Woman of the House

by Taylor, Alice

  “Who’s going to help?” Jack asked, looking up into the rafters of the old house where the cobwebs draped like grey cloths.

  “Me!” she said indignantly. “Didn’t I help you last year too?”

  “So that’s why some of the spuds grew upside down,” Jack declared.

  “Dada,” Nora appealed to her father, “make Jack take me seriously.”

  “When I was your age, Norry, he never took me seriously either,” Ned said, smiling down at her.

  “Were you here when Dada was my age?” Nora asked in surprise.

  “I was indeed, and I knew your grandfather when he was your age. We went to school together, and I remember your great grandfather when he was an old man and I was a young lad,” Jack told her.

  “Jack,” she said in amazement, “you must be as old as the hills!”

  “Older, I think sometimes.” He laughed and continued, “Do you see that oak tree up at the top of the haggard?” He pointed to a tree that they could see towering over the cow sheds. “Well, my first autumn here I planted an acorn in a tin bucket, and as it grew bigger over the years I transplanted it on and now look at it.”

  “So you and that big tree grew here together,” Nora said with interest, looking from Jack to the tree.

  “Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Jack said. “But whereas the tree is growing up I think that from now on I’ll be growing down.”

  “I’ll soon be as tall as you,” she said, standing on her toes; then, swinging around to Ned she asked, “Dada, have you planted any trees?”

  “All over the farm,” Ned said smiling down at her. “Jack taught me well.”

  They’re like peas in a pod, Jack thought. He remembered the day that she was born and how it had thrilled Ned to have a daughter.

  “Where’s Bran?” she asked.

  “Probably up in the barn sound asleep. That’s the place for a dog to be on a cold day like today,” Ned told her.

  “Mom says that he gets fleas in the barn and that we bring them into the house then,” Nora said.

  “She could be right,” Ned smiled, “but what’s a flea between friends?”

  “Is Bran your friend or my friend?”

  “A shared friend.”

  “I’d say he prefers you,” she said thoughtfully.

  “What makes you say that?” Jack asked.

  “Well, if he’s with me and Dada calls he runs away. But if I call him when he’s with Dada he won’t come. So I’d say that he prefers Dada.”

  “He probably does,” Jack agreed, “because I’ve the same problem with him. But what about all this help that I was going to get with sorting my potatoes?”

  “Do you really want help?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose and peering into the bag of potatoes, not so sure now that she wanted to help.

  “Well of course I do. Two heads are better than one even if they were only pigs’ heads.”

  “I haven’t got a pig’s head,” she told him indignantly.

  “I’ll leave the two of you to it,” Ned laughed. “I must give hay to the cows.” As soon as he went out into the yard a black sheepdog with one white ear and matching front paws emerged to jump around him wagging his tail.

  “Hello, old boy,” Ned said, patting his head and running his hand down along his broad glossy back.

  “See what I mean,” Nora said; “when Dad is around he wants no one else.”

  “Sheepdogs are like that,” Jack told her. “They have many friends but only one master. Your father reared him from a pup and fed him every day.”

  “Why was he called Bran?” Nora asked.

  “Every dog that we ever had was called Bran,” Jack told her.

  “That shows that you had no imagination,” she told him.

  “Where did you learn a fine big word like that?” Jack wanted to know.

  “It was our new word in school last week, and I think that if you don’t have it you’re fairly dull.”

  “That describes us pretty well around here, I suppose,” he admitted, trying not to smile at her serious face.

  She had forgotten about her plans to help him and had seated herself on one of the bags of potatoes.

  “How was school this week?” he asked, hoping that he could unravel the problem that was worrying her father.

  “All right,” she said slowly, “but I prefer Saturday and Sunday best, especially Sunday ’cause I like going to mass.”

  “Aren’t you the holy girl!”

  “Ah Jack!” she protested, “you know that it’s going to town that I really like.” And then a new thought struck her: “But I like going to mass now too since Fr Brady came.”

  Jack thought to himself that she was not the only one. What a relief this young priest was compared to the old parish priest who would put you to sleep for half an hour every Sunday.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do in town tomorrow after mass?” she asked him.

  “Do you want me to guess or will you tell me?” he asked.

  “Guess.”

  “Now, let me think,” he said, putting his hand under his cap and scratching his head. “Maybe you’re going to stand at the chapel gate and make a political speech after mass.”

  “What’s a political speech? I’d have to know what it was if I wanted to do it.”

  “Not at all. A lot of people do it and they don’t know what it is.”

  “Jack, you’re fooling again. If you’re not going to talk serious, I’m going to bring hay to the cows with Dad instead of helping you,” she threatened.

  “Right,” he said, “what are you going to do in town tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to buy a new pipe for Dada because you know that the stem of his old one is cracked since he left his coat in the stable and the pony stood down on it, so,” she told him in a rush of words, “he needs a new one and you know that Dada never buys anything for himself.”

  “Where did you get the money?” Jack asked. “Pipes are expensive.”

  “Aunty Kate,” she told him. “I told her about his broken pipe so she priced one in town and gave me the money the last time she was here. But it’s a secret and it’s a surprise from me.”

  Martha won’t be too pleased about that, he thought, because as far as Martha was concerned the farther away Kate kept from Mossgrove and the children the better.

  “By God,” Jack said, “but that will take him by surprise all right.”

  “Isn’t it exciting?” she asked. “I can’t wait for tomorrow, but now I must go in and polish the shoes for Sunday. Dada’s and Mom’s and Peter’s and mine. That’s my Saturday night job.”

  “You’re the shoe-shine boy!” Jack declared.

  “I’m not a boy,” she protested indignantly.

  “Well, the shoe-shine girl, so.”

  “Are you codding me, Jack?” she demanded.

  “Would I do that?” he asked innocently.

  “You know you would,” she told him, smiling in spite of herself; “but don’t forget now, Jack, to keep my big secret.”

  “I won’t even tell Bran!” he assured her.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN SHE OPENED her eyes she saw him. He was running along the top ridge of the blanket right below her chin: a long grey white flea who was obviously in a hurry. Nora wondered if there was such a thing as a lazy flea; they always seemed to be busy about their own business.

  This one had a definite target in view and was headed in its direction with great intent. Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. Nora felt that if he had ears which she could see, they would be standing erect, listening. She held her breath and watched him without a blink. One false move now and he would be gone, but if she hesitated too long he would make his move before her and then she would not stand a chance. She pounced on him but he was too fast for her. He burrowed down into the deep wool fibre of the blanket, and even though she did a certain amount of excavating in the vicinity of his disappearance, her small probing ten-year-old
fingers were no match for his magical ability to become invisible. She wondered if the flea kingdom had a whole maze of underground tunnels running through the wool blankets and heavy quilt.

  On Monday mornings her mother laid siege to their underground kingdom with a canister of sickly yellow Keating’s Powder. That night when Nora smelt it off the blankets she thought that the strong whiff off the Keating’s Powder was worse than the fleas. Her mother drove them into temporary retreat but they were not defeated. Later the following week, with reassembled forces, they came back into the attack. Nora had to admire their determination not to be permanently evicted. Even when her mother made an all-out assault on them with blanket washing in the summer and totally eradicated them, they still found their way back. Their ability to muster extra troops meant that they sometimes outflanked her mother with their sheer numerical strength. Now as Nora lay in bed thinking about her mother’s arch-enemies, she felt her scalp that was still tender from the usual Saturday night fine combing.

  The previous night, when supper was over after the milking, her mother had backed a sugan chair up against the kitchen table and put Nora kneeling on it with her hair pouring forward over her face like a blonde waterfall on to a newspaper on the table. She then put a firm hand under Nora’s forehead and proceeded with determination to plough a fine comb with long pointed teeth through Nora’s thick mane. She started at the nape of her neck and pushed forward over the crown of her head and then down the long stretch of hair until she came out at the ends that skirted on to the newspaper. A hapless flea tumbled forward and, before he had time to right himself and scurry to safety, she squashed him beneath a determined thumbnail. Then she inspected her comb and tut-tuted in annoyance when she found in the midst of the ribs of hair and hay-seeds that the flea corpse on the newspaper had a travelling companion.

  “Who were you sitting beside in school last week,” Martha demanded.

  “Kitty Conway,” Nora told her.

  “Oh, those Conways!” her mother fumed. Her father rattled the newspaper that he was reading beside the fire. Her mother did not elaborate on the subject, but she returned to Nora’s head with renewed vigour. When she next inspected the comb Nora expected to see a bit of her scalp amidst the hayseeds and ribs of hair. Martha continued relentlessly until Nora squealed in protest.

  Her father came from behind his newspaper and taking the pipe from his mouth asked mildly, “Martha, are you trying to scalp the child?”

  “Would you have us walking with lice like the Conways?” her mother demanded.

  “Are the Conways walking with lice?” Nora asked in amazement and saw through her hair her father throw a warning look at her mother as she bundled up the newspaper and thrust it behind the pot over the open fire where it blazed yellow and then fell in a grey cobweb of ashes on the red sods of turf. Nora straightened up and swept the hair back off her face. She felt dizzy after all the forward pressure on her head, so she climbed on to her father’s knee while her mother filled up a tin pan with warm water and put it back on the table. Her father rubbed his stubbly chin across her face and she screamed in mock horror. It was a game they played every Saturday night before he removed the blond bristle from his strong chin.

  “Come on, Nora,” her mother said. She resumed her kneeling position on the chair and her mother plunged her head into the pan and started to lather her hair with a bar of white soap. When she had it scrubbed to her satisfaction she changed the pan of water and poured a chilly stream over Nora’s head until she was satisfied that all traces of the soap were removed. Nora sighed in relief when a towel was finally wrapped around her head. While she sat drying her hair by the fire her mother was busy filling a big timber tub with warm water out of the black pot over the fire.

  “Start taking off your clothes, Nora,” her mother instructed as she tested the temperature of the water by swishing her fingers through it.

  “I think I’ll check the cows.” Her father rose to his feet and stretched himself before the fire.

  “Better put on your coat, it’s cold,” her mother advised. “And send Peter in soon. He’s next.”

  As he left the kitchen Nora saw her father raise his eyes to heaven and knew that he sympathised with Peter, who considered himself at twelve to be too big to be washed in the timber tub. But her mother was adamant about the Saturday night routine. While Nora dreaded the hair combing and washing, she enjoyed the bath. As she lay soaking in the warm sudsy water, she never wanted to come out of it. When the water started to cool her mother made her stand up and poured lukewarm water all over her out of a white enamel jug. The feel of the water running down her back was so nice that she wished that it could go on for ever. Her mother’s long pale face was flushed from the hot steamy water and strands of her dark hair had come loose from the knot at the back of her head. Nora laughed with delight as the water ran down her back and a smile lit up her mother’s normally serious face.

  “You’re nice when you smile, Mom,” Nora told her.

  Then they heard Peter dragging his feet reluctantly in along the yard, so Nora was lifted easily out of the bath and dried quickly. A fresh clean nightdress was pulled down over her head and her mother put her on the bottom step of the stairs. Later as she dozed off she could hear her mother and Peter battling it out below in the kitchen.

  Now in the cold morning light Nora snuggled down in her warm and comfortable bed. She should really get up and lay the table for the breakfast before they came in from the cows, but the thought of the cold kept her under the blankets. The two windows of her small room were both clouded up with grey frost and she could see her breath sailing up towards the ceiling like the steam from the boiling kettle over the fire. She wished that her room was not so cold. It had three items of furniture: her black iron bed with the brass knobs, the dressing table with the wobbly leg and an orange crate standing upright in the corner under the sloping roof. One deep-set window between the orange box and the dressing table looked out over the farmyard and the other window beside the bed looked out over her mother’s garden.

  Her room was at the top of the stairs just over the kitchen so it was the warmest bedroom in the house and Peter’s identical room at the end of the narrow corridor was the coldest because it was over the parlour which they seldom used. Her parents’ room in between was twice the size, with a dark wardrobe and a wide timber bed which Nora got to sleep in whenever she was sick.

  She put her foot out to test the temperature and swiftly drew it back in under the warm blankets. She wished that she was downstairs all dressed and the table laid for the breakfast. She would get up now in a few minutes. She envied the flea who could stay in bed all day. She wondered if fleas knew just how lucky they were and what life would be like as a flea.

  “Nora, get out of that bed or you’ll have us all late for mass.” Her mother’s voice coming up from the kitchen brought her wide awake. She looked at the grey frost on the window pane and knew that as soon as she slipped out from under the warm blankets the cold would wrap itself around her like a sheet of ice.

  “Is Peter up?” she called down to her mother as a delaying tactic.

  “You know well that Peter is up with an hour, helping your father and Jack. Get yourself up out of there now and no more dilly dallying out of you.”

  Nora could imagine Peter and her father out in the stalls sitting on their milking stools with their heads resting against the warm flanks of the cows and chatting companionably together. She knew that as soon as her mother had left the stalls that Peter and her father slowed their pace. Peter was probably telling his father and Jack the story of the film that had come to the local hall on Friday night. Her mother was not very keen on those kind of conversations and was only interested in “getting on with things”. Now her voice came loudly from the foot of the stairs.

  “I can’t hear any sound from up there. Will you get out of it or do you want me to come up?”

  Nora’s answer was to jump out on to the floor with a lou
d thud which brought a welcome silence from the kitchen.

  She shivered as the cold wrapped itself around her. Earlier she had dragged her clothes in under the blankets to warm them and now she pulled them out and poked around in the bundle for her stockings. Sitting on the edge of the bed she eased the long black knitted stockings up over her pale thin legs and secured them in position with two black garters. Then she jumped into her navy blue knickers, pulling it up over her bottom and stretching the legs down over the tops of her stockings. The next step was the toughest, when she had to whip the warm flanelette nightdress off over her head. Her teeth chattering as the cold hit her bare skin, she quickly located her long sleeved wool vest and dragged it on over her head, tucking the tail of it inside her knickers. After that the soft bodice and then her grey-skirted petticoat with the white sleeveless top. Now she began to feel a bit better. When she had eased a light jumper and then a heavy knitted jumper over her head, her top half began to warm up, and the warmth started to extend downwards when she put on the thick tweed pinafore frock that her mother had made out of a remnant. Nora wished that remnants were not always such dull colours. She sat on the window sill to lace on her black shoes.

  Weekdays she wore heavy high-laced boots with studs and iron tips, but on Sundays it was shoes. Light, patent, shining shoes! She danced across the floor to feel how light they were on her feet. She twirled to a halt in front of her dressing table with its tip-over mirror and peered in at herself. A long pale face looked out at her from a tangle of fair curly hair. She wished that she had red hair like Kitty Conway and was small and pretty. At the thought of Kitty Conway she felt the usual lump of fear forming in her stomach. But today was Sunday and she was not going to think about her, and besides today she was going to buy Dada’s pipe. Wasn’t he going to be surprised?

  As she ran down the stairs she heard her father and Peter come in from the milking and felt guilty when she saw that her mother had the table laid and was dishing out the porridge.