Emily’s House

 

Emily’s house

The sound of the news presenter’s voice stirred Andy out of his short sleep on the chair in front of the television. He focused his eyes on the image on the screen as a smiling politician and his wife presented their new baby son to the waiting media. “What a lovely surprise – baby was born during the election campaign,” the newsreader enthused.

“Bloody happy surprise,” Andy muttered angrily. “It was no bloody surprise when the Tories closed down all the coal mines in 1984 and made hardworking decent folk like me unemployed. With one decisive movement he aimed the remote control at the television and watched in satisfaction as the smug face of politician faded from his screen.

He wished he could snap off his memories so easily. Election spiels and empty promises always brought him back to the 1980s because he always associated it with the beginning of his own troubles.  I was twenty-five, living at home and newly married to Emily, he remembered.

Emily. Small and stocky with beautiful long flowing red hair and eyes as golden brown as the autumn leaves they tramped through as they wandered content and happy in the country lanes that surrounded both their farms. She was what his father called a good catch and from good stock. “Aye,” It’ll be grand to have a few wee redheads disturbing the place,” he’d commented to nobody in particular.

Emily and me? Our lives full of dreams and plans. Passionate about each other they’d made a pact to wait until their wedding night before making love. “It was to be the night that would seal our love for each other and start us on the next stage of our lives, “Andy grunted as he filled the kettle.

That was our first mistake; he thought bitterly. Perhaps if we hadn’t waited things might have turned out different. “Ach,” he said to the empty kitchen,” there’s no point in raking over oul coals.”

Coal and politicians, he reflected, the two things he associated with the troubles in his life.

Emily had not taken to marriage. She found every excuse to avoid making love. “Your mother will hear us,” she would whisper fiercely as he tried to kiss and cuddle her in bed. As each month passed, his parents looked expectantly at them. They question of when we would make them grandparents foremost in their minds, Andy thought.

“I don’t want to have children… yet. I want us to build a house of our own first,” Emily muttered moving to the edge of the bed.

Andy poured the boiling water on the tea and stirred the teapot absently. “Yet, she could be loving and persuasive when she wanted something. Fool that I was I could refuse her nothing, “he reflected.

“We could build the house quicker – if went to work in England,” she’d pouted. Their lovemaking that night had been a hurried affair. “Nothing like what making love to the girl I loved with all my heart should have been, “Andy murmured. He gave the teapot an impatient shake and watched the golden brown liquid swirl in the dark interior of the pot.

Leaving the farm, taking the boat to England had been bittersweet. “I thought it would make Emily happy… imagined returning home with money to build the kind of house Emily wanted. Finally, she would let me love her. We’d live the life we’d dreamed of as we’d lay in the summer grass…

He cast his eyes over the lower field as he waited for the tea to settle and thought about the day before he’d went to Newcastle-on-Tyne. His father, a man who seldom spoke unless he had something important to say, had found him in the barn forking straw.

“Don’t go son,” he said, fiddling with a bale of straw.

“I have to Da. I need the money to get a house for Emily.”

“I know a man – build a house in the lover field. I’ll see about the Plans“

For the first time in a long time Andy had taken a good long hard look at his father. “The tall, dependable man of his childhood was still evident in the length of his stride and the broad back that bent to pick up a bale of straw. “ But I suddenly saw that his thick crop of hair was thinning, his face lined with age,” Andy murmured spooning sugar into his tea.

“Maybe with a place of her own your wife might want children before we get too old to enjoy them, “his father had said a wishful note in his voice. “You know the farm is yours when I die,” he said softly.

” The new house will be well weather beaten before it’s my turn to run the farm and you’ll get no peace at all once the grandchildren come.They’ll be running around the place like spring lambs,” Andy had assured him.

With a shrug his father had turned away but not before he’d seen the sad, reflective look in his eyes. Andy felt a quiver run down his spine as if someone had walked over his grave.  Now, years later, he realised that his quiet, unassuming father was astute and observant and knew without being told how things were between Emily and him

 

Work in England was plentiful. The pay was good and if the beer wasn’t Guinness, well, it wasn’t too bad. I sent money home every week. The foundation of our house was laid; Emily was happy and life was good, he thought.

 

Trouble always comes in pairs, my mother used to say, Andy thought In contrast to his da she had been a sharp-tongued woman who worked from dawn to dusk and expected everyone else to do the same. “That was part of the problem with her and Emily,” he mused.

He looked out the window of the old farmhouse at the few hens pecking the ground in search of something to eat. That was all was left of the farm. “What was the old folk’s hard work all for,” he said softly. There had been a hard frost the night before and he knew that the hens’ hard work would be in vain. “Just like it was when I pleaded for work when we got paid off in England,” he reflected.

That had been the first problem. Without any warning the gaffer paid him off, “That’s they way it is,” he replied, when Andy asked why it was him that was being paid off, “Last in, first out, that how it is. Ach, strong man like you will have no bother getting another job,” he said, slapping Andy on the back. “Away and have a pint and stop worrying yerself man.”

When he got home to the digs another shock was waiting for him. “Could I have a word? Paddy, the landlady called after him as he turned the corner on the stairs. No matter how many times he told her his name was Andy she still called him Paddy. He liked Mrs Armstrong. She treated the lodgers well. Andy noticed that her eyes were red from crying. “I must ask you to leave right away.” She twisted her hands together.

“What did I do,” he asked her. Had he forgotten to pay his rent?”

“My son,” she began, “my son…a soldier, was shot dead in Belfast this morning.” Her body began to shake uncontrollably.

“But I’m not from… Andy tried to explain,

Mrs Armstrong clung on to the banister of the stairs “Please, please go, right away,” she pleaded. “You’re Irish. Go before my husband and other sons get here.”

“Just like that, I found myself out on the street, unemployed and homeless,” Andy murmured.

He remembered that night standing in the pub nursing a pint desperately trying to decide what to do. Jim, a mate from work had offered him a spare bed in his parent’s house, “We’ll get work at the factories.” he said. But work was scarce. Minors were out on strike; many living off the soup kitchens.

Finally, he’d got 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 strike; the other had crossed 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 tea over his hand instead of into the cup. “It was then I met Ellen,” he mused. Ellen was fun. He could vividly remember how terrified he had been of running into someone from home as he and Ellen did the endless rounds of the pubs and clubs. “I forgot about Emily and the farm. I send no money,” he berated himself.

But sometimes he’d wake up in the early hours of the morning 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 up, walked out of Ellen’s life and went back home to Ireland and to Emily.

If he expected a welcoming party he got none. “So the prodigal son has returned?” His mother’s sharp tongue chastised him. 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 the armchair. The guilt he had felt at betraying Emily had never left him. Nor the bitter and angry words his mother had hurled at him about the house.

“I think 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’ve been gallivanting around England with your fancy bit of skirt, your father has been building that house of yours. It took him to an early grave,”

Andy’s eyes filled with tears as a great wave of regret stronger than any physical pain made him bow his head in anguish.

Emily had got her house.

The house, made of sturdy red brick 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. He suddenly understood something that he had not understood before. Emily had been as much out of place in the country as the house had been. If only he had understood that before he had married her or even after he had come home from England. Perhaps they could have pieced their lives back together again.

Emily never allowed him to make love to her again. He understood now that withholding her love was her way of punishing him for not taking her away from the farm and his parents. She was a farmer’s daughter but she hated being a farmer’s wife.

Rinsing his cup under the running tap Andy heard the postman and general gossip carrier rap on the door. “Are you in Andy? Letter from America,” he called, For once, Andy didn’t offer him a cup of tea. He wasn’t in the humour today to listen to him rattling on about the Election.

Dark rain clouds scuttled across the sky as Andy went to look for his glasses. Taking a fresh cup of tea in his hand he gave the fire poke making the green wood hiss and spit like a vengeful woman. Turning the letter over in his hand he slit the letter 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 grapple with what they said. He read it again and again.

” My name is Andrea; I believe you are my father.”

Andy shook his head in bewilderment. It couldn’t be right. There was some mistake.

“I’m coming to Ireland soon and want to meet you,” signed Andrea.

Andy sat in stunned silence. Even the clock on the wall seemed to be holding it breath. He picked up the envelope to look at the postmark again. Something fell out 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 murmured.

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.

His father’s eyes

“It was not the way of men like him to speak of love for their son,” Andy whispered.” But I always known my father loved me.”

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.