KINGDOM 1


fruit cake through the post every Christmas, home-made fudge at Easter, and remembered the children’s birthdays, put pound notes she could not spare in cards.


Betty had been too busy for marriage. She had once walked out with a young Protestant man named Cyril Dawe her father disapproved of. Nothing ever came of it. The time for marriage and children passed for Betty. She became used to attending to her father’s needs in the big house, quelling his temper, making his strong tea, ironing his shirts and polishing his good shoes on a Saturday night.


After his death she managed to live by renting out the land and cautiously spending the savings her father had left in the Allied Irish Bank. She was fi fty years old. The house was hers, but a clause was put in her father’s will that gave Louisa right of residence for the duration of her lifetime. Her father had always favoured Louisa. She had given him the admiration he needed, whereas Betty only fed and clothed and pacifi ed him.


When June passes without word from the Porters, Betty becomes uneasy. She pictures the lettuce and the scallions rotting in the vegetable patch, toys with the notion of renting a guest house by the sea, of going off to Ballymoney or Cahore Point; but in her heart she knows she won’t. She never goes anywhere. All she ever does is cook and clean and milk the cow she keeps for the house, attends mass on Sundays. But she likes it this way, likes having the house to herself, knowing things are as she left them.


An overwhelming sense of freedom has accompanied the days since her father’s death. She pulls weeds, keeps the gardens tidy, goes out with the secateurs on Saturdays to cut fl owers for the altar. She does the things she never had time to do before: she crochets, blues the lace curtains, replaces the bulb in the Sacred Heart lamp, scrapes the moss off the horse trough and paints the archway gate. She can make jam later on when the fruit ripens. She can pit the potatoes and pickle the tomatoes in the greenhouse. Nothing, really, will go to waste if the Porters do not come. She is getting used to this idea of living through the summer alone, is humming a tune softly and weighing candied peel on the scales, when the postman wheels the bicycle up to the door.


‘They’re coming on the ninth off the evening ferry, Miss Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘They’re coming as far as Enniscorthy on the bus. You’ll have to send a car.’ He puts the card on the dresser and slides the kettle over on the hot plate to make himself some tea. ‘Not a bad day.’


Betty nods. She has only four days to get the house ready. They could have given her more notice. It seems strange, their not bringing the car, Stanley’s big company car that he always takes such pride in.


160


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