Robert Scott’s funeral to Grange churchyard was one of the largest anyone could remember. For so many who stood in the pale autumn sunshine Robert’s passing was not only an immediate personal loss, but one of those events which they recognised as a critical point in their own history and the history of their community.
The crowds of mourners flowed from the churchyard and spread out over the broad, roughly-surfaced space opposite the church gates. As they made their way slowly towards the ponies and traps tethered across the road, or the handful of cars parked under the wall of the churchyard itself, they greeted each other with nods and handshakes. A phrase as familiar as the time-honoured ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ spoken so often at the wake or at the graveside, echoed back and forth: ‘Ah, ’tis the end of an era, the end of an era.’
There were men who had sat on the hard wooden benches of the Orange Hall with Robert when they were just lads of seventeen and he had already served his time. Women who were infants in the schoolroom, when he was a big boy carrying turf for the fire. Their grown sons and daughters, who’d brought work to the forge since they were youngsters. All looked around bleakly as they turned their backs on his grave and called to mind friends and relatives already at rest on the hill top behind them.
Their own youth and prime was now long past, but harder still to bear was the disappearance of the world in which they had grown up, day by day. They knew they could no more halt the changes they saw at every turn than wind back the clock, regain their own lost vigour, or bring Robert back to his rightful place in the forge.
‘Ach, the place will be desperate quiet without him,’ said Harry Todd, as he shook hands with his cousin John Williamson.
Robert’s hammer had echoed like a heartbeat throughout Harry’s lifetime, its silences punctuating the weeks as clearly as the church bell.
‘An’ where will we go for the news?’ asked John, a well-off farmer, who didn’t appear to recognise either his telephone, or his new television set, as any substitute for the worn and grimy bench inside the half door.
A sudden chill breeze stirred the dust and blew yellowed leaves against the stone wall below the old schoolroom. Once, long ago now, both men had sat in that large, bare room with Master Ebbitt and young Miss Rowentree, chanting their multiplication tables, the names of the continents, of the kings and queens of England and of the counties of Ireland. The building was boarded up now, the roof rapidly deteriorating. It was beginning to look like the cottages where they themselves had been born, storehouses now, a short distance away from the newly-built bungalows with running water, electricity and wide picture windows.
‘It’s hard on the wee lassie, an’ her lost her parents not that long back,’ said John, with a slight backward glance to where the family still stood by the graveside, studying the cards on the wreaths laid out on the trampled grass, while the gravedigger and his helper shovelled back and tamped down the dry brown earth.
‘Aye. Clever girl she is too. He was that proud o’ her whin she got the scholarship. Ah niver heard Robert talk so much about anythin’ in all the years I knew him, as he did about that scholarship. What’ll happen to her now, I wonder?’
‘Sure only time will tell, man. But I’d say she’d make her way. She has a head on her shoulders forby being clever, though she’s heart sore at losin’ him. Did ye see her drop in the wee posy of flowers after Bob and Johnny threw down the earth? Fuschies, they were. I wondered to meself when I saw them where she had them growin’, to have them flower so late. But then, that house always was kinda sheltered.’
They paused and turned to watch June Wiley hurry past with her eldest daughter, Helen. They nodded knowingly as mother and daughter disappeared into the lane that ran from the top of Church Hill down past Robinson’s orchard, along by their horse trough and across the front of their potato house and machine shed to come out beside the forge.
‘She’s doin’ the tea for the relatives,’ said John, who was June’s uncle. ‘Bob and Johnny have a fair way to go the night, though I heerd Clarey is for Rowentree’s with her friend Jessie afore she goes back t’ Belfast.’
‘Is that so?’ Tom enquired, as he unhitched his pony and trap from the gate into his brother-in-law’s field and hoisted himself awkwardly into the driving seat. ‘Have ye yer car?’
‘Aye, but I parked it beyond by Colvin’s to be outa the way o’ the hearse,’ John replied, turning on his heel.
‘Ye’ll be down one night soon?’ Tom said quickly, to his cousin’s departing figure.
John raised a hand in acknowledgement, but didn’t pause. His bad leg had started to ache with all the standing. Once it started, it didn’t know when to stop.
‘Ye’ll be welcome,’ Tom called, raising his voice. ‘There’s not many folk call these days. It bees lonely of an evenin’.’
He gathered up his reins and called to the mare. With a last look at the Scotts arranging wreaths on the closed up grave, he turned the trap back the way he’d come, to his own empty house at Ballynick.
After the crowds of people who had packed the house since Friday evening, Clare found it strange to walk into the big kitchen with her Scott uncles and aunts. Uncle Jack had said he thought he ought to stay with Granny and Granda Hamilton when he took them back to Liskeyborough. Jessie said she’d be down when she’d seen Harry off. But Clare knew no one else would call today, not even dear Charlie. In the unwritten rules of the community, only ‘family’, or those especially invited by the family, might visit between the laying to rest of a loved one and the necessary taking up again of life on the following day.
‘There ye are, love, it’s all ready. There’s a second pot just brewing,’ said June Wiley as she greeted them at the door. ‘Now be sure ye eat somethin’ for I’m sure ye had no lunch.’
‘June, I don’t know what I’d have done without you. You’ve been so good,’ said Clare, as she walked outside with her. ‘And you too, Helen,’ smiling at the tall, fair-haired girl who’d so brightened the days for Robert, these last three weeks.
‘Aye, well, Clare, you’ve done your share t’ help yer friends. It’s a small thing to help you now. Come up if there’s anythin’ you want or if you feel lonely. You know yer way.’
She turned back into the house. Sarah and Sadie were handing round sandwiches. Bob and Johnny had brought extra chairs from the sitting room, but Sarah and Sadie seated themselves on the settle when they finished pouring tea. They looked as awkward as ever.
No one sat in Robert’s chair. The clocks were silent still but the kettle singing on the stove raised her spirits, a small continuing thing in a world that seemed otherwise to have stopped. She drew it aside before it boiled up and started rattling its lid and pouring out steam.
‘Desperate big crowd,’ said Johnny, when the silence grew too much for him.
‘And such a lovely lot of wreaths,’ added Sarah.
Clare listened as they repeated all the comments they’d already made at the graveside while they’d read the labels on the wreaths. That had been her own worst time. Even worse than seeing the coffin lowered into the dry earth. Her eyes were so misted with tears, she couldn’t read the words out loud, which they expected her to do. All she could think of were the cards once written for Ellie and Sam.
It was Jessie, dear Jessie who had stepped forward and read out the tributes for her in a voice Clare hardly recognised.
‘Clare dear, I don’t want to upset you on a day like today, but I think I ought to ask you about my father’s will,’ began Bob, tentatively, as he put his empty tea cup back on the table.
Clare smiled at him and shook her head.
‘I don’t think he had one. He never mentioned it.’
Bob nodded. It was no more than he expected.
‘Would there be anywhere he kept papers or money? I think we should just make sure.’
They left Sarah and Sadie to search the Bible and the huge Bible commentaries, between the pages of which Robert sometimes kept a spare pound or two for emergencies and went into his bedroom. It was already dim and shadowy for as the afternoon drew on towards dusk the heavy furniture absorbed what little light filtered in through the tiny orchard window.
‘I think there’s an Ulster bank book in one of those tiny drawers,’ Clare said, pointing at the dressing table. ‘If there was a will, he’d have put it there.’
‘Have you the key?’
Clare shook her head and pulled opened both drawers. One contained his pension book and the freewill offering envelopes from the Presbyterian Church, the other held a battered bank book and a yellowed policy document. Provincial Friendly Society Burial Fund, it said. It was dated 1904, the year Robert was married, and was fully paid up in 1929.
‘As far as Johnny and I are concerned, Clare, anything father left is yours,’ he said quietly, as he picked up the bank book and opened it.
He smiled wryly and handed it to her.
The account had been closed a month earlier with a withdrawal of twenty-one pounds, two shillings and elevenpence.
‘Ye’ll need to be buying books and suchlike,’ Bob said, as she opened the envelope he’d handed her the night before she left for Belfast.
When she drew out the four papery fivers and protested that it was too much and too good of him, he’d laughed and said what he’d always said whenever he’d given her money, even as a very little girl: ‘Ah, sure there’s corn in Egypt yet.’
She stood leafing through the bank book, aware that Bob was watching her. The entries were almost all in the same hand, a flowing copperplate in black ink that had faded only slightly. The book began in 1931 with a Brought Forward entry of forty-seven pounds, two and tenpence. Over the next fifteen years, Robert’s saving had grown to three hundred pounds. In 1946, there were a cluster of withdrawals taking the account right back to fifty pounds. Then there was a deposit of two hundred and sixty. That would be the money for Granny’s funeral. She would have had a Burial Fund policy too. The next withdrawal was in August 1947. She knew from the amount that it was for her school uniform. From then on, Robert had made regular small withdrawals. Perhaps some of those payments for gates which Robert had said would cover the rent for weeks hadn’t actually turned up after all.
‘I’m sorry Clare, I could have done more. I didn’t realise things were so bad,’ said Bob, leaning against the chest of drawers by the door.
‘You’ve always been kind and very generous,’ she protested. ‘He was always saying how good you were, particularly at Christmas.’
For a moment, Clare thought Bob was going to cry himself.
‘He was very independent, in his own way,’ she went on quickly. ‘He wasn’t ungracious, just quietly determined. I think maybe I’m a bit like him.’
Bob smiled warmly.
‘Clare, will you let me pay the rent for you till you’re through university? You won’t want to give up the house will you?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that,’ she burst out, horrified at the thought of it. ‘It’s my home. It’s all I have now,’ she added more quietly. ‘But I can manage the rent. My grant is far more than I imagined it would be.’
‘That’s because it’s a full grant,’ he said, knowledgeably. ‘The grants are means tested and my father had no means. No means at all,’ he added, ‘and him worked that hard all his life.’
Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Bob did burst into tears and Clare put her arms round him.
‘Oh yes, he had, Bob,’ she insisted. ‘He had all the means he needed. When he said “We’ll get what’ll do us,” he meant it. I don’t think he’s ever wanted anything he couldn’t have. At least, not while I’ve known him.’
Bob mopped himself up on a large white handkerchief and nodded.
‘I think you’re right, Clare. It may not always have been like that, but I’ve felt he was content these last years. There’s not many end their life in as good heart as Robert. That’s worth more than a fat bank book,’ he ended as he put the tattered book back in the drawer. ‘What about this?’ he asked, picking up the policy.
‘I think he asked Charlie to see to that.’
‘And what about his clothes? Would you like us to take them all away with us, so you won’t have to go through them?’
Clare shook her head.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, but Charlie knows an old man in Ballybrannan whose badly in need of them. He says he won’t mind all the darns and mends, he’ll be only too glad to get them.’
‘So that’s everything then?’
Clare smiled weakly.
‘No, you’ve forgotten one thing,’ she said, as she pulled out the wide central drawer in Robert’s wash stand and handed Bob his silver fob watch.
He turned it over in his hand and read the inscription on the back;
‘Robert Scott 1902, From C. R. who will never forget.’
‘C. R.?’ he asked, surprised. ‘I though my mother gave him that as a wedding present.’
‘So did I,’ she admitted honestly, as she surveyed the other items in the drawer, hoping to find a keepsake for Johnny. ‘What about these for Uncle Johnny?’ she asked, producing a velvet lined box with matching tiepin and cufflinks. ‘Auntie Polly sent them from Canada and he was very proud of them.’
Back in the kitchen, Sadie and Sarah were brushing dust and fluff from their black suits. The Bibles and Bible commentaries were piled high on the table with the remains of the sandwiches and cake. Sitting beside them was a single pound note, streaked and grimy from the pocket of his working trousers.
‘It really is time we were going, Bob’, said Sadie sharply, as they came back into the kitchen.
Johnny was jingling his car keys when Clare offered him the box with the tiepin and cuff links. He looked at Sarah dubiously but thrust them into his coat pocket with a hurried word of thanks as his wife walked past him into the hall to use the mirror and the last of the daylight to put on her hat.
‘Ring me, Clare, if there’s anything either of us can do,’ Bob said, as he kissed her goodbye.
‘Yer a great girl, Clare,’ Johnny said, hugging her awkwardly.
‘I hope your studies go well, Clare,’ said Sadie, tottering slightly in her very high heels, as she followed after Bob into the gathering dusk. ‘There’s nothing like a good education to help you get on in life,’ she added as Clare walked down the lane with them to where the cars were parked below the forge.
Of the four black-suited figures she might not see again for many a day, only Bob seemed sad as he waved to her before he reversed down to the empty main road.
But the last word was Sarah’s. As soon as she’d arranged her skirt carefully beneath her bottom so that it wouldn’t crease, she wound down the car window and leant out.
‘Make sure you read your Bible every day, Clare,’ she said, as Johnny started the engine. ‘You can keep on re-using the notes I gave you last Christmas. There is just so much to be gained by rereading the same passages at regular intervals.’
And then Johnny, too, reversed down to the empty main road and set off on the long journey back to Fermanagh.
There was still light outdoors as the dusk faded and the hush of evening deepened over the quiet land. Clare stood under the rose trellis at the front of the house for a long time, listening to the blackbirds as they called and scuffled before settling to roost. When she glimpsed the first star she stepped back into the kitchen and found it so dark she couldn’t have picked her way between the abandoned chairs but for the glow of the stove, which cast their tall shadows against the distempered walls.
She carried the chairs back to their place in the sitting room, ignored the scattered remains of tea and dropped down on the settle. It was the first time she had been able to sit quietly by herself since the moments by the well in the orchard the previous day.
She’d always loved the kitchen when it was lit only by the radiance from the stove. Often, when Robert, rose to light the lamp, she felt sad as the kindly shadows were driven away. In the flickering firelight, one was not aware of the soot-blackened ceiling or the scuffed, varnished paper that covered the lower half of the walls. The dirt and grime she struggled to keep at bay simply disappeared and she could enjoy the gleam of well-loved objects, the wag on the wall with its brass weights, the shiny black noses of the china dogs on the mantelpiece, the well-polished surface of the mahogany drop-leaf table that saw service only at Christmas, the wink of the glass panes in the corner cupboard.
She looked across at the empty chair and for a moment imagined she saw the faint haze of smoke from his pipe. She smiled to herself. She was sure the smell of his tobacco would always linger in her mind. Judging by the pained look on Sarah’s face when she’d come back with Uncle Bob from Granda’s room, the Bibles and Bible commentaries were thoroughly pickled in his favourite Mick McQuaid tobacco.
On the mahogany table, an old stone jar, held a bunch of gold and bronze chrysanthemums. They were not the impressive blooms the local florists had used for the wreaths, they were spray chrysanthemums, garden grown, smaller and more homely, with a wonderful spicy smell. They had been waiting for her when she came back from the orchard and found John Wiley lighting the Tilley lamp under the watchful eyes of Sadie and Sarah.
‘The Senator and the Missus sent these for you, Clare,’ he said, drawing her over to the scrubbed table where he’d laid the blooms in their brown paper wrapping. ‘An’ I’ve a wee somethin’ here from Andrew forby,’ he added quietly, as she bent down to see if there was any rainwater left in the galvanised bucket in the big cupboard.
‘Does Andrew know about Granda?’ she asked, straightening up immediately.
‘Aye. He phones his Granda fairly regular,’ he explained, ‘but the Richardsons were up at Caledon on Friday, so he got June, an’ of course she tol’ him. So he rang again later, an’ asked the Senator for these.’
John took from the deep pocket of his coat an old tin box. Inside, half a dozen small sprays of fuchsia with the pendant blooms of Clare’s Delight were carefully packed in damp moss. She had burst into tears and clutched John as if she would never let him go.
‘Ach, there now, Clarey,’ he said, putting his arms round her, ‘Sure Robert was a good age. You’d not want to ’ave seen him poorly, now wou’d you?’
She shook her head vigorously and mopped up her tears as quickly as she could. What had made her cry this time was the thought of the Senator, a man she had come to know and like, an exact contemporary of Robert himself, going to his greenhouse and cutting his precious blooms, surely the last blooms of the season, to send to her, because Andrew had asked him if he could spare them.
The fire was dropping low and the room growing chill. Remembering that Jessie would be arriving soon, she stirred herself, made up the stove and lit the lamp. The soft, yellowy light grew as she turned up the wick and the familiar gentle hiss broke the silence of the room. How many times had she watched Robert light the lamp? Now, she would have to go on lighting it until the electric came. According to the newspaper, it wouldn’t be long now.
She shook her head and paused, staring up at the soot-blackened boards of the ceiling where tiny flecks of distemper had fallen off, leaving white marks on the dark surfaces. She stood, a large, empty teapot in her hands and knew, suddenly and quite clearly, that she would never look up at the blackened ceiling and see a light bulb hanging there. For a moment, she was completely taken aback.
‘And why should I?’ she said aloud, recovering herself.
She could imagine how unforgiving the electric light would be, illuminating all the dark corners. It would cast harsh shadows and show up the sad shabbiness of this well-loved room. Yes, of course, ‘the electric’ made life easier. Granny and Granda Hamilton and their immediate neighbours had all had it put in this year. They all said how much work it saved and how much less cleaning there was. But no one ever spoke of what had been lost when it came.
‘Hello, Clare, how’re ye doin?’
‘Oh, Jessie, how good to see you,’ she said, as her friend walked in, the fur collar of her coat beaded with tiny specks of rain. ‘You shouldn’t have come down for me, you know. I’d have come up later and you could’ve had longer with Harry.’
‘Ach, not atall. He’ll be late enough by the time he gets back to Belfast,’ she said dismissively, her back to Clare as she slipped off her coat and parked it over a chair. ‘Did ye get yer aunties off all right?’
Clare grinned.
‘Sarah told me to make sure I read my Bible every day.’
As Jessie raised her hands in a familiar gesture of despair, Clare caught the glint of diamonds.
‘Come on, Jessie, let’s see it. You kept your gloves on this afternoon,’ she said cheerfully.
She saw Jessie’s face crumple. She seemed so awkward and uncomfortable and not like her usual self at all. She’d been pale when she’d arrived, but Clare thought it was just the cold of the night air. Now she was beginning to think something was wrong.
‘I’d have called the party off, Clare, if it hadn’t been for the message ye left me on Friday,’ she said, uneasily.
‘Of course you would, I know that,’ Clare said reassuringly. ‘Do you really think Robert would have been very pleased if I’d let you? “Ach, a lot o’ nonsense. Shure life goes on. Isn’t it grate news about Jessie.” That’s what he’d have said, Jessie, isn’t it?’
Jessie nodded. Robert had no time for sentimentality. But she was still ill at ease as she held out her hand for Clare’s benefit. The tiny circle of diamonds winked again.
‘Oh it’s lovely, Jessie,’ said Clare warmly. ‘Is that a sapphire in the middle?’
‘Yes. Harry said it was to match my eyes,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s always saying daft things like that.’
‘It’s not daft. You have lovely blue eyes and you look gorgeous in that coat. You really can wear posh clothes,’ Clare said enthusiastically.
To her great surprise, she saw tears wink in the corner of Jessie’s eyes and her lips begin to tremble.
‘Oh Jessie, love, what’s wrong? What is it? Have I said something?’
For one awful moment Clare wondered if Jessie might be pregnant. Something awful must have happened to upset her so. She hadn’t seen her cry like this since the night she’d found her in the barn after her father shot himself.
‘Ach, it’s nothin’ you said. It’s just everythin’,’ she sobbed. ‘I have Harry, an’ we’re engaged an’ everythin’ in the garden’s rosy an’ you’ve lost Robert an’ Andrew is away over in England an’ …’
Jessie voice failed her and she broke down into floods of tears.
‘And what, Jessie?’ Clare repeated. Whatever Jessie wasn’t telling her was going to be very bad news indeed. Suddenly, she felt sick with tension and she couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer.
Jessie struggled with a minute scrap of lace and muttered incoherently.
‘Please, Jessie,’ Clare pleaded. ‘Just tell me. Tell me now.’
But Jessie was so distraught it took some time before she was able to say anything coherent. When finally Clare grasped what Jessie was saying she felt the blood run from her cheeks and her hands go stone cold.
On the way home from Robert’s funeral, Mrs Rowentree had stopped to give a lift to a local girl who’d gone to the same secretarial college in Belfast as Jessie. Maisie Armstrong had got a job in a solicitor’s office in Armagh and had come back to live at home. She’d asked Mrs Rowentree how Jessie was and if she and Clare were sharing a flat in Belfast. Mrs Rowentree said no, they weren’t, and wondered what had put that idea into the girl’s head. When she enquired further Maisie grew so embarrassed and awkward Mrs Rowentree had pressed her to explain. Finally, she’d blurted out she thought Clare must be going to live permanently in Belfast now because on Friday she’d had to type up all the papers for terminating the tenancy.
Clare sat stunned, unable to grasp how something so awful could happen so quickly and just when it was least expected. It had never occurred to her she might lose her home. Despite all the encouraging things Jessie went on to say she knew suddenly and quite clearly that nothing was going to change matters. Jessie was quite right to be upset. For the second time in ten years she knew she was not only bereft, she would be homeless as well. She wept silently while Jessie made tea.
‘Maybe she’s talkin’ through her hat,’ said Jessie, desperately, as she poured for them. ‘I shouldn’t a’ mentioned it till at least we were sure, till we had these damn papers,’ she went on, totally distraught at Clare’s distress. ‘Surely he can’t do that,’ she declared, ‘just put you out when the rent’s paid regular and the Scotts have been here since pussy was a kitten.’
‘I think he can probably do what he likes,’ Clare replied flatly. ‘He doubled the rent the minute he got his hands on old Albert’s land.’
‘Did he?’
Clare nodded wearily.
‘That’s why I got the job at Drumsollen,’ she explained. ‘We couldn’t have paid the new rent if I hadn’t.’
‘You never told me that,’ Jessie said, accusingly.
‘Some secrets are not very exciting. I’ve always told you all my nice secrets?’
‘Clare, is there any whiskey left?’
‘There might be,’ she replied vaguely, nodding at the glass-fronted cupboard.
Jessie put down her teacup, threw open the glass doors and inspected the remnants in the surviving bottles.
Clare sat quite still, looking up at the blackened ceiling. Some part of her had known. Whenever she lost one thing, she lost everything. Well, not quite everything. She had some friends and she had a room of her own. But the thought of never coming home, of there being nowhere to go on a Friday evening, no place beyond where she lived and worked through the week …
‘Here, drink that,’ said Jessie, taking away her teacup.
She handed her a glass of whiskey to which she’d added a generous splash of spring water.
Clare drank obediently and sat silently looking into the fire. She didn’t even notice Jessie refill her glass.
‘Jessie, dear, I know I said I’d come home with you tonight and we’d spend tomorrow together. Please don’t be annoyed with me, but I have to stay here tonight.’
‘Aye. I thought you might. Will I stay with you?’
Clare shook her head.
‘And have your mother worry herself silly?’ she said patiently, as she wiped her damp face.
As time passed and they sat talking together, she began to feel that perhaps things weren’t so bad after all. She was tired and rather thirsty, but the heat of the fire was so comforting and Jessie seemed to be in better spirits now.
‘Don’t worry, it might never happen,’ she said reassuringly, as she got up and went outside for a pee.
An hour later, Jessie left her to cycle back to Tullyyard. Before she went, she insisted Clare get ready for bed and put out the Tilley lamp in the kitchen. She lit a candle for her and made her promise to lock the door and put out the candle the moment she’d gone.
Once outside, Jessie stood in the darkness, listening intently. She heard Clare put the bar on the front door. Then she watched for the tiny wavering light to appear as Clare went into her room and set it down on the washstand by her bed.
‘Whoof,’ went Clare, after she’d drawn back the bedclothes.
The flame flickered and recovered.
‘Whoof,’ she went, as she tried again.
Outside the bedroom window, Jessie watched and waited. First a giggle, then another whoof and finally the creak of ancient bedsprings. Jessie said a silent thank you. As long as she’d managed to blow the candle out and bar the door she’d be all right. She’d sleep. Jessie had no doubt she’d sleep. After four glasses of Bushmills, she’d never known anyone not.
The papers came next morning, a huge fat packet of them. Clare carried the big envelope back into the house with a handful of other letters and cards, her legs shaking, her heart beating faster, as she sat down at the table and tore it open. She scanned the covering letter hastily. It confirmed all her fears. Their client, Mr Hutchinson, wished to convey his sincere condolences to Miss Hamilton on the death of her grandfather, a much-respected member of the community. Further he wished to assure her he had no intention of insisting on her vacating the property at the customary week’s notice. Now that she was resident in Belfast, he appreciated she would need at least two weeks to make the necessary arrangements for handing it over. In consideration of her position, no rent would be charged for this two week period, but her attention was drawn to the inventory enclosed and the necessity of leaving the property in a clean condition, ready for immediate occupation by his farm manager, Mr Hanson and his wife and family. He wished her every success with her future career.
With shaking fingers, she unfolded the sheets of an old, handwritten document enclosed with various typewritten sheets. It was a copy of the original lease. She couldn’t quite focus on the long sentences, but here and there the words jumped up at her. ‘Made this eight day of October, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirty between, (undecipherable), and Robert Thomas Scott, formerly of Drumsollen, one house and forge with (blank) … and three perches of land and rights of commonage as shown.
She burst into tears. One hundred and twenty four years exactly before the day she was born, her great-great grandfather had signed his name on both the lease and on this copy made by the same hand. It was there, perfectly clear to see, at the bottom of the beautifully written document.
‘Ah, Clarey dear, I’m sorry. Is it from the solicitors?’
She looked up and saw Charlie peering round the door.
‘Come and look, Charlie,’ she sniffed, knowing he’d have heard what Maisie had told Mrs Rowentree.
‘The bugger,’ he exclaimed, as he took up the letter and scanned it quickly.
‘There’s nothing I can do, is there, Charlie? He knows I can’t fight back. Even if I could afford a solicitor, he’s probably sure he’s in the right.’
Charlie nodded his head sadly.
‘He’s been clever forby. He’s waived the rent. He’s behaved as if he’s being reasonable. An’ he’s puttin’ in a family,’ he said, his lips tightening.
‘What’s clever about that?’ asked Clare, looking puzzled.
‘Ach, Clare, there’ll be desperate bad feelin’ at what he’s doin’ and he knows it, but he’ll be able to say, “What does a wee lassie want wi’ a house an’ her away in Belfast. Aren’t there families cryin’ out wi’ the shortage?” Oh, the same man has no flies on him, he’s up to every trick in the book. You can be sure he knows his ground.’
‘And there really is nothing I can do?’ she said, sadly.
He shook his head and pressed his lips together tightly.
‘When I heerd about it last night I away in to Armagh and knocked up young Emerson of Munro and Anderson,’ he began. ‘I used to have a lot of business with him when I was on the Council. He said there’s dozens of these old leases still around with a week’s notice either way. Even if they seem way out of date to us, they are still perfectly legal. I’m afraid, Clare, till such time as you’re so well off you can buy out yer man an’ keep the wee place for yer holidays, you’ll have to put up with it.’
To her own surprise, she smiled.
‘I used to dream what I’d do if I had a lot of money,’ she began. ‘I’d have the whole place painted inside and out, a new floor in the sitting room where there’s a bit of dry rot, new windows at the back, the same style and shape, of course, but a bit bigger to give more light …’
She broke off as she saw the desolate look on Charlie’s face.
‘Ach, ye remind me of Kate. She was the one for makin’ things nice, but like you, she loved the old bits and pieces, the brass lamps and the china dogs and the baskets made of glass with that pink twisted edging round them, that ye put yer cake in fer Sunday tea.’
He paused, shuffling the papers of the inventory through his large, worn fingers.
‘Well, they’re together now, Kate and Robert. An’ maybe that’s the way it should’ve been, but Kate said I’d niver be any good by myself. If I hadn’t her to keep me straight I’d have got myself shot or finished up on the end of a rope. That’s what she used to say.’
‘But what on earth did she mean?’
‘Ach, the Scotts an’ the Runnings were a rebelly lot,’ he said, smiling. ‘Sure yer man Thomas there made pikes for the United Irishmen,’ he said, running his finger under Robert Thomas’s name on the lease. ‘An’ his landlord, Sir Arthur Richardson, put a pile o’ money inta the cause, though he kept his name out of it an’ no one split on him when it all failed. Some of us has kept up hope. There’s been men to follow Tone and Emmett. Myself one of them.’
‘But not Granda, surely?’
‘No, not Robert, more’s the pity, for a more reliable man you’d never find. I reasoned long and hard with him, but he said he could never bring himself to kill a man no matter what the cause might be. But he did say he’d never turn his back on a friend in trouble, whatever he’d done, an’ I’d cause enough to be grateful for that.’
Charlie laid out the papers on the table as if he were dealing a hand of cards, his eyes moving restlessly across the lines of text.
‘He an’ Kate took an awful risk when I’d made a couple o’ bad mistakes an’ was informed on. The pair of them saved my life. That’s when I met Kate first an’ fell for her. Aye, an’ she for me, tho’ she fought it hard, for she loved Robert right enough. She said there was different kinds of love and a man wouldn’t understan’. I don’t know. Was she right?’
Clare didn’t know either. She was just so aware Charlie had now lost them both. She wasn’t the only one who was bereft.