The Mersey Girls Read Online Free

Lucy to think of. There was simply no time in her busy life to worry about men.
    Maeve dished up the breakfasts and watched her father eating with the speed he always showed. He shovelled the food in, packing his mouth with bacon until the grease ran down his chin, wiping spilt yolk with a slice of bread, drinking his tea in big gulps between mouthfuls. The pity of it was, she reflected, that though he was a good farmer, none better, he was always rushing, hurrying to get on. So he seldom praised her meals, though perhaps as the bacon came from the pigs he reared, the eggs from the poultry strutting in the yard outside, even the bread from their own wheat, he might think that to say that the food was good was a form of self-appreciation.
    It would have been nice to have been appreciated by her father, but to Padraig Murphy, Maeve was simply a work-horse. A good one, yes, but not valued as she ought to be. It isn’t really fair, because if I were pretty then I’d marry and leave and he wouldn’t like that, Maeve told herself, putting a piece of fried bread and an egg onto her own plate and taking it to her place at the end of the table. Her father was ashamed of her because she had no man sniffing after her, yet he resented the men who came calling after Clodagh, Éanna and Nora, was continually critical of them and obviously more than a little jealous.
    ‘More tea, Maeve.’
    She had only just sat down; Kellach made a half-move, but Clodagh was quicker. She took her father’s mug without a word, refilled it, put it down before him. Once again, Padraig showed by neither word nor gesture that he had been given the tea he had demanded.
    ‘Get the honey.’
    This time Maeve reached the jar down from the dresser without having to move from her chair and stood it with a crack on the table before him. He reached for it, dug his knife into the smooth, amber sweetness, spread it thickly on a round of buttered bread.
    ‘Lovely manners, Daddy,’ Nora said. She had come into the kitchen softly and reached round her sister for the teapot. ‘Don’t worry, Maeve, I’m not eating breakfast this morning, I’ll just have me a nice, hot cup of tea. Oh, and some bread and honey because I mustn’t be fainting behind the till.’
    Nora worked in the town’s only dining rooms and was already clad in her working uniform – a black dress with white collar and cuffs, a rustling white apron and neat low-heeled black shoes. She was golden-haired, like three of her four sisters, and was currently walking out with the schoolmaster, a pleasant, scholarly man in his forties who had never been married and who probably never would be, unless Nora nudged him a little.
    Padraig looked up and gave Nora a half-grin; she was his favourite daughter, now that Evie had fallen from favour with such a crash. I was never a favourite, nor ever will be, Maeve thought sadly, though I’m the only one that works at home, slaving to keep the place halfway decent. Still, I’ve no charm, no pretty ways. How can I expect to be anyone’s favourite?
    But then she remembered Lucy, sleeping in the cradle upstairs, and a smile curved her lips. Her sisters were lovely and beloved, but she – she had a baby who was as good as her own. She would see that Lucy got the best of everything and when Evie came back, or grew famous, there would be the four of them, closer than friends, staying together for the rest of their lives.
    Me Da can be as grumpy as he pleases, and Kellach can court his old widow and go and live in her rich little farm, she told herself, eating her fried bread. The girls can marry their young men and Nora can flirt with the schoolmaster and get prettier and more sought-after by the day together. But what does it matter to us Murphy girls, Maeve and Evie, Lucy and Linnet? We’ll manage fine so we shall, Maeve told herself blissfully. And did not even hear her father’s voice as it ordered her to cut more bread and look lively, woman, we men have got