Clare didn’t expect the weeks that followed Robert’s death to be easy, but she was quite unprepared for the anxiety and the pervasive sense of loss that overwhelmed her as she tried to take up her life again.
Every time the phone rang in the dim, echoing hall below her room, she went rigid, fearful lest some new disaster might come upon her. She would open her door and listen intently as Mrs McGregor came out of her sitting room and picked up the receiver.
‘Jean dear, it’s your mither. Hurry up now, she’s in a call box.’
She’d breathe a sigh of relief, go back to whatever piece of work she’d been struggling with, and give herself a severe talking to. She was letting things get on top of her, she’d say. Going to lectures had become an effort, writing essays an interminable chore. All she felt up to was sitting in her room, staring into the orange glow of the gas fire or watching the laden clouds move steadily past the bare branches of the rain-soaked trees.
Evening after evening she would sit by the fire, comforted by its warmth and its friendly roar, absorbed in her own thoughts. The loss of Robert was a shock and a blow but, even in her worst moments, she knew she would not wish him back to face another winter, however bad a time it gave her.
‘His hammering days are over.’
She wept every time she thought of Jamsey going to look for him in the forge, because he couldn’t hear him hammering.
‘Ye’d not wish to see him poorly.’
She would weep each time she remembered John Wiley taking an old tin box from his pocket, and showing her the fuchsias packed in moss Senator Richardson had sent her.
But her tears brought real relief from the pain of her loss. She grieved for Robert as she had grieved for her parents, sensing the hurt would heal as the wisest of her friends said it would. But there was another hurt that the tears did little for. Once again, with the death of someone dear to her, she had lost the home she loved.
The only person who seemed to understand how she felt about that was Andrew. He wrote often and phoned at an agreed time every two weeks. She knew how truly concerned about her he was and his efforts to cheer her touched her, but he seemed so far away, so remote, a part of a world full of warmth and sunshine as completely lost to her as the summer itself, now long gone.
Friday nights were the worst times, she decided, as she walked back from the last lecture of the week, the rain mizzling down, the street lamps reflecting in the wet road.
‘All trying to get home early,’ she said to herself, as she glanced at the line of tail lights disappearing up the Malone Road, before she tramped over the pedestrian crossing and turned into Elmwood Avenue.
She had a roof over her head, yes, but she had no home. No lane, no forge, no orchard, no smoking stove, no floor to scrub. She turned her key in the front door and ran upstairs, knowing she couldn’t cope with any friendly greeting.
As week followed week, it got so bad she could hardly bear to leave her room. She forced herself to go to lectures, but shook her head and said no to all the offers of outings or parties. When Jessie and Harry insisted she go out for a meal with them she told them she had an essay to write. The very thought of the restaurant, brightly lit and decorated for Christmas, was more than she could manage.
The only time she felt any ease at all was when she was surrounded by her precious possessions, her own books, those she had inherited from Ronnie, the few objects she’d brought from the home she had lost.
Whenever she did try to work, she sat in Robert’s chair, the green glass jar she’d used for posies beside her on her table in the window, the sitting room clock and the two white dogs with black shiny noses on her mantelpiece.
Yet people had been so kind to her. She’d been touched by the way Henri Lavalle assured her of his help at any time. Mrs McGregor told her to come down whenever she felt lonely. If her grandparents weren’t able to have her to stay over Christmas, she said, she’d be more than welcome to join her small family.
The last week of term arrived, but the first solitary days of the vacation brought no change. Indeed without the pressure of work to keep her going, they were even worse.
‘Clare dear, it’s your Uncle Jack.’
She raced down stairs, a towel round her wet hair. She hadn’t even heard the phone ring as she lay in front of the gas fire combing it through to help it dry.
‘Hallo, hallo, Uncle Jack? Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing to worry about, love,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Granny asked me to give you a wee ring. She needs a bit of help and she thought maybe you’d go up for a few days. Sure we haven’t laid eyes on you for weeks you’ve been that busy.’
Clare felt ashamed. Uncle Jack had rung several times to see if he could collect her for the weekend, but she’d made excuses. The farm had only three bedrooms. If Auntie Dolly went off to visit friends, then it wasn’t too bad, for she’d have Dolly’s room, but if Dolly was at home and Jack went fishing, she had to share a room with William. If Jack was at home as well, then it was a folding bed in Dolly’s room and having to listen to her talk about her boyfriends far into the night.
William just about tolerated Jack sleeping in ‘his’ room at weekends, but having to share with his sister was a different matter. From the moment a visit was even mentioned, he began to grumble and complain.
‘Is Dolly away, then?’ she asked, surprised, for today was only Wednesday.
‘No, Dolly’s at home till Friday, but she’s off to see Emily and the children at the weekend. We’ve had a wee bit of bother with William, but you’re not to worry yourself. He’s all right, but he won’t be home for about a week.’
Clare knew he was doing his best to reassure her, but she insisted on having the full story. Given William’s characteristic behaviour, it was a familiar enough tale. The previous day Uncle Billy had come over from Richhill to visit Granny. He’d left his motorbike parked in the yard with the key in the ignition. William had seen his chance, slipped out and rode off, managing the powerful machine fairly well till he’d met a tractor coming the other way and filling the narrow lane. He’d ended up in the hedge, cut and bruised, with a broken leg. He was now in the infirmary in Armagh, his leg in traction, but otherwise unharmed.
Clare sighed. Poor Granny and Granda. And poor Uncle Billy. His motorbike was his pride and joy and no doubt it had suffered damage as much as William. She did her best, but she found it hard to be sorry for her brother when his behaviour caused so much distress and concern to everyone.
‘I can bring you back on Sunday night, Clare,’ Jack went on, ‘an’ we can bring your big photograph. I have it well wrapped up for you. Could you manage to go up on the bus tomorrow? Granny thinks she ought to go inta Armagh and see him, an’ she’s walkin’ very badly. I think she’d like ye for a bit o’ company. She’s always talkin’ about ye,’ he ended quietly.’
‘Yes, yes, of course, I’ll go,’ she replied immediately. It did not occur to her that it was the first ‘yes’ she had said in months.
It was foggy the next morning. As she drew back the heavy curtains on the bay window, Clare shivered and wondered what was the warmest thing she could wear.
‘Trousers,’ she said to herself, as she went to the wardrobe.
As she stretched out her hand for the pair Auntie Polly had sent her in August, her hand brushed against the old ones she’d last worn when she’d scrubbed out the house by the forge, to leave it ‘in a clean condition as per the lease’.
She gasped, horrified, as she remembered the rings. She searched the pockets frantically, but all she found was a grubby handkerchief and the old penknife Robert used to carve tobacco from his plug of Mick McQuaid.
‘What on earth have I done with them?’ she cried, totally distraught. ‘How can I have lost them?’
Still shivering in her nighty and dressing gown, she began to search the room, throwing open drawers and rifling through the contents. There weren’t all that many drawers to search. In a few moments, she stopped, defeated, and flopped down on the unmade bed. Then she remembered.
‘Please, please, be there,’ she whispered to herself, as she went to her dressing table. From the top drawer, she drew out a small leather box and opened it. Clipped into the red velvet lining were the gold earrings Jessie and Harry had given her for her eighteenth birthday. Beside them, quite safe, the two gold rings bound together exactly as she had found them.
The fog was patchy, but not enough to prevent the almost empty bus from getting on with it. Soon they were out of the city. In the stream bottoms the mist lay thick, the trees and bushes ghostly shapes, but nearer the road the hedgerows were clear and the bare trees stood out, their branches grey etchings over a pale wash. On the smooth curve of a little hill, sheltered by trees, a farmhouse made a perfect composition, the mist softening the harsh detail of rusty roof and ill-placed dung hill. She looked up and saw the sun, a bright disk alternately gleaming and disappearing in the soft, blanketing vapour, as it rose higher in the sky.
She had never found mist beautiful before, but perhaps cycling through it with the moisture clinging to your face and hair was not the best way to appreciate it.
‘Single, please to Loney’s Corner,’ she said to the conductor, when he came to collect her fare. ‘Could you drop me a bit this side of it to save me a walk?’
‘Aye, surely. Are ye for the station?’
‘More or less,’ she agreed, smiling.
‘Ach, we nearly always have someone goin’ doun that road. Sure a wee extra stop only takes a minit.’
By the time the bus stopped opposite the road that led down to Liskeyborough, the sun was glinting on the whitewash of the south-facing cottages and the mist was dissolving before her eyes.
‘Thanks very much,’ she shouted, over the roar of the engine, as the conductor handed her down her small suitcase.
She crossed the main road, the throbbing still in her ears, and heard her name called.
‘Not speakin’ to anyone this mornin’?’
‘Sam!’ she cried in surprise, finding her cousin perched on a shiny new tractor that sat vibrating by the roadside.
‘I’ll give ye a lift if ye can houl on t’ yer case,’ he offered as she came alongside.
She scrambled up behind him and settled herself securely on the sack of straw behind his driving seat, one arm holding on firmly.
‘Are you for the farm?’ she shouted, as he set off.
‘No, I’m over the Retreat way. We’ve sheep on the ten acre, but I’ll drop you at Granny and Granda’s. How’ye doin’? D’ye like Belfast?’
‘Miss the country, Sam. How about you?’
‘I’m great. Da and me’s started on pigs. It’s goin’ powerful well.’
They bumped along past familiar fields. It almost looked as if the same cattle were in the same place as the last time she’d come this way. She found it strangely comforting.
‘Sam!’
‘Aye.’
‘Can you drop me up on the hill? I want to look round me. Granny doesn’t know when I’m coming, so she won’t be looking out yet a while.’
‘Sure. I’ll hafta t’ go on a bit past the gate, it’s a bit steep to stop.’
‘I need the walk,’ she said, laughing. ‘You forget how to walk in the big city.’
The noise of the tractor died away as she walked back down the steep slope of the lane to the five-barred gate. The notice was still there, but it hung lopsidedly, one piece of binder twine having given way.
‘Trespassers will be prosecuted,’ she read, as she climbed over, and parked her case in the hedgerow.
‘Or persecuted, if you live in Fermanagh,’ she added, as she set out up towards the tall, stone finger.
The grass was beaded with moisture and the slope as steep as she remembered. She was quite out of breath when she got to the top and had to lean a moment against the worn stone of the base of the obelisk. Recovering her breath, she went and propped herself against the low concrete post that carried the observation point for Armagh Observatory.
Wisps of mist still lingered in the wet valley bottoms, but the hillsides were now bathed in sunshine. Even as she watched, the mist dissolved as the sun rose higher. Beyond the orchards and fields to the north-east she caught a sudden sparkle from the broad expanse of Lough Neagh.
‘My teacup,’ she whispered to herself, as she turned and walked over to look out from the other side of hill.
It was still there. Of course, it was.
She laughed at herself as she ran her eye over the familiar landmarks, the tall chimney of an old cotton mill, the tower and spires of the cathedrals, the domes of the Observatory poking above the trees that concealed the sharp outlines of her primary school.
The tiny breeze that had helped to disperse the last of the mist fell away. It was now perfectly still. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her face as she looked up at the clear, blue sky.
‘I envy you, Clare,’ Andrew had said, as they stood side-by-side, looking out over the same countryside, a little over a year ago.
She remembered how his eyes ran hungrily over the farms and fields on the slopes away to the east, as if searching for something. Perhaps she knew now what it was he wanted.
‘I’d buy cows.’
They’d all laughed at him, that wet afternoon in Caledon when Ginny amassed a fortune in Monopoly money. Ginny said she wanted to train horses. She herself had admitted how much she wanted to travel. Edward insisted he had no ideas yet. And dear Andrew wanted to farm his cousin’s land.
She stood for a long time, her mind filling with images from the past. She thought of her friends over at the Grange, people who would make her welcome anytime, the Robinsons, the Wileys, Jessie’s mother and Aunt Sarah, Charlie Running.
Down below the hill, her Hamilton grandparents would make her welcome too, their home always a focal point for all the family, the proliferating relatives she’d had such trouble sorting out when she was a little girl.
‘It was there all the time,’ she said to herself. ‘I thought I’d lost my home. And in one way I had. The bricks and mortar have gone. But that’s not the half of it, as Robert would say. There’s all the rest, all this. Andrew was right, I have my whole world spread out around me. It is mine and no one can take it away from me. Only I can let it go. If I have all this somewhere, I can make a home again. Later, in another place, perhaps.’
She put her hand into her trouser pocket and took out the rings. They caught the sunlight and winked at her. Bonded together with a single long, fair hair with a hint of red they were marked with initials that spoke of a passion for the land of Ireland.
Her thoughts went back to Andrew. She went over all they had shared when they’d been together, the long letters they’d written week after week, when they’d been so far apart. He’d been so tender towards her distress, so eager to help and comfort her. Yes, they too were bound together, by their love for each other and their love of this land spread out all around her.
She took it all in once more and smiled suddenly. Her desolation had gone. Dispersed like the morning mist in the warmth of the sun. She was herself again, the future open before her. But where that future would lead, she could not see, even on such a clear day.