The Girl from Ballymor Read online

  She sat quietly for a few minutes more. So now there was only herself, Michael and Gracie left in the village. In the morning she would go to Father John, and arrange for Martin’s body to be collected, and buried. She didn’t know whether Martin had any money – if she could find any she would make sure he had a proper burial in the churchyard. If not, he would be put in the mass grave along with the latest famine victims. It was not something she could bear to think on, while she still sat with his mortal remains.

  ‘Bless you, Martin. May you be at peace now,’ she said, and hauled herself stiffly to her feet. It was time to go.

  Outside, the full moon shimmered across the landscape, oblivious to the events inside the cottage. Kitty raised her face to it and breathed in deeply. The air was fresh and clean, damp with the night’s dew but refreshing and cleansing.

  The goat had scrambled to its feet as she came out, and now Kitty untied her. ‘Come on, girl. Come on and I’ll see if I have some eggshells and potato scraps for you.’

  It walked obediently beside her, down the lane back to her own cottage, as though it knew its master was dead. There would be goat’s milk to drink in the morning, Kitty thought, but immediately chastised herself for thinking of her own family’s fortune, when poor Martin lay dead not a hundred yards away.

  CHAPTER 7

  Maria

  I stayed in the bar till closing time, sipping J2Os and mineral waters, enjoying the music and pondering Dan’s question. We’d been together so long – five years, and had lived together for three. Why upset the status quo? What was marriage anyway, other than a piece of paper that made it ‘official’? We loved each other, we were committed to each other – financially at least, since we had a joint mortgage on the house – what more would being married give us? I was scared of change, I knew that. Dan had spent ages talking me into buying a house with him. We’d originally rented a place together, and I’d liked the fact that if everything went wrong I could move out and give up the tenancy with only a month’s notice. Buying a house was a much bigger commitment. But it had made financial sense, and I had been certain Dan was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, even if I had never thought about marriage. I was still certain of that, although looking to the future was not something I was very good at. The future looked scary from here.

  I was better at thinking about the past. Dan and I had met in a pub, much like this one but in Camden Town. It had been packed to the rafters and there was a live band playing – some kind of alternative rock band, clothed all in black with spiky neon-coloured hair and dragons on their shirts. Aoife would have loved them. I’d been at the bar, trying to buy drinks for myself and two mates who loved this music and had dragged me along, and I was being totally ignored by the bar staff. Probably, I’d thought at the time, because my looks weren’t alternative enough. There was no gel in my hair, no rips in my jeans and no piercings in my nose. The bloke to my left at the bar – mouse-brown floppy hair, matching eyes, lovely smile – was also being ignored. He’d been waiting even longer than me. After a while the two of us began rolling our eyes, sighing with exasperation and then giggling.

  ‘I guess we’re not the kind of customers they want here,’ he’d said to me. ‘I’m Dan, by the way.’

  ‘Maria. Nice to meet you,’ I’d said, and instinctively put out my hand for him to shake. The formality of the gesture made us both giggle some more, and by the time we were both eventually served, we’d swapped phone numbers.

  He texted me on and off during the evening until, when I could take no more of the thrashing guitars and screaming lyrics, I’d told my mates I was going home with a headache, texted Dan, and we met up outside the pub. He’d walked me home the long way, via the canal towpaths, and we’d had our first kiss at the door of the flat I was renting at the time. I think I’d known even then that this was a relationship that would last. Why then was I unable to say a simple yes to his proposal? Or was it just the other thing, that I hadn’t told him, and that he should know before he had my answer? That he should have known before he asked the question?

  O’Sullivan’s band were now playing the Irish national anthem, and everyone in the pub stood up in respectful silence. Even Paulie shuffled off his bar stool and gazed into the middle distance, his eyes misty. I loved the patriotism of the Irish, but playing the national anthem signalled the end of the night, and indeed Aoife turned up the pub lights, the musicians packed up, and the pub slowly emptied of customers. Time for bed. No text from Dan about the bracelet yet.

  It was when I was half undressed, pottering around my room in my underwear, that he called me.

  ‘Hi, Maria. I found the bracelet.’ His voice sounded strangely taut, as though he was trying to control his emotions.

  ‘Great! Where was it?’ I felt a huge wave of relief. That bracelet was so important to me. So many memories were bound up in it, starting with Dad waltzing me around the sitting room to Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Dreaming My Dreams’ on the Christmas he’d given it to me, while Jackie watched, scowling, jealous of the attention I was getting from him.

  ‘It was where you said it might be. In the top drawer of your bedside cabinet.’ Dan took a deep breath. ‘Maria, is there something you need to tell me?’

  Oh God. I suddenly realised what else I had stuffed into that drawer, underneath shop receipts and packets of painkillers. I didn’t know what to say, how to start the conversation we were clearly just about to have, that we should have had weeks ago. My mind raced, hunting for the right words.

  ‘Maria, when did you take the test? Is it recent, or what? I mean, are you actually . . . right now . . . or . . .’

  I sat down heavily on the bed. This was it. No more denying it. I had to tell him, and it would change everything. ‘Two months ago.’

  ‘Two months? And you’re still . . . I mean, you haven’t lost it, or . . . shit, t-terminated it?’ His voice was shaking. ‘Because I don’t think I could handle . . .’

  ‘No. I’m still pregnant.’

  ‘Oh thank God! That’s . . . that’s bloody amazing! I’m sorry, Maria, but when I found it and saw the blue line, I was terrified it was an old one, and you’d . . . ended it, and never told me. Sorry, I don’t know how could I even think that. You wouldn’t do that. ’Course not. Sorry. Been drinking. Maybe I had a few too many. Oh wow! We’re going to be parents!’

  I had thought about a termination. God, I’d never admit that to him, but the fear of the future that had coursed through me when I did the test and that blue line appeared had been so profound that researching abortion clinics had been my first thought. It was very swiftly replaced with the knowledge that, whatever happened, I could not go through with that. I couldn’t do it to Dan.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ I said. Parents. God, what a big, grown-up, terrifying word that was. I found myself crying again. Tears came so easily these days – hormones, I guessed.

  ‘Wow! When? Do you know the due date? Have you been to see a doctor? How have you been feeling? And when . . . when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I’m about fifteen weeks. It’s due in mid-January.’

  ‘Fifteen weeks? Already? But how long have you known?’

  ‘A few weeks. I was going to tell you soon . . . just hadn’t quite found the right moment. I was . . . kind of in denial, I suppose. I’m scared.’

  ‘Aw, but, Maria, you should be excited, not scared. Is everything OK? Are you OK?’

  I was silent. Images of Jackie rushed through my mind: her berating the five-year-old me for tipping my crayons out over her polished oak floor, telling me to ‘grow up and stop crying’ when as a seven-year-old I’d fallen off my bike and cut my knee, sneering that ‘even dead bodies float’ when I’d come home proudly bearing a swimming certificate from Brownies. What if being a bad mother was an inherited trait, and I’d be as bad as she was?

  ‘Maria? What’s wrong? You’ve gone quiet. God, I wish I was there with you now.’

  So did I. I to
ok a huge breath, but even so my words came out as a sob. ‘What if I’m no good as a mum? What if I’m like Jackie?’

  ‘But what if you’re like your dad? I never knew him, but from everything you’ve told me it sounds like he was a wonderful man and a fantastic parent.’

  ‘He was.’ He’d made up for Jackie. His death had driven Jackie and me even further apart, if that was even possible. I was seventeen when he’d died, and I moved out a week after his funeral, not wanting to spend any longer around Jackie than I had to without Dad there. We’d had a huge row. Jackie accused me of leaving when she needed me most, but couldn’t she see that I’d needed a mum? A proper mum, with warm, welcoming arms, who would be proud of me no matter what. I couldn’t cope with her coldness and distance once Dad was no longer there to act the go-between.

  ‘So, there you are then. Half your genes come from him. You’ll be great. I mean, this is a life-changing experience for both of us, and I won’t deny it, I’m nervous too, but – I always wanted to be a dad. And although we may not be perfect, I’m sure we’ll be good enough, and that’s all that matters.’

  He was so wise. And he was right, I knew it in my heart. But I still could not get my head round it all. Would I ever feel ready to get married and be a mum? An image of me standing at an altar, heavily pregnant in a scarlet wedding dress looking like an overripe tomato flashed through my mind. Is that how it would be? Is it what I wanted? I still needed time alone, to get myself straight. It was all happening so quickly.

  ‘Dan, it’s late. I should get to bed now.’

  ‘I suppose you need to get a good amount of sleep, in your condition.’

  ‘Please don’t say that – “in your condition”. Hate that phrase.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Hey, weren’t we always careful? How did you even get pregnant? Shit, Maria.’ His excitement suddenly seemed to ebb away. ‘Oh God. Am I making a fool of myself being excited about becoming a dad? It’s not mine, is it? That’s why you hadn’t told me, and why you ran off to f-fucking Ireland when I proposed. You’re pregnant with someone else’s kid. Fuck, that’s it, isn’t it?’ His words were beginning to slur. This was not the sort of conversation to have when he’d been drinking, but here we were, in the middle of it.

  ‘Wait, no, let me explain . . .’

  ‘Jesus, Maria. I can’t take this right now. You said yourself, it’s late. We’ll talk again.’

  ‘Dan, just let me—’

  But he was gone. I tried to ring back immediately but he must have turned his phone off. I curled up foetus-like on the bed and hugged a pillow against my tummy. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to damage my relationship with Dan. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And yet, I had damaged it by not telling him about the baby until now. I put a hand on the small but firm bump below my belly button. What if we split up over this? What if I ended up pregnant and alone, losing the best thing in my life? And how on earth was I ever going to cope with motherhood, whether we were together or not?

  Maybe keeping it secret had been a bad idea, and I should tell people, talk it through and come to terms with it in that way. I instantly thought of Declan. He seemed like such a good listener, and that’s what I needed right now. Someone to listen.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kitty

  The village was a lonely place after the death of Martin O’Shaughnessy. Kitty wondered about moving, but where could they move to? They had no money. They could just manage to pay the rent on the cottage and their tiny potato patch, as long as Michael was able to get work. It was a precarious existence. Kitty often dreamed of a different life – one across the ocean in America, with Patrick, and the other children still alive and thriving. One where they had a two-storey house, a garden and regular income. With a park nearby where Patrick could teach the boys to play hurling. Where there were shops within a few minutes’ walk – shops with fresh goods on the shelves, goods that she could afford to buy. A life where they were never hungry or cold. If only she and Patrick had taken the children and emigrated, before the accident, before the famine. If only they’d had the money for the passage, they’d have done it. It was the life they should have had. Not this one of poverty, starvation and death.

  The last few months, since Martin’s demise, had been a little easier. She’d taken the goat, milked her every morning and the family had welcomed the fresh goats’ milk and cheese. The chicken had laid an egg, sometimes two, every day. They’d had enough potatoes between the remains of the sack Martin had given her and the others she’d found still tucked away in his cottage. She’d cleared his cottage, retaining anything of value or use to her, before Waterman’s agent came to take it.

  And it had been summer – bringing lighter days and warmer weather.

  But now autumn was here. It was almost time for the potato harvest. The summer crop had been a disaster, but they’d been hopeful the main crop would have escaped the blight. Kitty had been ignoring the wilted stems and blackened leaves, praying that was caused by the damp, cold weather at the end of the summer and not by blight. They needed the autumn crop to be a good one, to provide enough potatoes to store, to last them through the rest of the autumn, the winter and spring. After these potatoes were lifted there would be no more produce from the ground until the early summer. Everything was resting on this crop being a success. It had to be a success. The alternative was unthinkable.

  In Ballymor, as the potato harvest time approached, there was a palpable tension in the air. Men were discussing when they should lift the potatoes, but no one was mentioning the blight, or speculating on how good a harvest it would be. Last year they’d all thought the autumn harvest would be a bumper crop, and it had turned out to be disastrous. It was as if no one wanted to court fate by predicting either a good or bad harvest. It was, after all, a matter of life or death.

  Another week, people were saying. Another week, and it’d be time. Kitty nodded and prayed daily that the harvest would be a good one, and the potatoes would be unblighted.

  And then the rain came. For five days it rained solidly, so that the fields turned to quagmires and the roads to ravines. There would be no harvest until it stopped raining and dried out a little. Every day Kitty stood at the door of her cottage and looked to the west, hoping for signs of clear skies and better weather to come. But it was not to be.

  Michael went off to work every morning regardless, coming home in the evening soaked through after a day labouring in the rain. Until the day he came home at lunchtime, with a worried expression on his face.

  ‘Michael, why are you home so early?’ Kitty asked. She’d been churning some goats’ milk to make cheese.

  He didn’t answer immediately. He sat down heavily on a chair, and leaned over to dip a cup into the bucket of water. He drank it thirstily, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and sighed.

  ‘Waterman’s laid me off,’ he said. ‘Well, not Waterman himself. His agent, William Smith, on Waterman’s orders. They’re economising. Wanting more work from fewer men, so they are.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We were lined up and every second man sent home. I was one of the unlucky ones.’

  ‘But just today, Michael? They’ll be wanting you back again tomorrow, or next week at least?’ Kitty twisted her apron in her hands. If Michael stopped earning money how would they pay their rent?

  He raised his eyes to her and shook his head again. ‘He said this was a permanent reduction. Waterman’s saying his crops have failed too.’

  ‘That’s an outright lie,’ Kitty said.

  ‘I know. The grain harvest was grand, back in August. I should know – I brought half of it in. His beef cattle are fat and healthy. All that food, all being exported to England. And us with our few meagre potatoes. ’T’isn’t right, Mammy. I’m glad not to work for him any more. I’ll find another job. I’ll find something. Don’t you be worrying, now.’

  She crossed the room to him, knelt beside him and hugged him. Grace, who had been
sitting in the corner listening quietly, came over as well, and Kitty put an arm around her too. She didn’t share Michael’s optimism about him finding more work, but she wasn’t going to say anything. With the chicken, the goat and the potatoes they had enough to eat, and the harvest would surely be a good one. Maybe Waterman would hold off from asking for the rent, now that his agent had put Michael out of a job.

  *

  Over the next couple of days, Kitty found herself appreciating having Michael around. He’d always worked so hard – gone from dawn to dusk – that she’d often felt she did not see enough of him. But now that he was out of work he was able to do some of the heavier jobs around the cottage that she’d been putting off. He repaired the roof where some thatch had come loose. He cut back the heather and gorse beside the track that was threatening to take over, now that there was no one else left in the village to keep it under control. He played with Gracie and sat for hours sketching her and Kitty.

  Kitty knew it couldn’t last, but while she had him at home, she made the most of him.

  One day he was down at their little field, checking on the condition of the soil and deciding whether it was time to lift the potatoes yet. Kitty was finishing a few chores in the cottage and had planned to follow him there, when she saw two men on horseback coming up the track to the village. She laid aside the broom she’d been using, smoothed her hair and apron, and stood at the door to her cottage. As they approached, she realised with trepidation that it was Thomas Waterman and his agent, William Smith.

  Waterman pulled his horse to a standstill a little way off, but Smith continued right up to her cottage and dismounted. Waterman did not. He was staring out across the moors towards the sea.

  ‘Kitty McCarthy?’ Smith said. ‘Your rent’s due.’

  ‘Sir? Not till next week, I thought.’ Kitty frowned in confusion. She had not got the date wrong, she was sure.