Ballydown, June 1896
The rain came in the night, sweeping in from the south, pattering softly on the bedroom windows. Rose stirred briefly and listened to the gentle, persistent beat on the thatch and the steady drip into the stone gutters below. The garden needed it and the neighbouring farmers would be grateful, she thought, as she drifted back into sleep.
It was still raining when Rose knelt to rouse the banked up fire and boil the kettle for breakfast. Great swags of low cloud made the kitchen dim and the stove sulky, even with the front door propped open to improve the draught.
‘That was a good drop we had in the night,’ John said, as he tramped downstairs and paused in the doorway, his tall, broad-shouldered frame cutting off the misty light.
‘You’ll all get wet on the way to work,’ Rose laughed, as she moved back and forth across the low-ceilinged room bringing the teapot from the dresser and fresh bread and butter from the small, chilly outshot beyond the kitchen, an addition to the house when it had been a farmhouse with enough cattle to need a dairy.
‘Well, Sam and I might get wet, but I think it’ll clear,’ said John thoughtfully. ‘There’s a bit of a lightness out to the west. Give it another hour,’ he advised, as he dropped into his armchair by the stove and pulled on his boots. ‘Will I give Sam another shout?’ he asked, as the kettle began to sing and she reached up to the mantelpiece for the tea caddy.
Rose paused and listened. After a moment or two they heard the heavy tread of stockinged feet on the wooden stairs. A robust figure, already as tall as his father, Sam glanced silently out at the rain, disappeared into the cupboard on the window side of the stove and emerged clutching his own well-polished boots.
‘Boiled egg, Sam?’ Rose asked, as he drew up his chair to the table.
He nodded, half-asleep, the soft skin of his face shining from the touch of cold water. He’d washed so quickly, there were still traces of soap behind his ear. He looked younger than his almost sixteen years.
‘Are you for town today, love?’ John asked, as she poured tea and cut them thick slices of the previous day’s baking.
‘No,’ she said, looking out at the rain and shaking her head gently. ‘I might have gone in, but I want to get on with Sarah’s dress. Only a week now to her birthday,’ she added smiling.
There was no danger whatever of anyone forgetting Sarah’s birthday. At thirteen, she was quite capable of reminding them all of the event, but she never failed to point out that her day was also her mother’s day. She’d been born on Rose’s thirtieth birthday in the house in County Armagh when they lived with John’s mother, Granny Sarah.
Rose dropped the eggs neatly into John and Sam’s waiting egg cups, filled up their mugs and went to the foot of the stairs.
‘Hannah, Sarah,’ she called firmly. ‘Time to get up.’
The voice that replied was Hannah’s. It usually was. Hannah was often awake long before anyone else. She would lie and listen to the familiar morning sounds, enjoying the quiet and the warmth of her own bed with her own special quilt, the one she’d designed when her mother and her friend, Elizabeth Sinton, had offered to make it for her.
Rose turned away from the steep, twisty staircase. If Hannah was awake, she’d make sure Sarah got up. Not always an easy job, but Hannah had the measure of it. She listened for another moment to the footsteps overhead, then, satisfied, she turned to Sam.
‘I have cheese or cold bacon and baker’s loaf,’ she began. ‘Or you could have some of each.’
He smiled sheepishly and nodded. Sam always had a good appetite. When his lunch box came back in the evening there wasn’t so much as a crumb to throw to the birds. She watched him scrape out the very last morsel of his egg, invert the empty shell in his egg cup and stab it with his spoon before she turned away to the dairy.
‘Well, the fairies never sail far in your egg-shells,’ John laughed, as he looked across the table. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve left it too late. They’re gone. That’s the fault of those that neglected their egg-shells.’
‘Is there any more tea in the pot?’ Sam asked, hopefully.
‘Aye, there is. Plenty.’
‘Are ye still workin’ on the stenters?’ he asked, glancing up at the clock, as his father refilled both their mugs.
‘No, we got them sorted out. I’m not sure what Hugh has in mind today. We might even get lookin’ at those drawin’s I told you about. Ivery time he goes to lay a hand on them doesn’t someone arrive with trouble at one mill or t’other.’
‘Here you are, Sam, and a big piece of cake too.’
He got up from the table, bent down and kissed her and took the lunch box from her hands.
‘You’ve got a grey hair, Ma,’ he said suddenly, as he straightened up.
‘Only one, Sam?’ she said, throwing her soft morning plait of dark hair back over her shoulder and laughing up at him. ‘I’m glad you can’t count. I’ve had to stop pulling them out or I’d have no hair left.’
‘Ach sure what’s a few grey hairs between friends,’ said John, stroking the crown of his head as he stood up and reached for his cap on the row of hooks by the door. ‘Better grey than nay. I’m beginnin’ to feel the draught rightly wi’out m’ cap these days.’
He moved across to the foot of the staircase, stepped up the two bottom treads, his head bent in the low stairwell. ‘Cheerio, Hannah. Cheerio, Sarah. See you tonight.’
A small chorus returned his greeting.
‘Will I see you midday?’ Rose asked, as she handed him his jacket.
He slipped an arm round her waist and kissed her.
‘All bein’ well,’ he said cheerfully over his shoulder as he and Sam stepped out into the swirling mist and tramped down the garden path.
John was right about the rain. By the time Hannah and Sarah finished their breakfast, collected what they needed for school and wheeled their bicycles round to the front of the house, the fine drizzle had stopped. As she followed them to the gate, Rose caught the first glimpse of the sun gleaming sporadically through cloud from which only the finest beading of moisture swirled around them as they freewheeled down the steep hill.
She stood at the garden gate, watching them go, Hannah’s slim, composed figure following more cautiously as Sarah wove her way expertly between the potholes on the unmade road. Dark haired, with startling blue eyes and pale skin, her chin jutting forward as she pedalled, Sarah was always in the lead. Hannah might be four years older and almost ready to leave school, but these days it was Sarah who led the way, just as James had done when he and Sam went everywhere together.
Rose cleared the remains of breakfast, washed up in the deep Belfast sink in the dairy, cleaned the Modern Mistress stove with black lead and emery paper and scrubbed the long wooden table. She swept the floor and added the crumbs from the bread board to those she’d flicked on to the garden path where the small birds could carry them off to the fledglings that chirped and squeaked in the nearby bushes and trees.
She paused a moment and drew back in the doorway, floor brush in hand, to watch a blackbird, a robin and a thrush swoop down one after another and disappear with full beaks. Though it was only the first week of June, their bright summer plumage looked worn and faded already, so hard did they work raising their broods.
By mid-morning, the first beam of sunlight glanced across the large, white-washed room. It threw reflections of the south-facing windows across the floor, lit up the solid legs of the table and caught the fine motes of flour dust hanging in the air as she slid cakes of wheaten and soda bread into the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron, moved lightly across the flagged floor and leant against the doorpost, her eyes half closed in the brightness. She turned sideways to let the sunlight play on her shoulders, always stiff and sometimes sore after the effort of cleaning the stove and kneading the bread. The deep warmth was like an embrace, reassuring and comforting.
The last of the mistiness had gone and the sky was patched with blue. She drew in a deep breath of the rain-washed air, full of the mixed scents of summer. Cut grass from their own meadow behind the house, pollen carried on the light breeze from the mature lime trees in the avenue of Rathdrum, the handsome gentleman’s residence at the top of the hill, and the mixed perfumes from the deep herbaceous border that followed the line of her own garden path.
Almost seven years now since they’d moved, the best of their old furniture carefully loaded on Sinton’s dray. There was Granny Sarah’s sideboard, the dresser they’d bought when she died and they’d had to sell the rest of her well-loved pieces, because their landlord was able to turn them out of the house at Annacramp. There’d been no space for fine pieces in the abandoned two-room cottage opposite Thomas Scott’s forge.
What excitement there’d been that day, driving fifteen miles into unknown country and a new home only John had seen. A new place with new neighbours. For the four children, it was the longest journey any of them had ever made. Once she’d settled them in, she’d begun planting her garden, trusting her cherished cuttings to a different soil, a changed aspect and a slightly different climate. As she walked the length of the path, nipping off dead leaves and the odd faded bloom from the flourishing border, she nodded to the old friends who’d come with her, tiny fragments when they arrived, now vigorous plants or thriving bushes.
Down by the gate, she leant over a clump of foxgloves and dropped her handful of bits into the old bucket carefully hidden among the luxuriant growth. Everything she’d planted had grown and flourished. ‘And so have we all, thank God,’ she whispered.
She rested against the gate and gazed out across the broad lane that ran up and over Rathdrum Hill. The fields they owned on the southern slopes below the lane were rented out to a neighbouring farmer, but John himself made sure the hawthorn hedges were cut low each autumn so that nothing interrupted her outlook over the rich lowlands of the Bann valley.
The low hills here were steeper than those in Armagh, but they had just the same gently curving shape. One behind another, like eggs lying in a basket, they ran away into the distance as far as she could see, until the now familiar outline of the Mourne mountains rose on the horizon, sharp and clearly drawn against the sky, the miles between so reduced in the clear light, she felt she could stretch out her hand and touch them.
The bright sunlight bathed the richness of the new growth, the hedgerows and trees fully leafed, but not yet quite mature, the whole countryside a sea of green, rippled and dimpled. No wonder the people who came in their carriages to visit Banbridge said that only now did they understand why Ireland was called the Emerald Isle.
‘All this and mountains too,’ she said aloud.
Until she’d married John and travelled north to Ulster, there’d always been mountains in her life. As a child, born in Donegal, she’d lived with the Derryveagh mountains all around her. She could still remember setting off one day to climb the long ridge that ran along their valley, because she’d so wanted to see what was on the other side. Later, when she and her mother had lived in Kerry, she never tired of climbing the lowest of the mountains near Currane Lake so she could stand under the vast expanse of the sky, the mountains around her, the Atlantic beyond.
She still thought of her mother so often. At times, she wrote letters in her head, telling her all the news, just as she’d done after she and John were married in the little estate church close to Currane Lodge and he’d taken her away to a new life in a far country. Hannah and Rose had served the Molyneux family for so many years, Sir Capel made her wedding day a holiday. She’d had gifts from servants and family alike and been seen off with her John in a cloud of good wishes. That she’d never see her mother again was the last thing she’d ever imagined.
Over the years, she often saw herself back in the housekeeper’s quarters, drinking tea and sharing her news. Even now that Hannah had long lain in the shadow of the church tower, she did it still, calling up her mother’s steady gaze as she would listen so carefully to all she had to say and respond with the shrewd, kindly wisdom so much a part of her.
Could she or Hannah have foreseen that Rose would own a two storey house with ten acres of land, the gift of a wealthy man, James Sinton, because she’d saved his life and those of his wife and children?
Night after night, after the rail disaster outside Armagh, from which the Sintons, Rose and the children had all escaped unscathed, she’d woken up gasping for breath, struggling to get back to them, running and running and making no headway, calling to them and they never hearing. It was only when she tried to find words to tell her mother what had happened that Rose found comfort. The more she let her mind move back into that room where they’d shared so much of their daily life, the more she was sure Hannah would have said that some good may come from even the most heartbreaking events, if only you have the courage to accept what has happened.
Events had proved how right Hannah would have been. That event, the cruel and bitter disaster, which tore the heart out of a community and left no one free from grief or anxiety, had actually lifted Rose and John out of a hard and limiting life and set them down in a brighter world, full of hope and possibility for them and their children.
She smiled to herself, thinking how pleased her mother would be if she knew John was too busy repairing and inventing textile machinery to shoe horses. Not only did his employer pay him handsomely, but he’d encouraged him to put down his first patents. Already, they’d yielded more than his year’s earnings when he’d worked in Drumcairn mill.
Hannah might have smiled with pleasure at their good fortune, but John’s own mother would have laughed out loud.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ she’d have said.
She could still hear Granny Sarah’s voice. Arriving in her home, a new bride, weary from a long journey, her mind full of images of countryside she’d never seen before, Sarah made her laugh the moment she crossed the threshold, welcoming her son with an irreverent gaiety.
‘Sure he always lands on his feet.’
And indeed, it was true. Although they’d had hardship enough before they came to Ballydown, John had certainly landed on his feet once again. She’d never known him happier in his work.
‘And what about the children, Rose?’
She saw again the closely written pages in the flowing copperplate which Hannah had perfected to record the accounts of Currane Lodge.
The last letter she’d written to her mother was the week before she died. Sarah had just started school, Hannah was able to sew the baby’s dresses Rose had made for years to boost their income. James was eleven years old, taller than Rose and he and Sam were mad about engines.
‘Your grandson James is apprenticed in Belfast now, Ma. He’s with Harland and Wolff, the biggest shipbuilder in the world,’ Rose said aloud. ‘He’s taller than John, but not as broad. And he likes to be called Jamie.’
Rose turned her head and glanced up the hill to where Rathdrum House lay hidden behind its avenue of limes. Sometimes when the air was very still, or the wind in the right direction, she could hear the ring of a hammer from the workshop attached to the stable block. She could always tell whether it was John or Hugh Sinton at the anvil. John’s stroke was steady and strong, but punctuated with the small, dancing rhythm all blacksmith’s use. Hugh’s stroke was rapid, persistent and unvaried in pace, full of a pent up energy, just like the man himself.
This morning all was silent. She could imagine the pair of them peering at some model they’d made, a design for an improved system of energy transfer, a more efficient method of performing some process in one of his linen mills. Hugh had inherited four of them. Millbrook spun the linen thread, Lenaderg wove the cloth, Seapatrick specialised in hemstitching and the largest mill of all, nearby Ballievy, right on the river Bann itself, did the bleaching and finishing.
Since they’d come to County Down, she’d learnt a whole new language. She knew all about the spinning and the weaving and the finishing of linen, but she had to admit she wasn’t always sure exactly how the machines worked.
No doubt she could have found out more, but unlike Sarah, she was reluctant to interrupt Hugh, or his sister, Elizabeth, when they came to Ballydown and talked about the everyday business of the mills and their work people. If Sarah wanted to know something she’d ask and go on asking until she understood. Rose shook her head wryly. Sarah’s first meeting with Elizabeth the day they arrived was one she’d never forget.
‘Good day and welcome Rose and John. I’m Elizabeth Sinton. I’m sorry Hugh couldn’t be here. He had to go over to Millbrook.’
The tall, angular woman who emerged from the front door of their new home was dressed rather severely in a dark skirt and a plain white blouse that accentuated her height, her already grey hair and her rather forbidding countenance. She shook hands with Rose and John warmly enough, ran her eyes over the children, a slight frown on her face and then greeted each one correctly by name as she shook hands with them.
‘Good day, James. Good day, Sam. I’ve heard a lot about you. You must come up and see the workshop as soon as you’ve settled in. I hear you are both keen on engines. Good day, Hannah. Good day, Sarah. And who is this?’ she asked, kneeling down unexpectedly on the garden path where she was face to face with Ganny, Sarah’s constant companion.
‘This is Ganny,’ said Sarah, promptly. ‘My granny made her for me. She was grey like you, but you’re much bigger.’
‘You mean ‘taller’, Sarah, don’t you?’ said Rose awkwardly.
‘No, I said bigger,’ retorted Sarah shortly.
Rose felt herself blush, but Elizabeth Sinton didn’t appear to be in the slightest offended. Entirely focused on Sarah, she smiled warmly, her strong, plain face suddenly transformed, her grey eyes sparkling.
‘I hope you’ll bring Ganny when you and Hannah come to visit me. I’ll show you a doll my grandmother made for me,’ she said, her rather formal way of speaking softening as she laid a finger on Ganny’s grey woollen hair.
‘I’ve taken the liberty, Rose, of making up the two new beds that arrived earlier in the week, in case any of you needed to lie down,’ she said, as she stood up. ‘Please don’t trouble to return the sheets. Hugh brings me so many to try out for him I could furnish one of Miss Nightingale’s wards,’ she added with a little laugh. ‘Now I shall leave you in peace. The dray will probably take at least another hour, but I’ve left some refreshments ready. Good day to you all.’
‘Funny lady,’ said Sarah, before Elizabeth Sinton had even closed the garden gate behind her. ‘I like her,’ she added decisively, as she yawned hugely and marched towards the open front door.
But if Sarah’s reaction to Elizabeth Sinton had embarrassed Rose, worse was to come. While Hannah admitted she was tired out after being up so early and having had such a busy morning, even before the journey, Sarah refused to make use of the other bed. She tramped round the house, looked into every room, opened built in cupboards, turned the tap on and off in the room beyond the kitchen, explored the garden and climbed up on the fence to look over into the field where her father said they could keep a mare if they decided to have a trap.
When she heard an unfamiliar voice in the big kitchen, she shot back inside and stood staring at Hugh Sinton as he welcomed her parents and shook hands with James and Sam.
‘Good day, Sarah,’ he said, as soon as his eye lighted upon her.
He moved forward to shake hands with her, his body awkward and ungainly as he hunched his left shoulder to enable him to swing his left leg forward. He held out his hand and smiled at her, his handsome, tanned face marred by a white scar that ran diagonally across one cheek, reappeared on his forehead and disappeared into his thick, dark hair.
‘Did a horse kick you?’ Sarah enquired. ‘Our friend Thomas has a scar like yours. He nearly died, only Ma and George Robinson took him to the Infirmary in Armagh. Did you nearly die too?’
Before Rose had time to draw breath, Hugh had released Sarah’s hand and nodded.
‘Yes. I was ill a long time. Elizabeth nursed me for months. But the horse didn’t kick me. It fell and threw me in our own yard. There was a piece of metal lying on the ground and it cut off the front of my knee, so it doesn’t work very well.’
‘Yes, it does sometimes,’ he said easily. ‘But I’m still here, God be praised,’ he added strongly, as he straightened himself up again.
‘I think it’s time Sarah was in bed,’ said Rose apologetically.
Hugh had given her a smile she would never forget. Sudden and full of an unexpected warmth, it showed her what a handsome young man he still was. John had been quite right. Hugh was just as kind and as considerate as his older brother James, even if he lacked James’s graciousness.
‘You’ve all had a long day and need your rest,’ he said gently, as Rose picked her up. ‘Sleep well, Sarah.’
He swung his bad leg into action over the stone floor. ‘God bless you all,’ he added, pausing in the doorway, before disappearing at speed down the garden path with a strange rocking motion.
The sun had risen towards its zenith and the mountains were now less clear as the heat shimmered on their rocky slopes. Rose shut the garden gate behind her, crossed the lane and leant on the five-barred gate in the low hawthorn hedge opposite. Michael MacMurray’s cattle had retreated to a patch of shadow where a well-grown ash tree raised its leafy crown above the line of the eastern boundary of the rich, sloping meadow. She studied the familiar countryside from this new perspective, delighting in the richness of full leaf. In as little as a week’s time, though still beautiful, the foliage would no longer be translucent to the light.
She listened to the familiar sounds of a summer’s day. The distant rush of water from the tail race of the bleach mill, the sudden scream of the swallows swooping low over the field in front of her, the creak of a cart on the road below and the bark of a dog somewhere across the river.
Sometimes the days were so full, she could pass a whole week without ever having time to stand here and give thanks for the good fortune that had brought them to this place where they’d settled so happily. So many of her worries for the family were a thing of the past, as John would say. The children were growing up, they were well and healthy, and there was money in the bank to help them on their way. What woman could ask for more?
On the still air, she caught a sound that was not familiar. To begin with she couldn’t even describe it to herself. Persistent and throbbing, a little like the distant thud of beetling hammers. No, not hammers, a rougher sound. More erratic and more turbulent. As she listened it seemed to be getting louder and coming closer all the time.
‘Missus Hamilton … Missus Hamilton …’
She spun round as she heard her name called and found a young lad running up the hill towards her. Without pausing for breath, he jerked his head towards the top of the hill. ‘C’mon quick, it’s Sam,’ he called over his shoulder, as he ran past her.
‘Sam?’ she gasped, as she turned to follow him, her breath caught with sudden anxiety. What could possibly be wrong? And how could Sam be up the hill when his workplace was down in Tullyconnaught not far from the mill itself?
She’d never seen this lad before, yet he knew who she was and had obviously been sent to look for her. She followed as quickly as she could, anxious lest the retreating figure disappear from sight. As she reached the less steep gradient beyond the crest of the hill, she saw the slight figure swerve through the open gate into the avenue leading to Rathmore House.
By the time she reached the driveway, gasping for breath, perspiration trickling down her face, she could see Elizabeth directing the lad to the workshop and hurrying after him. Rose struggled on and arrived at the gable of the house just in time to see the young lad, a rolled, red flag clutched in his right hand, spill out his message to John and Hugh.
‘Ach, good man yourself,’ said John, clapping him on the shoulder.
She slowed down, a stitch in her side and walked as quickly as she could towards them. John turned and caught sight of her. He was smiling. She felt such a relief. It must be all right if he was smiling.
The throbbing noise had grown louder, louder even than the pounding of her own heart.
‘Down to the stable wall, Elizabeth,’ called Hugh, as he jerked his bad leg into action and hurried away from them.
John came towards her and slipped an arm round her waist.
‘Yer all outa breath,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m all right now,’ she said, drawing a great gasp of air into her small chest. ‘I thought there was something wrong. What’s happening?’
‘D’ye not hear?’
‘I hear a noise, but I don’t know what it is.’
‘C’mon. Hugh’s right. The stable wall’s the best place.’
Hugh had fetched a ladder to make it easy for Rose and Elizabeth to climb up. They stood in a line on top of the solid wall and looked down on the stretch of main road that ran along the foot of the hill towards Corbet and Katesbridge. The road was empty, its rough surface a pale gash through the green countryside.
‘Will you not get into trouble, Billy, for leaving him without a flagman?’ asked Hugh coolly, addressing the boy who stood beside him, shading his eyes against the light.
‘Ach no. Wait till ye see. There’s no need for me.’
It was only when she caught the smell of smoke on the clear air that Rose guessed what they were waiting for.
‘Can ye feel the vibrations?’ John asked her quietly.
Rose wasn’t sure. She was still hot and shaking after the effort she’d made, but before she had time to answer, a man waving a red flag appeared. Yards behind him, with a cloud of smoke and steam swirling round them, not one, but three, highly polished road engines steamed steadily along the highway below, each one hauling three loaded wagons.
‘Is that the new Fowler then?’ asked Hugh, leaning forward, his eyes pinned to the foremost engine. ‘I think your Da’s going to have to walk a bit faster, Billy,’ he added, as the flagman leading the procession caught sight of them and waved his red flag up at them.
‘D’you see whose up front, Rose?’
It was some moments before the smoke parted and Rose saw a familiar figure. For a moment he appeared to be quite unaware of his audience, but then the flagman checked the road ahead, turned back and called up to him. With a great beaming smile, young Sam Hamilton wiped his brow with the back of his arm and raised it in salute to the little group of spectators on the hillside above.
They waved back and stood watching till the last engine had passed and the only movement below was Billy taking a shortcut to catch up with the convoy when it paused to take on more water at Corbet Lough.
‘Well, Rose, what do you think of that?’ asked Hugh, his voice barely concealing his excitement. ‘The new engine and him not turned sixteen. Are you not proud of him?’
‘I am, Hugh, I am,’ she nodded, tears springing to her eyes. ‘I can hardly believe he’s grown up so quickly,’ she said, trying to blink them away. ‘It’s just the smoke,’ she said feebly. ‘It makes my eyes water.’
‘Just wait till young Jamie launches his first ship,’ he said, nodding sympathetically and turning his head away to give her time to recover. ‘We’ll have to do better than a wall to stand on that day.’