Safe Home (The Tipperary Trilogy) Read online

  SAFE HOME

  By Bill Patterson

  ***

  Published by:

  Bill Patterson and Madeleine Hogan

  Copyright (c) 2013 by Bill Patterson & Madeleine Hogan

  ****

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

  ****

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  CHAPTER 1

  Liam Flynn was waiting for his eldest son to arrive for their afternoon’s labour. Robbie had gone across to his cottage, ‘for a bit of dinner’ he’d said. He was probably chasing that new wife of his around. Liam propped open the door of their carpentry shop to let out the stale air and welcome in some fresh. July had been unseasonably hot and sunny so far, delighting farmers the length and breadth of Ireland and bringing a welcome uplift in spirits to the tiny Tipperary village of Gortalocca. The mild, wet spring had given way to a glorious long summer of hot, sunny days and that meant a bountiful crop was assured. The 1720s had been a decade of crisis in Ireland and it was taking time to recover from the early famine years, when two seasons of failed crops had devastated a country already on its knees.

  There was still no sign of Robbie and his father’s mood began to sour. They were mid-way through an important job, fabricating an armoire for the wealthy Butler family in nearby Nenagh, and he wanted Robbie to help him move a pile of wooden planks. The wood he needed for the doors was near the bottom. He decided to start shifting them on his own and found the top ones to be surprisingly light but, as he got towards the middle, they became heavier. He felt a sharp pain in his left thumb. At almost forty-seven, he was no longer a young man and, if nothing else, Robbie was useful for the lifting and carrying. The job had to be done and so he pressed on.

  The sweat on his leine made the shirt stick to his body and he stopped to straighten himself up for a moment, wiping the sweat away from his eyes with the back of his hand. A pain shot up the inside of his left arm to the elbow but he ignored it and attacked the woodpile again. He had barely begun when an overwhelming sense of nausea came over him. He sat down on the wooden stool in the workshop to rest for a minute or two. A searing pain shot through his chest and it was a pain like no other he’d experienced. Where’s Michael? No, not Michael, he thought, he left long ago. Where’s Robbie? An iron fist seemed to crush his chest in its grasp and he fell from the stool as the pain gripped him. He tried to get to his knees, using what little life was left in his body and, as he sank back down to his face on the hard packed floor, he wished he’d been able to see Rosin one last time.

  *

  Roisin sat alone in the gloom of her tiny cottage, the only light cast by the glowing embers of a turf fire. Her blue-grey eyes were a relentless basin of tears and she dabbed at them for the hundredth time that day, her liquid gaze resting on the lifeless body laid out in front of her … her husband of twenty-four years.

  As she looked down at Liam’s now ashen countenance, she thought of how she’d kissed his face that morning as he left for work. She closed her eyes to imprint the memory on her brain. The early sun had warmed them when they’d stepped outside their thatched cottage. She had watched her husband walk away, down the only street in the village of Gortalocca, and he had raised his hand, knowing that she would still be standing at the cottage door, watching him until she could see him no more. Roisin wished she could open her eyes and discover this was just a dream but this was Ireland, and death was a silent and constant companion.

  Thoughts fluttered around her mind, like a butterfly going from one blossom to the next, each thought leading to another. As she raised her face to pray, her gaze came to rest on the huge gilt mirror which hung over the fireplace, prayer could wait. She thought back to when Liam had carved it, soon after they were married, and she remembered how she’d chided him for wasting time making such a foolish extravagance for such a simple cottage. Her eyes welled with tears again as she recalled the hurt on his face.

  ‘But it’s for your birthday,’ he had said.

  She had relented then, her heart full of pride for the man she had married, the endearingly simple and frustratingly complicated young carpenter. The gold leaf was beginning to peel from the mirror frame now, revealing the red sizing beneath. If you had peeled off the thin, stoic, veneer of her husband’s Presbyterian heritage, Liam Flynn had been a romantic underneath.

  Roisin picked up the crocheting she had begun just the night before. If she busied her hands, perhaps the pain of her broken heart would ease, if only briefly. She thought about how she’d watched Liam immerse himself in his work when they had lost their infant, their only daughter, eighteen years before. He had focused all his efforts on a job he’d been commissioned to do by the Otways, in an attempt to relieve his grief.

  A wave of anger washed over her now and she put the wool down. She got up from her chair and addressed her husband’s dead body, as if an argument might rouse him from his slumber.

  ‘How am I supposed to live without you, Liam Flynn? Damn you for leaving me! I should have told you how much I loved you, but…’ Her eyes filled again. She noticed a smudge on the mirror and went to it, using a corner of her apron to clean off the mark. She looked at herself and smoothed down her hair. Strands of platinum now mingled with the golden ones, and there was no denying that she was thicker around the waist than she’d been on that day when she first met her ‘raggedy man’.

  Her thoughts now darted back to the days when Liam had first arrived in Gortalo
cca. That had been 1704 and almost everyone from those days was gone now. She looked down at his face again and had to swallow her bile. His once ruddy complexion was pallid and his lips were grey. She felt a sudden need to see his crystal clear blue eyes one last time, those eyes which didn’t just look at something but saw everything. Roisin knelt next to her husband and touched his face, his skin was cool. She recoiled at first but pressed on, opening an eyelid. The pupil was dilated now but it was unmistakable, the blue that she had lost herself in so many times. But it was different now. Everything was different now. The eyes that had once been so full of life and enthusiasm, no matter how bad a situation got, were distant, as if gazing at something far, far away. She kissed his cold face, not for the last time.

  Roisin returned to her chair to resume her vigil over the deceased. She pulled a shawl onto her lap and let her mind wander again, back to that afternoon when she had met the raggedy fellow, covered in mud. Their first encounter had been anything but auspicious. She hadn’t thought much of his looks. He was ordinary, she was bored, and had delighted in an opportunity to tease the poor fellow for her own amusement. Looking back, she reflected on how churlish she had been, but that was long ago, when she had been a spoiled and self-centered young woman of nineteen. She knew now that, if anyone ever treated either of her sons that way, they would incur a mother’s wrath that they wouldn’t forget in a hurry. She wished Michael was with her. Mikey was their younger son. Robbie had spent the afternoon with her but now he had gone home to his wife. They lived in Paddy’s old house across the road.

  She thought about Paddy, the pig farmer. She missed him almost as much as she missed her own father. Paddy Shevlin always had a joke to tell, or a story to relate, and he never knew how funny he was. Whatever came out of that gob of his was always a surprise, even to him. Fat little Paddy wasn’t just a friend and a neighbour to Roisin, he was like a favourite uncle. He had shared many a meal at their table with them, here in the cottage, and many a beer across the road in the bar, both when her da ran the place and after his death too. She made a mental note to put a sign up on the door of Hogan’s to notify people that it would be closed until further notice. Hogan’s hadn’t closed since her father died, almost twelve years before, but she didn’t have the heart to open it now. There would be too many questions to answer and she needed to feel stronger before she faced people again.

  She thought about the little spirit grocery which she had helped her da run since she was eleven. She hadn’t changed the name of Hogan’s after he died, she hadn’t had the heart to do that either. It would always be Michael Hogan’s place in her mind and she knew everyone would still call it Hogan’s, no matter what they changed it to, and so she’d left the sign up outside. Liam and Roisin had called their younger son after her father. She wondered where Mikey was now.

  He had been well on his way to becoming a blacksmith, as Liam’s own da had been, when he had astonished everyone by announcing, out of the blue, that he was going to become a priest. Liam had been disconsolate at his son’s decision and had tried his best to talk him out of it, but Mikey was like his father. Once he had an idea in his head, he turned it into a plan, and once the plan was made, neither God nor man could deter him from it. Mikey would be almost twenty-two now and his mother hadn’t seen him for four years. If he had become a priest, she knew that he would be a wanted man now. Catholic priests had been incarcerated, some had even been executed, for spreading sedition against the English crown by defying the edict which banned them from practicing their faith. Despite the threatening possibility, Roisin’s instincts told her that her son was still alive. As his Mother, she would surely sense if any ill had befallen him. Right now, she just wanted to see him again, and look into his eyes. He had his father’s eyes and Liam’s disposition too, quiet, modest and unassuming, but with a will of iron. If anyone could survive these wicked and treacherous times, it was her boy, Mikey Flynn.

  Roisin thought back to the summer her father had died. It had been a wet one and the winter was even wetter. Crops failed and times were lean for almost everyone. Liam had commissions from the wealthy English families to build furniture, so he was able to support his wife and children, but most Irish families suffered terribly. Late that autumn, an epidemic had spread through all the townland communities around Lough Derg. It started with a fever and aching joints, but in just a matter of days, it suffocated many of those who contracted the disease, especially the old and the very young. In spite of old Moira’s best ministrations, Roisin’s father had died just a week after he became ill, his last short breath just a bubbling gasp. Roisin’s eyes moistened again, she hadn’t thought about her father’s last few moments for a long time. The babies died that year too. Jamie Clancy, the orphaned neighbour who Liam had taken in, lost his wife and two children that murderous autumn. Jamie was young and had eventually recovered from his terrible loss. He was married to a girl from Ballina now and Roisin smiled through her tears as she thought about their newborn. Life goes on.

  Roisin’s thoughts landed on Paddy Shevlin and she smiled. A person couldn’t help but smile when they thought of Paddy Shevlin. Paddy had suffered the same fate as her father a few years later, but with one difference … Paddy had welcomed death. He had been lonely and no one knew it until those last few days, because he was always the life of any gathering. When he knew he was dying, Paddy had said he wanted an Irish wake and that Liam could pay for it. He told Liam and Roisin that he had talked to his dead wife every night since she’d died, before he went to sleep. He told them he wanted to be buried next to her in the old churchyard at St. Patrick’s, and that he wanted a pig engraved on his gravestone. Liam had tried to talk him into something more dignified and funereal but Paddy had insisted. Paddy Shevlin had a wake that no one ever forgot and he was buried under the only tombstone in Ireland with a swine on it.

  Paddy had been a witness at Liam and Roisin’s wedding, along with old Moira. Father Patrick Grogan had presided over the ceremony. It was performed deep in the woods, at Lodge, and Liam had dressed in his ‘gentleman suit’ for it, even putting on the shoes he hated so much. Roisin had been dressed in a muslin shift, dyed blue with woad in the traditional fashion. She was barefoot with a wreath of wild yellow flowers in her hair. She thought back to Liam’s tenuous relationship with the priest. If he’d had his way, he would have had another priest marry them, but Father Grogan was the only one left. They’d had an official ceremony at nearby Johnstown’s Church of Ireland too, a few days later. Roisin had been reluctant but she knew it was the only way their plan could succeed. Father Grogan gave her absolution but Liam had declined.

  Father Grogan had always been a mountain of a man but he began to lose weight, in spite of eating and drinking as he always had. He seemed to be always thirsty, drinking cup after cup of whatever fluids he could get his hands on, and he smelled of urine. His sight failed him and old Moira, whose own sight was dim, had to lead him around. Finally, he became too weak to walk at all, and his feet broke out in foul-smelling ulcers. His breath smelled like sickly-sweet spirits and Moira said he was dying from what she called ‘sugar poisoning’. He had collapsed and died shortly after he presided over the funeral of Sinead, Liam and Roisin’s baby girl. They’d had to carry the priest, on a litter, to the field at the back of their cottage to conduct the service when they buried the three year old near the faerie ring. Roisin’s eyes filled again. Her daughter, her little girl with hair the colour of ripened wheat and blue eyes … planted in the ground, like a potato. When she fell asleep in the chair, the tears were still wet on her cheeks.

  *

  CHAPTER 2

  Roisin opened her eyes to her new world. There would be visitors today, they would be coming to pay their respects. She decided she would put on her Sunday best finery. She tried to focus her thoughts but, again, they were like leaves in the wind. Her eyes wandered to the little door next to the fireplace, which led into the small bedroom. She had been pregnant with Michael, and
Robert just a toddler, when she’d asked Liam if he could put in a little window next to the fireplace, to let in more light. She shook her head now and managed a faint smile as she remembered. Whenever she had asked Liam for something, it was sure to be SOMETHING. He had promptly begun to build an extension onto their little cottage. A window would have been sufficient but, of course, it had turned into a project. For almost a month, the cottage had been in total disarray … and so had her temper. When the job was completed, Roisin had to admit that having the extra space, and a modicum of privacy, was welcome, but she’d had a hard time saying so. It didn’t matter. Liam knew she appreciated it and that’s all that mattered to him.

  Before she headed to the bedroom to get herself changed, Roisin looked down at Liam’s lifeless body and the now familiar sting threatened tears again.

  ‘I’m going to miss you so much, my darling,’ she said out loud to him. She and Liam had never been apart for more than a matter of hours since the day they were wed. In the bedroom, she took off her worn linen dress and put on her Sunday clothes. She thought about her husband, the yeoman carpenter, who had shed his labourer’s skin so many times to become the country squire, and how uncomfortable he had been with the hypocrisy of it all.

  ‘Clothes make the man, they tell me,’ he had said and shrugged his shoulders. She had always known that clothes didn’t make Liam Flynn. No, Liam Flynn was an exceptional man, no matter what garments he wore.

  She returned to the parlour now. She lit an oil lamp and stood in front of the big mirror, frowning as she tugged at her dress, it was tight in a few places. Her figure was no longer the girlish one she imagined it still was in her mind, but was undeniably taking on the fuller form of a matron. Again, she addressed Liam out loud.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me I was gettin’ fat, ya sod?’ She knew it hadn’t mattered to him. To him, she was always his ‘beautiful Irish girl’. He had said it often, whenever they’d shared rare moments alone together. Another of Liam’s expressions came to her mind now too.