August 1951
The morning had been wet. Heavy, thundery rain swept across the front of the cottage, blurring the prospect of fields to a green wash. It sent rivulets of water running down the path to the forge where the trees and shrubs threshed in the blustery wind and released the first shrivelled leaves of the approaching autumn to lodge in the rich grass that had flourished through a warm summer.
Towards noon the rain eased, the clouds began to lift, and by late afternoon when two figures appeared cycling out of Armagh along Loughgall Road, their arms were bare under the hot sun and their light cotton skirts billowed and flapped with the following southerly breeze.
‘Race you to Richardson’s gates,’ shouted the older girl, her words carried off by the movement of air, but her meaning clear from the jerk of her head.
‘Right, you’re on,’ replied Clare, as they spun down Asylum Hill and bumped through the bad bit of road at the bottom, where the even more broken and potholed Mill Row joined the main road.
Along the wall of the asylum, past the mortuary chapel and under the line of sycamores that lay beyond Longstone Lane they flew, pedalling furiously on an open road with neither sight nor sound of a vehicle. Inevitably Jessie drew ahead. Clare made a half-hearted effort to catch her, but she knew of old Jessie’s longer legs always had the advantage of her, even on a day when she wasn’t tired and just starting her period.
‘You win, as always,’ she said laughing, as she skidded to a halt, laid her bicycle down on the grassy verge and joined her friend who was already sitting on the low wall adjoining the handsome gates of the Richardson estate. ‘Will we go down to the stream?’ she asked as soon as she’d caught her breath.
‘Aye, c’mon, let’s go down.’
They left their bicycles propped against the wall, crossed the road and climbed through a gap in the hedge. The slope was steep and they had to stop talking and concentrate on finding tufts of grass to use as footholds and handholds, but after a few minutes they were standing on a minute patch of sand beside a tiny, noisy rivulet, well swollen with the morning’s rain.
Once down into the deep ravine, it was an easy matter to choose a big stone and step across the flow. They made their way to a tree which stretched a branch across the stream and obligingly provided two seats, side by side, completely out of sight of any passers by on the road above.
‘I love it here,’ said Clare, swinging her legs and looking down at the threads of vivid green water weed shaped by the strong flow. ‘Do you think we might still come here when we’re old?’
‘Why not? Sure, if we’re both in wheelchairs, we’ll be so rich we can hire a team of fellas to lower us down on ropes.’
Clare giggled. One of the things she loved about Jessie was the way she just came out with things. You never knew what she’d say next. She sometimes wished she was more like her friend, more easy with things, less considered. That way, she’d be much more fun. Sometimes when she was teased for her seriousness at school, she thought it would be such a relief to be like Jessie and take everything in her stride.
‘But if we had a whole team of fellows, it’d would defeat the object of the exercise, wouldn’t it?’ she said with a smile. ‘This is where we talk secrets, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but what’s the chance of havin’ any good secrets when we’re old?’
The strong sunlight fell through the leaves of the beech tree that provided their seat and dappled their skin and hair. It cast a golden halo on Jessie’s wavy shoulder length tresses and picked up the freckles on her creamy skin. Jessie’s eyes and hands were always in motion and they caught the light, while Clare sat still, absorbed in the movement of the water, her skin paler but clear, her hair a mass of dark curls, her eyes distant, but quick to light up and gleam with pleasure whenever she turned to her friend.
Their meeting had been a strange chance, though they lived not a mile apart as the heron flew, from the stream beside Jessie’s home to the pool in the water meadow beyond the forge.
Clare had had her new bicycle from Uncle Harry for her tenth birthday as he had promised and on a lovely October day she cycled to school. But despite the new bicycle, the day was no happier than the days of the preceding weeks when she’d travelled into Armagh by bus. Having longed to go back to her old school in Armagh, having thought about it through all her time in Belfast and looked forward to it during the final week of the summer holidays, she had been bitterly disappointed on her first day back.
Miss Slater had gone. ‘In the family way’, was the phrase she heard the older girls use. In her place was a new class teacher, tall and thin, with a hard face and no sense of humour, who was preoccupied with the state examination for which the brightest pupils in her class would be entered.
She had written to Margaret Beggs, her best friend, to tell her she was coming back but Margaret was not one bit interested. She’d moved house and wanted to forget she’d ever lived in Edward Street. Her new friends all lived on the Portadown Road and Clare’s company was no longer wanted.
As if this were not bad enough, Clare found herself utterly bored by the work they were doing for the benefit of those wanting to take ‘The Qualifying’ and go to the local Grammar School. She came to dread the blue textbook with the medical cross on the cover. ‘First Aid in English’ it called itself. Inside, there were long, long lists of things to be memorised. The adjective from eagle is aquiline, the female of monk is nun, the opposite of ingress is egress. Learning by heart, spelling tests and practice in copy books left her miserable and frustrated. There were no more stories, no more geography lessons, no more nature table or library box times. It was all English and arithmetic, spellings and sums. She couldn’t bring herself to learn her spellings each evening, so she ended up at the bottom of the class.
Where this state of affairs would certainly have led, Clare never found out. One afternoon when she went to collect the bread ration, Clare found herself in the baker’s queue behind a small, white-haired lady. She thought she recognised her, but she couldn’t be sure. While she was still thinking about it, the old lady fumbled and dropped the dark toned loaf she’d just been handed. Clare jumped forward and caught it before it fell on the floor.
‘My goodness, that was quick thinkin’,’ said the baker, as he leant across the counter to help the old lady open her shopping bag.
‘Thank you very much indeed, my dear. I’m afraid it’s my hands. They don’t work very well these days,’ she added apologetically.
The loaf was safely loaded into her bag and she was about to leave the shop when she turned, looked at Clare, and said: ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be Clare Hamilton, would you?’
‘Why, yes,’ admitted Clare, as she handed over the money and coupons for her own loaf.
‘I taught your dear mother at Grange school and your uncles and aunts as well, but your mother I remember best.’
She stood waiting until Clare had collected her change and they walked out of the shop together.
‘Eleanor was a very able girl. You look very like her, though she was fair and you are even darker than your father. I knew him too, for my aunt lived at Hockley and I used to go there a lot. Come over here, dear, we mustn’t clutter up the entrance,’ she said sharply. ‘Thank you, Mr Farmer, I’ll see you again on Friday,’ she added turning back to address the tall figure behind the counter.
They stood talking for a while and then Mrs Taylor, as Clare discovered she was called, arranged for Clare to come to her house on the Mall for a cup of tea after school.
‘I’m afraid the tea will be hardly worth coming for, my dear, but perhaps I may have something else to tempt you with,’ she said thoughtfully.
Mrs Taylor had been widowed for many years and her only daughter was nursing in Canada. She admitted she enjoyed company and Clare was soon a regular visitor. Each week she would choose books from Mrs Taylor’s small library and each week they would talk about what she’d been reading. During one of these conversations Clare found herself admitting how bored she was at school and how she was now bottom of the class, because each Friday morning the class was rearranged in order of merit after the weekly spelling test and she hadn’t been learning her spellings.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Taylor looking most anxious, ‘I wonder if I can explain to you Clare why something like learning your spellings could make an incredible difference to your whole life.’
Clare was quite taken aback by the sad and serious look on her new friend’s face. For all Mrs Taylor’s formality of manner, Clare found her a lively person. She smiled at Clare’s comments about the characters she met in the books which moved back and forth in the waterproof carrier bag Uncle Harry had so thoughtfully provided behind the saddle on her bicycle. And often she told funny stories about her early days in teaching when, as young Miss Rowentree, she thought she knew quite a lot after her training course in Belfast and then discovered that knowing things didn’t help in the slightest, unless you could get the better of the very assorted group of children you had to teach.
Clare listened fascinated as she described the school room beside the church, a room continually criticised in the inspector’s reports for not possessing a map of the world or a globe, for having structural cracks and only one ‘office’ for both boys and girls. She’d heard stories of pupils who’d emigrated, who’d died, or been killed in the war, but she’d never seen Mrs Taylor looking as sad and as thoughtful as she looked when she confessed to being bottom of the class.
Mrs Taylor set down her teacup and sat up very straight.
‘You see, my dear, people make judgements based on their own preconceptions. They look at your clothes and decide whether you are rich or poor. They listen to the way you speak and decide whether you are educated or ignorant. They look at the results of a spelling test and decide whether you are intelligent or stupid. And based on that judgement, a judgement which can be utterly false, they make decisions. Do you understand?’
Clare nodded. Jane Austen’s novels were full of that kind of judgement and so was The Mayor of Casterbridge, which she had just put back in its proper place on the shelf. Just because poor Elizabeth-Jane used country words like ‘leery’, her father was ashamed of her, even though she was actually a very thoughtful and observant person.
‘Clare, I’m sure your mother would have wanted you to do well at school.’
‘Oh yes, Mrs Taylor, Mummy always said it was very important for a girl to have a good education.’
‘But, Clare, my dear, if you are bottom of the class, you will not sit for the Qualifying. And if you do not sit for the Qualifying, you will not have a chance of going to the Grammar School. Is that what you really want?’
Clare had been about to reply that, no, it wasn’t what she wanted, when there was a vigorous rat-ta-tat-tat at the front door. Mrs Taylor laughed wryly.
‘Here’s someone come to meet you who wouldn’t have an idea in the world about Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy. But she does have other qualities. Would you go down and open the door to save my legs?’
‘Hallo,’ said Clare, shyly, as she looked up at the figure on the doorstep, a girl a year older and at least a foot taller than herself.
‘You’re Clare,’ the girl said, as she tramped down the hall and paused at the foot of the stairs. ‘That’s great. I’m Jessie. Is Auntie Sarah all right?’ she asked as they went upstairs to the sitting room.
‘Yes, she’s fine. I’m just saving her legs.’
‘She could do with a new pair. I think this pair’s worn out. That’ll learn her to be a teacher!’ she said cheerfully, as she marched into the crowded room, bumped her way through the close-packed furniture and gave her aunt a big kiss.
They had cycled home together and been friends from that moment on. The following year, when Clare did pass the Qualifying, at her first attempt, Jessie just managed it on her second. After Clare had collected up her year’s savings, the egg money, some dollars from Auntie Polly and a withdrawal from Granda Scott’s Bank Book, Jessie’s mother had taken them both to Armagh and supervised the buying of their school uniform.
Clare would never forget that day. They had each put on the tunic and blouse, tied the tie, donned the three-quarter socks and the blazer. They stood staring at each other while Mrs Rowentree made sure there was letting down on both the hems and room for development in both the blouses. The assistant came back into the fitting room and handed them each a black beret and a large pair of green knickers.
Jessie had taken one look at the huge bloomers, held them up in front of her, and then deftly wound them into a turban for her head.
It had been a ridiculous and happy moment. Even the assistant had laughed. And although Mrs Rowentree had made some protest, it was half-hearted, for she was laughing too.
‘You’ve gone very quiet. What mischief are ye plannin’ now?’
At the sound of her friend’s voice Clare jumped, laughed at herself, and came back to the present.
‘I was thinking of the day your mother took us to get our uniform.’
Jessie grinned and made a gesture with her hands as if she were lowering the imperial crown with great solemnity onto her head.
‘I’ll probably be out on my ear tomorrow when the results come out, so ye can have anythin’ fits you.’
‘Oh don’t say that, Jessie. Please don’t say that. You didn’t think you’d done so bad at the time.’
‘Ach well, sure what does it matter? I never thought I’d get the Qualifying and I’ve had a great time these four years since. If I’m out, I’ll get a job and have lots of money an’ then we can go to the pictures whenever we like. It won’t make a bit of difference to us except for sittin’ in the same classroom and not being able to say two words the whole day. Are you goin’ into school in the mornin’ or waitin’ for the post?’
‘I’ll go in,’ said Clare quickly. ‘I couldn’t stand waiting for the post. Anyway, it mightn’t come on the post tomorrow. If I had to wait till Monday, I’d go mad.’
‘You’ll be all right, Clare. What are ye worryin’ about? You’ll sail through. I’d bet you five pounds if I had it, I’m that sure.’
Whether it was her friend’s words, or the sudden warm pressure of her hand on hers, Clare couldn’t tell, but she found her eyes filled with tears. She felt herself suddenly wondering if she would ever sit here with her friend, ever again.
‘I suppose we’d better go,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Aye, I have stuff for the tea in my bag, so there’ll be no tea till I get there,’ said Jessie laughing and swinging herself deftly back onto the bank.
‘Me, too,’ Clare added, as she followed more cautiously behind. ‘Though Granda never notices the time when he’s in the forge. It’s not teatime, till I tell him it is.’
‘That’s handy.’
Clare followed Jessie up and across the steep bank until they had almost reached the gap in the hedge.
‘Jessie!’ she whispered hastily.
‘What?’
‘There’s someone doing something to our bicycles.’
‘Is there indeed. Well, I’ll see to them,’ she said angrily, before she had even raised her head to look.
Without further ado, she pushed through the hedge, marched across the road and confronted the offender.
‘And what do you think you’re doing to my friend’s bicycle?’
Clare paused halfway through the hedge and surveyed the scene. Jessie stood, hands on hips, glowering down at a fair haired boy in an open-necked shirt who appeared to be unscrewing the valve cap on one of her tyres.
‘Trying to put this valve cap back on, but it’s fiddly and I’m not much good at it. Here, you have a go.’
Clare had an irresistible desire to giggle when she saw the look on Jessie’s face. But Jessie was not to be charmed.
‘Are you a Richardson?’
‘Yes, I’m Andrew. How do you do?’
He stood up and held out his hand politely, as Clare crossed the road to join them. Jessie shook his hand and turned to Clare.
‘Clare, this is Andrew Richardson. I’m not sure he wasn’t lettin’ your tyres down.’
‘No. I don’t think so,’ said Clare as she shook hands. ‘There are better ways of letting tyres down.’
‘Are there?’ he enquired, looking at her directly. She was amazed to find how startlingly blue his eyes were.
‘Yes, a good poke with a penknife or a spike of some sort,’ she replied honestly. ‘I’m sure he’s got a pen knife,’ she added turning to Jessie.
‘Don’t put bad in his head, Clare. He’s maybe done damage enough.’
‘Not guilty, madam,’ he declared, looking at Clare again. ‘There were some boys here when I came down to open the gates. They ran off when they saw me and I noticed the tyres were flat. I’ve pumped up one, but the other was more difficult,’ he explained.
‘That was very kind of you,’ said Clare, feeling strangely uncomfortable.
He was really a rather friendly boy, though he did have a peculiar accent and was wearing very posh jodhpurs and riding boots.
‘Well, if you’ve managed to get any air back in, I think we must be going,’ said Jessie, firmly.
He nodded, straightened up Clare’s bicycle and gave it to her.
‘Have you far to go?’
‘No, not far. Only the Grange.’
‘Should be all right that far.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much for pumping it up,’ she said as she wheeled it out on to the road and stretched herself up into the saddle.
‘Not at all. It was a pleasure,’ he said, with a grin, as he turned towards the heavy iron gates on the driveway and swung them open just as a large car approached at a leisurely pace from the direction of Armagh.
They stopped by the pump opposite Charlie Running’s cottage, had a drink and splashed their hot hands and faces. They always stopped by the pump to make plans for the next day even when they weren’t thirsty, because Jessie’s road home left the main road just a little further on, where Riley’s Rocks poked their hard-edged shapes through the soft greenness of Robinson’s bog. It ran downhill, struck westwards through Tullyard and then wove its way onward between scattered farms and cottages cut off from each other by the undulations of the hilly countryside and the small plantings of orchard and woodland.
Clare remembered the September morning, four years ago now, when they met up at just this spot for the first time, dressed in the new uniforms that still had some of the original creases from the manufacturer’s box. Clare’s three-quarter length socks wouldn’t stay up and Jessie insisted she’d got bigger since her blouse was bought. It had rained suddenly and violently as they struggled slowly up the Asylum Hill. There was no where to take shelter and no time to waste. They pressed on and arrived at Beresford Row at a quarter to nine, new Burberrys damp, hair dripping beneath the sodden berets, to search for their labelled pegs in a minute cloakroom full of perfectly dry girls, who had walked from Barrack Hill or Railway Street and missed the rain completely.
‘Are ye workin’ for Margaret tomorrow?’ asked Jessie, as she pushed her hair back from her damp face.
‘Yes, I’m looking after the children. She wants to go into town.’
‘Pity. No Ritz this week,’ she said sadly.
‘I can’t afford it anyway, Jessie. I’ll need black stockings if I go back. The forge is very quiet.’
Jessie nodded and said nothing. She was a lot better off than Clare. There was pocket money from her father every week, regular bits and pieces of money from her mother for doing jobs and the occasional half crown from Auntie Sarah, but as often as not Jessie was broke too. Unlike Clare, who always had an eye to the future, never knowing what she would have to find money for, or where it was going to come from, Jessie was unthinking. If the money was there, she spent it. Come easy, go easy was her way. If she had it, that was fine, but if she didn’t, she never complained.
‘Will we go for a walk tomorrow evening?’
‘Aye, why not. I’ll call for you about seven. We’ll maybe pick up a couple of good-lookin fellas and go off to a dance.’
Clare giggled. The chances of meeting anyone on a Saturday evening were so small even bumping into an elderly neighbour was a major event.
‘Make sure you put your nylons on, Jessie,’ Clare laughed, knowing that Jessie, like herself, had never even seen nylons, let alone be able to afford the price of those smuggled over the border from the Republic.
‘Time I was away,’ said Jessie, looking at her watch.
‘What time it is?’
‘Quarter past five.’
‘Me too. See you tomorrow,’ called Clare as she swung herself into the saddle.
She caught sight of Jessie’s flying figure for a moment before she was hidden from view by the scatter of young trees around the old quarry. She felt suddenly sad and anxious. Tomorrow the exam results would be out. If she did well, her scholarship would be renewed and she would stay at school. If she didn’t, she must leave and get a job.
If Jessie failed to get Junior, her family could afford to pay for her to stay on in the hope that she might scrape through Senior Certificate in two years’ time, but that was out of the question for Clare. Thirty pounds a term was an enormous sum to find and then there was the lunch money and all the other expensive things that kept cropping up, from hockey sticks to educational outings.
She made a final effort on the hill past Robinsons. Perhaps it was just her period and the pain in her back that was making her feel so low. She’d have to put herself in better spirits before she looked in the door of the forge.
She wheeled her bicycle up the bumpy lane and smiled as she glanced up at the house. In one of the window boxes Uncle Jack had made for her, something new was blooming. It was too far away to see exactly what it was, but it certainly hadn’t been in bloom when she left just after their midday meal.
‘Hello, Granda, are you dying for your tea?’
‘Ach, yer back. Did ye see Jessie?’
‘Yes, we did our shopping and then we sat and gossiped.’
‘Any news?’ he said, putting down his hammer and leaning against the bellows.
‘I brought you the Guardian and the Gazette both so you’ll be well newsed,’ she said with a laugh, ‘and I saw Mrs Taylor, who was asking for you. And Jessie’s father’s had his tests done. Good news. They say his heart’s all right. He had to go to the hospital again today though.’
Clare saw how tired he was. He had a way of leaning against the bellows, even when they didn’t need pressing and there was a look below his eyes that made him seem pale, though his skin was always brown beneath the layer of grime his sweat trapped as he hammered. So often these days, she knew he was glad to stop work when she appeared, so she tried to think of anything else that would prolong his brief respite.
‘Have you had any callers yourself?’
‘Aye, one or two. Mosey Johnston paid me for his gate, so we’re all right for the rent for a week or two. Ah thought he wasn’t goin’ to pay me atall, he’s been that long. And yer friend John Wiley was here. He says there’s some big bug from across the water comin’ to Richardson’s for the weekend. His wife’s landed him with the childer for the whole time an’ he’s not well pleased.’
Clare laughed. Dear John. The older the children got the less he liked looking after them, but June was chief helper to the housekeeper at Drumsollen and working all weekend would be extra money for the family.
‘I think maybe I saw the big bug arriving, Granda. There was a very posh car coming out from Armagh and the gates were open at the foot of the drive.’
‘Aye, that’s likely it, for John said he had to away back quick once I’d done the bit of a weld for him. He asked for you. He said to ask you how your flowers were doin’.’
‘I hope you told him they’re doing well. Something else is out since that rain this morning, but I can’t see what till I go up and look.’
She paused, suddenly made anxious by the dragging weariness come into his face now that the pleasure of her return had passed.
‘Would you like a glass of the spring to keep you going till the tea’s ready?’
‘Ach, no. I’ve near finished. I’ll not start anither job the day. I’ll be up shortly. Did ye say ye’d got both papers?’
‘Yes. I was lucky. There were still some left. I think I should order them, then we’d be sure of them. Whoever’s in town could collect them, Jessie, or me, or the Robinsons.’
‘Well …’
Clare smiled warmly, said the tea wouldn’t be long, picked up her bicycle and manoeuvred it past a field gate for Harry Nesbitt. Of all the expressions and customs she’d had to learn since the day she and Edward James Bear walked up the path to the house for the first time, Granda Scott’s way of saying ‘Well’ had puzzled her most and taken her longest to work out. But once she’d observed for a while there was no further difficulty. ‘Well’ said with that slight upward inflection, meant exactly what most other people meant by ‘Yes’. So she would order the Armagh weekly papers and a Sunday one as well. It would mean going in especially to fetch it, but what did that matter. It was one of his few pleasures, and surely they could find tenpence a week.
She unpacked her shopping onto the hallstand and parked her bicycle under the elderberry bush beside the far gable. So thick was the canopy of a huge beech tree arching above the bush itself that even in the wettest weather she seldom had to wipe the saddle dry in the morning, and if she forgot to collect her underwear, hung there to dry, then it’d be no worse off than leaving it over the back of a chair in ‘the boys’ room’. This was the small room beyond her own bedroom where she had set up the old wash stand under the window, so she’d have a place to do her homework should anyone come to call on Robert before she’d finished, or when she was able to find him brass band music or a talk about Ulster customs to listen to on the radio.
The dazzling splash of brightness she’d seen from the forge was in the green-painted box on the sitting-room window sill. In a moment, she was close enough to see it was a fuchsia. As she put out a tentative finger to touch it, she laughed, and remembered precisely what fuchsia it was.
‘What a strange coincidence,’ she said quietly to herself as she stroked the waxy petals.
The cutting that had produced its first glorious bloom, a purple corolla with long orange stamens, surrounded by a milky white skirt like that of a ballerina, John Wiley had brought her from the small bush in his own garden.
‘Here ye are, Clarey. Niver say where ye came by that fellow, but I promise you, you’ll like him. Most beautiful thing I iver saw in a garden in all my life.’
‘Why can’t I say where I got him, John?’ she said, taking the moss-wrapped fragment from his large hand and settling herself to listen to the story she was sure he had to tell.
‘Well, d’ye see, Major Richardson, he went off to England on some business or other and when he came back, he had this bush. Said it was a new variety. Made a great fuss about it. Wouldn’t let Old Harry touch it. Had to plant it himself. And I can see why he was so particular. Ach, when it first came out up at the house, I thought it was lovely, so I asked Old Harry for a wee cutting. But he said it was more than his life was worth an’ he wouden give me as much as a leaf.’
John hung his head in despair, then grinned at her mischievously.
‘Well, that’s all right, thinks I, and waits my time. And sure enough one day Harry’s mowing the lawn an’ somethin’ goes wrong with the mower. It jumps outa his hands and knocks a brave wee branch off the fuchsia an’ then stops dead. Well, when he called me to get the mower going for him, I saw the branch in a jar of water. I knew rightly what it was, so we “did a deal” as they say at the pictures. I’d not say a word about the damage to the bush an’ he’d not say a word about the bit of that branch in my pocket.’
Clare wondered what Andrew Richardson would think if he knew a piece of his uncle’s precious plant was growing on the windowsill of the forge house at Salter’s Grange. And that cuttings from it would soon be found in every cottage and farm where there was someone with an eye hungry for colour and fingers green enough to coax one more to grow.
Strangely, she didn’t think he would mind. Despite his strange accent and his posh clothes, he’d been very kind. If those boys he’d seen were from the Mill Row, they’d not be beyond pinching the pumps and her precious back carrier bag, though they wouldn’t risk lifting the bicycles themselves.
She stood looking down at the exotic bloom resting against her fingers so softly.
‘Something beautiful,’ she said quietly, as she wondered what its name might be. ‘Until I find out, I shall call you Clare’s Delight.’
She spent a few minutes removing faded blooms and yellowed leaves from the rain-battered plants in the flower bed below the window and then, remembering she was supposed to be getting tea ready, she dropped her gatherings in the old bucket hidden behind the aquilegia and headed for the kitchen.
As she reached the open front door, she was greeted by ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, being played with a needle that should certainly have been thrown away long ago. Her heart sank and weariness swept over her. She would be pleased enough to see Jamsey most afternoons, but today it was late, her back ached, and her mind was so preoccupied with her talk with Jessie that the effort of talking to him intimidated her.
She paused, her hand on the latch. It was a bad sign that he was still here this late in the afternoon. Usually, he was gone long before this. He came often to play one or other of the two ancient gramophones which had filled the house with lively noise when Polly and Mary, Ellie and Florence, and Bob and Johnny were still at home. When he was having a bad day, he would come over from the farm to escape whatever had upset him and play records, often going on playing the same record over and over again. Sometimes she managed to cheer him up, but sometimes it was not till Robert came up from the forge and found some message for him to take to the farm that he was prompted to go home.
The music died away, but Jamsey did not lift the playing head and the needle went on scratching in the groove.
‘Hello, Jamsey,’ she said, quietly slipping round towards the window so that he could see her.
‘Up yer cock.’
As bad as that, she thought, looking at his face, pasty, white and immobile. His eyes regarded her, but did not see her.
‘No, Jamsey, don’t say that. Robert doesn’t like you to say that,’ she said firmly.
He stared at her and seemed to be about to repeat the forbidden words.
She put her finger to her mouth.
‘Shh. Lemonade and sasparilla, Jamsey. Say “lemonade and sasparilla” for me.’
‘All the same price, take your choice, lemonade and sasparilla,’ he said, tears springing to his eyes.
‘There now, don’t cry, Jamsey. What’ll we sing?’
He looked at her blankly as if he hadn’t even heard, but she saw him straighten himself as he always did when he sang. It was the only time he ever lost the sad droop to his shoulders.
Clare began, her light voice a thin thread in the large room where the last of the afternoon sun had retreated and shadows gathered in all the corners.
The pale moon was rising above the blue mountain
The sun was declining into the blue sea
It was then that I went there and walked with my Mary
My Mary, the loveliest Rose of Traleee.’
Half way through the first verse, a strange, halfstrangulated noise began to accompany her. Jamsey knew the words well enough but couldn’t sing them, though he was able to mime their cadence.
Clare turned towards him and conducted him with both her hands. She was so delighted when suddenly he broke into a broad grin. Conducting him while they sang had never yet failed to make him smile.
‘One for the road, Ellie,’ he said the moment they stopped.
‘Name your pleasure,’ she replied promptly.
‘“Once in Royal David’s City”,’ he said, without hesitation.
For a moment, she wondered if she could manage it, but there was something about the way he looked at her, the way he leant slightly towards her, the way he called her ‘Ellie’, that gave her courage. She sat down opposite him and conducted him through all the verses. They were still singing when Robert came in for his tea.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t even started yet,’ she said apologetically, after Jamsey had raised a hand and suddenly departed. ‘He was in a bad way.’
‘Poor man, it’s hard to know what goes on in his head. Sometimes I don’t think it’s anythin’ anyone says or does, it’s just inside him.’
She put the kettle back on the stove and poked it up while he unfolded the newspapers she’d left by his chair. He never read the papers before his meal, but he liked to look them over, squinting down through the tiny round glasses with their springy earpieces that gave him such trouble when he went to hook them round his ears.
She cut slices of bread from the grey-brown loaf and brought out the small cheese ration from the corner cupboard. There were two sorts of jam, gooseberry from Liskeyborough, and damson from the orchard behind the house. ‘Not worth picking this year,’ the Robinsons had said. ‘Take what you like.’ And Margaret had told her you could get extra sugar coupons for making jam if you asked for them. So she’d dug in the rubbish dump for jars, scrubbed them and boiled them, picked the fruit and made her own jam for the first time. She felt so proud of the full jars standing in The Room to cool. Even if it was a bit runny, it tasted wonderful.
After their meal, Robert took half an hour on the bed and Clare settled to read at the table because the light was better there than by the fireside. But she found it hard to concentrate, though the library book, a copy of Pride and Prejudice, was one of her favourites.
She stared out through the tiny orchard window. Then she ran her eye over all the assorted objects in the thick embrasure, the salt and pepper for the table, a bottle of ink for the accounts for the forge, a few old penholders with a paper bag containing threepence worth of shiny gold and silver nibs from Woolworths. The Tilley lamp lived there too, when not in use and a packet of candles for when they ran out of paraffin. There were matches and shoelaces, a pair of scissors and an airmail writing pad with envelopes.
‘Are ye studying again?’ he asked as he padded over to his chair where he’d left his boots.
‘No, this is for fun,’ she said, moving back to the settle on the far side of the stove. From there, he could hear her better, because he could see her face.
Just as Robert stretched up from putting on his own boots, they heard the scrape of someone approaching on the path outside. Usually they could guess who the visitor might be, but tonight they looked at each other in surprise. It was early yet. Not many men finished their work before dark and women usually visited during the day.
Clare jumped up, pulled open the kitchen door and saw Margaret’s husband, the eldest of the Robinson boys, standing there, a look on his face that had to mean bad news.
‘What’s wrong, Eddie? Is Margaret all right?’
‘She’s all right in herself.’
Eddie raised a hand in salute to Robert, pulled off his cap and sank down on the settle.
They waited for Eddie to collect himself. She felt a sick nausea sweep over her as the seconds dragged by like minutes.
‘I’m the bringer of bad news to yez both, an’ I’m sorry for it. Jack Rowentree is dead,’ he said, his voice as firm as he could manage. ‘Yer wee friend Jessie found him a while ago when she got back from town,’ he added, as he turned towards Clare, his voice breaking down as he spoke.
‘Oh no!’
‘Ach, man dear, that’s desperate news. Was it the heart after all?’ asked Robert, his eyes staring, his face a stiff mask in the fading light.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Eddie, collecting himself and sweeping his hand back over his shock of brown hair. ‘That’s the worst of it, Robert. I have to tell ye, Jack had bad news from the doctor. He came home and shot hisself.’
Robert Scott wished he’d a drop of whiskey in the house for Eddie Robinson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. But the last time there’d been a bottle in the house was the previous Christmas when Bob had brought him some. Whiskey was hard to come by these days, even if you had the money to pay for it, as Bob did.
‘Margaret said I was to ask your opinion, Robert,’ Eddie began, taking a deep breath and looking up at the older man.
‘Aye,’ said Robert encouragingly.
Clare stood watching them in amazement. Eddie Robinson was such a brusque, lively character, never at a loss for a quick word or a witty remark. The transformation was startling.
‘By right we should go an’ pay our respects,’ he said, beginning firmly enough. ‘If the man had died natural I’d ’ave put the mare in the trap meself an’ sent Jamsey over to see if yez wanted a lift. But I don’ know rightly what to do the way things are.’
Robert nodded and looked at Clare.
‘I’ll have to go and see Jessie, Granda, whatever you decide,’ she said hastily, aware that tears might suddenly stream down her face.
‘We must go as usual, Eddie,’ said Robert quietly. ‘We coulden leave that wumman in her grief to think her neighbours had turned their backs on her.’
‘I can go on my bike, Granda, that’ll leave more room in the trap,’ Clare began, ‘will Margaret face it, Eddie, she’s not got long to go, has she?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No, she hasn’t. She said she’d maybe not go to town tomorrow after all, but she’s for going over to Rowentrees, if Robert here thinks it’s the right thing.’
‘Aye, Eddie, ye can’t turn yer back on need. Woud ye give me a minit to see if I’ve a clean collar.’
‘There are some in the top drawer,’ said Clare in a whisper as he passed her on his way to his bedroom and left her alone with Eddie.
‘It’s not even that I know the man well, Clare. Sure he’s been away for years, all through the war. An’ even when it was over he was a long time gettin’ back. Torpedoed twice an’ then a prisoner of war,’ he went on, his hands outstretched, ‘An’ he comes back safe from all that and then this. Sure there’s no sense in it. No rightness at all.’
Clare stared at him. For the first time in the five years she’d known him, she saw a face unsmiling, shoulders hunched in despair, hands that struggled in the air to express a hurt he couldn’t put into words.
What could she say, what words of comfort were there?
She remembered that day, so long ago now, when the minister of the church her parents had attended, came to visit her at the hospital before Auntie Polly took her away. William had been excused the minister’s visit which made it slightly easier because she didn’t have to worry about him fidgeting or walking off. She’d sat on a high backed chair in a waiting room with heavy furniture and a highly polished table covered with years old magazines.
The minister had talked and then he had prayed. There wasn’t much difference between the two. What he said when he arrived, he said again in the prayer before he left. She’d wondered then if he thought God wasn’t listening because he said everything at least three times and it couldn’t be for her benefit for she was paying attention to every word.
‘God gives and God takes away. Blessed is the Lord. We cannot see what is best for us, but He sees. In His wisdom he binds and looses. Mummy and Daddy are in a far better place. A place with no pain and no distress. They will be in the company of angels singing and praising the Lord. She wouldn’t want to call then back to this vale of tears when they could be united in fellowship with the Lord, now would she?’
He’d gone on for a long time and then read the twenty-third psalm which was nice because she liked it and knew it by heart. And then he’d told her that the Lord would comfort her and he had to be going.
She couldn’t really tell whether the Lord had comforted her or not. She couldn’t imagine how He would do it. She did wonder if He knew how to comfort little girls who had lost their parents. When she went on feeling so unhappy through all those long weeks in Belfast she’d wondered if perhaps the Lord was too busy. She hadn’t blamed Him because it probably wasn’t His fault, but she felt afterwards that it was always better not to expect too much help from anywhere and then you wouldn’t be too disappointed.
‘It’s an awful shock, Eddie,’ she began, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to Jessie. I can’t think of a single word of comfort, can you?’
He shook his head sadly.
‘Whin me father died I diden shed a tear. He’d had a good life and he’d started to ail, so in a kind of a way I was glad he diden linger and fail. An’ it was the same wi’ the mother, though she did go kinda unexpected. But Jack Rowentree is a man in his prime. That’s not right, Clare. I can’t figure roun’ that atall,’ he said, standing up as Robert emerged from The Room looking uncomfortable in the fiercely-starched collar from the laundry which he felt obliged to wear on any occasion that called for an expression of formality.
‘I’ll see you both there,’ said Clare, glad to be able to escape before her tears let her down.
She set off back up the road to the turn where she and Jessie had parted not three hours earlier and skimmed down the slope where Jessie had disappeared from view when their roads diverged. She pedalled hard, indifferent to the fine, warm evening and the golden light that spread across the lush meadows and made them glow. She overtook a couple of ponies and traps and didn’t even glance up to see who else was travelling in the same direction and on the same sad errand. On the final slope up to the two storey house where Jessie had been born, a car passed her. It pulled into the farmyard ahead of her and found a place to stop among the crowd of traps and vans and bicycles already there.
The front door stood wide open and voices reached her as she leant her bicycle against the wall of an outhouse. The thought of going in to those crowded rooms appalled her. But she must. She had to find Jessie and her mother and say that she was sorry and ask if there was anything she could do. That much, at least, she knew she had to do.
But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Pressed against the wall of the barn, she stood staring across at the house, its windows all thrown wide to let the spirit go, its blinds all drawn, so that it looked as if the dwelling itself had closed its own eyes and was trying to shut out the memory of what had happened.
It was then that Clare thought she heard someone crying. She listened and was sure. The sound seemed to be coming from the outhouse behind her so she pushed open the worn half door. She saw Jessie lying on the straw, her arms over her head, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.
‘Jessie, Jessie, my love, don’t cry, please don’t cry or I’ll start and I’ll never be able to stop,’ she pleaded, as she put her arms round her friend.
‘I’ll see him, Clare, I’ll see him every day of my life, lying here with only half his head left and the blood running round all the bumps in the cobbles and making a wee lake over there,’ she gasped, nodding to a damp patch on the barn floor.
Clare stroked Jessie’s hair and abandoned her own attempt not to cry. Her tears poured down unheeded on to the soft brown hair as she knelt in the fresh cut straw where her friend had thrown herself again.
Neither girl heard the door behind them open, nor did they notice the small, weary figure who stood there looking at them intently as they clutched each other wordlessly.
‘Jessie, Clare.’
Clare was the first to hear. Startled, she looked up and saw Mrs Taylor, Jessie’s aunt, standing very straight, a dark outline against the brightness of the sunlit farmyard behind.
Sarah Taylor walked towards them, bent down and kissed Jessie and then, to Clare’s surprise, kissed her too, her lips dry against her wet cheeks.
‘Now, my dears, I have to ask you a favour. I take it, Jessie, this is the place where my little brother died.’
Jessie nodded and drew the sleeve of her cardigan hastily across her eyes.
‘Well, there is something I should like to do, but I fear I have neither the strength, nor the skill,’ she began. ‘I would like to leave flowers here for Jack. When he was a little boy he used to bring flowers for me. He knew I loved flowers, no matter what kind they were. Buttercups or daisies, things from the garden, honeysuckle from the hedgerows, leaves or berries. Anything that grew. And I’d like to acknowledge that. Will you do that for me?’
They got to their feet and looked down at her.
‘Lots of flowers, Mrs Taylor?’ asked Clare who wanted to be sure she understood.
‘Yes, an extravagance of flowers, Clare. So many it will take you both to carry them and the rest of this lovely evening light to find them,’ she said, turning on her heel as if to depart. ‘I’ll tell your mother, Jessie, that you’ve offered to do something for me. I’m sure she can spare you with all these other people who are so anxious to help her.’
Together they rode the lanes. There was plenty of late honeysuckle twining its way through the quickset hawthorn and climbing the branches of the larger bushes and trees planted to give body to the hedgerow. From the damp tangled grass in the hedge bottoms, tall spikes of meadowsweet scented the air. They gathered armfuls of both and then thought of garden flowers they might add. When they called with Charlie Running to ask if he could spare a few roses, he cut them his best, added dahlias as well and sent them on to his cousin Dick Compston for sweet peas. They filled their baskets and carrier bags and tied bundles of foliage across their handlebars to save themselves a second journey back to Jessie’s home.
Dusk was gathering when they arrived back, but to their surprise there were candles burning in the darkness of the barn. Some old stone jars filled with water had been left ready for them together with a cluster of two pound jam pots and an extra bucket of water.
‘Do you think she’s gone a bit funny?’ asked Jessie, as they carried the flowers into the barn and saw the candles flicker in the draught from the open door.
‘Who? Your Aunt Sarah? No, I don’t think so,’ said Clare quietly, as she chose the biggest stems to put in the tallest of the stone jars.
‘What’ll I do with these?’ asked Jessie, doubtfully, holding up a handful of roses with very short stems. ‘They’ll not sit in a jar wi’ stems that wee.’
‘Did your father like roses, Jessie?’
‘Aye, he did. Said it was his favourite flower.’
Suddenly, it seemed obvious to Clare what she had to do.
‘Why don’t we put them here, on the floor itself,’ she said, tipping out water from one of the jars.
The water splashed down and ran into the damp hollow where earlier someone had washed away Jack Rowentree’s blood.
‘Look, we can make a kind of floating bowl, just here,’ Clare went on, taking some of the roses from her friend’s hand.
She placed them with care, the short stems between the cobbles where the water was deepest and waited while Jessie did the same with those she still held.
‘Smell, Jessie, smell,’ she cried, as the last dark red bloom found its place. ‘Charlie said they’d such a great smell it made up for the poor stems.’
Clare watched her friend as she drew in the heavy perfume and then stood up and looked down at the jars and jam pots overflowing with summer flowers.
‘Mmmm. They’re lovely,’ Jessie said, nodding.
The candles threw light against the massed flowers and spilt over to wink back from a few drops of water lying like raindrops on the petals of the small pool of dark red roses that smelt so wonderful.
Clare waited and watched.
‘I think it looks great,’ said Jessie with a great sigh. ‘Will we away and get Aunt Sarah and show her what we’ve done for Daddy.’