Page 119 of The Missing Sister

She shut her writing book carefully, replaced the pencil in its holder and put it back under the mattress. Then she sat up again and stared out of the window at the New House. It was hard to believe that today it would become their home. They would even have an inside tap, drawn from the stream on the hillside behind it. She had been allowed to try it, and itwaslike magic; the water came out when you turned it on, and disappeared when you turned it the other way. There was a range oven for Mammy to cook on so she’d no longer have to use the pot over the fire, and a big kitchen table that Daddy had made out of wood, which could seat all eight and a half of them with room to spare. And then... the best thing of all: a little hut which she could walk to from the kitchen. Inside it was a contraption with a seat that she’d only ever seen up at Father O’Brien’s house, and a chain above to flush it.

Anyway, it meant that none of them needed to go into the fields beyond to do their ‘business’, as Mammy called it. How it worked, Merry didn’t know, but like everything else at the New House, it was magical.

Merry shivered as a blast of wind whistled through a crack in the windowpane, so she huddled under the blanket once more. And for one of the few times in her life, other than birthdays, Christmas and when she went up with Mammy to the priest’s house, Merry could hardly wait until it was time to feed the chickens, because that meant the most exciting day of all had begun.

‘Merry, will you be picking up that blanket? It’s trailing behind you in the mud!’ called Mammy, as she and Katie followed their mother across the yard for the hundredth time to put their things into the New House.

Both girls watched as Mammy dumped the pots she’d carried onto the long table, and used an old cloth to open the small door on the new range. She and Katie had been told very sharply not to touch it because it would be too hot. A delicious smell wafted out as it opened.

‘Is that brack cake, Mammy?’ Merry asked.

‘It is, Merry. We’ll be wanting something nice for our first tea inside.’

‘Does it have the little black fruit in it?’ asked Katie.

‘It has currants in it, yes,’ Mammy answered as she drew it out and put it on a table to the side of the range to cool. ‘And don’t either of you be touching it yet, or I’ll have you cleaning out the pigsty. Merry, get back across and see to Bill, will you?’

‘Where’s Nora?’ asked Merry. ‘She’s after disappearing again.’

‘I’m not knowing, but see to Bill while me, Ellen and Katie make the beds upstairs.’

‘Yes, Mammy,’ Merry said, rolling her eyes and passing Katie a glance. As she walked back across, Merry felt so angry with Nora, it made her heart beat faster. Nora was always disappearing when there was work to be done. And now it meant another smelly napkin to change, when it was really Nora’s turn. Bill was sitting in the small wooden pen placed in a corner of the old kitchen, the only room downstairs and where the whole family were when they were not in bed or outside. For the first time she could ever remember, Merry saw the fire that had been lit earlier in the big nook that took up almost the whole of one wall had been allowed to go out.

‘Bye bye, fire,’ Merry said out loud. ‘We’ll not be needing you anymore for our cooking.’ Turning her attention to Bill, who smelt worse than the fields when Daddy and John spread the manure, she took a blanket from the sideboard and laid it out on the cold stone floor. Then she picked up Bill from his pen and placed him on it. Next, she found a clean napkin from the pile in the sideboard drawer and a pail of water which they used to clean Bill’s mess.

‘Do you know, Bill, that you’ll be two soon, and ’tis time for you to get out of napkins altogether?’

Bill, who Merry thought was the spit of Daddy already, with his dark hair and blue eyes, giggled at her as Merry held her breath and unpinned the napkin, then slid it and the mess inside it from under him. Rolling the dirty napkin up to be scraped out and washed later, she took a cloth and dipped it in the pail of water to clean his bottom. Then she expertly fastened a clean napkin around him. Immediately after she’d done that, Bill rolled onto his side and then heaved himself up onto all fours. Even though he could walk a bit now, he still preferred to crawl, and did so very fast. He knew how to place himself under the table with the chairs about him, so hands could not easily reach him. He thought it was a grand game altogether, and would sit there chuckling as Merry had to move chairs to reach him.

‘Aha!’ Merry said as she dived under the table and grabbed him. ‘No chairs today, Mr Bill! They’ve all gone over to the New House already.’ Pulling him out, Bill protested heavily as she picked him up and placed him safely back in his pen. His howling grew louder, so she plucked up the empty bottle and refilled it with milk from the pail that stood outside the front door to keep it cool.

‘There now, drink your milk and be good while we work away in the New House,’ Merry told him. ‘And there’s your doggy to play with,’ she said, picking up a wooden toy she herself remembered loving when she’d been little.

As Merry took the soiled napkin out to scrape away the contents in the bowl which would be disposed of later in the field, she wondered why Mammy wanted to have babies. Even though she loved her little brother, she still remembered the fierce look of fear on Mammy’s face when she’d been standing in the kitchen and a large swish of water had appeared between her legs. At the time, Merry had thought that Mammy had disgraced herself, but it turned out it was the sign that Bill was on his way out of her tummy. The baby delivery lady had arrived soon after, and the family had sat in the kitchen, listening to the screaming from Mammy upstairs.

‘Is she dying, Daddy?’ Merry had dared to ask. ‘Going up to heaven to be with Jesus?’

‘No, Merry, she’s giving birth to a babe, just like she gave birth to your brother and sisters.’

Merry thought now that, with the new babe coming soon, there’d be even more napkins for her to clean.

‘And that’s another thing that will be better, Bill,’ she called to him as she dunked the napkin in the special fluid that took most of the brown stains away. ‘We have a tap over at the New House, so maybe ’twill be easier to wash these.’

Leaving the door ajar so Bill could be heard if he screamed, Merry ran back across to the New House to help Mammy.

‘I’ll be on my way now, Father,’ said Mrs Cavanagh as she stood in the doorway to James’s study. ‘Your friend’s room has fresh sheets and I’ve dusted round. The fire is laid and your tea is in the range.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Cavanagh. Enjoy your day of rest and I’ll see you as usual on Tuesday.’

‘Just make sure that Mrs O’Reilly spends more time cleaning than she does yabbing. I’m getting tired of double work to do when I come back. Goodnight, Father.’ With that, Mrs Cavanagh shut the door more firmly than she needed to just to underline her point. A point she made every single Sunday evening when she left for her day off. Over the last seven years, James had often wanted to tell her the truth: that young Maggie O’Reilly was a pleasure to have in the house, with her lovely smile and the way she sang in a high, sweet voice as she went about her chores. She was also a far better cook than Mrs Cavanagh could ever be, and in the few hours she spent at the house, she would leave it sparkling. However, having prayed on the subject, he’d realised that all he thought was exactly what Mrs Cavanagh knew herself if she were to look into her heart: she was threatened by the younger woman and that was why she behaved towards her as she did.

Behind his desk, Father James O’Brien stretched and breathed a sigh of relief. His Sunday duties were over and this evening – the start of his unofficial day off (although his door was always open to members of his flock in trouble) – was made even better by the fact that his dearest friend Ambrose was on his way down from Dublin for his monthly visit.

James stood up to switch on the electric light that hung in the centre of the room.

The evenings were drawing in already, even though it was only the start of October.

Ambrose’s visit prompted James to think how much had changed since he’d arrived here in the parish of Timoleague almost seven years ago. Ambrose had said then that it would take time for him to be accepted, and he’d been right. Now, he not only felt that he had been, but more importantly, that he was respected by the community he served. And rather than his youth being a negative, he had managed to turn it into a positive by lending a hand during the harvest and counselling rather than judging the wives if they came to him pregnant yet again, wondering how they could cope with another babe.