After the Rising & Before the Fall by Orna Ross

Author:Orna Ross [Ross, Orna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublishDrive

* * *

Diary 9th January

This morning I was feeding the hens when two cold hands came round my face, covering my eyes. I knew straight away who it was. “Barney!” I cried, delighted first, then fearful.

Did he know something…? As soon as I turned round, I could see that he didn’t. He was smiling a smile that broke my heart to see because I knew what I had to tell him would wipe it away.

“We’re below in Colonel Taylor’s,” he said. “So near that I said I’d have to come home.”

I bombarded the poor fellow with questions. “Are the boys around here now? You look thinner, have you been eating all right? Did ye get my despatch about the barracks job? Have ye a plan for it? Are you hungry?”

He laughed. “Which do you want me to answer first?”

“All, all. Oh, Barney, it’s great that you’re here. Christmas was awful miserable. And Mammy — ”

“Is bad.”

“Bad, yes. But she’ll perk up now. She’ll perk up now.”

“A perk-up is what I’m in need of myself. I need a wash and some clean clothes. What I’m wearing is stuck to me and the itch is back.”

I threw the last of the meal in a heap in the middle of the yard and the fowl leapt on it, clucking like the children over Father John’s sweeties, beating each other away.

“Come on inside,” I said to him, wiping my hands on my apron. “I’ll put on the kettle. How does a feed of rashers and eggs sound?”

Only three weeks since we last saw him but he’s grown even thinner. And he was filthy from face to foot. “Have a bit of a wash there in the barrel before I bring you up,” I said, “Else Mammy will think you’re the devil himself come to visit.”

While he was doing so, I put on water to boil for a proper soak in the tub and got in food from the shop. Then the two of us went upstairs together. “Ah, son,” was all Mammy said when she saw who it was. Two thin arms came up from the blankets as he went to her and they held each other in a way neither would have done six months ago.

When they parted after a long closeness, we each sat on the bed, one on either side of her, while she asked him questions that came slow out of her soreness, about the talk we were hearing that surrender might be imminent. He tried to fob her off, to talk of other things, but not a chance. She dragged herself up in the bed and gave us one of her speeches.

“At a moment’s notice…this country produced…the finest politicians and soldiers, drawn from all walks of life. Six years ago they were nothing but they…they came to command the admiration of the world. Why?” Her finger poked the counterpane. “Why? Because they stood on the side of right…that’s why. They had a principle…Now, the talk is of giving up that principle…or of watering it down but…principles can’t be watered down.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.