The Unwelcome Homecoming
Tom brooded for a while on old Ned’s words as he followed the road that took him through the village, over the River Deele with its humped backed bridge and the turnoff for home.
His thoughts turned to Catherine and their coming wedding. He remembered the first time he had seen her in the old one-roomed disused school used by the parish for parochial dances. She was with her sisters. They were flouncing about and flirting with the local boys but Catherine was standing, shyly, a little apart. The naked bulb hanging from the old school’s pitched rafters turned her reddish auburn hair to gold. She was only fourteen then. His heart had quickened. He knew there and then, she was the girl he was going to marry. He said her name softly to himself. Catherine, Catherine.
Her sisters called her Cassie. But he always called her by her proper name. “Her name is Catherine,” he reminded them. He knew Mary Anne and Liza laughed at him behind his back .His sober way of dressing with his three piece suit, brown brogues made him looked older than his 25 years and wasn’t the usual attire of farm labourers. He had plans. He wouldn’t always be a general labourer.
Reaching the outskirts of the village, on impulse he turned right past Weir’s big house on the corner of the Green and took the road that led to the newly opened Ballindrait train station and Clonleigh graveyard.
The April day was bright and full of promise. The sun filtered through the trees casting leafy shadows on the rough tarmac of the narrow country road. It would shine for him and Catherine on the 20th – a week from tomorrow, he thought.
He changed his suitcase to his other hand and lengthened his step. He’d go the graveyard and say a few prayers at his Uncle John James’s grave.
Coming around a bend on the road he drew abreast the short incline that led onto the train station platform. The place looked much the same from the road with its overgrown hedges and grass verges full of nettles and thistles as it had done before.
Curiosity got the better of him and he found himself standing on the single strip of cement that was the platform beside a sign that announced it was Ballindrait Station.
He moved to the edge and looked down at the freshly laid timber sleepers, and the new gleaming rails of the narrow gauge railway track all the Donegal men labouring in Scotland were talked about. Some of them had even worked on digging out the track before they took the boat.
He listened to the silence. Was it his imagination or did he hear somewhere in the distance the whistle of a train.
He could have changed platforms at Strabane and taken the railcar to Ballindrait but after the twelve hours crossing he was happy to stretch his legs and walk the rest of the way home. Funny that he thought, I left Cloughfin School at fourteen and went to labour in Glasgow like most Donegal men and women. I’ll soon be as long living there as long as I lived here but I still think of Uncle John James’s farm at Gortinreagh as home.
He turned when he heard somebody shouting his name. Making his way back out to the road again he saw Jimmy, John James’s second eldest son waving at him from a tractor. “What are ye doing standin’there like one of the scotches that come to Barney Mc Ginley’s for their summer holidays, “he laughed. Reaching down he hauled Tom up behind his seat. “Hold on,” he shouted above the noise of the old tractor as he started back the road to the village.
Clutching his case close to his chest the veins in Tom’s free hand stood out as he gripped the back of the seat. The tractor wheels churned up the loose gravel lying along the side of the road covering his feet and clothes with grey dust. “What’s your hurry,” he yelled into Jimmy’s ear above the rattling.
Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. He wasn’t laughing. “She sent me to get you off the early train, “he said as he pulled hard on the brake at the railway crossing on the Gortin Road and waited for the Strabane to Letterkenny train to pass. He waved to Benny Devenney as he re-opened the gates to let them pass.
“Keep your mouth shut when she has a go at ye,” Jimmy advised as he swung into the yard behind the farm house scattering the ducks and geese.
Ellen Devine, the housekeeper was up to her elbows in flour when Tom came in through the back door. She nodded her head in the direction of the front of the house. “She’s I there and she’s steamin,” she said in a low voice as the door from the hall open and John James’s widow of two years, Mary Bridget, stood there her face like flint. Tom always thought she look as if she had just sucked sour gooseberries.
“Well, you finally got here,” she said sarcastically. “Jimmy has better things to be doing than scouring the country searching for you. There’s a farm to be run here in case you’ve forgotten.”
Tom knew it was pointless arguing with her. “I’ll go and change and help Jimmy,” he said turning to the stairs. There was a loaded silence. “The room at the back of the house is where you’ll sleep. Patrick, my eldest son is sleeping in your room now.”
Thomas’ pleasure at being home evaporated. He knew with his uncle lying in the graveyard since the last time he had been home the house wouldn’t be the same. But he hadn’t expected this. “You mean the room where all the broken farm implements are dumped?” he said a note of disbelief in his voice. “Uncle John James only used that for storing things he had no use for.”
“Ellen, leave that baking and make a pot of tea,” Mary Bridget ordered, ignoring his shocked outburst.
Ellen thumped the baking bowl on the scrubbed kitchen table.” This fruit cake needs to go in the oven before the fruit sinks to the bottom. It’s for the weddin’ and needs to sit for a while after it bakes to cool,” she said.
Mary Bridget bristled. “That’s all I hear about is this wedding. You’d swear it was a Callachan was marrying instead of a Cannon,” she said spitefully as she made for the kettle. She knew she’d said too much when she was Ellen’ back stiffen.
Red face with anger Ellen pushed the baking bowl from her. Wiping her hands on the tail of her apron she made to take the kettle from her mistress.
“It’s alright Ellen. You carry on with your cake making. I’ll make the tea. “You’ll need a cup of tea after your journey,” she said in a more conciliatory tone, turning to Tom.
“I had a mug of tea with old Ned, the shoemaker,” Tom said stiffly.
Mary Bridget forced a smile. “Oh, getting your feet under the table with your in-laws before you tie the knot. So that’s where you were? Sitting having tea with the old shoemaker while Jimmy was wasting his time looking for you,” Her sharp eye caught sight of the brown paper parcel ties with rough twine under Tom’s armpit. She stiffened. Here she was getting things ready to put up a wedding breakfast for him and his bride and there he was foolishly spending money on what looked like a present.
Tom caught her look. He had forgotten he still had the new boots under his arm.”Cassie’s uncle made me a pair of leather boots for my wedding. He said John James would probably have got him to make me a pair if he was here.”
Mary Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, very likely he would have.” She drew herself up. “This is a good a time as any to say what I have to say. With your sister married and a home of her own in Scotland and you about to marry, I think your uncle’s responsibility to his sister, your dead mother, is paid in full.”
Behind her, Ellen angrily splashed the spitting water from the kettle over dry tea leaves and clattered a blue and white mug from the dresser onto the kitchen table. “Aye. Some folk have a bad memory where a farm o’land is concerned,” she muttered under her breath as Mary Bridget made for the kitchen door.
“But you mind what I say, this April day, Mrs Callachan, your mistress of this house by promising poor civil bachelor John James – forty years to your twenty- you’d give him sons to carry on the farm….”
Mary Bridget whirled around. “Ellen Devine, you may be in this house many’s a long year. But I am mistress here now. I’ll have no more backchat from you or you can take the consequences,” she said two red temper spots pinking her cheeks.
Ellen turned her back on her mistress. “Me mother used to say it’s a long road has no turn. “
Wrapping a wet dishcloth around her fist against the heat of the range she opened the oven door and carefully placed the fruit cake on the shelf. “Don’t you worry young Cannon, it’ll rise like the sun rises over Croghan Hill – a fittin’ weddin’cake for you and young Catherine.”
With a flounce of her skirts Mary Bridget banged the kitchen door behind her.
Gemma Hill 2021 copyright
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 