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A Song Across the Sea

Page 2

by Shana McGuinn


  Tara spun around and glimpsed Sheila. The clumsy girl was crawling on the floor, picking up the potatoes that had spilled from the pot.

  “You wicked, stupid girl!” Tara said, so choked with anger she could barely speak. “Look what you’ve done!”

  Sheila looked up at her, mute. Tara felt just a little sorry for her harsh words. Sheila’s face was pale with contrition, her lips bloodless. Tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.

  “That’s enough, Tara,” her father said. “I’m sure it was an accident. Your cousin didn’t mean any harm.” He took Padraig in his strong arms and rocked him rhythmically.

  “I was only after helping you get the jam pot down from the shelf,” Sheila mumbled hoarsely.

  Aunt Bridey looked at her sister in consternation. “Kitty, I think we’d best be leavin’.”

  • • •

  And so it hadn’t been a perfect day, after all—not one to be captured in a glass paperweight and stored in the shadows for later. There’d been tears, angry words, and pain.

  Tara thought about it all as she leaned back in the big timber tub that had been dragged in front of the fireplace. Her bath water was getting cold.

  “Will there be a scar, d’ya think?” she asked her mother.

  “There will. It was a bad enough burn.” Her mother was tatting lace in the soft glow cast by the peat fire. Tara knew with pride that her mother made the finest lace in two counties. She would take it into the village next market day and sell it to a shopkeeper for a little extra money.

  Tara made swirls in the tepid water with her hand and looked over at her brother. Padraig, asleep now in his cot, seemed not to be overly worried about a scar. His burn had been lovingly tended to. Tara could see the white dressing on his hand from across the room. Exhausted from crying, he’d allowed himself to be put to bed soon after supper.

  Tara finished her bath and went to bid goodnight to her father. She found him sitting in the big leather chair near his bed, peering at a newspaper through spectacles perched precariously on his nose. He lowered the paper when he saw her.

  “Ah, well, here’s me lass,” he said, and offered her a windburned cheek to kiss.

  Unwilling to go off to bed just yet, she sat at his feet.

  “Did you hear what Miss Connelly was sayin’ about America?”

  “Missus told me all about her extravagant stories, and I don’t believe the half of it.”

  “But it sounds so grand!”

  “No better than a fairy story. And no more truth to it, either.” He reached down and gently lifted her chin so that her eyes met his. “You’re not thinkin’ of leavin’ us to go off to America?”

  She giggled. “Sure and I’m off tomorrow. I thought I’d swim there, carryin’ me clothes in a bag on me head.”

  He smiled and took his newspaper in hand again. She stood and hugged him, whispering in his ear: “I’ll never leave you, Da.”

  But as Tara carried her candle in its tin sconce up the dark stairs toward her bed, her mind buzzed with excitement. America! Even the word had a wondrous sound to it. She drifted toward sleep as if carried there by a tranquil current, humming to herself and dreaming of America.

  Chapter Two

  Summer’s spun-gold days slipped away. Autumn was fast upon them. Tara’s chores around the farm increased, but she didn’t mind. Joyfully she helped her father dig potatoes out of the earth, thin the turnips and cut the turf that would be burned in the stove and fireplace in the long months ahead.

  Padraig was often beside her. She’d give him a spade and laugh at his childish efforts to dig around the potatoes with it. He seemed to have forgotten his injury, but the back of his right hand still bore the memory: a vivid reddish patch of puckered skin.

  After a round of visits and tales that left the villagers breathless, Miss Brigid Connelly had taken her leave and gone back to America. Back, Tara imagined, to her mansion and servants, to fine dresses and food too exotic to even imagine. On the eve of her departure, Brigid gave her brother enough cash money for a new plough horse. Tara’s father reported this bit of news one evening at mealtime; he’d overheard the brother boasting about it in the village pub the night before.

  “I don’t think we’ll see the likes of her again,” he commented, while working his way through a plate of steaming cabbage. “Her Duchess Miss Connelly”—as he’d taken to calling her—”is too fine a lady for simple bog-pickers like ourselves.”

  Tara’s days were too full for her to give much thought to Brigid Connelly. She arose before dawn and had a quick cup of tea to quiet her stomach before milking the cows. The white-legged Molly was her favorite. Sitting on an ancient three-legged stool in the cow barn, a bucket propped between her knees, Tara sang snatches of song while she squeezed the cow’s teats and sent long streams of milk into the bucket. Occasionally her mind would wander, and a jet of milk would miss the bucket and hit the straw-covered stall floor instead. Molly sometimes turned her head and looked at her as she sang. Even a cow could be cheered by a little music, Tara thought, then laughed at her own silly ideas.

  Then the bucket of milk had to be carried over to the churn. She’d hoist the bucket up and pour the milk into the churn, through the muslin cloth used to strain the milk. The milk would be separated into cream and skim milk, and the cream put into the hand churn for the making of butter.

  After feeding the chickens and helping her father catch the horse for his day’s work, Tara sat down to her own breakfast. Days when she wasn’t out in the fields she spent helping her mother. There was bread to be baked, with flour ground from grain threshed from the wheat grown in their own fields. Eggs had to be collected from the hen house, bedding washed and hung outside to air, clothing made and repaired.

  Tara, under her mother’s watchful eye, was learning to rein in her natural exuberant energy for this last task. Sewing required patience and even stitches. She was, gradually, acquiring some skill at it. Her mother said Tara turned as fine a hem as she’d ever seen. On their last visit to the village, Tara’s mother had traded lace with a local shopkeeper for several yards of cotton, an apple-green fabric sprinkled with deep blue flowers that her mother said would bring out the color in her eyes. It was to be a dress for Tara. She insisted on making it all by herself.

  Now, as Tara painstakingly cut out the pieces on the long kitchen table, she heard her parents talking outside. She tried not to listen to the voices drifting in through the open window—something in their tone hinted that the conversation was not for her ears. Tara wielded the scissors carefully, frowning in concentration, and tried to imagine herself in the finished dress. She pictured herself wearing it at a dance, the skirts swinging around in a green-and-blue-whirl as she danced a jig, all eyes upon her!

  But it was hard not to shut out her parent’s voices.

  “…and O’Leary says the taxes on the land are going to be raised again,” her father was saying. “I’d hoped to buy a new cow in the spring. Molly’s drying up. There’s barely enough milk left over after the household needs to take to the creamery.”

  Her mother sighed. “The oats don’t look as full as last year.”

  “Too much rain this summer. We won’t be fetchin’ a top price for them.”

  Tara’s mother said something in a low voice that she couldn’t make out, but she heard her father’s reply clearly enough.

  “No, no. Let the child have her music lessons.”

  Tara put down her scissors and listened intently. Twice a week, she walked the three miles into the village and took music lessons from Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. Standing in a tiny parlor cluttered with furniture, Tara sang her scales and practiced phrasing and sight-reading while the gray-haired Mrs. O’Shaughnessy accompanied her on a rickety piano. The old woman’s bent, arthritic fingers wrung extraordinary sounds out of that dilapidated instrument in much the same way that her father coaxed crops out of his forbidding, rock-strewn fields.

  These visits were a joy to Tara. Mrs. O’Shaughn
essy was firm yet encouraging with her. She opened up the world of music for Tara as if it were an enormous book, with each page yielding new treasures.

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy had studied voice in Dublin many years ago. She’d met a handsome young farmer visiting relatives in the town and married him, moving to this quiet village with never a backwards glance, but she’d brought her music with her.

  Mr. O’Shaughnessy had passed on long ago. A large framed photograph of him hung on the wall over the piano, his austere gaze sometimes distracting Tara when she sang.

  “What was he like?” she’d once asked, impulsively. “He looks so…serious.” Her youthful curiosity overcame any thought that the question might be a painful one.

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, however, looked up at the picture with a smile. Her fingers rested lightly on the piano keys as she considered the question.

  “Ah,” she said. “That was the face he showed to the world, but to me he showed his gentle side. Don’t be deceived by appearances, Tara. That photograph doesn’t half show the man’s quick smile and ready laugh. When we lost the wee one—”—Mrs. O’Shaughnessy’s only child had died of a fever at the tender age of two—”—I thought the sun would never shine for me again. I sat in that chair by the window, day after day, never stirring. I looked out the window but saw nothin’, not ponies and traps passin’ by on their way to the market, not little children hurryin’ along to school. Not the mist, springin’ up in the fields beyond the village. Everything was dead to me.

  “But Dennis waited, and brought me tea, and told me news of the townsfolk that I wasn’t even hearin’.”

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy absentmindedly tinkled a few keys on the piano. Tara saw her suddenly as she must have been those many years ago: young and strong, her long red hair caught back in a bun, her green eyes aloof with grief.

  “And what happened?”

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy smiled. “One day I looked at him and realized that he was sorrowin’ also. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a child. You see, in me grief, I selfishly believed that I was the only one in all the world who’d ever felt such a terrible ache. It was only together that we were able to go on.”

  The old woman stared at the picture for a long moment then said softly, almost to herself, “I hope one day you’ll be lucky enough to find a man that good, Tara.”

  So Mrs. O’Shaughnessy stayed on her in the village that had become her home. She gave piano and voice lessons to children—mostly children from town, whose parents had the funds to afford them. Tara, though, was her special project. The girl had a voice so pure and strong that it transformed a mere song into a wondrous thing that touched the heart of the listener.

  None of this did Mrs. O’Shaughnessy tell Tara. It wouldn’t do to let the girl get too full of herself. For now, Tara sang simply because she liked to sing. That was enough for a child of twelve.

  Mrs. O’Shaughnessy did, however, tell Tara’s parents about their daughter’s gift. She admired Kitty and Brendan McLaughlin for making room in their cash-strapped household budget for Tara’s lessons. It was her fondest hope that one day Tara could use her singing for something better than entertaining the cows during milking. The girl should be on a stage, singing to a vast audience. Still, the old woman knew it was improbable. Tara was a farmer’s daughter. She would most likely marry, bear children and stay close to the land, because it was the only life open to her.

  Tara was aware of none of this. She knew only that the lessons so dear to her might be taken away. She held her breath and waited, still listening.

  Her mother sounded worried. “But we can’t lose the land, Brendan.”

  “Ah, the cost of the lessons isn’t as dear as all that. A small thing, really.”

  “Sure and I’d hate for Tara not to have them. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy told me she’s never had a more gifted pupil.”

  Tara felt a warm flush of pleasure at the pride in her mother’s voice. A gifted pupil! It was a surprise to her. During her lessons, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was not all that free with her compliments.

  Her father was speaking again.

  “And don’t you know, when she sings in church on Sunday, everyone else quiets so they can listen?”

  So it was decided. The music lessons would continue. Tara bent down over her fabric as her parents entered the kitchen, pretending she hadn’t overheard. There was a lightness in her step the rest of the day, an appreciation of something precious that had nearly been lost. She surprised her mother with a hug and brought her father a cup of buttermilk—his favorite—as he sat reading the paper in his big chair that night.

  How lucky she was to have parents like these!

  Tara didn’t notice when, sometime later, her mother’s brass candlesticks and heirloom broach disappeared from the house. Her father stopped pulling out the gold watch and chain that he’d used to keep time with for as long as Tara could remember. He no longer went to the village pub for his weekly pint, and Tara’s mother worked later than ever into every night, tatting lace by candlelight to sell to the shopkeepers in town.

  Tara noticed none of this. Her music lessons continued and the taxes were paid.

  • • •

  The river flowed down along the western boundary of the little farm, hugging the slope until it curved and disappeared under an arched stone bridge. In the spring, heavy rains turned it into a wrathful, swollen torrent that violently overflowed its banks and sometimes the fields around it, saturating the land so that it could hold no seed.

  Now, however, the river was a gentle current, serenely coursing past the lush tangle of trees and coarse bracken blanketing its banks.

  Tara slipped out of her dress and underthings, leaving them draped over some shrubbery. She was unselfconscious as she moved toward the river. There was no one about to see her. Indeed, at twelve years old, she was as unaware of the slender grace of her long limbs as she was of the world beyond her farm. Sunlight muted by the trees dappled her face. It was a child’s face, rounded and trusting, but with the promise of a woman’s ripe beauty in its future.

  She knew every bend of this river. She dove from a mossy bank into the deepest part of the river and thrilled to the sensation of cool, clear water on her skin.

  Tara had helped her father cut hay all morning. It was hot, sticky labor. Wisps of prickly hay had worked their way up her sleeves and down the damp back of her dress. Now, as she cut through the water like a fish, the morning’s exertions felt as though they were being washed away. She swam close to the bottom, willing herself to stay underwater as long as possible before finally rising to the surface.

  Refreshed, she climbed back onto the bank and found her clothes. The warm sun quickly dried her skin; her thick chestnut hair was another matter. She wrung the water out of it as best she could, then dressed and started for the house.

  Tara’s mother pretended to be taken aback when she saw the wet hair.

  “Stopped for a swim, did you? And your poor, hard-workin’ father waiting in the field for his midday meal.”

  Tara played along with the joke.

  “He said he wasn’t hungry today. Said I should eat his dinner, along with me own.”

  They both laughed at that. Tara’s father had an appetite that inspired awe in the rest of the family, though there was nothing fat about him. He was a tall, strapping man with work-hardened arms and a loping gait that looked slow going enough but was actually—Tara had found—very hard to keep up with.

  Her mother took a knife and cut thick slabs of brown bread from the loaf she’d just taken from the oven. It smelled so good, Tara felt she almost could eat the whole loaf. She’d a healthy appetite herself. Tara poured freshly-brewed tea from the pot into an enamel bucket.

  “Would you like to eat dinner here, before you go back out to your father?” her mother asked.

  “No. I’ll eat with him.” That was the best part of her day, sitting with her father, eating and talking amid moist, sweet-smelling heaps of mown hay, the hay y
et to be cut standing like golden sentries around them.

  “Well take Padraig with you. Himself is not lettin’ me get to me chores today. He wants all the attention, he does.”

  Paddy sat on a high stool drawn up to the table, a piece of brown bread in his chunky fingers. Whether he was eating it or simply pulling it to pieces for study was difficult to tell. Hearing his name, he looked up at them with a deceptively innocent expression on his face and gurgled happily.

  Tara helped him down from his stool. She took the enamel bucket by the handle and carried her father’s dinner, wrapped in a linen cloth, in her other hand.

  “Come along, Paddy boy. You’ve been banished to the fields.”

  He slowed her pace and she worried that the tea would be cold by the time they reached her father. Looking at Paddy’s impish face, his dark blue eyes so like her own, she felt a surge of affection for him. Sure, her brother had more than a little of the devil in him, but she wouldn’t trade him for the world.

  Her father was still hard at work. As she and Paddy drew closer, Tara could see him walking behind the horse that she’d helped him tackle to the mowing machine that morning. He saw them and waved cheerily.

  Padraig, ambling behind her, chose that moment to stumble and fall to the ground. He lifted his face and frowned, trying to decide whether or not to cry. The taste of blood in his mouth decided him. He burst loudly into tears.

  Tara put down her bucket and moistened her cotton kerchief in a nearby spring. She knelt down beside him, gently dabbing at the blood with her kerchief.

  “There, there, little man. Such a fuss about a wee cut. It’s not so bad as all that.”

  He sobbed a few sobs more, for effect, then allowed Tara to lift him to his feet. She brushed a few stray wisps of hay from his shirt.

  But something else was wrong. She sensed it before she saw it. A sudden, hollow fear gripped her and made her breathless. She swung around, forgetting Paddy. Her father had stopped mowing, locked in a moment which she instinctively knew was all wrong, so wrong. He stood strangely still, then clutched at his chest and fell heavily to the ground.

 

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