Jojo Moyes - Ship of Brides

There was a brief pause.

‘I know . . .’ Margaret wrinkled her nose as she reached up to undo the girth.

Letty wondered if she had said too much. She hesitated, then bit back the awkward apology that had sprung to her lips. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Forget it. You’re right, Letty,’ said the girl, as she swung the saddle easily under her arm. ‘She wouldn’t have had this mare doing circles to balance her up. She’d have put her in a pair of side reins and be done with it.’

The men returned shortly before one o’clock, arriving in a thunderous cluster of wet overshoes and dripping hats, shedding their coats at the door. Margaret had set the table and was dishing up steaming bowls of beef stew.

‘Colm, you’ve still got mud all the way up the back of your heels,’ said Letty, and the young man obligingly kicked off his boots on the mat rather than waste time trying to clean them.

‘Got any bread with that?’

‘Give us a chance, boys. I’m going as fast as I can.’

‘Maggie, your dog’s asleep in Dad’s old hat,’ said Daniel, grinning. ‘Dad says if he gets fleas off it he’ll shoot her.’

‘I said no such thing, eejit child. How are you, Letty? Did you get up to town yesterday?’ Murray Donleavy, a towering, angular man whose freckles and pale eyes signalled his Celtic origins, sat down at the head of the table and, without comment, began to work his way through a hunk of bread that his sister-in-law had sliced for him.

‘I did, Murray.’

‘Any post for us?’

‘I’ll bring it out after you’ve eaten.’ Otherwise, the way these men sat at a table, the letters would be splashed with gravy and fingered with greasemarks. Noreen had never seemed to mind.

Margaret had had her lunch already, and was sitting on the easy chair by the larder, her socked feet on a footstool. Letty watched the men settle, with private satisfaction, as they lowered their heads to eat. Not many families, these days, could boast five men round a table with three of them having been in the services. As Murray muttered to Daniel, his youngest, to pass more bread, Letty could still detect a hint of the Irish accent with which he had arrived in the country. Her sister had occasionally mocked it good-humouredly. ‘That one!’ she’d say, her accent curled round a poor approximation of his own. ‘He’s got more fight in him than a Dundalk wedding.’

No, this table lacked someone else entirely. She sighed, pushing Noreen from her thoughts, as she did countless times every day. Then she said brightly, ‘Alf Pettit’s wife has bought one of those new Defender refrigerators. It’s got four drawers and an icemaker, and doesn’t make a sound.’

‘Unlike Alf Pettit’s wife,’ said Murray. He had pulled over the latest copy of the Bulletin , and was deep in ‘The Man on the Land’, its farming column. ‘Hmph. Says here that dairy yards are getting dirtier because all the women are quitting.’

‘They’ve obviously never seen the state of Maggie’s room.’

‘You make this?’ Murray lifted his head from his newspaper and jerked a thumb at his bowl, which was nearly empty.

‘Maggie did,’ said Letty.

‘Nice. Better than the last one.’

‘I don’t know why,’ said Margaret, her hand held out in front of her the better to examine a splinter. ‘I didn’t do anything any different.’

‘There’s a new picture starting at the Odeon,’ Letty said, changing the subject. That got their attention. She knew the men pretended not to be interested in the snippets of gossip she brought to the farm twice a week, gossip being the stuff of women, but every now and then the mask of indifference slipped. She rested against the sink, arms crossed over her chest.

‘Well?’

‘It’s a war film. Greer Garson and Tyrone Power. I forget the name. Something with Forever in it?’

‘I hope it’s got lots of fighter planes. American ones.’ Daniel glanced at his brothers, apparently searching for agreement, but their heads were down as they shovelled food into their mouths.

‘How are you going to get to Woodside, short-arse? Your bike’s broke, if you remember.’ Liam shoved him.

‘He’s not cycling all that way by himself, whatever,’ said Murray.

‘One of youse can take me in the truck. Ah, go on. I’ll pay for your ices.’

‘How many rabbits you sell this week?’

Daniel had been raising extra cash by skinning rabbits and selling the pelts. The price of good ones had risen inexplicably from a penny each to several shillings, which had left his brothers mildly envious of his sudden wealth.

‘Only four.’

‘Well, that’s my best price.’

‘Oh, Murray, Betty says to tell you their good mare is in foal finally, if you’re still interested.’

‘The one they put to the Magician?’

‘I think so.’

Murray exchanged a glance with his eldest son. ‘Might swing by there later in the week, Colm. Be good to have a decent horse around the place.’

‘Which reminds me.’ Letty took a deep breath. ‘I found Margaret riding that mean young filly of yours. I don’t think she should be riding. It’s not . . . safe.’

Murray didn’t look up from his stew. ‘She’s a grown woman, Letty. We’ll have little or no say over her life soon enough.’

‘You’ve no need to fuss, Letty. I know what I’m doing.’

‘She’s a mean-looking horse.’ Letty began to wash up, feeling vaguely undermined. ‘I’m just saying I don’t think Noreen would have liked it. Not with things . . . the way they are . . .’

The mention of her sister’s name brought with it a brief, melancholy silence.

Murray pushed his empty bowl to the centre of the table. ‘It’s good of you to concern yourself about us, Letty. Don’t think we’re not grateful.’

If the boys noted the look that passed between the two ‘olds’, as they were known, or that their aunt Letty’s was followed by the faintest pinking of her cheeks, they said nothing. Just as they had said nothing when, several months previously, she had started to wear her good skirt to visit them. Or that, in her mid-forties, she was suddenly setting her hair.

Margaret, meanwhile, had risen from her chair and was flicking through the letters that lay on the sideboard beside Letty’s bag. ‘Bloody hell!’ she exclaimed.

‘Margaret!’

‘Sorry, Letty. Look! Look, Dad, it’s for me! From the Navy!’

Her father motioned for her to bring it over. He turned the envelope in his broad hands, noting the official stamp, the return address. ‘Want me to open it?’

‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Daniel yelped as Colm’s hand caught him a sharp blow to the back of the head.

‘Don’t be even more of a mongrel than you already are.’

‘You don’t think he’s dead, do you?’ Margaret reached out to steady herself, her normally high colour draining away.

‘Course he’s not dead,’ her father said. ‘They send you a wire for that.’

‘They might have wanted to save on postage but—’ Daniel shot backwards on his chair to avoid an energetic kick from his elder brother.

‘I was going to wait until you’d all finished eating,’ Letty said, and was ignored.

‘Go on, then, Mags. What are you waiting for?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the girl, apparently now in an agony of indecision.

‘Go on, we’re all here.’ Her father reached out a comforting hand and laid it on her back.

She looked at him, then down at the letter, which she now held. Her brothers were on their feet, standing tightly around her. Letty, watching from the sink, felt superfluous, as if she were an outsider. To hide her own discomfort she busied herself scrubbing a pan, her broad fingers reddening in the scalding water.