House of Memories by Alice; Taylor Page A

across the valley at Mossgrove. It was everything that he wished for this place: a fine, well-kept house surrounded by large green fields. He looked around at the small, drab kitchen with its stained walls. From as far back as he could remember, they had had buckets in strategic corners to catch the drop-down when it rained. When the old fellow died, the girls had cleaned it up as best they could, but there was no money to do any more. His mother had been so run down and exhausted that he was glad when the girls had insisted that she go back to Dublin with them, and she had not come home since. Now he kept everything that he needed on the kitchen table, which reduced housework to a minimum. All his energies were directed into the farmyard and the farm. If only he could get going, he had such plans for this place. His aim was to make it like Mossgrove. He felt that he knew every inch of the place across the river because Shiner was always talking about it.Peter and Shiner worked there like brothers, and Peter never “acted the big man”, as Shiner termed it. But, of course, Martha Phelan cracked the whip over the two of them, or at least she tried from what he gathered from Shiner. But she did not cross Jack, because as everyone in Kilmeen knew Jack was the real farmer in Mossgrove.
    So wrapped up in his thoughts that he never heard the footsteps coming across the yard, he swung around at the sound of the voice behind him.
    “Danny lad, can I come in?” Jack said quietly from outside the open door.
    Danny could hardly believe that Jack Tobin was actually standing here after all the trouble between the two families. This small, wiry man in his tweed cap was synonymous with Mossgrove and the Phelans, and it had been his father’s aim in life to destroy them both.
    “Jack,” he said in confusion, “I can’t believe you came.”
    For days he had been trying to pluck up the courage to go to see Jack, although he was afraid that Jack would find it very hard to help him after all that his father had done to them in Mossgrove. But now Jack was here.
    “Come in, come in,” he said eagerly, pulling out a chair.
    “I was half afraid that you might think that I was pushing my nose into your business, so it’s good to be made feel welcome,” Jack said in a relieved tone, coming into the kitchen and sitting into a wobbly súgán chair.
    “But sure, of course, you’re welcome,” Danny told him gladly, “because even though Kate said you’d help me, I was afraid that after all that had happened over the years you might not want to.”
    “All water under the bridge now, lad,” Jack assured him, looking out the window, “and do you know, I seldom see Mossgrove from across the river.”
    “And it looks good,” Danny said ruefully. “I couldn’t tell you how often I have stood here and envied you all over there.”
    “Well, lad, maybe we can turn things around here so that in time you will be proud of Furze Hill,” Jack told him.
    “Even hearing it called Furze Hill makes me feel better,” Danny said. “Nobody ever called it that only my grandmother, and she always had such pride in her voice when she spoke of the old days here.”
    “She was a great woman,” Jack assured him. “Went through rough times with your grandfather, but she never lost her spirit.”
    “She was too good for him, wasn’t she?” he asked.
    “She was,” Jack told him. “She fell from a high rookery, as old man Phelan used to say.”
    Since his father’s death Danny had a growing need to know more about his grandmother and how things had been in Furze Hill in her day. It was as if the roots of his own story stretched back to hers. Now here was a man who must have known her in her younger days and might even remember Furze Hill before it got swallowed up in briars and furze bushes. Jack was sitting at the side table looking out the window; Danny stacked some of the ware out of their way and took the chair at the head of the table. This