Another Man’s Child. Anne Bennett
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gloves that encased their hands.
Celia knew Norah considered bonnets old fashioned and babyish but Celia was glad of hers that day and also liked the blue ribbons that tied so securely under her chin. ‘Anyway,’ she had reasoned with her sister when she had complained again that day as she got ready in their room. ‘You’d have to have a hat of some sort – and just listen to the strength of that wind. Any other type of hat you had today would be tugged from your head in no time and in all likelihood go bowling down the road, however many hatpins you had stuck in it. You running to retrieve it would cause great entertainment to the rest of the town and I doubt that would please you much either.’
Norah said nothing to that because she did agree with Celia that bonnets were the safest option that day, especially when riding in the cart with their father where the wind was even more fierce. Given a choice she wouldn’t have gone out at all, but stayed inside by the fireside; however, their mother, Peggy, had given them a list of things to buy as they were going in on the cart with their father who had some beef calves for sale. They did go in often on Saturdays because the Mulligans’ farm was just outside the town and Peggy always said her gallivanting days were over, so the girls each had a bulging shopping bag as they crossed the square – shaped like a diamond and always referred to as such – to the Abbey Hotel where they were meeting their father.
The beasts for sale were in pens filling the Diamond and the pungent smell rose in the air and the noise of them, the bleating and grunting and lowing and squawking of the hens, just added to the general racket, for the streets were thronged with people, the shops doing a roaring trade.
As usual on a Fair Day the pubs were open all day. Some might have their doors slightly ajar so the two girls might get a tantalising glimpse inside. That was all they would get though, a glimpse, and if any men were standing outside with their pints, they would chivvy them on, for respectable women didn’t frequent pubs and certainly not young ladies like Norah and Celia.
The cluster of gypsies was there too as they were every Fair Day, standing slightly apart from the townsfolk. They’d always held a fascination for Celia, the black-haired, swarthy-skinned men who often had a jaunty manner and in the main wore different clothes to most men of Celia’s acquaintance: light-coloured cotton shirts, moleskin waistcoats and some, mainly the younger ones, bright knotted handkerchiefs tied at their necks, and they were not above giving girls a broad wink as they passed. The women seemed far more dowdy in comparison, for they were usually dressed in black or grey or dark brown with a craggy shawl around their shoulders and more often than not there was a baby wrapped up in it, while skinny, scantily dressed, barefoot children scampered around them.
Suddenly, Norah gave her sister a poke in the ribs, taking her mind from the gypsies as she said, ‘Will you look at the set of him,’ and she jerked her head to the collection of people at the edge of the fair at the Hireling Stall who were in search of someone to take them to work on one of the farms or as servants in the house. As the Mulligans needed no outside help, Celia had never taken much notice of them and she cast her eyes over them now. There were, however, a few young men and she said, ‘Which one?’
Norah cast her eyes upwards. ‘Heavens, Celia,’ she cried. ‘Do you really need to ask? The blond-haired one of course, the one smiling over at us this very moment.’
‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Norah,’ Celia said. ‘It can’t be us.’
‘Celia, he’s looking this way and smiling so he must be smiling at someone or something,’ Norah retorted. ‘No one but an idiot would stand there with a wide grin on his face for no reason and I tell you he is the least idiotic man that I’ve seen in a long time. Quite a looker in fact.’
Celia stole a look at the man in question and did think he was most striking-looking and she took in the fact that he was tall, broad-shouldered and well-muscled and the sun was shining on his back, making it seem like he had a halo around his mop of very blond hair. She couldn’t see the colour of his eyes, but she did see that they were twinkling so much it was like light that had been lit inside him and she felt herself smiling back. She looked away quickly and felt a crimson flush flood over her face. She saw that Norah had noticed her blush and, to prevent her teasing, said sharply, ‘Mammy will wash your mouth out with carbolic if she hears you talking this way.’
‘Better not tell her then,’ Norah said impishly.
‘I just might.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Norah said assuredly. ‘You’re no tell-tale.’
‘All right,’ Celia conceded. ‘You’re right, I’d never tell Mammy. But talking of men, I was wondering the other day about you wanting to go to America and all. Whatever are you going to do about Joseph O’Leary?’
‘What’s Joseph O’Leary to do with anything?’
‘You’re walking out with him.’
‘Hardly,’ Norah said. ‘We’ve just been out a few times.’
‘Huh, more than a few I’d say,’ Celia said. ‘But it doesn’t matter how long it’s been going on, in anyone’s book that constitutes walking out together.’
‘Well if you must know,’ Norah told her sister, ‘I’m using Joseph to practise on.’
‘Oh Norah, that’s a dreadful thing to do to someone,’ Celia cried, really shocked because she liked Joseph. He was a nice man and had an open honest face, a wide generous mouth and his fine head of wavy hair was as dark brown as his eyes, which were nearly always fastened on her sister.
Norah shrugged carelessly. ‘I had to know what it was like. I am preparing for when I go to America.’
‘Does he know your plans?’
‘Sort of,’ Norah said. ‘I mean, he knows I want to go.’
‘Does he know you’re really going, that Aunt Maria said she’ll sponsor you and pay your fare and everything?’
‘Well no,’ Norah admitted.
‘Poor Joseph,’ Celia said. ‘He’ll be heartbroken.’
‘Hearts don’t break that easy, Celia.’
‘Well I bet yours will if you can’t go to America after all and Mammy could stop you because she’s great friends with the O’Learys.’
‘Mammy will be able to do nothing,’ Norah said confidently. ‘She has made me wait until I’m twenty-one and that was bad enough, but I will be that in three months’ time and then I can please myself.’
‘She doesn’t want you to go.’
‘I know that and that was why she made me wait until I was twenty-one.’
‘And that doesn’t worry you?’
‘It would if I let it,’ Norah said. ‘Now you worry about everything and in fact you would worry yourself into an early grave if you had nothing to worry about. You never want to hurt people’s feelings either and, while it’s nice to be that way, it could stop you doing something you really want to do in case someone disapproves.’
‘Like you going to America?’
‘Exactly like that.’
‘But I’d never want to leave here,’ Celia said, looking around the town she loved so much. She loved everything, the rolling hills she could see from her bedroom window dotted with velvet-nosed cows calmly chewing the cud, or the sheep pulling relentlessly at the grass as if their lives depended upon it, and here and there squat cottages with plumes of grey smoke rising from the chimneys wafting in the air. Their farmhouse was no small cottage however for it was built of brick with a slate roof and unusually for Ireland then, it was two storeyed. Downstairs there was a well-fitted scullery with a tin bath hung on a hook behind the door and leading off it, a large kitchen with a range with a scrubbed wooden table beside it and an easy chair before the hearth. It was where the family spent most of their time, for though there was a separate sitting room it was seldom used. The