In Turbulent Times

excerpt

A shameful thought passed through Liam’s mind before Nora answered. Her voice was bleak. ‘Yes, he’s fine. As far as I know. Letters don’t come all that regularly.’
Another pause. Another tear. Nora looked from the fire to her hands. They trembled in her lap. She placed the half–eaten scone on the plate, and dried her cheeks with a hankie from the pocket of her dress. ‘He’s in the Mediterranean somewhere.’
‘Then why …?’ Liam did not finish the question. He stared at Nora’s lowered head, at the curve of her neck, at the heavy droop of her doleful shoulders. Her shoulders were shaking. She was quietly crying.
‘Nora, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?’
She buried her face in her hands and wept openly. ‘I can’t marry Joe,’ she explained through her anguished sobbing. Then she brought herself under control and wiped her eyes again.
‘What’s all this about?’ Liam asked in a consoling voice. ‘Why can’t you marry Joe? Has he …?’
‘No, Liam. It’s me,’ Nora said. ‘I’m carrying your child.’
Liam felt his heart drop into the pit of his stomach and pound away there, thud, thud, thud. ‘Oh my God.’ He took a deep breath. His emotions were in turmoil. Excitement, elation, then apprehension, foreboding, and finally concern for Nora, for how she would handle the public shame, the contumely of congregations that would doubtless cost her the teaching job at the school. He would lose her; the school and the pupils would lose her. Gradually his innards returned to normal. His heart still pounded, thud, thud, thud, but in his chest where it belonged, like a fist beating against his ribs from the inside, a prisoner clamouring for release. When he was in control of himself again he asked, ‘Nora, are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ Her head still bowed, her eyes still fixed on her hands in her lap, she did not look at Liam. ‘I’m a month overdue already. It must be.’
Liam’s turbulent emotions gave way to a new sensation, a hope that maybe …. Not knowing what to say, he stood up from his chair, walked to the kitchen and poured the boiling water into the teapot. He brought the teapot back and placed it in the hearth near the fire. Little puffs of steam spurted from the spout.
Nora had not moved. But when Liam sat down again she turned to him and said, ‘Will you marry me, Liam? Now. Right away.’
‘Yes, Nora. I’ll marry you.’

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

“Rebel Casey, some are calling him now.” Finn stared with uneasy eyes at the embers in the fireplace. They needed only a breath to excite them into flames again. “He was in Dublin with the rest of them at the Easter Rising. Came back a wounded hero and married my Nora.”
“They’ve been sweethearts since childhood, if I remember rightly,” Padraig said.
“They’re little more than children yet.”
“Nora’s nearly twenty-seven, Finn. She and Flynn are hardly children.”
“They are in my eyes,” Finn said. “They haven’t the sense of two calves. Caitlin has more wit than the two of them put together.”
“How is Nora?” Padraig asked.
“Still the same sweet, silly girl. A model daughter, a model wife, and now a model mother. Everyone loves her. And I’m frightened for her. Young Casey is a danger to wife and child. He’s a marked man in these parts, Padraig. He’s known as a Sinn Fein Republican. He’ll finish up like a dead dog in a ditch one of these nights and leave my daughter a widow and my grandson a fatherless orphan.”
Padraig shivered. The room was rapidly becoming cold. “I heard he was planning to move to Dublin to live.”
Finn seemed unaware of the chilliness. “That’s not the safest place for him either,” he said. “He’s in Dublin now, running the risk of being shot by an RIC policeman or a British soldier with a finger on the trigger. But I don’t want him to go and live in Dublin. I don’t want to lose Nora and Dermot. Not at this time in my life.”
“Dermot’s over two now, Caitlin told me.”
“Ay. Handsome little sprat. Spitting image of his father.”
“You are proud of him.”
“Yes, I suppose I am. What man doesn’t wish for a grandson?” Finn looked at Padraig, pale and thin in his black clothes, a skeleton of a man, not a real flesh-and-blood human being. “I never had a son but you. And you didn’t turn out the way I’d want a real son of mine to be. With Nora for a mother, I dare say Dermot will turn out to be a Christian too, like all the rest of your mindless minnows, but with luck he’ll show more independence as he grows older. The fingerling baby might turn out to be a shark of a man. I’m tired of Christians. Only Caitlin shows any spunk around here. She’s not your meek, subservient Nora, Padraig. Caitlin’s grown into a strong-minded, spirited young woman.” Finn looked wistful. “She should’ve been my son. First out of her poor mother’s womb. Always the active one,

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