Woman of the House Page 18

  “Will everybody please be seated,” David instructed, coming through from the kitchen bearing a tray of steaming soup bowls and placing them at the four places set on the table.

  The Doc uncurled himself off the couch and eased the protesting cat on to the floor where she arched her back and headed underneath the table.

  The soup was thick and creamy and Kate felt that it was a meal in itself, but Hannah followed up with laden plates of main course. When Kate remarked that the spring lamb was delicious, Hannah smiled and said, “Could be Mossgrove lamb: Danny the butcher and his father before him always bought from the Phelans, as you know.”

  “It tastes wonderful anyway,” Kate told her, thinking that they might not be buying Phelan lambs much longer.

  “This is a grand time of the year,” said the Doc, sensing her train of thought: “lambs and daffodils and the first of the rhubarb. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”

  “You stole into the kitchen,” she accused him, “and you saw the rhubarb.”

  “Have you got rhubarb already, Hannah?” Kate asked in surprise.

  “I put an old iron bucket over it to bring it on fast,” Hannah told her. “I wanted to have it for David for Easter. He always loved rhubarb since he was a small, bold brat.”

  “Oh, Hannah, you’re a brick!” David said. “I can never remember an Easter that you did not have rhubarb and custard. To me nothing’s better than rhubarb and custard at Easter.”

  Kate had to agree with him when Hannah brought a big bowl of pink rhubarb in from the kitchen.

  “Do you know the Irish for rhubarb?” David asked Kate.

  “No,” she answered in a puzzled voice, “can’t say that I ever heard it.”

  “Ah, David, for goodness sake,” Hannah protested, “why do you always have to remind us of that every year?”

  “What is it anyway?” Kate asked.

  “Purgoid na manac.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “I don’t know how good your Irish is,” David said, “but it means the purgative of the monks. It was the only laxative they had long ago in the monasteries.”

  “Well, you learn something new every day,” Kate said. “Will we take some of it up to Fr Burke?”

  “Oh, Kate, you’re not the nice girl that I thought your were,” David laughed, and the Doc and Hannah joined in.

  They finished with cups of tea and light pastry oozing cream. Kate felt that she could lie down on one of the comfortable couches and sleep peacefully for the evening. But David had his eye on the clock, and as soon as the last plate was carried back to the kitchen he said, “We’ll head up towards the presbytery now. He’ll be looking for excuses to get the better of us, so we’d better start with a clean slate.”

  Kate rose reluctantly to her feet, thinking how pleasant it would be to spend the afternoon here with himself and the Doc, instead of facing up to Fr Burke, whom she had always found a bit hard to take. As well as that, she was a little worried that she might not say the right thing. She knew how important this was to David and she wanted to do everything she could to help him. Maybe I’m trying to impress him, she decided.

  As they walked up the street with the Doc and Hannah’s good wishes ringing in their ears, she could sense David’s tension. This school is very important to him, she thought, which had the effect of making her feel even more nervous.

  The avenue to the parochial house curved in behind the church. It was a large, imposing house with bare green lawns and no flowers. When David lifted the heavy black iron knocker, the bang seemed to thunder through silence.

  “Good God,” he whispered, “I never thought it would make such a racket – ’twould wake the dead.”

  “Never mind,” Kate assured him, “it’s probably faint enough from the other side,” and she had to make an effort to stop herself from giggling.

  Then they could hear bolts being drawn back; the door opened slowly, and Lizzy the housekeeper’s nose came around the edge. A tall, thin woman with black sparse hair, her nose was her dominant feature, and she sniffed the air around her as if nothing about it pleased her.

  “Good afternoon, Lizzy,” David greeted her pleasantly, “we have an appointment with Fr Burke.”

  “Not finished yet,” she informed them in disapproving tones.

  “Can we come in and wait?” Kate asked as Lizzy made no attempt to open the door further.

  “I suppose so,” she said grudgingly, and slowly opened back the door just wide enough for them to get in sideways.

  “Wait here,” she told them and disappeared back a long brown corridor.

  Kate looked around and realised that, even though she had not been in here for years, nothing had changed. Everything was brown. The lino on the floor and running up the stairs was a dark brown with white linking along the sides. The stairs themselves wore many coats of varnish that did not fit snugly on top of each other but bubbled up along the handrail in foxy protest. The walls were covered in beige wallpaper and the picture rail bore brown, sad-faced saints who could not muster up a smile between them. On the huge hall-stand carved gargoyles snarled at each other under Fr Burke’s hats.

  “He should get Mark in here to brighten up his colour scheme,” she whispered. “I never saw anything so drab.”

  “Kate, we’re not here to redesign his house,” David said severely, but he smiled in spite of himself. “I feel as if I’m back in boarding school waiting outside the headmaster’s door to be reprimanded,” he added.

  Just then they heard shuffling footsteps and saw Lizzy’s shadowy figure reappear.

  “He’s ready now,” she told them in a prim voice, and they followed her thin form back the corridor.

  “In here,” she said, knocking so timidly on a heavy door that Kate thought nobody on the other side could hear. Nevertheless, a big voice boomed through.

  “Come in,” it instructed with authority.

  Lizzy inched the door open very slowly, and gradually the room inside came into view. The entire wall straight opposite the door was book-lined from floor to ceiling, and in front of it behind a large desk sat Fr Burke, his huge pudgy fingers interlaced and resting on the green leather top. A tall, north-facing window let in a grey light and there was no heating in the room.

  Looking at his overheated face it was obvious that he had just vacated a much warmer room. We were brought in here to be intimidated, Kate decided.

  “Sit down,” he instructed. Two straight-backed chairs were already in position, well apart, directly in front of him.

  “Well, now, what’s all this about?” he enquired.

  “I wrote to you about it, Father,” David began with determination. “It’s about starting a new secondary school here in Kilmeen.”

  “For what reason?” Fr Burke barked, his folded chins shaking in annoyance. He was glaring at David, his purple lips pursed.

  “The children around here need education,” David told him quietly.

  “Are you saying that what the good nuns over in Ross are doing is not education?”

  Careful, David, Kate thought, he’s going to turn this into a battle of wits and is trying to trip you up. But David said calmly, “The nuns are providing a very good commercial course, but it’s mostly girls who go there, and…”

  “You can’t blame the nuns for that,” Fr Burke cut across him.

  “It’s no fault of the nuns,” David agreed, “but even for the girls who go there it would be better for them to do their Inter and Leaving certificate before going on to Ross.”

  “So you’re saying that what the nuns are providing is only second-rate stuff,” he barked.

  “No I am not,” David told him firmly, “but there is need for more educational facilities here. Our children are emigrating uneducated, and it’s only manual jobs that are available to them wherever they go.”

  “So you think that manual labour is beneath them? There’s nothing wrong with earning your bread by the sweat of you brow, my boy.
Many a good Irishman did it before them.”

  “I’m only saying that they should have the choice,” David told him.

  “And you would take the bread out of the mouths of the nuns in Ross, who started their school here on the understanding that theirs would be the only school in this parish?”

  “Things change, Father.”

  “And some of them not for the better,” Fr Burke asserted. “You have a job in Dublin: why can’t you stay up there? Do you not know when you’re well off with a fine comfortable pensionable job. Your school here could fall through, and then where would that leave you?”

  “It won’t fail,” David told him, “and even if it did I could always get another job.”

  “Nobody likes to employ a failure,” Fr Burke observed.

  “That would be my problem,” David said sharply, annoyance creeping into his voice. “And …”

  “Well, the setting up of this school is my problem,” Fr Burke cut in, “and my first duty is to the nuns in my parish. They are under my protection, and that’s the end of the matter as far as I am concerned.”

  You arrogant old toad, thought Kate, I would not like to be depending on you for protection. She had planned to say very little in case of saying the wrong thing, but as she listened she could feel the school slipping away and her irritation mounting. She decided that they had got nowhere and that the time had come to get a few facts straightened out.

  “So apart from the opposition of the nuns, you have nothing against the school,” she interceded.

  For the first time he turned his small, piercing blue eyes on her, giving her his full attention.

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘You say that your only opposition to the school is the protection of the nuns, is that right?” she shot back at him, sitting on the edge of her chair and looking him straight in the eye.

  “Well, what of it?” he asked angrily.

  “Is that the only objection that you have?” she persisted.

  “That’s my business,” he told her. “I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.”

  “Well, I can tell you,” she said, “that the nuns have no objection to the new school. As a matter of fact, they think that it will be good for their school, which it probably will.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you went behind my back about this?” he blustered.

  “I did not go behind your back. I never went behind anyone’s back in my life,” she said, rising to her feet and striding to the front of his desk. “I went to school in Ross and loved the nuns there, and now I visit them regularly, and yes, I have discussed this with them, as I was quite entitled to do. They are enlightened, forward-thinking women and want to see the children of this parish getting the best start that they can get in life. So they have no opposition to this school.”

  “You had no right,” Fr Burke gasped but got no further, because Kate threw caution to the wind.

  “I had every right because now we know! You are the only opposition. You are the only one standing in the way of progress.”

  Fr Burke put his two huge hands on his desk and jumped to his feet with such speed that his chair tilted backwards and crashed to the floor behind him.

  “How dare you speak to me like this!” he spluttered, choking with rage. “To think that a daughter of Nellie Phelan’s would come in to my house and…”

  “Leave my mother out of this,” she said fiercely. “She was a lady who listened to your self-opinionated, pompous meanderings all her life and never criticised you. But if she knew what you’re doing now she’d turn in her grave.”

  “Get out!” he shouted, pounding the desk with his ham fist. “Get out of my house!”

  “You don’t need to tell me,” she replied, pounding the desk with her closed fist and pushing her angry face close to his. “And may God forgive you for your narrow vision, because I never will and neither will a lot of this parish.” And before he could say another word she marched across the floor and whipped the door open, nearly falling over Lizzy, who was standing there with a bemused expression on her face.

  Kate banged back the big iron bolt of the front door and strode out on to the crunching gravel where she stood with her fists clenched in anger, and then headed for the gate. As she cooled down she was aware that David had caught up with her and was walking silently beside her. She was afraid to look at him because she knew that she had burnt their boats behind them. Whatever hope he had had before, she had now put paid to everything. As they walked in silence around the side of the church, she sneaked a sideways glance at him. His face was white and his jaw was tight with anger.

  “I blew it, didn’t I?” she admitted miserably.

  “No, you didn’t,” David told her quietly. “He was against it anyway. I had hoped that he’d have been some way reasonable, but he was impossible. There is no way that he is going to agree to the school. He must really have it in for Dad. But, God, it was something to watch the two of you. It was like a terrier and a bloodhound in attack.”

  “I lost the head totally,” Kate admitted.

  “You did.”

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked tentatively.

  “Angry? There was enough anger in there to set fire to a hay barn, not to mind me adding to it, and the best part of it all was that you and Dad had warned me to keep cool.”

  “I was a fine one to talk, wasn’t I, but he just drove me mad with his patronising attitude towards everything.”

  “As soon as you started I knew that you were going to let him have it. I could feel it coming like a thunderstorm.”

  “He’s been irritating me for years with his boring sermons and his overbearing attitude,” Kate declared, “but I never realised how much I had it in for him until I started.”

  “Lizzy will have a great time telling the whole village what Kate Phelan said to the P.P.”

  “Oh my God,” Kate gasped. “I never thought of that, and of course she’ll make me out to be a real demon.”

  “Never mind. You only said what a lot of us are thinking.”

  “But thinking it and saying it are two different things.”

  “Well, maybe it needed to be said. He’s always got away with murder.”

  “You must be very disappointed,” she said.

  “I suppose I am,” he agreed.

  “I wish to God that I had stayed out of it. You’d have had some chance without me.”

  “If you hadn’t done it I might have lost my cool myself,” David admitted, “but I don’t think that I would have been as dramatic as you. I’d forgotten that you were so fiery.”

  “Where do we go from here?” she asked.

  “He’s going to make an announcement next Sunday off the altar,” David said. “He told me that after you stormed out, but I think that we’ve had it as far as he is concerned.”

  “I think you’re right,” Kate agreed bleakly.

  “It’s a shame, because our whole future hinged on his decision.”

  Later that night, as she prepared for bed, Kate thought back over David’s words. What exactly had they meant?

  Better not read too much into this, my girl, she told herself as she drew back the curtains before getting into bed. Suddenly she noticed someone move in the shadows of her back garden. She stepped back from the window and watched in the darkness, and just as she was beginning to think that she had imagined the whole thing, Matt Conway slunk out from under the hedge and disappeared through the gate. She crept downstairs and checked that every window and door was securely locked, but she did not sleep too well that night.

  Chapter Fifteen

  NORA LAY IN bed and wondered if she could get out of going to school today. The thought of it nearly made her sick. Could she pretend that she was really sick? She was feeling terrible, but she knew that it had really nothing to do with being sick in the usual way, and it would be very hard to convince Mom. Especially when Mom already knew that she did not want to go to school. Mom did not unders
tand that she dreaded going to school because all of them would be talking about Mossgrove being for sale. She never remembered anyone in school with their home for sale. Nobody that she knew had ever sold their house and farm. They would be looking at her as if she had two heads or something. She was not like Rosie Nolan, who loved being the centre of attention. She hated it.

  It was bad enough after Dada had died, but at least people died in other houses too, but nobody sold their farm and moved away. Most of her friends had their grandparents living with them or near them. She did not want to move away either. At least she supposed that they would be moving away, because why else would Mom be selling. She did not really know what was going to happen. Mom did not seem to know what they were going to do either, only that she was going to sell Mossgrove. It was all such a muddle. She could hardly believe her ears when she had overheard Jack and Davy talking about the Conways buying Mossgrove. The thought that the white worm would be sleeping in her bedroom nearly made her sick. The whole thing from the first minute that she had heard Davy shouting at Mom about it made her miserable.

  Peter was in a silent rage and would not talk about it, and she knew that Davy felt uneasy talking to her about it. Mom just told her that it would be all for the best, but she did not believe that. Jack was the only one who understood, but she sensed that he was more upset that he was letting on. If only Aunty Kate would call. She was the only hope. Maybe she might be able to do something. Aunty Kate loved Mossgrove the way Dad and Jack did, so she would try to stop Mom if she could. But would she be able? Mom did not like Aunty Kate, and she had not liked Nana Nellie. Was that why she was selling Mossgrove, because they all liked it and she did not. Why didn’t Mom like Mossgrove? She could never understand that, but then there were a lot of things she could not understand and it made everything very complicated.