Richhill 1924
Even in high summer the interior of the grocer’s shop was always cool. Little sunlight penetrated beyond the windows that looked out over the wide thoroughfare where once linen merchants had come to buy webs of cloth. Now, time and circumstances having changed, the only sign of life was a baker’s cart, its deliveries complete, moving through the empty space, idly observed by a couple of small boys playing marbles in the heavy dust of an unusually dry and warm June.
The boxes and tins that decorated the two small windows on either side of the open door, a couple of advertisements for soap and tea, their colours faded to strange muted shades of red and blue, their curled-up edges yellowed by age, were the only signs that this two-storey dwelling was any different from its neighbours. The adjoining grey terraced houses marched up the hill, their doors also standing wide, their half-curtained windows reflecting the unremitting sunlight.
Henry Loney kept the back door of his shop propped open with a brick. What cool air their might be in the deep shadow of the yard behind flowed down a narrow passageway where sides of bacon hung against the wall in woven nets, boxes of butter piled beneath.
He lifted his eyes from the account he had just added up and ran them across the shapely figure of the slim, dark-haired girl who stood waiting in the small space between the wooden counter and the towers of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall of what had once been his grandmother’s parlour.
‘Ye’ve a brave list the day, Rosie,’ he said, as he stuck his pencil behind his ear, turned away from his account book and gave his attention to the shelves behind him.
Rosie brushed back her dark hair from her perspiring forehead and followed his practised movements with wide dark eyes. Now he’d added up the cost of her mother’s groceries, he’d want to know all the news from the long, low farmhouse at the foot of the winding lane leading down to Richhill Station. She dreaded the weekly inquisitions but they were not to be avoided. Gossip was Henry’s favourite pastime.
‘Yes, there’s a bit extra. Billy’s coming home this afternoon.’
‘Ach, is he now? Yer ma’ll be glad to see him,’ he replied, as he placed packets of tea and sugar on the counter. ‘Ye’ll want to know how he’s doing down there in Enniskillen. Far better pay in the police than what he was doin’ afore.’
She watched as he reached up for more packets and boxes, his bald head tipped back towards her. Henry was her uncle, one of her mother’s brothers, a part of her everyday life, but she’d never liked him, even when she was a little girl and he sometimes gave her chocolate.
She’d liked him even less since the day he’d found her alone in the kitchen at home, slipped his arm round her waist and moved his hand up towards her breast. From that day onwards she’d avoided him when he visited the farm and kept well out of reach in the shop if he came round the counter on the pretext of helping her get a good grip on her well-filled shopping bags.
‘Are ye all well down at the farm?’ he asked, turning back towards her, a polished brass scoop full of porridge oats poised over an open paper bag. He readjusted the scales, weighed out lentils and barley and enquired about her father and mother, her brothers and sisters.
‘Yes, indeed, all just as usual,’ she replied, making an effort not to sound as weary as she felt.
It was the same every Saturday morning. After she’d done the jobs her mother lined up for her, washing the kitchen floor, cleaning the stove, feeding the hens, she was always glad to get out of the house. Even if the weather was bad, she didn’t mind. She enjoyed the walk up the lane. There were always birds in the hedgerows; the buds, or leaves, or blossom, depending on the season; friends or neighbours to wave to as she passed. What she did mind was Henry and his endless questions and having to be sure to say the right thing.
At almost sixteen, Rosie Hamilton had no illusions at all about her mother. Martha had a sharp tongue and was easily annoyed. A chance word, a harmless remark and you’d get an outburst of fury or a clip round the ear. Often, her anger was unpredictable. One minute she was talking about some piece of news picked up from a neighbour and the next she was shouting, berating her in her thin, hard voice for something she had done or not done. It made little difference which it was once she got started.
Apart from absence and saying as little as possible, Rosie had never found any real defence against her mother’s tirades. There was no surer way of provoking her than to fail to remember exactly what Henry, or any of her mother’s other relatives, had said to her, and what she had said in reply, for the questions and comments of neighbours and friends, and particularly of Rosie’s aunts and uncles, were a matter of great significance to Martha Hamilton.
On her return from any errand to the village, from school, or even from a walk with her friend, Lizzie Mackay, Rosie knew she would be questioned as to who she’d met and what they’d said.
‘Did he ask ye how I was? Did ye tell him I was in Armagh yesterday? Did ye tell him Charlie has bought a motorcycle? What did he say? An’ what did you say to that?’
‘Joe well?’ Henry continued, a small half smile crossing his well-rounded face as he wrapped Sunlight soap in thick brown wrapping paper. ‘Still complainin’?’
Rosie knew better than to agree. Her Uncle Joe, the eldest of the Loney brothers, owned the small farm where her family lived. He had seldom a good word for anyone, least of all herself, and he complained endlessly. If it wasn’t the rain, it was the lack of it. If it wasn’t the poorness of the income from the farm, it was the weakness of the government. If it wasn’t one of his nephews or nieces not doing what he told them, it was his sciatica or his chest.
She had never seen Uncle Joe smile. She sometimes wondered if he had forgotten how to or whether the muscles of his small, wrinkled face had set so firmly in its habitual scowl he could no longer manipulate it, even if some unusual circumstance were to provoke him to make the attempt.
‘He and Bobby are turning the hay in the low meadow,’ she said lightly, knowing she must say something.
‘Ah shure it’s great weather for hay,’ said Henry, his tone implying an intimate knowledge of the maturing process of hay. ‘With this heat there’ll be grand drying. The quality will be exceptional this year.’
Rosie nodded and smiled dutifully as Henry reached over the counter for her empty shopping bags.
There were few subjects on which Henry was not an expert. The fact that he lived over the shop, had never married, seldom left the village and read only the newspapers, which he ordered with the goods for his trade, presented him with not the slightest difficulty in pronouncing on any matter that might arise.
‘And what about yer da? Does he like his new job?’
Henry paused in the process of packing her bags and Rosie eyed the remaining pile of groceries. Were another customer to come into the shop Henry could pack the remainder in a matter of seconds and she would be out into the sunlight in the time it took for him to say ‘Cheerio, Rosie, tell your mother I was askin’ for her’.
But today, no other customer came to her aid. Henry would pack the items one at a time with concentrated attention until he had satisfied himself there was nothing of any significance left to be found out.
‘Yes, he does,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘It’s further to cycle every day, but he says it’ll keep him fit.’
After many years working as an engineer at the local jam factory, her father had been offered a job with the company where he’d had his first job away from home, many years earlier, in the days when he still drove a traction engine. He’d told her about getting it one day when she was sitting in the barn watching him measure up a piece of metal sheeting for a boiler he was about to mend.
He’d come over from Banbridge on the train and walked up from the station on a lovely sunny morning, passing their own house, never thinking he might one day live there. He’d been offered the job right away and went home as pleased as Punch to tell her granny and granda. It had been a bad time for him and they’d been worried about him, because he’d had an accident at the haulage company where he’d been working since he left school. He’d broken his leg and been given his cards. It had nearly knocked the heart out of him, he’d said, his face darkening at the memory, but didn’t we all have bad times and get over them, he’d gone on, nodding to her, encouraging her, for he’d guessed she’d had another dressing down from her mother that day and had come out to the barn to get away from her.
‘It’s a grand firm to work for,’ Henry continued confidently. ‘I have it on good authority that they’re one of the best motor companies in the North of Ireland. Maybe your da’ll buy a motor himself,’ he said, looking at her sideways.
‘That would be nice,’ she said promptly. ‘Then he could bring Ma up for the groceries.’
The moment she spoke and saw the smile broaden on his face she regretted it. She’d meant to say only that it would be nice, a harmless remark he could make nothing off. She couldn’t think what had possessed her to say more. Maybe it was because her back was aching with standing still while he took his time over packing her bag, or maybe she was just tired of having to watch every word she said.
‘Aye, she could act the lady then like yer granny does. Mrs Hamilton from Rathdrum House,’ he said with a little bow. ‘Have ye been over t’ see her at all, or is it only yer da goes ivery week?’
Rosie felt her face flush with anger and couldn’t be sure if it showed in the dimness of the shop. Henry was leaning towards her across the counter, her shopping bags enclosed in his arms so that she couldn’t pick them up without moving closer to his smiling face.
‘Granny is very well, thank you,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m hoping to see her next week when school finishes.’
She stepped over to the door and propped it open with the brick that lay beside it. Then, without looking up at him again, she reached for the shopping bags, pulling them away from his restraining arms.
‘Ma’ll be wondering what’s keeping me,’ she said crisply turning her back on him. ‘I’ll tell her you were asking for her.’
‘Aye, an’ tell her I put in a good word fer ye up at the castle. She told me ye’d no plans for when ye left Miss Wilson’s wee school. But I think they’ll have ye. The Richardsons know I can spot a good worker when I see one.’
He came round the counter and followed her into the street.
She walked away quickly, the heavy bags dragging at her arms, her chest tight with fury. Even though she knew he couldn’t leave the shop to follow her, she moved as fast as she could. Once clear of the village, she was so breathless she had to prop the bags against a gatepost, lean against the bars and wipe tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘So that’s what she’s been planning,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Her and Henry, behind my back.’
The thought appalled her. Only once had she been inside the handsome seventeenth-century house that stood behind its wrought-iron gates at the top of the hill. Lizzie Mackay’s aunt was the housekeeper there and she’d smuggled them in one day when the family were away visiting one of the other landed families in the county, the Stronges at Caledon or the Achesons at Markethill.
She’d taken them on tiptoe round the family rooms showing them portraits and silver and well-polished furniture. She’d even shown them the shaped timbers that held up the roof, each one numbered centuries ago by the builder, and pointed out a great stone eagle that sat poised on one of the tall chimneys.
There was a strange smell about the place. Dust and old carpets and metal polish. But it was the back kitchens that had oppressed her most. Dark and gloomy, they had a list of rules and regulations pinned to the wall that Aunt Maisie insisted on reading out to them. Lizzie hadn’t much liked the place either, but it was Rosie who caught her breath and longed to be out in the open air again, away from the dark panelling and the cold stone floors.
‘What am I going to do?’ she exclaimed. ‘What am I going to do?’
She picked up her bags, straightened her shoulders and moved on. If she delayed any longer she was sure to be told off for dilly-dallying. If she couldn’t think of anything different in the next week, she might end up having to go up to the Richardsons after all. She couldn’t stay at home for long, she knew that. Things were bad enough as they were, her mother constantly finding fault with everything she did, but if she had to spend every day at her beck and call she’d never be able to keep her temper.
For the last year, since she’d left the National School, she’d been going to Miss Wilson’s small school on the outskirts of the village. Miss Wilson was white-haired, wore a monocle and was very strict, but she was also kind. She’d suggested that Rosie might train as a teacher or become a nurse, but Rosie knew her mother would never stand for it. There’d been trouble enough over her going to Miss Wilson’s for a year, even though her grandmother had paid the modest fees.
All her mother wanted was for her to get a job, in the office of the jam factory like Emily, or be apprenticed to the dress-maker like young Dolly wanted to be, just as soon as she could leave school. Who did she think she was that she couldn’t do what her sisters did?
‘It’s all very well for yer grandmother, she can well afford it,’ her mother had protested, when Rosie had told her of her grandmother’s offer. ‘An’ while your sittin’ readin’ books, I suppose she expects me to feed an’ clothe ye fer the year,’ she went on furiously.
‘I think we can manage that, Martha,’ her father said coldly. ‘There are five of our family addin’ to your purse forby what I give you. Ye can let me know if ye run short.’
The year was almost finished now, but she was no further on. Another week and there would be no Miss Wilson, no books, no French lessons, no painting or poetry. She would even miss the deportment and embroidery which she’d never enjoyed.
For a long time now she’d been anxious about leaving school but her father had tried to reassure her.
‘Give yourself a bit o’ time, Rosie. Sure there’s no great hurry to make up your mind. There’s plenty to do here over the summer now Emily’s out at work and Margaret spends all her time helping her aunt up at Sandymount. You can give your mother a hand with the house and keep an eye on Dolly and Jack. Things might be clearer in a month or two. Maybe ye need a bit of a rest from school work.’
She crossed over the main road, the sun high in the sky, a short misshapen shadow at her feet, and began the long, slow descent to the valley bottom. She could rely on her father trying to help her, but it was always at a price. If her mother saw her coming out of the barn where he had his workshop and where he and her brothers slept, she’d be accused off slipping out to avoid doing her work, leaving it all for someone else.
Once started on the theme of Rosie’s idleness, and particularly her sitting around reading books when she could be doing something useful, there was no stopping her. Only the appearance of one of her brothers, or a visiting neighbour, would stem the flow and create an immediate change of tone.
‘Ach hello, Mrs Hutchinson. Come in and sit down. Rosie was just goin’ to make us a cup of tea.’
Although she’d walked as quickly as she could, going up to the village and on the return journey, Rosie was only too aware that time was moving on. Henry had been slower than usual and although there was no clock in the shop, she knew the sun was higher and the shadows much shorter than when she’d set out. It was a bad sign too that there was no one about. Not a soul on the lane itself, and no one in the gardens or farmyards she passed. When she picked up the odour of boiled potatoes and fresh-baked bread, she knew it was certainly past one o’clock.
The smell of frying onions drifting over the wooden gate that led to the open door of their nearest neighbours reminded Rosie she was hungry as well as tired, but her thoughts were not on food. Part of her was already anxious about her mother’s reception. Another part was thinking longingly of a large mug of water from the enamel bucket in the wooden press.
The gate into the farmyard was open as it often was during the day. Only when the four cows were brought up for milking did Uncle Joe send Bobby running to close it. She tramped through gratefully, her eyes watering in the bright light, her neck and back aching from the weight of the bags dragging on her narrow shoulders, her gaze on the open door ahead and the thought of the cool dimness beyond.
‘Hello, Rosie. Ma thought you’d got lost.’
A small voice greeted her brightly as she crossed the threshold into the stone-floored kitchen.
‘Hello, Dolly,’ she replied wearily, managing a small smile for the little girl who sat by the stove rubbing a brass candle-stick with a piece of blackened rag.
She lifted up her bags, lowered them gratefully on to the kitchen table, propped them up against each other and began to unpack them quickly.
‘Mrs Hutchinson was here,’ Dolly went on, as she poured Brasso on the matching candlestick with more vigour than skill, her fingers as black as the rag she was using. ‘Ma’s just walking down the road with her. She said she thought you’d got lost.’
Rosie sighed and said nothing. The remark about getting lost was another way of saying she was late. Like many of her mother’s remarks, made to a neighbour, with a little laugh, it sounded like a joke, but it only sounded like a joke. Unless Mrs Hutchinson was still here and her mother had to behave as if it really was, then its true meaning would emerge. Unless some piece of news or gossip, had put her mother in a good mood, that remark about getting lost was simply advance warning that she could expect a telling off.
Halfway through the second bag and before she had dared pause for a drink of water, Rosie heard her mother’s step in the yard. Moments later the light from the door was blocked by her small, square figure.
‘Ach, so ye did come home after all. We thought you’d lost your way,’ she began, as she came to the table, an unpleasant smile on her face.
Rosie was not at all surprised when she turned away towards Dolly.
‘Aren’t those just lovely, pet,’ she enthused, as she picked up the candle sticks and placed them back on either side of the mantelpiece. ‘Haven’t you done a great job. Good girl yerself. Now away over to the barn and clean up your hands in the wash house. And then go and have a wee look and see if you can find where the white hen’s nest is. She’s laying away again. Have a good look an’ I’ll call you to yer dinner when it’s ready.’
Rosie saw the smile on her mother’s face disappear like snow off a ditch the moment her young sister was out of the house. She went on unpacking from the bottom of the second bag, a tight knot of apprehension gathering in her stomach.
‘What kep’ ye?’ Martha began, her lips snapping shut after her utterance.
‘There was a lot to get today. Uncle Henry said I’d a brave list,’ Rosie replied mildly.
‘Ye cou’d ha’ bought the whole shop in the time ye’ve been away,’ her mother replied, tossing her head.
Although her mother had grown increasingly stouter over the years, for some reason Rosie could not fathom, her face had not changed. It was still as she remembered it from her childhood, sharp and almost unwrinkled, the eyes small and bright, the nose pointed, her sparse hair drawn back into a meagre bun, pinned at the nape of her neck.
‘Maybe ye were seein’ yer man,’ Martha said with a sneer.
Rosie folded up the empty bags and stared at her, a look of amazement on her face.
‘Don’t you try to fool me, Miss Rosie,’ her mother said sharply, her tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Aggie Hutchinson saw you the other night. And right embarrassed she was to hafta tell me what any chile of mine was up to. Ye should be ashamed of yerself,’ she went on, poking her chin forward and flushing red with the fury of her words.
‘What are you talking about, Ma. What night?’
‘Last Wednesday night, as you very well know,’ she replied, nodding her head for extra emphasis on every word. ‘Choir practise was what you tole me. A pack o’ lies. That wee huzzey, Lizzie Mackay, an’ you, comin’ down the lane with a couple of boys. Kissin’ and huggin’. Lettin’ yourselves down a bagful. Paddy Doyle, indeed. Not even one of yer own sort,’ she spat out viciously.
Rosie felt the blood drain from her face as she recalled what had actually happened in the lane. A group of boys had rushed out from behind a hedge, mostly the young Doyles who had recently come to live nearby, shouting and egging each other on. Paddy had grabbed her, managed to kiss her awkwardly on the cheek and run away laughing. Lizzie didn’t even know the name of the red-headed lad who was more successful and kissed her on the lips before disappearing with his friends.
‘It was nothing, Ma. Just a couple of boys catching hold of us for a dare.’
‘Well, that’s not the way I heard of it,’ her mother snapped back. ‘Are you tryin’ to tell me that Mrs Hutchinson is stupid? That she hasn’t eyes in her head?’
Rosie looked away, the anger on her mother’s face too much to bear. Mrs Hutchinson might or might not be stupid, but she was well-known as a gossip. The more unpleasant the gossip, the better she enjoyed it.
She knew she couldn’t say that but before she had considered carefully enough what she could say, she heard herself reply.
‘Perhaps, Ma, if Mrs Hutchinson had watched a bit longer, she’d have seen the boys running away into Mackay’s field.’
Martha came round the table, where Rosie had abandoned her efforts to sort out the groceries, and advanced upon her.
‘How dare you! How dare you! You’re as bad a wee huzzey as Lizzie Mackay. I’ll not hear you say a word against your elders and betters.’
Rosie saw her draw back her hand to hit her, moved backwards to avoid the blow to her face and tripped on the uneven worn stone of the floor. As she felt herself falling, she grabbed wildly at the back of a chair standing against the wall that gave on to the farmyard, but she couldn’t stop herself. She hit the upper part of the open door, her head banging against its solid shape, her cheek scraping past the latch of the half door below as she crumpled on the doorstep.
Dazed and confused, she lay where she had fallen, her eyes closed against the blinding light.
She felt the shadow of her mother come between her and the light and waited for her to go on. The fall had jerked tears to her eyes and she put up a hand to wipe them away. She felt blood on her cheek, warm and sticky.
‘What’s happened to Rosie?’
From a little way away, she heard her father’s voice, calm and steady as it always was. A moment later, she picked up the smell of lubricating oil as he put his arm around her and drew her to her feet, her face buried in his working dungarees.
‘Did you lift your hand to her?’
‘Not at all. She tripped over herself on that bad bit of floor,’ replied Martha quickly. ‘Sure she’s never lookin’ where she’s goin’ her head’s that full o’ books and stories.’
‘We’ll see about that later,’ he said shortly. ‘Send Dolly over with some tea and plenty of sugar in it.’
He picked Rosie up in his arms as if she were a child and carried her over to the barn.