The exceptional mildness of the last months of 1845 continued through the early months of the new year in Ardtur, as indeed it continued through most of Ireland, making the signs of spring so visible that all along the west coast, and certainly in Donegal, men began preparing to plant their first crop of potatoes several weeks earlier than usual.
Patrick McGinley could see no reason to wait and he too began to turn over the soil early in March and dig in the seaweed he’d been able to collect from the shore, as well as the small amount of manure accumulated in the barn where Neddy had his stall, alongside the turf cart and the tools used in both the potato garden and out on the piece of bog that came as part of his holding of ‘dwelling house and garden’.
Hannah, who had remained busy all winter, actively engaged with both her teaching, her sewing, and all the things she did to support Patrick’s work for their neighbours along the length of the valley, found herself strangely uneasy at the visible signs of growth, the small sprays of unfurling leaves on the hawthorns, the very first wildflowers in sheltered corners and even the odd garden flower in the collection of old pots under the south-facing windows.
On the evening when Patrick and the children settled at the kitchen table to prepare seed potatoes for planting the next day, she sat silently by the fire, sewing, and thinking of the letter she soon expected from Galloway. She was dreading it coming. It seemed that parting from Patrick would never get easier. She did appreciate that it was indeed the price they paid for their closeness, but somehow, just now, it seemed harder to bear than ever.
Her father, at least, was in very good spirits, pleased that, as he put it, ‘there had been no winter’. In his most recent letter he’d reported an above average crop of both lambs and calves. From everything he said it was clear ‘the season’ was just as early in Galloway as it was in Donegal. That made perfect sense, when even here in Ardtur, further north and more exposed to the elements than the south-facing fields sloping down to the beaches on the Solway Firth, growth had already begun. It would be only a matter of days, rather than weeks now, before Patrick would be preparing to leave.
There were many other people equally concerned about Patrick’s departure, but their reason was very different from Hannah’s. There had been no easement whatever in the demand for the meal and flour he had been distributing since last October. Now, everyone in the valley knew that Patrick would soon be leaving with the other harvesters. Without his regular deliveries there would be no food till the new crop of potatoes were big enough to dig.
Jonathan Hancock had done his utmost to set up a plan to care for the whole valley with the resources he’d been able to gather from his own mill workers, from the donations he’d raised with the help of Johnny’s pictures and the distribution of funds he’d had from the Friends Yearly Meeting. But he, like Hannah and Patrick, had thought things might improve in 1846. There had been talk of Public Works providing paid work, at least until the new crop was ready. But, so far in this area, nothing had happened. From what Sophie and John had gleaned from the wide variety of newspapers and magazines, English and Irish, they had access to, it looked as if nothing of a public nature had actually happened after all. No employment schemes. No relief. Apart from irregular donations from American emigrants directed to the school, or to individual families, nothing new was coming to support Jonathan’s scheme, while the need of most families remained unchanged – and with the threat of the situation getting worse still if the new potato crop failed.
What indeed would happen when Patrick left for Galloway?
Hannah kept Jonathan informed and he was quite clear in his answer. If there was no change in the need then, of course, the work must go on, exactly as it had been doing. Could Hannah find someone to take over from Patrick until sometime in June, when the new potato crop was harvested? He would try to find the funds.
It was fortunate that in the same letter asking her to find someone to replace Patrick when he left for Galloway, Jonathan also gave Hannah an update on the fishing boat being built by her brother’s small boatyard in Port William. Good progress, he said, had been made on the keel and an interim payment had been made to the builders, but the official visit of the Quaker researchers to Dunfanaghy and the North Coast of Donegal, planned for the early summer, had been unavoidably delayed. As yet there was no new date for the visit, which he felt sure would result in an order for further boats.
It was when Jonathan commented on what they would do if the crop failed that Hannah realised what a burden they had shouldered. She wondered if that was why Jonathan sometimes now sounded uneasy, or even burdened, in his letters, though he continued to answer her reports fully and promptly. Usually he managed to end with some piece of good news he thought she might not have heard via what he called ‘her spies’ – Sophie and her lodger, John McCreedy.
But at least the immediate problem could be resolved easily. Patrick went to see Dermot Donnelly and found that although he had managed to find some irregular work by his own efforts, he was only too happy to take over Patrick’s task as soon as he left, to keep him busy until the hoped-for boat was ready.
The fact that Dermot had no barn attached to his cottage was solved very simply and to the great delight of Rose and Sam. Neddy would continue to live in Ardtur, fed and looked after by Dermot, but groomed, as Dermot promptly agreed, clearly amused, by Rose and Sam.
‘Sure, it’s no trouble at all to walk back and forward from home,’ he insisted, to Patrick and Hannah as they shared mugs of tea, a few days before Patrick’s departure. ‘Haven’t I walked miles in the last months in the hope of a few hours work, an’ just to get me out of the house? We’ve had enough to eat, thanks to Johnny’s wee pictures and that friend of yours, the Quaker man, but sure I can’t bear being idle.’
Dermot was delighted at the prospect of a proper job for at least the next few months. With that confirmed and the promise of the first fishing boat ready to launch by the end of the year, the man Hannah had found so bitter and anxious at their first meeting was so transformed that he’d now become a welcome visitor.
*
Patrick’s departure came and went.
Hannah shed silent tears in her empty bed and then kept herself busy till she judged, the weather being calm, that he was probably safely in Scotland, albeit with the journey still to make from Stranraer to the hamlet of Rewick. Then, next day, she took out her writing pad as soon as she’d finished morning jobs.
One of the first things she was able to tell him was that Dermot had called just when he was ready to set off with Neddy. She was touched when she found he had stopped to ask her if there were any jobs Patrick had usually done for her when he was down the mountain, for he’d be glad to do them for her.
Dermot was as good as his word. Some days later, when Catriona replied to a note he had delivered to her, she announced that a first batch of skirts and shifts was ready for sale or distribution. When Dermot asked if there was anything she needed him to do, Hannah promptly told him what was in the note.
‘Well,’ he replied, without the slightest hesitation, ‘d’ye want to come out with me on one of the mornings ye’re not at school, or can ye tell me what’s needed an’ I’ll do it fer ye? Ye did tell me once what the plan was. Some gets the stuff for free; some pay a wee bit for it. Was that the right way of it?’
Hannah nodded and explained why it wasn’t all for free. She watched him as he nodded his agreement.
‘How would you know who had no money and was entitled to a free one?’ she asked quietly.
‘Sure, isn’t that easy,’ he said. ‘Don’t I remember what my poor wife wore afore ye came t’ the door an’ tole us about Johnny’s wee pictures an’ that Quaker man took a hand in helpin’ us. I don’t forget those times, nor shou’d I, just because I’ve m’ hopes to go back to fishin’ again. I was a right hand at that,’ he added quietly.
The wistfulness in the way he said it brought tears to Hannah’s eyes. She blinked them away quickly, smiled and said: ‘What about size?’
‘Ah, sure what about it? Women always know by the look o’ the thing whether it’ll fit them or not, an’ sure if I know anythin’ at all, some of them’ll be that glad to get somethin’ decent, they’ll find a way of makin’ it fit,’ he added, with an easy laugh.
‘An’ don’t be worryin’ about the money,’ he said. ‘I can tell them the more I gets from people that has a wee bit, the more garments we can get t’ give away t’ them that has nothin’. I’m a fair judge of honesty, even wi’ the women who sometimes think men are stupid.’
Hannah laughed aloud and wished she had both the time and the energy to give a full account of his practical approach to both Patrick and Jonathan.
Meantime, as he said goodbye and she wished him well for the day’s work, she reminded herself she now had two mornings’ work to do, for tomorrow was a school morning and Daniel had asked her to organise a spelling quiz, which would also let him judge how successful, or otherwise, their pupils’ command of English vocabulary had become.
About Dermot’s capacity for the new job, she had no doubts at all.
*
There were now fifteen pupils packed in to Daniel’s big kitchen. It had always been a problem when they all needed to write at once, for the few desks they had were only suited to the oldest boys and girls and they not only took up a lot of room but also had to be moved outside at the end of the day to leave room for those who gathered in the evenings to share the day’s news and listen to stories and poems.
That meant, of course, the desks were often too wet to move back inside in the late evening, or next morning. When that happened all the pupils had to use slates, or pieces of board laid across their knees. As Hannah and John agreed, it didn’t give them a fair chance at improving their handwriting. Worse still, now that copybooks were available, there was little opportunity to use them.
‘Good news, Hannah,’ John said, smiling, as he stepped out of Sophie’s house and fell into step with her and Rose and Sam at school time next morning. ‘I forgot to tell you last night when I was so hungry for my supper!’ he said laughing.
‘Well, what is it?’ she replied, encouraged by his smile.
‘We had a visit from Joseph Ross yesterday, your friend from Ramelton,’ he added. ‘Apparently, you told his wife we had no proper furniture for the school, so he came up before Easter and asked Daniel about the children, their ages and sizes. He came back yesterday after school and brought us two folding tables that will take three or four each. He says he’s got a man making two more the same size but with shorter legs that would take three or four of the wee ones.’
‘My goodness,’ Hannah said, ‘they never mentioned it to me when I last saw them.’
‘He told me that too,’ John replied, happily. ‘He said you’d done a great favour for their PWC and this was to be a wee surprise and a thank you. There’ll be benches to match coming in a week or so, and the whole lot can be folded up whenever we want to put on a play!’
*
Hannah was glad of John’s presence at the evening meal now that Patrick was in Scotland, especially on ‘teaching days’ when she found herself weary and preoccupied as she made supper. She appreciated his appearing and passing on what news there might be that he could share with Rose and Sam present.
To her surprise, he seldom stayed beyond their bedtime when they could have talked more freely, so she spent many hours alone with her sewing, often too tired to write, even though she had letters both personal and otherwise that were on her mind.
As the days lengthened and the skies were still pale gold at eleven o’clock, she thought more and more of Patrick and her father working away in the fields, the long, long summer dusk full of the sound of the gentle splash of waves on the nearby beach, the bark of a dog, far away, carrying on the still air, the call of an owl hunting along the hedgerow of the biggest field.
The world of her childhood seemed such a very happy and secure place, unlike this island of Ireland, now her home, where in places people were waiting desperately for the new potato crop, their only hope of both paying the rent and keeping their home and having food to see them through the long months when the nights darkened earlier and earlier, and winter came.
*
The bad news came in dribs and drabs to begin with, the first news brought by Dermot himself. Collecting meal and flour in Derry, he had met some sailors from the Glens of Antrim. Over a week earlier, they had found the first bent stalks on the well-sprouted plants in their potato patches. By the time they sailed for Derry, the smell of decay was on the air and the few spadefuls of potatoes they’d dug revealed tiny tubers already blotched and beginning to rot.
Days later, John relayed some news from Fermanagh from the Impartial Reporter, a local newspaper sent to Sophie by her niece. The blight had just arrived there. This year there was no point trying to dig the potatoes to save them as they were still so small.
As the days passed there was no end to the reports. This time the failure was total in every part of Ireland, and Donegal was soon as badly hit as the areas where the blight had first been found.
‘What are we goin’ to do, Hannah?’ Dermot said, when he found her kneading bread at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning while Rose and Sam were out ‘looking after Neddy’.
‘I don’t know, Dermot. I just don’t know,’ she said, dusting flour off her hands. ‘Jonathan Hancock is due sometime soon. We may just need to put on our thinking caps, as my sister used to say. We’ve managed so far. We’ll think of something.’