Scarlett (90 page)

Holly branches on mantels and over doors and windows, said the housekeeper. And a big candle, usually red, in one window to light the Christ Child’s way. We’ll have one in every window, Scarlett declared, but Mrs. Fitz was firm. One window. Scarlett could have all the candles she wanted on tables—or the floor, if it made her happy—but only one window should have a candle. And that one could only be lighted on Christmas Eve when the Angelus rang.

The housekeeper smiled. “The tradition is that the youngest child in the house lights a rush from the coals on the hearth as soon as the Angelus is heard, then lights the candle with the flame from the rush. You might have to help her a bit.”

Scarlett and Cat spent Christmas at Daniel’s house. There was nearly enough admiration for Cat to satisfy even Scarlett. And enough people coming through the open door to keep her mind off the Christmases at Tara in the old days when the family and house servants went out onto the wide porch after breakfast in response to the cry, “Christmas Gift.” When Gerald O’Hara gave a drink of whiskey and a plug of tobacco to every field hand as he handed him his new coat and new boots. When Ellen O’Hara said a brief prayer for each woman and child as she gave them lengths of calico and flannel together with oranges and stick candy. Sometimes Scarlett missed the warm slurrings of black voices and the flashing smiles on black faces almost more than she could bear.

“I need to go home, Colum,” Scarlett said.

“And aren’t you home now, on the land of your people that you made O’Hara land again?”

“Oh, Colum, don’t be Irish at me! You know what I mean. I’m homesick for Southern voices and Southern sunshine and Southern food. I want some corn bread and fried chicken and grits. Nobody in Ireland even knows what corn is. That’s just a word for any kind of grain to them.”

“I do know, Scarlett, and I’m sorry for the heartache you’re feeling. Why not go for a visit when good sailing weather comes? You can leave Cat here. Mrs. Fitzpatrick and I will take care of her.”

“Never! I’ll never leave Cat.”

There was nothing to be said. But from time to time the thought popped up in Scarlett’s head: it’s only two weeks and a day to cross the ocean, sometimes the dolphins play alongside for hours on end.

On New Year’s Day, Scarlett got her first hint of what it really meant to be The O’Hara. Mrs. Fitz came to her room with morning tea instead of sending Peggy Quinn with the breakfast tray. “The blessings of all the saints on mother and daughter in the new year to come,” she said cheerily. “I must tell you about the duty you have to do before your breakfast.”

“Happy New Year to you, too, Mrs. Fitz, and what on earth are you talking about?”

A tradition, a ritual, a requirement, said Mrs. Fitz. Without it there’d be no luck all year. Scarlett might have a taste of tea first, but that was all. The first food eaten in the house must be the special New Year’s barm brack on the tray. Three bites had to be eaten, in the name of the Trinity.

“Before you start, though,” Mrs. Fitz said, “come into the room I’ve got ready. Because after you have the Trinity bites you have to throw the cake with all your might against a wall so that it breaks into pieces. I had the wall scrubbed yesterday, and the floor”.

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Why should I ruin a perfectly good cake? And why eat cake for breakfast anyhow?”

“Because that’s the way it’s done. Come do your duty, The O’Hara, before the rest of the people in this house die of hunger. No one can eat before the barm brack is broken.”

Scarlett put on her wool wrapper and obeyed. She had a swallow of tea to moisten her mouth, then bit three times into the edge of the rich fruited cake as Mrs. Fitz directed. She had to hold it in both hands because it was so big. Then she repeated the prayer against hunger during the year that Mrs. Fitz taught her and heaved with both arms, sending the cake flying and crashing against the wall. Bits flew all over the room.

Scarlett laughed. “What an awful mess. But the throwing part was fun.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” said the housekeeper. “You’ve got five more to do. Every man, woman, and child in Ballyhara has to get a little piece for good luck. They’re waiting outside. The maids will take the pieces down on trays after you finish.”

“My grief,” said Scarlett. “I should have taken littler bites.”

After breakfast Colum accompanied her through the town for her next ritual. It was good luck for the whole year if a dark-haired person visited a house on New Year’s Day. But the tradition required that the person enter, then be escorted out, then be escorted back in again.

“And don’t you dare laugh,” Colum ordered. “Any dark-haired person is good luck. The head of a clan is ten times over good luck.”

Scarlett was staggering when it was over. “Thank goodness there are still so many empty buildings,” she gasped. “I’ awash with tea and foundering from all the cake in my stomach. Did we really have to eat and drink in every single place?”

“Scarlett darling, how can you call it a visit if there’s no hospitality offered and received? If you were a man, it would have been whiskey and not tea.”

Scarlett grinned. “Cat might have loved that.”

February 1 was considered the beginning of the farm year in Ireland. Accompanied by everyone who worked and lived in Ballyhara, Scarlett stood in the center of a big field and, after saying a prayer for the success of the crops, sank a spade into the earth, lifted and turned the first sod. Now the year could begin. After the feast of applecake—and milk, of course, because February 1 was also the feast day of Saint Brigid, Ireland’s other patron saint, who was also patron saint of the dairy.

When everyone was eating and talking after the ceremony, Scarlett knelt by the opened earth and took up a handful of the rich loam. “This is for you, Pa,” she murmured. “See, Katie Scarlett hasn’t forgotten what you told her, that the land of County Meath is the best in the world, better even than the land of Georgia, of Tara. I’ll do my best to tend it, Pa, and love it the way you taught me. It’s O’Hara soil, and it’s ours again.”

*   *   *

The age-old progression of plowing and harrowing, planting and praying had a simple, hard-working dignity that won Scarlett’s admiration and respect for all who lived by the land. She had felt it when she lived in Daniel’s cottage and she felt it now for the farmers at Ballyhara. For herself as well, because she was, in her own way, one of them. She hadn’t the strength to drive the plow, but she could provide it. And the horses to pull it. And the seed to plant in the furrows it made.

The Estate Office was her home even more than her rooms in the Big House. There was another cradle for Cat by her desk, identical to the one in her bedroom, and she could rock it with her foot while she worked on her record books and her accounts. The disputes that Mrs. Fitzpatrick had been so gloomy about turned out to be simple matters to settle. Especially if you were The O’Hara, and your word was law. Scarlett had always had to bully people into doing what she wanted; now she had only to speak quietly, and there was no argument. She enjoyed the first Sunday of the month very much. She even began to realize that other people occasionally had an opinion worth listening to. The farmers really did know more about farming than she did, and she could learn from them. She needed to. Three hundred acres of Ballyhara land were set aside as her own farm. The farmers worked it and paid only half the usual rent for the land they leased from her. Scarlett understood sharecropping; it was the way things were done in the South. Being an estate landlord was still new to her. She was determined to be the best landlord in all Ireland.

“The farmers learn from me, too,” she told Cat. “They’d never even heard of fertilizing with phosphates until I handed out those sacks of it. Might as well let Rhett get a few pennies of his money back if it’ll mean a better wheat crop for us.”

She never used the word “father” in Cat’s hearing. Who could tell how much a tiny baby took in and remembered? Especially a baby who was so clearly superior in every way to every other baby in the world.

As the days lengthened, breezes and rain became softer and warmer. Cat O’Hara was becoming more and more fascinating; she was developing individuality.

“I certainly named you right,” Scarlett told her, “you’re the most independent little thing I ever saw.” Cat’s big green eyes looked at her mother attentively while she was talking, then returned to her absorbed contemplation of her own fingers. The baby never fussed, she had an infinite capacity to amuse herself. Weaning her was hard on Scarlett, but not on Cat. She enjoyed examining her porridge with fingers and mouth. She seemed to find all experience extremely interesting. She was a strong baby with a straight spine and high-held head. Scarlett adored her. And, in a special way, respected her. She liked to scoop Cat up and kiss her soft hair and neck and cheeks and hands and feet; she longed to hold Cat in her lap and rock her. But the baby would tolerate only a few minutes of cuddling before she pushed herself free with her feet and fists. And Cat’s small dark-skinned face could have such an outraged expression that Scarlett was forced to laugh even when she was being forcefully rejected.

The happiest times for both of them were at the end of the day when Cat shared Scarlett’s bath. She patted the water, laughing at its splashes, and Scarlett held her, jounced her up and down, and sang to her. Then there was the sweetness of drying the perfect tiny limbs, each finger and toe individually, and spreading powder over Cat’s silky skin and into each baby wrinkle.

When Scarlett was twenty years old, war had forced her to give up her youth overnight. Her will and endurance had hardened and so had her face. In the spring of 1876, when she was thirty-one, the gentle softness of hope and youth and tenderness gradually returned. She was unaware of it; her preoccupation with the farm and the baby had replaced her life-long concentration on her own vanity.

“You need some clothes,” Mrs. Fitz said one day. “I’ve heard there’s a dressmaker who wants to rent the house you lived in if you’ll fresh paint the inside. She’s a widow and well-fixed enough to pay a fair rent. The women in the town would like it, and you need it, unless you’re willing to find a woman in Trim.”

“What’s wrong with the way I look? I wear decent black, the way a widow should. My petticoats hardly ever peek out.”

“You don’t wear decent black at all. You wear earth-stained, rolled-sleeves, peasant women clothes, and you’re the lady of the Big House.”

“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, Mrs. Fitz. How could I ride out to see if the timothy grass is growing if I had on lady-of-the-house clothes? Besides, I like being comfortable. As soon as I can go back into colored skirts and shirts I’ll start worrying about whether they have stains on them. I’ve always hated mourning, I don’t see any reason to try and make black look fresh. No matter what you do to it, it’s still black.”

“Then you aren’t interested in the dressmaker?”

“Of course I’m interested. Another rent is always interesting. And one of these days I’ll order some frocks. After the planting. The fields should be ready for the wheat this week.”

“There’s another rent possible,” the housekeeper said carefully. She’d been surprised more than once by unexpected astuteness on Scarlett’s part. “Brendan Kennedy thinks he could do well if he added an inn to his bar. There’s the building next to him could be used.”

“Who on earth would come to Ballyhara to stay at an inn? That’s crazy. Besides, if Brendan Kennedy wants to rent from me, he should carry his hat in his hand and come talk to me himself, not pester you to do it.”

“Ach, well. Likely it was only talk.” Mrs. Fitzgerald gave Scarlett the week’s household account book and abandoned talk of the inn for the moment. Colum would have to work on it; he was much more persuasive than she was.

“We’re getting to have more servants than the Queen of England,” said Scarlett. She said the same thing every week.

“If you’re going to have cows, you’re going to need hands to milk them,” said the housekeeper.

Scarlett picked up the refrain “… and to separate the cream and make the butter—I know. And the butter’s selling. I just don’t like cows, I guess. I’ll go over this later, Mrs. Fitz. I want to take Cat down to watch them cutting peat in the bog.”

“You’d better go over it now. We’re out of money in the kitchen and the girls need paying tomorrow.”

“Bother! I’ll have to get some cash from the bank. I’ll drive in to Trim.”

“If I was the banker, I’d never give money to a creature dressed like you.”

Scarlett laughed. “Nag, nag, nag. Tell the dressmaker I’ll order the painting done.”

But not the inn opened, thought Mrs. Fitzpatrick. She’d have to talk to Colum tonight.

The Fenians had been steadily growing in strength and numbers throughout Ireland. With Ballyhara, they now had what they most needed: a secure location where leaders from every county could meet to plan strategy, and where a man who needed to flee the militia could safely go, except that strangers were too noticeable in a town that was hardly larger than a village. Militia and constabulary patrols from Trim were few, but one man with sharp eyes was enough to destroy the best-laid plans.

“We really need the inn,” Rosaleen Fitzpatrick said urgently. “It makes sense that a man with business in Trim would take a room this close but cheaper than in town.”

“You’re right, Rosaleen,” Colum soothed, “and I’ll talk to Scarlett. But not right away. She’s too quick-minded for that. Give it a rest for a bit. Then when I bring it up, she won’t wonder why we’re both pressing.”