by Carol Coffey
Seán was proud of the changes he had made to the house and farm as a young man. Preferring farming to school work, he had left the books for the fields at thirteen. His family didn’t have the best of reputations in the village and he had worked hard to change this during the late 1960s. But it had all been for nothing. He had spent his youth trying to develop a farm and a reputation that was destroyed faster than a fire spreads through a barn of hay. It was hard to imagine himself now – young, fit and full of hope – but he had been that man. Now he spent his days trying to hide his drinking from the nag his sister had turned into and from the farmhand who, although he said nothing, could see that his employer was an alcoholic. Over the past ten years they had managed to maintain some semblance of normality within the house: Seán working the farm as best he could, if only to keep some money coming in; Kate, resentfully running the house and caring for Ben who would never be a man and who would need to be cared for long after they were both gone. Somehow they had managed. Now, when they seemed to be getting on and putting the past behind them, it had reared its ugly head in the form of their younger sister. Old memories would be stirred up in the village and people would begin talking about it again. Seán could feel his face redden. If only they didn’t have to have her back. If only the institution could have kept her there. If only she was fit enough to have lived out her life in Dublin on her own or in one of those residential homes. He had tried to put the nosy psychiatrist off, ignoring letters regarding her wellbeing, not visiting. You’d have thought they’d have got the message. But no. He couldn’t very well have said “We don’t want her back.” It wouldn’t have seemed right, would have got people talking just the same.
He could feel the blood rising in his face, not sure himself if it was in anger or shame, when Kate interrupted his thoughts.
“No point dwelling on it, we have to make the best of it. Maybe she’ll have changed, mellowed a bit. She was just a child, remember. She might be a good help with the lad. God knows she might understand him better than me.”
Kate always knew exactly what he was thinking and even feeling. Kate, always one step ahead of him, cool and calculating, smarter than her older brother by far. Seán looked at his sister who he felt was just like their mother had been, calm and beautiful. He was always conscious of how different he looked to his siblings and parents. He was the only redhead in a raven-haired family. He had green eyes and freckled skin whereas his siblings had blue eyes and clear white skin that neither burned nor tanned. He stared at Kate, envious of her composure. His sister had even more reason to resent Tess’s return than he as she was engaged when the “accident”, as they liked to refer to it, happened. Kate was a different woman then, popular and about to be married to the eldest Moore son who would eventually inherit a large farm and money with it. But it wasn’t just that. She was in love with Noel Moore. His family hadn’t been the happiest about it in the beginning but Kate soon won them over, even Noel’s mother who had thought there would never be anyone good enough for her eldest son. Her future looked bright and happy but Tess had been waiting in the wings to destroy it all.
Dermot sat uneasily into the driver seat of the battered truck and shot a nervous smile in Tess’s direction. She didn’t look dangerous. She was small and like her older sister was not bad-looking. Dermot thought that she looked like a younger Kate, with long hair that was so black it made her white skin look even paler than it was. He noticed she did not look at him when he spoke and that her dark blue eyes looked neither happy nor sad. He hadn’t realised that he had thought so much about how she would react both to leaving this place and going home but she didn’t seem to care much one way or the other and spent the journey staring out of the truck’s muddy window.
The silence was making Dermot uneasy.
“Shouldn’t take us too long to get back at this time, not much traffic.”
No reply.
“You must be looking forward to seeing your family again – it’s been a long time.”
Silence.
“Do ya not answer someone when they ask you a question?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, why don’t you answer my questions?”
“You didn’t ask me a question. ‘Shouldn’t take us too long to get back at this time, not much traffic’ and ‘You must be looking forward to seeing your family again, it’s been a long time’ are not questions.”
Dermot stared back at the strange girl, amazed that she had repeated word for word what he had just said and a little annoyed that she was right: he hadn’t asked her a question.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re right, they weren’t questions.”
“I know,” Tess said coolly and turned her head towards the window.
She didn’t want to talk to this man who she had never met before. She wanted to savour every minute of this drive, hoping to get through noisy Dublin city quickly and arrive at the edge of Wicklow with its cool mountains and lakes, hoping they would be as she remembered them. Dermot, sensing this, focused on driving as fast as the law allowed. He wasn’t great with people at the best of times and this one was different, impossible to talk to. He couldn’t wait to get this job done and get back to what he loved best, tending to animals.
Chapter 2
1970
Summer was always a beautiful time in Árd Glen when most families seemed willing to forget the miserable winter and the hard work of spring, and could relax and enjoy the fruits of their labour. However, the Byrne family was not like most families. For the Byrne family, nothing was ever normal. Maura Byrne had lain in her bed for just over one year, the birth of her last son causing severe depression which had never lifted. The doctors later diagnosed some rare disease where a person becomes old and confused before their time – pre-senile dementia they called it. In the beginning she would walk out of the house in the middle of the night, always looking for something she couldn’t put words to. Later, there were no words and she mumbled constantly, sometimes roaring at invisible menaces and finally taking to the bed with Kate and Tess caring for her round the clock. Michael Byrne could always be found in the local pub when Maura needed a doctor. If he were sober enough he would drive his wife to the nearest town where the only doctor in a twenty-mile radius lived. It was a well-known joke among the townspeople that with the amount of vets in the area you would be luckier to be a cow than a human being if you got sick in Árd Glen.
When Maura passed away, only Kate cried. Her father, remorseful, head bowed, smelt of the whiskey he had consumed until the early hours. In her cheap wooden coffin, the one-time local beauty looked nothing like the radiant girl she had once been. Her hair, almost grey, was once raven-black, her dark-blue eyes once surrounded by the palest flawless skin. Now, her face was lined with the worry her married life had brought her, her skin slightly yellow, darkening as the coffin lid slammed shut.
Kate’s tears, in truth, were more for herself than her mother. She had silently hoped that her mother would pull through this strange illness and return to her responsibilities around the house. With Maura gone and Tess’s problems, what would happen to the baby? She knew that, as good as Noel was, he would not want her to take the child to live with them.
Seán stood erect, lost in his thoughts. His mother had always protected him from his father, protected them all. Now she was gone and he wondered if his father would lose the farm through drink, a farm his mother insisted was rightfully his and was his only chance of a future.
Tess looked around at the small crowd dressed in black. She had never seen some of the people before. She wanted to ask their names as she always liked to know people’s names. She listened as the priest chanted prayers from a beautiful black book with gold writing. She wondered how her mother would get out of the large box in front of her when she felt better. She knew it was another question she should not ask and, at age ten, her head was full of such questions. She wondered when her mother would be back as she was the only one who could do he
r hair just right. No one thought to explain to her that her mother would never be back.
After the funeral, the Byrne children’s days were mundane and predictable. Seán tended the farm while their father recovered from the latest hangover. Kate and Tess cared for the house and the baby between them, although Tess did not like looking after Ben and would put her fingers in her ears whenever he screamed. Tess knew that, like herself, the baby did not like to be touched and wondered if he was going to “have problems” like her when he grew up. She knew her family would not like this and that everybody thought she was troublesome. She never quite understood this. She knew she was different but wondered how she was a problem – she worked as hard as Kate, didn’t she?
There were things other than the baby’s crying that Tess didn’t like. She didn’t like the smell of whiskey or the way her father acted when he had been drinking. Tess liked things to be predictable but found herself hiding more and more in the barn and humming, which usually made her older sister very angry. Tess knew that Kate wanted to leave, to marry Noel and have her own family, but wasn’t this her family? Tess didn’t want to look after the baby and didn’t want to be left on her own when their father had been drinking. Seán would be no help. He had to keep their father happy, as he had to get the farm when Daddy died. Tess had heard all these conversations going on around her – Kate needs to get married, Seán needs the farm and the baby needs to be lifted up – but nothing ever made much sense to her. She tried to remember all these important facts and behave normally but could not understand why they were important and wanted everything to stay the same. At age ten Tess knew that she did not understand as much as she should. Rare visitors to the house shook their heads at her and said things like “God help you, Kate, you have your hands full” to her sister. But Tess knew that the only one who was a problem was Daddy. He caused Mammy to get sick with a new baby, made Seán have to work hard because he went to the pub at night, and if Mammy hadn’t got sick Kate could have got married and there would be no baby to make Tess put her fingers in her ears and get into even more trouble. If Tess could see this and she had “problems”, why could no one else see it?
Tess decided it was a sensible question and made her way to the kitchen where Noel was visiting with his mother and aunt who was a seamstress in Dublin and was going to make Kate’s wedding dress.
Kate looked nervous when Tess entered the room as she always did when they had visitors. She never knew what her peculiar sister would say next. The child worked hard and according to the special school she attended she could be a lot more trouble than she was. Sometimes Kate felt sorry for this sister who would almost certainly end up in some home whenever Seán had a mind to marry. Kate couldn’t very well take her to live with her. At the very least Kate hoped Seán’s wife would care for the baby, but knew there would be no place for poor peculiar Tess. Kate had tried to teach Tess to run the house and care for Ben but had found her more often than not hiding under furniture with her fingers in her ears. All sorts of sounds bothered her – the tractor and even the radio if it wasn’t tuned in right. Tess lived by rules she had made up herself – what time to go to bed, what time to sleep, what clothes were only for Sunday. Anyone who knew her well could get Tess to stay quiet for hours by saying it was a new rule. Kate, who found that she always had to tell Tess what to do and when to do it, sighed and softened as her sister stood awkwardly in the doorway, knowing Tess had one of her “questions”.
“Yes, Tess, what’s your question?”
“When will Daddy die, Kate? How much time longer before Seán gets the farm?”
Kate could feel herself redden. She had told Tess not to come into the kitchen while Mrs Moore was visiting but, even so, it was not like Tess to ask this sort of question. But how could she begin to tell her future mother-in-law and husband that?
“Tess, that’s not a very nice thing for you to say. Daddy is still young and Seán would rather Daddy didn’t die just so he could get the farm – you know that!”
“No, Kate, you said that we would have to put up with him even when he is drunk so that Seán would get the farm when he dies, remember?”
Kate was caught. One look at Tess’s innocent face was worth a thousand words and she could think of nothing to say except to shout loudly “Tess, leave the room please!”
Tess left, her face showing her bewilderment. Kate sat down again and hoped her visitors didn’t notice her hands shaking around the teacup. She felt that she had nothing to lose and said, “Poor Tess, she imagines all sorts of things, nightmares and all. I worry about her but it’s her condition, the child can’t help it.”
“I hope it doesn’t run in the family,” her mother-in-law said all too quickly before settling back down to a strained conversation with her future daughter-in-law.
Kate wasn’t to know that this would be the last time that either Mrs Moore or Noel would ever cross her doorstep.
Seán Byrne lay on in bed for the first time since he could remember. As a child he was always up with the dawn, working on the farm before the dreaded school day began. He did poorly in school but was smart enough to focus on a job he knew he could do and do well. He had heard his father throwing up behind the shed in the early hours, having downed money they could ill afford to spend, but he was powerless to do anything to stop him. Even though the farm had been his mother’s, it would not rightfully be his until the old man died. There was no way he would sign it over, retire early and let Seán make his mark. No, his father had somehow always resented him, never missing an opportunity to insult or embarrass him. Seán knew there had been talk in the town that Michael Byrne was not his real father but had married his pregnant mother quickly to avoid scandal, the offer of the farm too good a compensation to refuse. As a child, Seán would hear his father come home drunk, shouting at his mother about how he “wanted a son”. His mother, having endured several miscarriages after Kate was born, would lock the bedroom door until he kicked it in. She would go quiet then. Seán had wanted to ask his mother about his conception many times but was too embarrassed to raise such a subject, aware that he had been born only six months after their marriage, the anniversaries of which were never celebrated. In reality he knew that some truths were better left alone. He sensed, even as a small child, that he was her favourite and was somehow more special to her than his siblings.
Seán now knew that at twenty-one he was man enough to run the farm and that the only thing standing between him and his future was the old man. As he lay in his bed he couldn’t help but think that if his father had been the one to die and not his poor mother, who had always stood in his corner, life would have been better for everyone.
Jimmy Kelly sat quietly in the bar that he frequented with his son Liam, both lost in thought. Even though Liam was still a teenager, the men looked more like brothers, both tall and thin with black dishevelled hair and skin brown from labouring in all kinds of weather. Jimmy thought of his deceased sister, Maura, and of all the events that led up to her inheriting the farm that should have been his and now his son’s, over twenty years ago. He and his sister had been close and were each other’s allies in a strict Catholic home which saw them each receiving an almost daily beating for breaking a commandment or committing a sin, even before either of them had made their First Communion and understood such things. The family was unusual for its time in that there were just the two of them when most other families had nine or ten children, and this made them even closer. Jimmy, like a lot of people during the 1940s, had caught tuberculosis and was moved to a sanatorium in Dublin. By the time his ravaged body reached eight stone his father had all but given up on his only son ever recovering. And by the time he did recover, his birthright had been handed over to his sister and her husband.
Maura was dead now and her drunken husband was letting the farm rot. The boy turned out all right, trying, Jimmy supposed, to keep the farm going but a bitter knot twisted in his gut as he looked at his own son Liam beside him, who
like himself was done out of his birthright.
Over the years Jimmy had mostly found work in Dublin, working hours too long to come home at night, leaving his wife alone to raise the boy. He blamed himself for the way Liam had turned out as he wasn’t around to discipline him and a boy reared by a woman could not turn out right. There had been problems making friends at school and later bullying for which Liam had been expelled at fourteen. Liam was now well known for fighting outside pubs after he’d had more than enough to drink. Although the boy worked hard enough, there was a wild streak in the lad that worried Jimmy.
He gave Liam the nod to finish his pint and, as he finished the last of his, it occurred to him that if only Michael Byrne had died first, he might have convinced Maura to do the right thing and return the land to its rightful owner. He would have sorted her Seán out with some acres. He felt his sister would have seen the sense in it and could not help but feel that the only thing standing between himself and his farm was Michael Byrne.
Chapter 3
1948
During Jimmy’s illness his parents remained in Dublin for most of the time, reluctantly leaving the seventeen-year-old Maura to tend the farm with the help of a lad from Dublin, Éamonn McCracken.
Éamonn’s mother was born in Árd Glen and had moved to the North following her marriage to a Derry lad she had met in Dublin. When the family came south to finally settle in Dublin, rumour had it that they had to leave Derry in a hurry due to their involvement with the Republican movement.
Maura’s father was not keen on Éamonn’s family, but thought the lad seemed okay and knew farm work well enough. He would have preferred his neighbour’s son, Michael Byrne, to help out but he was busy that summer reclaiming fields on his own father’s farm. He would have to settle for Éamonn, who, with his sister Brigid, spent most summers in Árd Glen with their mother’s family and often spent time on the farm with Maura and Jimmy.