Patricia Falvey (3 page)

I shivered as if a sudden draft had entered the room, and I moved closer to Da. I understood some of what they were talking about—Da had spoken of these things often enough. The Catholics in Ireland wanted to be able to rule themselves without interference from the English, but the Protestants were against it, particularly the Protestants in Ulster. They were afraid of the hold the Catholic Church would have on them if they were trapped inside a free Ireland. They were called Unionists because they wanted to keep the union with England. I had heard all this talk before—but tonight it seemed more urgent and more threatening. A frightening thought entered my head and prowled around like a menacing animal. What if, as P.J. said, the Protestants came and took our house back and drove us out? They had done it in the past, and only for Great-Grandda Hugh we would not be living in it now. I swallowed hard and tried to think of something else.

P.J. brushed the crumbs from his beard and said, as he always did, “Will we play one for the road?”

“I’ll sing Mary’s favorite song,” said Da, “the one I courted her with—‘On the Banks of My Old Lovely Lea.’”

“Good man,” cried P.J.

“Lovely,” shouted Billy.

Da began to sing. His tenor voice was high and clear. The years fell away from his face as he sang. Slowly, the Music Men took up their instruments to accompany him. The song was a sweet and melancholy love song. Da looked straight at Ma as he sang, and Terrence followed Da’s gaze. Ma sat at the table, smiling at Da. Lizzie had crawled into her lap, and Ma sang the words softly into the child’s ear as she rocked her to sleep.

The music ended. The men shuffled to their feet.

“The English took all our land,” Frankie put in suddenly. “We learned about it in school. They just came in and took it and gave it to themselves—acres and acres of it.” His small face was red with fury, and his dark eyes flashed.

“That’s enough, Frank,” Ma said sharply. “It’s time for bed.” Ma always called him Frank when she was annoyed with him.

“The lad’s right just the same,” said Terrence. “It’s a wonder Tom here has any piece of land he can call his own.”

Da nodded. “Well, we have my grandfather Hugh O’Neill to thank for that. There were no flies on that man.”

I tugged at Da’s sleeve. I could no longer hide my anxiety. Frankie had voiced my worst fears.

“Will the Ulstermen come and take our house, Da?” I whispered.

Da stroked my hair. “Of course they won’t, love,” he said.

“But Mr. Browne has already taken some land, and he’s an Ulsterman.”

I was sorry the minute the words were out of my mouth. Poor Da’s face turned pale. He looked over at Ma. She lowered her eyes and said nothing.

“Ah, sure you do your best, Tom,” Terrence said uncertainly. “You do your best.”

“Aye,” said Fergus. He stood up and put on his cap. “Well, I’d best be going. I have to get started on the bleaching early tomorrow. Ma says the rain is coming. She can feel it in her bones. And there’ll be no work to be had when it’s raining. Ma says I need to get the work while I can.”

“Ah, sure if your ma told you the pope was in the backyard, you’d believe her!” said P.J.

Fergus glared at him. There were times when Fergus turned very dark, as if a dark ghost haunted him somewhere down inside. It frightened me to see it.

That night, after the Music Men left, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and knelt up on the window seat, as I always did, to bid good night to Slieve Gullion. I rested my chin on my hands and stared at her outline in the pale moonlight.

“Please, Mother Gullion,” I whispered. “Please don’t let anybody take away our house.” The ancient mountain gazed back at me in silence. I slipped into bed and pulled the quilt up over my head, shivering as I waited for the ghosts.

THE FIRST TIME
Da took Frankie and me to the top of Slieve Gullion to see the house after it was painted, we jumped up and down in delight.

“There it is,” shouted Frankie, “I can see it clear as day!” His brown eyes, usually dark and intense, glowed in his small face. It was a look I had seen only once in a while when he looked at Lizzie. I linked my arm in his, and for once he didn’t shake me off.

“Didn’t I tell you?” cried Da. “Didn’t I say you would be able to see it for miles!”

From the summit of Slieve Gullion, it drew your eye like a magnet. Indeed, it would become known far and wide as the Yellow House. When the sun shone it dazzled like a golden beacon, and even on the grayest of days it glowed through the mist like magic. Neighbor or stranger, everyone smiled when they looked at it. I imagined more merry ghosts had arrived to join Great-Grandda Hugh, and for a while the faceless ghosts left me alone.

That crisp, sunny morning in mid-October 1905, we had taken our time climbing up the mountain, as we always did, Da walking ahead of us carrying his blackthorn stick, Cuchulainn at his heels. Frankie scrambled over the rock face to an outcropping called Calmor’s Rock, which had a cave beneath it. It was a treacherous climb over to it, but Frankie enjoyed showing off. I made my way more slowly, enjoying the sound of my feet squishing through ditches and scraping over the roughness of the rocks. Mother Gullion’s cloak of summer bracken had shredded into tatters, revealing ancient scars and furrows carved from the ice age. A soft breeze rustled the trees, and waterfowl squawked from distant lakes. I breathed in the clean air until I thought my heart would burst.

We stood on the summit at the edge of Lough Berra, which everyone called the Lake of Sorrows on account of some sad story about a young man named Finn who dove in to find a ring for his love and came out—an old man with a gray beard—to find his love gone.

“Aye, Slieve Gullion has seen a lot of sad stories in her time,” Da said, “but she keeps all her anger locked up in that volcano at her heart. She’s beautiful on the outside but troubled deep down.” He sighed. “Just like Ireland.”

Frankie pushed me away and danced around, throwing his arms up in the air.

“Will she ever blow up, Da?” he shouted. “Whoosh! Flames and fire everywhere!”

“Let’s hope not,” whispered Da.

Frankie looked disappointed. He turned to look out over the sweeping landscape below.

“I’m going to own this all someday, Da,” he said.

“Sure you’ve no need to be owning it,” Da said gently, “you can enjoy it as much as the next man just by looking at it.”

Frankie shook his head. “No, Da. You have to own it.”

Da gave Frankie a queer look, and I jumped in to change the subject.

“Tell me about Great-Grandda Hugh again,” I said. “Tell me how he won the Yellow House back.”

Da smiled. He sat on the bank beside the lake and took out his pipe and lit it. He loved being asked to tell stories. He took two long puffs on his pipe and leaned back against a rock.

“Ah, he was a grand man, so he was,” Da began. “He had red hair just like you and me, Eileen, and like the ancient king of Ulster Hugh O’Neill himself. Your great-grandda had green eyes so bright they could light your way on a dark road, and a way with him so convincing he could coax the stars down out of the sky.”

Frankie scowled. He hated it when Da said I looked like Great-Grandda Hugh. Da took another puff from his pipe. Cuchulainn raised his head and twitched his ears as a rabbit scurried past, but he thought better of chasing him and lay down again.

“Did I tell you he was a gambler, too?” Da went on. “And he had great luck, so he did. That’s how he won our house back from the Sheridans.”

We all knew Great-Grandda was a gambler. Da had told us this story a hundred times before. This was his way of having us ask to hear it again.

“Tell us, Da,” I said.

Frankie rolled his eyes and picked up a stick and threw it after the rabbit.

“Edwin Sheridan was from a well-to-do family of Quakers, but he was the black sheep,” Da continued. “He drank, gambled, ran after women, and did all the things Quakers are not supposed to do. It was probably only a matter of time before he would have lost the house anyway. Easy come, easy go, I suppose. His family had the house granted to them by the English king. It was O’Neill land before that. There are still Sheridans living around these parts. They own the big mills over in Queensbrook.”

“Will they ever try and take our house back, Da?” I said.

Da shook his head. “No chance of that, darlin’. But if they try, sure won’t you be the one to drive them off? You’re marked to be an O’Neill warrior, love. Those green eyes make you special. You’re the one to carry on the O’Neill legacy.”

Frankie, who was busy throwing stones into the lake, swung around.

“I’m fiercer than she is, Da,” he shouted. “Why can’t I be the warrior? If the Sheridans ever try to take our house back, I’ll fight them and kill them!”

“Ah, sure you’ll make a fine warrior, too, lad,” Da said. “Isn’t that why we gave you the name Hugh?”

Frankie shrugged. “It’s only my middle name. Why couldn’t it have been my first name?”

Da sighed. “Ah, well, your mother overruled me on that one, son. Said she wouldn’t let me fill your head with all the O’Neill legacy talk. She wanted you to be your own man.”

Frankie rolled his eyes. “I’ll always be my own man,” he said. “And if I want to be a warrior, then that’s what I’ll be. And I’ll carry on the O’Neill legacy better than her,” he said, pointing to me.

He was defiant like that, Frankie. I just smiled at him when he went off on one of his tantrums. I knew that no matter what, I was Da’s favorite. On the other hand, kind and gentle as Ma was with me and Lizzie, she was always hard on Frank. She expected more from him, always quizzing him about school and correcting his manners. I supposed it was because he was a boy and more would be expected of him in the world. I also suspected deep down that Ma pushed him harder because she loved him more. It was a thought I always sent away as quickly as it came.

Looking back on it, I can see that Frankie and I acted the way normal brothers and sisters do with each other. We fought each other at home, but when it came to outsiders we formed a solid union and defended each other. I loved my brother, and I knew that deep down he loved me. We were O’Neills, and no one was going to get the better of us.

A sudden noise of wings beating above us stopped all our talk, and we looked up.

“It’s the geese, Da,” Frankie and I shouted together. “Look, it’s the geese!”

Da grinned. “Aye, the wild geese.”

We strained to see a flock of geese flying in a V wedge over our heads. Every year at about that time, they flew south through a corridor between two mountains known as the Gap of the North, which in olden times marked the division between Ulster and the rest of Ireland.

“There they go,” said Da, shading his eyes with his hand, “the flight of the Earls.”

“Who were the Earls, Da?” I said.

“They were the great O’Neills and other brave men who fled Ireland in 1607 after nine years of war.”

“And where did they go?”

“Spain, Argentina, all points of the globe. But we remember them every year when we see the geese. The geese are a lucky sign to those who see them.”

We were all quiet as we descended Slieve Gullion that day, lost in our own thoughts. My imagination ran in circles with visions of fighting O’Neills, and menacing Sheridans, and geese flying to faraway places in the world. My mind eased when I saw the Yellow House and my lovely, smiling ma standing at the door.

“Youse took your sweet time,” she said in that husky voice of hers. “I had the dinner ready an hour ago.”

My heart swelled with a sudden love for my beautiful ma.

I broke out in a run. “We saw the geese, Mammy,” I cried as I threw my arms around her waist.

“I saw them, too,” she said.

“Da says they’re a lucky sign.”

Ma hugged me but said nothing.

I
sometimes wonder if it’s better for the bad things to happen all at once rather than little by little, like blood seeping out of a wound. When they happen all at once, if the shock of it doesn’t kill you, you might at least stand a chance of rearing up and fighting back. But when they come on you slowly, one thing creeping after another, it wears you down so that you might as well be dead when they finally end, because you have no strength left to resist.