Thomas and Catherine
Parking his bike behind the chapel wall Thomas snapped off his bicycle clips and straightened the crease in his trousers. He could see a group gathered around the door of the old school; the red tips of their cigarettes glowing in the dark like small red pinpoints of light. Across the road St Patrick’s newly opened school stood silent and aloof.
The old school turned church hall was packed. Its thick walls and deep-set windows and wooden floor vibrated and rattled to the sound of the band; a man playing an accordion accompanied by a fiddler was giving it all they could. Trying to see through the throng of dancers Thomas wondered if Catherine was here.
When the dance, the Siege of Ennis ended, the dancers parted like the Red Sea; men on the left-hand side of the hall and women on the right. Thomas spotted Catherine near the ladder that led to the elevated bandstand above the dancers’ heads. She was with her sisters Annie and Lizzie.
He made his way up the hall. He knew as soon as the next dance was announced there would be a mad stampede across the hall. He wanted to be the first to ask Catherine to dance.
“Best of order,” the MC called out as a man took to the stage to sing
The next dance was a slow one. His heart beating fast against his ribs Thomas led Catherine onto the dance floor and held her close. It had been six months or more since he had held her. As they danced cheek-to-cheek he felt her move away from him. He drew back a little and looked down at her. “The priest’s watching,” she whispered in his ear. Sure enough, Thomas felt the tap on his shoulder. “Leave room between you for the Holy Ghost,” The priest admonished. “It’s not Glasgow you’re in now,” he advised.
Gradually the hall emptied as couples paired off. “I’ll walk you home,” Thomas offered.
Cassie looked to where her sisters were chatting up two fellas. “We all have to go home together.”
Thomas’s heart sank. He’d forgotten her father, Willy Sherrin’s rule was “You go out together and come home together.”
“But they could wait for me on the Tober road,” Cassie smiled.
The road was quiet except for the snuffling of cows in the fields and the odd rustling in the bushes. Now that he had Catherine to himself Thomas felt tongue-tied. Wheeling his bicycle with one hand he awkwardly put his other arm around Catherine’s waist.
Presently, they reached the townland of Birdstown on the outskirts of Ballindrait village. “Will we take the back road to Tober,” he asked as he passed Annie and Jane Tinney’s thatched cottage – or go up Mill Street,” he asked hoping she’d take the long way home so he could pick up the courage to ask her to marry him.
Somewhere behind them in the silence of the night Catherine could hear her sisters laughing. She knew they always took the short cut.
“Mill Street,” she said.
“Uncle James is working late the night,” she commented as they passed a newly built labourers’ cottage on the side of the road. “He must be mending shoes for the Big House.” She stopped in her step. “Maybe I’ll run in and see if he’s alright,” she said.
Thomas threw down his bike and sat down on the hedge to wait. He could hear the chattering of Lizzie and Annie getting closer. They were catching up with them.
Impatiently he waited for Catherine to come out of the cottage. Things weren’t working out the way he had planned. When there was no sign of her he ventured into the front yard and listened outside the stout green door set in the gable of the house. He could hear a man’s voice deep and gravelly but couldn’t hear Catherine’s.
He wondered what time it was He had no watch. He glanced at the sky. It was beginning to clear. The dance had went on to two o’clock. His uncle John would be ready getting up soon to see to the animals.
Across from the front door of the cottage a plum tree spread out its branches like huge muscled arms. Thomas wondered if Catherine’s uncle sold the plums to the man who came around buying the big juicy Victoria plums. People said he sold them to the shops in Derry.
The door of the cottage creaked and opened and Cassie motioned him into the dark hall.
Inside the cottage a man was mending shoes by the glimmer of a small light and the glow of the fire shining through the bars of the range. He glanced up when Thomas came in.”So yer back from gatherin’ the tatties in Scotland,” he commented.
Thomas wanted to tell him he wasn’t tattie hoker but soon to be a charge hand for a group of men working on the farms.
“Aye, the tattie hokers make good money,” the shoemaker said addressing Catherine. “£3 pound a week, ah hear.”
“Your sisters will be waiting for you,” Thomas said to Catherine, anxious to be away.
The old shoemaker snorted. “Don’t let that crowd in here.”
“Here young Cannon,” he said as Thomas made to go out the door. “You be respectin’ our wee Cassie, do ye hear me. Don’t be bringin’ any o’ them new-fangled ideas back wi’ you from the Gorbles.”
In the dim light his niece’s face reddened with embarrassment. She gave her uncle a quick hug. “Go to bed now, Uncle. I’ll come down in the morning and deliver the shoes ready to go,” she soothed.
Out on the road again Thomas got Cassie on the bar of the bike and began pedalling over the Burn Dale. He could hear her sisters taking the shortcut up the back road past Daisy Mc Ginty’s and Mary Jane Mc Gavigan’s cottages. He hoped they’d wait for their sister at the mouth of the road that led to Tober. He began to pedal faster. He wasn’t going to have time to ask Catherine the question he had been waiting all this time to ask her if he didn’t hurry.
Turning into Mill Street he left the sleeping houses behind and didn’t stop until, breathless, he reached the turn into the place where the old Mill used to be. There was a nook there.It was the place he had planned to ask Catherine to marry him.
At the junction of the road Annie and Lizzie were waiting their faces set like flint. “Where were ye? What kept ye’ Da will be down the road lookin’ for us. He’ll not let us go another night,” they barged at Catherine.
.
Thomas stood holding the handlebars of the bicycle and looking after them until their voiced faded into the night. Then, throwing his leg over the bar of the bike he free wheeled down the Tober Bray hands free like he had done when he was a lad; past the still sleeping houses and pedalling like mad headed for Argery. He’d be home in time to help the uncle that had reared him, with the early milking.
And tell him the date wasn’t set yet but that he was marrying Catherine Sherrin fromTober before the new season for working in Scotland came in the spring.
Gemma C Hill ©
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 