House of Memories Read Online Free Page B

charge. It had finished when Martha took over, but by then he no longer needed it. He had a reserve for a rainy day. He was grateful to the old man for that security.
    When his mother had died suddenly when he was eighteen, the old man had stepped in and paid for the funeral and later put up a headstone, and no one knew about it but the two of themselves. Jack had missed his mother dreadfully: his father had died when he was a baby and he was an only child, so when she went he was on his own. The months after her death were raw and hard. Often the old man had called at night and stayed for hours. That support in his bereavement had welded a deep bond between them. Sometimes he found a bunch of flowers on his mother’s grave, and he knew that it was the old man remembering.
    Suddenly he felt a soft cheek against his and was startled into wakefulness, causing him to straighten up, moving his feet and disturbing Toby, who looked up at him in annoyance.
    “Kate,” he said with delight. “I must have dozed off.”
    “You must indeed,” Kate laughed from behind him as she put her hands on his shoulders and began to massage between his shoulder blades.
    “Oh, that eases my old bones,” he told her appreciatively.
    “How’s the old ticker doing? Are you taking things any easier?” she asked.
    “Yerra, I’m great for an ould fella,” he told her.
    “Well then,” Kate said as she drew up the rocking chair beside him, “tell me all the news from below.”
    “What kind of news?” Jack teased.
    “You know that anything that moves in Mossgrove is news for me.”
    “Well, all is quiet in Mossgrove. While Martha was in America, Peter got his hands on the control knobs, and I feel that he might keep them there.”
    “Is she satisfied with that?”
    “I’m not sure. You know with Martha you can never be quite sure of anything. She seems satisfied enough, but that might only mean that she is hatching something that might turn us all upside down when she gets going again,” Jack said.
    “Life is never dull around Martha,” Kate mused, “but nothing came of the great romance that we all thought would blossom in New York.”
    “Well, we are assuming that it didn’t, but I suppose when he didn’t come back with them that was that. But it didn’t surprise me that it happened that way. Somehow I can never see Martha getting married again. In many ways Martha is a solo operator,” Jack concluded.
    “I thought that she might have married him for the money,” Kate said thoughtfully. “I know that sounds terrible, but Martha likes power, and think what she could have done as Mrs Rodney Jackson.”
    “Martha would prefer to make her own money,” Jack decided.
    “You are probably right,” Kate agreed. “You know Martha better than any of us.”
    “Hard to know Martha.”
    “Well, I didn’t come to discuss Martha,” Kate told him. “I am here to discuss money problems.”
    “Oh,” Jack said in surprise.
    “Not my money problems,” Kate assured him.
    “Whose then?” Jack looked at her inquiringly.
    “Danny Conway’s,” she told him.
    “Aha! I thought that he couldn’t keep going much longer without needing hard cash at the rate he was doing improvements,” Jack said thoughtfully, “but how did you get involved in it?”
    Kate filled him in, and as he listened he nodded his head slowly and smiled with understanding as she told about the grandmother.
    “So old Molly Barry has left her mark,” he said slowly. “The chances were always there that there was bound to be one throwback. And Danny is the one! I thought that it was looking that way. And he has even resurrected the old name Furze Hill. It was always known as Furze Hill when I was a child, and it was a grand place then. The Barrys were fine people.”
    “But what happened?” Kate’s voice was full of curiosity.
    “Molly Barry married so far beneath her that she could never again straighten up,” Jack told her.
    “Good God, Jack, that’s