The Mersey Girls (11 page)

And in the very very back of her mind, where nightmares lurked, Linnet also told herself that if she was ever threatened for living alone, then she would take a lodger, a nice young woman not many years older than herself, who would provide her with the respectability which, she knew, she would lack in the eyes of authority if they knew her mother was away.

Happier in her mind than she had been since her mother’s departure, Linnet slept well that night.

It was about the same time – the Easter holidays after the twins’ fourteenth birthday – Lucy and Caitlin finally discovered who had stolen their fruit cake the previous summer.

After that first visit to the castle, and the mysterious theft, they had decided they would make a point of visiting the old castle at least once a week, and at first they actually did so. But after a couple of visits the curragh wasn’t there, and it did not appear again. After that they went because they enjoyed having a place of their own, one which nobody else knew about, but it gradually palled because it was a long walk, because the marsh grew next to impassable as the summer rains swelled its puddles into small ponds, and because nothing much happened when they went over there.

‘We ought to have gone over in winter, because whoever was living there likely wouldn’t be watching for visitors in winter,’ Lucy remarked on Easter Sunday as they stopped by the gate to the meadows and the marsh. They leaned on the mossy top bar, looking across at the black finger of the tower pointing up at the pale blue sky. ‘What’s more, whoever lives there would have needed a fire, and newly dead fires leave traces . . . oh, why didn’t we go over in the winter?’

But they had not gone because they were busy with other, indoor activities and also because as the weather worsened so the lure of the castle had palled. It no longer seemed mysterious when the rain sheeted across the marsh but just lonely and dilapidated, and when the snow came, and the howling gales, both girls found plenty to occupy them in the old farmhouse with its empty rooms and crowded attics, or in the sheds and barns which abounded around the farmyard.

‘But this holiday, now that we’re fourteen and past, we’ll go back again and do all sorts,’ Caitlin announced. ‘This year, we’ll do all the things we didn’t do last year, starting off by nagging our daddies to make us a curragh of our own.’

‘I don’t have a daddy,’ Lucy reminded her. ‘Is it my grandad you’re meaning?’

‘Yes, of course. I do forget,’ apologised Caitlin. ‘Your grandad will help my daddy to build us a curragh, won’t he?’

‘I doubt it; he’ll say there’s easier ways of gettin’ rid o’ the pair of us than be drowning,’ Lucy said placidly. ‘They’re against boats, the Murphys. They say they’re farmers, not fishermen.’

‘Oh well, we’ll have to find the magic curragh, then,’ Caitlin said. It was a fine day and she was in a good mood and besides, school had broken up which meant that though they would be busy about the farm they would not have to go off to school each day. ‘Are we plantin’ spuds tomorrow?’

‘We are. I’m going to get the thickest sack out of the barn for me poor knees, you’d better do likewise.’

On Easter Sunday itself, of course, they had been too busy with church services, visiting the graves and being lugged here and there by their respective families to go anywhere or do anything, but finally, after tea, Caitlin came over and the two of them agreed to plant potatoes all the following day in return for a picnic the day after that.

‘Fair enough, though if the rain holds off your grandad will expect you to finish the big field,’ Maeve warned Lucy. ‘It’s half done, mind, but there’s still a power of plantin’ left to do.’

As it happened, the next day started off chilly and overcast and it seemed that it had rained most of the night – at any rate, as the children, Maeve and the farmhands squelched across the half-sown field every step was a battle.

‘If it had rained
now
then they’d likely have put the plantin’ off till tomorrow,’ Caitlin moaned, as they reached the end of the rows and dumped their sacks on the cold, wet ploughland. ‘As it is, we’ve got to put a good face on it and start, at least.’

Lucy said nothing but threw her own sack down and knelt on it. Oh, the pain of the sharp little pebbles digging into her kneecaps, the discomfort of hands gone numb from the cold and wet, trying to delve into the claggy soil, oh the misery when, presently, the nippy wind brought a gust of cold rain with it, not enough rain so that they might give up, just enough to fur their lashes with wet and to soak their hair into rats’ tails.

‘At least the best part of the field’s done,’ Maeve called over her shoulder at one point. ‘And Kellach’s such a worker, look at the rate of him, shootin’ up his furrow like a racin’ greyhound!’

The simile made Lucy smile – her first that morning. Kellach was a beefy young man and his broad behind, moving stolidly along his furrow, resembled a greyhound about as much as Clara Bow, the mournful old mule who had done the ploughing, resembled a racehorse.

‘Sure an’ it’s nice to see you smile,’ Maeve said encouragingly. ‘Let’s see if we can keep pace wi’ one another, shall we? Then at least we can talk.’

‘I don’t feel like talkin’, Caitlin grumbled. ‘Sure an’ isn’t the inside of me mouth the only warm bit of me? I’m not after gettin’ that cold by openin’ me gob more’n I have to.’

That made Maeve and Lucy laugh and Maeve said that since they were all working like Trojans now, she’d offer them a bit of a prize . . . Kellach would undoubtedly finish his row first, and probably be halfway down his second before any of the females had reached the hedge, but whoever came second to Kellach at the end of the field would get a bag of Maeve’s cinder toffee and a threepenny piece to spend.

It definitely gave a point to the work, Lucy thought, seizing her bag of spuds and heaving herself further along the row. She planted two likely looking potatoes, eyes up, and entombed them, banged the earth flat, moved on. Maeve was a little ahead of her still, Caitlin a long way behind. But Caitlin had heard, and was rapidly brightening up despite the rain which was starting in earnest now.

‘We should’ve started off evens, though,’ she panted at Lucy’s heels. ‘What’s the prize for whoever comes in third?’

‘A clip round the ear,’ Kellach shouted from way up front. ‘Delivered be the all-time winner, Kellach Flanagan, and am’t I the best spud-planter in all of Ireland, now?’

‘First isn’t important today, Kellach,’ Lucy shouted. ‘The race is a ladies’ race with just me an’ Cait competin’, and I’m in the lead as they round the bend!’

‘Neck and neck!’ Caitlin screamed, drawing level with Lucy. ‘Put your money on the Kelly filly, ladies an’ gentlemen, sure an’ she’s got the stamina an’ the speed, what more can you ask?’

‘The Murphy mare’s drawin’ ahead,’ countered Lucy, planting like mad. ‘The Murphy mare’s got the legs on the filly, she’s used to heavy going, she’s got a light foot on her so she has!’

Maeve was laughing so hard that they caught her up, both now ignoring the dreadful weather conditions, not even bothering to lift up their kneeling sacks but bending and straightening, slamming the seed potatoes into place, covering them up, stamping them down and dragging their equipment on to the next bit of trench.

‘Sure and if old Tom was out here he’d be puttin’ a bob each way on the pair of ye,’ she called after them. ‘Mind them spuds don’t get planted upside down, we don’t want to have to dig six foot down to get ’em when they’re ready.’

‘Australians would get them,’ Lucy said, pushing her hair back from her forehead with a muddy hand. ‘Good Irish potatoes, gone all that way . . . oh, oh, you distracted me, Maeve, now the poor Murphy mare’s handicapped!’

By evening the race was won and the field finished. Mud to their eyebrows, the children went to their own homes, almost too tired to shout a goodnight; almost, but not quite. Lucy reached the haven of her little room under the eaves, opened the window into the downpour, and leaned out, but only a little way, out of deference to her clean white nightgown.

‘Caitlin, are you in your room?’ She shouted needlessly, since she could see both Caitlin’s candle and her head and shoulders against the light. ‘Have you had a bath? Maeve said when she emptied my bathwater she might as well have taken it straight along to the nine acre, for ’twas all good, rich loam. I washed me hair, though I didn’t see the point; it ‘ud been rinsed in rainwater all day so it had.’

‘I’m bathed,’ Caitlin answered. ‘And I’m dog-tired, so I am. If I live the night out shall we go over to the castle tomorrow? For I’m damned if I’ll set another potato until next year.’

‘There aren’t any more to set, thank the good Lord,’ Lucy said piously. ‘If the sun shines I want to go a picnic tomorrow. If it’s rainy again we might go into Cahersiveen with Maeve in the donkey-cart. She’s got shoppin’ to do, she says.’

‘We could go to the cinema,’ Caitlin said eagerly. ‘Honest to God, Lu, your Maeve knows a t’ing or two – we earned those threepenny bits twice over so we did.’

‘Aye, you’re right there, she’s a psychia . . . whatsit, isn’t she just?’

‘A cunning old mavoureen, you mean,’ Caitlin called. ‘See you in the morning then, alanna. Goodniiiiiiight!’

‘See you in the morning,’ Lucy shouted back. ‘Goodniiiiiiight!’

She shut the window, causing drops to fly into the room and speckle the floorboards, and took a flying jump into her bed. The bed cannoned into the wall and the metal head rail squealed and scattered flakes as it rammed against the whitewash.

Lucy cuddled down the bed and dragged the blankets up over her shoulders. Tomorrow they would . . . they would . . .

She slept.

‘Well, me prayers were answered,’ Caitlin said with a good deal of satisfaction next afternoon as they set out for their picnic. ‘Didn’t we work like a couple of Irish navvies all morning so as to get our legs loose this afternoon, and aren’t we rewarded? Isn’t it just the sort of day we wanted, alanna? A bit windy, I’ll grant you, and wit’ the odd cloud floating along, but it’s sunny, that you cannot deny.’

Lucy looked dubiously up at the sky above them. It was sunny, that was certainly true, but there was a great deal of cloud above and there was an oddness in the weather, something she described to herself as a sort of brassiness, which she did not much like.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said heavily. ‘The air tastes odd, don’t you think? Perhaps we’d better stick close to home, eh, Cait?’

But Caitlin was having none of it. ‘For a start off, if we stick close to home then your Maeve and my mammy will see us and hand out jobs, sure as me name’s Kelly,’ she said. ‘And for another start off, it’s sunny and you can’t be too sure of sunshine in April. And for
another
start . . .’

‘You can only have one start, the rest isn’t,’ Lucy said pedantically. And then, when Caitlin pulled a face and fell silent, ‘Well then? What’s the next start?’

‘How can air taste funny?’

‘It can,’ Lucy said, after a short pause to consider. ‘It tastes of metal polish.’

‘Smells of it, d’you mean? Because sure I can understand a smell of metal polish, but a taste of the stuff? Air can’t taste, it’s not water!’

By now they were across the long meadow and climbing the gate onto the marsh so Lucy just shrugged and wrinkled her nose.

‘I don’t know how it can taste, I just know it does. I can taste it in my mouth. Are you saying you cannot?’

They crossed some more marsh, leaping from tussock to tussock and avoiding the brackish, sky-reflecting pools.

‘I know what you mean,’ Caitlin said at last. ‘Only I don’t think it tastes so much of metal polish as torch batteries. D’you want to turn back, then?’

It was a good question since, as Caitlin spoke, they could see blowing across the lough towards them a rainshower, fine as cobweb, colourful as a rainbow as it caught the sunshine. And looking across at it, Lucy could feel the tingle in the air, the strange stillness, which presages exceptionally bad weather.

‘Too late,’ she said, however. ‘We’ll never get home before the rain reaches us; let’s make for the castle.’

They ran on, but very soon the rain was upon them, misty and cool on their skins, not at all unpleasant. They reached the edge of the mound in good order and were about to pull themselves up when from the rapidly gathering clouds overhead came an ominous rumble and almost at the same moment, a vivid fork of lightning arrowed down into the lough.

‘God help us!’ Caitlin gasped.

Lucy, fervently echoing her friend’s words, bounded the last couple of yards, hit the grass running, and made straight for the castle, Caitlin close on her heels.

‘It’s an electric storm,’ she gasped as they ran in under the arch. ‘I’m scared, Cait, we shouldn’t be out, we should be indoors . . . aargh!’

She had shrieked because at that moment the thunder cracked overhead so loud that it pained the ears, and the narrow space in the castle keep was lit up by a brilliant flash which completely swamped the afternoon light.

‘Oh, oh,
oh
!’ Caitlin squeaked as the thunder cracked a second time. ‘It’s right overhead, we’ll be killed stone dead! The bloody castle will fall on us and Mammy and Maeve will skin us alive!’

‘It’s stood for a thousand years, so no reason why it should keel over now,’ Lucy said stoutly, but perspiration was trickling down the sides of her face and her heart was thumping like a trip-hammer. ‘You made a poem just now, Cait –
It’s right overhead, we’ll be killed stone dead
! That’s a p . . . oh, oh!’

Even as she spoke a tongue of lightning struck the sapling growing out of the highest wall and licked down the stones towards them, causing both girls to shriek and Caitlin to cover her head with both hands in a gesture as instinctive as it was futile.

‘Get through the door, for divil a hope have we got here,’ Lucy said briskly, giving her friend a shove. ‘Go on . . . at least there’ll be a roof over our heads.’

They dived through the door just as another great, hollow clang of thunder echoed around them so that the slam of the door was noiseless. And just before it closed they saw more lightning flicker horribly around the keep.