The apple blossom had come and gone. With its falling petals passed the first warm days of the year and the first of the long, quiet dusks that seemed to go on for ever. Clare found it heartbreaking to have to sit at her table, evening after evening, shut up with her revision for the June exams. She thought of the times, now long past, when she had slaved over her spellings and what a difference that had made to her future. But it wasn’t easy.

The sun was now so high it slanted through the tiny windows of ‘the boys’ room’ at the back of the house, where she worked, her books and papers spread out on the bed that had been Bob and Johnny’s, a long time ago. As the hours passed, the heavy shadows under the old trees in the orchard deepened and a blackbird sang his heart out from the highest branch of the one pear tree that threw its branches up and over the surrounding apple trees.

When her restlessness and the beauty of the evening got too much for her, she would walk out to the front door and stand under the rose covered arch, the pale petals of Albertine unfolding around her. She would breathe deeply, grateful to escape for a little the confinement of the small back room where the window hadn’t opened for years and the aura of damp and dry rot never faded, even in summer.

The evening air was so full of scents and perfumes, the heavy smell of elderflower from the huge flat blooms on the tree by the gable, the tang of cut grass from Eddie’s meadows, the lingering aroma of turf smoke from the sunken metal circle in front of the forge, where an old cartwheel had been re-hooped earlier in the day. There were hints and murmurs of forgotten aromas, the dark perfume of the old roses her great-grandmother had grown and the tang of herbs whose names she didn’t even know. Behind her on the hall-stand stood a great jug of double white lilac from the tree by the old house, to judge by its size a tree her great-grandmother might well have planted.

Sometimes she wondered what she herself might leave behind, what trace of her life, of her being, in this place, a grandchild might find, something she had made, or planted, or set going. And then she would remind herself of the exercise book open on the old washstand, the novel in English, or French, or German she was currently studying, the notes to be gone through, the dates and definitions to be learnt by heart.

The month of May, Clare decided, was a wistful month, a month that stirred up longings one couldn’t even name and made the longings one could name even harder to bear. But, as Mrs Taylor always said to both her and Jessie, ‘All things pass, both pleasant and unpleasant’.

And May and June did pass, the exams safely and successfully completed. Term ended and suddenly she was free. She could do whatever she wanted to do. She had time. Time that felt like a huge legacy of hours and days, weeks and weeks of them, to spend as she chose.

‘Great, just great,’ said Jessie. ‘You’ve been a right pain this last six weeks. Gettin’ you out of that room was like gettin’ blood out of a stone. C’mon we’re goin’ to live it up. Roy Rogers in Trail of Robin Hood Monday or Tuesday, The Underworld Story, Wednesday or Thursday, Tomahawk Trail on Friday. An’ we’ll go to the field in Armagh on The Twelfth an’ make sure Robert doesn’t have one too many while he’s listenin’ to the speeches.’

Clare laughed and thought how wonderful it was to have Jessie home. She, too, had her summer holiday, nearly as long as her own.

‘I take it you’ve won the pools,’ she said wryly as Jessie finished outlining her plans for the following week.

‘No, I’ve done far better than that. I’ve made a fiver,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘My treat. We’re goin’ upstairs. Ice cream in the interval and chips on our way home. How about that?’

Clare was intrigued. Since Jessie’s father died her mother had gone back to teaching and one or two relatives had contributed towards the cost of Jessie’s secretarial course, but Jessie certainly hadn’t appeared to be any better off than before, for she still had her old habits of spending money whenever she got her hands on any.

‘So how did you manage that?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Tell me the secret. I could do with a fiver or two myself.’

‘Ach, sure it was the cat did it.’

‘What cat?’

‘Yer woman that I stay with. Mad about that cat, she is. If you heard her talkin’ to it you’d think she was mental.’

‘Yes, but what about the fiver?’ Clare persisted.

‘I was at a loose end one evenin’ an’ I did these sketches of dear pussy. I left them lyin’ in what she calls the “guest’s lounge” an’ when she sees them, she wants them. I told her I only do sketches on commission and that I charge five pounds a sitting. I was only pullin’ her leg, but she’s that daft she thought I was serious, so she asked me to do a sittin’. D’ye believe me or do you want to see it?’

‘Of course, I believe you. You always were marvellous at sketching. But I can’t let you spend your money on me.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not fair.’

‘Would you do it for me, if you had a fiver?’

‘Yes, of course, I would.’

‘Then what are you bletherin’ about? Now which nights are we goin’ to the Ritz? I can’t go tomorra night, worse luck. Mammy’s for Hockley to see the other oul’ aunt an’ she says I’ve to go with her.’

Clare laughed at the wry look on her friend’s face. Jessie never minded going to visit Aunt Sarah with her mother, though she said the crack was always better if she went on her own, but visiting Sarah’s older sister Florrie was definitely not Jessie’s idea of fun.

‘We might see each other on the way there. I’m heading Hockley direction to go to a dance,’ she said lightly.

‘Yer not? Where’s the dance?’

Jessie face fell, her disappointment so clear she looked an absolute picture of misery.

Clare relented. She’d intended to tease her friend a little, but seeing her looking so let down, she hadn’t the heart.

‘Oh, it’s nothing much, Jessie. Only the Orange Hall. Uncle Jack’s lodge,’ she began. ‘That’s why I couldn’t ask you to come with me. It’s invitation only. I only got one because Aunt Minnie wants me to help her with the sandwiches and Jack said if I stayed for the hop he’d run me home. I’m really sorry I couldn’t ask you to come with me.’

Jessie shook her head and looked at her sharply.

‘You’ll tell me next they’re unfurling a new banner.’

‘Yes, they are indeed,’ said Clare, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

Jessie shook her head impatiently.

‘Ach it’s the season for it. Sure they’re all at it, any that kin afford it. Have you any idea what one o’ these do’s is like?’

‘No,’ said Clare honestly. ‘I’ve never been to anything like that before. I thought it might be rather interesting.’

‘Interesting,’ Jessie repeated carefully. ‘They say there’s one born every minit,’ she went on raising her eyes heavenward. ‘Sure they’ll speechify half the night, ye’ll be starved by the time ye even see a bully beef sandwich an’ there won’t be a man there under forty. Or if there is, he’ll be with his Daddy and he’ll hide in a corner till it’s time for them both to go home. I think I’ll be better off with Florrie.’

 

Uncle Jack collected Clare the next afternoon, waited patiently while she put her freshly-ironed dress across the back seat and drove her off at speed to Liskeyborough. He had to see a man about a lorry for the field, he said, as he dropped her in the farmyard, her dress over one arm, Jessie’s new Louis-heeled shoes and her purse in Granda Scott’s shopping bag.

Aunt Minnie was already installed at the broad table under the kitchen window, bowls of mixture and a pile of sliced loaves at the ready. At the far end of the table, Granny Hamilton sat and watched, her hands so bent now with arthritis that she could no longer grip a knife.

‘Hello, Clare, how are ye?’ she said, smiling up at her. ‘Is that the wee dress you were tellin’ me about? The one Polly sent you?’ she asked, her sharp eyes running over the navy blue fabric with its pattern of white spots. ‘Away an’ put it in the bedroom before we get butter on it. There’s a wire hanger on the back of the door.’

Clare got to work, grateful for Granny Hamilton’s company – for Minnie was a large, silent woman whose most frequent conversational utterance was ‘Really’. She was, however, a dab hand at making sandwiches. She’d reduced the first stage to two efficient movements. One spread the butter generously and evenly across the slice from crust to crust, the other removed as much as possible while leaving a layer sufficient for the filling to stick to. It was some time before Clare mastered the technique, but after all, she reminded herself, Minnie had been doing it for years.

Granny Hamilton entertained them as they worked. She passed on the news from the aunts and uncles scattered around the province and brought them up to date on the large number of cousins now leaving school and finding their first jobs. Every so often she interrupted herself to comment on the assorted men who came to the kitchen door enquiring for Jack or one of his brothers, in connection with the preparations for the evening.

‘Sure that poor man has himself worried silly about the night,’ she began, as she craned her neck to see who it was that was tramping down the yard, knowing that the most likely place to find Jack was in the workshop. ‘If he’d known he’d be Chairman in the year of a new banner, he’d never have taken it on. But there was no talk of that until a few months ago and now he can’t get out of it. He’s that shy, he’d go half a mile out of his way to avoid speakin’ to a stranger.’

‘Will he have a lot of speaking to do?’ asked Clare, as she carefully cut open the waxed paper on a sliced loaf so they could reuse it for the finished sandwiches.

‘Ach, yes. There’ll be thanking brother This for the loan of the field and brother That for the loan of the lorry to stan’ on. An’ then he’ll have to thank the Reverends for dedicating the banner and addressin’ the assembled company. After them, he’ll have the bands to thank for comin’ from Rockmacreaney, or Richhill, or where ever indeed they’re comin’ from. An’ after that he’ll have to thank the lady that cuts the cord an’ give her a wee box with a pair of silver scissors in it. And then he’ll have to do the Women’s Committee and thank them for makin’ the tea.’

‘That’s about half the Women’s Committee you’re buttering bread with, Clare, in case you didn’t know,’ she added with a grin, when she saw the very serious look on Clare’s face as she took in all she was saying.

The kitchen had grown warm and stuffy, even with the stove low and the door propped open. Clare looked out. The sunshine had disappeared since she’d arrived. Dark clouds were piling up on the horizon. It would only be a matter of time before it rained. And it would be heavy.

‘Aye,’ said Granny Hamilton, looking up at Minnie, ‘forby your Harry, there’s his cousin Sam from Stonebridge and his other cousin, Billy Hamilton from Four Lane Ends. Oh, they’re well pleased at the way the lodge is growin’ and bringin’ in the young ones,’ she said, pressing her lips together and nodding sharply. ‘That, I heer tell was why they made the effort for a new banner. The aul’ one would have gone on a while longer, but some of the senior men in the lodge made a brave bit in the war. Sure the prices was sky high for farm produce, an’ one or two did a nice wee sideline with men from Belfast who had their own customers, if you understan’ me. It didn’t hurt them to put their han’ in their pockets,’ she went on, looking out the window where the first sixpenny-sized drops were beginning to fall.

‘It’ll be a big night for the young ones, shakin’ hands with the Chairman and the County Grand Treasurer,’ she went on, one thought leading to another. ‘But they’ll have their father’s with them to keep them straight,’ she added thoughtfully.

She frowned at the rain and turned back to Minnie, who had not uttered a word for the last hour.

‘Is your young Harry nervous about tonight?’ she asked agreeably.

Minnie twitched, pushed back a straggling lock of greying hair and added another slice to the pile in front of her.

‘Not really,’ she said slowly, as she buttered the next.

Clare bent her head lower and spread faster, because she was afraid she might laugh. It wasn’t just Minnie, poor thing, who’d never uttered two words if she could manage with one, it was the whole prospect of the evening as it now unrolled before her. Jessie was going to have such a good laugh.

Not that she ever minded when Jessie laughed at her for getting things wrong, for Jessie wouldn’t know how to be unkind, but sometimes Clare was glad Jessie didn’t know the half of what went on inside her head. It meant she felt less of a fool when her imagination got the better of her.

The longer Clare went on buttering and listening to Granny Hamilton the more she could see that she’d really had let her imagination run away with her this time. She’d been so excited that Sunday afternoon when Granny asked her if she could come and help Minnie.

‘You’ll stay for the do, won’t you?’ said Jack, who’d just come into the kitchen. ‘I’d like a dance with my young niece.’

Although she and Jessie were practised dancers neither of them had ever danced anywhere but the Temperance Hall in Lonsdale Street where the high school girls went for gym and games. The thought of wearing a dress and dancing with a proper partner instead of another girl in green knickers was very appealing. Clare could imagine the band playing a lively quickstep, herself spinning round the lamplit hall in the arms of a handsome young man, raising the dust from the wooden floor as they wove expertly in and out of the other, less practised dancers.

She had entertained her dreams on many a boring journey home from school and across many a yard of dirty floor to be scrubbed, but it had never entered her head that Auntie Polly would send her a dress for her birthday a whole three months early.

Clare held the dress against herself, almost certain it would fit. And it did. When she’d slipped into Robert’s room to look in the big mirror inside his wardrobe door, she could hardly believe it.

She adjusted the white collar on the high, buttoned-up neck and pirouetted in her bare feet to see the swirl of the generously cut skirt that flared out from the neat waist. With the brightness of excitement in her dark eyes and her even darker curls setting off the creaminess of her skin, Clare hardly recognised the face that looked back at her in the dim light of the heavily-furnished room. She was wondering if she dare use lipstick for the big occasion when suddenly she remembered she’d no shoes she could possibly wear with such a smart dress.

‘I don’t think this rain’s goin’ to give over,’ announced Granny Hamilton firmly. ‘I think it’s settled in for the night.’

Startled, Clare came back to the present and looked out through the open door. Broad puddles were spreading across the uneven surface of the yard. Huge falling drops of rain raised spikes of water in them like tiny, pale flowers.

‘What’ll they do about the banner, Granny?’ she asked quietly.

‘Nothin’ for it, they’ll have to use the hall. Sure, they’d all get soaked and the banner would be well christened. They can take a wee shower an’ be none the worse if they’re kept movin’, those banners, but not a downpour like this. Especially when they’re new and the paint not that well settled.’

She surveyed the table, the finished and wrapped sandwiches lined up in battle order ready to be packed in a big box.

‘Minnie, ye may make us a cup o’ tea. Goodness knows when you an’ Clare will get a bite to eat. Can you make up some of those thin crusts with a bit o’ jam. There’s new raspberry in the cupboard Mrs Loney brought me a present the other day.’

 

The rain didn’t stop, it got heavier. Minnie, Clare and two cardboard boxes of sandwiches were squashed unceremoniously into the back of Jack’s car for the short drive to the hall. In the front seat, the Master of the Lodge kept up a stream of anxious questions about what was going to happen. Jack tried to answer him while swerving between the worst of the flooding from the springs in the hedge banks of the deep-set lane above the farm. The journey was uncomfortable but mercifully short.

They parked as near the hall as they could, but between the driving rain and the muddy path outside, Clare abandoned all further thoughts of her first glorious appearance on a dance floor. Clutching her half of the sandwiches, she splashed through the puddles, deposited her box in the minute kitchen and retired into the adjoining lavatory to dry her wet hair on her handkerchief.

As she stood in front of a small, starred and spotted mirror, drawing a comb through her wet curls, she thought ruefully of the time it had taken with the flat irons to get out the creases her new dress acquired crossing the Atlantic. They were nothing to the creases just made by her close confinement with Minnie and the two boxes of sandwiches in the small back seat of Jack’s Austen.

She peered at herself in the mirror and made up her mind. Holding her breath and with great care, she outlined her lips with Perfection Pink and rubbed them together as Jessie had instructed her. Having nothing else to hand, she blotted them and left a perfect print on her wet hanky.

‘At least I can tell Jessie I wore her lipstick,’ she said to the mirror as she turned her back on it and went out into the hall.

The hall was bleak and chilly. Two men were struggling to install the banner in an upright position on the narrow platform of the low-ceilinged room, while others brought out stackable chairs, discovered there weren’t nearly enough of them to seat the expected company and went off in search of more. Clare shivered and wished she’d brought a cardigan. It was July and the afternoon had been hot and sunny, but she ought to know better by now. As Granda Scott always said, ‘There’s many weathers in an Ulster day!’

Tonight felt like winter as the rain pounded on the corrugated roof and the grey light filtered through the small sash windows. The empty, echoing hall was gloomy, the wooden floor, just like those she and Jessie had seen in countless barn dance scenes at the Ritz, became damper and dirtier as men with chairs, men with ladders, men with supports for the poles of the banner, all tramped back and forth by way of the muddy path to the main road where they had parked their assorted vehicles.

The men’s voices echoed as they called instructions to each other. The furled banner leant drunkenly on its poles, first one way and then the other, till someone decided it would have to be unfurled. If it wasn’t supported properly unfurled then the whole thing might fall over on the platform party when the lady with the silver scissors did her bit.

Clare wondered how the said lady was to have risen the twelve feet off the ground to where the banner was lashed around it’s crossbar in order to unfurl it, but no one seemed to have considered this difficulty. More urgently, they now faced the immediate problem of getting a field full of people into the hall, in company with two pipe bands, the special guests and the members of the lodge itself.

As the evening wore on, however, it seemed to Clare the bad weather itself was helping out. Many guests stayed at home. But even then, the hall was packed. The press of perspiring bodies, mixed with the odour of damp clothing, rubber boots and Brylcreem, made Clare long for fresh air. But she could see that was a long way off.

Finally the proceedings began. There were prayers and exhortations from the ministers, followed by strong words about courage and loyalty. Clare was puzzled when the elder of the two clergyman made lengthy reference to the Battle of the Somme and the great sacrifices made by the Ulster Division in the cause of freedom. As she went on staring at King William on his shiny white horse, it suddenly came to her that the Battle of the Somme must be the image on the other side of the banner.

‘I hope and pray that this example may inspire you to live lives worthy in God’s sight and that the freedom that has been passed down to you will still be yours …’

His voice tailed off ominously as he looked down at the young men lined up below the platform, three of her cousins in their midst, wearing new suits and looking acutely uncomfortable.

He spoke as if he expected another war to break out at any moment. Surely he couldn’t really mean it, she thought. Didn’t everyone expect the last one to be the very last one of all? If enough people didn’t want another war, couldn’t they stop it happening?

To keep herself occupied, she studied the detail of exotic flowers all round the border of the banner and the vivid landscape of little hills, the background to William’s portrait. The horse, she thought, was very good. And horses were difficult to draw, so Jessie said. Especially in that rearing position. But William wasn’t very inspiring. Short and rather podgy, he looked as if he was cross-eyed. Or perhaps that was just the light of battle in his eye.

The clergyman was now speaking of religious freedom.

‘The Orange Order will not abide anyone interfering with the way in which we worship. All those who march behind this banner stand for freedom of worship,’ he pronounced firmly, shaking his finger at the assembled company.

Clare yawned discreetly behind her hand and looked around her. The rows of faces were impassive. They gave no hint as to whether they thought he was inspired or talking a lot of nonsense. And they applauded every speaker with equal courtesy, including the whole list of votes of thanks Granny Hamilton had so accurately predicted.

A second clergyman was now getting to his feet. He smiled genially at the assembled company and said that the unfurling of a banner meant that a lodge was flourishing. This was a good sign. Long may it continue. He then pointed out the fact that Roman Catholics went to Mass before eight o’clock. They must admire them for that and be prepared to make the same effort.

‘Week after week you have the good example set by the Royal Family attending Divine Worship. They are fighting against Communism. But we here in Northern Ireland have another battle to fight as well as the fight against Communism. We have to fight the enemy that never sleeps, We must never forget Rome. The church of Rome is ever ready to exploit weakness. We must be vigilant. We must be ready,’ he warned, as he waved an emphatic finger and sat down.

Clare was confused. She couldn’t quite see how Northern Ireland was involved in the struggle against communism. She’d never heard of anyone she knew being a communist or even knowing anybody that was. Perhaps the lodge had inside information about these mysterious people. As for the encroachment of the Church of Rome, the only conversion she had ever heard off was the joke about the elderly Protestant on his death-bed, who decided to be converted, because he thought it was better if one of them went than one of his own side.

She would have to ask Granda Hamilton what it all meant, she really would. He wasn’t a member of a lodge because of being a Quaker, but he always knew what was going on and would answer her questions as well as he could. Every one of his sons had joined the lodge and now his grandsons were just waiting to be seventeen to apply for their sash.

She’d so missed seeing him today. A cousin in Castlewellan had died and he’d gone to the funeral taking William with him. Whenever Granda went anywhere now he always took William and Granny breathed a sigh of relief. She was quite open about it. William was as difficult as ever, she said. If he hadn’t someone or something to keep him occupied he was a pain in the neck. His grandfather was the only one who had the patience to keep on at him and make him behave properly. He’d always worn her out from the first day he ever came, but now when she was so tired and often in pain she just couldn’t cope with him at all.

Clare sighed. She had done her best but nothing seemed to work with William. Sometimes she imagined he would find something that really interested him, football, or chemistry, or bird-watching. But so far there was nothing that had engaged him in any way. She wondered if William would join the lodge when he was seventeen, like the rest of his cousins. But that wasn’t very likely to solve the problem.

The Chairman had finally got round to thanking the bands and the Ladies’ Committee. While he was expressing his deep appreciation of all the ladies did for the lodge, Clare slipped from her seat close to the kitchen door and moved silently inside. She lit the Calor gas under the copper. It had just come to the boil when the band launched into the National Anthem and the assembled company leapt to their feet and sang all three verses.

 

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time everyone had been fed and provided with innumerable cups of tea. There was an awkward pause when it seemed that neither of the bands present expected to play for dancing. Eventually, a few brave souls from each offered their services and the piano was retrieved from its hiding place in the cloakroom.

They struck up a quickstep that set Clare’s feet tapping, but no one moved. A thick knot of men at one end of the room kept their backs turned to the women and girls sitting round the walls at the other. Clare waved hopefully to her cousin Sam. He blushed and looked the other way.

Finally, after three more numbers, the Chairman took the floor with his wife, a large lady with tightly permed hair, who nodded over his shoulder to the younger men and mouthed to them to ‘Go and dance’.

Clare waited patiently. Someone was walking towards her. A large man in a navy striped suit and brown leather shoes. He said nothing, just nodded at her and held out his hand. She stood up. He pressed two fingers to the small of her back. Holding her at arm’s length he walked her backways along the side of the room. At each corner, he twisted his body to accommodate the new angle and then continued as before.

‘Big crowd,’ he said after the first circuit.

‘Yes,’ agreed Clare, unable for the moment to think of any more promising response to this conversational effort.

‘Are you a member of the lodge?’ she enquired, thinking it a pretty poor attempt on her part.

‘Na,’ he said, dismissively. ‘No time for all this marching and so on. Encourages bad feelin’. I’m agin it.’

‘So how do you come to be here?’ she asked promptly, quite unable to contain her curiosity.

‘Wanted to see how the banner looked,’ he said, as the music stopped. ‘I painted it,’ he added, walking away as silently as he’d come.

After that, she did take the floor with Uncle Jack, who was a great dancer, though he tried to tell her he was past it. But they only managed two dances. Just as they were getting into their stride, someone came and proposed a vote of thanks to the musicians and they had the National Anthem all over again. It being Saturday night, the hall had to be empty and closed up before the Sabbath.

In no time at all, Clare was saying goodbye to Jack at the bottom of Granda Scott’s lane. The rain had stopped, but she still had a job picking her way through the familiar puddles in front of the cottage.

To her surprise, the front door was not closed and when she pushed open the kitchen door, she found the lamp still lit.

‘Did ye enjoy yerself?’ Robert asked, as his half-closed eyes flickered open.

‘I did indeed, Granda. I had a great time,’ she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could manage. ‘Granny says we’re both to come over for our tea next week, its far too long since she’s seen you.’

‘That’s very nice of her, very nice indeed,’ he replied, nodding to himself. ‘Did she like yer dress?’

‘She did. She said it suited me real well,’ she went on, glad to be able to tell the truth.

‘I had a young gentleman askin’ for you this afternoon,’ he said as he leant over to pull off his boots.

‘Who was that?’ she asked, amused by his habit of teasing her.

‘Oh, one that’s been here before,’ he said firmly. ‘I think you mind his name. The one on the chestnut mare.’

He winked at her as he headed for his bed.

‘Goodnight now. Sleep well after your first dance.’