Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

“Anything.”

“Bury me in O’Hara earth.”

Don’t be silly, you’re a long way from that, Scarlett meant to say, but she couldn’t lie to the old man. “I will that,” she said, the Irish way of affirmation.

Daniel’s eyes closed. Scarlett began to weep. Kathleen led her to a chair by the fire. “Will you help me brew the tea, Scarlett? They’ll all be coming.” Scarlett nodded, unable to speak. She hadn’t realized until this moment how important her uncle had become in her life. He seldom spoke, she almost never talked to him, he was simply there—solid, quiet, unchanging and strong. Head of the household. In her mind Uncle Daniel was The O’Hara.

Kathleen sent Scarlett home before dark fell. “You’ve your baby to tend, and there’s nothing more to do here. Come back tomorrow.”

On Saturday everything was much the same. People came to pay their respects in a steady stream all day. Scarlett fixed pot after pot of tea, sliced the cakes people brought, buttered bread for sandwiches.

On Sunday she sat with her uncle while Kathleen and the O’Hara men went to Mass. When they returned she went to Ballyhara. The O’Hara must celebrate Easter in the Ballyhara church. She thought Father Flynn would never finish his sermon, thought she’d never get away from the townspeople, all of whom asked about her uncle and expressed their hopes for his recovery. Even after forty days of stringent fasting—there was no dispensation for O’Haras of Ballyhara—Scarlett had no appetite for the big Easter dinner.

“Take it to your uncle’s house,” suggested Mrs. Fitzpatrick. “There are big men there still getting the farm work done. They’ll need food, and poor Kathleen that busy with Old Daniel.”

Scarlett hugged and kissed Cat before she left. Cat patted her little hands on her mother’s tear-stained cheeks. “What a thoughtful Kitty Cat. Thank you, my precious. Momma will be better soon, then we’ll play and sing in the bath. And then we’ll go for a wonderful ride on the big ship.” Scarlett despised herself for having the thought, but she hoped they wouldn’t miss the Brian Boru.

That afternoon Daniel rallied a little. He recognized people and spoke their names. “Thank God,” Scarlett said to Colum. She thanked God, too, that Colum was there. Why did he have to go away so much? She’d missed him this long weekend.

It was Colum who told her Monday morning that Daniel had died during the night. “When will the funeral be? I’d like to the sailing on Friday.” It was so comfortable to have a friend Colum; she could tell him anything without worrying that he’d understand or disapprove.

Colum shook his head slowly. “That cannot be, Scarlett. There are many who respected Daniel and many O’Haras with a chance to come over mud-mired roads. The wake will last at least three days, more likely four. After, there’s the burial.”

“Oh, no. Colum! Say I don’t have to go to the wake; it’s morbid, I don’t think I could bear it.”

“You must go, Scarlett. I’ll be with you.”

Scarlett could hear the keening even before the house was sight. She looked at Colum with desperation, but his face was set.

There was a crowd of people outside the low door. So many had come to mourn Daniel that there wasn’t enough room for all of them. Scarlett heard the words “The O’Hara,” saw a path open for her. She wished with all her heart that the honor would go away. But she walked in with her head bent, determined to do the right thing by Daniel.

“He’s in the parlor,” said Seamus. Scarlett steeled herself. The eerie wailing was coming from there. She walked in.

Tall thick candles burned on tables at the head and foot of the big bed. Daniel lay on top of the coverlet in a white garment trimmed in black. His work-worn hands were crossed on his chest, the beads of a rosary between them.

“Why did you leave us? Ochón!

Ochón, Ochón, Ullagón Ó!”

The woman swayed from side to side as she lamented. Scarlett recognized her cousin Peggy, who lived in the village. She knelt by the bed to say a prayer for Daniel. But the keening filled her mind with such confusion that she couldn’t think.

Ochón, Ochón.

The plaintive, primitive cry twisted her heart, frightened her. She got to her feet and went into the kitchen.

She looked with disbelief at the mass of men and women that filled the room. They were eating and drinking and talking as if nothing unusual was happening at all. The air was thick with smoke from the men’s clay pipes in spite of the open door and windows. Scarlett approached the group around Father Danaher. “Yes, he woke to call people by name and to make his end with a clean soul. Ah, it was a grand confession he made, I’ve never heard a better. A fine man Daniel O’Hara was. We’ll not see his like again in our lifetimes.” She edged away.

“And do you not remember, Jim, the time Daniel and his brother Patrick, God rest his soul, took the Englishman’s prize pig and carried it down into the peat bog to farrow? Twelve little ones and all of them squealing, and the sow as fierce as any wild boar? The land agent was shaking and the Englishman cursing and all the rest of the world laughing at the show.”

Jim O’Gorman laughed, swatted the tale teller’s shoulder with his big blacksmith’s hand. “I do not remember, Ted O’Hara, no more do you, and that’s the truth of it. We were neither of us born when the adventure of the sow had its happening, and well you know it. You heard it from your father same as I heard it from mine.”

“But wouldn’t it be a fine thing to have seen, Jim? Your cousin Daniel was a grand man, and that’s the truth of it.”

Yes, he was, thought Scarlett. She moved around, listening to a score of stories of Daniel’s life. Someone noticed her. “And tell us, if you will, Katie Scarlett, about your uncle refusing the farm with the hundred cattle you gave him.”

She thought quickly. “This was the way of it,” she began. A dozen eager listeners leaned toward her. Now what am I going to say? “I . . . I said to him, ‘Uncle Daniel’ . . . I said, ‘I want to give you a present.’ ” Might as well make it good. “I said, ‘I’ve got a farm with . . . a hundred acres and . . . a quick stream and a bog of its own and . . . a hundred bullocks and fifty milk cows and three hundred geese and twenty-five pigs and . . . six teams of horses.’ ” The audience sighed at the grandeur. Scarlett felt inspiration on her tongue. “ ‘Uncle Daniel,’ I said, ‘this is all for you, and a bag of gold besides.’ But his voice thundered at me till I quaked. ‘I’ll not touch it, Katie Scarlett O’Hara.’ ”

Colum grabbed her arm and pulled her outside the house, through the crowd, behind the barn. Then he let himself laugh. “You’re always surprising me, Scarlett darling. You’ve just made Daniel into a giant—but whether it’s a giant fool or a giant too noble to take advantage of a fool woman, I don’t know.”

Scarlett laughed with him. “I was just getting the hang of it, Colum, you should have let me stay.” Suddenly she put her hand over her mouth. How could she be laughing at Uncle Daniel’s wake?

Colum took her wrist, lowered her hand. “It’s all right,” he said, “a wake’s supposed to celebrate a man’s life and the importance of him to all who come. Laughter’s part of it, as much as lamentation.”

Daniel O’Hara was buried on Thursday. The funeral was almost as big as Old Katie Scarlett’s had been. Scarlett led the procession to the grave his sons had dug in the ancient walled graveyard at Ballyhara that she and Colum had found and cleaned up.

Scarlett filled a leather pouch with soil from Daniel’s grave. When she spread it on her father’s grave, it would be almost as if he was buried near his brother.

When the funeral was over, the family went to the Big House for refreshments. Scarlett’s cook was delighted to have an occasion to show off. Long trestle tables stretched the length of the unused drawing room and library. They were covered with hams, geese, chickens, beef, mountains of breads and cakes, gallons of porter, barrels of whiskey, rivers of tea. Hundreds of O’Haras had made the trip in spite of the muddy roads.

Scarlett brought Cat down to meet her kinflok. The admiration was all that Scarlett could have wished for, and more.

Then Colum supplied a fiddle and his drum, three cousins found pennywhistles, and the music went on for hours. Cat waved her hands to the music until she was worn out, then fall asleep in Scarlett’s lap. I’m glad I missed the ship, Scarlett thought; this is wonderful. If only Daniel’s death wasn’t the reason for that.

Two of her cousins came over to her and bent down from their great height to speak quietly. “We have need of The O’Hara,” said Daniel’s son Thomas.

“Will you come to the house tomorrow after breakfast?” asked Patrick’s son Joe.

“What’s it about?”

“We’ll tell you tomorrow when there’s quiet for you to think.”

The question was: who should inherit Daniel’s farm? Because of the long-past crisis when Old Patrick died, two O’Hara cousins were claiming the right. Like his brother Gerald, Daniel had never made a will.

It’s Tara all over again, thought Scarlett, and the decision was easy. Daniel’s son Seamus had worked hard on the farm for thirty years while Patrick’s son Sean lived with Old Katie Scarlett and did nothing. Scarlett gave the farm to Seamus. Like Pa should have given Tara to me.

She was The O’Hara, so there was no argument. Scarlett felt elated, confident that she had given more justice to Seamus than anyone had ever given her.

The next day a far-from-young woman left a basket of eggs on the doorstep of the Big House. Mrs. Fitz found out that she was Seamus’ sweetheart. She’d been waiting for almost twenty years for him to ask her to marry him. An hour after Scarlett’s decision, he had.

“That’s very sweet,” Scarlett said, “but I hope they don’t get married real soon. I’ll never get to America at the rate I’m going.” She now had a cabin booked on a ship sailing April 26, a year exactly after the date she was originally supposed to have ended her “vacation” in Ireland.

The ship wasn’t the luxurious Brian Boru. It wasn’t even a proper passenger ship. But Scarlett had her own superstition—if she delayed again until after May Day, she’d somehow never leave at all. Besides, Colum knew the ship and its captain. It was a cargo ship, true, but it was carrying only bales of best Irish linen, nothing messy. And the captain’s wife always travelled with him, so Scarlett would have female companionship and a chaperone. Best of all, the ship had no paddlewheel, no steam engine. She’d be under sail all the way.

The weather was beautiful for more than a week. The roads were dry, the hedgerows were full of flowers, Cat’s feverish sleeplessness one night turned out to be only a new tooth coming in. On the day before she was to leave Scarlett ran, half-dancing, to Ballyhara town to pick up the last of Cat’s frocks from the dressmaker. She was confident that nothing could go wrong now.

While Margaret Scanlon wrapped the frock in tissue paper Scarlett looked out at the deserted dinner-time town and saw Colum going into the abandoned Protestant Church of Ireland on the other side of the wide street.

Oh, good, she thought, he’s going to do it after all. I thought he’d never listen to reason. It makes no sense at all for the whole town to be squashed into that dinky little chapel for Mass every Sunday when there’s that great big church standing empty. Just because it was built by Protestants is no reason for Catholics not to take it over. I don’t know why he’s been so stubborn so long, but I won’t fuss at him. I’ll just tell him how happy it makes me that he’s changed his mind.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Mrs. Scanlon. She hurried along the weed-ridden path that led to the small side entrance, tapped on the door and pushed it open. A loud noise sounded, then another, and Scarlett felt something sharp hit her sleeve, heard a shower of pebbles on the ground at her feet, a booming reverberation inside the church.

A shaft of light from the open door fell directly onto a strange man who had spun to face her. His stubbled face was twisted into a snarl, and his dark, shadowed eyes were like a wild animal’s.

He was half crouching, and he was pointing a pistol at her, held out from his rag-clothed body in his two dirty, rock-steady hands.

He shot at me. The knowledge filled Scarlett’s mind. He’s already killed Colum and now he’s going to kill me. Cat! I’ll never see Cat again. White-hot anger freed Scarlett from the physical paralysis of shock. She raised her fists and lunged forward.