LITMIR.BIZ

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so Terry took little notice, until Abel hailed him. Almost every week, Abel carried letters to the McCarthy house from their sons in America and he knew their writing well, so he said to Terry, ‘Your brothers are after writing to you now too.’

      Terry stared at the man for a second or two before the significance of what he said caused him to throw down his spade, leap the hedge and take the letter from his outstretched hand. He went to the privy – the only place he could think of where he wouldn’t be disturbed – and ripped the envelope open.

      Dollar bills were folded inside the letter and Terry stuffed those into the pockets of his breeches and smoothed out the sheet of paper.

      Okay kiddo,

      I just might have a job for you at last. The factory are setting up new lines making waterproof mackintoshes and they’ll be up and running in three weeks or so. I’ll put your name forward, but there would be hundreds after each vacancy, so there is no way I can hold it for you and there will be a damned long wait for anything else if you let this one go. I presume you have primed Mammy and Daddy what you intended to do when the time was right so I advise you to waste no time in buying a ticket and getting your arse over here pronto. See you soon hopefully.

       All the best

       Johnnie

      Excitement leapt inside Terry initially and then reality struck. It was about the very worst time to leave the farm with not even the hay gathered in. But then was there ever a good time to leave a farm? And as Johnnie said, if he passed this offer up, then he might as well say goodbye to his dreams of going to America altogether. Johnnie thought he must have discussed the possibility of him joining his brothers with their parents, but though they’d both sensed his dissatisfaction, the idea that he might leave the farm had never occurred to them and Terry wished now he’d given some hint of it. Well, he thought, that can soon be remedied. The sooner he told them the better for speed was of the essence, so he squared his shoulders and made his way to the farmhouse.

      The resultant row was so fast and furious that Bridie fled to the bedroom and buried her head beneath the bedclothes. Sarah pleaded and cried and Jimmy thundered and roared while Terry shouted back. Francis and Delia were brought in to try to talk some sense into the boy and the following day Father O’Dwyer was called.

      By then, Terry was barely speaking to his parents, but his determination to leave had not been altered at all though everyone had thought and said he was wrong, ungrateful, neglecting his filial duty. His parents, their farm and their welfare were, they said, his responsibility. Who was to help them now if he ran away like this? Surely to God he couldn’t expect his wee sister to take up the reins?

      Bridie tried to keep out of it. She wanted no one to see the tears she shed, for it would be just another stick to beat Terry with. She knew she’d miss him more than anyone – it had been just the two of them for so long and she knew she’d be lonely. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if she’d been going into town to work; then there would have been Rosalyn and other girls to talk to through the day, but she knew it would be the loneliness as well as the workload that might wear her down now.

      ‘Do you hate me, Bridie?’ Terry asked, coming across her in the barn in tears. He’d fought all the people that opposed him and pleaded with him and yet it was Bridie, who had said so little, who played on his mind.

      Bridie raised her face, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She knew Terry had his ticket and would be leaving in the next few days and she wanted to bang her little fists on his chest and tell him he couldn’t go. What was he thinking of to leave her like this?

      But how could she let her brother go with only recriminations ringing in his ears? ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t hate you, but I’m sad – I’ll miss you.’

      ‘Oh God,’ Terry said, feeling ashamed for his sister’s sake. ‘I’ll send for you, Bridie, when I’ve …’

      ‘You know I can’t leave here,’ Bridie said quietly, and she put her arms around Terry and kissed him on the cheek and left him, sobbing.

      Terry left in August 1928 and, in the early weeks, Bridie often felt she couldn’t go on. She saw the farm for the first time as Terry had seen it: one relentless round of work with never an hour, never mind a day, off to do with as she pleased.

      At first, she sought her bed straight after the evening meal, so tired even her bones ached. However, bit by bit, her body became accustomed to the hard physical work and she had a wage to be picked up at the end of every week to look forward to, though her parents had balked at that initially.

      ‘But why do you want a wage, Bridie?’ Sarah had asked.

      ‘Everyone has a wage, Mammy, if they do a job.’

      ‘Yes, of course, if you work outside the home,’ Sarah had conceded. ‘Here you get your meals and clothes bought for you when you need them.’

      ‘Ah, but d’you see, Mammy, that’s it,’ Bridie had said. ‘You say I have clothes when I need them, but really you mean your choice of clothes when you think I need them. As for meals, wouldn’t anyone working here be fed?’

      ‘Well, yes,’ Sarah had had to agree. ‘But …’

      ‘There isn’t any but in this, Mammy,’ Bridie had said, hardening her heart against her parents’ confused faces. ‘There has been no cost to you in working clothes, for I’m wearing Terry’s.’

      She was, too, although they had been refashioned. By taking in the crotch and chopping inches off the legs of the breeches and cutting down the work shirts, repositioning the buttons and chopping the sleeves to fit, she had her made them fit her just right.

      ‘I’d like the same as Rosalyn earns in the shirt factory,’ Bridie had said. ‘Less what she pays in keep. I think that’s fair.’

      ‘Fair or not,’ Jimmy had said, ‘none of our other children have demanded a wage for working their own place.’

      ‘It’s not my place, it’s yours,’ Bridie had reminded him. ‘And I know Terry asked for a wage because he told me. Maybe if he’d been given one he’d have stayed longer.’

      ‘Are you threatening me, Bridie? I’ll not stand that,’ Jimmy had blustered. ‘Big as you are …’

      ‘Daddy, I’m threatening no one,’ Bridie had said gently. ‘I’m just stating facts. I’ll work as hard as I’m able, but I need money of my own.’

      Jimmy had knocked his pipe against the hearth, filled it with infinite slowness and drew on it. He had no wish to alienate his darling daughter ‘Well,’ he had said at last, ‘I think what Bridie has suggested is only fair.’

      Sarah had looked at him, open-mouthed, while Bridie had reached up and kissed her father’s stubbly chin. ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she had said. ‘I appreciate you listening to me.’

      She had missed the look that passed between her parents, the one that said they’d raised a treasure, a daughter in a million, for that treasure, worn-out by hard work, had taken her weary bones to bed.

      Francis wondered if Bridie had any idea of how fetching she looked as she worked the fields in her brother’s cut-down clothes. She was like a wean dressing up, except no wean had a figure like the one she was developing. Her eyes were like pools of dark brown treacle and could flash fire, but mainly sparkled with laughter, and however her hair was tied back, curls would always escape. Sometimes just to look at her could stop the blood pulsing in his body. He knew he could do nothing about it but look, for the girl was his niece and yet but a child. But God, if things were different …

      Francis was on his way to the McCarthy house for a rambling session with these thoughts churning in his head. In the late autumn and winter, with the harvest safely gathered in, rambling nights were popular in the country houses.

      Word got around that a rambling was to be held at such a house and neighbours and friends would come from all over. The men often had an instrument with

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