have, and I won’t grub around in this place for much longer, with Mammy doling out small amounts of money to me for the collection at Mass as if I was a wean.’
Bridie saw some of the injustices of Terry’s predicament that she’d never realised before. ‘Oh, Terry,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you tell Mammy and Daddy how you feel?’
‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’ Terry snapped. ‘It’s like talking to a brick wall.’
‘But where will you go?’
‘New York,’ Terry said. ‘Seamus and Johnnie said they’d send me the fare.’
‘But what about a job?’ Bridie said, for she knew as well as any that unemployment was rife everywhere since the Great War and getting worse. ‘It’s as bad there as here. Worse, in fact. They have soup kitchens in America, Terry.’
‘I know,’ Terry said. ‘That’s the threat Mam and Dad use when I’ve mentioned it to them. Not that I’ve said that much, you know. I’ve just tested the ground as it were. I wrote to Johnnie and he said he can probably get me set on alongside him in time. There’s nothing for now, but he’s keeping an eye out and will send for me. I’m willing to work. I’ll not go to America and live off him and Seamus, never fear. All I’m waiting for is word and the money for the fare.’
Bridie knew then that eventually Terry would go. It might be weeks or even months, but he wouldn’t stay.
However, the weeks rolled by and soon winter was upon them again and still no word came from America. Still and all, Bridie told herself, there might not be a place in America for Terry for a long while. She couldn’t imagine Johnnie and Seamus to be the only Irish boys with relations clamouring to join them. The dole queues in America were as long as those anywhere else and why would they take another person into the country when it made more sense to employ one of their own?
That winter proved to be a severe one and both Jimmy and Francis were worried about their pregnant ewes. Rosalyn came over one day and complained how bad-tempered her father had become lately. Bridie expressed surprise – Francis usually had a smile on his face and had a far more relaxed attitude to life than his brother Jimmy.
They were, as usual, in the barn and Rosalyn peered out of the barn window as she said, ‘Poor things to be born in this anyway.’ She rubbed at the window with a mittened hand, clearing the ice. ‘I mean just look at it,’ she said. The landscape before them was covered in snow blown into drifts at the sides of the fields and gilding the trees and hedges.
Bridie shivered, despite her thick coat. ‘Aye, you’d think they’d wait till spring is really here and the snow had at least disappeared,’ she said. ‘I think God slipped up there.’
Rosalyn gave her a push. ‘Don’t let the priest hear you say that, Bridie McCarthy,’ she said in mock severity while her eyes twinkled. ‘You’ll spend the rest of your life on your knees repenting, you will.’
‘Aye? Well, I’ll say one for you when I’m down there,’ Bridie promised with a smile.
But in all truth there was not much to smile about during those bitterly cold days and the only bright news at all that awful January was that Mary had given birth to a baby and named him Jamie after her father. Jimmy was ridiculously pleased by the gesture and that evening talked of Mary coming home when the baby was a bit older. ‘Show me my namesake,’ he said with a broad grin.
Bridie was glad to see that smile; for far too long her father had had a frown creasing his brow. It was a pity, then, that Terry had to spoil it. ‘Aye, that’s right. Get another one back here that you can chain to the bloody land.’
‘I chain nobody, boy.’
‘Yes you bloody do,’ Terry said, leaping up and reaching for his coat.
‘Where are you going? There’s work to do.’
‘Oh,’ said Terry in mock surprise. ‘You surprise me! Work, is there? Well, get some other silly bugger to do it. I’m away out.’
‘Terry! Come back here!’
As the door slammed shut, Bridie looked fearfully at her father, but he made no effort to follow his wayward son. The peat in the fire settled and hissed and the clock’s tick seemed very loud. Everyone seemed fearful of breaking the silence and Bridie picked up a sock from the mending basket by her mother’s feet and began to darn the large hole in the heel.
By mid-March, the long months of the winter were behind them. The snow and ice were long gone, the lambs had all been born fine and healthy and spring planting was going on apace. The sun was shining in a bright blue sky and Bridie, having celebrated her fourteenth birthday in February, felt happy with her world.
She was, however, rather at a loose end. It was a Saturday and also a Fair Day in the town, where the farmers bought and sold their stock. Terry and her daddy had gone in early with some calves to sell. They’d offered her a lift into town, but she’d said she’d not felt like it that day but then, calling to see Rosalyn, she found she’d also gone into town with her own brother and father very early that morning. ‘She thought you’d be gone in too,’ said Delia.
‘No,’ Bridie said. ‘Daddy offered, but I didn’t fancy it today. Never mind, I’ll see Rosalyn later.’
After helping her mother all morning, she’d been too fidgety to stay in and had gone out tramping the hills later that afternoon. Everyone seemed either to be indoors or in town because she met not a soul and so was pleased on her return to see her uncle Francis approaching her as she neared the outskirts of the farm. She waved to him.
It was as she got nearer that she noticed his strange gait, his slightly glazed eyes and slack mouth, and she realised that her uncle was drunk. She wasn’t totally surprised. He’d been in the town for many hours and the bars, open all day, would be thronged with friends and acquaintances with nothing to do for hours but drink and reminisce. Many men, her father included, would probably be the worse for wear that day.
‘And how’s my favourite girl today?’ Francis cried.
‘Ah, then it must be me you’re talking about since there’s not another soul around for miles,’ Bridie answered with a laugh.
In two strides, Francis was alongside his niece. ‘God, Bridie, but you’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he said. His voice was husky and thick and the way he was looking at her was sending shivers of alarm down her spine. She told herself not to be stupid. This was Francis who she’d known all her life. Dear God! There was no need to be nervous of him. He’d got drunk and was acting oddly, that was all.
‘Hush, Uncle Francis,’ she said in a voice she forced to be steady. ‘You’ll have my head swelling and I’ll not get in the door.’
Francis, his mind addled by the many pints of ale he’d drank that day, was confused. Bridie was his niece and yet he wasn’t seeing her as a niece, but as a desirable young lady and one he’d secretly lusted after for months. It was a fact he’d kept hidden from everyone and the guilt had made him short-tempered with them all at home.
But now here she was, all alone and not a soul about. He grabbed her around the waist and, stunned, she made no protest until he held her against him, his hand clamped against her back. Bridie remembered what Mary had told her about men and women just the previous summer and when she felt the hardness of her uncle she knew what it was that
