Woman of the House

by Taylor, Alice

  “Sit down now before this gets cold,” she told them. Catching sight of Peter’s boots, she frowned: “Could you not have left those out in the scullery?”

  “For God’s sake,” he protested, “what’s wrong with a bit of cow dung.”

  “Nothing,” she told him sharply, “as long as it’s where it should be.”

  “Oh, all right,” he said in disgust, heading for the scullery door. Putting his toe to the heel of one boot he eased his foot out of it and then kicked it across the scullery and followed up with the other.

  The scullery, the small room behind the kitchen, her mother used as a filter to try to prevent the dirt and mud of the farmyard from reaching the kitchen and the rest of the house. Her father sympathised with her efforts but Peter clashed with her, and on a few occasions it was only her father’s intervention that prevented a row. Nora felt that she could see both sides: her mother wanted everything done properly and the house kept nice and clean, but Peter was getting big and wanted to do things his way and she could understand that as well.

  Sometimes in school he sorted things out for her and she regarded him as a second guardian angel. It was good to have a big brother in the older classes. But she had never told him about Kitty Conway because she found it very difficult to admit that she could be made so miserable by one so much smaller than herself, even though they were the same age. Kitty Conway made her feel big and awkward and stupid. She never hurt her physically but she could cut her to pieces with her acid tongue until in spite of herself Nora would feel her eyes fill up with tears, and then Kitty would smirk and call her a softie. Once when Nora was gardening with her mother they had come on a plant that had died; her mother had dug it up, and in the earth, clinging to its roots, was a little white worm.

  “That’s the cause of the trouble,” her mother had said, and a picture of Kitty Conway had sailed into Nora’s mind. She is like that little white worm, she thought, eating me away, and some day I will die and nobody will ever know what happened to me.

  “What’s wrong with you, Norry?” her father smiled at her from across the table. “You look as if you have the troubles of the whole world on your shoulders.”

  “Was anybody ever at you in school, Dada?” she asked unthinkingly.

  “Who’s at you in school?” her mother demanded.

  “Nobody,” Nora lied. Her mother was the last person she could tell. She would be across the fields to the school to sort it out and that would only make the whole thing worse because Kitty Conway would sneer even more and say that she was a real baby having to get her mother to fight her battles. Her father always understood things better than her mother.

  “Norry,” her father told her, “people were often nasty to me, but the secret is to take no notice and they soon get tired of it.”

  Just like Dada, she thought. But it was hard to take no notice when you were sitting beside the white worm. Ever since that day in the garden she thought of Kitty Conway as the white worm and she saw no way of getting rid of her. She wished that she could hit her with the shovel like Mom did to the worm and cut her up into tiny pieces.

  “Sometimes you have to fight back,” Peter declared. “If people think that they can walk all over you, they will do just that.”

  Nora wondered if he guessed that there was something wrong in school, because sometimes she was sick just before they reached the school, but she did not want to tell him about it because he was usually friendly with the Conways boys, and anyway it would be hard to explain. To change the subject she asked, “Is Jack gone home?”

  “Yea,” her father said, “he had things to do before mass so he went up to the cottage.”

  “What are you and Jack going to do about Conways’ cows?” her mother demanded of her father.

  “Very little we can do, I suppose,” he said calmly, “only fence before them again.”

  “You know well that they break down the fences to let the cattle through.”

  “I know, but we can’t prove anything, and it’s easier to re-fence than to be drawing them on us,” her father answered.

  “Dear God, but it drives me mad to think of their hungry cows eating our good grass!” her mother said with disgust. “And they probably laughing at us behind our backs.”

  Nora felt a fellow feeling with her mother. Was there no end to the treachery of the Conways?

  “Let’s forget about the Conways – it’s Sunday,” her father suggested. “I’d say the road will be icy this morning. Hope that it won’t be too slippery for Paddy.”

  “Won’t the frost nails hold him?” Nora asked fearfully.

  “They will of course,” her father assured her. “I put new chisel frost nails on him last week, so that should hold.”

  “Is he tackled?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Peter answered, “but Jack tied him up in the barn and I’ll tackle him in a minute.”

  After breakfast they went upstairs to get ready for mass. Nora’s Sunday coat was hanging on the back of her bedroom door. Her mother had hung an old bageen sheet over it to keep it free from dust and her cap was in a paper bag in the bottom of the orange crate. The money for Dada’s pipe was screwed up in a bit of newspaper under her cap.

  She reached on tiptoe and took down her coat: it was bright green and the collar and pockets were trimmed with navy. Her mother had made the cap out of material left over after the coat. The first Sunday she had put them on she had felt like a princess, but the following day in school Kitty Conway had sniggered, “You looked like St Patrick yesterday.”

  Since then she had not been so happy with the outfit, but there was no question of not wearing it as her mother had given weeks to its creation. First she had laid the material out on the kitchen table and then placed the pattern carefully on top. Then after a lot of thinking and repositioning of the pattern she had started to cut with the long shinning scissors. To cut had taken courage, Nora had decided. If her mother had got it wrong it would have been terrible because weeks of her egg money had gone into that material. It was the first piece of material about which her mother had asked her opinion, and it was she herself who had decided on the green. At first she had wondered how all the odd pieces of material with the long white tacking stitches would ever become a coat, but gradually it began to take shape. The night that it was finished Nora knew that her mother was very pleased and so was she.

  She tried to angle the small mirror of her dressing table to get a better look at herself. She knew that it fitted perfectly but she wished now that she had chosen a different colour. She put the pipe money deep into her pocket.

  “Come on, Norry, we’ll be late for mass.” Her mother came in to inspect her and to see that she had no threads trailing below her coat and that her cap was at the right angle. Norry was her father’s name for her but her mother used it when she was in good humour. In her navy hat and coat her mother looked splendid, and as she walked out into the backyard after her Nora thought that her mother walked as if nothing could stop her. Peter had tied Paddy to the water barrel, and Nora patted the horse’s soft nostrils with her fingers before following the others. Her mother settled them all into the trap and wrapped a rug around Nora, but when she attempted to include Peter he tossed it aside.

  “Ah Mom, for goodness sake!”

  “Well, aren’t you the man for us,” his mother chided, but Nora could see that she was more amused than annoyed.

  Her mother sat behind her father at one side of the trap and she sat behind Peter at the opposite side. Her father took the reins and guided Paddy out of the yard, which Nora always thought looked different when viewed from the trap. She was high enough to be able to see all over it, and she decided that it looked lovely with all its dark red doors and stone walls. Peter sheltered her from some of the cold, but even at that she could feel it biting into her face and she was glad of the warm rug around her legs. She put her hand into her pocket to check on the pipe money. She could see that her father was giving all his con
centration to guiding the pony over the steep slippery road. His strong fingers were curled around the reins and he guided the pony with firmness and skill. Paddy was older than herself so he knew the road well, but the ice could be dangerous. Her mother and Peter were talking, but Nora was not listening. She was watching her father’s face and she could see that he was worried about Paddy.

  “I think I’ll get out and lead him by the head,” he said, and just as he stood up it happened with terrifying suddenness. Paddy’s back legs went from under him and he crashed down between the shafts. There was a tearing sound of splintering wood and the trap shuddered, then lurched forward and hit the road with a jolting thud, and Nora found herself flung forward with great force. Then she was swimming through darkness.

  Chapter Four

  ALL HER BODY was hurting. She tried to struggle out of the darkness that was stifling her, but it was too strong and kept sucking her down. From far away she could hear Paddy grunting in distress.

  Then the grey fog cleared and she saw him lying on the side of the road tangled up in harness and broken shafts and from a long way off she heard Peter’s voice trying to soothe him and straighten him up. Did Peter think that she was under the trap? Where was Dad that he was not helping Paddy? She crawled on her hands and knees around the back of the trap. She tried to stand but her legs had turned into wobbling jelly and she kept falling. Then she saw her mother through the mist that was swirling before her eyes. Her mother was kneeling in the middle of the road and was bending over something. Her long black hair had come loose and had fallen forward forming a curtain between them.

  “Mom.” Nora said the word in her mind but it never reached her tongue. Something had gone wrong with her voice.

  The grey fog engulfed her again and when it cleared her mother had raised her head and was looking at her. Her eyes were like two black holes in grey shrivelled paper. Then she saw what her mother was holding. Mom’s lap seemed to be full of blood, and it was when she saw the blonde hair that she realised that it was her father head. Then she felt Peter’s arms around her.

  “Norry, Norry, don’t look, don’t look. Oh God, don’t look, don’t look.”

  “Dada, Dada!” she screamed, struggling to get to him, but Peter held her firmly. “Peter! Oh, Peter, Dada, Dada,” she cried, looking beseechingly up into his face.

  “Paddy’s hooves got him. He fell the wrong way. He was standing.” Peter’s voice came in gasps as if he had to tear the words out of the back of his throat.

  The blackness came back in a swirling cloud and this time she went with it.

  When she woke up she was back in her own bed and she was so cold that she felt frozen on to the sheets. It was almost dark and at first she thought that there was nobody in the room, but then she saw a movement by the window.

  “Peter,” she whispered.

  He moved slowly across the room. It was almost as if he had lost the ability to walk properly. She could not see his face in the darkness, but everything about him had slowed down.

  “Dada?” she asked.

  “Norry,” he told her, “Dada is dead.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window into the gathering darkness.

  “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” he sobbed. “I wish that we were all dead.”

  “Oh, Peter,” she gasped. “I’m so frightened.”

  “So am I,” he said, and when she put up her hand to his face she could feel the tears.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked tearfully.

  “Downstairs,” he answered, and then she became aware of the sound of voices coming from below.

  “Who’s below in the kitchen?” she asked.

  “Nana Lehane is here, and Jack and Aunty Kate and the Master is here, and Miss Buckley and the Nolans and smelly old Mrs Conway and a lot of others.” Peter listed out names in a monotonous tone and then added with a sob, “I wish that half of them would go home. They’re down there talking stupid talk. That old lump of a Mrs Conway told Mom that it could be worse. Imagine, that it could be worse! And then she kissed me and said that now I’m the man of the house. I don’t want to be the man of the house.”

  He put his face down on the pillow beside her and sobbed into it. “At least we can cry up here,” his muffled voice came out of the pillow.

  Nora cried with him. She had not seen Peter cry for a long time. Grown-ups did not cry as much as children and Peter was almost grown up. When the sobbing eased she put her arms around him and asked, “Is that a wake downstairs?”

  “Yes,” he said bitterly, “where they all come and tell you that they are sorry for your troubles and they are thinking, ‘Thanks be to Jesus that’s not me.’”

  “It’s like when Nana Nellie died,” Nora said.

  She remembered the “Sorry for your trouble” from when Nana Nellie had died and people saying it to Mom. She remembered thinking that it was no trouble to Mom because Mom had never liked Nana Nellie anyway.

  “I think that I’d like to go down,” Nora said. “I want Mom.”

  “Are you able?” Peter asked, turning back the bedclothes to help her out.

  “God! Norry, you’re frozen stiff,” he said when he felt her cold legs. “Will I rub you like Dad does the greyhounds? He says that it’s good for the circulation and warms them up.”

  “Try anyway, but go easy ’cause I’m awful sore.” But she felt that no amount of rubbing would warm her because she was frozen inside too. Peter rubbed her legs firmly, but when he touched her arms she winced with pain.

  “I must be all scratched,” Nora said.

  “Aunty Kate and Doctor Twomey spent half an hour picking thorns out of you and cleaning you up, but he said that you had nothing broken and that the worst thing was the bump in your head.”

  “So that’s why I’m sorest up there,” Nora said, feeling the lump at the side of her head. “And what about you, Peter, are you hurt anywhere? And what about Mom?” she asked anxiously.

  “We’re all right,” he said, and added, “If they knew downstairs that you were awake there’d be somebody up like a bullet.”

  “Why are we all all right and Dada is not?” she wanted to know.

  “Do you remember, Norry, he was standing up to go out to lead Paddy by the head, so he fell down by Paddy’s legs. I wish that I had been watching the road like he was,” he added desperately.

  “Pete, will you help me to get dressed?” She did not want to remember that scene on the road.

  She clambered painfully out of the bed; it felt as if the hinges where her bones connected were refusing to turn. Peter helped her to put on her stockings and, slowly, the rest of her clothes. He moved very quietly on the floor.

  “I don’t want them to know down below that you are awake or they’d be up like a swarm of ants. Aunty Kate or Nana would be all right. They were here all evening but are gone down for a cup of tea,” he told her.

  “Why are the rest of them annoying you so much?” she wanted to know.

  “Wait till you go down and see.”

  After half an hour downstairs she found out what Peter meant. All the talk made the pain in her head worse, and people talked about her and above her as if she was not there, and her mother sat in the middle of them like a statue as if in some way she was not there at all. Nana Lehane and Jack were the only two who were more like themselves. Nana took her by the hand and, sitting on Dad’s chair by the fire, put her on her knee.

  Close up, Nana’s face was as white as her hair that was caught up in a knot on the top of her head. Even though she tied her hair up firmly little curly bits escaped and Nora usually enjoyed running her finger through them. But now she clung to Nana, feeling that of all the people in the kitchen she alone was the nearest to having Dada here. Though Nana was Mom’s mother Nora often felt that she was more like Dada. Mom and Nana did not even look like each other. Mom and Uncle Mark were tall and quiet whereas Nana was small and dainty and was
always telling stories. Now she wrapped her arms around Nora as if she could breathe some warmth into her.

  “You’re like a lump of ice, child,” she said.

  “There is only one cure for that,” Jack told her. “Can she come with me for five minutes?”

  Nana and Jack exchanged glances.

  “All right,” Nana conceded, and Nora thought that Nana sounded doubtful, but Nana and Jack agreed about most things. Nana always said that she considered Jack to be “sound”.

  “Give me a few minutes’ head start,” he said to Nora, “and then slip out the back door after me and come over to the calf house.

  “Why?” she asked in a puzzled voice.

  “Just do as he says,” Nana said quietly.

  They watched him edge his way unobtrusively across the kitchen, a small-boned, wiry little man with tufts of white hair curling up around his grey tweed cap.

  “Now, Nora,” Nana instructed, rising from her chair and leading her across the kitchen. They were intercepted several times by neighbours wanting to talk to Nana and to pat Nora on top of her sore head. Old Mrs Conway loomed in front of them, so large and wide that there was no getting past her. Nora shrank back against Nana.

  “Ah, he’s the heavy loss to ye,” she boomed. “Herself won’t be able to manage at all without him.” Nana agreed quietly but kept going. The scullery was full of women, but Nana being small was able to slip out behind them, and as she closed the door she somehow managed to have procured a coat off one of the hooks on the back of it and wrapped it around Nora.

  “Run over to Jack now, child, “she said and stepped back into the scullery.

  Nora looked around the yard. This was Dada’s yard and she almost expected to see him come out of the stalls or Paddy’s stable or the calf house. But it was Jack who called across the yard.

  “Over here, Nora.” She walked across slowly. A cold white moon glittered off the frosty stones. Her legs were stiff and she felt numb inside and outside and the bitter night air pierced the scratches on her face. Jack was standing in the shadow of the house and he had a mug of hot steaming water in his hand.