We were eating griddle cakes with honey – Christy’s beehives had produced a bumper harvest that autumn – and Clara Venus had reunited Romulus with Remus and reinstated the wolves in the ark, which she had set upon the kitchen table. Christy was desperately downcast, but the Biddies shot him warning looks every time he made mention of an Gorta Mór, or touched on what had become known as the ‘coffin ships’ that were transporting their wretched passengers across the Atlantic. I was glad that they had the wit not to speak of such things in front of Clara Venus, for I knew that, preoccupied as she seemed in marching the animals two by two up the gangway of the ark, she listened constantly. ‘Little pitchers have big ears,’ said Old Biddy, when Christy made some reference to mass graves in Cork. And between the pair of them, through nuance of word and tone, the Biddies let me know that they had been lucky; that they had survived in this hidden corner of North County Cork, and were well set up for the coming winter.
What do You think about Another Heartbeat In The House?
