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aunt there was no love lost between them. And 147 really, she couldn't stand my ma or the rest of the family, but she would come and she would stay for weeks on end.` She started to laugh now, so much so that her body shook as she said, `She would eat us out of house and home and not bring a victual in nor leave a penny when she went. She did it on purpose; she had a funny sense of humour. At times we used to laugh together about nothing, laugh until the tears ran down our faces. That seemed to be her motto, laugh it off. But I can tell you, me ma and da didn't laugh after she had gone, yet they would welcome her again with open arms as soon as she put her nose in the door.` Moira's laughter faded and as she went down the main staircase she muttered, `But she stood by me; she always stood by me, and for that alone I wish her a long and happy rest in heaven.`

For the next three days everyone in the house was on tenterhooks. They didn't know when Brian would arrive. When eventually he did, surprisingly early on the Thursday morning, it was at exactly a quarter to nine. Apparently

he had got a lift on a carrier's cart that passed the boundary of the farm on its way to Durham.

Òh, Brian, Brian, am I glad to see you.` Before she had taken in his expression Moira had thrown her arms around her brother. And when Maggie Ann appeared in the hall she too embraced him, greeting him the while, and when she finished with, `You're like the sight of God's holy angel,` he answered, Ì

hope you'll go on thinking that, but I doubt it.Ìt was at this point that they both looked closely at him. And now Moira, the wide smile having left her face, said, `Come on in, come on in to the drawing-room. Have you had your breakfast?`

`Yes, I had a good meal in the town. I slept there overnight, 'cos it was late when I got in.`

Òh, you slept in the town, in an hotel?` This was from Maggie Ann, because an hotel spelt money.

`No, not in an hotel, in a lodging house; a boarding house, as they call them. It was clean and decent and the breakfast was good. I think you had

better sit down, both of you.` 149

Neither of the women said another word but did as he said, and as Brian took another seat and began with the words, `Prepare yourself,` the drawing-room door was thrust open and Hector entered, a broad smile on his face as he exclaimed, `Hello! there, Brian.` His hand was outstretched as Brian rose from the chair to take it, saying solemnly, `Hello to yourself.`

`You're early. Did you travel overnight?`

`No, I've just been telling them, I spent it in the town.`

Òh, oh. Have you eaten?`

`Yes, yes. I would sit down.`

`Sit down? Why should I?` Hector's voice had changed.

`Well, stand if you like. It's up to every man to greet disaster in his own way.`

`What d'you mean, disaster?` The words seemed to have been dragged through Moira's lips. She was sitting now, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes unblinking; then she said, `Get on with it. What is it?`

`She potched you. The old girl potched you,

Moira. She diddled you as she diddled everybody all her life. She is where she is now, laughing. I hope she frizzles in hell because what I'm goin' to say isn't only hurtin' you, it's hurtin' us, an' all; because you always said we'd have a share in it, didn't you?`

`But the will?Ìt was a small voice coming from the large frame of Maggie Ann. `She always said her will was made out.`

Òh, aye, Maggie Ann, it was made out and right from the beginning.`

`How much have I got?`

Brian looked at Moira now, saying quietly, Òne hundred pounds.Às Moira lay back in the chair and closed her eyes the door opened and Daniel came in. He was smiling but the smile slid from his face when he observed the group in the middle of the room, three seated and one standing and not one of them taking the slightest notice of his entry. He stayed where he was just within the doorway and listened to Maggie Ann now yelling, À hundred pounds! You can't mean it, Brian, you can't mean it. Where's the rest gone?`

`Well, where d'you think?` Brian glowered

at her. `To the bastard. All eleven 151 thousand, nine hundred pounds of it, and all tied up nicely and nobody can touch it. Da was goin' to make a claim because he was her nearest surviving relative but he soon found out that was useless. He might have stood some chance, so it was said, if it had been a few years earlier, but there are new laws now about women inheriting. Anyway, there it is.`

`Who is this ... this bastard you talk about?` Hector's voice came menacingly from low in his throat.

Brian looked at him, then glanced at Moira before looking back at the man again and saying, `She hasn't told you?`

`Told me what?`

Òh,` Brian got to his feet, `well, that's up to her. Why d'you think that, us bein' Catholics, didn't kick up hell's shindies about her marryin' in a God-forsaken registry office? If she had been without taint you would have never got near her unless it was through a priest and the Mass.Ìt was Maggie Ann who rose to her feet now and, putting her hand out towards Brian, she said,

`Come away, come away into the kitchen.Ànd after he had cast one look between his sister and her husband, he allowed Maggie Ann to lead him from the room; and Maggie Ann left the door open, expecting Daniel to follow her, which he did, as far as to step into the hall, but there he turned and looked to see Moira, on her feet now. Facing his father, she cried bitterly, `He's right for once. D'you think they would have let you marry me, you a Protestant and, as he said, in a registry office, if it wasn't that they wanted to get rid of me because I had sinned? Oh, yes, I had sinned: but if it had been with one of the clan it wouldn't have mattered, they would have had me married off. But he happened to be an English soldier. And so, while still fifteen, I gave birth to a daughter and I've never seen her since. She was adopted, and I was left on their hands and no decent man would have me. But you came along and--`

She was gabbling now.

Hector made no move; nor did he speak for a moment until, as if the substance of her words had just penetrated his mind, he yelled, `You! you bitch, you! You came to me supposedly as pure as a virgin.

You acted like one that night.

God!` He put both hands to his 153 head now and seemed to tear at his hair, while he went on, Ànd you've had the audacity, you, you filthy scut, to deny me my rights. And now the bait you held out has turned into rotten fish. Not a penny! God in heaven! I'll throttle you, woman.Às he made to spring, so did Daniel, only to find himself gripped from behind and hearing Maggie Ann's voice yelling over his shoulder, Ì wouldn't lay hands on her if I was you. Her brother's in the kitchen and he's not only good with his fists, he's a champion knife-thrower, won prizes at the fair for it.` Her voice was almost a screech now: `Don't! if you value your neck, lay hands on her.`

When Hector turned and dashed up the room towards Maggie Ann, she pulled Daniel to the side, and as Hector brought his quivering fist in front of her face, he cried, Òne day, before you leave this house, I'll drive that between your eyes.Ànd she answered him grimly, but quietly, Ìt'll be with your dying breath, then.Àgain he had his hands to his head; and now he was rushing across the hall and to the front door, while Maggie Ann, pushing Daniel into the room said to him,

`Comfort her. I must go to Brian and get him out of this house as quick as possible, or God alone knows what'll happen next.`

Quietly, Daniel closed the drawing-room door behind him and just as quietly walked up the room to where Moira was sitting, her elbows on a sofa table, her head resting in her hands. And he hesitated before he touched her because through his mind there was running the thought: She had a child before she came to Father. And she'd had to sleep with him all these years and bear his children likely without ever loving him. And then there was the fact that she, having had a child, seemed to drive his father mad, even though he himself had had mistresses for years. But would the fact of her having had a child have mattered if she had been left the money? Maybe, but perhaps not so much; no, not so much. The world was topsy-turvy and, in a way, dirty.

Moira raised her head now. Her face was dry: she hadn't been crying, but there was a depth of sorrow in her eyes as she looked at him and said, `You are shocked?`

`No, Moira, no.`

She looked away from him and down the 155 long room and her voice was barely a mutter now as she said, `You've no idea, boy, what it was like living in that house knowing that I was condemned to it for years; and not really because I'd had a child, for if it had been to an Irishman, somebody they knew, it might have even been laughed off--many of the children round about didn't know who their fathers were, anyway. But, you see, he was an Englishman, a soldier, and I loved him and he loved me. Although we were both very young we knew we loved each other, really loved.` She turned now and, her head back, she looked up into his face, saying, `That is why I have loved you, because, in a way, you are so like him.

He was tall and slim with that same look on his face that you have at times, and he was kind; but he was English, and a soldier, and so to them he was the devil incarnate. And what did they do? He was killed.

The man they had picked out for me to marry, he shot him, supposedly because I had been brought to shame; but no, the killer was a member of a Fenian movement and out to destroy anything that was English. You have no idea of the feeling of hate that surrounds them; no, not surrounds, but threads through them all for anything

English. They are all carrying on a fight that started hundreds of years ago. True, they had suffered at the hands of the landlords, and were still suffering, but they couldn't see that there are ordinary English people the same as there are ordinary Irish folk.`

`Your daughter, you have never seen her?`

`No; from the time they took her from the bed where Maggie Ann had laid her by my side, I only know she was passed over to Auntie Mattie, and from there she was passed on to a family. But I could never get Auntie Mattie to tell me who or where these people were. But now`--she gave a small hard laugh--`she's a rich woman, and Auntie Mattie had the last laugh. I should hate her, but I can't, because she knew me and she knew that had she left me all that money I would have halved it with them at home.

I don't think she would have minded so much the money being spent here, but she would have if any of the family had laid hands on it, particularly her nephew, and Brian himself. She was the only one who knew that I was seeing Paul. That was his name, Paul Brownlow, from the county of Essex in England.

He would have married me, oh yes, he would have married me. He didn't even know that I was carrying his child when they shot him. It was 157 dear, dear patriotic Brian himself that saw me meeting him; then they practically tied me up in the house so that I wouldn't see him again. But when the child began to show then the sparks flew and the Fenian boys demanded justice.`

He heard himself say, `Didn't you care for Father at all when you married him?`

Ì liked him. Anyway, I wouldn't have cared who I married at that time. My only desire was to get out of that house and away from the stigma that was like a red cross on my back, and on my front. It could have been painted there. I even heard women in the market say that Paddy Mulcahy had to flee the country because of me; not that Paddy Mulcahy had killed an innocent man, not in battle or skirmish, but in the back of the head as he was walking along a street, and`--she turned to Daniel again--`the life here appeared like heaven. Can you understand that? But strangely, you know, Maggie Ann never has thought that way, and she would go back again into that house if it wasn't for me. But then, of course, to them she is clean, untouched, pure as the Virgin Mary herself.` Her voice rose now almost to a cry as she exclaimed. `Those men! They can drink until they are senseless, they can whore until they're worn out; they can practise cruelty, both mental and physical, on humans and animal alike, yet let one of their own clan, the female of course, just have one lick of the apple that they can chew to the core and they are damned. I've sometimes known families who have sent their daughters over to this hated England rather than suffer the shame of them giving birth to a bastard there.

`Why did God make us so unequal`-- she was now stabbing the question at Daniel--èh? You're on the verge of manhood: there are needs stirring in you, and you'll give vent to them sooner or later. But should that girl, that Frances you're so gone on, should her needs cause her to let them be eased by another young fellow or whatever, what would you say? You, the kind understanding Daniel, the man in you, what would he say? I know what he would say, Daniel, I know what he would do: he would make you throw her off as if she was a leech stuck on your skin, because the manhood in you would have been affronted. But, of course, had she eased herself with you it would have been different; and you may have married her, but once you owned her, the fact that she had

been easy pickings would have stuck in your 159 craw ... Oh, don't look like that, boy; I know what I'm talking about.` She turned from him now, her hand going up to her brow as she exclaimed, Ànd oh dear God! this day's just beginning; there'll be an end to it.Ànd she left the room leaving him standing, stunned by her knowledge, not only of those men among whom she had been brought up, but of himself.

As Moira said, the day wasn't over, and it really didn't end until eleven o'clock that night.

Before Daniel went up to bed she said to him, `Now, Daniel, when he comes in he'll likely be the worse for drink ... What am I saying? He will be the worse for drink; he'll be roaring mad. Now, whatever you hear, whatever happens, keep out of it. It isn't your business, and believe me, Daniel, I can take care of myself. I can handle this, and I'll do so in my own way. Now go on up an' stay in your room no matter what happens. I'll be all right; I've made my own arrangements.` ...

He was first made aware that his father had returned