close her eyes and say thanks for the life she lived now. She was so grateful for all she had, but that gratefulness was tinged with sorrow over the past. And the past never left her.
4
Vegetables
When my mam was dying, she only had one worry. That I’d look after my sister, Agnes. She never married and Mam knew that was hard on her, for all that Agnes used to say she had no use for men at all.
Except your father, Joe – she was fond of him. He was like a brother to her. But apart from Joe, Agnes liked to pretend she couldn’t care less what any man might think of her.
She had courted in her youth but the man she loved, Mikeen Clancy, had been killed in the War of Independence. He was twenty-five, as gentle a man as ever came out of County Galway, but gentleness doesn’t stop bullets. The light went out of Agnes after that. His mother and his family got to grieve, but there was no ring between Agnes and Mikeen. Only an understanding in their hearts. If you married a man, you were entitled to grieve when he died. Being hopeful of marriage didn’t count.
Agnes cried on her own at night. When they got Mikeen’s body back, nobody gave her a lock of his hair to keep.
It wasn’t easy, being a spinster in our parish. Years later, when we’d upped sticks and moved to America, it was all different. On the streets of Brooklyn, there were plenty of women without chick or child or man, and nobody pitied them. But in Kilmoney, a woman without a husband was in a different class altogether. A husband gave a woman standing in the community. With no husband, you might as well be a child.
In truth, there were few men as capable as my sister around. Nobody would run a house like Agnes, and she was so good to you, Eleanor, like a second mother. But I think she lost hope when Mikeen died, and no other man looked at her the same way when they saw her sadness.
She put a lot of her love into the garden. If she was down, she went out into the garden and pulled up a few weeds. When it came to vegetables, parsnips were her favourite. She liked to cook what we used to call green, white and gold – mashed parsnips and carrots with parsley on top. But her favourite dish was panroasted parsnips. A good housekeeper should always have a little bit of duck fat in her pantry and use that to coat the parsnips. Roast them until they’re crisp on the outside, speckled with black pepper.
‘Bia don lá dubh,’ as Agnes used to say. Food for a black day.
Connie O’Callaghan wasn’t sure at what point she’d become a professional single woman. But she was reasonably sure of precisely when other people had accepted her as such. It was around the time of her thirty-ninth birthday, nearly a year ago, when people had stopped telling her about this or that man they knew who was ‘gorgeous, just right for you’ and started inviting her to events without a plus one.
When she was in her early thirties, after she’d split up from her fiancé Keith, people did their best to fix her up with every single man within a fifty-mile radius.
She’d gone on dates with a few guys from the bank where her cousin worked, but nothing had come of it, apart from a greater understanding of what actuaries really did, courtesy of one man who had no other conversation.
There had been several dinner parties where she’d arrived and surveyed the men, wondering which one was the ‘fabulous man, simply fabulous’, and every time her guess had been wrong.
He had never been the one she liked the look of. Invariably he turned out to be the one she’d assumed lived with his mother, had a stamp collection and had never been on a date before.
Men were produced for her like rabbits out of a magician’s hat. But it hadn’t been love at first sight on either side.
Connie hadn’t just relied on blind dates in those early, post-Keith years. There was no staying at home with a DVD box set and a tub of ice cream, either. No, she’d been out there looking for love.
There had
4
Vegetables
When my mam was dying, she only had one worry. That I’d look after my sister, Agnes. She never married and Mam knew that was hard on her, for all that Agnes used to say she had no use for men at all.
Except your father, Joe – she was fond of him. He was like a brother to her. But apart from Joe, Agnes liked to pretend she couldn’t care less what any man might think of her.
She had courted in her youth but the man she loved, Mikeen Clancy, had been killed in the War of Independence. He was twenty-five, as gentle a man as ever came out of County Galway, but gentleness doesn’t stop bullets. The light went out of Agnes after that. His mother and his family got to grieve, but there was no ring between Agnes and Mikeen. Only an understanding in their hearts. If you married a man, you were entitled to grieve when he died. Being hopeful of marriage didn’t count.
Agnes cried on her own at night. When they got Mikeen’s body back, nobody gave her a lock of his hair to keep.
It wasn’t easy, being a spinster in our parish. Years later, when we’d upped sticks and moved to America, it was all different. On the streets of Brooklyn, there were plenty of women without chick or child or man, and nobody pitied them. But in Kilmoney, a woman without a husband was in a different class altogether. A husband gave a woman standing in the community. With no husband, you might as well be a child.
In truth, there were few men as capable as my sister around. Nobody would run a house like Agnes, and she was so good to you, Eleanor, like a second mother. But I think she lost hope when Mikeen died, and no other man looked at her the same way when they saw her sadness.
She put a lot of her love into the garden. If she was down, she went out into the garden and pulled up a few weeds. When it came to vegetables, parsnips were her favourite. She liked to cook what we used to call green, white and gold – mashed parsnips and carrots with parsley on top. But her favourite dish was panroasted parsnips. A good housekeeper should always have a little bit of duck fat in her pantry and use that to coat the parsnips. Roast them until they’re crisp on the outside, speckled with black pepper.
‘Bia don lá dubh,’ as Agnes used to say. Food for a black day.
Connie O’Callaghan wasn’t sure at what point she’d become a professional single woman. But she was reasonably sure of precisely when other people had accepted her as such. It was around the time of her thirty-ninth birthday, nearly a year ago, when people had stopped telling her about this or that man they knew who was ‘gorgeous, just right for you’ and started inviting her to events without a plus one.
When she was in her early thirties, after she’d split up from her fiancé Keith, people did their best to fix her up with every single man within a fifty-mile radius.
She’d gone on dates with a few guys from the bank where her cousin worked, but nothing had come of it, apart from a greater understanding of what actuaries really did, courtesy of one man who had no other conversation.
There had been several dinner parties where she’d arrived and surveyed the men, wondering which one was the ‘fabulous man, simply fabulous’, and every time her guess had been wrong.
He had never been the one she liked the look of. Invariably he turned out to be the one she’d assumed lived with his mother, had a stamp collection and had never been on a date before.
Men were produced for her like rabbits out of a magician’s hat. But it hadn’t been love at first sight on either side.
Connie hadn’t just relied on blind dates in those early, post-Keith years. There was no staying at home with a DVD box set and a tub of ice cream, either. No, she’d been out there looking for love.
There had
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