Dreams Of Other Days

by Elaine Crowley

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

A powerful novel that sweeps the reader back to the great Irish famine - a time of courage, passion and political upheaval. When Katy O'Donnell marries handsome, swaggering, hard-drinking Jamsie O'Hara she is as fresh and filled with dreams as her mistress, Catherine Kilgoran, who is marrying in silk and lace up at the big house. The story of two families whose fortunes are inextricably linked,and of a small,close-knit community bound together by tradition and by tragedy, it is also a tender and truthful portrayal of a marriage and of a woman whose indomitable spirit remains unbowed.

Release date: July 25, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 607

Sample

On a fine May morning, in 1837, in the village of Kilgoran, a young man stood in front of a long, low, whitewashed, thatched
building, a hand shading his eyes against the sun as he looked for sign of the midday coach bringing the new parish priest.
The man’s name was Peader Daly, and the building outside which he stood, a public house called Carey’s. It was situated where
the road divided four ways, a place referred to locally as Carey’s Cross.


The sound of men’s voices, laughter, and a strong smell of porter wafted out through the half-door. Peader moved into the
road a bit for a better view, and thought as he had all morning, of how once the new priest was settled in, himself and Katy
O’Donnell would arrange to have their banns called. A rapturous look crossed his face at the prospect of having Katy for his
wife.


In his mind’s eye he saw her, the shape of her, the way she moved with a swing to her hips. Golden-haired Katy who soon would
leave her father’s cottage at the Lodge Gates of Kilgoran House, and make her home with him. He felt weak with longing for
the night she would lay beside him. Images of her skin the colour of new milk, the narrowness of her waist that he could span
with his hands, how her hips curved away from it and her breasts swelled above it caused a sensation in his loins. He dwelt on the feelings aroused by his visions. Then remembering that such
feelings before marriage were lust and a cause of confession, he said a silent prayer for the gift of purity, and concentrated
on the road ahead.


The sun shone on his hair highlighting the reddish tints in it. His eyes were green, the colour of clean bottle-glass. Men
admired his height and litheness. And the girls of the village considered him the handsomest man, except, maybe, for Jamsie
O’Hara.


When he saw a vehicle come over the hill, a speck in the distance, he went to the half-door and called urgently, ‘Jamsie!
I think it’s coming. There’s something just cleared the rise.’


Jamsie and his brothers, Padraig and Johnny, were seated round an upturned barrel, drinking porter, Jamsie’s back to the door.
Without turning to look at Peader, he waved a hand dismissively and said, ‘You’re seeing things. Did you ever know it to be
on time? Come in and sit down. You’ve been in the sun too long, sure your brain must be parched.’


His brothers laughed, so did the men at the counter. And Carey, the landlord, said, ‘Aren’t you in a terrible hurry to get
the priest here altogether, Peader? And sure you know the minute he arrives he’ll be laying down the law about drink. If the
clergy had their way I’d be out of business.’


Peader took another look up the road. There was no mistake about it, the coach was arriving. Going back to the door he appealed
to Jamsie’s brothers. ‘Padraig! Johnny! Will you shift, and him, too. I tell you the priest will be here in a minute. Won’t it be a nice reception with not a soul but myself to welcome him? Come on,’ he urged, ‘and
someone give Tim Coffey a shout. His horse is halfway to Clonakilty with the cart behind her. We’ll be in a nice fix with
no yoke to lift the priest’s things.’


‘Eh, Tim!’ a man shouted. ‘The jennet’s bolted.’

Jamsie turned his dark head and smiled indulgently at Peader. ‘You’re as bad as a woman any day for worrying,’ he said good-naturedly.
‘But rest easy, I’ll be there now in a while.’ He returned to drinking his pint.


Then a man at the counter said, ‘Whisht! I think I hear something. Be God, he’s right! It’s the coach.’ There was a hurried
swallowing, a wiping of hands across mouths, and faces assuming serious expressions, an attempt by way of straightening shoulders
to erase the signs of drink, as one after another the men headed for the door. Tim Coffey, coming in from the yard adjusting
his trousers, headed after the men and his straying animal who with lowered head was grazing on the move.


They assembled in a little group outside the public house. Those who wore caps removed them, and stood twisting and rolling
them for they were ill at ease, more so as they knew the sign and smell of drink was about them.


‘Whoa! Whoa there,’ the coach driver called to the horses, reining them in.

‘Whoa,’ he called again, leaning back in the seat, pulling on the reins.

The horses came to a halt; they were lathered in sweat, their bits flecked white. The driver got down, opened the carriage
door, tipped his hat, and in a voice loud enough for the waiting men to hear, announced, ‘We’re here, Father. It’s Carey’s Cross. Mind the step now,’ he continued, and with
difficulty restrained himself from helping down the tall black-clad figure emerging slowly and awkwardly, for he remembered
how at the staging post his assistance had been kindly, but firmly refused.


Peader, not aware of the driver’s earlier experience, thought him the queer, surly sort of a man not to offer a hand, and
moved forward, his own outstretched. Then a look about the priest’s face, a set to his mouth, made him halt. Feeling foolish
with a hand raised he brought it up to his head pretending that the gesture of combing his hair with fingers was his original
intention, and watched the priest negotiate the step. Saw his swollen knuckles whitened by strain grasping the door frame,
as one stiff-kneed leg after another was lowered from step to ground. Then the driver unloaded the luggage, tipped his hat
again, and bid the priest goodbye.


‘Father Bolger,’ Peader said, ‘we were waiting for you. We have the horse and cart. Will you put on your things, and maybe
ride with them? The chapel’s a good walk.’


‘God bless you for all your kindness, all of you,’ the priest said, looking from one to the other, seeing the men still nervously
twisting their caps. Peader introduced everyone, and for each the priest had a word of greeting, and thanks. When the introductions
were done he exclaimed, ‘Well, well, that’s grand indeed! I never expected this, and a conveyance, too!’


His face, that at first sight appeared stern and forbidding, took on a kindly humorous appearance, his deep-set, pale blue
eyes smiling, the skin at the corners creasing into lines furrowing the pale flesh. He pushed back his tall hat and massaged the red crease made by the too-tight band, a strand
of ginger greying hair escaping on to his forehead.


‘Well,’ he said again, ‘that’s grand indeed. I never expected the like. If all my days in Kilgoran are like this I’ll have
no cause to complain.’


The watching men beamed at the praise, and were glad Peader’s father, Michael, had organized the meeting, and persuaded Tim
Coffey to come with the cart. It was wonderful to have a priest again in their midst. Three months they had been without one
since Father Mullen died suddenly.


‘Right then,’ said Father Bolger, ‘put the bags on, but myself I’ll foot it with you. Walking keeps the joints moving, nothing
like it for the rheumatics.’ Tim Coffey who, since recapturing the horse, had not let go its straw bridle, backed it closer
to the group. Padraig and Johnny loaded the cart, while Jamsie at the priest’s request undid the blackthorn stick tied to
one of the bags and handed it to him. Tim exchanged bridle for reins and mounted the cart, its wooden wheels creaking as the
procession set off to walk the four miles to the chapel.


The road was narrow and winding, hedged with hawthorn. The cart sides dragged at the leaves, crushing the white May blossom
so the summer morning was heady with the sweet smell. Here and there along the way old men, old women, and children had gathered
to see the priest. He spoke a few words to them and gave his blessing. Jamsie and Peader pointed out little whitewashed cottages,
some clearly visible, others only glimpsed at the bottom of boreens, saying who lived where. ‘That’s the Widow Murphy’s. In the next field Statia Tierney lives, she’s above
now in your house seeing to things. And over there is Mary Doyle’s. Mary has lumbago, she’s the one who’ll look after you,
but Statia’s agreed for the present.’


The priest listened, thinking that in time he would remember all the names, meet the people to go with them. After a while
he asked, looking from one of the young men to the other, ‘Tell me now, which one of you is which? I was so overcome with
the unexpected welcome I didn’t take in half of what was said.’


They identified themselves. ‘I’m Peader Daly, Father.’

‘Ah, yes, Peader.’ A fine, serious-looking man, better dressed than the others, Father Bolger noted.

‘Jamsie O’Hara, Father.’ Taller than the other one, heavier, too. A divil-may-care expression about his blue eyes. A different
type altogether to Peader, the priest felt sure.


‘Them’s the two brothers behind, Padraig and Johnny,’ Jamsie said.

The priest glanced back. ‘You’re the spit of each other, more like twins than brothers. You’re not, are you?’

Johnny moved up alongside Father Bolger. ‘We’re not, though the mistake is often made. Padraig’s the eldest. He’s nineteen.
Jamsie’s a year younger, and I’m seventeen.’


‘Is that so? And yourself Peader, what age are you?’ the priest inquired.

‘I was born the same year as Jamsie.’

– Well, I’ve got them fixed in my mind now, and your man on the yoke, an oul sour puss if ever I saw one, is Tim Coffey, Father Bolger thought.


They went on for a while until they came to a place where the hedge was scant. The priest stopped walking, the men did too.
One of them called to Tim who pulled up the horse and sat smoking a short clay pipe, brooding over the few shillings lost
because Peader’s father had pressed him into carrying the priest’s traps instead of two churns for a farmer beyond the village.


‘That’ll be Lord Kilgoran’s house, I suppose?’ Father Bolger asked, looking across the fields to where rising from landscaped
parkland there was a pale-stoned mansion, flanked on either side by curving wings. From its many windows and conservatories
the sun was reflected.


‘It is,’ Peader confirmed. ‘Once it was the seat of the O’Sullivans. Their castle was there long before the English came.
Part of it is still there at the back of the house, and their dungeons beneath it.’


‘Is that a fact?’

‘A fact indeed, as it is with many of the big houses. Built on the ruins of something else, someone else’s. This one goes
back to the time of Henry VIII. Though as you can see it’s been altered over the years. Changed, the way Kilgorans themselves
changed, for they were Catholics when they came, and are Protestants now. That’s how they held on to what they have.’


‘You know your history well,’ Father Bolger said approvingly.

‘He does that – Peader’s the great scholar,’ Jamsie said, as they started again on their journey. ‘Him and me went to the
same hedge school. His father let the master teach in his house. Peader had the gift for learning all right.’


‘And yourself?’ the priest inquired.

‘Ah, no, not me,’ Jamsie laughed deprecatingly. ‘I’ve a head like a brick. And you could say the schoolmaster didn’t take
to me, nor me to him. One day after he hit me, I hit him back. Fighting you can do for nothing, my father said when he heard
tell. Out you come, I can put my twopence a week to better use.’


‘Jamsie’s the hard man,’ Peader said with affection for his childhood friend.

‘I’m told Kilgoran’s a good landlord.’

‘He is that, one of the best,’ Peader said.

‘Are you all his tenants?’

‘All except the O’Haras, here,’ Peader explained.

‘Oh, and whose tenant are you?’ Father Bolger asked.

Johnny O’Hara, the youngest of the brothers, took from his mouth the grass he was chewing, and spat on the road. ‘Dano Driscoll’s.’
He uttered the name with contempt.


‘I see,’ said the priest, and thought he knew the sort of man Dano was. Irish and a Catholic, if the name was anything to
go by. A regular at Mass and the sacraments, generous with offerings and oats for the priest’s horse, making sure of his place
in Heaven. He knew the sort well. A small farmer maybe, that had come up in the world. A grabber of land, able now, from whatever
source, to afford expensive leases. Wanting big fields for pasture, never mind that to get them he ran out the occupiers of
small tilled ones, depriving them of a home and their living. He was sure he would hear more of Dano. But in the meantime
he would give Johnny no more encouragement to vent his spleen so, bringing the conversation back to Lord Kilgoran, he asked, ‘Tell me now, has the Lord many in family?’


Answers came back from all sides. ‘Four, Father. Three girls and a son.’

‘’Tis a great week for Kilgoran – yourself arriving, and Miss Catherine, the eldest, marrying tomorrow. Great goings on altogether.’

‘Great excitement indeed,’ Father Bolger agreed. The men were gathered round him, he saw their shabby clothes, the worn frieze
coats, breeches stitched and patched, stockings that had seen better days, brogues, handy shoes fitting either foot, scuffed
and battered by long wear. All showing their badges of poverty, except Peader, with a comfortable cut to him. Poor men who
seldom handled a penny, and when they did, as often as not spent it on drink. Blaming their plight on drink was an excuse,
he knew, ever on the lips of landlords, officials and priests. Not that he condoned its misuse, but drink wasn’t the whole
story, he thought, detaching himself from them, walking to where he could look out over the little fields. The men, thinking
he needed to relieve himself, walked on a bit.


His head ached from the tight hat, he pushed it back, and again the gingery grey strand of hair fell forward. What unfortunate
people were his countrymen, he mused. Their land in the hands of strangers, governed from England, soldiers in the King’s
uniform barracked in the towns.


In front of him were the plots of potatoes, their green leaves growing well, the fields planted with barley and corn. Behind him a way, the big house with the women slaving to have everything ready for the wedding. Washing and cleaning,
mending and dairying. Always it had been the same. ‘Yes Sir,’ and ‘No Sir,’ bending the knee and touching the cap. Preparing
for weddings, hunts and balls, shoots and weekend parties. Rocking the stranger’s cradle. Turning the houses inside out while
the gentry had their season in Dublin or London. Conditioned to think themselves lucky to earn the few shillings that stretched
the price they got for their grain.


What an existence they had! Seldom anything to eat but the potato washed down with buttermilk when they could afford it. Maybe
once a year, at Christmas, a bit of fat bacon or salt fish. All over the country the same. People in little cottages with
one field, two if they were fortunate. Dividing them up when a son married. It was that or he’d be out on the road. Exhausting
the bit of ground with too many mouths to feed. And even with the rent paid – no security. Anytime the humour took him a landlord
with the law behind him could evict: anywhere except Ulster that had a system like England and an agreement between two parties
was honoured.


Jamsie, Peader, and the men came back, but left the priest undisturbed gazing at the fields, thinking his thoughts. The fields
that were tilled, planted, that were prayed over for sun and rain, for the frost not to be too hard. From which children picked
stones and frightened the birds. And all for what? he asked himself. So that the fruits of their labour, the corn and the
barley, cattle and pigs, the firkins of butter, went down the road to the ports – and England. And the people ate potatoes,
depended for their life on them, a vegetable that was as contrary as the weather. Was it any wonder they sought solace in drink?


A breeze blew across the field sending ripples through the grain. Looking at the undulating crops soon to be plundered he
felt a surge of hatred rise within him, a flood of anger and bitterness for the English who had so treated his people. An
emotion first experienced long ago in his home town of Enniscorthy on the day he saw the man being flogged. He prayed daily
for God to take it from his heart.


A touch on his elbow, and a voice inquiring, ‘Are you all right, Father?’ brought him back to the present. The waiting men
looked concerned. He assured them he was fine, sighed and indicated he was ready to continue the journey.


When next they stopped it was at a stone, slate-roofed house belonging to Peader’s father who was outside waiting to greet
the priest. ‘Come in Father,’ said Michael Daly, who looked like his son. ‘You’ll be tired and thirsty after the journey,
and wanting to rest.’


‘Thanks all the same, but I won’t, for if I sat I’d not rise again.’

‘Sure you can stand, so, but out of the sun,’ Dinny Crowley, beside Peader’s father, said. He was small and thin with a cranky
face.


‘You’ll have a drink?’ asked Michael Daly.

‘A drink would go down well. A drink of water.’

‘Ah, Father, sure you can have that, too,’ Michael protested.

‘Water will do fine.’

Dinny wrinkled his face in disgust, and went to fetch the water.

Michael spoke to the priest. ‘I needn’t tell you how delighted we are to have you, Father, three months without a priest in
the chapel was a terrible long time. The house has been put to rights, and a few things sent up. I doubt if you’ll want for
anything. I’d have had your horse down at Carey’s waiting, but at the last minute I thought she’d gone lame. Myself and Dinny
stayed to doctor her. But, sure, thank God I was worrying over nothing, and she’s grand. There she is.’


Father Bolger’s eyes followed Michael’s pointing finger and saw the brown mare grazing. – A beautiful creature, and a more
than generous gift, he thought, but one I’ll have to refuse. The man will think bad of me – a churlish individual. First refusing
his hospitality, then his fine mare. But it can’t be helped.


He explained how unless there was always someone to hand, he could neither mount nor dismount. Michael’s face fell with disappointment,
then showed concern and sympathy when he heard the reason for the refusal.


‘God comfort you, the rheumatics is a terrible affliction. But how will you manage, especially in the night for sick calls?’

‘I’ll have to put my trust in God,’ the priest replied.

‘Then that He may answer your prayers,’ said Michael.

For a while, the priest, Michael and Dinny discussed Daniel O’Connell, Michael commenting that nothing but good seemed to
have come from the granting of Catholic Emancipation. And wasn’t it a grand thing that paying tithes to support the Protestant
clergy had been reduced? The priest said it was, and expressed his hopes that one day O’Connell would secure Ireland’s total
freedom. ‘God bless and spare him to us. A man that hates violence and has achieved what he has without shedding anyone’s blood.’


‘A clever man, that’s what he is,’ Dinny said. ‘Look at the way he’s after uniting the people and clergy in the struggle.
And wasn’t his penny a week Catholic rent a stroke of genius. There’s few that can’t find it, and the paying of it makes everyone
feel they have a say in what’s going on. Which reminds me, Father, there’s been no collection since the priest died. You’ll
be seeing to it?’


‘I will that,’ Father Bolger said. ‘We’ll call a meeting first thing.’ He bid Dinny and Michael goodbye and, accompanied by
the band of men, set out on the last stage of his journey, Peader telling him as they went, that further along the road was
a small gate into the estate, and some of the women working in the House might be there to see him.


In the cool, dim, dusty dairy at Kilgoran House, Katy was churning extra butter for the wedding guests. It was strenuous work,
her thick golden hair was disarranged from the effort, a fine sweat beaded the upper lip of her full mouth, and her usually
serene brow was marred by a frown. Occasionally, without stopping the churning, she raised her head to look at a spider descending
an invisible thread spun from one of the many cobwebs festooning the ceiling. The thread grew longer, the spider hovered above
a pan of milk set for the cream to rise.


However, the frown on Katy’s forehead was not a result of her labour, but of the worry going through her mind. For with the
new priest’s arrival there was no longer an excuse for not getting married. The sudden death of Father Mullen, on the very
day she had realized what she felt for Peader was not love, seemed as miraculous a happening as the miracle she had experienced
during the old priest’s last Mass. To think so about someone’s death was probably a sin, she had told herself several times,
and wished some other happening had given her the opportunity to put off the calling of her banns and Peader’s. That very
Sunday after tea they had an appointment with Father Mullen, but the poor man was gone to God by then, and she madly in love
with Jamsie O’Hara.


The thought of him made her tremble and feel hotter than she was already so that she sweated more profusely. She bent her
face and wiped it across the sleeve of her blouse, and began to relive again the moment she fell in love. It happened in Mass.
On the men’s side across the narrow aisle, one row up from where she was sitting, Jamsie O’Hara knelt as he did every Sunday.
The warning bell rang before the elevation of the Host. Katy bowed her head. The second bell sounded, she raised her head
to look at the priest with his back to his congregation, arms uplifted offering the sacred bread. Out of the corner of her
eye she noticed Jamsie as if seeing him for the first time. His head was bathed in a shaft of the hard bright February sunshine
slanting through a narrow window; she saw how the hair she thought was black had a bluish tinge to it, and as the priest lowered
his hands, found herself remembering the colour of Jamsie’s eyes and thought how strange and sinful it was to think about
such things at this moment. She she again bowed her head, and closed her eyes, trying by squeezing them to distort the image
of his face clearly visible as if imprinted upon her lids. Again the bell was struck, the chalice offered. Katy’s head came
up, but as if they had a will of their own, her eyes were cast in Jamsie’s direction instead of at the vessel whose wine had
now been transformed into the blood of Christ. And within her heart another miracle occurred – she fell in love with Jamsie
O’Hara, with the shape of his reverently bent head, the vulnerable exposed skin between the rough, shabby frieze collar and
the hair that curled on the back of his neck. She was possessed by a longing to cross the aisle, bend and kiss the pale skin.
It would feel soft, she was sure, like that of a baby. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, don’t let me do any such thing,’ she prayed, alarmed at what was happening to her.


– I must be losing my mind, me that’s promised to Peader. My heart leaping out of my breast, my head light, a feeling maybe
that I’ll faint, only it’s nice, and not a sick feeling at all. And all because of Jamsie O’Hara that I’ve seen most days
of my life passing the Lodge Gates. One of what her mother called the rough dirty crowd from up on the bog, that before this
minute she had never given a second thought to.


So lost did she become in the wonder of this strange and delightful emotion that she continued to stare at the one to whom
it was directed, until a sharp dig from her mother’s elbow, and a hiss to ‘stop gawping, and pay attention to her duties’
brought her to a temporary reality. But from that moment on she thought of Jamsie all day as she went about her work in the
House; when she opened her eyes in the morning, last thing before she closed them – and sometimes God granted her bedtime
prayer, and she dreamed about him.


A shout from Nan, the dairymaid, recalled her from her thoughts. ‘I said, aren’t we fortunate getting a priest? I think you’re
losing your hearing. Three times I spoke to you.’


‘I was miles away,’ Katy said. ‘It’s grand isn’t it? I was just thinking maybe I could slip down to the gate and see him pass
by.’


The old woman said nothing and returned to stamping patterns of cows and leaves on moulds of butter, and Katy to thinking
wouldn’t it be great if Jamsie was with the crowd walking with the priest? And wondering how she would break the news to Peader that she didn’t love him? And then angry thoughts about her mother’s refusal to let her go
dancing at Carey’s Cross.


She remembered how, the week after falling for Jamsie and knowing he danced there, she broached the subject.

‘Have you lost your mind? Dancing above at the Cross – you, a girl about to be married! Only tinkers and the like dance there.
Buzzing and leaping, screaming like the demented, and their clothes disarranged exposing their limbs,’ her mother had replied.


‘Peader goes,’ Katy had said, by way of persuasion.

‘Not since he’s been courting you. And anyway, a man can do what he likes, and not one thinks the worse of him. On the nights
Peader doesn’t call you’ll sit by the fire.’


– Sit by the fire one night, the next with Peader, never allowed to go dancing – where will I ever see Jamsie except a glimpse
of him outside Mass, Katy thought. That’s how I’ll spend the rest of my life till I die. But if I never lay eyes on him again
I’ll not marry Peader, and tell him so tomorrow.


Anger and frustration surged through her, unconsciously she channelled the emotions into her churning, so the paddle turned
faster, the sound of the swishing milk changed as it became less liquid.


Nan stopped stamping the butter. ‘ ’Tis coming,’ she said. ‘I can hear it. You’re the great butter maker, nearly as good as
myself.’


‘Indeed I’m not, sure’s there’s no one to beat you.’ Katy believed what she said, but at the moment would have said it anyway,
for she wanted Nan to wash and salt the butter, then she might see Jamsie.


The old woman preened at the praise, wiped her greasy hands on her skirt, sat down and began probing with a long finger nail
between her remaining two front teeth. ‘There’s something there. I can’t get at it. It has me tormented,’ she said.


‘You’d want a bit of thread,’ Katy advised. ‘I was thinking,’ she added, ‘you might finish the butter. I’d love to see the
priest. I wouldn’t be a minute and tell you all about him when I come back.’


‘There now I’ve got it,’ the dairy woman said, extending her nail with an atom of something attached for Katy’s inspection.
She rubbed it off on her skirt and answered Katy’s question. ‘I will. You can go and welcome. If I had the power in my legs
I’d run with you.’


Katy left the churn and rolled down her sleeves. The woman went to look at the cream. She skimmed her fingers across the pan.
Some fell back, she licked the rest, skimmed again and offered it to Katy, who hastily refused and put on her cloak, noticing
as she did so that the spider was drowning in the milk pan.


On her way to the small gate well away from the main one, she saw Charlotte Kilgoran. The child was bowling a hoop along a
narrow path, her hair streaming behind her as she ran to keep pace with the hoop. The path, Katy knew, led to a drainage ditch.
After the wet spring it would have a depth of water. It was a place forbidden to children.


‘Miss Charlotte,’ she called. If the child heard her, she pretended not to, so that Katy had to call again, louder this time.
Charlotte