The Belfast Girl at O’Dara Cottage

Chapter 2

While I’d been talking to Mary Kane, streamers of cloud had blown in from the sea. Now, as I crossed the deserted road to the door of the cottage where Paddy stood waiting for me, a gusty breeze caught the heavy heads of the hydrangea and brought a sudden chill to the warmth of the afternoon.

‘Ah come in, miss, do. Shure you’re welcome indeed. ’Tis not offen Mary an’ I has a stranger in the place.’

Mary waved me to one of the two armchairs parked on either side of the stove and handed me a cup of tea.

‘Sit down, miss. Ye must be tired out after yer journey. Shure it’s an awful long step from Belfast.’

She glanced up at the clock, moved her lips in some silent calculation and crossed herself.

‘Ah, shure they’ll be landed by now with the help o’ God,’ she declared, as she settled herself on a high-backed chair she’d pulled over to the fire. ‘It’s just the four hours to Boston and the whole family ‘ill be there to meet them. Boys, there’ll be some party tonight. But poor Bridget’ll be tired, all that liftin’ and carryin’ the wee’ ans back and forth to the plane.’

She fell silent and gazed around the large, high-ceilinged room with its well-worn, flagged floor as if her thoughts were very far away. The sky had clouded completely, extinguishing the last glimmers of sunshine. Even with the door open little light seemed to penetrate to the dark corners of the room. What there was sank into the dark stone of the floor or was absorbed by the heavy furniture and the soot-blackened underside of the thatch high above our heads.

I stared at the comforting orange glow beyond the open door of the iron range. One of the rings on top was chipped and a curling wisp of smoke escaped. As I breathed in the long-familiar smell of turf I felt suddenly like a real traveller, one who has crossed wild and inhospitable territory and now, after endless difficulties and feats of courage, sits by the campfire of welcoming people. The sense of well-being that flowed over me was something I hadn’t known for many years.

‘Is it anyways?’

The note of anxiety in Mary O’Dara’s voice cut across my thoughts. For a moment, I hadn’t the remotest idea what she was talking about. Then I discovered you had only to look at Mary O’Dara’s face to know what she was thinking. All her feelings were reflected in her eyes, or the set of her mouth, or the tensions of her soft, wind-weathered skin.

‘It’s a lovely cup of tea,’ I said quickly. ‘But you caught me dreaming. It’s the stove’s fault,’ I explained, as I saw her face relax into a smile. ‘Your Modern Mistress is the same as one I used to know. It’s ages since I’ve seen an open fire. And a turf fire is my absolute favourite.’

‘Shure it’s not what you’d be used to atall, miss.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘I used to be able to bake soda farls and sweep the hearth with a goose’s wing. I’m out of practice, but I’d give it a try.’

‘Ah shure good for you,’ said Paddy warmly.

He put down his china teacup with elaborate care and turned towards me a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

‘Now coulden’ I make a great match for a girl like you?’ he began. ‘There’s very few these days can bake bread. It’s all from the baker’s cart or the supermarket.’

I thought of the rack of sliced loaves by the door of my parents’ shop. Mother’s Pride, in shiny, waxed paper. They opened at eight every morning to catch the night workers coming home and the bread was always sold out by nine. ‘A pity we haven’t the room to stock more,’ said my father. ‘Or that the bakery won’t deliver two or three times a day.’

Bread was a good line. People came for a loaf and ended up with a whole bag of stuff. Very good for trade. And, of course, as my mother always added, the big families of the Other Side ate an awful lot of bread.

‘It was my Uncle Albert down in County Armagh taught me to make bread,’ I went on, reluctant to let thoughts of the shop creep into my mind. ‘He wouldn’t eat town bread, as he called it In fact, he didn’t think much of anything that came from the town. Except his pint of Guinness. His “medicine”, he used to call that.’

Paddy O’Dara’s face lit up. He looked straight at me, his eyes intensely blue.

‘Ah, indeed, miss, every man needs a drap of medicine now and again.’

‘Divil the drap,’ retorted Mary O’Dara. ‘I think, miss, it might be two draps or three. Or even more.’

It was true the arithmetic wasn’t always that accurate. I could never remember Uncle Albert being drunk, but he certainly livened up after he’d had a few. That was the best time to get him to tell his stories.

‘They’re all great men when they’ve had a few,’ she said wryly, as she offered us more tea.

‘Ah, no, Mary, thank you. Wan cup’s enough.’ Paddy got hurriedly to his feet. ‘I’ll just away an’ see to the goose.’

I smiled to myself, as she refilled my cup. Uncle Albert always went to ‘see to the hens’ when he’d been drinking.

‘I’ll have to go and see to the goose myself when I finish this,’ I said easily.

‘Ah, sure you knew we had no bathroom and I was wonderin’ how I would put it to ye.’

Her relief was written so plainly across her face that I wondered if she could ever conceal her feelings. I knew what my mother would say about someone like Mary. Only people with no education showed their feelings. Anyone with a bit of wit knew better. You couldn’t go round letting everyone see what you felt even if it meant ‘passing yourself’ or just ‘telling a white lie’.

My mother sets great store by saying the right thing. Most of her stories are about how she put so and so in their place, or gave them as good as she got, or just showed them they weren’t going to get the better of her.

Whatever my mother might think I knew Mary was no simple soul. She had a wisdom that I recognised. It was wisdom based on awareness of the world, of its joys and sorrows, of how people managed to live with them. I had known the same kindly, clear-eyed perspective on life for eighteen of my twenty-one years. I had lost it when Uncle Albert died and had not found it again. Until this moment.

‘Mrs O’Dara,’ I said quickly, ‘before Mr O’Dara comes back, you must tell me how much I’m to give you for my keep. Would four pounds a week be enough?’

‘Four pounds, miss . . . an’ the dear save us . . . I couldn’t take your money, shure you’re welcome to what we have, if it’s good enough for you.’

‘It’s more than good enough. But I must pay my way,’ I insisted quietly.

She had taken a basin from under the table that stood against the outside wall of the cottage and was putting the teacups to drip on the well-wiped oilcloth that covered its surface. She looked perplexed.

‘Have you a tea-towel, so I can dry up for you?’

‘Shure, two pounds would be more than enough, miss. I don’t know your right name.’

‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth Stewart.’

‘Well, two pounds, Miss Stewart, then, if you want to pay me.’

‘Oh you mustn’t call me that, Mrs O’Dara. I’m only called Miss Stewart when I’m in trouble with my tutor.’

She laughed gently and pushed a wisp of grey hair back from her face. ‘Well, indeed, no one calls me Mrs O’Dara either, savin’ the doctor and the priest. Nor Paddy either. Paddy woulden’ like me takin’ your money, miss . . . I mean Elizabeth.’

‘But you’re not taking my money. It’s just grocery money,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll put it in that teapot on the dresser every week, that wee one with the shamrock on it. You can tell him it was the little people. Say three pounds and we’ll split the difference.’

I went and took a striped tea-towel from the metal rack over the stove. Long ago, I had learnt to bargain for goods when I knew they were overpriced. I was good at it. This was the first time I had ever had to bargain upwards. I knew that Mary O’Dara would rather go short herself than exploit someone else. What a fool my mother would think she was not to take all she could get and close her hand on it.

I dried the cups and watched her put them away in the cupboard under the open shelves of the dresser. When she came back to the table, she ran the dish-cloth round the basin inside and out, slid it onto the shelf below, wiped the oilcloth and spread both the dish-cloth and the tea-towel to dry above the stove. She moved slowly, with a slight limp and a hunch in her shoulders that spoke of years of heavy work. But there was no resentment in her movements, neither haste, nor hurry, nor twitch of irritation.

I found myself thinking of a novel I’d read at school. The hero believed that all work properly done was an offering to God. His superiors thought he was mad, but his workmates didn’t. They were mechanics and the aircraft they serviced flew better than any others and seldom had accidents. The idea of a practical religion that worked on the principle of love really appealed to me, especially since the only one I was familiar with seemed to work entirely on the principle of retribution.

I smiled to myself. After Round the Bend I’d read everything Nevil Shute had written and enjoyed it enormously. Then, when my mother finally realised that he wasn’t on the A-level syllabus, there was a furious row. ‘Filling my head with a lot of old nonsense,’ was what she’d said.

Mary straightened up from the potato sack and came towards me. ‘Ah, ’twas my good angel that sent ye to my door today, Elizabeth, for I was heartsore. Sometimes our prayers be answered in ways we never thought of. Draw over to the table an’ talk to me, while I peel the spuds for the supper?’

‘I will indeed, Mary. But first, I really must go and look at the Aran islands.’

She laughed quietly as Paddy came back into the cottage and I went out, crossing the front of the house in the direction from which he had appeared. Somewhere round that side I’d find a well-trodden path to a privy in an outhouse, or the sheltered corner of a field.

The path led up behind the house, so steeply at first that there were stone steps cut into the bank. I stopped on the topmost one and found myself looking down on the roof. The cottage was set so close to the hillside, I could almost touch it from my vantage point. The thatch was a work of art. Combed so neatly there was not a straw out of place, it had an elaborate pattern of scalloping like the embroidery on a smock, all the way along the roof ridge, a dense weave to hold it firm against winter storms. Beyond the cottage, fields stretched down to the sea. Under the overcast mass of sky it lay calm and grey, but I could hear the crash of breakers where the long swells born in mid-Atlantic pounded the cliffs, a mere two fields away.

I counted the houses. Seven cottages facing west to the sea, each with turf stacks and smoke spiralling from their chimneys. Four more in various stages of dereliction, their roof timbers fallen, the walls tumbled, grass sprouting from the remains of the thatch. There should be another group of cottages facing south to Liscannor Bay, but from this angle they were hidden by high ground. I breathed a sigh of relief; here below me at least was a remnant of the community I had come in search of, a community once more than a hundred strong.

I stood for some time taking in every detail of the quiet, green countryside, the wide, grey sweep of the sea and the now-dark outlines of the islands. I thought of those who had once lived in the tumbled ruins, those who had been forced to go, those who had endured poverty and toil by remaining. Sadness swirled around me with the wind from across the sea. I knew nothing of these people, of their lives here in Lisara, or beyond in America, and yet some part of me felt as if I had known them, and this place, all my life. As I walked up the hillside, the sadness deepened. It was all the harder to bear because try as I might I could find no reason to explain my feelings.

By the time we cleared away the supper things the wind had strengthened and the dark clouds hurled flurries of raindrops onto the flags by the open door. Reluctantly, Paddy put down his pipe and went and closed it.

‘I may light the lamp, Mary, for it’s gone terrible dark. I think we’ll have a wet night.’

‘Indeed it looks like it, but shure aren’t the nights droppin’ down again forby.’

Paddy waited for the low flame to heat the wick and mantle, his face illuminated by the soft glow.

‘D’ye like coffee, Elizabeth?’

‘I do indeed, Mary, but are you making coffee? Don’t make it just for me.’

‘Oh no, no. Boys, I love the coffee meself, and Paddy too. Bridget always brings a couple of packets whinever she comes.’

Paddy put the globe back on the lamp and turned it up gently. The soft, yellowy light flowed outwards and the dark shadows retreated. I gazed across towards the corner of the kitchen where heavy coats hung on pegs. There the shadows were crouched against the wall. They huddled too beyond the dresser so that in the darkness I could barely distinguish the sack of flour leaning against the settle bed. But here I sat beyond the reach of the shadows in a warm, well-lit space. I leaned back in my chair and let my weariness flow over me, grateful for the moment that nothing was required of me.

Above my head, the lamplight caught the pale dust on the blackened underside of the thatch. The rafters were dark with age and smoke from the fire. A row of crosses pinned to the lowest rough-hewn beam ran the whole length of the seaward wall. Some were carved from bits of wood, others were woven from rushes now faded to a pale straw colour or smoked to a honey gold. A cross for every year? There were a hundred or more of them.

‘I’ll just get a wee sup of cream from the dairy.’

The lamp flickered and the fire roared as Mary opened the door and the wild wind poured in around us. As she pulled it shut behind her, I found myself gazing up at a tiny red flame that danced in the sudden draught. Beside it, on a metal shelf a china Virgin smiled benignly down upon the freshly wiped table, her hands raised in blessing over three blue and white striped cups and a vacuum pack of Maxwell House.

‘Boys, it would blow the hair off a bald man’s head out there,’ Mary gasped, as she leaned her weight against the door to close it, a small glass jug clutched between her hands.

‘That’s a lovely expression, Mary. I don’t know that one,’ I said, laughing. ‘I think Uncle Albert would’ve said, “It would blow the horns off a moily cow.”’

She repeated the phrase doubtfully, while Paddy chuckled to himself. ‘Ah Mary, shure you know a moily cow.’ He prompted her with a phrase in Irish I couldn’t catch. ‘Shure it’s one with no horns atall.’

She laughed and drew the high-backed chair over to the fire. I jumped to my feet.

‘Mary, you sit here and let me have that chair.’

‘Ah, no, Elizabeth, sit your groun’. I’m all right here.’