Shadow on the Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

but she knew quite a bit about his history from Rose. She wasn’t sure what you could say to a young man who’d been a rebel, had fought against the British Army and spent years in English jails mixing with other rebels even better known than himself.
    Rose had always been fond of the young man, the youngest son of her eldest sister Mary, who’d found a job with the Stewart family of Ards when the McGinley family had been evicted from their home in Donegal back in the 1860s. She’d married a local man and raised a large family on the outskirts of Creeslough where he had a flourishing drapery business, while her little sister Rose had been taken to Kerry with baby Sam when their father died and her mother found work there as a housekeeper with the Molyneux’s of Currane Lodge.
    Emily still missed Rose. For the years of Emily’s girlhood, Mrs Hamilton, as she then called her, had been their neighbour and her friend. She’d seen her nearly every day, taking up eggs or milk, or making tea when she came down to visit the Jacksons at thebottom of the hill. Rose had always been good to her, lent her books and knitting patterns and was always willing to listen to her troubles. When she and Alex married, it was Rose who suggested they should move into her house at Ballydown now that she and John were going to live at Rathdrum.
    No mother could have been kinder than Rose when she was first expecting and full of anxiety, nor when the babies were growing up and she worried continually as to whether she was doing the right thing by them. Rose had been with her when all the girls were born. She could hardly bear to think of the day Rose had not been there, the day young Johnny finally appeared after the longest and hardest labour she had ever had. That was the day Rose’s beloved John had died, only a few hours after Alex had gone up the hill to tell him the longed-for boy had arrived at Ballydown and that his name would be John.
    Emily wiped away her tears with a soapy hand and told herself not to be silly. It was all a very long time ago. Eighteen years ago, come August. She could not possibly forget the day, or the date, or the year, not only because it was her son’s birthday, but because this year in August he’d be eighteen, old enough to do what he so wanted to do and join the Air Force, like his sister Elizabeth. Then she would be like mothers everywhere, living with the fear of his loss as every day went by.
    As if to escape from her anxious thoughts, shepounded the dungarees more vigorously, drained off the dirty water and began rinsing them. When she splashed herself thoroughly with the ice cold water from the tank on the roof, she knew she just wasn’t paying proper attention to the task in hand, so she collected herself, dumped the wet, brown mass into a bucket and tramped out to the already laden clothesline.
    She wondered why it was she was never as anxious about the girls as she was about Johnny. It was not that she loved them any the less, but they always seemed better able to take care of themselves than their brother. There was a casualness about him, an indifference to circumstances quite different from either of the two older girls, who had always been much more practical. More like herself perhaps. At present, however, the main reason she didn’t worry about them was that all three of them were fairly well out of harm’s way, for the moment at least.
    Catherine, the eldest, had trained as a teacher, gone on a course in Manchester to learn more about children with writing difficulties and had met a young research chemist at a dance. She’d returned home, gone on teaching at a local primary school and they’d written to each other, enough pages to fill a book, in the following year. Being quite sure by then that war was coming, they’d decided to marry regardless.
    Brian Heald had expected to be called up, but to his surprise when he applied himself, he was told he was to be reserved because of his