The children were sitting under a hawthorn hedge at the bottom of the embankment. James had his arm round Sarah who was still crying. Hannah was making a daisy chain. Sam was watching out for her and waved the moment he saw her come over its edge. As she began the steep descent, she saw Hannah offer the daisy chain to Sarah, but Sarah shook her head and went on crying.
‘There’s Ma, now. I told you she wouldn’t be long,’ said James, as she came up to them, immediately dropping to her knees and putting her arms round Sarah, who wrapped her arms round her neck and wept even more loudly. Above her dark curls, she ran her eyes over the other children.
‘Did you find her, Ma?’ asked James.
‘Yes, I did,’ she said calmly.
James dropped his eyes and asked no further question.
‘Are all the people killed now?’ Sarah burst out, lifting her tear-stained face from her shoulder.
‘A lot of people will be hurt, Sarah. Some will be killed. But we don’t know yet how many.’
She looked closely at Sam and Hannah. She’d seen already that James was very steady. At twelve, he was grown up for his age and she knew he’d worked out exactly what was going to happen when the passenger train ploughed into the runaway carriages. Sam was unusually silent, his face pale, his dark hair catching the sunlight. Hannah stood looking at her, the daisy chain was crumpled in her hand, her eyes dry, but unnaturally large, without their usual sparkle.
‘What we must do, Sarah, is go home. And on the way, we must go and tell Da we’re all right. He’ll be so worried about us. It’s a long way, across to our own road, so you’ll have to be a very brave girl.’
‘Can we not go and help?’ said James roughly, nodding his head in the direction of the runaway carriages.
‘Yes, you and I could,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But I don’t think we should.’
She saw his lips tighten as he grasped her meaning.
‘What’s the best way to get to Killuney, James?’
‘Over the fields, you mean?’
She nodded. They would have to cross the embankment. The wreckage might well be visible and even worse, they might still hear the cries of the injured, but it would have to be faced.
‘Go ahead, James, see can you spy out the best way across the fields towards the bridge. If we can reach it, it’s an easy walk up the lane over Drummond and down on to our own road.’
‘You mean the lane that comes down by the wee chapel beyond the mill?’
‘That’s right, we’ve walked it the odd Sunday, but we’ve never gone as far as the bridge.’
‘I’ll go with James, Ma,’ said Sam suddenly. ‘I always see the wet bits long before he does.’
‘Don’t get too far ahead,’ she warned, as she wiped Sarah’s eyes and stood up. ‘Can you manage that bag, Sam, or will I carry it?’
‘I can manage.’
‘What about you, Hannah?’
‘I’m all right,’ she said, straightening up.
The tramp across damp meadows was slow and wearying, especially when they had to find gaps in the hedgerows large enough for them to climb through. Sarah had never been a good walker, she tired quickly and, although she didn’t ask to be carried, Rose knew she was soon exhausted. They had to stop more than once to let her rest.
Although the distance to the bridge was not more than two miles, to avoid a full view of the disaster area, James’s chosen route took them nearly an hour. With wide, boggy patches to thread their way through between the sloping fields, their progress at times was painfully slow. The final steep pull up to the lane running over Drummond Hill in the full glare of the hot sun left Rose breathless and nearly as exhausted as Sarah and Hannah.
But she didn’t stop, urging them to press on, for even at this distance she could hear sounds that filled her with dread. As the lane sloped downwards under the shade of trees and became the familiar place of Sunday walks, she began to feel her courage return. Once they were back on the Loughgall Road, it was less than two miles home and there were shady places where they could stop and rest. She might even make them eat a bite from the picnic Hannah and Sam still carried.
As they neared the foot of the lane, they stopped to rest once more and she called James to her.
‘It’s not far now to the mill, James. Go and ask for the foreman. Tell him what’s happened,’ she said, speaking very quietly. ‘Say you’d like to speak to your father to tell him we’re safe. You’ll probably catch up with us long before we’re home. I’ll have to carry Sarah soon.’
‘Right, Ma. I’ll not be long.’
She watched him run down the lane and disappear round the corner of the small chapel that marked the end of the Asylum grounds. Once he was out of sight, she moved them on, Sarah hanging on her hand, Hannah silent with fatigue. Only Sam plodded forward steadily just a few yards ahead of them. His role as scout was over, but he always took the lead when James wasn’t with them.
They were resting again under the trees near the gates of Drumsollen when he caught them up.
‘Did you see Da?’ she asked, before he had caught his breath.
He shook his head.
‘Da’s gone to Killuney, him an’ three men with tools and the big dray. They sent down from the station for transport an’ the foreman asked for four volunteers. The looms was in, so he was free to go. He’s away half an hour ago.’
‘So he doesn’t know we’re safe,’ she said, her heart sinking at the thought of what lay before him.
‘I’ll carry Sarah for a bit,’ he said, looking her full in the face.
‘Just for a bit, James,’ she said, trying to keep the distress out of her voice. ‘We can stop at the pump for a drink of water.’
In all the hundreds of times she had walked from the gates of Drumsollen to the pump opposite the old limestone quarry, a distance little more than half a mile, it had never seemed so long. Just putting one foot in front of another required all her thought and effort. She tried to focus on the gush of water that would quench their thirst and cool their hands and faces.
She was annoyed with herself for having brought nothing to drink, but they’d planned to buy lemonade when they got to Warrenpoint. Bottles were heavy and difficult to carry and always leaked, no matter how hard you tried to cork them up.
Suddenly she thought of the trainload of passengers they’d left behind. So many in such need and no water. No shelter from the hot sun.
She stopped herself, knowing if she let herself think, she’d not get the children home.
James was so vigorous with the pump he splashed them all, but no one laughed. They all drank deep, hands held out to cool in the very cold water. Rose wiped Sarah’s face with her handkerchief where she was already reddened by the sun. They would have to walk under the hedgerow for what shelter they could get on the last open stretch to their own lane.
They were just about to set off when they heard a vehicle approach from the direction of home. They stayed where they were in the shade to see who it might be.
‘It’s George Robinson with Thomas and two of the boys. I think it’s young George and Sammy,’ said Sam, stepping out into the road to wave at them.
The trap was coming at speed, but it slowed down as soon as it saw them and came slowly to rest beside them. Thomas leapt down and put his arms out, trying to embrace them all.
‘Thank God, Rose. Thank God yer safe. Are ye hurted at all?’
Totally overcome by the tears streaming down Thomas’s face, she could only shake her head.
‘How did ye hear?’
‘They sent for help to Castledillon, an’ one of the grooms rode over to me in case they needed tools. He’s away up to the cart manufactory. They’ve asked for vehicles fit to bring people to the hospital. Can ye’s make it home, d’ye think?’ he asked, eyeing them doubtfully.
She nodded vigorously.
‘You go on, Thomas, we can manage. John’s away with the dray from the mill. Tell him we’re safe. Please tell him if you possibly can,’ she said, quickly, afraid her tears would let her down.
‘I’ll tell him all right,’ he said, as he sprang up into the cart again.
As he sat down beside George and his sons, she saw that the two young men, broad shouldered and newly married, were looking as pale and vulnerable as her own Sam.
She managed to wave to them, as George shook the reins, but she could think of no words to wish them well on the journey they had in front of them.
‘I’ll take her now,’ she said, sometime later, as they came up the hill and caught sight of the forge, a thin trickle of smoke still rising in a leisurely way up into a perfect blue sky.
As she took Sarah from his arms she could see that even James was now exhausted. She led her little party up the lane, picking her way between a hay float and the reaping machine on which Thomas had been working when the call came.
She waited for Sam to open the door and they went in to the empty kitchen. It was warm and stuffy.
‘Prop open the back door, Sam, will you,’ she said, as she put Sarah down and opened the front windows as far as they would go.
‘We’ll have our lunch now,’ she said firmly. ‘Would anyone like a cup of tea with some sugar in it?’ she asked quietly.
All she got was nods as she bent to stir up the fire and put the kettle on its chain. She glanced at the clock on the dresser. It said ten to twelve. Not yet noon and already it felt like the longest day in her whole life.
As soon as they’d eaten, she put Sarah to bed. To her surprise, Hannah went too, without being asked, and she was followed shortly afterwards by Sam and James. She sat herself down in Granny Sarah’s rocking chair and stared at the table, where the scattered remains of their picnic still waited to be cleared up. It was only when the creak of the bedroom door startled her that she realised she’d been asleep.
‘Can I bring you a glass of the spring?’ said James, as he crossed the floor in his bare feet. ‘I’m so thirsty.’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, yawning and stretching, her mind still caught in a pleasant dream.
Before James put the glass in her hand, the pleasure had evaporated and enormity of what had happened flowed in upon her like a dark cloud. With it came the knowledge of what she had to do.
‘James, I’ll have to go down to Wylie’s. Can you look after the girls? Sarah might sleep till I get back. I’ll not be long.’
She’d have liked to change her clothes but she was afraid of waking Sarah, so she set out for Annacramp still dressed in her Sunday best, though her well-polished boots were now streaked with dried mud and the hem of her skirt stained with grass.
What could she say? To Peggy, of all people, who had lost so much. Could she have done more? Could she have gone back and searched for Mary and the children leaving hers in the care of James? Could he have got them home by himself? Or would Sarah have screamed uncontrollably, once she was not there to reassure her?
Rose argued the case back and forth as she tramped the familiar road, empty and quiet in the early afternoon. Could she have helped? Comforted a distraught child, a dying mother?
‘Don’t look back, Rose. Don’t look back.’
The words had come to her as she stood on the embankment, the carriages running away from her. They echoed in her mind from long ago. She could hear the voice, kind, but firm. She knew she’d done as she’d been told, but where the voice came from or when it had spoken would not come back to her.
She turned into the yard of Wylie’s farm and made for the dwelling house that sat back behind the stable and byres. The back door stood open as it always did. She was about to knock when she heard a movement, a slight rustle of a skirt. Peggy Wylie stood in front of her, her face red and swollen with crying, her arms outstretched.
‘Rose, Rose,’ she cried, tears pouring down unheeded. ‘I thought I’d lost everyone now, but you’re still alive. Are the children all right?’
They wept in each other arms, tears of sorrow, tears of relief inextricably mixed.
‘How did you know what had happened, Peggy?’ Rose said at last, as they grew steadier.
‘Sam Loney at Richhill station heard from the guard on the 11.15 down train from Armagh,’ she began, doing her best to not to cry. ‘He said a man had just run back down the other line and asked John Foster to telegraph for help to all the railway stations. Then Sam came over for Billy and they’re away to help with two of the Gibsons. What happened Rose? Whatever happened?’
Rose told her all she knew, though nothing to raise her hopes about Mary or the others. She was in one of the carriages nearest to the guard’s van at the back of the train, she said. The doors were locked and the runaway coaches were gaining speed all the time.
‘Poor, poor Billy,’ Peggy said, ‘He’s such a good sort, but he hasn’t much go about him. Sure, look at the way he went to bits when wee Jane died. What’ll he do if he loses her? An’ the wee ones too? Ach, Rose, I don’t understand about God at all. First Kevin and now this. How can He let such things happen?’
Rose shook her head.
‘My mother used to say that God wasn’t for doing things for you, He was for helping you bear what comes. I didn’t understand her then and I’m not sure I understand yet,’ she said sadly. ‘I prayed for a miracle on that embankment but the Lord certainly didn’t put out his hand and stop those carriages.’
They were silent for a long moment, then she roused herself.
‘Peggy, I’d like to stay with you, but I’ve left Sarah asleep and James can’t manage her if she starts to cry again. She feels things more than’s good for her, that child.’
‘Thank God you’re all safe. I’ll have news by tonight. Davey’ll be back from work around seven and he’ll know, one way or the other. He was on duty at the station all day.’
She said her goodbye. She simply hadn’t the courage to tell Peggy that Davey’s duty had been changed, that it was Davey who had been sent to lock the carriages and Davey who was to follow on the passenger train behind.
By the time she arrived back home, Hannah was peeling potatoes and James and Sam had gone to fetch more water. Careful not to wake Sarah, they’d cleared the table, washed the cups and left the room straight. Though the hours passed slowly, no one had the heart to say a word.
At five, Rose woke Sarah and gave the children their meal. She sent James over to Robinson’s to see if they’d heard any news. They hadn’t, so she read them a story. Then another. And another.
Shortly before eight o’clock, there was the sound of wheels on the road. Before she’d even spoken, James was out the door and into the lane.
‘It’s Da and Thomas,’ he called back. ‘The Robinson’s have dropped them on the road. They’ll be up in a minute.’
‘Good boy. Stay here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
Rose ran down to the foot of the lane and stood watching the two men walk slowly up the hill, while the trap made its way up into the farmyard.
John put his arm round her, but said nothing, his face a mask of exhaustion, pale under a layer of dirt and grime. Thomas looked down at the road and then up at the sky. Both men’s trousers and forearms were streaked with blood.
‘What about Mary Wylie?’
‘And Jacob and William and Ned?’
‘Jacob and William were with their mother. Wee Ned’s all right. She threw him out into a bush,’ said John, his voice so tired it seemed an effort for him to speak the words.
‘And Davey?’
‘He was there helpin’ us, poor lad.’
They walked up the lane together and paused outside the forge.
Thomas looked in through the door at the silent anvil and the cold ash of the fire.
‘I took tools in case there was people trapped in wreckage,’ he said in a level tone, ‘but sure I didn’t need them. Those poor people might as well have been sitting in match boxes for all the difference it made. I’ve never seen the like of it,’ he said, his voice failing him.
Pressing his lips together, as if to choke a cry, he raised a hand in salute, turned his back on them, tramped up the path, pushed open the closed door of his house and disappeared inside.
‘Come and have your supper, John,’ she said quietly, as she took his arm. ‘You may not feel like it, but we must keep our strength up. We’ve an awful lot to give thanks for.’
The children waited silently while he went out to the washhouse with a kettle of hot water and the clean shirt Rose fetched from the bedroom. They let him begin his supper, but when he began to ask his own questions, they could restrain themselves no longer and poured out their story just as they had experienced it. The boys told him about the size of the engine, the dividing of the train and the stones that gave way. Hannah described the long walk home, the boggy bits where she and Sarah had almost got stuck and said how glad Thomas had been to see them at the pump.
‘Are all the people killed now, Da?’ said Sarah, repeating the question she had asked at intervals all through the day.
‘Some were killed, Sarah, but most are all right,’ he said reassuringly.
‘Could we have been killed, Da?’ she went on, fixing him with a piercing gaze from her dark eyes.
‘No,’ he said, slowly. ‘Not with your Ma to look after you and your brothers to be so sensible. If you’d stayed in the train now, you might have got hurt.’
‘But we didn’t. We jumped out. And James caught me,’ she said, her eyes lighting up unexpectedly, as she came and climbed up onto his knee and threw her arms round him.
He held her until she released her limpet grip. Then he kissed her and looked wearily at Rose, who picked her up and took her off to bed.
‘You’d have been proud of them, John,’ she said, when an hour later the other children had followed her.
She told him the parts of the story the children had left out or could only guess at, then rose to make them a pot of tea. It was when she came back to the table with the teapot, she saw how pale he’d gone.
She came and put an arm round him, felt his shoulders tight as a board. He was holding himself rigid.
‘John dear, you haven’t told me the half of it.’
A bleak smile flickered for a moment as he nodded his head.
‘I daren’t, Rose. It’s not fit for you to hear,’ he said wearily. ‘An’ I might disgrace m’self.’
‘Sure Thomas disgraced himself this morning when he saw us by the pump,’ she said quickly. ‘What’s the shame in that, John? Isn’t there a river of tears flowing tonight in houses all around us? Some that we know of and some that we don’t. Why should we spare ours?’
She poured the tea into two mugs, so that she could sit beside him on the settle and hold his free hand.
‘Come on, love. Tell me from the beginning.’
To her surprise, he set off quite steadily. Told her how he’d just finished work on the second loom when the foreman came up looking for him, the message from the station in his hand. They’d hurried down and out to the cart sheds without a word, each knowing the other’s wife and children were on the train. John harnessed the horses with another man, some of the spinners brought cans of water and bales of the clean, spoilt cloth they used for wrapping full spindles. They had to go the long way through the town, for the dray was too wide for the lane over Drummond.
‘By the time we got there, they’d started to lay the bodies out under the hedges. Most of the dead was lying down at the bottom of the embankment, so we left the dray with the youngest man an’ went down there. I saw Captain Prescott from The Mall giving brandy to a man. I went over to ask him could I help an’ I heard the man say, “It’s no use, Captain.” An’ he died. So we carried him up an’ put him under the hedge. I’m sure we carried a dozen, men and women, an’ I managed rightly. I kept tellin’ m’self you’d a’ been away up at the front, for the boys wou’d want to be near the engine. That’s what kept me going. An’ then Prescott saw this young lad. “Give me a hand with this one,” says he to me. An’ I put my hands under his shoulders an’ Prescott took his feet, an’ the head came off in my hands and the feet came off in Prescott’s. So we put him under the hedge in three pieces.’
He put down his mug and dropped his head in his hands. She thought he was crying, but he wasn’t. He was just rubbing the skin of his face, for it was stiff with exhaustion. In a moment, he went on.
‘Yer man Prescott offered me a mouthful of brandy, but I said no. I wasn’t used to it, it might make my head light. So he told me to go and get a drink of water, or milk, and come back to him. An’ I did that. I climbed back up the embankment an’ I met Thomas an’ he told me he’d seen ye. An’ after that I was fit for anythin’,’ he said, his voice taking on an unexpected note of strength.
‘And did you and Thomas stay together?’
‘Not to begin with. I thought I ought to go back to Prescott, for I’d been helpin’ him. So I went back down. An’ when I come to him, he was talking to two wee childer. They were sitting on the grass making daisy chains as if there were nothing amiss. “Were you on the train?” says he to them. “Yes,” says one of the wee girls, a wee fair-haired child no older than our Sarah. “An’ so was she,” she says, pointing to another wee girl, her sister by the look of it, just lying there dead with not a mark on her an a wee smile on her face.’
‘Were there many children killed?’ Rose asked, amazed at how cool they both were managing to be.
‘Not that many that I saw, but there was nurses from the hospital lookin’ for them. Women threw childer out of the windows when they found the doors was locked. Like Mary did. Sure they found wee Ned crying in the middle of a briar bush because he couldn’t get out.’
They sat silent, Rose wondering if she had the courage to ask about Mary, but he read her thoughts.
‘Prescott went to see what the arrangements were for taking the bodies to Armagh, so I went and found Thomas and the Robinsons. They were moving axles to get at the ones underneath. Though they were all dead,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘It was Thomas who found Mary. He was standin’ up on the embankment an’ he sees somethin’. He diden say a word to me, just went down and turned over this woman who’d been thrown out, down the embankment. He said he knew it was her before he turned her over because he’d seen her passin’ on their way to the station and she had on a blue blouse. An’ when he looked up at us, we went down to him an’ carried her over to the hedge. She wasn’t marked at all. Thomas said he thought her neck was broke. He said he minded waving to her as he came out of the forge to start in on the reaper.’
‘And the boys, Jacob and William?’
John shook his head and pressed his lips together.
‘There was an army doctor there,’ he said, slowly. ‘The Barracks sent down their ambulance corps forby military, an’ I heard him say to Prestcott he’d seldom seen such carnage, even on a battlefield.’
Rose knew the blue blouse only too well, made from the length of material Sam had brought from Kerry after her mother died. It was Mary’s colour, perfect with the lovely blue eyes so ready to glint with humour, or with mischief. It was the thought of Mary’s eyes, wide with surprise and delight, the morning she’d given her that piece of cloth that finally breached all her defences.
She wept, as if she’d never have enough tears for all the pain and loss of the day. John put his arms round her and comforted her, his own tears falling unregarded in the mass of her soft, dark hair.
‘How many were there, laid out like you said?’
He shook his head.
‘We made two journeys to the Tontine rooms with ten each time. And I saw the Army wagons follow us on the way to the market house. Thomas said he and the Robinsons had seen the first carts leave for Armagh Station. It won’t be less than sixty and there’s hundreds injured.’
They sat silent. She wondered if she’d seen all that John had seen whether she would be able to grasp any better the sheer magnitude of what had happened, for the scale of it seemed outside her imagining.
‘I’ll tell you a funny thing, Rose,’ he began.
She stared at him, the idea of anything even remotely amusing coming out of the day quite unthinkable.
‘D’ye mind yer man from Cabragh, that did me out of my job?’
She nodded silently.
‘He was there with the father and son that has his cart manufactory. I heard him askin’ the Reverend Jackson Smyth if there was a priest about the place, for he thought his neighbour wasn’t goin’ to live an’ he wanted to get him the Last Rites.’
‘And was there a priest?
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘Smyth pointed him out and yer man away and got him. Him that was so hot on Rome. Ach, sure maybe somethin’ good might come of it, Rose, but it’s not for us to see. We may just do our best an’ try to help our friends. An’ give thanks we were all spared.’