Blessings in Disguise

by Jessica Stirling

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Glasgow is a city teeming with immigrants, rich and poor, schemers and victims alike. And the McKennas, fresh from Ireland, have no intention of being victims. When Nolan McKenna and his sisters arrived unannounced on Cissie Cassidy's doorstep claiming to be her late husband's long-lost relatives, the lonely widow is all too willing to be taken in and trusting enough to help them find them a foothold in the city. While Nolan wields a shovel for twelve back-breaking hours a day, the beautiful, trusting Clare takes up with the wrong man instead of the collection agent who yearns to make her his bride. Sharp-witted and pretty, Evie is made of more ambitious stuff and uses her job behind the bar of the Harp of Erin to attract the attentions of Russell Blackstock, builder and land-speculator, who owns half the tenements on Clydeside - and plans to own still more. The worlds of the wealthy Blackstocks and the penniless McKennas are set on a collision course that will mean huge changes for them, and for the city they live in.

Release date: February 22, 2007

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 448

Sample

Chapter 1

As a rule Mrs Cissie Cassidy had no truck with the Irish, particularly those reprobates who occupied the crumbling tenements north of Riverside Road. In fact, the widow Cassidy had a ‘down’ on most immigrant sons of Erin and the reason for her prejudice was not hard to find.

     If you ventured the length of Salamanca Street past Paddy Maizie’s pub to the drab little burial ground behind St Kentigern’s you would discover there a grave marked not by marble or granite but by a slab of indeterminate mineral that may, or may not, have been slate; a stone smeared with pigeon droppings and so stained by a decade of fogs, frosts and sour Scottish rains that it resembled the tomb of an ancient warrior and not the last resting place of Eamon O’Connor Cassidy, who had died in the spring of 1864.

     They said it was his heart, that wide-open Irish heart, big as all Killarney, that had burst with the strain of the digging, but it was drink not digging that had done for him and even now, ten years on, Cissie was still mad at herself for having run off to Glasgow with a useless Irish charmer, still fizzing at Eamon for boozing himself into an early grave and leaving her childless, penniless and teetering on the verge of fifty.

     One windy evening in early March, Mrs Cassidy came scuttling up Salamanca Street from Kennedy’s bakery where she worked in the kitchen behind the shop. She had learned to cook at her mother’s knee and, one way or another, had been at it ever since.

     The high point in her culinary career had been half a year of service in the Royal Restaurant, but the stifling heat in the Royal’s kitchens had undermined her health and one night, while helping to prepare a wedding dinner, she had fainted dead away and had shed what had existed of little Cassidy number four, just as she had shed his predecessors, after which she had been fit for nothing but staying at home and looking after Eamon.

     Soon after Eamon’s death, however, Mr Belfer had found her a job at the bakery and now, in Kennedy’s airy kitchen, she bored her workmates stiff with tales of high life in Glasgow’s posh West End. But of all the little Cassidys or, rather, their absence, she said nothing, for her failure to carry a child to full term was nobody’s business but her own.

     March then, in the evening: the wind plastered her skirts to her calves and tugged mischievously at her bonnet, while little Mrs Cassidy clung to the large cardboard box within which nestled three meat pies.

     When she rounded the corner into Salamanca Street a particularly boisterous gust of wind whipped off her bonnet and before she could recover her balance an unfamiliar voice said, ‘Allow me, missus,’ and a hand as big as a soup tureen placed the bonnet back on her head.

     The stranger was young, a great giant of a man with shoulders as broad as a roof beam, an open face, all chin and brow, and smiling brown eyes. He wore a short-jacket suit and a chequered cap, but no muffler. His bare throat rose from his collar as thick and smooth as a marble column.

     ‘Where did you spring from?’ Cissie asked.

     ‘From the deck o’ the Rose o’ Tralee,’ the young man told her. ‘Sprung as quick as me legs would carry me, for I was mighty glad to set foot on dry land after a perilous voyage on the bosom o’ the deep.’

     ‘You’re Irish,’ Cissie said.

     ‘That I am. Nolan McKenna at your service.’

     ‘An Irishman an’ – I’ll stake my life on it – a digger.’

     ‘A digger for sure,’ Nolan McKenna said, ‘or about to be so.’

     It was on the tip of Cissie’s tongue to inform him that she had once been married to a digger but, in spite of the stranger’s size and easy air, he was Irish and she’d had enough of handsome Irishmen to last a lifetime.

     He leaned towards her, and said, ‘What is that lovely smell? By Gar, what have you got in that box?’

     ‘My supper.’

     ‘We could be doin’ with a bite o’ supper,’ Nolan McKenna admitted. ‘Fact is, we ha’n’t had much since yesterday, a crust o’ bread bein’ the best o’ it. Maybe you could be directin’ us to where we could find a cheap bit o’ tuck, since us poor travellers ain’t got our bearin’s yet.’

     ‘Us poor travellers?’ Cissie said. ‘Have you brought the family with you?’

     ‘Aye, all the family God has spared me.’ He jerked his thumb at two girls who huddled, shivering, against the weeping brick wall. ‘Me sisters – for what they’re worth. Come on, girls, say “How Do” to the pretty lady.’

     The streets of Glasgow were littered with dirty little waifs, some as sharp as carpet tacks, others as dumb as oxen. The McKenna sisters appeared clean, however, and, Mrs Cassidy noted, had shoes with buckles, and trimmed shawls.

     The smaller one even had a big straw bonnet decorated with silk ribbons and paper flowers that she held by her side as if she was embarrassed to be attached to such a frippery.

     She advanced towards Cissie with quick, mincing steps and so resembled an elf or a fairy that when the wind gusted again Cissie was tempted to drop the box and grab the child just to stop her being swirled off into the sky.

     ‘This is Evie,’ Nolan McKenna said. ‘The other ’un is Clare.’

     ‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Cassidy, quite nonplussed. ‘Well, well, well.’

     They weren’t children after all, Cissie realised, but might even be as old as seventeen or eighteen. Crouching over her bundle, the one called Clare nodded a sulky sort of greeting.

     ‘This kind lady will be tellin’ us where we can find our supper.’ Nolan McKenna paused. ‘Before we start searchin’ for Eamon again.’

     Cissie Cassidy’s heart leaped into her throat and a sharp little pain trickled down the length of her breastbone.

     ‘Eamon?’ she said.

     ‘Our uncle Eamon,’ Evie informed her.

     ‘Lots of Irishmen called Eamon in these parts.’ Cissie Cassidy just managed to keep the squeak out of her voice. ‘Did – does this particular Eamon have another name?’

     ‘Cassidy,’ Evie said. ‘Eamon O’Connor Cassidy. He’s me mam’s long-lost brother who shipped to Glasgow many years ago an’ has not been heard of since. Mam’s last words, whispered with her dyin’ breath, were, “Find Uncle Eamon; he’ll see you right.” ’

     ‘Are you from Killarney?’

     ‘Aye, Killarney.’ Evie’s blue eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m wishin’ I was back there now with Mam still alive, the stew pot bubblin’ on the fire like it was before the blight took off the tatie crop an’ we lost the tithe.’

     Sniffing and wiping her nose on her cuff, she fought back tears. Her sister shuffled up behind her and patted her on the shoulder, saying, in a curiously flat voice, ‘There, there, Evie, when we find Uncle Eamon, he’ll look after us till we get back on our feet.’

     The pies were growing colder by the minute. Mr Belfer would boil a pan of water to heat his up and Mr Macpherson would give his a minute or two on a tin plate on the hob. Why was she fretting about pies when Eamon’s nephew and nieces were standing before her? Killarney, though? She had never heard of a sister in Killarney. Eamon had steadfastly refused to discuss what lay behind him in Ireland, except to brag about an older brother who’d been hanged in Dublin for killing a man in a dispute over wages.

     ‘If you haven’t heard from your uncle in umpteen years,’ she said, ‘why have you come to Glasgow to look for him?’

     ‘Had a letter,’ said Evie promptly.

     ‘Who had – you?’

     ‘Me mam.’

     ‘Where is it then?’ said Cissie Cassidy. ‘Let me see this letter.’

     ‘Can’t,’ said Evie.

     ‘Why not?’

     ‘It went.’

     ‘Went? Went where?’ said Cissie.

     ‘Up in smoke,’ said Evie.

     ‘An’ what did this letter what went up in smoke say?’

     ‘Said he was wed to lovely woman an’ had a house in the Riverside.’

     ‘When was the letter sent?’

     ‘Years ago, long years ago,’ said Evie.

     ‘Ten years or more,’ said Clare.

     ‘Sure an’ I was no more than six years old at the time,’ Evie went on, ‘but I remember the gladness it brought me mam.’

     ‘The wife,’ Cissie said, ‘did he mention his wife’s name?’

     ‘No name,’ said Nolan.

     ‘Or if there was, we’ve forgot.’ Clare glanced at her brother. ‘I told you, Nolly, it’s a needle in a haystack. He could be gone, our man, shifted on somewhere else for all we know.’

     ‘Aye, a miracle it will be,’ said Evie, ‘if ever we find him.’

     ‘Supper an’ a dry bed for the night will be miracle enough for me.’ Nolan McKenna sighed. ‘Well, lady, you’ve listened patient to our story an’ it’s none o’ your blame we’re lost, so we’ll be goin’ on our way. Come on, girls, hoist up your bundles. There’s nothin’ to keep us here.’

     And against her better judgement, Cissie Cassidy said, ‘Wait.’

 

They followed the woman across Salamanca Street to a tall smoke-blackened tenement separated from its neighbours by a broad lane.

     Father Fingle, at the Catholic Mission, had told them that most of the old properties in the Riverside ward were owned by the Blackstock brothers and that rooms were rented out by the week or month, complete with bedding and a few sticks of furniture.

     ‘Wait here,’ Mrs Cassidy said.

     ‘Can we not be comin’ in?’ said Evie.

     ‘Not till I have spoke with Mr Belfer,’ the woman said.

     ‘Mr Belfer? Who’s Mr Belfer?’

     ‘He collects our rents an’ takes care o’ us in a general way.’

     ‘His word is law, is it?’ said Evie.

     ‘It is,’ Mrs Cassidy said.

     ‘Is there a privy inside?’ Clare asked.

     ‘There’s a closet on the bottom landing,’ said Mrs Cassidy, adding, proudly, ‘kept so clean in our buildin’ you could eat your dinner off the floor.’

     ‘Well, I’ve no dinner to eat,’ said Evie, ‘but I do need to pee.’

     ‘You’ll just have to hold it in,’ the widow said. ‘Mr Belfer doesn’t like strangers usin’ our facilities.’

     Evie might have put up more of an argument if Nolan hadn’t prodded her with his elbow, warning her to keep a clamp on her tongue. She was just weary enough to obey. Cork to Greenock at one shilling a head and all the bread you could eat, so the handbill promised. The bread had turned out to be mouldy and she had heaved most of it over the side before the voyage was half over. She felt now as if she had been travelling forever, forever hungry.

     ‘Go an’ speak to your man,’ Evie said. ‘We’ll wait here.’

     ‘I’ll be quick as I can,’ the woman promised and, reaching up, pinched Evie’s cheek reassuringly, then vanished into the close.

     ‘Do you think she swallowed it?’ Nolan asked.

     ‘O’ course she did,’ said Evie.

     ‘Hook, line and sinker,’ said Clare.

 

Mr Benjamin Belfer held the tin box by a string and dipped it into a simmering saucepan on top of the coal stove, which, in Cissie’s opinion, was no way to treat a fine meat pie.

     ‘There,’ he said, ‘the matter of my dinner is took care of, or almost so. What’s here?’ From a shelf above the stove he plucked a little clock and peered at the dial. ‘Four minutes should do it nicely. Now’ – he rubbed his hands – ‘now, my dear Mrs Cassidy, what’s all this about long-lost Irish cousins turnin’ up on our doorstep?’

     ‘They aren’t cousins,’ Cissie said, ‘and I don’t know if they are long-lost, leastways not my long-lost, nor Eamon’s neither.’

     ‘Did Eamon ever mention a sister in Killarney?’

     ‘Never.’

     ‘It was a long time ago.’

     ‘It was,’ Cissie agreed. ‘He says he’s a digger.’

     ‘Who does?’

     ‘The young man. Says he’s come to Glasgow in search of work.’

     ‘Oh, they all say that,’ said Mr Belfer. ‘Question is, what are you goin’ to do with them?’

     ‘If they are Eamon’s kin it would be cruel to turn them away.’

     ‘It was a long time ago,’ said Mr Belfer again, adding, ‘whichever side of the Irish Sea you hale from. I recommend caution.’

     ‘I can’t leave them out in the street.’

     ‘Well, you can’t bring them in here.’ Mr Belfer held up both hands as if to ward off uncharitable thoughts. ‘Even if I had space, which I haven’t, there’s precious stuff in my apartment an’ they might not be honest.’

     ‘It’s the young girls I’m worried about.’

     ‘Young girls?’ Mr Belfer scrutinised the clock. ‘Aye, well, I suppose it’s different when unfledged females are involved. How young?’

     ‘Sixteen or seventeen, thereabouts.’

     ‘Hmm,’ said Mr Belfer thoughtfully.

     ‘Now Mr Coker’s gone an’ you don’t have another tenant waitin’ for his room, I wondered if you might not  . . .’

     ‘Rent them Coker’s room, with poor Mr Coker hardly cold in his grave? That’s a great deal to ask of me, Mrs Cassidy.’

     ‘It’s only till I find out if they are who they say they are.’

     ‘How do you propose to do that?’

     ‘I don’t know,’ Cissie admitted.

     Dusk enclosed the tenement like wet flannel.

     The drizzle had thickened into rain and the eaves high overhead had already begun to overflow. Across the lane Mr McLean would be grooming the cart-horses and old Mrs McLean, in the garret above the stables, would be counting her cats to make sure they were all safe and sound.

     Cissie said, ‘I’ll pay for the room.’

     ‘You?’ Mr Belfer said. ‘Why would you do that?’

     ‘If,’ said Mrs Cassidy, ‘they are Eamon’s family, they’re my family too.’

     ‘It strikes me, my dear Mrs Cassidy, that you’ve rubbed along without family thus far an’ you might find it less troublesome to rub along without them for a considerable while longer.’

     ‘How much is the rent?’

     ‘For the night?’ Mr Belfer shrugged. ‘One shillin’.’

     ‘Fuel for the fire?’

     ‘There’s coal in the bucket.’

     ‘Lamp oil?’

     ‘The room’s furnished well enough for homeless Irish,’ said Mr Belfer testily. ‘I got bills posted, you know, so if some respectable gent turns up in search o’ lodgings out the Irish go, rain or no rain, females or no females.’

     ‘One shillin’,’ said Cissie, ‘is awful expensive.’

     She had hoped for more help from Mr Belfer who had been her friend, almost her only friend, for the past ten years. He took his responsibilities as Mr Blackstock’s collection agent very seriously, though, and would do nothing, not even in the name of friendship, to jeopardise his position.

     ‘Take it or leave it, Mrs Cassidy. If they aren’t happy let them slope up town an’ see if they can find a charity bed in a hostel.’ He consulted the clock, lifted the pan and set it on the table. ‘It’s my dinner time – past it – so if you want to fetch them in, do it now for I’ll require to give them scrutiny before I rent them one o’ my rooms even for a single night. Understood?’

     ‘Understood,’ said Cissie Cassidy meekly.

 

The moment Evie clapped eyes on Benjamin Belfer she knew he was the sort of man who liked to have everything his own way.

     He stood in the doorway, arms folded. His ruddy cheeks, portly belly and striped waistcoat made him look more like a squire than a caretaker. His legs were short and somewhat bowed but he was a potent enough creature for a man of his years, his years, she reckoned, being in the region of forty.

     The room was stuffed with furniture. There was linoleum on the floor, a half-sized dresser glinting with china, a table with a cloth on it, and a coal-fired stove. The mantelshelf was laden with a variety of trinkets of the sort that only a man would keep.

     If there was a wife she had made no mark upon Mr Belfer’s apartment which, in Evie’s opinion, had ‘bachelor’ written all over it. She primped her hair and wondered if it would be better to simper or sob.

     ‘Now then,’ Mr Belfer began, ‘Mrs Cassidy informs me you think you’ve a claim on her hospitality.’ He spoke in a deliberate manner as if he assumed that, being Irish, they wouldn’t understand Queen’s English. ‘It is incumbent upon me,’ he continued, ‘to ensure that you are what you say you are an’ aren’t pullin’ the wool over this dear lady’s eyes.’

     ‘We have no business with this lady, sir,’ said Evie. ‘Our business is with Eamon Cassidy – an’ he’s provin’ uncommon hard to find.’

     The widow was clearly intimidated by the caretaker and more than willing to let him make the running.

     ‘For your information,’ Mr Belfer said, ‘Eamon Cassidy is no more.’

     ‘No more?’ said Nolan. ‘Sure an’ what does that mean?’

     ‘Means dead,’ said Mr Belfer.

     ‘Dead!’ Clare exclaimed. ‘Poor Uncle Eamon’s dead!’

     ‘May his soul rest in peace,’ said Nolan, and crossed himself.

     Evie let her lip tremble and her eyes water but Benjamin Belfer had already turned his attention to her sister.

     ‘You, lass,’ he said, ‘what’s your name?’

     ‘Clare, sir.’

     ‘Clare what, sir?’

     ‘Clare McKenna.’

     ‘Step out where I can see you better.’

     Clare stepped into the lamplight.

     ‘Where do you come from?’ Mr Belfer said.

     ‘Killarney, sir,’ said Clare. ‘In Ireland.’

     Mr Belfer apparently took her to be an object of truth as well as beauty, a part Clare played to perfection. He said, ‘Do you know what happens to young ladies who tell lies?’

     ‘They burn in hell, sir.’

     ‘Well, I wouldn’t say hell.’ Mr Belfer stepped back. ‘No, not hell exactly since the concept of hell is out o’ favour these days.’ He drew in breath and released it slowly. ‘I mean, young ladies who lie are always found out. Do you hear me, Clare McKenna, they are found out and punished. Tell me the truth now, are you really the niece of Eamon Cassidy, late of the town of Killarney?’

     ‘Not the town of Killarney, sir,’ said Clare. ‘We come from a place on the Lakes on the flank of Bull Mountains. Me mam’s family too, since we were all together, Cassidys and McKennas, tendin’ those same scant acres.’

     Benjamin Belfer might resemble a country squire, Evie thought, but he surely knew nothing of country matters or of the geography of Ireland.

     ‘Tell them, Mr Belfer,’ Mrs Cassidy said. ‘Do tell them.’

     Mr Belfer thrust a hand into his trouser pocket, his knuckles bulging inside the cloth. He was almost convinced, Evie realised, almost there.

     He said, ‘This was Eamon Cassidy’s last place of residence. You can’t find the man, for the man has gone to his Maker, but this kind lady, who has already took you to her bosom, is his widow; in a word, your aunt.’

     ‘Oh!’ Clare clasped her hands together. ‘Our aunt, our dear, dead uncle’s wife. Oh what a happy chance that is, sure is it not now?’

     Then in a gesture that seemed entirely spontaneous, she sank to her knees and hugged the bewildered little widow who, like it or not, was about to inherit a brand-new family and all the trouble that went with it.

Chapter 10

Of all the beneficial habits that Libby had acquired during her marriage to Peter Galloway the three that stood her in good stead upon her return to Glasgow were early rising, morning prayers and eating a hearty breakfast.

     Throughout Pin’s schooldays Libby took breakfast with her ward at their own special table in the morning-room, just the two of them. As befitted a young lady of the middle class, Seang Pin had been educated at Our Lady High School. Libby had become involved in the work of the orphanage attached to the school and had taken it upon herself to organise outings and other special treats for the children. Whatever slanders Willy might put about, the Our Lady Orphanage was not a reformatory where beatings and starvation were the order of the day and all sorts of unspeakable perversities were enacted after dark. The children were well cared for, given a basic education and, as a rule, found remunerative employment when they became old enough to work.

     After Pin left school Libby and she continued to take breakfast at the little table in the morning-room with an intimacy that Jane Blackstock envied, though it would no doubt have surprised Jane to discover that after prayers each morning Libby and Pin would fall to discussing horse flesh and that, before the morning was out Pin would lay a series of small bets with Patrick Maizie, Libby’s publican friend.

     On that warm May morning, however, Libby and Seang Pin were not assessing the merits of Jim Dandy or Bold Derry but the worth of a certain Nolan McKenna who, if he had been running at Ayr, might well have been carrying Seang Pin’s colours.

     ‘Oh!’ Libby said. ‘So the Irishman’s caught your eye, has he? He’s certainly a fine figure of a man and would, without doubt, help keep our little monsters in hand.’

     ‘You are always saying that we need more male helpers.’

     ‘It’s true. After the last fiasco,’ Libby said, ‘when there was hardly a teacher under the age of fifty . . . Yes, I confess, we do need someone with a better turn of speed. If it hadn’t been for you, we’d have lost a good half-dozen of the wee devils over the sea wall.’

     ‘Mr McKenna is young and fit.’

     ‘Mr McKenna is a working man, not free on Saturdays.’

     ‘Uncle Russell might be able to sort that out for us.’

     ‘Us?’ said Libby.

     ‘For the orphanage.’

     ‘Of course, for the orphanage,’ said Libby. ‘May I point out, however, that your uncles are not in favour of little Catholics being carted off into the countryside to enjoy themselves.’

     ‘Perhaps if we promised to drown a few . . .’ Pin said.

     ‘Indeed,’ said Libby, grinning, ‘an annual sacrifice to the river gods might appease even your Uncle Willy.’

     Pin poured and drank a thimbleful of coffee.

     ‘Will you ask Mr McKenna – and Uncle Russell?’ she said, at length.

     ‘Pin, Pin.’ Libby shook her head. ‘Have you learned nothing about the eccentricities of our society? The Irishman is not like us.’

     ‘Was Mr Galloway like you?’

     ‘I was young and silly in those days.’

     ‘Would you not make the same mistake again?’ said Pin.

     Libby laughed. ‘Yes, chicken, of course I would.’

     ‘Admittedly Mr McKenna is not a businessman, like your Mr Galloway,’ Pin said. ‘No more, however, is he a Protestant. Besides, he might wish to come to the picnic to chaperone his sister.’

     ‘Who, by the by, has not yet given me an answer.’

     ‘Perhaps she will speak with you at church on Sunday.’

     ‘Perhaps she will,’ Libby said, fondly brushing Pin’s hair with her fingertips. ‘We’ll see.’

     ‘And Mr McKenna?’ Pin asked.

     ‘We’ll see about that too,’ said Libby.

 

Father Fingle lived alone. Though three or four elderly parishioners took it in turn to clean for him, he cooked for himself and was just polishing off a breakfast egg when the door knocker rat-a-tatted.

     Still in carpet slippers and a scruffy old bathrobe, he shuffled to the door and found the beautiful dark-haired Irish girl hopping agitatedly on his doorstep. He invited her into the parlour, excused himself long enough to wash the egg stains off his face, give his hair a brush and get rid of the bathrobe, then, more intrigued than he had a right to be, came back to find her staring at his beautiful little statue of the Virgin.

     ‘Well, Clare, what troubles you?’ He seated himself in the least comfortable of the parlour’s three worn armchairs. ‘Is it the picnic?’

     ‘The picnic?’ Clare said.

     ‘I was under the impression that Mrs Galloway had asked you to assist at the orphans’ picnic next month.’

     ‘Oh that!’ Clare said. ‘No, Father, it isn’t that at all.’

     ‘What is it then?’

     He listened to her tale of woe, nodding as if his head would fall off. He had heard it all before, of course, a dozen variations on the same old story: the temptation of Adam, or, in this case, Eve. He put a tactful question or two and was relieved to discover that the illicit union had not been illicitly blessed and that there was still time, as it were, to redeem the situation.

     When questioned about her young man, though, the McKenna girl was oddly evasive. Father Fingle knew by experience that disparity of cult was not an insurmountable obstacle to a long and happy marriage, but for all that something in Clare’s account of the relationship troubled him.

     ‘Your young man, you must bring him to talk to me,’ Father Fingle said.

     ‘If he’ll come,’ Clare said.

     ‘If he won’t come then there can’t be a marriage before God.’

     He sounded more disapproving than he had intended. After all he didn’t want to chase the young woman into her lover’s arms without commitment or consent. He had met too many disbelieving husbands, too many lying spouses, to respect a promise made on the spur of the moment. Better a difficult marriage between different faiths, however, than no marriage at all.

     ‘My brother will make sure he comes to see you, Father,’ Clare said.

     ‘That’s not good enough,’ Father Fingle told her. ‘The essence of any marriage forged in the grace of the Church must be love between the parties.’

     ‘Harry does love me, you know.’

     ‘In that case he’ll come without coercion,’ Father Fingle said. ‘I take it he has asked you to become his wife, that consent to the betrothal is mutual.’

     She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she answered, quite long enough to sound another warning bell in the priest’s head.

     He got up from the armchair and made a little tour of the parlour while the girl watched him, frowning. What did she really want, he wondered: a nod, a few hasty arrangements, a dispensation or two, meaningless penances, then a ceremony that would bind the young man to her in the hope that he would honour a promise by which he set no store at all? She would not be the first young woman to confuse carnal gratification with true love.

     He heard himself say, ‘You must talk to your young man – Harry, is it? – talk to Harry very seriously. Make sure he fully understands what’s at stake. If he really cares about you, he’ll come to see me willingly.’

     ‘But will you marry us in church?’

     ‘I make no promise on that score,’ Father Fingle said. ‘It’s up to Harry to take the first step before we proceed down the road to a proper Christian union.’

     ‘I want to be his wife,’ said Clare. ‘I do.’

     ‘Send him to me, then,’ said Father Fingle.

     ‘When?’

     ‘Tonight at nine o’clock.’

     ‘He’ll be here,’ Clare McKenna promised, nodding.

     But wise old Father Fingle was not so sure, not so sure at all.

 

She had expected more from the priest at St Kentigern’s. In a woolly sort of way she had assumed that she was due some favour, some dispensation to make up for the suffering that Father Garbett had inflicted upon her when she was young and innocent of men, as if one sin of the flesh might cancel out the other. In hindsight she felt sorry for the gnarled wee man in the cassock who had pulled her hand against his upright flesh and had been moved to defile her by the same instinct that had driven her into Harry Fairfield’s arms.

     Long ago she had heard her father and Kiernan argue that if God had not wanted man to procreate God would not have given Eve unto Adam, that it was lusting not love that shoved the world along its evolutionary track. She had understood none of the argument then or why Kiernan had laughed and her father had raged, or why – now – she felt purged not only of guilt but of righteousness, cleansed by the very act that she had been taught to abhor.

     She worked hard all that morning at the tub in the stable, scrubbing thick knots of cotton and flannel. She washed not only her linens but all the sheets and blankets too, rinsing away her sins in an aura of horse dung and horse pee while Mrs McLean’s cats crouched in the empty stalls and eyed her warily with their yellow-green eyes.

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