Anne Bennett - Till the Sun Shines Through

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2003

Copyright © Anne Bennett 2003

Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007139828

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780007534685

Version: 2017-09-13

I would like to dedicate this book to my eldest

daughter, Nikki Wilkes, with all my love.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Both Bridie McCarthy and her cousin Rosalyn were lying across the straw bales on the upper floor of the barn, the place both girls made for when they needed a bit of peace. Rosalyn was reading the latest letter from Bridie’s sister Mary, who was married and living in Birmingham and had written asking if Bridie could come and stay with her a wee while before school opened again in September.

Rosalyn handed the letter back to Bridie with a sigh. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said.

Bridie didn’t contradict her cousin. Instead she said, ‘Well, Mary did promise I could go on a visit when she had her own place. You mind they had to stay with Aunt Ellen first after their marriage last year?’ She hugged her knees with delight. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘I bet,’ Rosalyn said. ‘Anything would be better than this place day after day.’ She crossed to the barn window and Bridie got to her feet and joined her. ‘It’s not to see Birmingham,’ she told Rosalyn. ‘It’s to see Mary. I’ve missed her so much since she left. Before then – Mary leaving and all – I thought life would just go on the same way year in, year out.’

‘For me it does.’

‘No, even for you there’s change,’ Bridie reminded her. ‘For a start you’ll be working in the shirt factory in Donegal town in a few weeks, now that you’re fourteen, instead of going back to school.’

‘Aye, I’ll work longer hours, give most of my pay to Mammy and still be at her beck and call when I’m home. “Rosalyn, do this, or that, wash the dishes, see to the weans, change the baby”. God, it would sicken you.’

Bridie burst out laughing. ‘Don’t be such a grouch,’ she said.

‘Well, don’t you ever want something to happen?’ Rosalyn demanded. ‘God, Bridie, there must be more to life than this.’

Bridie looked out at the farm and countryside she loved with all her heart, where the sun shone down from a cloudless sky giving everything a glow. In front of the squat whitewashed cottage the hens strutted about the yard, pecking the grain that had fallen between the cobbles, while the cows placidly chewed the cud in the lush fields and occasionally leaned their heads on the five-bar gate to watch the world go by. To the side of the house was the orchard, the trees heavy with fruit at that time of the year. Much of the fruit would be picked in another month or so, Bridie knew, and bottled or made into jam, except for the apples. They would be stored in straw-layered barrels in the barn.

Everywhere she looked there were trees and greenness and beauty and it always left her with deep satisfaction to look upon it. There were other cottages like their own dotted about, all on the same lines and most with a curl of smoke wafting from the chimneys. Some cottages seemed almost to nestle in the verdant green Donegal hills that were dotted with sheep who tugged relentlessly at the grass.

The lane to the road divided the cows’ field from the tilled ground where Bridie could see her father and her brother Terry working. Just a little way along that road the lane meandered down to run alongside the rail bus tracks at the bottom of the farm.

The red and cream diesel-driven rail buses had been a feature of Bridie’s life since as far back as she could remember. Her father had told her rail bus tracks were laid all over Donegal and ran on narrow rails because they had to climb and dip over unaccommodating hills, or negotiate other austere landscapes. He’d said they had opened up life for the people in the outlying farms and villages, which had been fairly isolated until then.

The one that ran past the bottom of the McCarthy farm came from the port of Killybegs in the west. In the cars and trucks pulled behind the rail bus would be fish from Killybegs, and cattle, sheep and produce from the surrounding farms. The rail bus would bring back vital foodstuffs, coal and Guinness from the north.

It also took fathers to work and mothers to shop. Bridie had been on it herself a few times with her mother, as far as Donegal Town, on the rare occasions when no one was taking the cart in. She’d never travelled on it the other way though; there had never been the need.

She well remembered the day Mary left, beside herself with excitement. She’d been mad to go with Aunt Ellen and Uncle Sam, who’d wanted to take her back for a wee holiday to their house in Birmingham, and she hadn’t been at all sure that her mother would allow it. Bridie had been sorry to see her sister go and would have been worse still if she’d known she’d never come back to live at the farm again.

She wondered if her mother had had an inkling of the way it might turn out, for she’d not wanted Mary to go either and Bridie had overheard the conversation she had about it with her sister Ellen. ‘What is the point of going to a place like Birmingham for a holiday?’ Sarah had complained. ‘Haven’t you said it’s fine and dirty and the air full of smoke and fumes from the factories? Hasn’t Mary all she needs here for a holiday if she wants one?’