Sam Hamilton placed his empty plate quietly on the table beside him and looked down again at the slight figure of his daughter. She lay asleep on one of the four single beds placed in each of the corners of the large, low-roofed room that ran the full width of the barn above his workshop and the washroom he’d fitted out for his family when they’d first come to live at the farm with Uncle Joe, his wife’s eldest brother.
The high sun of early afternoon made two bright patches on the bare boards by the tiny windows overlooking the yard, but the rest of the sparsely-furnished space was cool, quiet and shadowy. Neither the random bellowing of cattle distressed by the heat, nor the whistle and hiss of the engines that steamed past on the railway line nearby penetrated the thick walls. As he sat watching the sleeping girl, his broad shoulders angled towards her, his large, square face immobile, the only noise he could hear was the regular click of the alarm clock that sat beside his empty plate.
Her dark hair had fallen across her face, but he could already see the outline of the bruise on her forehead. The scrape from the door latch wasn’t deep but it had bled a lot. He’d sat her down in the wash house, cleaned it and dabbed it with iodine from his first-aid kit. Painful, but reliable. He’d used it himself many a time and never suffered infection in a cut or a wound. She’d not said a word of complaint as he painted it on, though he knew well how much it stung.
The bruise would come and go, the cut would heal. She’d be none the worse. He sighed and looked around the room as if it would answer the questions shaping in his mind.
She’ll be all right, he said to himself, as he saw a hint of colour come back to her pale face.
Although she’d been confused for a while after he’d brought her over to the barn, he could see she’d taken no great harm. He thanked God it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared when he cycled into the yard and heard her cry and the bang of her head on the door.
The tea had helped. She’d drunk the whole mug his youngest daughter had brought over in the short time it took the child to pass on her mother’s messages. There’d be no dinner till evening when Billy was home. Did he want his bread and cheese on a plate where he was?
He had a fair idea of what had happened, but as soon as she’d drained every last drop of the tea, he’d tried to get her to tell him herself.
‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ he said encouragingly.
It was always so difficult with children. One moment you were trying to teach them not to carry tales and the next you needed to know exactly what had happened so you could do something to protect them. It was not the first time Martha had struck Rosie, though he had spoken to her sternly about it.
He shook his head sadly. But why was it always Rosie? She was such a willing girl, a hard worker who never complained when her mother gave her the jobs she didn’t want to do herself. Martha had never laid a finger on any of the boys. She might have smacked Emily or Margaret when they were very small and being naughty, but she certainly never raised a hand to them once they were older. As for Dolly, the youngest, the child born after he’d left Martha’s bed for good, she spoilt her outrageously, petting her and favouring her in a way she’d never done with any of the others.
There was no making sense of it. But then, he’d known for a long time there was no making sense of Martha. He’d accepted years ago that she didn’t love him. As the years passed, he’d finally come to the conclusion that she never had loved him, even when she was happy to have him in her bed. Martha was a law unto her self. The best he could do was to avoid angering her, to make sure she had enough money to care for the children properly, and to take pleasure in seeing them grow and thrive.
Nine children, five boys and four girls. A fine, long family, as they would say around Banbridge where he’d spent most of his own childhood in a well-built farmhouse that looked out over the rich Bann Valley to the Mourne Mountains beyond. He wasn’t sure if they had the same expression here in County Armagh, but then, apart from the men he worked with at Pearson’s Haulage Company and the other Quakers he saw on a Sunday at the Friends’ Meeting House in Richhill, he didn’t have much time or opportunity for conversation.
There was certainly no conversation with Martha. Mostly she ignored him, or sent him messages via the two youngest, Dolly and Jack. When he went over to the house, she set his food in front of him without a word. If something in the day had happened to please her, she’d talk excitedly while he was having his meal without once looking at him. Then she’d stop suddenly and before he’d had time to make any comment, she’d complain that he never listened to a word she said, that he was interested in no one but himself and his work.
Rosie stirred restlessly, her sleep troubled. He leant towards her, saw beads of perspiration break on her forehead and noted the darkening skin of the rising bruise.
What Martha said wasn’t true. He loved all his children and was happy to see them in his workshop. He could speak freely there and listen to their stories for Martha never came over to the workshop where he spent most of his time repairing tools and machinery when he was not doing his everyday job at Pearson’s. Maybe she so seldom saw him talking to the children, it did seem to her as if he wasn’t interested, but then he remembered how angry she was when Rosie used to come and sit hour after hour in the barn watching whatever he was doing. He sighed. Nothing he’d ever done was right for Martha and it wasn’t likely to change now.
He got slowly to his feet and moved cautiously across the bare wooden floor, avoiding a couple of boards that always squeaked. Downstairs in the workshop, he collected a piece of clean, spoilt cloth, folded it into a pad and stepped into the washroom. The cold water gushing from the tank on the roof splashed his blue dungarees as he soaked the fabric and pressed the pad between his large hands.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, he thought of his own mother, Rose, standing over the sink in the small, chilly dairy of their house at Ballydown, her hands red and chapped as she struggled with his and his father’s work clothes. Often stained with oil or grease, or the plaster from a wall where his father had squeezed into some awkward corner to repair a loom or a weaving frame, she would work away with a beetle or a washboard, a drip at the end of her nose, the steam from the hot water condensing on her cold face, singing.
When he was small she would sing nursery rhymes to him and his little sister, Sarah, as they played in the big kitchen, the door open so she could keep an eye on them. When they were older, at school, or at work, they would come in upon her unexpectedly and find her still singing, but those songs were different, quiet and sad, and she sang as if no one was meant to hear.
Years later, Sarah had explained why he could never make out what the songs were about.
‘It was Irish, Sam. That’s why you couldn’t understand it. Did you think it was your ears?’ she asked, laughing at him, teasing him as she always did, till he’d smiled and admitted that indeed the harder he listened the less he could make of it.
Rosie had turned on her right side while he’d been gone, making it easier to lay the pad gently on the bruise. As the cool fabric touched her damp skin, he was surprised to see her smile.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, her eyes flicking open. ‘I think I heard you going down, but I was busy dreaming,’ she went on, her smile broadening. ‘But it’s gone, can’t remember a thing about it.’
‘That’s the way with dreams,’ he said soberly. ‘The bad ones wake you up and the nice ones run away. That’s what your Aunt Sarah always used to say. She was a great one for dreams,’ he added, encouraged by the steady tone of her voice. ‘She used to keep us all sitting at the breakfast table while she told us every wee detail of some dream or other she’d had. We’d all ’ave been late for school if your granny hadn’t put in a word or two.’
Rosie sat up, caught the damp pad as it slipped, turned it over and pressed it back over the bruise.
‘Didn’t she ever scold you?’ she asked, a frown wrinkling her brow.
‘Ach, I’m shure she did,’ he replied, a small smile touching his lips. ‘Shure we were naughty too. But I never mind going to bed without a hug and a kiss. She always taught us never to hold a grudge or be upset with each other, even for a day.’
‘“Life is too short for hurting one another. If you can’t love someone, then at least let them be”,’ Rosie repeated quietly.
‘Aye, that was another of her sayings.’
He looked at her closely, wondering what else she’d picked up from his mother.
Each summer, two at a time, from the beginning of the school holidays, she had invited all the children to the farm-house, halfway up Rathdrum Hill, his old home in Ballydown. Billy and Charlie had slept in the bedroom where he and his brother James once slept, followed a week later by Sammy and Bobby.
He paused. Dear James, the older brother he’d followed around so devotedly throughout his childhood. Clever James, so ambitious he’d rejected his parents and himself for being foolish and backward, unaware of political and economic realities, indifferent to all the things James himself thought so important. James had spoken so bitterly to the parents that loved him, said untrue and unkind things to Hannah and Sarah, then turned his back on all of them, walked out of their home at Ballydown and out of their lives.
Sam shut his eyes momentarily and repeated to himself the blessing he always said for James: God protect you, James, if you are still with us, and keep your soul if you are not.
What had happened to his brother was a mystery. Were he still in Ireland, someone surely would have come across him, or at least read his name in the paper, but there’d been no word of him for long years now. Perhaps he had simply shaken the dust off his feet, like his own uncles who’d left the family home in Annacramp, gone to America, hadn’t written and never returned.
He began to smile again when he thought of Emily and Rosie and how much they loved going to stay with their granny. Being younger, only a few of their visits were to the farm-house. For them, visiting Granny and Granda meant going on up to the top of the hill, to the lovely old house where they had a garden to play in, books and photograph albums to explore, and a bathroom. He could still remember the excitement when the two girls came home after their first visit and told him how they floated in the long, deep bath, something they’d never met before.
Only the two youngest girls, Margaret and Dolly and his young son Jack had never visited their grandmother. Though they had all been invited as warmly as Emily and Rosie, Margaret always refused to go, insisting that her aunt couldn’t manage without her. From the time she’d been old enough to visit away from home, she’d taken herself off to her Aunt Maggie’s house just up the road at Sandymount. Now she lived there permanently and her aunt, who had no children, always backed up her refusal.
Dolly never wanted to leave her mother and for some reason, best known to herself, Martha absolutely refused to let young Jack go to Rathdrum House either with one of his sisters or on his own. There had been arguments about it, but when he saw how distressed the little boy had become, he’d dropped the subject, knowing his mother would understand.
There was colour in Rosie’s cheeks now. She’d thrown her dark hair back from her face and was wiping face and hands briskly with the pad he’d brought for her bruise.
‘Did yer mother lift her hand to you?’ he said calmly, without looking at her.
Rosie’s smile vanished, she dropped her eyes and twisted the damp cloth in her hands. ‘Did she?’ he persisted.
She moved her head in an almost imperceptible nod. ‘I’ll give it thought,’ he said quietly. ‘It will never happen again.’
Although Rosie protested and said her mother would need her help with preparations for the special dinner she always made when Billy came home, Sam insisted she stay where she was and have another wee sleep. This Saturday, Emily had the half day from her job at Fruitfield Jam Factory. She could do whatever was needed, he said, as he got to his feet and went back down to his workshop.
There, he stood undecided, his eye running over the jobs lined up on the workbench, his mind still resting on his daughter, the image of her small, pale face as she lay on his bed, the lightness of her slim body in his arms as he carried her over from the house.
Rosie fell asleep almost immediately and woke surprised to find it was so late in the afternoon. She sat up hurriedly, ready to swing her legs out of bed, push her feet into her shoes and go back over to the house, but the moment she moved her head throbbed with pain and set up an oscillating beat, like the one a motor makes when the engine is ticking over. She lowered herself cautiously on to the bed again and was grateful to feel the throbbing slowly die down. A little later, she discovered the pain went away so long as she kept quite still.
High above her head in the pitched roof the motes danced in a broad beam of sunlight that fell through the one small skylight window. She followed its slanting path to the floor where it lit up a rag rug, its colours still bright, though she and Emily had made it from the carefully folded pieces from dresses and skirts out of Granny’s box, some of them years old, a few even going all the way back to the days when Auntie Hannah and Auntie Sarah were still at home.
On one of the few wet days in their visit the previous summer, their grandmother had sat in the conservatory at Rathdrum and showed them how to stitch the hemmed pieces on to the hessian backing. They knew already that visit would be their last holiday together for Emily was about to start work at the jam factory and Rosie begin her year at Miss Taylor’s small school in Richhill.
She closed her eyes and walked round her grandmother’s garden. The details of the paths and flowerbeds were so clear in her mind, for a moment, she imagined she could smell the perfume of the old roses after the rain, but the moment passed even more quickly than a pleasant dream when she caught the tone of a sharp little voice down in the workshop below.
‘Ma says, is our Rosie going to lie aroun’ all afternoon an’ leave us to do all the work?’
Her father’s voice was soft but firm.
‘Rosie hurt herself, Dolly. She’s not feeling well. Do you not remember when you fell and cut both your knees? You sat by the fire for a long time. Is Emily not home yet?’
‘Aye, she came a while ago, but Ma sent her a message to Loneys.’
‘Well, tell your mother that if Emily is delayed at Loneys and she needs help, I’ll come over myself as soon as I’ve finished fitting this blade.’
Rosie smiled in spite of herself. Now ten years old, Dolly had grown so like her mother she’d picked up her mannerisms and her sharp way of speaking. Her father’s offer would have brought a sour look to her face for she knew it was not the answer her mother wanted.
When he made an offer to help in the house, she could never be quite sure whether or not he did it deliberately, for he knew as well as she did the last thing her mother ever wanted was to have him in her kitchen.
She eased herself up in the bed and leant back against the headboard. The throbbing didn’t start up immediately, but suddenly she felt so weary all she wanted to do was go to sleep. She smiled wryly and admitted to herself how much she was dreading stepping in to the kitchen and facing the comments which would inevitably come her way. At this moment, she had not the remotest idea how she could bring herself to go, but she knew it would have to be done.
As she bent over gingerly to lace up her shoes, she heard a different voice below, a hasty word to her father and a flurry of skirts on the wooden stair.
‘Ach, Rosie dear, what happened at all? You look ghastly.’
Her sister Emily dropped down on the edge of the bed beside her so awkwardly that the springs protested and she nearly knocked Rosie sideways.
‘Thanks very much,’ Rosie replied, managing a smile.
Over a year older, tall and skinny, with the same pointed features as her mother, Emily resembled her in no other way. She put her arm round Rosie and hugged her, then pushed her sister’s hair back and scrutinised the bruise and the cut outlined with iodine. She screwed up her face in concentration.
‘Ma said you fell against the door,’ she said, her voice heavy with disbelief. ‘Well, if you did, you hit it the queer dunt. That wou’d be more like somethin’ I’d do. It’s not like you at all.’
To her great surprise, Rosie found tears had begun to trickle down her face. She didn’t know why she was crying, but the more she tried to stop the faster the tears flowed.
‘Ach, dear a dear. Is it very sore?’ Emily asked, her face screwed up with anxiety.
Rosie shook her head and poked about in her pockets for a handkerchief.
‘Here y’ar, here’s mine,’ said Emily quickly, pulling out a crumpled square and putting it in her hand. ‘Now, c’mon on. Tell me what happened for I don’t believe a word of what I’ve bin told.’
It was only then Rosie realised it was Emily herself had brought the tears, the big sister who had always stood up for her, who’d listened to her even when she knew she hadn’t much idea what she was talking about. Emily and Sammy, her older brother, were her best friends. They had been her playmates, her companions on the walk to Richhill School, the two people she could rely on day by day. While she had them she felt safe, even when her mother was in one of her rages, but now Sammy was working in Armagh and only came home when he had a half day on Saturdays or a Sunday off. Emily was putting away every penny not demanded by their mother. As soon as she had enough money saved she would buy her ticket to America.
Rosie cried in Emily’s arms until the tears finally stopped. Then she told her what had happened.
‘Ach dear, what are we goin’ to do?’ Emily said with a great sigh. ‘It’s not fair that you get the worst of it. She’s never as bad with me. But then she knows I’m goin’ as soon as I can,’ she added, wiping Rosie’s damp face with the sleeve of her second-best blouse. ‘Did you see anything in the paper last night?’
Rosie nodded.
‘Six jobs for “smart boys”,’ she said briskly. ‘Two in Armagh, two in Richhill, one in Portadown and one in Loughgall.’
‘No smart girls?’
Rosie laughed.
It was the earnest look on Emily’s face that cheered her. It was so characteristic of her. Emily’s greatest gift was figures. From the day she’d been asked to count wooden beads she’d changed her mind about not liking school. Numbers made her happy. She recited the multiplication table for pleasure. Counted the money in her mother’s purse. Measured and recorded the milk given by each of the four cows. Laid out the nails and screws from the workshop in multiples. Words were a different matter. Emily often had no idea what to say.
When Rosie laughed, Emily beamed with relief. She couldn’t bear to see her sister all upset and worried. There were so few jobs around and that made it all the harder. Billy had had to work on the farm until he was old enough to join the police and she’d been at home for over a year before one of the clerks at Fruitfield left to get married. There were so many in for that job she probably wouldn’t have had much chance if her father hadn’t worked there for years and all the bosses knew him.
Poor old Bobby was just the same. He’d left school the previous year and couldn’t find a job of any sort. He wanted to be a mechanic, but he was still having to put up with Uncle Joe on the farm for a few shillings a week. Rosie was smart, far cleverer than any of them, but that wasn’t much help if all the jobs going were for boys.
‘Rosie,’ Emily said suddenly. ‘I’ve thought of something.’
‘What, Emily? What have you thought of?’
‘Something I read in The People’s Friend. There was this story about this girl who goes to America and marries a rich man and the first thing she does is send a ticket to her sister,’ she said quickly. ‘I could do that. Not find the rich man. Not with my face,’ she said, laughing. ‘But I could save up again and send you a ticket. And it woudn’t take near so long as it’s taken me this time. It’ll take me sixty-five weeks at two shillings a week here and I’ve lost over three weeks with expenses at work I hadn’t reckoned on, but wages are higher there and I could save maybe a dollar a week for thirty weeks or two dollars for fifteen weeks or even three dollars for ten …’
She broke off.
‘Isn’t that an idea?’ she asked quickly, not sure what to make of the look on Rosie’s face.
‘That’s a great idea, Emily,’ Rosie replied, giving her a hug. ‘That’s awfully good of you.’
Rosie hadn’t the heart to tell her sister that if she went and she herself had to stay at home, waiting to find work, then she would feel so lonely and vulnerable that even a week would seem more than she could bear.