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Francis, for God’s sake!’

      Eddie jiggled his baby son in his arms as he scanned the page. ‘She doesn’t say much,’ he said at last.

      ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’ Mary cried. ‘What d’you want, that she explains it to you chapter and verse? What she says and hints at is quite enough to tell me what’s going on.’

      ‘Why doesn’t she kick the man in the balls if she’s so bothered about it and tell him to behave himself?’ Eddie asked.

      ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ Mary said, knowing full well the dilemma Bridie would have found herself in. ‘I should have gone over to see her this summer, especially with Aunt Ellen’s rheumatics starting up again and being unable to go herself.’

      ‘You knew nothing about this in the summer,’ Eddie reminded her. ‘And then the money was an issue with Junior here taking such a lot of it. There was your aunt being laid up too. How could you have just upped and left for a week or two?’

      Mary knew she couldn’t have done, not really, but she felt guilty about her sister. She promised her she’d be home the following summer and until then advised Bridie to be very careful of her uncle and try to avoid situations where she might find herself alone with him and to make sure she never, ever encouraged him in any way.

      At the end of the letter she suggested that she should perhaps broach the subject with her mother. But when Bridie received Mary’s reply, she screwed it up in impatience.

      What the Hell did Mary think? That she encouraged, even enjoyed, the advances of a man she thought of as a fatherly figure? And didn’t she think she’d tried to avoid being alone with him? The fact that the farm was isolated in many areas made that almost impossible. And as for telling her mother … Well, that was a non-starter.

      What had she expected, she asked herself, that Mary would come up with some plan to scupper her uncle? She didn’t know, but she did know she viewed the future with dread and would continue to unless she could find some sort of solution. Each day now she woke up with a dead weight in her heart and a stomach turning somersaults in case she should have to ask for help in some area of the work. She wished someone could tell her how to deal with it.

      By the late spring of 1930 the situation between herself and her uncle had got worse rather than better and she knew something had to be done, and so she decided to take Mary’s advice and speak to her mother.

      It was not a success. Sarah truly didn’t see there was a problem, or chose to misunderstand what Bridie was trying to say. Bridie, knowing of her mother’s naïvety, chose to believe the former. Not that she was experienced herself, but every nerve in her body cried out that what her uncle was doing was wrong. Yet, unless she was able to describe in detail what her uncle said and, more importantly, where he touched her, which she couldn’t begin to explain to her mother; she’d never understand. ‘What do you mean, you don’t like him kissing you and holding you?’ Sarah demanded. ‘Hasn’t he done that since the day you were born?’

      ‘Yes, but …’

      ‘But nothing, Miss. God, Bridie, I hope you’re not getting above yourself, I thought you had more sense.’

      ‘I have, Mammy. It’s just that …’

      ‘I hope you haven’t been bothering your father with this nonsense? You know what he thinks of Francis. God, I’d hate to be the person that came between them.’

      No, she’d said nothing to her father, she wasn’t a fool altogether. And she didn’t want to be the one that would separate one brother from the other either as her revelations certainly would. She realised in that moment that she was on her own and not even Mary’s promised visit in August of that year could lift her spirits.

      However, Mary believed every word her anguished sister had written to her, and with reason, and was furiously angry on her behalf. She intended to seek her uncle Francis out at the first opportunity and put the fear of God into him.

      But when Mary eventually arrived back home she was the feted daughter, welcomed home with Aunt Ellen, now semi-recovered from her rheumatics, and wee Jamie, an enchanting toddler turned two years old, who enthralled Jimmy and Sarah and even Bridie.

      It was almost a week before Mary got her chance to see her uncle Francis without anyone else in earshot. She’d said nothing to Bridie of her intention and now she faced her uncle across the field of ripening hay he was surveying.

      Her stomach churned as she looked at him. He seemed so harmless. But she hardened her heart against him for Bridie’s sake. ‘I believe you’ve been giving our Bridie a hard time recently?’

      ‘Not at all. What’s she been saying?’

      ‘Never mind. She’s said enough,’ Mary snapped. ‘We won’t go into it now – you’d just deny everything, I imagine, and then I’d get angry, because I’d stake my life on Bridie telling the truth. All the years of her growing up, I’ve never known her lie.’

      ‘I demand to know what she’s complained of,’ Francis said. ‘How else can I protest against it?’

      ‘Don’t even think you can,’ Mary answered scathingly. ‘If you examine your conscience, you’ll know what Bridie has complained of. And I’m telling you it has to stop, here and now. You think if she complains she won’t be believed, she’s even told me that. Well, let me tell you, if this doesn’t stop, the letters she’s sent to me, telling me what you try to do and what you say, will be given to prominent people in your life. Aunt Delia, for example, or Father O’Dwyer. Believe me, if you do not leave my sister alone she will not be the one painted black in this instance because I’ll tell my tale too. Some people might then begin to wonder about Sally McCormack so think on, Uncle Francis.’

      Francis began to bluster. ‘Mary, for God’s sake. You know there was no proof that I’d ever touched that gypsy brat. As for your sister … Well, let’s just say she has a vivid imagination.’

      ‘And me? Have I a vivid imagination too?’

      ‘You misunderstood me.’

      ‘Like Hell I did,’ Mary spat out.

      ‘Look, Mary, Bridie has got the whole thing wrong, out of proportion. That’s all it was and that’s all I’m prepared to say on the subject.’

      ‘Well, it isn’t all I’m prepared to say,’ Mary barked out angrily. ‘I don’t care what label you put it under, or how you try to justify it, if she writes to me in the same vein again, you will have cooked your goose as far as your family, your wife and your standing in the community are concerned. I hope you understand that.’

      Francis understood all right. He stood at the crossroads of his life and he knew if he was to go forward, Mary would ruin him. Somehow, he had to control the fascination Bridie held for him in order to keep the life he had and, though he made no reply, Mary knew she’d frightened him and dearly hoped it was enough to help her sister.

CHAPTER THREE

      Mary never told Bridie of the conversation she had with their uncle Francis and the threat she’d issued, so Bridie didn’t look for any significant change in his behaviour once Mary left for home.

      But at the harvest, which the two families had always worked together, Uncle Francis was quite curt with her, when he spoke at all. She didn’t see why he should seem so annoyed with her, but preferred that attitude to his previous one, so didn’t bother worrying over it.

      She still viewed the coming winter – the rambling season and Christmas – with apprehension, but she needn’t have worried. Francis made no attempt to waylay her, or even say anything slightly suggestive, but rather seemed to avoid her if he could.

      She was able to say this in a letter to Mary, who was glad she hadn’t Bridie to worry about for that autumn she had discovered she was expecting

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