Tag: ira

In Turbulent Times

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Those who went to the house swore it had never been cleaned since Maggie’s mother was alive. It seemed that Maggie lived, ate, slept and washed in only one room. All the other rooms were packed to overflowing with the accumulated belongings and unsorted junk of at least two generations of Potters. In several corners in the house stood unemptied buckets of Maggie’s excrement and urine which neighbours said she used as fertiliser in her garden. Even more remarkable were the envelopes and canisters and small cardboard boxes filled with money—more than four thousand pounds in all—that passed to a man in the city, a nephew, it was said, who had never ever been to see his aunt in all the years that anyone in the village could remember. Old Rachel Dunn, Willy’s arthritic mother, was still alive in a nursing home in Ardross, a helpless cripple, clinging tenaciously to life at the age of eighty-seven.
Into Maggie Potter’s ill-starred house Liam and Nora moved in the first week of January 1943 when all the country could talk about was the rout of the German forces at Stalingrad. But Nora’s mind dwelled not on the frozen snows of Russia nor on the hot desert sands, where Tom Carney was fighting, but on the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic where the German submarine wolf-packs prowled: grim, determined, unseen predators of the convoys from America. Joe Carney was among the prey, and Nora feared for his life. She wrote to him almost every week, giving him all the gossip from the village and keeping to herself her misery and her cherished memories.
They’ve actually made a good job of fixing up the house and painting and decorating it. I never thought that Maggie Potter’s place could look so clean and trim. Even the outside walls have been whitewashed and the doors and window frames painted the usual dark green. As in the old schoolhouse, we have a kitchen and a scullery and a sitting room downstairs, two bedrooms and a box room upstairs, and a view of the sea from the back. The sea is pale blue and grey today and sparkling where the sun is shining on it. I used to love the sea but now I hate it for separating us and threatening you with so much danger. And yet I still love to walk along the shore and watch the endless convoy of waves reach the rocks and shingle and break there and whisper to me with their parting breath that they have seen your ship on their way across the ocean and that you are well and send your love.
Later that day, for the first time since she had written to Joe to tell him of her pending marriage to Liam Dooley, Nora mentioned in her letter that she was unhappy.

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The Unquiet Land

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Now Caitlin too was becoming angry, her face flushed. “Padraig has never wanted me. You do him a great injustice. He only wants to see me married to you. Until then there can be no more sinning.” She felt her anger subside like a guttering candle. She held her hands out to Michael, enticing him to come close to her again.
He did. He took her hands in his and gazed into her eyes with a mix of love, disappointment and confusion.
“You know I’m going to church again, Michael,” Caitlin said gently, soothingly. “I am a baptized Catholic. Father Riordan baptized me and Nora when we were born and my mother died. He was afraid that we might die too. Unbaptized. And be put in a sack in a hole behind Killyshannagh Chapel.”
“Finn MacLir would never have allowed that,” Michael said. “He would have seen you buried properly. Along with your poor mother.”
“My father was too distraught to know what was going on,” Caitlin said. “Una Slattery, when we were very little, used to take us to church when my father was at the fishing.”
“Do you realise how much you have abused your father’s trust, Caitlin?”
“I never did,” Caitlin protested. “I was a new-born baby when I was baptized. I was a little child when Una took us to church. You’re right though. These things were done without my father’s knowledge or consent, but don’t blame me or Nora.”
Michael remained dubious, his simple heart troubled. Though he knew that Caitlin and Nora were not to blame, he still felt that Finn MacLir had been cheated by others. But he could not put his feelings into words.
“Be that as it may, Michael,” Caitlin continued, “before I could receive Communion I had to go to Confession. I had to tell Padraig everything. Everything about us, Michael.”
“Does this mean, Caitlin,” Michael began awkwardly, yet with a heart-stopping surge of hope, “does this mean that you are going to marry me?”
“Yes, of course, I am going to marry you, Michael. You know I am. I love you.”
“When, Caitlin? When will we be married?”
“Soon. It takes a lot of planning.”
Caitlin’s answer sounded evasive to Michael. Hope dropped from him like a rock from a wall. Suspicion filled the hole it left. He lowered his eyes and half turned to walk away. “Whenever you are ready, Caitlin,” he said, his voice charged with controlled anger, “come and let me know.

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In Turbulent Times

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‘Right, Joe. And even with the tractors and the rest, Michael and Danny Boylan are still finding it difficult to cope. They’re working long, hard hours every day.’
‘They could bring in a couple of land girls,’ Joe suggested teasingly.
‘They’re not that desperate,’ Caitlin retorted. ‘A lot of farmers don’t want city girls in the fields. I don’t know of any around these parts.’ Then Caitlin leaned forward in her chair with a serious look on her face. ‘Joe, I’m glad you’re here and Michael isn’t. I want to talk to you about something important.’
‘What would that be?’
‘Nora. She’s not happy, is she?’
Joe felt uneasy. ‘Oh she seems content enough.’
‘Joe, you’re not being honest with me,’ Caitlin interrupted. ‘You and I both know she should never have married Liam Dooley. Oh he’s been a good husband. I’m not complaining on that score. He worships her. He’ll do anything for her. Maybe he does be out a lot, but he’s a teacher and he’s involved in a lot of out-of-school activities. Local history societies, the WEA, and all that. But he’s not the man for Nora. He’s twenty-two years older than she is. He’s set in his ways, and they’re not Nora’s ways. He’s stuffy and fussy and a creature of habit. Nora needs someone who’ll … who’ll open doors and windows and let her fly. If you see what I mean.’
‘I do, Mrs Carrick.’
Caitlin got up to pour tea into two cups on the kitchen table and added milk and sugar. ‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and rationing ends,’ she said. ‘Will you have a scone, Joe? Or a slice of treacle bread and butter? Home-made country butter.’
‘No thanks, Mrs Carrick.’ Joe accepted the proffered cup of tea.
‘Joe, why did Nora marry Liam Dooley?’ Caitlin asked unexpectedly.
Joe was taken by surprise. ‘I suppose she discovered that she loved him. They were working together at …’
‘Blethers, Joe. I want an honest answer. And I know she would have told you. You above all people.’
Joe, put on the spot, tried drinking tea to cover his discomfiture. ‘Haven’t you asked Nora herself? You’re her mother.’
‘But not a good mother,’ Caitlin declared with commendable honesty. ‘She’d be more likely to confide in Michael than in me, but she hasn’t. Not in this case. Nora and I have never been all that close. Not as close as a mother and an only daughter ought to be. We get on badly, she and I.

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The Unquiet Land

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“For both of us, of course. And for Michael and Mother Ross.”
They had been standing in the main street. Now they began to walk slowly down the hill towards the square. Caitlin felt easier when Padraig could not look into her eyes and read the secrets there.
“Caitlin, I do not believe you can answer for your father anymore,” Padraig said. “A rift has opened between Finn MacLir and me that will be difficult to close. I was once like a son to him. I am a stranger now. And the love we used to share is all on my side.”
“Padraig, please don’t say that. Finn MacLir could never disown you. He’s not a vindictive man.”
“He’s a proud man. With a hatred of religion,” Padraig argued. “I represent religion. I preach the truth of God that Finn despises. As he denies God, he denies me. As he despises the truth of God he despises me.”
“You are taking everything much too personally, Padraig.” Caitlin felt herself becoming angry with the priest. She thought he was being unreasonable. “My father doesn’t despise you. He loves you, Padraig. In many ways he still regards you as the son he never had. You even more than Michael. There was a bond between you and my father that is still as strong as ever. He admires your achievement, Padraig. He gives you full credit for everything you have done. But he is disappointed that you chose to be a priest. You could have been a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. You could have gone into any of a dozen different professions. But you entered the priesthood and you can’t expect a man like my father to be pleased about that.”
“I did not choose the priesthood, Caitlin,” Padraig said. “God chose me to be a priest. He has work for me to do. And I believe that part of that work is to save the soul of Finn MacLir. God sent Finn to save my life for Him. In return I must save the eternal life of Finn MacLir. God wants him, Caitlin. God is the good shepherd fretting over the loss of one sheep. He has sent me home here to bring that lost sheep to the fold.” Padraig grew excited. “That is my mission, Caitlin. To bring Finn MacLir to accept Christianity. And not Finn alone. I am hoping that you too will reaffirm your faith in God. You must, Caitlin. You cannot continue to live in darkness, in hopelessness.” A fanatic gleam shone in Padraig’s wild, dark eyes. “Could that be what is troubling you?”
They stopped again in the village square.
Caitlin realised that she was standing in Padraig’s shadow. It was a normal shadow, elongated by the lowering sun, but not monstrous, not threatening. Out of the shadow truth had come.

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The Unquiet Land

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“What’s wrong down there, Tom?”
“Ach it’s yourself, Caitlin.” Tom turned to look at her and Nora with eyes scrunched up against the sun. “Oh they just fished a body out of the harbour.”
Michael, Caitlin thought immediately, and her face paled with fright. “Who… who was it?” she asked in a faltering voice.
“It was your Michael that pulled him out,” Tom declared, as if anxious to be the first to tell her.
“Pulled who out?” Caitlin asked.
“Carney’s youngest boy. Joe-Joe.”
“Is he dead?” Nora asked fearfully.
“I don’t know.” Tom spat tobacco on to the wharf. “Dr Starkey’s down there now.”
“What happened?” Caitlin and Nora, looking down on the boat, could see Michael now. He was bent over in the middle of the group with his hands on his knees.
“Well, I didn’t see it myself,” said Tom. “Seamus Slattery just a while ago came up from the boat saying there was nothing he could do, so he was going to the bar for a drink. As far as he could tell, it seems that young Joe-Joe was fishing over the side of Carney’s boat—your father’s boat—when he fell overboard into the water. Carney was in the galley doing woodwork and he didn’t hear the little fellow calling for help. It was God’s doing that sent Michael Carrick to the boat to ask Carney to do something for your father. He fished Joe-Joe out. I think he jumped in and lifted the boy into one of the rowing boats and then called Carney to bring a rope.”
“Joe-Joe can’t swim then?”
“Oh I dare say he can splash about a bit. But he’s only what? Four? Five? Six? Damned if I can keep track of the youngsters anymore.” Tom spat again. He pushed a gnarled, arthritic hand under his cap and scratched his white head. “I dare say he panicked.”
On the boat Michael straightened up. He saw Caitlin and Nora and waved but he did not smile.
One by one the other men unfolded like ferns and almost hid the slight figure of Dr Starkey. Caitlin saw only the round, bald patch on the back of the doctor’s head. Then someone lifted a bundle wrapped in blankets and carried it over his shoulder from the outer boat across the middle one to the inner boat by the wharf-side. Others reached out hands to help steady the man—Joe Carney himself—as he clambered over the sides of the boats…

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The Unquiet Land

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and, unlike Padraig, who did his best with what physical strength he had, Michael was a farmer to his finger-tips: strong and tireless, with an instinctive knowledge of the land and its needs, bred into him through countless generations of farming ancestry. For these very different characteristics Caitlin loved them both.
Michael was late today and that was unlike him. He knew how much Caitlin hated unpunctuality and he never showed up late for anything without good cause. Something had delayed him. Caitlin stood up from the rock on which she had been sitting and started along the footpath to the harbour, hoping she would meet Michael on the way. A strong breeze from the sea flicked her 1ong, black hair and flappered her skirt like a flag on a pole as she strolled along the path. Tussocks of grass bent over in the breeze like peasants in potato fields. Seagulls sliced the wind with bladed wings. Shags skimmed over the waves, and gannets plunged for fish like suicides. The air smelt of sea-wrack and salty pools.
Then Caitlin thought she heard her name being called. She stopped and turned and saw Nora hurrying towards her. She waited till Nora arrived beside her, breathless and smiling, almost laughing.
“You seem to be in good form today, Nora,” Caitlin said.
Nora linked her arm through Caitlin’s, and they dandered on towards the harbour. “Oh Caitlin, Flynn’s back. He’s back for good. We’re not going to live in Dublin after all.”
“Well, no wonder you’re in good form,” Caitlin said. “I’m glad you’re not leaving. I’d have been lost without you.”
The girls sauntered along in silence, arm in arm, almost mirror images of each other, save that Caitlin wore an old blue cardigan and Nora a brown, woollen coat. An unbiased observer might have said that Nora was the prettier of the two. There was a hardness to the line of Caitlin’s mouth and a certain insensitivity in her eyes, both of which were absent from the gentler, softer features of her sister. Otherwise they bore the physical characteristics of twin girls. As they approached Purdy’s Point they stopped to watch the waves break on the black dike and the wrack-covered rocks. Nora kept her arm entwined in Caitlin’s but she said nothing.
“What’s on your mind, Nora?” Caitlin asked at last.
Nora hesitated, her eyes still fixed on the choppy sea. Then she turned to Caitlin and said, “I was wondering about you and Michael.”
“What about me and Michael?” Caitlin asked, though she knew well what was coming.

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The Unquiet Land

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“He’s given them up. He doesn’t like Dublin very much anymore. He wants to stay in the village and work in the quarry again. He says that’s the only life for him.”
“Oh Nora, that’s wonderful news.” Mother Ross was almost weeping. “I didn’t want you to go to Dublin. It’s so far away. I think that was worrying your father too. He was beginning to think you’d leave and he’d never see you or Dermot again.”
“He’s silly, Mammy.”
“He’s old, Nora. You said so yourself.”
The two fell silent, each distracted by separate thoughts of Finn MacLir.
Then Mother Ross sighed, sipped her tea, and stirred in another spoonful of sugar. “There’s shortbread in the biscuit tin by your elbow.”
“No thank you. The tea’s fine on its own.”
“Push the tin over here then,” Mother Ross said. “I’ll have some.”
Nora did as her stepmother requested. “I think you’re eating too much, Mammy.”
“Oh, don’t you start, Nora. I get enough of that from Dr Starkey.” Mother Ross took a bite from her wedge of shortbread, ate it with obvious relish and then said, “So Flynn’s decided to stay in the village. The big city’s not for him after all.”
“No. He keeps thinking he ought to be in Dublin. His Uncle Finnegan there is very fond of him. But every time he goes to Dublin he gets homesick for the mountains. He’s up at the quarry now to see about keeping his job there. He’s been in Dublin since the general election in December, over two months now. But they’ll take him back. He’s a good worker. He’s a Drumard stone-man, Mammy. He’ll always be a Drumard stone-man.”
Or stone dead. The thought rushed unbidden into Mother Ross’s head, but unlike the voluble palm reader her tongue refused to give it utterance. Nevertheless she felt impelled to say something, if only to warn Nora. Perhaps she should talk to her husband and remind him that his responsibilities to her and their son were greater than his commitment to Republican idealism.
“I’d be a lot happier,” she said, “if Flynn Casey wasn’t also Rebel Casey.” Mother Ross clasped her stepdaughter’s hand to emphasise the seriousness of her words. “Nora, I’m very fond of Flynn. I know that a lot of people don’t like him, and perhaps some of them have good cause not to. But, Nora, there’s a mood in the country. An ugly mood. If there’s going to be trouble, Flynn’s going to be mixed up in it, and I’m afraid for both of you. And for little Dermot.”

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In Turbulent Times

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‘With Liam Dooley?’ Joe’s face took on a puzzled look. ‘You could have had your pick of every young man from here to Kerry. Why Liam Dooley of all people?’
‘Oh Joe, don’t say it like that. It just happened. I don’t know how. Something I said. We were both upset. And then we were consoling each other.’
‘In bed?’
‘Please, Joe. Don’t make it sound worse than it is. God alone knows how much I have paid for that one sin. And I shall go on paying for it till the day I die. God is very severe on sinners sometimes, Joe. His punishment seems out of all proportion to the sin. But He has His reasons, they say. And for some reason He has been severe in his punishment of the Carrick family.’
‘But Nora, going to bed with a man doesn’t mean you have to marry him. Nor does it mean that the one you might eventually want to marry is going to hold it against you if he knew about it.’
‘What if I was pregnant?’ Nora asked. ‘What if I was carrying the first man’s child? Wouldn’t that make a difference? Wouldn’t the man I might eventually want to marry hold that against me?’
Joe looked away and said nothing. A harshness, a bitterness, in Nora’s voice was new and discomfiting. But the more he thought about it the more justified it was. Fate—or God—had treated Nora cruelly.
‘Can you be sure?’ Joe asked. ‘Can you be sure you’re going to have a baby?’
‘I’m not,’ Nora replied.
‘You’re not sure?’ Joe cried. ‘Then why did you …?’
‘Oh Joe, please!’ Nora shouted in exasperation. ‘I didn’t mean I’m not sure. I meant I’m not going to have a baby.’
‘Nora, I’m confused. I’m not thinking too clearly.’
‘After I slept with Liam I was a month overdue with my period.’ Nora gushed out the words. She was embarrassed. It had been easier to put this in a letter. These were matters a woman did not discuss with a man. But Joe had rights to a full explanation. She had to tell him everything, if only to make herself feel less miserable by justifying what she did. ‘That never happened before. I was always regular. I was frightened, Joe. I was sure I was pregnant.’
‘Did you talk to your mother about it?’
‘I couldn’t, Joe. I wanted to. I tried to. But I was so ashamed, so frightened of what she’d think of me. I couldn’t do it. I suppose I kept hoping …’

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The Unquiet Land

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a while, but we don’t get along all that well. She’s a straitlaced Puritan like many here in the village. And I hate Belfast, don’t you? There’s a brother and his wife in Liverpool, but I’m never going to England. I have a good friend in Derry. You know her. Molly McEvoy. Her husband was killed last year. She has often said that she and I should live together.”
“Derry’s not much improvement on Belfast,” Finn pointed out.
“No,” said Mother Ross, “but it might have to do. I don’t have a great deal of choice.”
“Come home with me, Jinnie,” Finn said impulsively. “I need someone to look after the twins. They’re nearly six years old now, and Una Slattery’s finding them too much of a handful with four children of her own. Caitlin’s a self-willed little imp who needs some of the wildness spanked out of her. Hard to believe they’re sisters, let alone twins. My house is comfortable, and there’s plenty of room. Come on. I’ll take you up there right away. I’ve the pony and trap on the road beyond.”
That was twenty years ago—twenty-one come June—and Mother Ross had lived in Finn MacLir’s house ever since. Six months after moving in as the keeper of his house and the childminder of his two young daughters, six months of slander-scandaled tongue-wagging in the village of Corrymore, Mother Ross became the second wife of Finn MacLir. Arthur Hamilton, as justice of the peace, married them in the dining room of the large, stone house. A party began on that first Friday in December, 1898, that people still talked about two decades later. And the first Friday of every month since then, whenever he was home, Finn and his friends met to celebrate yet again the night he married the widow, Sinead O’Neill, otherwise known as Mother Ross. Though she was Mrs Finn MacLir by law, she was, and remained, Mother Ross by custom. Even Caitlin never stopped calling her by the only name she had ever known her by.
“My mother was Annie Hogan before she married Jimmy Ross,” Mother Ross once related to Caitlin. “She was the midwife here in Corrymore for many years. I was the youngest of her seven children and I used to help her at the birthing. I was with her that terrible night when you and Nora were born, Caitlin. When the arthritis crippled my mother’s fingers, I took her place. I never had any children of my own.” A sad, faraway look had come into her eyes. “I was pregnant when my husband was drowned at sea, and I lost the baby in a miscarriage. I survived on my own after Jimmy’s death using midwifery skills learned at my mother’s side. I not only took

over her job, I was given her name at the same time. Mother Ross. It has stuck to me ever since.”

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In Turbulent Times

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had been told what to do if Nora Carrick took one of these seizures. Yet they all stood back along the grey walls, and the children ran to a safe distance and watched with eyes and mouths wide open while the young girl’s legs jerked up and down, and her head struck the ground, and her mouth opened and closed expelling a kind of froth like a rabid animal. Joe saw what was happening as he reached the square on his way home from the harbour. He rushed forward, wrapped Nora in his jacket and placed his pen-knife between her teeth. He remembered Dr Alexander’s saying she could bite her tongue during this stage of her fit unless something like a fountain pen was thrust between her teeth on one side of her mouth. With one knee on the ground, Joe held Nora against the other while her convulsive movements began to subside. He wiped her face clean with a handkerchief. He had seen that face so many times before but never till that moment did he notice how pretty it was. Her eyes below the straight-cut fringe of hair were closed. She had rather prominent cheek-bones and a dimple at each side of her mouth when she smiled. She was not smiling then. Her cheek rested against his dark-blue jersey as if she were listening to his heartbeat. Her black hair smelled sweetly with a soft fragrance as if freshly washed with a scented soap. That smell lingered in his nostrils for days, and each time it came back to him it brought exciting new feelings, like those he used to feel in his stomach at the approach of Christmas or a birthday or at the prospect of an outing. And yet different too. More subtle, more gentle, and somehow infinitely sweeter. And he would recall the pale, round face framed in its black, shiny, scented hair pressed against his heart, and the eyes flickering open, so dark and deep and troubled those young, serious eyes. Joe could not remember if he had felt then the same exquisite feelings he had had later when, unbidden, the picture of Nora’s face returned to fill his mind for days on end. Nor could he remember if he had noticed then the rounded outline of her young breasts which he later recalled as having been in contact with his heaving chest.
How momentous those few minutes had been for him, and yet how many of the minor details he had been oblivious to at the time. Perhaps the significance of the scene had been a later invention. He remembered how the crowd had closed in around him, and everyone looked at the peaceful body in his arms as Nora awoke from her frightening ordeal. Had she taken his hand and held it till Dr Alexander came and led her to his car? Joe thought she had but now he wasn’t sure. He remembered standing in the square with his jacket hanging over his arm, watching Dr Alexander’s car drive away …

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