The Woman from Kerry by Anne Doughty

Author:Anne Doughty [Anne Doughty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749017309
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2014-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

With Sarah and her beloved Ganny safely delivered to Sophie at the farm, Rose strode out gratefully. The fresh autumn morning, the tracery of spiders’ webs beaded with dew, the hedgerows bright with berries, lifted her spirits, bringing her an ease and a freedom she hadn’t felt for weeks.

The last time she’d been in Armagh was the fateful day when she’d taken delivery of the white envelope at Monroe’s. Two months ago now. With the children at home and so much to do to make the house workable, she’d had to rely on John’s visits to Armagh for necessities. He’d pay the rent and buy oranges for Sarah when he had to go to Turner’s for hardware for the forge. Sometimes, he had time to collect tea and sugar for her as well, but more often with the forge so busy she’d had to use what the baker’s cart provided. It gave her much less choice and was considerably more expensive.

She’d missed her visits to town sadly. Missed the weekly books from the library, the changing fashions in the windows of the best shops, the familiar faces in the grocers and drapers shops, but most of all she’d missed wearing clothes other than her working skirt and her oldest blouse. She felt as if she’d not stopped dusting and brushing, scrubbing and sweeping, weeding and digging, since the day John pushed open the door into the abandoned house. For the first time in her life, her hands were so rough and dry they caught threads in her stockings when she put them on.

She’d had nothing to read but the newspapers, full of news that brought no comfort to anyone. No time to sew except for the usual collection of rips and tears, the backsides of James and Sam’s trousers after they’d been climbing or the knees of John’s when he’d been kneeling down to rim cartwheels on the stone circle.

Her only joy was clearing out the roots of the weeds around the front of the house and making two small flowerbeds under the windows. There, where she could keep a watchful eye on them while they were small, she planted out the first cuttings that had rooted from those she’d made from Sarah’s garden.

In the dusk of that last, long summer evening at Annacramp, weary from the effort of the day and clumsy with tiredness, she’d worked methodically along both borders and used every small flowerpot and empty tin can she could lay hands on. Determined not to abandon the most precious of Sarah’s plants when she ran out of containers, she’d cut much larger pieces from the most flourishing plants and put them in water in an old bucket with no handle, hoping she could take the cuttings later. They’d had to wait till after the doctor’s visit, but they’d taken no harm from the delay. The small fragments of Sarah’s sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs had put out vigorous roots in an old wooden box she’d found in the wash house and filled with soil from the overgrown garden.

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