‘Can we go and see Maisie when I get home from school?’ asked Sarah next morning, as soon as she came downstairs to breakfast.
‘We’ll see,’ said Rose absently, distracted by the headache she’d woken up with.
She paused, her hand on the latch of the door to the dairy and tried to remember what she was doing when Sarah spoke.
‘Do you mean “no”?’ Sarah threw back at her.
‘No, I don’t,’ she replied, as the whatever-it-was she was about to remember slipped away from her like a mouse disappearing down a hole.
She came back to the breakfast table and stood looking down at it until Hannah got to her feet. ‘We need some more milk, Ma. You sit down. I’ll get it.’
Rose did as she was bid and poured three cups of tea, aware that Sarah was still staring at her.
‘When I say, “we’ll see”, I mean just that,’ she said, making an effort to sound firm, though she didn’t feel remotely firm. ‘It depends how much light is left when you get in and whether it has snowed again. If the weather’s bad, we’ll have to leave it till tomorrow morning.’
‘And what if it’s still bad then?’ Sarah persisted.
‘We’ll meet that when we come to it.’
‘You always say that, doesn’t she, Hannah?’
Hannah paused, milk jug in hand, looked at Sarah and bent towards Rose. ‘Say when,’ she said quietly, as she added milk very slowly to her mother’s cup of tea.
‘Thanks, love,’ she nodded, thankful for the small, loving gesture. It was so like Hannah to make putting the milk in her tea a way of comforting her without antagonising Sarah further.
‘Yes, she does often say that,’ Hannah agreed, sitting down and looking across the table at her sister. She helped herself to wheaten bread and reached across for the damson jam when Sarah forgot to pass it over. ‘You can’t always plan what you’re going to do, not even in summer. Look how often we changed our plans in the holidays when it got too hot, or when we remembered it was Fair Day in Banbridge, or when Dolly threw her shoe. That’s what we’ll meet that when we come to it means. You know that perfectly well, Sarah.’
Rose drank her tea gratefully, but wasn’t sure she could face eating anything. She’d had a restless night, full of confused dreams about the past. They’d left her feeling downhearted and oppressed and her head was beginning to throb. As soon as she’d got them off to school, she’d take a headache powder and sit down for a little while till it went away.
Sarah had subsided for the moment. She was spreading damson jam liberally on another piece of wheaten bread.
‘Are you going up to see Elizabeth this morning, Ma?’ Hannah asked lightly, one eye resting on Sarah as she munched.
‘Yes, I’ll go,’ Rose said, brightening a little at the thought of Elizabeth’s company, ‘unless the snow comes on again.’
Friday was their usual day, the heavy work of the week behind them. Elizabeth had a housekeeper who did most of the cooking, but she didn’t spare herself on what needed to be done. The house was large and full of good furniture, books and family mementoes. She had plenty to do to keep it in order, for she regularly entertained visiting Friends who came to minister, or to report to their Monthly Meeting.
As she thought of walking up the hill to see Elizabeth, she remembered John’s parting words.
‘Da said to tell you it had thawed a bit and you’d be all right if you kept to the middle of the road,’ Rose began. ‘It’ll still be solid ice at the sides and you’re to take good care and walk down the hill with your bicycles … and probably up again as well. Sam says the main road should stay open with the road engines moving. They’re not bothered by the snow till it gets quite deep.’
‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ said Hannah reassuringly. ‘We’re out early today. We’ll be home well before dark.’
Rose was even more grateful when they left. She poured the last of the tea and sat by the fire to drink it and collect her thoughts, but her thoughts did not want to be collected. She went and took her headache powder, put together a basket with her sewing things and a pot of the new damson for Elizabeth and set about clearing the breakfast table.
By the time she’d done that and even before she’d washed up, she had to sit down again, she was feeling so shaky and shivery. She hoped she wasn’t starting a cold. Jamie was coming home on Saturday afternoon and would be staying over till Sunday, the first time in five weeks he’d been to see them. She missed Jamie. The last thing she wanted was to be sniffing and blowing and red in the nose when he came so seldom and had so much news to tell them.
She sat by the fire gathering her energy to wash the dishes, make up the fire and leave all tidy. An hour later, she woke with a start, amazed she should have fallen asleep. Her cheeks were burning and her head still throbbed though she was sure she’d taken the headache powder.
‘Oh dear,’ she said aloud. ‘I think I am getting the cold. I can’t go to Elizabeth like this.’
She walked to the window and looked out. Large, heavy flakes were falling from a uniformly leaden sky. Not a great day to be out at Millbrook. The sky had been clear when she’d heard John and Hugh go past in the brougham, but it certainly wasn’t turning into a very good day for inspecting the new roof. They’d probably have to content themselves checking out the looms instead.
It was two months now since they’d set going again the old looms they’d modified themselves. The production figures would tell them whether they should modify the rest, or whether the only way was to install something more up-to-date. It was a big decision, John said. An awful lot of money was involved.
She moved round the kitchen feeling slightly dazed, trying to decide what to cook for the evening. John and Hugh would have something to eat at Millbrook, but it would be a long, cold day for them, even if they did try to get back with the last of the light.
She went out into the dairy, always cool in summer, now full of an icy chill. She saw her breath stream around her as she filled a glass of water from the tap. She gulped it down and felt sweat break on her body as if she’d gone out into the blazing sun. She gripped the solid edge of the Belfast sink and closed her eyes. She was forty-three now and her monthly bleeding had stopped. Was this the change her mother had told her about, the sweats that came unexpectedly by day and by night, bad enough at their worst to soak a night gown?
She staggered back to her chair by the stove, closed her eyes and prayed that the throbbing in her head would go away.
Even as she lit the sitting-room fire after breakfast, to have it warm and welcoming when Rose arrived, it occurred to Elizabeth that the hill might prove to be too slippery. When it began to snow and showed no signs of stopping she sighed, looked around the empty room and told herself Rose was being sensible. There would be other mornings she knew, but she felt a sudden sharp disappointment for today she’d needed to talk to her.
‘Oh well, it can wait,’ she said briskly, as she carried a small, finely made writing table from under the window to sit facing the fireplace. ‘May as well make a virtue out of an extra morning,’ she added. ‘Besides, it’s a pity not to enjoy such a lovely fire.’
It was a good opportunity to catch up on overdue correspondence. It was not that she disliked writing letters, personal ones or those she wrote as secretary to one of the committees run by the Monthly Meeting, it was more a case of such tasks being left aside when more pressing ones presented themselves.
She worked steadily, grateful for the warmth of the fire on her knees, ignoring as best she could the backs of her legs which were growing colder and colder. As the morning hours passed slowly, the small pile of sealed envelopes grew. A little after noon she got to her feet, the backs of her legs now quite numb, her shoulders aching from concentration. She walked round the room briskly, replaced her table under the window and stood with her back to the fire, her skirts hitched up. When her legs thawed out she crossed to one of the tall, large-paned windows and ran her eyes over the white blanket spread out over the familiar features of the cobbled yard, the outbuildings and the garden beyond.
Snow always made ordinary things extraordinary, she reflected. The wall beyond the stable, topped last night with the ragged remnants of grass and weeds, was now smoothed to uniformity, not a trace of the fragments of campanula escaped from the flowerbeds or the ragwort blown in from the nearby meadows. The stable itself had a hefty covering, the tracks of the brougham long since covered. The snow still fell, creating a vast silence, a silence which drove humans indoors to seek warmth and shelter like the wild creatures themselves.
She turned to the fire, thrust into its orange heart a well-seasoned log from the basket on the hearth. It crackled immediately, as the tinder dry outer skin caught fire. The smell of apple wood rose towards her, overwhelming the hour and the day in a flood of unbidden memory.
The lines of apple trees marched up and down the hills of her grandfather’s farm. On the slopes of Fruit Hill near Loughgall, in the midst of the Armagh apple-country, trimmings were burnt in autumn bonfires and seasoned logs from previous years were saved for the sitting room fire at Christmas. Long ago now, but the memories of her grandfather had never faded, the old man who had made her and James so welcome throughout their childhood.
He had lost both wife and daughter. Sons he had, both near and far, well-loved enough, but of his only daughter, his beloved Hester, her children were all that was left to him. Both James Sinton and their step-mother understood his need and the Pearson farm was always a part of young James and Elizabeth’s life, a happy place, still active and busy, despite the old man’s loss.
His bristly moustache and thick mass of white hair often intimidated those who didn’t know him, children and adults alike, but his brown face and sun-burnt hands were what Elizabeth remembered most vividly. She and James had never feared him, though being much younger, Hugh had found him a formidable figure. He loved them all, cherishing them as he did the apple trees he had planted with his own hands, row upon row of them, throwing well-ordered orchards like a woven mantle across the swelling folds of the little hills on which his farmland lay.
It was at Grandfather Pearson’s bedside that Elizabeth had met Charles Cooper, a young man from Armagh, newly qualified at medical school in Edinburgh.
She sat down abruptly and stared at the blazing log. She was twenty-two when he’d been able to ask her to marry him. Now she was thirty-eight. How could it be she still felt such grief after all this time? So many wise words had been poured over her. So many kindnesses offered. But nothing had touched the hurt of the sudden, unexpected loss. Time had not healed the pain, it had only made the pain a familiar thing, like a physical pain that sometimes faded to a shadow and at other times leapt up, sharp and undiminished, like today.
He had been so unsure of himself. She’d found it hard to grasp how confident he was in his medical practice, yet so awkward with her. As the weeks of her grandfather’s last illness progressed, he grew easier, able to talk to her about his work and his hopes for the future. He’d showed her how to watch for the early signs of distress and how to treat them before they became a trouble to the old man. They were watching together when he died, slipping away so peacefully that they embraced each other, dry-eyed and thankful, before setting about what had to be done.
A year later, on a hot summer day, when she was working in the garden at Rathdrum, a message had arrived to say Charles had been taken ill in a village near Armagh where he’d gone to help the local doctor with an outbreak of cholera. Later that day, while she was making preparations to go and take care of him, a letter was delivered telling her he had died.
She had taken care of others since. First her father, then Hugh. At one time, she’d thought of training to be a doctor, now that some medical schools were open to women, but it always seemed there was some more pressing need in her immediate surroundings. Now, surely, she had left it too long. Her place was here at Rathdrum, her consolation her friends and family, her dear friend Rose and her four young people.
She picked up her morning’s letters and looked at them. An elderly aunt and uncle now living in the farm at Fruit Hill, a cousin in England, another in Canada, a brother of Charles who practised in Manchester and still wrote to her about his work and his family. A web of loving thoughts, spanning distance, weaving the past to the present. It was something to give thanks for. Something to set against the ache of loss, of what might have been if Charles had lived to be her cherished husband.
The snow had stopped and a pale sun glinted feebly on the horizon as Hannah and Sarah cycled out of Banbridge on the wet and muddy strip of main road where the road engines had passed, their back wheel strakes scraping the fresh snow and leaving it to melt as they hauled in loads of coal for the mills and carried off webs of cloth to Newry and Belfast.
Rathdrum Hill was a different matter. Stopping at the junction of their own road with the main road, Hannah looked at the deep, unmarked surface dubiously.
‘I think we’ll have to leave our bicycles at MacMurrays,’ she said, testing the depth with her front wheel.
‘We can carry them,’ said Sarah. ‘They’re not heavy.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Hannah agreed.
If you wanted to get anywhere with Sarah it was best to begin by agreeing with her.
‘They’re not heavy at all, but if we slipped when we’re carrying them we could hurt ourselves quite badly. If we have our hands free, we might be able to save ourselves. Ma would be so upset if one of us had a bad fall, don’t you think?’
Sarah nodded briskly and Hannah breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Then we’ll just have to be extra careful as far as MacMurray’s,’ she said briskly, lifting her bicycle clear of the snow and stepping cautiously towards the nearby farm entrance.
The MacMurray’s had cleared their yard and one of their barns stood wide open. They parked the bicycles and greeted Michael MacMurray who was pitching fodder into the byre.
‘I expect the brougham will be back soon,’ he said, walking with them across the yard. ‘Don’t think Mr Sinton an’ yer Da could do any better on the hill than you. I’ve a space cleared ready for them.’
The sun had disappeared behind the trees that sheltered the MacMurray’s farm from the westerly winds and the light was beginning to fade as they tackled the hill. The snow lay much deeper than usual and Hannah soon began to tire.
‘I shall be glad to get home,’ she said breathlessly, as she stopped again to rest.
‘I’ll make you some toast,’ Sarah replied quickly, turning round and tramping back to encourage her sister with a warm smile. ‘There’s baker’s bread from yesterday. And damson jam,’ she added, rolling her eyes.
Hannah laughed and moved forward again, using the tracks Sarah had made.
‘Here, give me your hand,’ said Sarah, grabbing at her. ‘I’ll give you a tow up. It’s not very far now.’
Despite Sarah’s vigorous efforts, Hannah was even more breathless by the time they got to the garden gate. Her creamy skin looked paler than usual, while Sarah was bright-eyed, her cheeks rosy from exertion. She pushed open the gate as far as it would go against the snow and left Hannah to close it as she clumped down the path to the front door. She threw it open and stopped dead. The kitchen was empty, dark and cold.
‘What’s wrong, Sarah?’ Hannah asked sharply, as she caught up with her. She peered past her and took in the empty room. ‘Where’s Ma?’
‘She’s not here. And the fire’s out,’ Sarah replied hastily, a note of alarm in her voice.
‘Perhaps she’s still up with Elizabeth,’ said Hannah soothingly.
‘But she knows we’re early today,’ Sarah protested. ‘Anyway we’re not early any more. It must be way after four by now,’ she went on, stepping over to the stove to peer up at the clock on the mantelpiece, its face just visible in the pale light reflected from the snow.
Hannah followed her gaze and registered sooner than she did that the clock had stopped. A bad sign, for she knew her mother wound it regularly every morning after they went to school. She scanned the room desperately for some explanation.
There was no note on the table, but in the dim light she recognised a familiar shape. Her mother’s basket was still sitting there, the corner of her well-wrapped sewing poking out. She took a deep breath and stopped herself from hurrying upstairs.
‘She had a bit of a headache this morning. Maybe she’s having a lie down,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ll go up and have a look while you light the lamps, Sarah.’
But Sarah wasn’t listening, she was flying upstairs and along the short landing to the largest bedroom. Hannah followed hastily and they arrived at the open door together.
Rose lay face down on the bedside rug, her everyday boots lying beside her. The bedspread had been thrown back and the covers opened, but she’d not succeeded in getting into bed. She’d caught at the bedspread as she fell and it was twisted round her slim body like a winding sheet.
It was almost completely dark by the time Hannah and Sarah managed to take off Rose’s dress and get her into bed. Her body was stone cold and only her hoarse breathing convinced them she was alive, for her eyes were shut and she seemed unaware of being moved.
‘Go and boil water on the gas, Sarah, and fill the stone jars while I get more blankets,’ Hannah said, the pallor of Rose’s face reducing her voice to a whisper.
‘Can I not go for the doctor?’ Sarah whispered back.
‘No,’ Hannah said firmly, desperately looking round for a reason to stop Sarah racing off into the night. ‘I need you to help me. We must get her warm again. Go on, get the kettle on, quickly.’
Hannah paused long enough to light the gas lamp before she brought extra blankets from the chest in Jamie’s room. She covered the still figure and tucked them well in at her sides, then put her warm hands against her mother’s face. It felt colder than snow.
At the foot of the hill, John and Hugh manoeuvred the young mare out of the shafts of the brougham and noted the two bicycles parked against the wall of the barn.
‘I see the girls did the sensible thing,’ said John easily, as Michael MacMurray came up to join them.
‘Aye, the hill’s as bad as I’ve known it, but they’re safe home maybe an hour ago,’
‘A good night to be indoors,’ said Hugh agreeably, as Michael walked with them across the well-swept yard to the snowy road beyond.
‘Da, Da.’
John turned away to stare up the hill. Against the smooth dim surface a small figure raced headlong toward him, tripping and recovering itself by turns.
‘Sarah, what are ye doin’ out? What’s wrong at all?’
‘Ma’s sick. She was lying on the floor,’ she gasped, leaning against the gate for support. ‘We have to get the doctor.’
John stared at her, his eyes large in the light of Michael’s lantern. Distress written all over her, her chest heaving, her cape was covered in snow where she’d fallen in her haste to get help once Hannah let her go.
‘It’ll be quicker to ride the mare,’ Hugh said. ‘Can you lend me a saddle, Michael, and get me up on her?’ he said urgently. ‘You go up home, John. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
He urged John away with a gesture as Michael threw a saddle over the mare’s back and bent to tighten the girths.
Sarah followed John upstairs and saw him look at her mother’s inert figure. When she heard him speak to Hannah, his voice breaking with distress, she slipped downstairs and out into the night. Even if the doctor was in his dispensary and even if he came on his horse right away, she didn’t think he’d be much use. It was fully dark now and the wind was getting up, blowing fallen snow from the hedgerows in her face. It didn’t matter about the snow. It didn’t matter how many times she fell over, she would just keep going till she got there. The only person who might be any good was Elizabeth and she must fetch her.