Woman of the House Read online

  “Now, Nora Phelan,” she said, “that will teach you a lesson, and to make sure that you behave yourself properly in future you sit up here in the front desk by Rosie Nolan where I can keep an eye on you.”

  Nora could hardly believe her ears. She was free from the white worm and sitting with Rosie. It had all been worth it! She kept the look of joy off her face and slipped into the front desk beside Rosie with her head down.

  “Thank you, Dada,” she breathed.

  Aunty Kate had told her to pray to him for help, and though Nora was doubtful if he could hear she still had prayed every night since the funeral to be delivered from the white worm. Now Dada had done it. She had wondered where he had gone when he died. Even Jack was not sure, but Aunty Kate had no doubts about it and now neither did she. He was up in heaven and he was listening and he could work miracles. She closed her eyes again and prayed: “Thank you, Dada, thank you for saving me from the white worm. Thank you, thank you. But now I want something else. Will you straighten out Mom and don’t let Kitty Conway be right about Mossgrove?”

  Chapter Six

  JACK RAN HIS hand along the back of the young cow as he walked in beside her to close the stall of her companion.

  “You won’t be long more, Daisy,” he assured her as he eased his fingers down over her belly and felt for the cleft between her back flank and udder that would tell him how much time she had before the arrival of her calf.

  Since Ned had gone he had taken to talking to himself and the animals, to break the silence of the farmyard. Of all his years in Mossgrove this was the most gruelling time. After Billy’s death it had not been this bad. There had been huge financial worries then, but he and Nellie had been in it together.

  “I thought that those were dark days,” he said to Daisy, “but they were a holiday compared to now.”

  The financial problem seemed a major issue then, but it was a reason to keep going, and Nellie and himself had carried the burden together. Money had solved that problem. True for the old man.

  “Jack,” he used to say, “money can solve money problems, but there are other problems that nothing can solve.”

  The old man was right, as he had been about so many things. It was only as he grew older himself that he had fully come to appreciate the sayings of Edward Phelan. Jack sometimes wondered how any one person could have had such wisdom.

  Daisy looked back at him out of large liquid eyes as she chewed the cud contentedly. Cows were gentle creatures, big, placid, undemanding animals, and he always found that they had a calming effect on him, especially when he was worried about something and had no solution to the problem. He had no solution to Martha’s problem. She had just simply come to a standstill. If it continued like this, things would come apart at the seams on the farm.

  In Mossgrove, the woman of the house had always managed the yard, which produced a big part of the farm income. She fed the hens, geese, ducks, pigs and calves, and helped with the milking. Martha had been good at it and her farmyard had been run like clockwork. She reared fine healthy calves and fattened pigs to the right balance so that they sold well at the pig market or graded high if sent to the new factory. She had baskets of eggs for the egg lorry every Wednesday and a flock of geese fattened for the Christmas market. When things were quiet out the fields he helped her with the yard jobs and had always been impressed by her efficiency. She had her faults but she knew her stuff regarding livestock, and if Ned and himself were busy out on the land she could manage single-handed and always had the cows in and the milking started when they came in from the fields. She was a determined woman with endless energy and had she kept them all on their toes. It was hard to think that she was thrown inside in the bed now at two o’clock in the day.

  When, after their father’s death he had told Nora and Peter that he thought their mother had too much spirit to stay down and that she would be on her feet soon again, he had meant it. He had been wrong. The poor little divils, he thought, it’s very hard on them trying to battle on the best way they can and coming home every evening to a cold house and a makeshift dinner. He wished that he had more time to make decent meals, but he was stretched as far as he could go, with Ned’s and Martha’s work to do as well as his own. Martha had closed up and shut everyone out including the children. She had never been a good one to talk things out or to encourage the neighbours to call, though that did not stop them now, but they were met with a cold, set face and few words. Most of them had stopped coming, except good-hearted Betty Nolan who would not be discouraged.

  “I’d come oftener and do more,” she told Jack, “but I’d be afraid I’d get the door and then I’d have burned my boats altogether and I’d be no help at all.”

  The Nolans had always been close neighbours of the Phelans and there had been a lot of toing and froing between the houses in the past, but that had dried up a bit with the coming of Martha, who liked to keep the neighbours at a distance. She was a bit too stiff for her own good, Jack thought, but then the father had been like that as well. He thought of the old man again and what he used to say: “Bad to be too rigid; better to yield a little. Rigid people don’t bend, they break.” By God, he thought, but the old fella had it all worked out. How would he solve this one, he wondered.

  “Hurry on there now, Daisy,” he told the cow, “and produce that calf before night so that I can go home to bed and not have to stay here with you.”

  She was a young cow and it was her first calf, so he could take no chances with her and would have to be there to see that everything went right.

  Ned had always covered the night deliveries, so it was a long time since Jack had to stay up with a cow, but he was back now doing a lot of things that he had not done with years. Keeping his fingers crossed that he would be able to cope with everything, he was glad that it was a quiet time of year with not much to be done in the fields, although there were things that he should be doing out there even now. The spring ploughing should be started, but the way things were at the moment he just could not get around to it. He decided that he had better go into the kitchen and put on the spuds for the dinner and while they were boiling he would feed the pigs and collect the eggs.

  In the scullery he had to step over muddy boots on the floor; some coats were hanging off the back of the door but most were down on the floor and across the little table where Martha had kept a pan of water for washing before they got as far as the kitchen. There was not much point in washing before you went into the kitchen now because it was worse than the scullery. The breakfast ware was still on the table and the fire had gone out. He had lit it this morning but he had not had a chance to come back in to put on more turf and logs, so it had burnt itself out. The ashes of previous days were piled high to the side because no one had got around to taking them out, and probably the ash hole underneath was at explosion point. But it would have to wait for another day. He screwed up pieces of newspaper and put a few bits of soft dry turf and some sticks around it, but when he turned the bellows to fan the flame it had no effect because, as he had suspected, the ash hole beneath was choked. But the fire lit up anyway as the turf was dry and reddened quickly. He put the pot of potatoes over the fire and then went to light the primus to boil a saucepan of water to wash up the breakfast ware.

  The primus was handy as a back-up because otherwise he would have to wait for the potatoes to boil before he could warm water for the washing up. After a long search he finally unearthed the primus from under a pile of dirty clothes in the corner of the kitchen. He was relieved that when he shook it he could hear oil gurgling; but when he looked for the methylated spirits to light up he discovered an empty bottle up on the top shelf of the scullery. He sighed in frustration and decided that while he was waiting for the potatoes to boil he would do a bit of a tidy-up. Nora was doing the best she could, but a ten year old was no match for the work of a farm kitchen. She had spent all yesterday evening cleaning the eggs for the egg lorry tomorrow. Thanks be to God, he thought to himse
lf, that Betty Nolan is doing the washing, as he piled it all into a jute bag. She whisked it away quietly every few days and brought it back neatly stacked and ironed, and a few cakes of brown bread with it. She’d clean up the place for them, too, he knew, but she was afraid that Martha would walk in on her and give her her marching orders. There was no doubt but that Martha had got herself fenced into a corner, and us with her, he concluded.

  When the potatoes came to the boil he moved them sideways and hung the kettle over the fire. While he waited for it to boil he brushed the floor and looked down ruefully at the crusted mud and bits of dried cow dung along the floor. You could track us, he thought, from the scullery door to the table and from the table to the fire. It was a big change, no doubt, from lining their dirty boots up carefully under the table in the scullery. Ned and himself had often laughed and compared the order of it to army living, but by God it was a lot better than this carry-on. The kettle started to steam so he poured the hot water into the tin pan and washed up all the ware and dried them with a not-too-clean tea towel, the best he could find. There seemed to be a wet tea towel on the back of every chair and the dry ones looked as if they needed a wash, so he collected them all and pushed them into Betty’s bag.

  Martha always had a stack of clean tea towels in the little press beside the fire, and he had heard her say that you could judge a housekeeper by her tea towels. As he collected the dirty ones he decided that they told their own story. When he opened the big kitchen cupboard to put away the ware, a mouse scuttled out of the sugar bowl. That meant there were about twenty more in hiding. The word must have gone round, he thought, that Phelans’ was now a safe house.

  He was straining the potatoes when he heard footsteps in the yard. He put down the pot and looked out the back window, but it was clouded up from smoke so that he had to rub it with his fingers to be able to see Nora and Peter trudging across the yard.

  “Oh, Jack,” Nora smiled in relief to see the fire lighting, “you tidied up: aren’t you great?”

  “A bit of a cat’s lick,” he told her.

  “Is she still in bed again today?” Peter demanded with a face like thunder.

  “That’s right,” Jack said lightly, trying to make as little fuss as possible, but Peter was not going to be sidetracked.

  “It’s not fair,” he said angrily, “she should be helping us. If she was dead there is no way that Dad would carry on like that. I wish to God that it was the other way around.”

  “She’ll come around,” Jack said easily.

  “You’ve been saying that with weeks,” Peter accused, getting angrier.

  “It’s not Jack’s fault,” Nora protested. “It’s very hard on Jack too with all the extra jobs.”

  “Well, I’m going to get her out of it,” Peter growled, heading for the stairs.

  Jack was pouring milk into mugs but he quickly put the jug on the table and took two long strides to the foot of the stairs.

  “Easy, Peter,” Jack said as he stood on the bottom step of the stairs with his back to the door that closed it off from the kitchen. “We can’t solve the problem this way.”

  “Well, how’re we going to solve it?” Peter shouted, red-faced with eyes full of angry frustrated tears. “She’ll have to get out of that bloody bed. Nora is tired every morning going to school; she fell asleep today and was sent out to the Master by that bitch of a Miss Buckley. And you’re shagged from trying to do everything, and we should be starting the ploughing because it’s the time and they’re all at it but us, and I’m fed up with the whole bloody cursed mess,” Peter finished in a rush of words and a sob.

  Jack stepped down and put his arm around Peter’s shoulder, half expecting it to be tossed aside, but instead Peter put his face down on his shoulder and cried. The poor lad, Jack thought. Because he’s so tall we think that he’s older than his years.

  Nora came over and took Jack’s hand and put an arm around Peter’s waist. “We’ll be all right, Peter,” she comforted. “I’m praying to Dada and he’ll look after us.”

  “He’d want to hurry on then,” Peter declared angrily.

  “But Dada never rushed anything,” Nora protested, which caused Peter all of a sudden to start laughing, and then Nora and Jack joined in because they all remembered Ned’s easy-going ways.

  “That’s better,” Jack announced. “Laughing is better than crying any day.”

  Suddenly the door behind them was whipped open. Three faces swung upwards in astonishment. An unwashed Martha stood there in a long, stained nightdress, her black hair in limp strings down over her shoulders. She looked down on them with disdain.

  “You should be ashamed of yourselves and your father hardly cold in his grave.” Her voice cut like a whiplash through their laughter with icy coldness. There was a stunned silence. Peter was the first to recover.

  “It’s bloody better than staying in bed all day like a shagging sick calf,” he asserted angrily.

  She turned on her heel and disappeared up the stairs; they heard the bedroom door bang behind her.

  “Oh,” Nora whispered, “that was awful.”

  “Maybe no harm though,” Jack decided. “It might be the beginning of the turn. Now we’d better get these eggs in the pan.”

  He cracked half a dozen eggs into the small black bastable and hung it over the fire. The fat spluttered and spat around them as he turned them over with a fork.

  “Fried eggs again today, Jack,” Nora smiled.

  “My menu is a bit limited, I suppose,” he admitted.

  “I like fried eggs,” she said loyally, “and we have plenty of them.”

  They sat around the table and ate the fried eggs and mashed potatoes yellow with butter. Then he made tea and buttered thick slices of Betty Nolan’s nutty brown bread. They might not have variety but at least it was solid fare, he decided.

  “We’ll stack up the ware now,” he told them when they were finished, “and I’ll wash everything together tomorrow. It’s handier that way.”

  “I’ll finish cleaning the eggs for the lorry tomorrow,” Nora said. “And did today’s eggs come in?” she asked.

  “Never got a chance,” Jack explained.

  “That’s all right, Jack,” she told him, “I’ll do it and then I’ll clean them all. Oh, I forgot Mom’s tea – I’d better do that first.” She went to the press and took out a large mug and then went to the fire where the teapot still sat.

  That tea is probably pretty chilly at this stage, Jack thought, and he knew that Martha hated to drink out of a mug, but he would not upset Nora by interfering. Peter had already voiced an opinion that his mother should be starved out of it.

  “Are the pigs fed?” Peter asked.

  “No, not yet,” he said.

  “I’ll do them so, and then we’ll do the milking together,” Peter told him. He was glad to see that Peter was a bit brighter. He was probably in the better of that outburst of temper and crying, and the fact that they had been able to laugh at themselves afterwards was good for the three of them.

  He went out to check on Daisy, but there was no need for supervision as she was at ease, hay dribbling from her jaw.

  “Your mother was a slow starter before you,” Jack told her. “Looks as if I’ll be burning the midnight oil with you tonight, my girl.”

  He fed the calves and gave hay to the horses in the stables next door. Paddy, looking small between the two farm horses, Jerry and James, who had a manger at either side of him, was back in his old form. There was timber railing between them because you could never be sure when horses might get a contrary notion. Paddy was a placid animal and James was easygoing, but Jerry could give you a lash of a kick if you were not careful with him. But to compensate for that mean streak he was a great worker out in the fields and more often than not pulled James along. Animals, he often thought, were no different to people; they all had their own peculiarities, but if he had a choice he preferred dealing with the animals.

  As he came out of the
stables he saw Nora with Bran on her heels going in the back door with her gallon of eggs. She walked with a tired drag to her feet and the clothes seemed to hang off her. A picture of the little girl who had bounced across the yard to Ned and himself a short while ago came into his mind. She’s having to grow up too fast, he thought; she needs her mother. Thank God that Kate would be back this week. She had worried about going away so soon after the funeral, but this special course that she was going on had been arranged with a long time and a substitute nurse booked to stand in for her and do her rounds. Ned’s death had hit her hard and maybe it was good for her to go away on this course. She had been very fond of Ned and had come often to Mossgrove because she had a deep attachment to the place. Jack knew that when Ned was in town he called to her house next door to the dispensary and they had long chats. Ned had been delighted when she had got the job as district nurse and it had suited Kate to come back to her own stomping ground. With just the two of them in the family they were very close, and he could see the same thing happening between Nora and Peter. As Ned used to joke, the Phelans seemed to come in pairs.

  As Peter and himself milked the cows he could see that Daisy was restless and moving around. Maybe with a bit of luck she would get down to business fairly soon and produce the calf before he went home. But when he checked her after the supper she seemed to have quietened down again, so he decided to go home to feed Toby and the cat and to lock up the hens and ducks for the night and to come back later. He went into the kitchen to collect the storm lantern and to tell Peter that he would be back and not to worry about Daisy. They were both at the table doing their lessons. Nora was having difficulty with long division and Peter was trying to sort her out.

  “If you’re gone to bed when I come back and if Daisy goes on too long, I might come in and make tea, so don’t take any notice if you hear noises,” Jack told them.