Read Christmas Wish for Free Online

become their habit to wait until he was off into Dunavon to fetch supplies and drink with Roger Casey, the builder. Out would come the record from its secret hiding place, the needle would be inserted and the handle wound up.
    Once they’d danced themselves breathless, they collapsed with laughter; the girls huddled around their grandmother’s legs.
    That’s when she would tell them about America and her wish, as a young girl, to go there.
    ‘I thought your grandfather would take me there, but he had a glib tongue. What he promised and his real intentions were two entirely different things.’
    The two girls listened avidly; their grandmother was good at describing what this other country was like and they lapped it up.
    ‘Do you know they have the highest buildings in the world? Great big towering things that look as though they’re stabbing the passing clouds. And a big statue at the entrance to New York harbour. That’s what people have told me and I’ve no reason to doubt the truth of what they say.’
    Sighing with the sadness of unachieved dreams, she laid her head back against the chair and closed her eyes.
    ‘I wonder what my life would have turned out like if your grandfather had been true to his word? Folk that have been there tell me the streets are paved with gold. And that’s where they make the pictures you know. That’s where Clara Bow, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin live. Not in New York mind you. I hear they live in a place called Hollywood.’
    ‘I think I would like to go there, to America,’ said Venetia, her small hand covering the work-worn fingers of her grandmother. ‘I think I’d like to be a film star – like Clara Bow.’
    She remembered the posters outside the picture houses in London. ‘I don’t want to stay in Ireland,’ she added. ‘I want excitement. I want adventure. I want to dance and sing on the stage and in the films.’
    Anna Marie eyed her sister timidly. ‘I couldn’t do that. Sing and dance in front of people.’
    ‘You don’t need to,’ said Venetia. ‘You can come with me. We have to stay together. Always!’
    Anna Marie sucked in her lips. Unlike her sister she was predisposed to staying in one place, but her sister was of strong character. Whatever she said, Anna Marie couldn’t help falling in with her plans.
    ‘Wait a while and I’ll take you to the pictures. I’ve heard we’re going to have a picture show in Dunavon just before Easter. I’ll ask your grandfather.’
    Their grandmother’s promise was forgotten in the work around the farm. First there were spring lambs to take to market and a fresh spring turning into a typical summer of warm days interspersed by rain. The land turned verdant, the animals gave birth to their young and the smell of all things growing made the air rich enough to taste.
    Autumn saw the harvesting of the fields, the laying in of winter fodder for the bad weather to come when the grass held no goodness.
    Anna Marie loved life on the farm though she tried not to show it to her sister. Venetia had never adjusted to the countryside, but what she did love were her grandmother’s tales of a place called Hollywood in a magic land called America.
    I’m going to go there one day. I tell you I am,’ Venetia declared.
    Anna Marie worshipped her sister and always went along with whatever she said. Though they were chalk and cheese, they rarely argued, mainly because Anna Marie always let Venetia have her own way.
    Just before Christmas the travelling film show came to town. It was called
The Jazz Singer
and it was the first ‘talkie’ ever made.
    ‘It was made nearly two years ago back in 1926 and people thought the talkies would never catch on, though apparently all films being made are now talkies. Now there’s a thing! I didn’t realise we were going to see people actually talking,’ their grandmother whispered to them. ‘That was what persuaded your grandfather to let us see it. He can’t believe it’s true and