The Ghost of Grania O'Malley Read Online Free PDF Page A

Big Hill too, when Jimmy Parsons, this ‘blow-in’ from England, this foreigner, this sculptor, came to stay for a summer holiday. He set eyes on Catherine O’Malley, took her fishing one day, married her and never went away.
    Everyone knew Michael Murphy was still in high dudgeon about it even all these years later. He was a squat little man and rich as Croesus – the very opposite of her father, who stood nearly two metres in his boots, and hadn’t a penny to his name. He was almost always in his boots too, either out in the fields shepherding his flock or in his shed carving his beloved ‘creatures’ that no one ever seemed to want to buy. He didn’t seem to mind too much, and Jessie didn’t mind at all. They were like family to her. She had given every one of them a name, and when she was little he would tell her stories about them in the dark before she went off to sleep. Her father only took his boots off in the evenings and then his dirty toes would be sticking out of his socks, and he’d be scratching them. He wasn’t perfect, but as a father he was a whole lot better than Michael Murphy would ever have been.
    Jessie could picture them downstairs now as she listened to them. He’d be sitting in the rocker, Panda at his feet, and she’d be at the ironing.
    â€˜You haven’t said much,’ she heard him saying.
    â€˜Well, that’s because there’s not a lot to say.’
    â€˜You got to see the minister then, at the Dáil?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Well, you’ll be glad to hear that he agrees with you, you and all the others, all except old Mister Barney.’
    â€˜He said no then?’
    â€˜No, Jimmy. He said yes. He said yes to money, yes to destruction, yes to pollution. Oh, he’s a real yes-man.’
    â€˜Well, you did what you could. No one could’ve done more, that’s for sure. So if it’s going to happen, best just to accept it, eh?’
    â€˜Never. Never. I’ll never accept it. I was born here, remember? I grew up on that hill. I dreamed my dreams up there. The place is in my blood. And they want to send bulldozers to cut the top off my mountain, my hill, so that Michael Murphy and his kind can dig out the gold and get rich – as if they’re not rich enough already. Well, they’ll do it over my dead body. And I mean that.’
    â€˜Cath, for God’s sake, why do you go on so? You’ve done what you can. Everyone respects you for it. I do, that’s for sure. But this is the nineteen nineties we’re living in. A hundred and fifty years ago there were over a thousand people living here on Clare, now there’s barely a hundred and twenty. The way things are going, in ten years’ time, there’ll be half that. And why? Because there’s no work here, no money. Bed and breakfast, a few tourists in the summer, sell a lobster or two, but that’s it. There’s nothing here for the young people to stay for. I don’t like Michael Murphy any more than you do but, like him or not, at least he’s brought work to the island. That gold mine will mean work for a generation or more, and money to develop the island.’
    â€˜Oh yes.’ Her mother’s blood was up now. ‘And at what cost? We’ll have streams of arsenic from the mine running down the hill, poisoning our children and our sheep – and that’s what the experts said, not me. They’re kicking old Mister Barney out of his shack, when the poor old man just wants to be left to finish his days in peace. And you know and I know that they won’t employ islanders in the mine. They say they will, but they won’t. People like that never do. They’ll bring in outsiders, blow-ins.’
    â€˜I’m a blow-in, or had you forgotten?’ said her father. There was a silence. ‘Look, Cath,’ he went on, ‘in the last three years, ever since