‘Did ye try the raw onions, Rose?’
She picked up the kettle from the hearth and carried it to the table where the teapot sat waiting. For a moment, distracted by the pain in her back as she bent over, she couldn’t think what Mary Wylie was talking about. Then she remembered the stench of the chickens left behind in the wash house.
‘Well, I’m not sure it got rid of the smell,’ she said, laughing, as she put the lid on the teapot and lowered the kettle back down to the hearth without stooping. ‘But John’s started to complain about the smell of onion, so there must be an improvement.’
‘D’ you want to put wee Edward down on the bed while you have your tea?’ she asked, looking at the sleeping baby Mary had been feeding while they talked.
‘Well, we can try,’ she replied, with a sigh. ‘But this one has all the others beat for guile. He cries his head off as if I were starvin’ him, then when he gets a few mouthfuls he dozes off. Happy as Larry, he is, unless I try to put him down. Ma says I have him spoilt, but she’s half deaf, she doesn’t have to listen to the cries of him.’
Mary moved the child gently away from her breast and raised her eyes heavenward when he didn’t wake. She tiptoed across the room and through the open bedroom door. The silence continued. Mary shut the door quietly behind her and waved her hands in the air, fingers firmly crossed.
‘Must have been the open fire made him sleepy. He wouldn’t do that at home,’ she said, shaking her head, as she settled herself comfortably back again in Sarah’s rocking chair and did up the buttons on her blouse.
‘Do you miss your stove?’ she asked, as Rose passed her over a cup of tea.
‘Yes, I do,’ she confessed. ‘But it’ll be better when I have a new crane. It’s the bending over all the time that gets me. Still, I was amazed how cooking on the fire comes back to you, if once you’ve ever lived with it.’
‘Ach sure yer tired out, Rose. I’m not surprised yer back’s botherin’ ye. I don’t know how the pair of you’s managed at all. When did ye do the whitewash?’ she asked, casting her eye round the freshly coated walls on which Rose had already hung some favourite pictures and the bunches of flowers she always dried for the winter.
Rose laughed.
‘Don’t tell anyone. We didn’t go to church on Sunday. John says the better the day the better the deed, but I’ve heard our neighbour is very strict about Sunday, so we kept the doors closed and crept around very quietly. But we needn’t have bothered. It seems she goes off to her old home in Battlehill to the church there, so she was away the whole day.’
Mary nodded her head and drank her tea gratefully, rocking herself gently in the comfortable old chair.
‘She hasn’t called yet?’
Rose shook her head and pursed her lips.
‘Maybe that’s for the best.’ There was a significant pause before Mary added, quietly. ‘She’s got a bit of a reputation, you know.’
‘Well, are you going to tell me like a friend, or do I have to find out for myself?’
‘Ach, I wouldn’t want to put you off. She might be all right if you take the right way of her. But she’s very strong in her opinions.’
‘And what are her opinions?’
Mary looked uncomfortable, her large blue eyes flickering round the hearth as if she were counting the pots and kettles gathered under the projecting canopy of the chimney.
‘Well, she’s a Methodist for a start,’ she began awkwardly, ‘Not that I’ve anythin’ against Methodists, but she’s awful strict. An’ the family is all great loyalists. I’ve heard that her grandfather was a great friend of Dan Winter. There was Catholics killed back that time an’ no one ever taken for it. The Courtneys of Battlehill was in the thick of it, so I’ve heard,’ she said uneasily, ‘but I’ve no head for history. I may not have the right way of it, for I think it’s all far better forgotten. But Mary-Anne forgets nothin’ and forgives nothin’, so I hear.’
Rose listened carefully. The one thing you could be sure of, Mary Wylie would never say a bad thing of anyone if she could find a good thing to say instead. She was so good-natured indeed, she often wondered how she’d managed to get this far in life without being exploited.
‘Tell me, Mary, how did our friend Thomas ever take up with a woman like that?’
‘Ach, ye may well ask,’ said Mary with a sigh. ‘Ma says he was took in. Mary was gettin’ on, she was thirty three an’ her younger sisters all married. Robert was three years younger an’ kinda shy. His own mother had just died an’ he’d no sisters, none that lived, that is. When they met up she’s as nice as pie. Sure it’s an old story, Rose. Ye’ve heard it afore.’
She nodded.
‘Did they have to get married?’
‘Aye. It were a July weddin’ as the sayin’ is. An wee Annie was born the night o’ the big snow in January ’76.’
‘What do you mean “a July wedding” Mary?’
‘D’ye not know that one? Maybe that’s an Armagh one. No one marries in July unless they have to. It’s bad luck,’ she said. It had a name in Irish, my grandfather always used. But I never got my tongue round it. She made a try at the unfamiliar sound. I think it means bad luck,’ she said tentatively.
Rose smiled to herself. It was seldom these days she heard a word of Irish, or had any cause to speak it herself, except for the cobbler in Armagh, an old man from the south of the county. The very sound of it still touched her and brought to mind the cries of children playing, the songs sung by their fireside, the stories she had heard. She recalled the last of the stories, the one old Daniel McGee had told. Her last story and his too, for he’d died in Letterkenny Workhouse a week after he was evicted.
‘Yes,’ she said, thoughtfully, ‘it is unlucky. What you said means hungry month. July was hungry, because it was the month between the potato crops. The old ones were gone and the new ones too small to dig. Not a good time for a wedding.’
‘Speaking of weddings, Rose,’ said Mary suddenly. ‘Is it not very quiet out the back?’
Both women stood up, went to the window and looked out. Half an hour ago, they’d watched Hannah, as chief bridesmaid, adorning the bride, Mary’s eldest girl, Jane, in an piece of lace curtain. Little Sarah was making bouquets of pink roses for the bride and bridesmaids and James was being turned into a minister by Mary’s boys with the help of an old black skirt of Rose’s.
‘No sign of them,’ said Rose. ‘Maybe the bride and groom are emigrating and they’ve gone on the convoy.’
‘Should we away and look for them?’ Mary asked anxiously, as she opened the back door and glanced around the empty garden.
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied easily. ‘Mine know they can only go as far as the top of the orchard unless they tell me who they’re going to play with on Church Hill. Hannah’s very reliable. She’d not go beyond the orchard without coming to ask. I’m sure your ones wouldn’t go off and leave them. We’ll give them a while and see if they come back to the garden. If they don’t appear in ten minutes or so, we’ll go then.’
‘It’d be a pity to wake wee Edward,’ confessed Mary, as she settled herself again. ‘It’s not that often he sleeps for me when I want him to.’
‘Which reminds me,’ said Rose, getting up again. ‘I have a present for that young gentleman.’
She opened the doors on the new dresser, bought with the money from the furniture they’d had to sell. She took out a cardboard box and laid it across Mary’s knee.
‘A small thank you for all you’ve done to help us,’ she said smiling. ‘It might come in handy in a month or two.’
Mary looked startled, stared at the box as if it might tell her what was inside. Rose had to smile. The box said Ladies wool stockings – Large. Cautiously, she opened it and gasped.
‘Oh Rose, you can’t give me this. It’s so lovely. I’ve never seen anything half as nice, even in the shops I never go into.’
To her amazement, Mary burst into tears.
‘Oh there, my dear, what’s wrong?’ she asked, crossing the hearth and putting her arm round her.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said, scrubbing furiously at her eyes with a corner of her apron. ‘All that work, Rose, all those lovely wee flowers, an’ lace and ribbon. An’ you did it for my wee Edward. Sure he’ll be like a wee Prince when he’s christened. Nobody else ever gives me things like you do,’ she said abruptly. ‘Good old Mary’ll do it. That’s what they say. And sometimes not even a thank you … an’ you go and make this for me …’
‘Now come on, Mary, don’t cry,’ said Rose, kissing her cheek, ‘or I’ll be afraid to make you a blouse for yourself …’
Rose broke off. There was someone knocking at the front door. A loud and peremptory knock at that. Puzzled, Rose looked at Mary and glanced through the window to see who the caller might be. But there was no one visible, neither pedlar, nor gypsy, fish man or bread man. She opened the door.
A sour-faced woman in dark clothes stood on the step, her greying hair scraped back in a tight knot, her bosom high with strong stays and indignation.
‘Missus Hamilton, I’ll have you know that the path down the side of my house is not for the use of you and your collection of children. It’s bad enough you using it to go to our well for water, which in charity we can hardly deny you when you have none of your own, but to let these children use it to make a playground out of the orchard is beyond all bearing. You will chastise them and see it does not happen again.’
So saying, she turned on her heel and strode off, her high buttoned boots crushing the weeds in her path. Rose watched, in amazement, until she disappeared under the trellis of roses which arched over her front door.
‘Well,’ she said, as she shut the door behind her, ‘you said she had strong opinions.’
Poor Mary’s face was a picture of anxious distress.
‘Oh Rose dear, what are you going to do?’
Rose took a deep breath and realised she was shaking from the sheer effort of self-control. She smiled ruefully.
‘I don’t know, Mary, but I can tell you what I’m not going to do and that’s “chastise” the children. “Chastise”, Mary? Is that a good Christian way to deal with children?’
‘That would be Mary-Anne’s way. Her children have the fear of God beaten into them. Even wee Robert and him not breeched yet.’
‘I’ve not seen one of her children since we moved last Saturday, and today’s Thursday. Does she keep them indoors and it the holidays?’
‘As far as I know, she does. The eldest girl, Annie, does all the housework. So I hear. Young Thomas lives with her mother over at Battlehill in the holidays to do her work for her, and Robert is only allowed out into that wee bit of grass behind the forge. She used to put him there in a horse collar when he was a baby so she could get her work done.’
‘A horse collar?’ said Rose, completely amazed.
‘Aye. It’s not such a bad idea, it keeps them safe for a wee while if ye’re busy,’ Mary explained. ‘My own Ma used one with the boys, but wee Robert was in it all day unless it was pourin’ with rain. One of the servin’ girls at Robinson’s used to stop and talk to him when she was sent over with the milk, but Mary-Anne put a stop to that,’ said Mary sadly.
She hesitated, not sure whether she should say more.
‘Ye see, Bridget was from away an’ she spoke mostly Irish. That makes Mary-Anne mad. She hates the Irish.’
‘But sure she’s Irish herself,’ protested Rose. ‘Aren’t we all Irish in Ireland?’
‘Most of us are, I’m sure, but not Mary-Anne. She’s one for not wantin’ Ulster to have anythin’ to do with the rest of Ireland. Don’t for any sakes mention Parnell or Gladstone in front of her. Traitors the pair of them.’
‘I don’t think I’m likely to mention anything in front of her,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘If today’s anything to go by, she’s a woman best avoided, but it’s going to be difficult if we’ve trouble over the well.’
‘Pay no attention to that. It’s not her well. Sure it’s on the Robinson’s land for a start. Anyway, it’s not a well, it’s a spring. Someone has just hollowed it out a bit to make a pool of water for the buckets to go in. Ye can’t own a spring, can ye?’
Rose was about to say she thought the same woman would lay claim to anything, when she caught a movement by the back door. One by one the children straggled into the kitchen looking downcast and miserable. James came last, still in his parson’s robes. He was carrying little Sarah, who was crying.
She held out her arms for the child. She looked pale. Her small body was hot and damp as she buried her face in her shoulder, wound her arms round her neck and cried even harder.
‘What’s wrong at all?’ asked Mary, looking from one silent child to another. ‘Jacob, tell me what’s happened.’
‘We were taking Jane and Sam to the station. An’ I was the engine driver. An’ we saw this wee child sitting by itself on the grass playing with bits of wood. An’ it comes over to us. “Can I play with you?” it says. An’ I says, “What’s yer name?” An it says “Robert Scott.” So I says, “You can be the guard. Ye have to wave a flag and shout Are ye right?” So we took the train up to the top of the orchard an’ roun’ the far side an’ when we get back doun again t’ the back o’ the house, there’s this woman standin’ there.’
‘She smacked wee Robert an’ he cried,’ said Hannah, her own eyes brimming with tears, her arm round young Sam who was clinging to her.
‘An’ she said we weren’t to come into the orchard down her path,’ said Jane, her eyes large, her face solemn.
Mary stood up and held out her arms. Jane and William leant against her generous figure while Jacob, her eldest boy, a few months older than James, stood biting his lip and trying not to cry.
‘Maybe I should take the children home now, Rose,’ said Mary awkwardly, as she felt Jane and William cling to her and saw the look on Jacob’s face.
Sarah had fallen asleep in Rose’s arms, her skin still prickling with heat. She looked round the bedraggled company and shook her head.
‘No, Mary, you can’t do that. I promised these children fresh soda bread with butter and a little bit of golden syrup for their tea. How about that?’ she asked, looking from one to another.
There were some rapid nods and a few weak smiles, a response better than she’d hoped. She made the best of it.
‘James and Sam, have you shown Jacob and William the engine your Da made for you? she asked, nodding at the wooden box under the window. ‘Hannah, could you slip into the bedroom very, very quietly, and bring me Sarah’s blanket and a pillow. We’ll put her on the settle for a wee sleep. Maybe Jane dear, you’d go out to the wash house and bring in the biggest bowl and the baking board for me.’
Rose and Mary exchanged glances as the children promptly moved around and did as they were asked, but it was not until they were all sitting round the table, fingers sticky with syrup dripping from the warm soda bread that the dark pall of Mary Anne’s wrath finally began to disperse.
‘What’s she thinkin’ about at all?’ asked John, as they sat by the embers of the fire late that evening. ‘Sure that’s no way to treat childer, even if they have done wrong. An’ I can see no wrong in it. Can you?’
Rose sighed.
‘Well, I suppose if she told wee Robert not to move from where she could see him, then he was in the wrong,’ she said, trying to be reasonable. ‘But imagine keeping a child from playing with others,’ she burst out, her anger getting the better of her.
John shook his head sadly.
‘Sometimes Thomas bees very quiet. Ye’d not get a word outa him the day long. I think maybe now I see the way of it, if that’s what he has to put up with at home.’
They sat in silence, the room growing darker as the long summer’s evening turned towards dusk, the only sound the tick of the clock on the wall and the creak of the elderly armchair he’d been meaning to strengthen for weeks.
‘What are we going to do about the water?’ Rose asked quietly. ‘Can she really put them out of the orchard?’ she went on, her mind moving from one anxiety to another. ‘The garden at the back is not that big and we’ll be wanting to plant it anyway. Then they’ll have nowhere to play but the bit of common.’
John twisted awkwardly in his seat and was about to reply when a sudden high-pitched cry startled them both.
‘That’s Sarah,’ said Rose, already halfway across the room.
‘What’s wrong with her, Rose?’ he asked, his face contorted with anxiety as she reappeared moments later, the distraught, screaming child in her arms.
‘She’s soaked in sweat, John. She’s wet through,’ she said, as she cradled the child and tried to comfort her. ‘Go over to Robinson’s and ask old Mrs Robinson if she could she come to me. Tell her it’s fever of some kind, but I don’t know what.’
By the time John was back, a small bottle in his hand, Sarah had exhausted herself and lay silent.
‘She’s comin,’ but she’s slow on her bad leg. She said give her a teaspoon of this an’ wet a sheet in cold water,’ he said, putting the small bottle down beside her and bringing her a spoon from the dresser. ‘Where would I get a sheet?’
‘There’s one in the top drawer of Sarah’s sideboard, right hand side, but there’s only half a bucket of water left in the wash house.’
‘Never worry, I’ll get ye more. It’s not dark yet,’ he said, as he hurried into the bedroom.
Rose heard him speak to Hannah, telling her to go back to sleep, reassuring her that Sarah would be better soon. She looked down at the child in her arms. As pale as a ghost now the redness had left her face, her dark curls plastered damply to her small head, her tiny body no weight at all as she cradled her in her arms.
‘Good man,’ she said, as John brought her the sheet pushed into the half bucket of water. A step at the door told them old Mrs Robinson had managed it.
‘Ach, dear, dear,’ she said sympathetically, as she limped across the floor and looked down at the sick child. ‘Did ye give her the feverfew?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘Will I away into Armagh for the doctor?’ said John, looking from one woman to the other.
Rose said nothing, she just watched Sophie Robinson, a woman well known for her skill with cures, as she took Sarah’s limp hands in hers and concentrated open-mouthed on the erratic breathing.
‘Sit yer ground man dear, or go to your bed,’ she said briskly. ‘The doctor might do her some good tomorrow, but she’s got to get through the night. She might and she might not. We can only do our best,’ she said matter-of-factly.
Rose glanced at John, saw the look of utter despair on his face and thought for a moment he was going to cry out. But he gathered himself.
‘Have we any more buckets? I’ll away to the well in case ye need more water.’
‘There’s one in the wash house that’s not scoured, but you can fill it with a clean jug,’ said Rose, as steadily as she could manage. ‘Wait a minute and you can have this one as well,’ she said, as she peeled off Sarah’s sodden nightdress. Sophie Robinson squeezed out the sheet and wrapped it round the inert and naked child.
It was Sophie who insisted John go to bed and gather his strength for when it was needed. As it was, he only took his boots off, ready at any moment to walk into Armagh for the doctor. The two women took it in turns to hold the child, rearranging the damp sheet when the fierce heat of her body dried it in patches. Sarah herself lay still, barely stirring as they wrapped and unwrapped her. At moments, she opened her eyes, looked as if she might cry out and then lapsed back into stillness.
‘What’s wrong with her, Sophie?’ Rose whispered, plucking up her courage at last, as the first hint of light showed itself beyond the curtains which had never even been drawn the previous evening.
‘God knows, Rose, but I don’t. I’ve seen it before, though, many a time. All I can tell you is it can go either ways. Another hour or two an’ I’d say ye stan’ a chance. All ye can do is keep yer heart up. Maybe you’d make us a mouthful of tea.’
Rose did her best to collect herself, but she knew she was moving round the room as if she were in a dream, seldom taking her eyes from the pale, sweating face that Sophie wiped gently with a damp handkerchief. It seemed to take so long to stir the fire, to get the kettle to boil. She had to make a huge effort just to remember she needed cups and sugar and the tea caddy from the dresser, milk from the far side of the wash house where the north facing wall was always cold.
‘Would you eat a bite of soda bread, Sophie?’
‘I would indeed, thank you. I get far hungrier when I sit up in the night than I ever do by day. Isn’t that a strange thing?’ she said cheerfully.
Rose nodded and wondered to herself how she could be standing here buttering bread and smiling and nodding at a neighbour when her little child, her littlest love, was so very bad she might die.
‘I’ll take her while you have a bite,’ she said, as she arranged Sophie’s bread on a plate and poured her tea.
‘I’m so grateful to you for coming to me,’ she went on, as she settled herself, the small body cradled in her arms, the damp warmth of the sheet penetrating her blouse.
‘Sure that’s what neighbours are for. Aren’t we put here on earth to help one another?’ she said vigorously, as she munched her way through the well-buttered soda bread.
Rose looked at her, an old woman, older than her own mother, and wondered if it was loss of some kind that had made Mary-Anne Scott so bitter and hard.
‘Take comfort for your grief and your distress but never let yourself be bitter. It is bitterness that destroys life.’
Rose closed her eyes, feeling the prick of tears she couldn’t prevent, as her mother’s words came back once more in her hour of need.
‘Dear Lord,’ she prayed silently, ‘give me back this child and I’ll try all my life never to be bitter. And I’ll try to forgive those that are.’
‘That was great, Rose. It would put heart in ye,’ said Sophie, rising from the table. ‘Now come and drink a cup of tea at least. I’ll have the wee one again.’
Rose drank the tea Sophie poured for her, surprised at how good it tasted and how thirsty she was. Fingers of light were now slanting across the stone floor as the sun rose through the lowest branches of the big pear tree beyond the forge.
‘What time does John start his work?’ Sophie asked suddenly.
‘Eight o’clock in summer,’ Rose replied, puzzled, but not anxious, for the tone of the question was steady and without alarm.
‘We’ll let him sleep till six, then he can go into town and leave a note for the doctor to call on his rounds. Have ye a clean nightdress and a wee blanket handy?’
‘They’re in the bedroom.’
‘An’ what time is it? Ah can’t see that clock of yours now we’ve put the lamp out.’
‘It’s half five.’
‘Near enough. Just slip in an’ get it,’ she said briskly. ‘If ye wake him, it’s no matter now.’
Cautiously, Rose slipped into the bedroom and took out a child’s nightdress from the left hand drawer of Sarah’s sideboard and a blanket from the cupboard underneath. John never stirred. Lying diagonally on the bed, face in the pillow, his stockinged feet pointing out over the edge, he’d fallen asleep where he’d thrown himself down.
Rose went back into the kitchen and found Sophie unwrapping the sheet and wiping the remaining dampness from the small body. As she watched, she saw Sarah shiver and put her thumb in her mouth.
‘Put her wee nightdress on now and wrap her up well while I make up your fire,’ said Sophie, laying the naked child on Rose’s knee. ‘Another hour an’ ye might see a wee hint of colour in her face. But she may sleep the day out.’
Rose wrapped her in the blanket and sat rocking her by the fire as the old woman got to her feet.
‘She’s a pretty one. Aye and a fighter too,’ she said, grinning as she looked down at the sleeping child. ‘I’ll come over around tea time an’ see how you both are. Of the two of you, I’d say you were the paler,’ she added, laughing and nodding to Rose, as she took up her stick and opened the door.
Sunlight poured around her as she raised a hand in farewell and hobbled across the broken, weedy ground to the path by the forge that would take her back to the farm and to her bed.