Part Two of a special new Christmas story by PATRICK O’SULLIVAN, following the exploits of Molly Connor and her time in the ‘big house’.

 

Much to everyone’s surprise, Mary Anne Sheehy had been give the post of temporary housemaid at the big house. It wasn’t that Mary Anne was a bad worker. It was just that her uncle had been evicted by Mr Marshall’s agent during the Land War, and it was well known that the Sheehy’s still felt bitter about it. They felt even more bitter about the fact that Mary Anne’s uncle’s wife had lost her baby after giving birth in the workhouse.

Mary Anne shared one of the servant’ bedrooms on the top floor of the big house with Molly. The two single iron beds, draped with plain green quilts, the slanted ceiling, the ironwork fireplace and grate typical of the time. Mary Anne was a good deal older than Molly, but Molly liked her well enough: her dark eyes shining with pride when she spoke of her uncle and his loyalty to the Land League.

The two maids were lying in their beds one night, when Mary Anne began to speak again of her uncle. “He had a little picture of Michael Davitt, the founder of the Land League, over his fireplace, and he knew all about him: how he worked as a child in a cotton mill in England, how he spent time in prison for his support for the Fenians and how he was fighting for fair rents for the tenants when the Land War was going on.”
Molly turned and looked at Mary Anne more intently still. It was easy to see how fond Mary Anne had been of her uncle and his family.

“Uncle Johnny had books in the house. He could read and write, you know,” Mary Anne elaborated, the oil lamp on the table across the way long since quenched for the night, its plain green bowl echoing the colour of the quilts.

“He doted on little Julia. He dotes on her still, though of course she is a good deal older now. He was taking a stand, he said for her sake, and for the sake of the child that was yet to be born.”
Molly heard the earnestness, the emotion in Mary Anne’s voice when she mentioned the baby that would sadly pass away in the Workhouse.

“They named her Lily, you know, for she had the fairest of hair and the blueiest of eyes, they said, and when she died my uncle Johnny was a broken man.”
Molly hung on every word, but she did not intervene for the moment.

“It was as if he were overcome with grief and regret and guilt all at once.”

“But it wasn’t his fault, what happened, I mean,” Molly suggested when it seemed that her companion did not feel like continuing.

“Oh, I know that, Molly girl,” Mary Anne assured her. “The trouble was, he thought it was. If he had been less devoted to his principles and the League, if he’d been more devoted to his wife and family, he’d have found a way to keep the wolf, Witherall, from howling at his door.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own