In Pursuit of Kate Corbett by Anne Loughnane

Author:Anne Loughnane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908447074
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing
Published: 2011-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER [7]

The offer From Clare …Decision time

“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

Proverbs Ch. 4 Vs.7

At harvest time the Sisters worked alongside two workmen. How Kate relished the task of preparing and taking their lunch down to them knowing the hunger of hard working young men. They would rest under the lovely old oaks and beeches that bordered the glinting stubble of St. Benedict’s field, and their healthy welcome for the food would bring to mind the memory of her boys.

KATE HAD SENSED a measure of anxiety in Vincent’s tentative query, “Why was I the one chosen to be sent home?” She was glad that he had used the phrase “sent home:” had he said “sent away” she would have worried that he had somehow felt less loved.

He was her baby, and she had never been apart from him until she sent him, aged barely eight, to be brought up by John Jo’s brother Tom and his wife Ellen. John Jo used to speak of Tom as “a hard working enterprising farmer,” full of the new confidence then abroad in rural Ireland. In the 1860s he built a lovely spacious farmhouse, and she remembered how surprised she had been when they first visited. Ellen eyed her sardonically. “Confess, Kate,” she said. “You thought we lived in a whitewashed cabin?” She had laughed “No, but I certainly had not appreciated what an elegant home you have” she replied. It was a four bay, gabled house with dormer windows facing south. The generous lawn was enclosed with rows of chestnut trees, and there was a stand of mixed woodland to the right. She loved the way the graceful avenue curved through this to the gravelled half moon which fronted the house, and how the wisteria insinuated itself around the beautiful Georgian door and fanlight, and along one of the windows. It had a distinction and charm, rare then, within the Irish farming community.

Kate liked Tom and Ellen very much. He was hard working and ambitious, but with a passion for justice that she admired, and a real compassion for those of his neighbours and kinfolk who fell upon hard times. Tom was a rate collector for the Tulla Union and she liked to think that he used his influence to mitigate the lot of the many struggling in the aftermath of the famine years. Ellen also was a woman of kindly and charitable disposition. Kate felt keenly her pain at being unable to have her own children, but appreciated the deep faith with which she tried to make her life fruitful bringing comfort to neighbours and friends. The need for this was everywhere then, as the countryside all around was just emerging from the harshness of the hungry years and the upheaval of the land agitation.

She remembered the delicately worded letter clearly: “We have come to accept our sorrow at not being blessed with a child … would like to be allowed to raise

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