean it. First with a little penknife, and then with a pipe-cleaner. “Explain to me, Tara,” he said seriously, “exactly why ye want to start piano lessons at this stage. You’ve never shown any interest in it before.”
Tara set the covered soda bread down to cool by the open window. “I don’t really know,” she hedged. “I’ve just taken a notion to learn it.”
“Would it be anything to do with that young one you went visiting last weekend?” Noel said innocently. “Yer father told me he met you outside Fitzgeralds’, all dressed up like the Quality in yer fine clothes.”
Tara blushed. She thought her granda knew nothing at all about last Saturday. When they all came back from the bog, there had been no mention of it. She thought her father had taken her side for once, that he had decided to keep her secret, to save her granda giving out to her. But if her granda knew, why had he waited so long to mention it?
“Well?” he said now, patiently waiting for her answer.
Tara took a deep breath. “I want to learn the piano, Granda, because I have a notion to do it . . . that’s all.”
There was another pause. “Have you now? And what other notions would you have in that young head of yours?”
“I want to better meself,” she said quietly. “I want to have nice things when I grow up . . . a big house . . . a car . . . nice clothes.”
“We’d all like those things, Tara, but it’s not easy,” the old man said. “If you are born into money, like the Fitzgeralds, then there’s no problem. But the likes of our family would find it very hard. There’s not much work round here, and what work there is, is very poorly paid.”
Tara came over to the fire to sit on the three-legged stool. She waited while her grandfather carried out the ritual of paring thin slivers from a hard piece of black tobacco, and then packing his clean pipe.
“The only way a young girl like you can get on,” the old man told her, “is to work hard at school, and get a good job. Have you ever thought that you could be a schoolteacher if ye worked hard enough?”
“Most of the teachers I know aren’t married . . . they’re oul’ maids.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothin’ . . . I was just saying.”
Noel took a deep puff of his pipe. “Sometimes you have the quarest thoughts in yer head, Tara. Where do you get them from, I’m wonderin’?”
Tara shook her red curls. “So . . .” she said, with a wheedling little smile, “will ye bring me into Tullamore tomorrow to ask Aunty Molly and Aunty Maggie?”
Noel looked at his granddaughter, and wondered once again where all these ambitious ideas of hers came from. Certainly not from her father. To Shay, work was only a means to an end. As long as his wages put food on the table and gave him a few glasses of beer at the weekend, he was happy enough. It wasn’t her mother – God rest her soul – she was a quiet enough woman and wouldn’t have got in with the likes of Shay if she had wanted more out of life.
“We’ll see,” Noel finally replied, “but only if you promise me never to set foot on Fitzgeralds’ land again.” He pointed the end of his pipe warningly at his granddaughter. “You’re worth a hundred of their kind, and I’m not havin’ you belittling yerself by hanging around their coat-tails.”
“Oh thanks, Granda!” Tara said delightedly, giving the old man a hug.
“I only said ‘we’d see’ – nothing more.”
“I promise I won’t go near Ballygrace House again . . . and I promise that I’ll practise the piano every chance I get!”
Agreeing with her granda now was easy, for Tara had no intentions of returning to Ballygrace House. Never again would she hide from Madeleine’s parents, or do battle with the cantankerous Mrs Scully. Madeleine would be leaving the local school shortly and going to a private girls’ boarding school. Sadly, their friendship would soon be coming to an end, in any case.
Later that evening, Tara skipped excitedly along the road to Lizzie Lawless’s house, to tell Biddy all about her piano lessons and the new bike she was getting. She decided she would not mention what had happened at Ballygrace House earlier in the week.
Tara Flynn had learned already that it was better to look forward with hope, than look back holding a grudge.
Chapter Seven
September, 1947
“I’m nearly fifteen years old,” Biddy said in an even tone to Lizzie Lawless, “and I’m entitled to go to the pictures if I want. Sure, I’ve done everythin’ for you . . . the meat’s cooked and the spuds are scrubbed, and the cabbage is washed and in its pot.” She shook her head and tutted. “And that’s after spendin’ the whole mornin’ working up in the priest’s house.”
Lizzie lifted her wizened old head up from the settle bed, her movement disturbing one of the three cats on top of it. “But I’m not well . . . I might need you to help me outside to the toilet.”
Biddy pointed to the chamber pot on the floor by the side of the bed. “You can do the same as you do at night, and anyway, you’re just back from doin’ it – you can’t have anything left inside you.”
Lizzie moaned and lay back down on the lumpy pillow. “I could be dyin’ and nobody cares,” she whined. “All that I’ve done for you and that ungrateful bitch, Nora, and look at the thanks I get. Running away and causin’ me all that trouble wi’ the parish priest. You’d think I’d murdered her and buried her body up the bog, the way he was carrying on!”
Biddy rolled her eyes to the ceiling and placed her hands on her hips. If Lizzie started on about Nora again she’d scream. She’d gone on about it for the last three months, since the older girl had mysteriously disappeared one night, taking all her bits of belongings. “You’ll be all right,” she said. “Didn’t the doctor say he could find nothin’ wrong with you?”
There was a silence for a few moments, then Lizzie said in a tearful voice. “I’ve no faith in doctors. They told ould Annie Rooney the very same thing, and she was dead within the week. She started off with the diarrhoea too.”
There’s no fear of this ould bugger dyin’ and giving us all peace, Biddy thought to herself. “If you like,” she said now, “I could call in at Mrs Galvin’s and get a cure off her for you. When she heard you weren’t well the last time, she offered to give me somethin’ for you.”
“Father Daly says he doesn’t hold wi’ these cures.” Lizzie’s voice had reduced to a self-pitying tremble. “But it’s not him that’s weak wi’ the diarrhoea . . . an’ he has an inside toilet as well. He doesn’t have to go outside in the pouring rain and the freezin’ cold, and bare his arse to an oul’ bucket.” She sighed deeply. “Ask Mrs Galvin for a cure for me . . . I’m at the stage I’ll try anythin’.”
“Ye have the pot there if yer caught short,” Biddy said, lifting her cardigan from the table, “and I brought back more newspapers from the priest’s house. I’ve torn them up into little squares for you. I’ll only be gone a couple of hours anyway.”
“I only hope I’m still here when you come back from yer pictures,” Lizzie called weakly as the door closed behind Biddy. Then, she said forlornly to herself, “With the way I’m feelin’ . . . I could be meeting my Maker at any time.”
Biddy closed the outside door quietly behind her and then, once out in the open air on her own, she punched her fist in the air triumphantly. By running away – and consequently bringing the priest to Lizzie’s door – Nora had done her the biggest favour imaginable.
Fa
ther Daly had quizzed Lizzie endlessly, about what went on in the house, and how she treated the girls. He had asked Biddy questions too, but had got very little out of her. She knew if she told the truth that she’d be moved from the only home she’d known, and more importantly, her best friend, Tara.
There was a long queue outside the Town Hall in Daingean when Tara arrived carrying Biddy on the back of her bicycle. They were beckoned excitedly to join a group of giggling girls who had kept a place for them in the queue.
“Does my hair look all right? And my dress and cardigan?” Biddy asked anxiously, as they dismounted the bicycle.
“Your hair is lovely now – it looks real natural,” Tara told her. “You should wash it more often. You’ve no excuse, now that Lizzie’s a bit more easy-going with you.”
“I’m brushing it a hundred times every night, like you advised me,” Biddy confided. She didn’t mention the compliments that Dinny the lodger had given her about the change in her appearance, and how he had promised to marry her as soon as she was old enough. She felt that Tara would be shocked at the difference in their ages, and even more shocked if she found out about all the things they did together when Lizzie wasn’t around.
“And what about the dress and cardigan?” Biddy prompted her friend. “Do they look all right?”
“They’re lovely, too,” Tara replied in a patient but distracted tone, as she scanned the crowds to see who was there. Then, seeing the anxiety on the orphan’s face, she elaborated further. “The white cardigan goes lovely with the navy and white polka-dot dress, and with your navy sandals.”
Biddy checked that the narrow belt was in the middle of her waist once again, and then she stepped out after her long-legged friend to join the crowds. It never struck her as odd that Tara rarely asked for reassurance on her own appearance.
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