‘Here y’ar, Miss. Ye’ve got a lovely day for your outin’.’
The guard on the Armagh train lifted down Sarah’s bicycle and glanced from her to the young man waiting at the foot of the lane. He winked at her as he waved his flag and blew his whistle.
‘He’s a good-lookin’ fella,’ he said, nodding down at her when he’d climbed back up again into his van.
‘He is indeed,’ she agreed, beaming at him. ‘Pity he’s my brother.’
‘Aye, but sure there’s one around somewhere just waitin’ for you,’ he said laughing, as the train creaked, lurched and moved forward.
She waved to him gaily and wheeled her bicycle along the platform to where Sam stood watching, a broad smile on his face.
‘Was the guard givin’ you the eye?’ he said, teasing her.
‘No, the poor man’s not quite right in his head,’ she said, her face perfectly straight. ‘He said you were good-looking.’
Sam laughed and reached out for the shopping bag she was carrying.
‘What’s this?’
‘Food,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Ma must think they starve you in Richhill, though I see no signs of it myself,’ she went on, looking him up and down. ‘There’s sandwiches and stuff for today and a cake for next week,’ she explained, as he secured the contents in his saddlebag.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Everywhere,’ she said happily. ‘I’ve brought the camera,’ she went on. ‘Somewhere high with a view. And then, after lunch, I want to go and visit Thomas Scott. I’ve been wanting to do it for years, but we mustn’t arrive at lunch time. Anyway, this light might not hold, so let’s find a hill first. I haven’t done anything yet about landscape.’
Sam laughed to himself as he pedalled off.
‘I’ll find you a hill all right,’ he threw back over his shoulder. ‘An’ you won’t go up it on a bicycle.’
A few minutes later she saw what he meant. Having crossed the railway, the lane ran uphill and soon became so steep they had to get off and push. Sam kept up a vigorous pace and she was soon out of breath.
‘Are you puffed?’ he asked, a twinkle in his eye, as he paused by a field gate and lowered his bicycle against the hedge.
‘No, I’m not. You have longer legs than I have,’ she retorted, gasping, as she took out the camera and handed it to him, so she could prop her own bicycle up against his. ‘Why have we stopped here?’ she asked, wiping her damp forehead with a bare arm.
‘You said you wanted a hill,’ he said easily, as he opened the field gate and closed it carefully behind them.
Sam nodded towards a grey stone obelisk topping the field that sloped steeply upwards from where they stood.
As they climbed the grass became progressively shorter. By the time they stood at the foot of the tall stone finger, it had disappeared altogether, leaving the earth surrounding it bare and tramped. They leant against the rough cut stone and looked about them.
‘There’s Armagh,’ said Sam, turning his back on the slope. ‘Ye can see the cathedrals plain. An’ the Observatory with the green domes. D’you remember Armagh from when you were wee?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I remember the Library on the Mall,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘Ma and I used to sit under the trees outside after we’d collected the books. It was an awfully long walk home.’
‘Aye, I suppose it was. Sure you were only six when we left Armagh.’
‘And you were only nine,’ she said, mimicking his dismissive tone. ‘What do you remember best?’
‘The engine sheds at Armagh Station.’
‘I don’t know why I bothered to ask,’ she said, shaking her head as she drew her camera from its case and opened its front.
Sam settled himself on a nearby patch of grass and lay looking out over the rich green landscape. Last Saturday he’d had to drive to Newry so he’d not been able to go home as usual. On Sunday he’d come up here with some of the lads from work and a crowd of girls. It had taken a while, but eventually he’d got Martha Loney to himself. He knew her well enough by now, meeting her every morning and evening going to and from his work, but he’d never yet talked to her.
‘Martha, will you come for a walk one evening next week?’ he said, guessing correctly there was no use being shy with the same girl.
‘What would I do that for?’ she came back at him.
‘Ach, sure exercise is good for you,’ he said slowly. ‘You can’t always be walkin’ out with that horse of your Da’s.’
She’d laughed and said she’d think about it. She told him she was saving up to go to Canada. She had an uncle there with a big job and a big house. His wife needed help. She’d no notion of being a skivvy, she said, but it would do for a start. If you paid your own fare you could go where you like, but you needed an address so as to get your papers.
‘Sa-am, Sa-aam.’
He turned round and saw his sister gazing at a short concrete pillar a few yards from the obelisk. He smiled, got up and went over to her.
‘Sam, give me a leg up, will you?’
‘There’s not much room with that pointy thing sticking out of it,’ he said, looking at the pillar doubtfully. ‘What is it anyway?’
‘It’s a meridian of Armagh Observatory,’ she answered absently. ‘If I stand on it, it will give me a better angle. You didn’t tell me you could see Lough Neagh from here,’ she said, as he put his hands round her waist and swung her up to perch precariously on the narrow surface.
‘Can you?’ he asked, not recollecting anything at all about Lough Neagh from the time he’d spent sitting on the grass with Martha.
He hung on to the waistband of her skirt in case she’d fall off. He’d never be able to face his mother if she hurt herself out with him.
‘Fine, great,’ she said, handing him the camera and jumping down beside him. ‘Where will we go to eat our sandwiches?’
‘We could head for Annacramp and find a nice spot by the roadside.’
‘Great, let’s go. I’m starving. Must be the fresh air up here,’ she said, as she took her camera back, closed it up and tramped off ahead of him.
‘Ma was right,’ she declared, as she gathered up the empty brown paper bags that had held their lunch. ‘She said we’d probably find an appetite if we were cycling.’
She folded them up, put them back in the shopping bag and brushed a few crumbs from her skirt.
‘Do you miss home, Sam?’
‘I might of a Sunday if I diden go over home, but durin’ the week I’m too busy to think long,’ he said directly, as he polished off the last of the sandwiches. ‘We’re powerful busy with furniture goin’ out and stuff for the jam factory comin’ in, forby the linen comin’ and goin’. There’s plenty o’ work to keep us goin’ till we start on the motor carriages.’
‘Hugh said he was hoping to have his in a month or two,’ she replied. ‘He’s had it ordered for ages.’
‘Aye, I remember him sayin’ he’d written for it when we got the trap, but they’re desperate slow to make. It’s not the engines, it’s the bodywork. It’s easy enough to build an engine and put it on a chassis, but what do ye do about the driver and the passengers? You need coach builders, but they haven’t got the right equipment,’ he went on, shaking his head. ‘They’re havin’ to make the machinery for the bodywork while turnin’ out the motor itself. There’s one in Armagh. I saw it in the paper.’
‘So maybe Hugh’s will turn up soon.’
‘I’d say it wou’d. He got his name down brave an’ early. I was askin’ Da did he want one, now he’s a Director, but he didn’t seem too keen.’
‘Didn’t he? Why do you think that is?’
Sam laughed.
‘Ach, Da’s kinda cautious. I reckon he’ll wait t’see how Hugh’s goes and how much work they’ll have to do to get it to climb our hill. I think Da feels Dolly might be more reliable for a while,’ he added, as they got to their feet, leaving two flat patches in the long grass of the hedge bank.
Sam pointed out Granny Sarah’s house at Annacramp which he remembered, but Sarah didn’t, then they cycled on till they came to the main road from Armagh to Loughgall. Together, they braked and stopped. There was no vehicle of any kind to be seen, neither motor vehicle nor farm cart, not even a straying cow or chicken. What had stopped them was a familiar sound. Borne on the gentle breeze came the rhythmic dance of a hammer on the anvil.
‘I remember that,’ said Sarah abruptly. ‘And I remember Da and Thomas rimming the cartwheels with the fire in a circle.’
‘Aye,’ Sam nodded, as they set off up the hill. ‘At least we know he’s at home.’
They wheeled their bicycles carefully up the rutted lane, avoiding the stray horseshoe nails and bits of metal filings, and parked them against the low bank beyond the shoeing shed.
‘Hallo, Thomas,’ said Sarah quietly, as the hammering stopped and the figure at the anvil caught sight of her in the doorway.
He put down the hammer and came forward to meet her, his eyes gleaming white against the dark cave of the forge.
‘You’ve maybe forgotten me, Thomas,’ she said, beaming at him.
‘Ach, how wou’d I an’ you the image of your mother?’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘Wee Sarah, an’ you a lady grown.’
He laughed and glanced up at Sam, who had hung back, overcome with a sudden shyness.
‘Hallo, Thomas,’ Sam said, shooting out his hand.
‘Sam! Ach dear, your mother said you’d got awful like your Da. You’d make a good smith with those shoulders of yours, but I hear it’s all engines with you, an’ you’re not that far away now. Over beyond Richhill I heer tell.’
From the deep shadow beyond the hearth, a young man appeared and leant against the doorway. Not as tall as Thomas, but with the same muscular arms and grimy, soot streaked face, young Robert Scott glanced shyly at Sarah and offered his hand to Sam.
‘You’d hardly remember our Robert, Sarah, and you only a wee thing when you moved to Banbridge,’ said Thomas drawing Robert into the conversation, as he waved them all over to the bench beneath the pear tree where once they’d sat waiting for Sinton’s dray.
‘Now, tell us all your news and then we’ll away up and make a pot of tea. Selina is away over to Annie an’ she’ll be right sorry she missed you, but now you’re so close, Sam, sure ye’ll come again won’t you?’
The talk was lively and even young Robert, so shy to begin with, began to offer his own small memories of the Hamiltons at Salter’s Grange. What he remembered best, he said, was Mrs Hamilton singing at her work and speaking Irish to the two girls from Donegal who worked at Robinsons.
‘Ach it must be ten years since ye left us?’ declared Thomas, with a long glance down the lane as if he were seeing some event in the past. ‘But at least you were still here to leave,’ he said, turning towards his son. ‘Sarah and Sam were on that excursion train with their mother and James and Hannah. We tried to keep it from you, for you were only a year older than Sarah, but sure there was dozens killed and hundreds wounded,’ he explained. ‘Their mother always said it was James who saved them. He and Sam were great men for engines, even then, but James understood air brakes forby, and when he heard them go, he knew the train would run back. An’ it did. But he told his mother and she had them out double quick, aye, an’ all the others in the carriage, as well, James Sinton and his family and a couple of girls in service with their sweethearts.’
‘Do ye mind it at all the pair of you?’ he said, his eyes wide, as he looked them full in the face.
‘I remember goin’ to look at the engine and thinkin’ it was not near big enough to pull the train,’ said Sam thoughtfully.
‘I only remember the long walk home,’ said Sarah. ‘We had to go across fields and they were muddy in places. And I remember stopping at the pump and James splashing us with water, he was so keen to get us a drink. It was so hot.’
‘Aye it was,’ Thomas agreed, wondering how it was they were talking about something so sad on this lovely summer day.
‘Will you drink a cup of tea?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Selina has us well taught how to make tea for visitors, hasn’t she, Robert?’
‘Aye, she has,’ replied Robert ruefully. ‘She came home one day and found us with no saucers and the cake on the lid o’ the tin and we got told off, the pair of us,’ he said, with a smile that even included Sarah.
‘Tea would be lovely,’ said Sarah warmly, ‘but there are two things I’d like to do first. I’d like to go and look at our old home and then I’d like to take some pictures of the two of you working in the forge. Is it safe to go into the house, do you think?’
‘Ach yes. It’s safe enough,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Just don’t stand under where the thatch is bulging. It’ll give way one of these days, but it’s still dry. I keep some wood and iron in there, but the door’s not locked. The weeds has grown up something powerful the last two weeks. Let Sam go first, Sarah, or you’ll spoil your nice clothes.’
Sam pushed the door open and stooped under the lintel. Sarah followed close behind and they stood together in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the dusty hearth, the iron crane still in its place. The windows were partly covered with ivy. Pale, greenish light filtered through the fluttering leaves and made dappled patterns on the floor.
Sarah turned towards the bedroom, pushed open the door and walked across to one of the two small wooden cubicles, the bedroom she’d shared with Hannah. Her walking boots echoed on the bare boards.
‘Sam, I can’t believe it. It’s so small,’ she said, whispering. ‘Six people in this room. How on earth did we manage?’
‘Aye. It’s a good thing we were all so wee then.’
‘Yes, but lots of people live in houses smaller than this. And there were only four of us. Some families have six, or seven, or even more. Some of the spinners and weavers at the mills have eight, or nine, of a family in houses no bigger than this,’ she said, her voice rising.
She looked around her for several minutes, then pulling the door shut behind her, she made her way round a pile of wood, crossed the kitchen and pushed open the door of the wash house. Still hanging from its nail on the wall, was the calendar for 1889, marked off with a pencil all through the month of July down to the day of their departure. The last reminder of the life that had once flourished in this small cottage.
Sam moved past her as she stood staring at the crossed off squares. She turned to watch him go, tramping cautiously between the abandoned spade rigs where their father had grown potatoes and vegetables for the family. She watched him head for the broad outer wall of the garden and suddenly remembered what he was looking for. He stopped, took out his knife and bent down. A few moments later, he came back into the house and handed her a long stem covered with dozens of tiny pink roses.
‘You won’t remember I’m sure, but we used to play weddings. Hannah was the bride and one of the wee Wylies cut her a bouquet of those roses. And then we took them to the station, because they were goin’ to emigrate. I can’t remember the name of the wee lassie. I think she died of TB,’ he said slowly.
‘Yes, she did. And her mother was killed in the rail disaster. It was Thomas found her body. Ma told me about it once.’
They fell silent and walked back into the kitchen side-by-side.
‘Nice bit of iron work,’ Sam said, swinging the crane out over the empty hearth and looking up at the dark crust of soot inside the chimney.
‘Of course it is. Da made it,’ she replied sharply.
He glanced at her and saw she was upset. He sighed to himself. You could never tell what was going to upset Sarah. He moved the crane carefully back against the chimney stack till it rested exactly where it had been for the last ten years and stood waiting till she made a move.
Sarah was so preoccupied with her thoughts on her homeward journey she almost forgot to collect her bicycle from the guard when she changed trains at Portadown. Sitting by the window of the Banbridge train, she watched the familiar countryside flow past, the evening light casting long shadows, summer flowers picked out in pools of sunlight, couples walking out, enjoying the first real warmth of summer.
Sam had asked her to go over to Richhill soon after he got his new job in the autumn of ’97 and they’d spoken of going to visit Thomas many times, but she’d never quite got round to it. Almost two years later, she asked herself why she’d left it so long.
She could think of no reason that satisfied her, but she was sure the delay had made the day even more important. This month was the tenth anniversary of the disaster. It was now ten years since they’d moved to Ballydown. She’d been six, a child with a beloved companion under her arm. Next week, at the Annual Celebration she would be sixteen. Six to sixteen. Could any decade in one’s life bring so much change?
The thoughts and images swirled in her mind like the smoke and steam blown back from the engine as it puffed southwards. She saw Thomas’s face, bent over a piece of metal on the blackened workbench at the back of the forge where dancing sunlight gleamed through the dusty windows. A strong, kind face, marked by sorrow and joy, the scar of his injury faded, the comfort of Selina a palpable presence after the hard, loveless years with the unlamented Mary-Anne and the more recent loss of little Sophie, which none of them could bring themselves to mention.
How vulnerable men were, she thought, the ones who were supposed to be so strong and so capable. They were the ones who went out to work, who ran the business of the world, sat in Parliament, governed the country. Good men like her father and Thomas, James Sinton and Richard Stewart. But where would they be without the women beside them, keeping up comfort and hope against all the hurt of the world?
Her mother had spoken often enough of Granny Sarah and the house at Annacramp. She’d explained why they’d had to leave. But only today, standing in that derelict house, had she begun to guess what it must have cost to make a life there after the loss that had come upon them.
She leant her head back on the lumpy upholstery of the carriage and studied the wide, faded prints of Irish beauty spots above the empty seats opposite. The Lakes of Killarney. The Glens of Antrim. The Giant’s Causeway. She was tired and her mind was racing. She knew what her mother would say; ‘Let it settle, Sarah. Give it time.’
She stepped down on to the platform, collected her bicycle, put the bag with her camera carefully into the front basket and freewheeled out of the station. The main road was crowded, as it always was on a Saturday evening. She turned down the hill and pedalled past the Crozier Monument. Couples were meeting below it, or waiting beside the polar bears who’d seen his ship trapped in the ice. They greeted each other, strolling off along the pavement outside the handsome house where Crozier himself had once lived, or turned back up the hill to a dance. Poor man, despite his monument, his heroic effort had no part in the thoughts of the Saturday night pleasure seekers. What he had achieved was soon forgotten. Like the efforts of so many good men and women with no monument except a derelict house or a heap of tumbled stones.
The sun had disappeared behind the trees as she followed the main road home, but it re-emerged as she wheeled her bicycle up the hill. She was tired now, and so aware of being alone. Not anxious, or afraid, in this familiar place on such a lovely evening, but alone. Very much alone. A figure surrounded by space.
She paused to unlatch the garden gate and wondered if in the end the problem was the same for women as it was for men. They too could only manage their very best if they had someone to help them bear whatever life asked of them. Like Ma and Da at Salter’s Grange.
Sunday promised to be as bright and sunny as Saturday had been. The front door was propped open at breakfast time and throughout the morning sunlight spilt into the kitchen as Sarah and Rose made preparations for midday dinner.
‘Four plates, Ma?’ Sarah asked, as she put them on the rack above the stove to warm. ‘Is Hugh comin’ down?’
‘Yes. He gave Mrs Lappin the weekend to go and see her sister. I only found out yesterday. He won’t have had a hot meal since Friday night,’ she said, smiling, as she dropped down into the armchair for a rest.
‘Ma, Thomas said yesterday that “you’d saved his life more than the once.” What did he mean?’
Rose looked thoughtful. She brushed some crumbs from the skirt of her second best dress and glanced across at her daughter.
‘Well, he probably didn’t mean it literally,’ she began. ‘He’s always insisted I saved his life when George Robinson and I took him to the hospital after his accident. But if he says I saved him more than once, he must be thinking of some of his bad times when your Da and I maybe helped him to keep his spirits up,’ she said slowly.
‘But he said you, Ma. I know he thinks the world of Da and it’s so obvious they got on well, but it’s you who saved his life. I think I know what he means, but I’m not sure.’
‘I’m not sure either, Sarah. Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes. I do. I’m trying to work something out for myself and I can’t get the bits to fit,’ she admitted.
‘All right then,’ her mother said, nodding and taking a deep breath. ‘Sometimes one loses hope. It happens to everyone sooner or later. You lose someone you love, a home, a job, a dream you had, your well-being, your health. When that happens, you need someone to encourage you. Not directly, perhaps. Sometimes it can happen just because someone is there, a friendly presence. Maybe what Thomas means is that when life was hard on him, somehow I cheered him.’
‘Young Robert says what he remembers is you singing. And speaking Irish to the girls from Robinsons. And laughing.’
Rose smiled.
‘We can’t always tell what we mean for others, Sarah. Poor little Robert had a hard time of it with his mother. Sometimes I wept when I heard her shouting at him for some wee thing any child might do. I hope maybe he’s forgotten for he was very young. Mary-Anne was very hard on them. But I know Selina loves them as if they were her own.’
‘And she lost her own little Sophie?’
‘She did,’ said Rose slowly. ‘Like I nearly lost you.’
‘Ma! You never told me.’
‘You never asked,’ Rose replied, laughing. ‘There’s so much to talk about in the present, the past sometimes gets forgotten. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s not.’
‘Thomas said it was Jamie who told you we had to get out of the train,’ Sarah went on, her mind following its own logic.
‘Yes, it was. Didn’t you know that?’
‘Maybe I did.’
Sarah looked down at her hands and studied the deeply etched lines as if she were expecting to find an answer to her question there.
‘Ma, it was so strange standing in that old house yesterday, trying to imagine what life was like for all of us. Were we very poor?’
‘It depends what you call poor. We never starved, though we were very short of money. The worst time was when the Orangemen boycotted the forge because Thomas and Da wouldn’t join the lodge. We ended up with me earning more from sewing than Da earned in a long week. That’s when he had to take the job in the mill. You know about that.’
‘Yes,’ she replied, sharply. ‘I’ve put him over it many times. I’m so very grateful he got out, but I just can’t forget about all those who are still in there. Getting lung diseases. Becoming deaf. Dying in what is supposed to be the prime of life. The figures are grim.’
She fidgeted restlessly, the light suddenly gone out of her eyes.
‘At least Hugh agrees with me,’ she said at last.
Rose looked across at the slim figure of her youngest daughter, the soft curls framing her creamy skin, her dark eyes clouded and sad. She could not tell what was going on in her mind. So often she could only sense a struggle, an effort to resolve something she felt would have been beyond her, even if Sarah had been able to put it into words.
‘Ma, when we came back from Ashley Park, two years ago, I was absolutely horrible, wasn’t I?’
Rose had to laugh.
‘You were very unhappy. And lonely. I know you missed Hannah badly,’ she said gently.
‘And Jamie,’ she added abruptly.
‘Jamie? Did you really miss Jamie?’
She blushed slightly and looked away.
‘No. I was glad he was gone. I was so angry with him I thought I hated him. But I felt guilty because you and Da were so sad.’
‘Oh, Sarah dear, I am so sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’
‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry,’ said Rose warmly. ‘You had quite enough to bear without feeling guilty about Jamie. It wasn’t your fault. Did you think it was?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Oh dear, Elizabeth did say that might be part of the problem. I wish I’d paid more attention to her at the time,’ she confessed. ‘But it’s easy to be wise after the event. I thought it was mostly that you wanted your own life and that just wasn’t possible for a girl of fourteen. Not for the kind of things I think you’ll want to do.’
‘What do you think I want to do, Ma?’
‘I think you want to make changes,’ she replied promptly. ‘You see things you think aren’t right. You’re concerned about people being poor and overworked and underfed. You’ll want to find a way to make life better for people. I’ve no idea how you’ll do it, but I’m sure you’ll try.’
‘I haven’t any idea either.’
‘Don’t let that worry you,’ she said strongly. ‘You’re sixteen, not twenty-six or thirty-six. You’ve got plenty of time,’ she added as she bent down to make sure the roast was sizzling merrily.
‘Ma, before we do the next bit, I want to say sorry,’ Sarah said, as Rose got to her feet.
‘But sorry what for?’ Rose asked, sitting down again.
‘I gave you and Da a really bad time over school,’ she said sadly. ‘I promise I’ll not say another word about it. It’s only another year now, but I promise I’ll make the best of it and not moan, and try to get a really good certificate,’ she declared, her eyes lighting up for the first time. ‘I can at least do that, even if I can do nothing about Jamie. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t dwell on it, love. Maybe Jamie will come back to us. If he does, we give thanks. If he doesn’t, we give thanks he’s alive and well and can make his own decisions. Don’t waste any time on regrets. You have far too much else to do. And now we must make a move, or there’ll be no lunch for two hungry men.’