The twenty-ninth of June 1966 was a brilliant summer day. Sunshine poured through the open windows and doors of Drumsollen and dropped patches of light on stacks of objects, piled on tables, chairs and floors.
From the moment the army of young assistants arrived from the auction rooms, clipboards at the ready, to lay things out, labelled and numbered, ready to be recorded for printing in the extensive catalogue, June and Bronagh had been struggling to save even the tiniest space on the kitchen table so they could provide coffee for everyone.
Clare could hardly believe what had emerged from cupboards and sideboards and had been pronounced eminently saleable. Delft and everyday china was stacked up on the kitchen table in perilous piles, Sevré and Royal Worcester dinner services were laid out more carefully in the dining room, battalions of silver alongside. Only the ancestors in their accustomed places remained untouched and indifferent, their details recorded in the colour supplement to the main catalogue.
‘Well, that’s it,’ she said to Andrew, as he locked their bedroom door, A smart young woman with a barely discernable Ulster accent had warned him that if he didn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time a vendor had been left without a bed to sleep in or clothes to wear the next day.
‘What shall we do?’ she asked, as they moved upstairs and across the entrance hall to Headquarters. ‘Where can we hide till it’s all over?’
‘Actually, if you don’t mind too much, I did leave rather a mess in my office yesterday,’ Andrew admitted sheepishly. ‘But I could do it tomorrow, if you’d like me to stay,’ he hastened to add.
One look at his face told Clare that the further away he was from Drumsollen today the better it would be for him.
‘No, I’m perfectly happy to stay,’ she reassured him. ‘Besides, Harry will be arriving at some point and one of us should be here. I’ve locked up our lunch in the bedroom,’ she added, laughing, as he kissed her and went out to the car.
So many last things, she thought. The last bottle of wine at the table in Headquarters the evening before the auctioneer’s staff arrived to begin work. The very last batch of sandwiches made and delivered before the kitchen went out of action. The last picking of roses for the cut glass vase in the hall. The vase was still there, both it and the table tagged with robust brown labels and large black numbers.
Clare decided the safest place for her was the summerhouse. She climbed the steps, turned and looked back down at the expensive cars lining up before the house, their occupants stepping out, well-dressed and well-heeled, catalogues in hand. After their attendance at the Private View, marks had been made on chosen items, prices considered, bids were now at the ready.
She sighed. Tomorrow it would all be over. They’d made plans for disposing of what didn’t sell. Harry would take any good stuff, various charities had been earmarked for the homely and domestic. June and Bronagh would deal with that, do one last tidy and leave Drumsollen to its fate.
She wondered if they might have to have a bonfire for the last residues of labels and wrappings and the thought of the fire brought back memories of the day she and Uncle Jack had cleared out the forge house. Then, the small amount of good, old furniture had gone to a sale room. His wooden chair she’d kept for herself, a companion through her years at Queens, but the old wooden settle where Charlie had sat across the fire from her grandfather, night after night, that had to be burnt.
They’d carried it out with the remaining rubbish and made a funeral pyre, like a Viking’s funeral, she had thought, as she watched the sparks rise up into the pear tree. Rather different from the clearing of Drumsollen. She wondered how Andrew felt at this moment, or even if he knew what he felt. She was sure he had just needed to get away and keep himself busy while the impedimenta of his life was dispersed, the last emblems of a life he had not chosen being taken up and carried away into the lives of others.
By five o’clock the auction was over and June and Bronagh had the whole of the kitchen table on which to lay out picnic mugs and paper cups, scones and cake, for the last time. The auctioneers staff came down and drank thankfully, munched their cake, said their goodbyes and hurried off back to Belfast.
Within half an hour, silence had descended upon the rooms that had been so full of noise and activity. Clare and Andrew walked around with Harry, amazed at the sight of bare, dusty surfaces so recently weighed down with objects of all kinds. Most of the smaller items of furniture had gone, but the larger pieces remained. They stood, looking strangely out of place, every one of them bearing a large, red SOLD notice and a printed sheet, the details needed by the drivers of vehicles that would arrive in the morning to carry them away to their final destinations.
Harry was delighted. He’d made some shrewd guesses, but even he was amazed at some of the unexpected results. With fees and commissions still to be paid, it would be some days before he could give them a final account, but he had not the slightest doubt that the sale had restored at least two thirds of what had been lost when Eventide had to withdraw their offer for Drumsollen, lock, stock and barrel.
‘Harry dear, we don’t know how to thank you,’ Clare said, after they’d exchanged the few necessary words about the results.
‘That’s what friends are for, Clare. Isn’t that what you once said to me?’ he asked, kissing her on both cheeks.
He turned away, stuck out his hand to Andrew, then hugged him instead. ‘We’ll miss having you in Ulster,’ he went on, ‘but I’ve a feeling we may see a lot more of each other. It’ll just have to be in more concentrated bits. I intend to see to it,’ he said firmly, as he put his arms round their shoulders. ‘Take care of each other in the meantime,’ he added quickly, as he turned away, strode across the entrance hall and went out into the sunlight where only his own car remained, waiting at the foot of the stone steps.
After the heat of the previous days, June Thirty dawned damp and overcast. It was still raining as they left Drumsollen in the late afternoon, their last goodbye said to June and Bronagh on the front steps an hour earlier before the two of them stepped into the little blue car, now Bronagh’s, as she set out for Ballyards to give June a lift home.
It seemed a long time since they’d driven through Belfast together, that quiet Sunday morning when they’d arrived home to the unwelcome greeting from her brother. It was only a year ago, but that year had changed everything.
Clare noticed there were Police wagons on some street corners, though the damp streets themselves were deserted. It was hardly surprising they were there when Loyalists had shot three Catholic barmen in the city, some nights earlier. A young man called Peter Ward had died. Earlier, a Protestant woman had been killed by a petrol bomb intended for the Catholic pub next door to her home.
She tried to push such distressing thoughts from her mind, but she had to admit it. Charlie had been right. They had done their best, but like so many before them, the only answer in the end was to take the Liverpool boat.
The lough was grey and flat calm under a dull, grey sky when they arrived at the docks, but by the time they’d queued to drive the car on board, left it being secured in the vast, empty cavern of the ship’s hold and climbed their way up narrow stairs to emerge on to the wet deck, a tiny shaft of sunlight was striking the green copper turret of a church spire somewhere in the city.
They were so grateful just to lean on the rail and watch the last preparations for departure. Weary from days of effort, their minds full of comings and goings, phone calls to be made, documents to be signed, at last there was nothing more to do. They were on their way.
‘Wasn’t it funny about the chandelier,’ Andrew said unexpectedly.
‘Yes, it was,’ she said, smiling. ‘Even Harry was amazed at the price it fetched, but as he said, they’re not made any more and few ever come on the market in good condition. I’ve felt guilty for years about how much it cost to restore when we were just setting out and couldn’t afford it,’ she confessed. ‘It just shows you how wrong you can be.’
‘But we weren’t wrong about trusting Harry, were we?’
‘No, we’re fairly good on reckoning the people we can trust.’
‘Perhaps because we trust each other,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Maybe that’s all one can ever do. Do one’s best and trust that help will come. And it did, didn’t it?’
Her words were drowned by the long, mournful sound of the ship’s siren, telling everyone it was about to depart. There were bangs and clanks as sea doors closed and the remaining hawsers were cast off.
‘So here we go, my love,’ she said softly. ‘Shouldn’t the dark clouds open and the sun pour down and The End rise up on the screen in large letters?’
He laughed. ‘But it’s not the end, is it? It’s the beginning of whatever comes next. Us together, making another life. Like we used to say, Come rain, come shine.’