The Woman from Kerry Read Online Free Page B

she laughed with glee and set her gently down again on her own two feet.
    A look of desolation passed over the old man’s face at the sound. Wherever he ended his days, and those days might be few enough, Hannah thought, he’d never again hear the laughter of children in the valley where he’d been a child himself.
    ‘Come in, Hannah, be ye welcome as ye always are. I’ve little to offer, but what I have is yours.’
    Daniel McGee’s house was about the same size as theirs had been, but there was no division to make a bedroom, so the single room seemed much larger than their own, its roof much higher, for it was raised in better times. Rose stared at the smoke-blackened sods that lay under the thatch. On the pale, silver-grey wood of the lowest laths St Bridget’s crosses had been nailed up each year on her special day. Some were woven from rushes. Some carved from the whitened tree stumps dug up with turf from the bog. A few were just pieces of sharpened stick bound together with a piece of rag. She began to count them softly to herself as her brothers brought the bundles from the cart.
    ‘Can I hold the child, Hannah?’
    Rose was amazed when her mother lowered Samuel into his arms without a moment’s hesitation. He sat rocking him gently and crooning to him while Hannah and Mary made up the tiny fire with turf from the cart and put water to boil for the potatoes they’d brought with them. Samuel opened his eyes, sneezed and then lay still, his arms waving gently, his large dark eyes attempting to focus on the face of the unshaven figure who looked down at him focused but unseeing.
     
    By the time they’d eaten, the sun had dropped far behind the ridge of the mountain. Inside the big room it was shadowy, the only light the pale oblong where the door still stood open. Every so often, even that source of light was dimmed as another man or woman slipped through to join the growing company.
    ‘Come away in and let ye be easy. There’s no one but old friends among us tonight,’ Daniel called out firmly. He greeted each of his visitors by name before they’d even spoken.
    He’d insisted Hannah sit in the wooden armchair that faced his own across the flags of the hearth. Beside it, he’d placed a low stool for Rose. Here she sat, her back resting against her mother’s legs, watching the silent figures settle themselves around the room.
    Behind Hannah, Mary shared a bench with her father and brothers, but many of the people who arrived had no place to sit. They dropped down on the floor or stood leaning their backs against the walls. For what seemed a long time to Rose, no one spoke in the crowded room and no one came. Then two men carrying a wooden bench slipped into the back of the room and seated themselves. As if that were the signal he’d been waiting for, Daniel cleared his throat and began to tell a story.
    It was a familiar tale of heroes she’d heard many a night, listening behind the bed curtains when she was supposed to be asleep. What was new to her was Daniel’s way of telling it. There were long and elaborate descriptions of places and people, clothes and weapons, castles and great houses, she’d never heard before. Sometimes the hero would pause and break into verse, praising his friends and drinking companions, cursing his enemies, celebrating the beauty of a woman or the paces of a fine horse.
    Often Daniel would pause and ask a question, as if to be sure he had their full attention. At critical points in his tale, he would ask his listeners to express their feelings. ‘Ah bad luck to him,’ they would chorus, if Daniel had spoken of treachery. ‘God give you joy,’ they’d cry, as ill-used lovers ran off together to the shelter of the mountainside.
    Daniel spoke in Irish, for he’d never left the valley and had no Scotch at all, but there were many words and phrases Rose had never heard before. At first she didn’t understand them, but as they were repeated, over and over again, slowly