Another Man’s Child. Anne Bennett
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‘Why do we never go to the socials or the dances in the town?’ Celia said as she and Norah washed up together in the scullery.
Norah shrugged. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘Just wondered, that’s all,’ Celia said. ‘Heard a couple of girls talking about it in the town Saturday.’
‘Did you?’ Norah said in surprise. ‘I never heard anyone say anything and I’d have said we were together all the time.’ Her eyes narrowed suddenly and she said, ‘It wasn’t that hireling boy put you up to asking?’
‘He has got a name, that hireling boy,’ Celia said, irritated with Norah’s attitude. ‘He’s called Andy McCadden and he didn’t put me up to anything. He asked if I was going to the dance and I said, no, that we never go.’
‘What was it to him?’
‘God, Norah, he meant nothing I shouldn’t think,’ Celia said. ‘Just making conversation.’
‘Well you were doing your fair share of that,’ Norah said. ‘I watched you through the window, chatting together ten to the dozen. Very cosy it looked.’
‘What was I supposed to do, ignore him?’ Celia asked. ‘I was taking him to find Daddy and he was leading a bull by the nose. Not exactly some sort of romantic tryst. Anyway, why don’t we ever go to the dances and the odd social?’
‘Well Mammy would have thought you too young until just about now anyway.’
‘All right,’ Celia conceded. ‘But what about you? You’re nearly twenty-one.’
‘I know,’ Norah said and added with a slight sigh, ‘I went with Maggie a few times; maybe you were too young to remember it. When she took sick and then died I had no desire to go anywhere for some time and then we were in mourning for a year and so I sort of got out of the way of it and anyway I didn’t really want to go on my own.’
‘Tom goes.’
‘He’s a man and not much in the way of company,’ Norah said. ‘Anyway he’d hardly want me hanging on to his coat tails. After all he went there hunting for a wife.’
‘Golly!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘Did he really?’
‘Course he did,’ Norah said assuredly. ‘No frail-looking beauty for him, for he was on the lookout for some burly farmer’s daughter, with wide hips who can bear him a host of sons and still have the energy to roll up her sleeves and help him on the farm.’
Celia laughed softly. ‘Well he hasn’t, has he?’ she said. ‘Though no one said a word about it, everyone knows he’s courting Sinead McClusky and she is pretty and not the least bit burly.’
‘Maybe not but you couldn’t describe her as delicate either and she is a farmer’s daughter.’
‘What about love?’
‘You’re such a child yet,’ Norah said disparagingly. ‘What does Mammy say? “Love flies out of the window when the bills come in the door.” Tom will do his duty, as you probably will too in time.’
‘Me?’ Celia’s voice came out in a shriek of surprise.
‘Ssh,’ Norah cautioned. ‘Look, Celia, it’s best you know for this is how it is. If I stayed here and threw Joseph over, apart from the fact my name would be mud, Daddy might feel it in my best interests to get me hooked up with someone else and of his choosing. This might well happen to you and it isn’t always in our best interests either, but it’s done to increase the land he has or something of that nature. And it will be no good claiming you don’t love the man they’re chaining you to for life, because that won’t matter at all.’
‘What about Mammy?’ Celia cried, her voice rising high in indignation. ‘Surely she wouldn’t agree to my marrying a man I didn’t love?’
Norah shrugged. ‘Possibly the same thing happened to her and it’s more than likely she sees no harm in it.’
‘Well I see plenty of harm in it,’ Celia said. ‘You said something like this before, but this has decided me. I shall not marry unless for love and no one can make me marry someone I don’t want.’
‘Daddy might make your life difficult.’
Celia shrugged. ‘I can cope with that if I have to.’
‘Well to find someone to take your fancy,’ Norah said, ‘you need to go out and have a look at what is on offer, for I doubt hosts of boys and young men will be beating a path to our door. And so I think we should put it to Mammy and Daddy that we start going out more and the dance this Saturday is as good a way to start as any. You just make sure you don’t lose your heart to a hireling man.’
Celia expected some opposition to her and Norah going to the dance that Saturday evening when Norah broached it at the dinner table the following day, but there wasn’t much. Peggy in fact was all for it.
‘Isn’t Celia a mite young for that sort of carry-on?’ Dan muttered.
Celia suppressed a sigh as her mother said, ‘She is young, I grant you, but Tom will be there and he can take them down and bring them back and be on hand to disperse any undesirable man who might be making a nuisance of himself.’
‘And I will be there to see no harm befalls Celia,’ Norah said. ‘It isn’t as if I’m new to the dances – I used to go along with Maggie.’
Peggy sighed. ‘Ah yes, you did indeed, child,’ she said, a mite sadly. She had no desire to prevent them from going dancing, particularly Norah, for if she wasn’t going to marry Joseph maybe she should see if another Donegal man might catch her heart and then she might put the whole idea of America out of her head.
And so with permission given, the girls excitedly got ready for the dance on Saturday. They had no dance dresses as such but they had prettier dresses they kept for Mass. They were almost matching for each had a black bodice and full sleeves. Celia’s velvet skirt was dark red, Norah’s was midnight blue. Celia had loved her dress when Mammy had given it to her newly made by the talented dress maker and now she spun around in front of the mirror in an agony of excitement at going to her first dance.
‘Aren’t they pretty dresses?’ Celia cried.
‘They are pretty enough I grant you,’ Norah said. ‘It’s just that they are so long.’
‘Long?’
‘Yes, it’s so old fashioned now to have them this long. It is 1920 after all.’
‘Let me guess?’ Celia said. ‘I bet they’re not this length in America.’
‘No they aren’t,’ Norah said. ‘Men over there don’t swoon in shock when they get a glimpse of a woman’s ankle.’
‘How do you know?’ Celia demanded. ‘That’s not the sort of thing Jim would notice and he certainly wouldn’t bother to write and tell you.’
‘No he didn’t,’ Norah admitted. ‘But Aunt Maria did. And she said that the women wear pretty button boots, not the clod-hopping boots we have.’
‘Well pretty button boots would probably be little good in the farmyard,’ Celia pointed out. ‘And really we should be grateful for any boots at all when many around us are forced to go about barefoot.’
‘I suppose,’ Norah said with a sigh. ‘Anyway we can do nothing about either, so we’ll have to put up with it. Now don’t forget when you wash your hair to give it a final rinse with the rainwater in the water butt to give it extra shine.’
‘I know and then you’re putting it up for me.’
‘Yes and you won’t know yourself then.’
Norah knew Celia had no idea just how pretty she was with her auburn locks, high cheekbones, flawless complexion,