Emily’s Dream Part 2
That night standing in the pub nursing a pint homeless and unemployed Jim desperately tried to decide what to do. Jim, a mate from work offered him a spare bed in his parent’s house, “We’ll get work at the factories.” he said. Jim remembered thinking he wasn’t so sure. Maybe, he should just go home and face Emily’s wrath about the delay there would have to be on the building of the house. Work was scarce. Minors were out on strike; many living off the soup kitchens.
Finally, he did get a job in a factory. The pay was bad and the working conditions were terrible. Andy remembered how he had hated working inside, the constant grind of the machinery and the relentless, repetitive work.
But even harder to take was the tension in Jim’s house one of his brothers was on the miners’ strike; the other crossing the picket line. Ugly accusations of ‘scabs’ and ‘Maggie lover’ were hurled across the dinner table every night.
He was jerked back to the present by the pain in his hand; He was pouring the fresh tea he had made over his hand instead of into the cup. He roused himself and wrapped a wet cloth around the burning sensation on his knuckles. “It was then I met Ellen,” he mused. Ellen a nurse confided in him that as soon as she finished her training she was off to America. A part of him wanted to go with her. It wasn’t too long before she was sneaking him into the Nurses’ Home. He and Ellen did the rounds of the pubs and clubs. “I forgot about Emily, forgot about the farm. I send no money,” he berated himself.
But sometimes he’d wake up in the early hours of the morning with Ellen sleeping beside him and just for a split second he would think he was in his own bed at home. Sometimes he imagined he could hear the dawn chorus of birds that nested in the trees around the farm. Or felt sure he smelt the newly cut hay. One morning, he woke early, walked out of Ellen’s life and went back to the farm and to Emily. Andy’s heartbeat quickened as he remembered the hostility in Emily’s eyes.
Andy’s legs felt heavy as lead and he sat down abruptly in his armchair. The guilt he had felt at betraying her never left him. Nor the bitter and angry words his mother had hurled at him about the house. “So the prodigal son has returned?” His mother’s sharp tongue chastised him.
“I’ll go down and see how the house is coming on,” he had remarked the day after he had come home.
“You do that,” his mother said grimly. “While you were away gallivanting around England with your fancy bit of skirt, your father was building that house of yours. It took him to an early grave. We couldn’t even find you when he died. God rest his soul.”
Andy’s eyes filled with tears as a great wave of regret stronger than any physical pain made him bow his head in anguish. His father had kept his promise to him. The man had got the plans passed. Emily had got her dream house. “But Da never got his grandchildren,” Andy murmured.
Made of glass and brick it stood in the middle of the lower meadow. Modern in design inside and out, it looked out of place surrounded by rolling green fields and the hazy hue of the mountains in the background.
Andy sat bolt upright in the chair as a thought struck him. Forty years too late he understood something that he had not understood before. Emily was as much out of place as a farmer’s wife as the house was out of kilter with its surroundings. If only he had understood that after he had come home from England in 198…. With his father lying in the graveyard he might have gone back to England – maybe even gone to Boston with Ellen – built a good life for himself.
Emily never allowed him to make love to her again. He understood now that withholding her love was her way of punishing him for his infidelity. It was all the excuse she needed.
Rinsing his cup under the running tap Andy heard the postman’s old bike rattling over the rutted ground of the lane. “Are you in Andy? Letter from America,” he called, For once, Andy didn’t offer him a cup of tea. He was in no mood today to listen to titbit of gossip he’s heard on his delivery. He loitered about talking about the weather. Andy knew he was waiting on him to open the letter. The letter from America would be discussed on his rounds to the rest of the farms, especially at Emily’s house.
Dark rain clouds scuttled across the sky as Andy went to look for his glasses. He gave the fire a poke making the green wood hiss and spit like a vengeful woman. Turning the letter over in his hand he slit it open with the old penknife he kept for whittling sticks.
Giving his glasses a wipe on the end of his jumper he began to read. The words on the page kept jumping out of focus and it was a few minutes before he could grasp what it said. With a perplexed frown he read it again and again.
” My name is Andrea; I believe you are my father. I’m coming to Ireland soon and want to meet you,” the letter went on.
Andy sat in stunned silence. Even the clock on the wall seemed to be holding its breath. He picked up the envelope to look at the postmark again. He shook his head in bewilderment. It couldn’t be right.
Something slipped from the envelope and fluttered at his feet. It was a photograph of a young woman. Her soft brown eyes held Andy’s attention. “Not the eyes of any woman I have ever known,” he stuttered.
No. But he knew he would know those eyes anywhere. Those eyes had looked into his in childhood and in manhood; always with the same unspoken message of love.
“It wasn’t the way of men like Da to speak of love for their son,” Andy whispered.” But I always knew my father loved me.” His father’s eyes. The girl in the picture had his father’s eyes, he thought incredulously.
Ellen’s daughter! His daughter?
He staggered a little as he rose from the chair and going out of the old farmhouse he made his way over the stile and into the field that lead to the lower meadow and Emily’s house. He didn’t lift eye or brow as he passed. Instead, he took the short cut for the old graveyard. Breathless, from the exertion of hurrying over the rough ground, he stopped at his father’s grave and withdrew the picture of the American woman from the envelope and propped it up against the headstone.
A soft wind rustled the fallen leaves covering the brown earth of the grave. Andy blessed himself and reaching over pocketed the small photograph. “Emily is welcome to her house Da. It’s only bricks and mortar. “He patted his pocket. “I have a daughter and you have a granddaughter, “he murmured softly. “A new generation – maybe two generation – new beginning for the old farm.”
Gemma Hill 2021
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 