Between Two Dusks

Coyle Martin Annie

Description

It is the 1950s in Dublin, Protestant Lizzie Wynne meets and falls in love with Finn, a young Catholic doctor, they are confident that religion will be no barrier to love in a changing Ireland. But the past has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it. Finn discovers Lizzie's past and family background, unknown even to her- it changes everything. Religion thwarted romance for Victoria and now Lizzie must pay the price too. Jilted by the man she loves, Lizzie escapes to Canada in search of a new life. When she meets the handsome Jack, it seems her future is secure. But questions about Lizzie's past remain and only a trip back to Ireland may resolve them. Will Lizzie ever discover the truth about who she really is?This heart-tugging story closely recreates the atmosphere of 1950s Ireland and is the sequel to 'To Know the Road' published in 2011.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

• Historical romance
• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782283218
• Langue: English

Extrait

Between Two Dusks



Annie Coyle Martin
Copyright

First Published in 2013 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Between Two Dusks Copyright © 2013 Annie Coyle Martin
Annie Coyle Martin has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Mobi eISBN: 9781782283164 ePub eISBN: 9781782283218 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782283263 Paperback ISBN: 9781782283119
Pneuma Springs Publishing A Subsidiary of Pneuma Springs Ltd. 7 Groveherst Road, Dartford Kent, DA1 5JD. E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Dedication


Day hangs its lights between two dusks, my heart
Always beyond the dark there is the blue.

Francis Ledwidge - The Blackbird of the Boyne



In memory of Tony Monaghan
1932 – 2012
Rest in Peace
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my family for their continuing support, especially Damhnait Monaghan for her help with editing, and Ciara O’Shea for reading the first draft and for her useful suggestions.
To the group of writers attending Writers Rendezvous at the Kingston Seniors Centre, thank you for your forbearance as I struggled to get the book written.
Thanks also to Ann Decter who first set me on this writing journey.
Contents
Chapter 1 Remembering Papa
Chapter 2 School Days
Chapter 3 Missing Rosie
Chapter 4 Dublin
Chapter 5 Student Nurse
Chapter 6 Getting To Know The City
Chapter 7 First Love
Chapter 8 Home To The Family
Chapter 9 Waiting For Finn
Chapter 10 Heartbreak
Chapter 11 Finn Visits His Aunt
Chapter 12 The Party
Chapter 13 The Land God Gave To Cain
Chapter 14 A New Decade
Chapter 15 Pot Luck
Chapter 16 June Wedding
Chapter 17 Home To Beechwood
Chapter 18 New Life
Chapter 19 Home Again
Chapter 20 Sudden Illness
1 - Remembering Papa
Lizzie Wynne lay awake and watched the morning light begin to fill her room. Papa always said, “Between two dusks day carries its lights. Day carries its lights in and tells the night to be off with itself.”
Where was Papa now?
When she was little he would hold her in his arms and dance about the square room, round and round. “Can you feel the beat Lizzie?”
And when she was a bit older, he taught her to waltz, taking both her hands and turning with her while the gramophone played, ‘Come back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff.’
“There! You’ve got it Lizzie!”
“Elementary, my dear Watson.”
And Papa threw back his head and laughed. And sometimes he’d say, “Let’s play ‘The Banks’.”
“Do Papa. I like it best.”
And they would dance to the lilting tones of ‘On the Banks of My Own Lovely Lee.’
She missed him every day. She told herself she would miss him forever. She knew she would never forget him. When she sat on the swing he would push her high and then he would stand in front. When the swing was as high as his shoulder she would jump off, and Papa would catch her.
Now she remembered that in the months before he died Papa had looked white and ghostly. One night she was too warm in bed and started down the stairs to get a drink. The wireless was on and the announcer was talking about devastation. She sat on the stairs to listen. She heard Mum say, “Andrew, we won’t tell Lizzie about this.”
And Papa said, “Victoria, she’ll hear it at Callaghans’, and the papers will be full of it tomorrow.”
Lizzie went down the rest of the way. Papa and Mum were sitting by the wireless. Papa turned it off when he saw her. “Lizzie, what are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m too warm and I want a drink.” She went over and sat on his knee. “Papa what’s ‘her she ma’?”
She saw Papa and Mum look at each other, and then Mum stood up. “You talk to her Andrew. I’ll get her a glass of milk.”
“It’s Hiroshima, Lizzie, a place in Japan and a terrible bomb fell there.”
“Like a Doodle Bug, Papa?”
“There are no more Doodle Bugs, Lizzie. It’s a bigger bomb than a Doodle Bug.”
“Will it come here, Papa?”
“No dear.”
She sat on his knee and drank her milk and afterwards he carried her up to bed. And he and Mum kissed her goodnight. Now she remembered that was the last time Papa ever carried her up the stairs. A little while later there was another bomb in a place called Nagasaki and Papa said the war was over. Lizzie thought it had been over ages before that.
After that it seemed that most afternoons Papa lay on the sofa in the square room reading that book ‘Animal Farm’. “Aren’t all farms animal farms, Papa?” she had asked.
“This one was different, Lizzie. The animals took over the farm, and ran it, because the farmer was so lazy and he’d drink too much and lie in bed with ‘The News of The World.’ Guess what the chief pig’s name was, Lizzie?”
“Head pig?”
“No, Napoleon. Isn’t that a great name?”
Lizzie agreed it was.
But Papa was always tired and sometimes Mum would tell Josie, their housekeeper, to carry the tea tray into the square room. And often Papa would say, “I’ll have a little jorum, just a wee one, Victoria,” and Mum would carry in the whiskey and soda from the dining room and pour a little of the amber whiskey into a glass and Papa would say, “Your health, ladies.” Lizzie always felt so grown up when he said that.
Then one day when she was nine Josie met her on the way home from school and took her to the Callaghans. Her best friend, Carmel Callaghan, was allowed to stay up with her, so Lizzie knew something had happened. Late in the evening her mother came and took her home and told her Papa was dead. They had taken him to the hospital and he had died there. Papa dead! She couldn’t get used to it. Why were people going about their business in the same way? Nothing stopped when Papa died. Josie collected the eggs, cooked and served meals! A few days later, cycling home from Killcore, when Carmel had turned off for home, Lizzie stood on the pedals to race up the avenue to Beechwood, then she remembered and slowed down. Papa would not be at home. The world had a strange off-centre shape since Papa died and she still missed him even after five years. Did Papa know Mum had remarried and Lizzie had a stepfather? How she hated that Donny Maguire. He was always interfering in what she was doing. About two months after her mother married him, Lizzie jumped off the swing from high up, pretending Papa was there to catch her. When Donny came out and saw, he ran over, screaming, “Lizzie stop that! It’s not safe! You are not to do that again.”
“Leave me alone! You have no right to boss me around.”
“Lizzie, do what you are told.”
“I hate you. I don’t have to do anything you say. You’re not my father. I’ve always hated you.”
She saw a flush come over his face and she turned and ran into the house through the scullery and kitchen and up to her bedroom and slammed the door. Who did he think he was telling her what to do? Taking Papa’s place! After a while Mum came up to her bedroom and said, “Lizzie, please don’t shout at Donny like that. He was just worried you’d fall.”
Lizzie said nothing, flustered because her mother was clearly very upset. She regretted losing her temper. Mum said nothing more, just left her and went back downstairs.
Lizzie wondered if Papa knew she had lost her temper or that she was going to Chestnut Park School in September? What was being dead anyway?
Now she heard the chirrup of a robin outside and listened for the sounds of the house. Josie would be up by now preparing breakfast: porridge and bacon and eggs. After breakfast, Lizzie was meeting Carmel and they were going down to the lake. Carmel lived on a farm at the end of a lane that led off the avenue near the old empty Beechwood gatehouse. Carmel was three months older than Lizzie, with dark hair she wore plaited and tied back with a narrow ribbon, and blue eyes in a short round face. Lizzie had green eyes and her dark blonde hair had red highlights.
At the lake they sat on the bank with their feet in the water and, as she always did, Lizzie told Carmel her troubles.
“It drives me crazy, Carmel. My mother is so besotted with my stepfather and my shrimp of a stepbrother.”
“Daddy says he does a great job on the farm, Lizzie.”
“She could have hired someone to do it.”
“It’s hard to get anyone decent, Lizzie.”
“Well no one will ever take Papa’s place,” Lizzie vowed, and kicked her legs in the water. A heron that had been standing on one leg in the shallows flapped its wings and, with immense dignity, rose in the air and flew slowly away.
“I wish I was going to school with you, Carmel. I think this Chestnut Park I’m going to is like a jail.”
“Can’t be worse than where I’m going.”
“But you’ll get home on weekends.”
“That’s one good thing. But think of me going to the nuns, Lizzie. When I went to see them, the Reverend Mother gave me a prayer card and told me to keep it in my school bag.”
She took a little card with the figure of a nun on it from the pocket of her dress and showed it to Lizzie. Underneath the figure was a single verse-
‘Far from the maddening world of strife
the noble work is done,
By her that chosen child of God,
the Presentation Nun’.
“Noble work? They’ll probably whack us. I hate it already, Lizzie. I wish you were coming too. They’ll want to turn us into nuns.”
“Don’t you dare become a nun, Carmel!” said Lizzie.
“Fat chance of that. Let’s read for a bit now. I have to return ‘Little Women’ when the l