Long Road, Many Turnings

By Mary Mcclarey

"Every journey has to start somewhere. For now, this one starts here..."

Long Road, Many Turnings is a family saga spanning four generations. It is the book for anyone who ever wanted to trace their ancestry and discover how their family really lived throughout the first half of the 20th Century.

Although a work of fiction, Celtic author Mary retells her own family story, achieving a mixture of drama, humour and historical events. Exploring scandal, heartbreak and danger through interrelated characters-including Roisin and Deirdre in 1907- to Ellen and Agnes in 1951.

Starting with two chapters focussed on the Drimoleague area of West Cork the reader subsequently experiences life across Northern Ireland, London and Wales. Chapters include the second world war, with storylines focussing on two different aspects–childhood evacuation to Wales and the issues and dramas encountered by working alongside Black-American soldiers in WW2 Northern Ireland. These illustrate war's unexpected impact on everyday life. There are also chapters depicting the post and the inter-war years, times which had their own challenges. Each character's story intriguingly slips into the background of the next thus readers are constantly provided with fresh themes and new characters. The writing is entertaining, touching on gender and cultural misunderstandings alongside a fast-moving storyline. It is accessible, friendly and down-to-earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Mcclarey
• Release date: Sep 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201806439

Mary Mcclarey

Mary is the author of three novels ‘Long Road, Many Turnings’ and ‘Time for a Change’ were her first two, ‘Another Mother’s Child’ completes the trilogy. She is also a prizewinner of  the 2020 Fish flash fiction competition. Now living in Devon she describes herself as a hybrid Irish-European. Born and brought  up in Northern Ireland, her grandmother’s family originate in West Cork, which is the setting of the first two chapters of this novel. Her career as a Midwife and Health Visitor as well as her fascination  with people has enriched her writing. Mary hopes her novels generate an understanding of how different characters respond to their life challenges, stimulating a reaction in readers which touches their own feelings and experiences. Although her feet are planted in England her mind is constantly travelling elsewhere, often to the irritation of those who have to live with  her. Find out more about Mary at http://marymcclareyauthor. co.uk.

Book preview

Long Road Many Turnings

Second Edition.

Mary McClarey

Copyright © 2019 Mary McClarey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the

publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with

the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries

concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction, although inspired by true events,

Almost all the locations exist, but any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

To all my family, with much love and thanks for your warm and generous support, always.

Contents

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Chapter 6.

Chapter 7.

Chapter 8.

Chapter 9.

Epilogue

Chapter 1.

Roisin. Drimoleague, West Cork, Ireland 1907

‘Go now, scholars. Go straight home and stay together,’ urged Roisin Carr, as she did every afternoon. Her back aching, her feet sore from standing on the hard, cold floor and her mind elsewhere. A cloudy afternoon, with fitful showers throughout the day, rattled the windowpanes and caused an eye-stinging smoke to blow out of the open peat fire.

Roisin was a keen and dedicated teacher and, although young to be the sole schoolmistress, she could hold the class well enough during lessons. Now she found it impossible to make her voice heard above the hubbub of eleven children ready for release. With harsh scraping of corner stools on flagstones, swinging of legs recklessly over the rows of wooden benches which provided most of the seating and noisily gathering slates and chalks to bring up to the teacher’s high desk, the boys and girls aged between six and twelve, were headed towards the open door.

These children would not dawdle; the day was too cold and damp, and the light was already fading. Many had around two miles to travel and Roisin often stood at the school doorway watching them, their heads down, crossing the bleak and windswept fields before reaching their homes.

At this time of year, the hawthorn bushes were barren, late autumn was drawing to a close and a whistling wind warned of irritable weather ahead. From the schoolhouse door, Roisin could just discern the outlines of small groupings of cottages and outbuildings across the surrounding open farmland, where families often lived close together, fields divided up for sons.

Today the children were noisy and urgent as they left the schoolroom. Roisin folded her arms and leaned against the wall letting them squeeze out the door as a single entity, like a shoal of fish, wriggling over each other in an attempt to get out. She knew they would soon disperse across the fields and lanes, breaking off into family groups the closer they got to home.

The habit of the mothers was to light a candle and place it in the window. Once the twilight faded it would guide their children home. Roisin wondered whether she would ever light one for her own children and watch them run home, attracted to the candle, like moths.

She closed her eyes for a moment and let herself dream. The older child would see the light first, he would be hungry and would urge the younger children, ‘Run faster, hurry up, see, Mammy has the tea on.’  They would splinter from the main group and although the younger ones would be reluctant to part company from their friends they would also be scared to be left behind. She imagined the younger ones jogging along after their older siblings, stumbling on the rough ground but not stopping. They would not be like the poorer children in her class who carried their shoes strung around their necks for safekeeping. No, her children would be properly shod, and she would be the best mother, a great help with their homework too.

Roisin opened her eyes and shook her head, her great mane of auburn curly hair drifting out from the bun she had secured that morning. ‘I’m well enough in looks,’ she told herself, ‘and certainly a good worker, any man would see that, but there aren’t many looking for a wife with independence and education around here, so it’s unlikely, but twenty-five isn’t too far gone now is it?’

A tall, solid young woman, with green eyes enhanced by long dark eyelashes and a fair, freckled complexion, she was an only daughter, and standing up to her two boisterous older brothers had made her ambitious and determined.

Smoothing her heavy tweed skirt over her hips she leaned forward one last time to warm her legs against the heat of the peat fire, before reluctantly moving across the room, righting the stools and picking up abandoned items, wondering at the ability of these boys and girls to so readily drop and forget their few possessions.

Would her children do that too, she wondered, feeling keenly the position she occupied in the community. Although she was the teacher, her identity was as a single woman, a situation referred to as, ‘Ah, sure she has no family.’ She was outspoken and always ready with a quick retort, ‘Wild goose never laid a tame egg’, she would tell Barry Og, when his hair grew at several angles across his head, just like his father’s. Or, ‘Every old crow has a young white as snow,’ her response to the O’Brian girls boast that Mammy and Dada had praised their progress. She tried to fit in and most of the time it was easy. She had a few friends and her brothers kept in touch. She lived with her mother in the schoolmaster’s house, owned by the church.

Her thoughts, as always, returned to the pupils while she tidied the slates and chalk, rubbing her dry dusty hands over the back of her skirt. One child, Kitty Collins, meant more to her than the others. She was a precious goddaughter and Kitty’s mother, Deirdre, was her best friend.

Roisin knew Deirdre was having a difficult time coming to terms with her recent loss - a long thin little daughter fully formed with skin like the membrane of an egg. She had arrived cold, still and much too early. Roisin had been there when Deirdre and Michael wrapped and buried the tiny body in the small corner plot at the outer edge of the graveyard.

‘That bloody priest, Father Daley,’ she muttered. ‘He’s looked up to and goes unchallenged, but he’s no father to this parish. Ha! So, he offers a blessing, but he won’t say the Mass for a dead baby.’ She shook her head at the memory of the priest and his influence over the parish. Her position at the school provided some security but she knew where the power lay, and she knew to be careful around him.

Damping down the embers of the peat fire she pulled the shawl her mother had woven over her head and across her chest, giving her coat an extra layer of protection against the gathering chill, before taking a great stride out the door and into the schoolyard. She secured the door with a bar to keep the rising wind from catching, no need for locking she had long ago decided. Stepping carefully around some muddy puddles, she walked towards the house where she knew her mother would be ready with the tea, bunching up her skirts impatiently against her thighs, trying to avoid the gorse bushes which shuddered in the wind, appearing to reach out and snag her.

She wondered what it would be like to walk home in a place where she could wear clothes designed to flatter rather than protect. Dublin, maybe? She wondered why she had never been there. Or the North? Deciding it would have been better than the countryside at providing her with a longed-for social life she reckoned that she didn’t really want to leave now; anyway, Mam would hate to see her go.

Within a minute, she had covered the few hundred yards to her home. She was wrestling with an irritant in her teaching programme. Father Daley wanted more catechism and less history. The families, many of whom were descendants of famine victims wanted history. The children wanted heroic and fantastic stories.  ‘Boer War, Brian Boru the Irish Giant, the Famine, IRA rebellion, Catechism, reading and writing, a bit of mathematics, Holy God, what do they think should come first?’ she asked the empty ground ahead as she strode quickly on. Approaching the house, still muttering to herself about the impossibility of keeping the children’s education balanced, she saw in the gathering twilight the outline of Father Daley’s horse and cart.

‘Ah now, what would he be wanting here? First Communion soon, he’s maybe planning a lovely visit to the school to get the children ready for their First Confessions.’

With the oil lamp glowing through the front window it was clear that her mother had brought the priest into the parlour. No doubt he was at this very moment taking tea.

Walking to the rear of the house, she let herself in quietly before hanging her coat on the peg and, taking a deep breath, turning into the best room. There she was, Mam. Maeve to the women, Mrs Carr to the men, looking like an older version of Roisin. Same thick head of red hair now heavily streaked with grey, tied back tightly in a bun. Her shoulders broad and strong and wearing her best fine ankle-length skirt, which suggested she might be a woman who spent her time indoors awaiting visitors. Roisin smiled at the thought, knowing her mother was a busy woman; gardening, growing vegetables, keeping chickens, and always helping the neighbours too. That fine woollen skirt would be hitched up in a trice, tucked into her apron, and on would go the boots at every opportunity. And now her mother was entertaining this uncompromising man, this priest, arrived only last year to the parish, sent unexpectedly by the Bishop of Cork to replace the ailing Father McCarthy.

She reckoned Father Daley was aged not more than forty, a good ten years her mother’s junior, his weak blue eyes seemed lacking in any emotion and his pale clean-shaven face might never have seen the sun and wind, so delicate and unlined was his complexion. He was carefully balancing his teacup over the table to ensure no drip would land on his freshly laundered suit, his impossibly white tab collar contrasting starkly with his smart black clerical shirt. Maeve, leaning forward slightly, her hearing was not so good, appeared to be respectfully listening to his views but Roisin expected the conversation would be meandering through liturgical topics of which she knew her mother really had no interest. She leaned back against the wall, listening a moment, thinking it would never do to interrupt the man. Tea was laid out on the table, best china, freshly baked fruit-bread, and butter.

‘All the best, of course, for himself,’ noted Roisin. ‘Why should a man who has renounced all earthly goods only ever be served tea from the daintiest rose-painted cups?’  She resented his assumption that it was always all right for him to have the treats, no sins of the flesh there now, and she wondered what else he liked to treat himself to.

Maeve had looked up sharply as Roisin closed the door gently behind her and now, not liking the look on her mother’s face, she braced herself for bad news. ‘Good evening, Father, hello Mam.’ Roisin stooped to kiss her mother.

‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ announced Father Daley, ‘There’s been a letter from the bishop asking me to find a teaching placement for a family man who has been employed in Skibreen. The school there has closed, and he needs a job... and a home. I’m sure you understand Roisin, no need for me to spell it out now. This grand house just for yourself and your mother, while a man needs a roof over his head. We’d be lucky to get him and his fine young Catholic family.’

‘Why are you telling me this Father?’ asked Roisin, frightened by what she had just heard. She was deliberately refusing to believe the implication and determined not to make this easy.

‘We will be appointing Schoolmaster O’Reilly to the school after the Christmas break, Roisin. That will give you a few months to find another post and a house for yourself and Mrs Carr here. God willing you will obtain a situation within the parish without too much trouble.

‘I myself will give you a grand reference and you’re well known across these parts for the fine woman you are. God bless you Roisin, it’s His will we must obey, you must trust His holy ways now.’

Roisin, conscious of the sound of her blood pulsing in her ears, felt the solid floor rock beneath her as she moved to reach for her chair. She had a sense of time standing still. In that moment between entering the room and drawing her chair to the table her understanding of her whole life had changed. Body numb, she was unable to speak, or unwilling to do so, until the priest had left, gulping down his tea, and raising a hand in blessing over the two women.

‘Now Roisin, we’ll put away the tea and I’ve here some bacon for your supper,’ said her mother returning from seeing the priest out and attempting to sound positive.

Roisin had a pain in her throat, she could hardly swallow and rubbing her hands anxiously up and down her arms, she felt prickles of sweat break out in her armpits. Cold and shaking with the shock, she found it difficult to make her tongue and teeth behave.

‘Mam, it’s so unfair, I’m a good teacher, so I am, and he has no right to do that, And I love those children, they’re mine to bring on, so they are.’ Swiping angrily at her face, which now had tears coursing down her cheeks, she felt her eyes stinging more than they had ever done by the smoke from the school peat bricks.

‘Now, girl,’ her mother’s face was turned away, she was pouring tea, afraid to see her daughter’s pain. ‘You know the church has to make difficult decisions in these times, and you would expect a working man to have the right to a job over a woman.  Maybe you should have found yourself a good man and spent your days raising a family, but no, you wanted another life. Well this is how it is, and you have been very fortunate to have had the fine teaching job now for five years, so we will pray tonight for guidance and maybe start a Novena together - you know St Joseph never lets us down. And will you write to your brothers Ruari and Seamus now and ask them what should we do?’

When Roisin’s mother finally turned around, she realised her daughter had stormed out of the house minutes earlier and was now angrily kicking the empty milk churn in the back yard, shouting ‘Bloody priests, bloody men! Damn the lot of them.’

It was only when Roisin broke the skin on her toes that she stopped kicking. The wind was getting up, mild rain wetting her head and face and the hot angry tears running down to her neck were giving no relief. She believed she had worked so hard for this job, a diligent pupil at school, then away to college in Cork for two years before returning home, knowing this would be her life now and accepting all that went with it. No man to herself at night, no children. Since Dada died it was just her and Mam, and the boys of course, when they came home.

Roisin and her mother passed the meal in silence. Pushing food around her plate and refusing to engage further with her mother’s plans for prayer, ‘I’m not staying in tonight Mam, I’m taking the horse. Don’t wait up for me’.

Roisin pulled on her coat, wrapped her woollen shawl around her shoulders and went out through the half door at the back of the house before her mother could object. She knew well that the older woman would lie awake if her daughter was out riding late across the open countryside alone, but tonight she didn’t care. Mounting her horse bareback, she cantered across the fields in the direction of town.

Drimoleague, had been a small, although still picturesque, village, until developed into a town when the railway from Dunmanway to Skibbereen opened some thirty years earlier. Since then the town had grown quickly. Roisin had taught the children that two hundred people now lived in Drimoleague with the shops and public houses built over those years changing the town, making Main Street into a main street. It was a popular, attractive, colourful town and Roisin was always at pains to make sure her pupils appreciated their homeland and were aware of its history.

She rode easily into the edge of the town, tying her horse up to the post by the side of the town’s best hotel and moved quickly, with more confidence than she felt, through the front door of O’Sullivan’s Bar. She was hit by a wave of warm air, smoke, and beer fumes. The room was noisy with male voices and smelt of damp from tweed jackets. She shrugged off her shawl while she scanned the floor for the familiar face of her friend.

It was easy to spot Patrick, as most heads had turned to the door when it swung open and, embarrassed by the sudden rush of attention; she smoothed her hair and licked her lips, tasting salt from the earlier angry tears.

Roisin had met Patrick Halligan a year ago after being introduced during a social gathering at the Collins’s, before Deirdre had lost her baby. She found him to be an easy companion. He was a bit of an outsider, an Ulsterman, a Northerner, which made her feel safer spending time with him than with other men in the parish and Roisin knew she couldn’t afford to start any gossip. He was an attractive man with a good head of dark curly hair, although too thin for his long frame. He had introduced himself as an agricultural salesman, from Belfast, staying at O’Sullivan’s on monthly visits. He’d been enthusiastic in his descriptions of the ways that he supplied horse medicine - worm powder, liniments, and hoof oil across the county. He made the most of his visits by giving himself a bit of a break, he said; walking and generally enjoying the area before heading back up north.  That was all she knew. She could tell that he was lonely, seeming to enjoy having an unattached woman to talk to and she asked no questions about his home life or family.

Patrick, like the others, looked up as she came in, a flash of recognition crossing his face as he nodded briefly, not exposing their friendship. Slipping quietly from his seat at the bar at the same time as she made her well-practiced move into a dimly lit snug at the back of the room, he asked, 

‘Would you take a port and lemon for yourself, now Roisin? I’ll get the drinks, so I will.’

Roisin’s eyes gradually became accustomed to the change in the light and looking around she, observed, not for the first time, how the place could do with improving. The paint was yellow with nicotine stains and the once cream walls were now a dull brown. It was impossible to tell where the original colour ended and there were shades ranging from caramel caused by the men’s pipes to chocolate patches closer to the open peat fire.  The whole place was still lit by oil lamps and candles, although Roisin, knowing that electricity was being used in public buildings in Cork city, hoped it would not be too many years more before the power lines would reach Drimoleague.

O’Sullivan’s was a traditional hotel but, whilst most public houses in Ireland had signs on the door saying, No Women, or, in smarter city areas, had dedicated lounges where women could take their ease alongside the men, the owners here had never followed that route. They liked to open the doors to whoever could pay and if that meant accepting women into the bar then the O’Sullivans felt it was not too high a price.

Putting the drinks down on the table between them, Patrick waited for Roisin to begin.

‘I’m to lose my job, my teaching job.’ She found she couldn’t continue. Having said it out loud made it true, and she didn’t know what would follow. She took a swallow of the port and lemon, but only a small one, she wanted it to last her the evening.

‘Ach, away, that’s terrible bad news Roisin, what’s the reason for it?’

‘A family man is to come from Skibbereen and take my job and they will take our house too.’

Patrick’s clear blue eyes met hers, so different from Father Daley’s she thought. No spark in the priest’s eyes at all. Patrick responded to her anxious look with a questioning glance. He took a mouthful of stout, placed his glass back on the table wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘Will ye get another job, or go away, or what? There’s plenty of work in other parts for a grand wee girl like yourself.’

He was trying to sound relaxed and knowledgeable whereas in truth he had no idea. He certainly didn’t think that asking his wife Oonagh to help a good-looking young woman friend would be an option. He liked Roisin, enjoyed her company and was attracted to her looks; particularly her striking red hair and lovely eyes, but he thought he wouldn’t want to generate any problems to interfere with his current comfortable existence.

‘Sure, I have plenty of choices, Patrick’, stressed Roisin, already suspecting she heard a strain of pity in Patrick’s voice, and that was an emotion she never could tolerate. ‘I might open a school for girls in Drimoleague itself, the...’  She stopped, realising that Patrick wasn’t listening anymore, and anyway that didn’t matter because she wanted to ask him for something else tonight.

‘Patrick, I wonder are you travelling back up to the north anytime soon? It would be