Yesterday Is Gone

YESTERDAY IS GONE

By

Michael Galvin

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.

Mother Teresa

In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright Michael A. Galvin 2014

Published by Michael Galvin at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

THE END

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CHAPTER 1

The screaming stopped suddenly; there was silence for a few minutes, and then the sound of a baby’s cry. It was all over now. Mary Fitzpatrick lay dead. The baby was still attached to her by the umbilical cord. The bang of the front door of the cottage announced the arrival of the Doctor; too late to save Mary, who had just died giving birth to her seventh child.

Doctor O’Leary scaled the stairs two at a time and was quickly into action, separating the baby from its mother and clearing the airways before thrusting it into the arms of a despairing Joe Fitzpatrick. His attention was then concentrated upon Mary; he felt for a pulse in her neck. Her eyes were sunken dark hollows, and the beads of sweat that still stood on her brow, had turned cold now. She lay on a blood soaked sheet. He turned to Joe shaking his head. Joe gave a whimper of despair. The baby continued to cry in his arms. What was he to do now? Yet another boy he thought.She had died just minutes after he had told her.

Downstairs in the cottage thirteen-year-old Patrick Fitzpatrick paced the floor looking up towards the thin wooden boards of the ceiling that separated the two floors and the sounds from the room above.He had run the five miles into the village to summon the Doctor when his father had yelled at him to get help quickly. Now he waited patiently, his five younger brothers still sleeping in the other tiny room at the top of the stairs.

The clock on the mantle struck seven. It was dark outside Patrick placed another square of peat on the fire to keep the embers alive and the caldron of water hot. He listened to the cry of the baby and the muffled sounds of Doctor O’Leary and his father and sensed by the tone of their voices that something was desperately wrong. Eventually the cry of the baby stopped and the voices of Dr. O’Leary and Joe Fitzpatrick could be more clearly heard.‘I’ll send Father Reagan when I get to the village, he’ll contact Munday to make the arrangements.’

Then there was the clank of the iron latch on the bedroom door and the creaking of the steep open tread stair as the two men came down into the room where Patrick waited. Dr. O’Leary ruffled Patrick’s tight black curly hair as reached for the catch on the front door. ‘You look after your father now. He needs your help.’ The door opened to the dark damp outside and caused smoke from the peat fire to bellow out into the room. Joe Fitzpatrick unhooked the oil lamp hanging in the centre of the room and accompanied the Doctor out to his car. The breeze blew the drizzle into his heavily lined face, causing the lamp to flicker as he held it high, while Dr. O’Leary cranked the starting handle of the Morris Eight. It took several turns before it would start.

Joe Fitzpatrick stood with his eldest son and watched the lights of the car as it bumped its way down the track to the narrow road back to Waterville. The lights momentarily disappearing as the car reached the road and turned behind the rough stonewall that edged it. They turned back to the cottage. The white washed walls returned a glimmer of light from the oil lantern and the thatch of the roof stood out dark, uneven, and in need of repair. Reaching the door, they could hear the baby crying upstairs. Joe Fitzpatrick turned his son towards him to look into his face. The light from the lantern caught the small white features as he looked anxiously up to his father.‘Mom’s dead Patrick, she died bringing another brother.’ His voice sounded ragged through the tightness of his throat. Patrick could see that his father’s eyes were filled with tears as the flickering light caught the reflection in their moistness. ‘Your new brothers to be called Sean, she named him just before she passed on. I don’t know what we’re to be after doing now she’s gone.’

Doctor O’Leary picked his way back to Waterville along the rough-pitted road. The Kerry Mountains stood out dark mauve in the distance, against the first light of dawn. It was 1944 and the whole of Ireland was suffering under the strains of rationing. He had little doubt in his mind that this was a contributory factor to Mary Fitzpatrick’s death. The lack of nutritious food and the lugging of heavy peat for the fire was a problem for everyone hereabouts. He jostled with the steering wheel and filled his pipe one handed from the leather pouch on the seat beside him. This war was a tough time for everyone. Irish neutrality brought no bonuses. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt were pressurising Ireland and Eamon de Valera to get off the fence.

Doctor O’Leary stopped momentarily on the road to light his pipe. This was a luxury, a moment to be savoured. This was perhaps the last strand of tobacco left in the village. But for his position as a Doctor his car would have been off the road a long time ago through lack of fuel. It was certainly one of the only vehicles still moving in the village. Even the trains had been suspended in Dublin through lack of power to drive them earlier that summer. He puffed repeatedly to get the pipe burning, and clouds of smoke filled the car. Squinting over his half-rimmed glasses to the rough road ahead, he continued back to the village. During the First World War he was a young Doctor starting his medical career, now another war. Wouldn’t you have thought that they would have learned their lesson the first time he thought?

His thoughts turned back to the Fitzpatricks. He had known them and the McDermott’s since he moved to Kerry over twenty-five years ago, and had watched Mary McDermott grow into a beautiful young woman. Almost unrecognisable to the worn out thirty-nine year old that he had just certified as dead. The McDermott’s lived out in a tiny hamlet on the edge of the Kenmare River. There had been a terrible fuss when young Mary got pregnant by Joe Fitzpatrick. She was not twenty at the time. Francis O’Leary remembered that Joe Fitzpatrick ran away to Killarney before being run to ground by Paddy McDermott, and brought home with two black eyes to marry the girl. Mary was the second to youngest of a family of eight girls, and the Doctor wondered at the strange tricks genetics could play when she was unable to produce a daughter; just a tribe of boys. Following the marriage the McDermott’s had disowned Mary and if she saw any of them in the village, they would ignore her.

Waterville was situated on a thin peninsular of land that separated Loch Currane from Ballinskelligs Bay and the sea. The village was just waking and lights were beginning to glow through the tiny cottage windows. As Francis O’Leary pulled the car up outside of his house he noticed that Madelaine Murry’s bicycle was parked leaning against the shiny brass plaque, Dr. Francis O’Leary MB (Dublin). How often had he told her not to do that he thought? Anyhow what was she doing here at this ungodly hour? Maddy Murry, had been waiting patiently for the Doctors return, rushed to meet him at the door. ‘Oh, thank God that you’re back Doctor.’ She was still out of breath after her ride from Inny Bridge. ‘It’s Kathleen McCartney, the baby’s come and he’s none too strong, has a terrible blue colour about him and an awfully erratic pulse.’

The Doctor turned in his tracks with Maddy hard on his heals. It was now daylight and there was the magnificent view over Ballinskelligs Bay and the silvery sands of the Inny Estuary ahead. Kathleen McCartney lived alone in ‘Ravensgate’, a large house overlooking the Bay.Her husband Dan was working away in Chicago and this was their first baby. Kathleen was in her mid forties and the pregnancy was completely out of the blue, no doubt the result of Dan’s return home for Christmas last year.Dr. O’Leary parked the car on the hill, taking care to leave it in gear.As a precaution he left a brick behind the back wheel.

Kathleen McCartney had the newborn baby cradled in her arms when the Doctor and his nurse entered the bedroom. The baby was still alive but clearly fading fast. As he had expected from Maddy’s description the baby had a serious heart defect. There was nothing he could do. The baby, a little boy would die. Just how long he could last was anyone’s guess, but from the look of the poor mite he wouldn’t last more than an hour or so.

Dr. O’Leary stood for a moment at the window overlooking the bay. At the other side of the bay was the Hog’s Head peninsular, a jagged finger of rock jutting out into the sea. To his right he could see an Irish Naval patrol craft scanning the coastline, expecting an invasion from the Germans or even the British at any time. The British would love the use of the Irish ports as a base to fight the German U-boats that were dominating the Atlantic and threatening the shipping. There was a cry of despair from behind him in the room that brought his mind quickly back. Kathleen McCartney’s baby had just died.

Father Reagan arrived at the Fitzgerald’s cottage on his bicycle just at the time Vincent Munday was unloading a plain wooden coffin from the back of his cart. The Fitzpatrick boys had been sent off to gather wood, apart from Patrick, who was kept back to mind the new baby. Patrick was trying to feed the baby with milk while the priest anointed the body of Mary Fitzpatrick.

Mary Fitzpatrick’s funeral took place at the church in Waterville. As was usual with such events on the Iverah Peninsula, everyone attended. The little church was full and overflowing, even though the Fitzpatricks’ lived isolated on the far side of Loch Currane and had little contact with the rest of the community. The word soon got around that the McDermott girl that had got into trouble with the Fitzpatrick lad was dead, and there wasn’t a spare pew in the church. There was only one attendant from the McDermott family however, Paddy McDermott. He sat silently at the back of the church, obviously drunk. When the humble wooden coffin was carried into the church he stepped unsteadily forward into the isle and kissed the coffin as it passed. ‘Mary o’ Mary what have we done?’ He sobbed and fell clumsily back into his seat.

Throughout the Requiem mass, the children in the congregation fidgeted, including the Fitzpatrick boys who were in the front row, including the new baby, Sean. It was only perhaps Patrick, and Eamon who was now eleven, that realised the significance of the moment, for the others the realism had not yet taken root. They would soon come to realise their loss. The Lord giveth and the Lord takest away. The words of Father Reagan drifted past Joe Fitzpatrick. He was thinking of Mary. He hadn’t given her much of a life. She could have done much better for herself and the McDermott’s had made that plain enough.

The McDermott’s had a herd of black Kerry cows and kept the surrounding villages supplied with fresh milk, cream and butter.All the McDermott girls worked the tiny farm. The Fitzpatrick family kept pigs and like the McDermott family kept the locality in supply of pork and bacon. It was a warm summer evening that Joe had met Mary on the road outside Waterville. He was returning with a cart full of potatoes and swill and she had delivered the last churn of milk. Mary’s cart was pulled into the edge of the road and she was examining one of the wheels. ‘Hello there.’Joe pulled his pony up alongside Mary’s. ‘Having a wee bit of trouble?’ Mary turned and looked up to Joe, her long red hair fell about her face obscuring one eye. She stood up and brushed the hair from her face revealing beautiful green eyes. ‘Oh hello, yes, I do seem to have some trouble with this wheel. It’s been all right up ‘till now but I’ve quite a way to go yet to home.’ ‘Aren’t you one of the McDermott girls?’ Joe sprung down from his seat to the road. ‘I’m Joe Fitzpatrick.’ He extended his hand to her after first wiping it down the leg of his trouser. She took it and gave it a gentle shake. Her cheeks had now flushed in embarrassment. ‘I’m Mary.’ Her big green eyes looked down, hiding them beneath long red lashes. ‘Let's take a look.’ Joe pulled at the offending wheel and it wobbled on its axle. He gathered some tools from the back of his cart and started to work on the wheel. It took over an hour to fix the wheel and although it was a bright summer evening, darkness would be falling soon, before she would reach home.

‘Look Mary, you've a fair bit to go yet and it’ll be dark soon. I can leave my cart in the village in Munday’s yard and ride with you to your farm.....just in case that wheel fails again,’ he hastily added.

Soon they were on the road back to the McDermott’s Farm with Con Munday’s bicycle on the back of the cart for his return journey. Joe could still see the envy on Con’s face as he pulled on the rein and got the pony into a gallop, riding into the sunset with a beautiful girl.

Con was the same age as Joe, twenty-six. The girl by his side he reckoned as being nineteen or twenty. For the first part of the journey Mary was quiet and shy but gradually she was opening herself out. Joe supposed that this was because she was quite unused to talking to members of the opposite sex, being the seventh daughter in a family of eight girls. Nine women in one house, thought Joe, no wonder Paddy McDermott seemed so strange. It would seem that the two families made many deliveries to the same places. Joe had it firmly in his mind that he wanted to see this girl again. He would talk his father into letting him do the deliveries so that they could meet up again. The journey back to the farm seemed to take no time at all but it was almost dark by the time that they had arrived. They bid each other goodbye and she took the cart up the final track to the farm whilst he happily whistled loudly on his way back to Waterville.

It was almost a fortnight before Joe got the opportunity to take the delivery round. His father had eaten something bad the night before and couldn’t leave the corrugated hut, even though it was only ten paces from the door. Joe’s mother loaded the cart with cured bacon that she had prepared and provided him with a list of deliveries. He hoped that his journey would coincide with Mary’s. Since he had met her, he hadn't been able to keep her from his mind. By mid-afternoon he had given up all hope of meeting her. It would seem that from the calls that he made that she was out delivering today, but she had