Emily was chopping shallots at the kitchen table when she heard the knock at the front door. For a moment, she was so surprised to hear such an unfamiliar sound, she didn’t even begin to worry what it might mean. These days, every woman dreaded the knock at the door that might bring the telegram or the formal letter to say that a husband or a son was missing. Emily herself had thought often enough of such an event in the dark hours of the night when she woke and couldn’t get back to sleep, but it never occurred to her as she pulled off her apron that the caller could be anyone other than someone who didn’t know her well enough to come round to the kitchen door.
As she rinsed her hands hastily under the tap, she thought it might be a collector for the Red Cross or one of the other local groups raising funds to support the forces or the prisoners of war.
She hurried along the hall and opened the heavy door. At that moment, her heart did leap to her mouth for there on the doorstep stood a tall, heavily-built man wearing the dark green uniform of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. She’d never laid eyes on him before and didn’t much like the way he was studying the outside of the house.
Before she’d time to speak, he’d taken out his notebook, confirmed she was Missus Hamilton and said he wanted to ask her some questions.
Only as she led him into the sitting-room and sat down herself on one side of the empty, well-swept hearth did she realise she should have asked for his identification. There wasn’t much point now she’d let him in. If he wasn’t who he appeared to be, she’d just have to keep her wits about her.
‘Have there been any strangers about the place that you are aware of, ma’am?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Do you mean round the actual house here?’ Emily responded, puzzled at his question
‘Roun’ the house or anywhere about this area up here.’
‘No, I can’t say I’ve seen anyone.’
‘So you know nothing about a lorry parked on the hill last night over beyond your gates,’ he came back sharply.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Emily, relieved that his business couldn’t possibly be bad news about any member of her family.
‘So what can you tell us about that?’
The tone was abrupt and instead of looking at her as he spoke his eyes moved round the room as if he were making an inventory of all the furniture and furnishings.
‘The lorry was driven by my husband’s cousin. He called to see us.’
‘A social call, that would be?’
‘Yes, it was a social call and no, he was not using petrol improperly. We were on his route home from a delivery.’
‘And this delivery was to …?’
‘If you want to know I can give you the name of his employers.’
‘So you are not willing to tell me where this person was before coming to park on the hill.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Emily crossly. ‘I’ve told you who it was and why he was here.’
Emily couldn’t remember what she’d read about never giving the name of a military installations, but even if she could, she’d keep it to herself, for she’d taken an instant dislike to this man.
‘He’s employed by Fruitfield Jams, outside Richhill. He is one of their most senior men and entirely reliable.’
‘His name?’
‘Sam Hamilton.’
He wrote down the details laboriously, leaning on his knee, his shoulder half-turned from her like a child writing a message it didn’t want anyone to see.
‘And what about your other visitor?’
For a moment, Emily couldn’t think what he was talking about. They had no visitors these days. Her older sister, living in Enniskilen, hadn’t been to stay since before the war, Sarah and Hannah were over in England and James, who used to come to see them regularly, was probably as short of petrol as everyone else, even if he was in the Government.
She sat looking at him, about to reply. He had the sort of red face that looked as if he suffered from high-blood pressure or was permanently angry, or both.
‘You were seen, Mrs Hamilton, last night walking up the hill with a stranger. We are reliably informed he had a southern accent. Perhaps the gentleman was another cousin of your husband’s making a social visit,’ he suggested, the sarcasm in his voice only thinly veiled.
Emily was so taken aback, she said nothing.
A part of her mind was trying to figure out her exact relationship to Brendan. If Sarah and Brendan were cousins and Alex and Sarah were cousins, did that mean Alex and Brendan were cousins? It was like one of those puzzles you got in the Brainteasers section of the women’s magazines. And it didn’t matter whether he was or not. It was still none of this wretched man’s business.
‘The gentleman you are referring to was not actually a visitor. He is an old friend who needed a bed for the night after his car was damaged by an Army vehicle and the hotel was unable to put him up.’
‘Which regiment?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And whereabouts did this so-called accident take place?’ he went on without looking up from his notebook as he continued to write.
‘Somewhere near Banbridge.’
‘And what was this friend’s business in the Banbridge area?’ he persisted, scribbling furiously.
Suddenly and without warning, Emily lost her temper. Was it not bad enough that the war made life difficult day and daily, even apart from the continual anxiety and regular bad news, but now, because of it, this horrible man could come into her home, ask her questions and imply she wasn’t telling him the truth. It was just too much.
She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again as she heard footsteps on the stairs. Her visitor heard them too.
‘There is someone else in the house?’ he asked accusingly.
‘Yes. My son is here.’
‘And why’s he not at school or at work?’
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ she replied, standing up and striding across to the sitting room door, not trusting herself to say one word more.
Still in pyjamas, his fair hair tousled from sleep, looking much less than his almost eighteen years, Johnny glanced at his mother’s face and sized up the situation in a moment.
‘What seems to be the officer’s line of enquiry, Mother?’
‘He hasn’t told me what he wants,’ she began steadily, looking Johnny full in the face. ‘He has merely asked a great many questions, some of which I consider quite unnecessary,’ she added sharply.
‘You don’t decide what is necessary ma’am. I do that,’ said the officer, standing up and drawing himself to his full height.
‘May I see your identification, please?’
Emily couldn’t believe her ears. Her son, given to communicating in short, rapid bursts in a mixture of the local dialect and the argot of gangster movies, had walked across the room and was now holding out his hand for the warrant card with a look on his face she had never seen before. Not exactly arrogant, but determined and certainly self-possessed.
The card was produced, whereupon Johnny walked over to the window and took his time to examine it closely in the bright light.
‘Good,’ he said briskly, thrusting it back at the waiting officer. ‘That seems to be in order. Now, if you’ll be so good as to tell us exactly what you are investigating and in what particular way we can help you, we will give you our full attention. Won’t we, mother?’
‘You really would have been proud of him, Alex,’ Emily said, as she brought a tray of tea into the sitting-room after their late supper.
‘I keep telling you there’s more to Johnny than he cares to let on,’ said Alex slowly, sinking back wearily into his comfortable fireside chair and closing his eyes for a brief moment.
‘Are you very tired tonight,’ she asked quietly, knowing how much he hated her making what he called a fuss over him.
‘No, no worse than usual,’ he replied honestly. ‘But I want to hear the end of your story.’
‘Well, there’s not a lot more to tell,’ she said. ‘Once Johnny appeared, your man sang a different tune, as the saying is. It seems some sticks of gelignite were stolen from the quarry and it must have been last night because the security man checks them last thing in the evening and then again in the morning. It was perfectly reasonable for him to be making enquiries. What was so annoying was the distrust. As if we’d be helping someone to come and do a thing like that,’ she said angrily. ‘Why on earth didn’t they send a man from our local force who knows everyone round here?’
‘I think it’s policy not to use local men for something like this,’ he said, leaning forward and taking his tea from the tray. ‘Do you not remember Sam telling us about when his two eldest sons joined up? They were posted all over the place. Anywhere but Richhill. They’re both sergeants now, but I think one is in charge of Moy and the other is down near Larne.’
‘Johnny said to me afterwards that he thought your man would do well in the S. S.’
Alex smiled ruefully.
‘You get his sort everywhere, love. They’re not very bright, but they’ve been in the job a long time and finally got promotion. A wee bit of authority and it goes to their head. Men like that will always boss women if they get the chance. There are plenty like him in the mills.’
‘I didn’t handle it well and I know it was because I had a bad moment when I saw the uniform. But I won’t be so slow if it were ever to happen again,’ she went on firmly. ‘As Johnny pointed out, in this country one is supposed to be innocent until proved guilty, but your man was assuming guilt in everything he was asking. Until Johnny turned up, that was.’
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Emily laughed.
‘What’s the joke?’ demanded Alex.
‘I’ve just remembered, love. He called me ‘Mother’. I didn’t notice at the time, I was so busy watching your man’s face when he saw he’d got a different customer to deal with.’
Alex grinned and took several large mouthfuls from his tea.
‘What did you say about Brendan?’ he enquired, as he emptied his cup.
‘Not a lot. But we did not mention maps,’ she said, as she picked up the teapot and came over to him. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’d tell a lie to a policeman.’
‘But then, Emily, you hadn’t had the experience of policemen you’ve just had. There’s good and bad in every group. You and young Jane tend to see the best in people. Women often do. But maybe we all have to be careful these days.’
He paused and shook his head, aware she was watching him closely.
‘No, I don’t just mean like the posters, ‘Careless talk costs lives’, and so on. That’s only good sense, and I suppose we do all need to be reminded of it … what I mean … well, you can’t always tell … even people you trust …’
‘Alex, what’s wrong?’ she asked quickly, reading the look on his face. ‘Was there trouble again at Millbrook with the engine men?’
‘No, it wasn’t Millbrook, it was Ballievy. There was a explosion sometime during the night. No fire, thank goodness, and the two watchmen safe enough at the opposite ends of the building, but the main countershaft was badly damaged.’
‘Oh Alex,’ she said, knowing now why he’d looked so exhausted when he arrived home. ‘Why didn’t they send up for you? When did you find out?’
‘There was a message waiting for me at Millbrook when I got there, but there was no point sending up here for me. I couldn’t touch anything till the police had been. Anyway, the senior men knew there was nothing we could do ourselves, so there was no point pulling me back from Millbrook or Seapatrick when I’d be coming to Ballievy anyway.’
‘So what’ll happen now?’
‘Well, I’ve spoken to Mackie’s in Belfast. They’re the only people that can help, but with their quotas for armaments, our machinery wouldn’t be high priority with them these days.’
‘But you’re on war work too,’ Emily protested. ‘What about the tent duck? You can’t have fighting men with no shelter in the desert or the jungle.’
‘Priorities and paperwork, Emily,’ he said wearily. ‘Some Civil Servant somewhere who might not know a countershaft from a Bren gun carrier will decide whether we get a licence for the repair or not. Even when we get it, there’ll be materials needed for the job and that’ll be the same process all over again. We could be out of production for weeks and then the War Office will be on our backs for the tent material. I’ve called a Board Meeting for Monday. Maybe someone else can think of something I haven’t thought of already.’
‘Oh love, as if you didn’t have enough on your hands. You don’t think your explosion could possibly be connected with those sticks of gelignite from the quarry?’
‘It had occurred to me,’ Alex replied sharply, with a brief nod. ‘Brendan said last night de Valera had given the I.R.A. short shrift in the South and they were nearly a thing of the past down there. But its been going round that some of them might think us a softer option so they have moved up here. Rumours thrive, as you know, but someone’s spreading bad feeling in the mills,’ he went on. ‘Security was doubled the last time we had an arson attempt, so whoever did the job at Ballievy must have had good inside information to be able to get in and out again without being seen by either of the two night watchmen. That’s the hardest part for me to stomach. Which of the people I’ve worked with for years is putting lives and jobs at risk?’
‘Ma, what in the name of goodness are you doing?’ Johnny demanded, as he came into the kitchen next morning, a little before noon, his face still damp and gleaming from his weekly shave.
He stood looking down at his mother’s bent head and the bizarre assortment of objects on the kitchen table.
‘You’re up early, love,’ she said, glancing up at him over the piece of wire she was twisting. ‘Are you sure you’re getting enough sleep? Did you get any at all at the factory last night?’
‘Oh yes. I had an hour or two. With three of us on, we can all have a couple of hours on the couch in the office, but sometimes I use part of my time off to work on the plane. Not everybody gets the chance to sit in a cockpit and go through specifications at their leisure,’ he explained, as he sat down opposite her at the kitchen table.
‘Can I help?’ he asked, sizing up her struggle with a large pair of pliers rather too large for what she was doing.
‘I’m not making a good job of this,’ she replied, breathing heavily, ‘but I’m not letting it beat me. This piece of wire has to go round this thimble, but the wretched little thimble keeps slipping out.’
‘Have you got a bigger thimble?’
‘Yes, I could thatch a house with thimbles, as the saying is. They were your grandmother’s,’ she explained, nodding towards the large, well-stocked sewing box in front of her. ‘But it has to be this one to go into the milk bottle,’ she said flatly.
‘Right, this thimble it is then,’ he said, trying to keep his face straight, as he took the thimble and wire from her.
She watched in amazement as he encircled the offending thimble in one deft movement and secured the wire firmly in place using only his finger and thumb.
‘Anything to oblige,’ he said, handing it solemnly back to her and then breaking into a huge grin.
‘What is it, Ma?’ he asked, bursting out laughing. ‘Or is it’s specification covered by the Official Secrets Act? Or is it something even the War Ministry don’t know about, like the new plane they’re working on down at Walkers?’
Emily waved the miniature ladle in the air and laughed at herself. Whatever manual skills she might have, and she did acknowledge some of them, she was no good at all with things mechanical. It was one thing being able to prick out hundreds of seedlings from one packet of seed, but she couldn’t even get a new battery into a torch without a struggle.
‘It’s for Jane’s birthday tomorrow,’ she said triumphantly. ‘If she can get home as planned, we’ll be having a special dessert with whipped cream garnished with jewels of raspberry jelly. This is for skimming the cream out of the top of the bottles.’
‘Couldn’t you just pour it off?’
‘No. That’s the secret. If you pour the cream off it gets diluted with the milk and then you can’t whip it. If you use this device you get the cream and nothing but the cream …’
‘So help me, Mother,’ he added, laughing. ‘And what about the jewels?’
Emily stood up, went to the larder and brought back a large white plate covered with a thin layer of bright-red, well-set jelly.
She set it down in front of him and watched as he inspected it at eye level to see how thick the jelly was. One of the most endearing features of her son was that unlike many of his contemporaries who talked at length and in great detail about what interested them, he was interested in what she was doing and would listen to her as patiently as she listened to him.
‘When I have made the dessert, piled it up suitably in the best trifle dishes and put the whipped cream on top, I shall take a very sharp knife and cut this into tiny, tiny squares and scatter them over the cream in a kind of cascade.’
‘That will look lovely,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Clever Ma.’
‘Can’t take the credit, Johnny. It was Cathy read it in a magazine and wrote to me about it. Just hope it’ll taste as good as it looks.’
‘Of course it will. It always does. Ritchie says he doesn’t know how you do it. He thinks your food is great. He says his Ma is always complaining she can’t get this and can’t get that. That’s why he never asks me to go there. You don’t mind, do you?’ he added, suddenly looking anxious.
‘Mind what?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘Ritchie coming here and me never going there. It’s not really fair on you with rationing.’
‘Of course, I don’t mind. He’s your friend, so he’s welcome, even if I didn’t like him as much as I do. Are the pair of you doing one last night tonight?’
He nodded vigorously.
‘It’s been great going down to the mill every night these holidays. We’ve both learnt such a lot. It’s one thing building model planes, Ma, and it was a good start, but seeing the actual things they’re making down there, like the torpedo airtails, is just so different. And the really big thing is that a few of them are working on a real plane, a plane I mustn’t mention, even to you, because its not official in the first place. But they’re working on a prototype. They’re hoping to have something to test by the end of the summer.’
‘A plane? In Walkers? But surely there’s not enough room with all those pillars. I think I’ve only been in it once, long before it closed as a mill, but I can’t imagine how you’d get a plane in there.’
‘Depends on the plane, Ma. STOLs are small to begin with and you can easily work on the wings and the tailplane on their own and then put it together later. It’s all wood and very light, Canadian silver birch …’
He broke off as she raised her hand.
‘Please, sir, what’s a stall?’
He shook his head, his bright blue eyes shining with merriment.
‘S. T. O. L.’ he spelt out. ‘It means Short Take Off and Landing planes and they are very good at not stalling, that’s why they’re used as spotter planes. They’re designed to cope with small fields enclosed by trees, places where there’s no space for a runway, however small.’
Emily listened, following as well as she could the technical language that now came to him so easily. He’d always been good about explaining what she didn’t know. Putting up her hand was one of their jokes, but she didn’t like interrupting all the time. Often, she’d just memorise the unfamiliar words and look them up in the dictionary afterwards. But there were two problems with doing that. How did you spell a word you’d never seen or heard before? And what did she do if it was one of the many new technical developments the war had brought about and the word for it wasn’t in any dictionary?
‘Did I tell you, Ma,’ he said suddenly, ‘that Ritchie’s father says he’s giving us both some extra money for all the cleaning up we’ve done while we we’ve been fire-watching? Job specification didn’t say we had to clear up any pockets of sawdust we found, but we thought it was a hazard, so we did. That’ll be a bit extra and I’m going to save it for my kit,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘The stuff the RAF don’t provide,’ he added, when he saw her doubtful glance.
Emily nodded and tried hard not to let herself react to that word ‘kit’. Such a simple word, but look what it meant. Johnny going away. Johnny not tramping into the kitchen full of sleep in the mornings before school. Johnny not spreading his books and papers across the dining room table to work for his exams.
She pulled herself up short and focused on the expense ahead. She should be pleased about what he’d said.
Money wasn’t a big difficulty with Alex’s salary as a director and all the girls working away from home, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she’d tried to make all her children aware that money was important, especially if you didn’t have any.
When she’d first come to her aunt and uncle after her mother died, she hadn’t had a penny to her name. The Jackson’s farm was small and wasn’t doing well. Things did improve, but she’d never forgotten what it was like to have nothing to call upon however great their need might be.
‘Must go, Ma. Lots to do.’ he said, jumping to his feet.
‘Where to?’ she asked, as she glanced up at the clock, knowing it must be almost lunch time.
‘Dining-room,’ he said, briskly. ‘Revision. Unless we are dining.’
‘That’s tomorrow,’ she said, laughing suddenly. ‘You can have a bowl of soup when your father comes in, or when you get hungry, whichever comes soonest. But it will be served right here,’ she said, pointing down at the well-scrubbed surface of the kitchen table. ‘You could have a couple of biscuits to keep you going.’
‘Thanks, Ma. That would be great,’ he said, giving her a quick hug and reaching for the biscuit tin.