The pleasant weather of late April that had brought greenness to the hawthorns and tiny blooms to the first wildflowers in the grass took a sudden dip towards the end of the month and into the beginning of May. Rain swept across the mountain in grey curtains, blocking out the view of the lake, making the rocky paths look like streams, while the wind swirled around the cottages, blew down the chimneys and on occasion filled the schoolroom with smoke.
Bad weather always made more work for Hannah. School clothes had to be dried overnight, the floor had to be washed more often, and now that she was teaching three mornings a week she seldom had time to sit by the fire. If she did find a quiet space to sit and reflect, she was already far too tired to think of sewing. At times, she even had to press herself to write the daily instalments of her letter to Patrick.
But despite the problems of fitting in everything she had to do, she could not help feeling a surge of delight when first one, and then another, large box was delivered to Daniel’s cottage in Casheltown. The boxes had come from Dublin, as promised, by Jonathan Hancock. The first one contained stationery: pencils, pens and ink, rubbers and blotting paper, drawing paper and both crayons and coloured pencils.
She would never forget the look on Daniel’s face as the pupils clustered around him and she and John opened that first box, passing over the items, which came out one by one, for him to inspect. She watched him stroke the covers of exercise books, sniff the unfamiliar odour of crayons and feel the sharp points of pencils and pens.
Later, when the second box came, he clutched the shiny copies and asked first one pupil and then another to open at random and read him a paragraph. It was difficult to tell whether it was the pupils or the teachers who were most excited.
By the time the weather improved enough to sit again on the stone bench and look out at the snow-like dusting of blossom on the hawthorns, a great deal had happened to secure the future of the school.
To begin with, the elderly Quaker in Richhill to whom Hannah had written, was able to assure her that it was just a matter of time before Daniel’s pension was restored. He explained, as simply as he could, that a trust had been set up soon after Daniel’s birth when it was clear that he was blind. As he was still blind, and as the source of the funds from which his pension came was in such good heart, there could be no reason for his pension being withdrawn. It might take a little time to have it restored, but even if this were so, she could be assured that all the missing payments would be refunded.
Daniel, relieved and delighted, worked out that he could pay Marie from what he proceeded to call his ‘back pay’ and would be able to make John a small allowance until his promised salary from the Quaker Charitable Society had been arranged.
It really did feel as if the sun was shining on all their efforts – from John’s attempts to beg, or borrow, benches to seat their pupils properly, or the first endeavours at ‘teaching Scotch’, something they had delayed because of an outbreak of flu, which kept many pupils at home just when the bad weather began.
Neither Daniel, nor John, nor Hannah, had had any idea as to how their pupils would react to learning English. They did agree that handing out the grammar books and proceeding formally might not be the best way. Daniel and Hannah talked about it when they took a short break mid-morning, and John and Hannah shared their thoughts after their evening meal on the fine evenings when Rose and Sam went out to play.
Daniel suspected that some of the children did, in fact, hear English spoken by people like the rent collector, or the land agent. Much would depend on the nature of those people. There might be some hostility or there might be acceptance.
That was when John suggested taking a light-hearted attitude to begin with, then see if they could engage their interest by trying to make use of any small familiarity with English the children might discover they already had.
Daniel thought it worth a try and Hannah, though not entirely easy about the part she was to play, was more than willing to see how John’s plans might work out. And so they began.
In the small space at the front of the class, after their usual morning lessons, John produced an old and very battered hat, put it on, and stood looking around him, rocking on his heels and whistling. From time to time, he looked down anxiously at something on the ground beside him. Then Hannah stood up, picked up a basket she had brought to school with her and came to look critically at the space behind John’s legs.
‘How much are you wanting for the chickens?’ she asked, speaking slowly in English, and looking him straight in the eye.
‘Ah, they’re great chickens,’ he replied, shaking his arms as if they were wings, and looking down at them. ‘They’ll be great layers. Eggs galore,’ he went on, cupping his hands round a large imaginary bowl. Say ten shillings for the box, and cheap at the price.’
‘I’ll give you five,’ said Hannah sharply.
For the first time, the class, who had been unsure what to make of the ongoing scene, laughed aloud. They listened, fascinated, as John and Hannah continued to bargain and after much haggling Hannah finally got her imaginary chickens, which she carried off and deposited with her basket beside the chair where she sometimes sat.
‘So do you think perhaps learning English might not be too bad?’ John asked, addressing the class now in Irish.
‘Did you understand any of the words?’ he went on, looking round the class who were still smiling.
From a variety of children, words were offered. ‘Chicken’ and ‘shilling’ and ‘egg’. They were repeated and written on the blackboard.
And then Daniel repeated the new words. They were the first words his pupils had ever heard him speak that were not Irish. He agreed with them that Scotch wasn’t that difficult after all. ‘A few words every day,’ he said, ‘and in a wee while you could go anywhere and talk to anyone.’
*
Sitting together on the stone bench while John finished the morning’s lessons, Hannah knew that Daniel was delighted with the success of John’s plan.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I once had a friend, a teacher himself, who used to say, “The secret with children is to work from the known to the unknown. Find a link to the child’s own experience. If you can make a connection, however slight, it’s like a beam of light to their path and you’re halfway there.”’
‘I wasn’t too sure when John suggested our dialogue,’ began Hannah honestly, ‘but I’m impressed. They’re all so excited and they thought it was wonderful when you said the words too. Was it difficult for you?’ she asked, breaking off, remembering his own unhappy relationship with the language that he’d once admitted to her.
‘No more than it was for young John,’ he said promptly. ‘If you hadn’t told me his father was from County Down and didn’t think to learn any Irish, even when he took an Irish wife, I might not have understood him so well. Knowing his background, I’ll do everything I can to back him up. He deserves all the help he can get. What would I do without you both?’ he added, rather sadly.
‘And who was it started the school in the first place?’ she came back at him. ‘Who was it tramped around trying to find enough money for a blackboard and a few books, and now look what we’ve got.’
He smiled. Hannah always gave credit where credit was due, whether it was the children, or anyone else. If he could have had a daughter, he would have wanted one like Hannah.
*
Later that day, when Rose and Sam were playing in the sunshine with some of the other children in Ardtur and John was reading newspapers to Sophie, Hannah cleared up after their evening meal and took out Patrick’s last letter from the drawer in the kitchen table.
He apologised, as he so often did, for having no ‘news’ of any kind and then went on to tell her of the work they were doing, the state of the crops, the kindness of the weather and the good-heartedness of her father’s new housekeeper, who had been so caring to the youngest member of the team, away from home for the first time and clearly feeling homesick.
She smiled, picked up her pen, scanned what she’d already written to him earlier in the week and continued.
You would have been so proud of Rose and Sam today when we had the first English class. I had explained to them that the other children might have no English at all and they must be careful not to speak up just because it was easy for them. So they said not a word until John began writing on the board, and then they just joined in when the class practised the first words and some simple sentences.
Do you remember, my love, how you used to sit at the kitchen table in the farm and I had to coax you to speak? You seemed to be so shy. It was only three years later you confessed it was not the English that was the problem, you were afraid if you said anything you’d give away your love for me. Three whole years, you kept me waiting! But in that time my father came to know you better. In the end your thoughtfulness was rewarded when he gave us his blessing. You were right indeed, for I was only just seventeen when you first arrived.
She put her pen down and stretched her aching shoulders. Between carrying turf and water for the house and writing on the blackboard in school, she often had a pain in her neck by the end of the day, but she had no complaints to make. Sometimes she saw Sophie, or Aunt Mary, struggle to lift a bucket less than half full. It meant they had to go to the well two or three times every day and all their everyday tasks took longer.
She tried not to think about growing old, or about losing her dear Patrick. She wondered if all women had such fears, or whether it was only because she was so happy in her love for Patrick, that she was so aware of just how much she had to lose.
She wrote a little more, decided that she must post the letter tomorrow before it got any longer and took out the shiny, new English book that they would use in the morning. It was as she opened it that she thought of Jonathan Hancock who had told her where to write and what to ask for. Without that visit of his so much would be different.
‘I wonder does he know about coracles?’ she said quietly to herself.
The children would be back soon and bedtime was close, but when she had tucked them up, she’d make the effort to write and tell him all she’d learnt from Shemmie the fish man. He’d helped her and many people would benefit from his help; perhaps there was something she could do to help him in return.
*
In the seven weeks that remained of the school year, all the pupils in Daniel’s school made good progress, not only in the new venture into English, but also in all the other subjects Daniel and Marie had introduced to them. It was as if the new books, now carried home at night with such pride, had encouraged even the most reluctant of pupils. Confidence had grown and it seemed as if new discoveries were being made all the time.
Hannah’s greatest joy came one morning unexpectedly. She was looking at sketches and drawings of ‘My home’, done for homework, when she found that Johnny Donnelly, a large, awkward boy who spoke only when spoken to, had produced a sketch Hannah herself would have been proud to have made.
She stared at it and found herself near to tears. While all the other children had drawn houses, some like their own, some copied from picture books, Johnny had produced a landscape. Using the crayons, which none of the children had ever seen before, he had created a picture of Lough Gartan and the mountain slopes beyond with sunlight falling on the water from a sky piled with clouds.
John agreed with her. It was an amazingly perceptive drawing from a boy who had never had a coloured pencil, or crayon, in his hand before. Hannah found a place for it, and for some others, on the whitewashed wall of the schoolroom where all Daniel’s visitors in the evening could see it when they came to talk, and play their fiddles, and listen to his stories. She then went and told Daniel what had happened.
Daniel was delighted. At the end of morning school, before Hannah went home, he went round the class asking each pupil what they thought of Johnny’s picture. ‘Did you hear that, Johnny?’ he asked at regular intervals, while Johnny blushed with pleasure and said nothing.
At the end of his inquisition, Daniel announced to the whole class that Johnny had just won a prize. It might take a little while to arrive, he warned, but Johnny would be receiving a box of watercolour paints and brushes, as well as a sketch pad, for his own use only. They would be arriving from Dublin, with only one condition: that he kept drawing and sketching.
Hannah and John both smiled to themselves as they listened to Daniel addressing the class. They knew that Daniel had just received his ‘back pay’. At times in the course of the last few months, from Marie’s accident and the loss of his pension, Daniel had almost despaired of keeping up the school. Now, with all the help they’d had thanks to Jonathan Hancock, the school had been saved. Johnny’s prize was one way in which Daniel was going to celebrate.