Catherine went very pink. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Are you shocked?’
Aunt Finola gave a cross between a laugh and a snort. ‘Shocked? I’d be a very strange woman indeed to have reached my age and be shocked by something like that! It’s been going on since the beginning of time! But Finn’s a good man. He’ll care for you, stand by you.’
‘Yes, but…’ Catherine’s words tailed away.
‘You want more than that, is that it?’ Finola nodded her head. ‘Tell me, Catherine—is the relationship good, generally?’
‘Very good,’ Catherine realised, unconsciously beginning to list all the things he had said to her on the eve of his departure. ‘We get on, we make each other laugh…’ Her cheeks went pink again. ‘Oh, lots of things, really. But—’
‘But?’
It sounded so stupid to say it. ‘He doesn’t love me!’
Finola digested this for a moment or two in silence. ‘Doesn’t he? Are you sure?’
‘He never says he does!’
Finola shook her head. ‘Oh, you young women today!’ she said exasperatedly. ‘Fed a diet of unrealistic expectations by magazines and books! How many smooth-tongued chancers have you met for whom words are cheap—who tell you they love you one minute and are busy looking over your shoulder at another woman the next? It’s not what you say that matters, Catherine, it’s what you do that counts.’
‘You mean you think that Finn loves me?’
‘I’ve no idea what Finn thinks—he never lets me in. He’s let no one in, not really—not since he lost his mother.’ Her brow criss-crossed in lines of sadness. ‘Think about it, Catherine. They’d been everything to each other and suddenly she was taken away, without warning. What child wouldn’t have grown wary of love after something like that? Or of expressing it?’
Why had she never looked at it that way before? Her thoughts came tumbling out as words. ‘You think I’m being selfish?’
Finola shook her head. ‘I think you’re not counting your blessings and thinking of all the good things you do have. Love doesn’t always happen in a blinding flash, Catherine. Sometimes it grows slowly—like a great big oak tree from out of a tiny acorn. And marriages based on that kind of love are sometimes the best in the world. Solid and grounded.’ She caught the look on Catherine’s face. ‘Which doesn’t mean to say th
at they’re without passion.’
No. It didn’t.
‘It all boils down to whether you want instant gratification or whether you are prepared to work for something,’ finished Finola gently. ‘It’s not the modern way, I know.’
‘An old-fashioned marriage?’ questioned Catherine wryly.
‘There was a lot less divorce in those days.’ Aunt Finola shrugged. ‘People stuck by each other through the good times and the bad times. For richer for poorer. In sickness and in health. Forsaking all others.’
‘We got married in a register office,’ commented Catherine absently.
‘I know you did. But you still made vows, didn’t you? Even if you didn’t mean them at the time, that doesn’t mean they can’t be true in the future.’
Catherine nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘For?’
‘For talking sense to me. For making me realise what’s important. I think I really needed to hear it!’ She smiled. ‘Shall I go and put the kettle on?’
‘Now you’re talking!’
By morning the world was silent and white, but at least the snow had stopped. Catherine got up as soon as it was light, peering out of the window at the frozen scene with pleasure—until she realised that the path to the gate was completely impassable. Someone could break their leg on that, she thought, especially if it became icy. And so, after a flurry of solicitous phone calls from Finn, Finola and Aisling, Catherine decided to clear the snow away.
She wrapped up warmly and set to work, and several people stopped to talk to her as she cleared the path—most of them asking when the baby was due.
‘Not until June,’ she told them.
‘You’ve a bit of a wait, then!’ said the postman’s wife, who had six herself. ‘The last month or so’s always the worst!’
No one seemed to think it odd that a pregnant woman should be working physically, but that was because, Catherine realised, it wasn’t. Not at all. And especially not in rural areas. For centuries women had been working in the fields until they had their babies, and what she was doing wasn’t so very different. That morning she felt strong, capable and really alive—as if she could conquer the world.