Across the River

Read Across the River for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Across the River for Free Online
Authors: Alice Taylor
brother never supported her! Kate could always wind him around her little finger, and of course Agnes thought that Mark was infallible, so that brought them all together against her. Kate was the one who had got Mark going with his paintings, and now he was making more money than any of them. The new school that Kate’s husband had started had given Mark an opening, and afterwards Rodney Jackson, who had leased them the school building, seemed to have endless avenues for Mark’s pictures in America. Everybody seemed to think that Rodney Jackson was God’s gift to Kilmeen, and he took it all in his stride. There was something about his calm acceptance of all the good things in his life that irritated her. She remembered that perfectly dressed little boy who had visited his aunts and who had got on so well with Mark, but even then she had been wary of him. Now whenever she met him with Mark he seemed to go out of his way to be charming to her, but she kept him at a distance. Every fool in the parish was falling over him, and she was not going to be one of the crowd. How could somebody who was supposed to be aswealthy as he was spend days rambling around this place and spend hours chatting with anybody who came his way? Granted, he was good-looking, very pleasant and rich, but in her opinion there had to be a catch somewhere. Nobody could be that bloody perfect! All the same, she had to admit he had been a real help to Mark, not that it had made any difference to Mark’s lifestyle except that he now seemed to spend all his time painting.
    It was the only interest that he had ever had, and as a child it had annoyed her intensely that he was always locked up in his own world where he appeared to be totally happy. Maybe that was why she too became a loner. But they were very different from each other. Mark had no drive, content to spend his life mixing and daubing. It was ironic in one way that what she had most despised about him now provided a regular source of income. He had always been Agnes’s white-haired boy and of course she was delighted now that her belief in him had been justified. Why they still lived in that old house when they could have built a better one, Martha could not understand. She went over the plans again, just for the sheer enjoyment of looking at them. The steps up to the front door would make the house impressive, then the large hallway with the wide sweeping stairway would give a great sense of space. She hated the way you had to come into the kitchen in Mossgrove to go up the stairs that were so steep and narrow. It was like that in all the farmhouses around, except in Nolans’ down the road who had built a new house when Tom and Betty got married. Admittedly they had no choice but to build, as there had been no house on that farm, but she always envied Betty Nolan her new house. Now at last she would have one of her own. She would have two big rooms at either side of the frontdoor and a large kitchen to the back. It would be such a relief to have a fine big back kitchen as well, for all the working clutter. The fact that the house would be so far away from the farmyard would keep everything much cleaner, with all the disorder well away from the house. She knew that Peter and Jack would think that it was crazy to be that far away from the yard, but they were simply stuck in a groove. Upstairs, she was going to have four big bedrooms. Every ceiling in this house was going to be high. She had had enough of low ceilings; they gave her claustrophobia.
    But her proposed site for the house was going to cause more opposition than the house itself. She was planning to build it in the Clune field, the big field just inside the gate of Mossgrove. It was going to be at the top of the field, facing the road, and she would fence off a good section for a garden and orchard. Jack was so proud of that field, always proclaiming it to be the finest of the farm with the best soil. The thought of losing some of it for

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