Across the River by Alice Taylor Page A

so obviously it hasn’t got that far yet.”
    “So you’re going to talk to Fr Brady? I don’t envy you your job. A fine young man like him who has done more for the young of the parish than anyone we ever had before him. There’s a begrudging shower of old whores in there in the village, and all they have to do is tittle-tattle.”
    “Calm down, Jack; it’s the nature of people to talk. I know that this kind of thing drives you mad, but we’ll get over it,” Sarah told him.
    She was right, of course, and when a few minutes later she pulled back her chair remarking, “Better be going, Jack, in case we’d be the cause of scandal,” he had to smile in spite of himself.
    On his way back from walking with her to the gate, he spotted a few weeds trying to strangle his young cabbage plants, so he brought out his old weeding cushion and got to work. After an hour, when his annoyance had evaporated, he knelt back on his heels and surveyed his cleaned patch with satisfaction.
    The following morning he awoke to the sun warm across his face. They were going to have a great day for saving the river meadows. His heart lifted in delight. He had always felt that those few moments before youactually woke up properly and got out of bed were a great barometer of how the day was going to go. How you felt in your gut was the important thing, and he felt that this day was going to be good.
Thank God for that
, he thought.
A good start is everything.
    After a quick cup of tea and bite of brown bread, he was on his way down the boreen to Mossgrove. The rising sun was shimmering across the dewy wheat of the Clune field, and the ferns on the ditches of the boreen were clothed in silken cobwebs. What a lot of silent activity went on at night. The sight of these morning cobwebs was magical. He loved the quiet of the dawn fields when he was out alone and monarch of all he surveyed.
Nobody owns this land
, he thought,
neither Martha nor Peter nor I. It belongs to those gone and those coming after us, as much as to us who are here now. It is greater than any of us.
    He rounded up the cows in the field above the house where they were gathered, patiently waiting to be brought in for milking.
Cows are grand creatures
, he thought as he went around and encouraged them to get up. There were the frisky ones who jumped up as soon as they saw you, and they reminded him of Peter, but there were a few Davy Shines in the herd as well that waited until the last minute to disturb themselves. But the sight of Bran bounding across the field brought them hurriedly to all fours.
    “Good boy, Bran,” he praised as he ran his hand along the bouncing sheepdog’s back.
    He was on his second cow when Peter joined him with a scowl on his face.
    “You musn’t have gone to bed at all last night, Jack. Every morning you’re earlier.”
    “How’d you mean, early?” Jack demanded. “With theriver meadows to be saved today, sure it’s hardly lying in bed I’d be.”
    “Sure the birds are only just up.” Peter sat under a cow further up the house and Jack could hear the milk dancing off the tin bucket.
    “The birds have a morning’s work done,” Jack asserted.
    “Did you never hear the dawn chorus? They give a recital before they begin their day and that was hours ago.”
    “I’d say they didn’t have a big audience.”
    “Probably the only time you ever heard it was before you went to bed, and then your sense of appreciation would not be too sharp.”
    “God, Jack, you’re so bright in the morning you are enough to depress anyone. No wonder Davy starts in the other stall so that he doesn’t have to be listening to you.”
    “No trace of him yet then,” Jack said. “The mother’s gone to her mother for a few days, so there is no one to get him out of bed.”
    “I gave him a spare alarm clock last night,” Peter said.
    “’Twould take the Angelus bell to wake that fellow,” Jack declared.
    Just then they heard the rattle of a bucket and knew