There were wisps of cloud on the far horizon as they drove briskly along the southern stretch of the Ring of Kerry to the station at Kenmare, but by the time they reached the little town heavy grey swags had covered the sun. As they unloaded the luggage, tiny stabs of warm rain fell. Sitting by the window, as the train steamed steadily eastwards, smoke billowing around the carriages in the strengthening breeze, Rosie watched the heavier rain catch up with them, driven by the strengthening westerly wind from the Atlantic, and spatter noisily against the window beside her.
The rain continued to chase them eastwards throughout the day. She watched the green countryside slip past beyond the streaming carriage windows, its rich colours even more intense under the laden grey skies than in the brilliant sunshine of their journey down.
They arrived in Dublin in a downpour, heard thunder in the night and set off again the next morning as the first gleams of light broke through the massed clouds. As they stood outside the hotel waiting for the luggage to be loaded, she watched the wet pavements begin to dry, the pale centre of each flagstone expanding outwards in the fresh breeze, moment by moment.
Halfway to Drogheda, the clouds parted and the sun finally broke through. Rosie, focused on the ruffled white caps fretting the navy-blue of the sea, stared in amazement as the broad expanse of dark water was transformed to a deep turquoise. She would never have believed that any stretch of Irish coast could look like the cover illustration on Coral Island, a tropical sea bathed in sunshine and rimmed with golden sand. Only the palm trees were missing.
She wondered if she would ever see this gleaming expanse of sea again, or stand by the shore on the west coast gazing out over the Atlantic with nothing but ocean between her and America. Her grandmother had waited a lifetime to revisit her beloved mountains of Kerry. She wondered where her own life would take her and whether she’d have the chance to return to somewhere she’d been so happy.
As so often since they’d left him at the station in Tralee, she found herself thinking of Patrick. Somewhere in the city rapidly being left further and further behind them, he was going about his everyday life. Doing whatever job he’d been able to find to earn enough money to stay at college. Meeting friends, reading History, his chosen subject, or poetry, clearly his passion, or any of the hundreds of books he would have access to, as a student in a very literate city.
She wondered if she wasn’t more than a little envious of him. It was surely hard enough for him to exist on very little money and keep up his studies, but at least he had the choice. Being a woman, it would be impossible for her. She simply didn’t have that choice. In fact, she saw so clearly now, once she got home she hadn’t very much choice about anything.
She glanced across at her grandmother and saw she’d closed her eyes. Over the last weeks, she’d worked out that she was seldom asleep even when her eyes were closed. Rose herself had admitted she was usually thinking. So many memories had been awakened by this very special journey, she could hardly take them all in.
Suddenly, she remembered a story her grandmother had told her when they were sitting together in the garden of the hotel in Waterville. She’d been struggling to catch the tones of the mountains with some new watercolours they’d bought that morning and Rose was encouraging her. Then, quite suddenly she began to talk about the mountains of Donegal where she’d been born.
Often before she’d talked about her childhood home, but this time she spoke quite slowly and in detail about the terrible morning when her parents and her brothers and sister were evicted from their home.
What so surprised Rosie was the cool, steady tone of her voice, so at odds with the heartache of the story she was telling. She could hear it even now.
‘I remember my mother going round the house, looking at everything, touching things, gathering them up. I didn’t understand at the time, but later I realised what she was doing. She was gathering all the thoughts and memories together so that she would have the home she’d made for us all safe inside her head when the house itself was only a heap of rubble.’
A cloud moved across the face of the sun, the tropical sea resumed its dark, ruffled aspect. Rosie stared at it as she went over her grandmother’s words in her mind, yet once more. Perhaps that’s what she herself had been doing all these miles from Kenmare. Gathering up the memories of this wonderful journey, so that when life was reduced to the farmyard, the lane up the hill to Uncle Henry’s shop, she could be sure there was another world out there, a world she might one day be able to reach out for.
‘Porty-down, Porty-down. All change for Richhill, Armagh, Monaghan, Cavan …’
Rosie almost laughed aloud as the train slowed to a halt. If there was one thing that made Miss Wilson really cross, it was when one of her pupils failed to pronounce the name of their nearest town in the proper manner.
‘Port-a-down,’ she would repeat. ‘Port-a-down.’ Then she’d add a little homily on the importance of correct pronunciation. It was a matter of courtesy, she insisted, to get the names of people and places exactly right.
‘Home James,’ said John Hamilton, folding his newspapers into a neat bundle and peering out at the stationmaster as he tramped past the carriage window, reeling off his long list of stations. ‘I hope our reception committee has got here all right,’ he said, more than a hint of anxiety coming into his voice as he glanced up at the well-filled luggage racks and thought of all the heavy items in the guard’s van.
‘Yes, we did expand a bit, didn’t we?’ said Rose to reassure him, ‘But you’ve a lovely tweed jacket to show for it.’
‘And I have two dresses and a suitcase,’ Rosie added quickly.
‘Ach, sure there’s Alex,’ he broke in, the relief in his voice only too obvious. ‘An’ someone else with him,’ he added. ‘I can’t make out at all who it is with that pillar in the way.’
‘Oh, how nice,’ said Rose, as she looked out herself and began to laugh at his puzzlement. ‘It’s your godson. Saturday must be his day off.’
‘I hope all’s well over at Dromore,’ John replied, his eyes screwed up against the light as he tried to catch sight of the young man for himself.
‘Aunty Rose, Uncle John, welcome home,’ said the tall figure, bending down to kiss Rose as soon as he’d helped her safely to the ground. ‘Alex here thought you were a bit squashed on the way over, so he’s let me come to help take you home,’ he added, as John stepped down to the platform and clapped him on the shoulder.
There were kisses and handshakes all around.
‘My goodness, you’re looking well,’ Alex declared, turning and lifting Rosie down lightly from the carriage.
‘Indeed, Alex is right. You are looking very well. Much better than the last time I saw you.’
It was only when she heard his voice that Rosie registered the tall young man in an open-necked shirt, so warmly greeted by her grandparents, was the same young man as the dark-suited doctor who sat by her bed a mere three weeks ago encouraging her gently and with great kindness to tell him about her family and her plans for the future.
She looked up at him, saw the sparkle in his grey eyes as he held out his hand and bowed over hers in a slight theatrical gesture. To her own amazement and distress, she blushed.
‘My goodness, it was as well I brought Richard,’ said Alex cheerfully, as he surveyed the luggage a porter had brought from the guard’s van to join what a second one had fetched out from the empty carriage. ‘Sure, I thought you were going for the scenery.’
‘And to get driving a Bentley,’ added Richard, as they followed after the porters and their trolleys.
Alex sized up the luggage now piled high on the pavement of the station forecourt. Deftly, he and Richard began to load the two waiting motors.
‘It looks as if there were shops as well as scenery,’ he commented, beaming down at Rose.
‘You never know what might be in those cases, Alex,’ she came back at him. ‘We don’t forget our good friends or their family just because we go on holiday.’
He handed her into John’s well-polished Austen saloon.
‘I’m sorry we can’t run to a Bentley, but as they say in these parts, now you’re home you’ll have to sit on an egg less.’
John laughed heartily as he levered himself into the driving seat. Alex swung the starting handle and, as she fired first time, he jumped in beside him, waving at Richard and Rosie as they set off.
A few minutes later, Richard’s Morris followed after with Rosie in the front seat beside him. How she came to be there she wasn’t entirely sure. Alex had loaded two heavy cases into the back seats, but who it was suggested it would balance the weight if she drove with Richard she really couldn’t remember, there had been so much talk and laughter over her grandmother’s determined defence that she’d only bought presents on this holiday to make up for all the ones they’d never had.
‘So, did you have as good a holiday as it seems, Rosie?’ Richard asked, glancing towards her with a smile as they came clear of the station traffic.
‘Yes, I did. It was all quite wonderful. I can’t imagine I shall ever have such a lovely holiday again.’
‘Oh surely not,’ he said gently. ‘Think of all the marvellous places you can go when you’re older. Not just Ireland. Scotland, England, the Continent, even America. Would you like to travel?’
She glanced sideways. His eyes were fixed on a horse-drawn dray loaded with some heavy piece of machinery, proceeding towards them at a snail’s pace and taking up most of the road. His face was rather long and not handsome at all when she came to think of it. Certainly not by the standards of the film magazines Lizzie Mackay was so devoted to. On the other hand, he had large grey eyes that looked directly at you. Kind eyes that seemed to see the best in you. They smiled easily too as if he was always ready to find something to be pleased about.
‘What do you think that is?’ he said, frowning, as the dray edged slowly past their stationery vehicle.
‘It might be a transverse engine,’ she replied thoughtfully, ‘judging by the size. What I can’t understand is why they’re using horses and not a road engine for such a heavy load.’
‘Actually I meant that slight hiccough coming from our engine. Though I do agree it seems strange to see a team of horses these days working on something so heavy.’
The dray moved past, its projecting load so wide there were only inches to spare. He put the Morris into gear and drove off cautiously. The hiccough grew less frequent, but was still there.
‘It’s pinking,’ she told him, as soon as the road was clear.
‘Is that dangerous?’
‘No, just a bad sign. A symptom of an unhappy engine,’ she added laughing. ‘It could be one of about three things: plugs, distributor or magneto.’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘With any luck, we’ll make Rathdrum and you’ll get the best repair service for miles around. Granda and Uncle Alex will just love taking your engine to pieces.’
‘You think they can fix it?’
‘Oh yes. It’s finding the problem that’s difficult. It’s relatively simple once you’ve worked it out. I suppose it’s the same with diagnosis. You can’t really prescribe for a patient until you know what’s wrong, can you?’
She didn’t know what to make of the brief look he gave her as they turned on to the familiar road to Banbridge. He said nothing more and seemed to be concentrating on his driving, so she turned away and cast her eye round the still saturated countryside, lit up by a sun now high in a clear blue sky.
The low-lying meadows between the small, humpy hills were still flooded in places. The cattle who’d come to drink were reflected in the pools of water along with the taller clumps of grass and the branched stems of buttercup. Wherever a track ran to a barn or a field entrance, the light struck back from the flooded wheel ruts and made parallel silver lines through the rich green of meadow or the sodden yellow of stubble.
‘Have you thought any more about what you’re going to do next?’ he asked as the silence extended.
‘Yes,’ she said wryly. ‘I’ve thought lots, but I’ve not made much progress. Granny has been very good. We’ve talked about all sorts of possibilities, but she knows she can’t do anything to help me unless my father agrees.’
‘And wouldn’t he want to do anything that would help you?’
‘Oh yes, he would if he could. But my father is very fair. Granny and I know he thinks it would be wrong to give me something he couldn’t give to all my brothers and sisters. There are nine of us, you see. My older brothers and sister have all gone out to work straight from school while I’ve had an extra year at Miss Wilson’s. I still don’t know how Granny managed that, but I doubt if she could persuade him to let me do training of any kind. My mother wants me to go into service in some of the big houses. My Uncle Henry had it all lined up for me at Richhill Castle …’
‘You mean as a servant?’
Rosie looked at him quickly, taken aback by the shocked tone of his voice.
‘It’s that or being a shop assistant in Portadown or Armagh,’ she said matter-of-factly.
She studied his profile as he negotiated a cluster of vehicles in the narrow main street of Gilford. When he was concentrating, his face did seem long and rather thin, but when he talked or laughed it looked quite different. It reminded her of Uncle Alex, who actually looked cross, his face set in sombre lines, until he laughed.
‘What would you do if your fairy godmother waved her wand and said you could do whatever you liked?’ he said suddenly as the road opened ahead of them without another vehicle in sight.
He threw out one hand to wave an imaginary wand over her.
She laughed, closed her eyes tight and then looked up at the bright sky.
‘I’d like to be a lady,’ she said, grinning. ‘Lady Rose, if you please. I’d have lots and lots of money and people who were clever and could do things to help me and I’d do important things like Aunt Sarah. I’d see what people needed and I’d be able to do something about it. I could set up nurseries for poor children, and workshops, and dispensaries, just like she did. There’s nothing like that where I live. There are poor people who haven’t enough to eat, and old people who can’t even keep clean unless they’ve got family to help them, and not everyone has family. And anyway not all families get on with each other …’
She broke off, aware that her light-hearted tone was no longer light-hearted. She hadn’t meant to go on at such length.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘So the first thing you need is a very wealthy milord. The richest ones are usually old and fat. Would you mind?’
‘Oh yes, I would. If I ever marry, it’ll have to be someone I like as well as love and they’ll probably be just as poor as I am. Like Granny and Granda. They had nothing much to start with and they were very poor when Granda was working in Drumcairn mill and they had four children to feed, but they really cared about each other. That’s what I’d want.’
‘And have you found anyone yet who might fit the part?’ he asked lightly.
She paused, considering, aware he was looking at her, the motor slowed right down as he prepared to swing into the steep left turn to take them up through Ballydown to Rathdrum House.
‘I might have,’ she confessed at last. ‘There was a young man in Kerry. He was hiding in Currane Lodge and we took him to Tralee to escape the people who were threatening to kill him. I liked him, but I might never see him again. He’s at college in Dublin and he’s poor. But he gave me a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets,’ she added, as if it explained something important she was now quite willing to share with someone as kind and friendly as Richard Stewart.
Halfway up Rathdrum hill the pinking grew rapidly worse, the engine coughed repeatedly, spluttered and died. Only Richard’s quick action on the handbrake prevented them from rolling backwards down the steep slope.
‘We’d better get out one at a time and chock the wheels,’ declared Rosie, moving cautiously so as not to destabilise the vehicle.
He followed her with equal caution and together they looked around for the nearest drystone wall. They found only flourishing hawthorn hedges, their blossom long gone, the new growth shooting out in all directions, berries already formed in pale green clumps.
‘Not a stone in sight,’ said Richard ruefully.
‘We could use the suitcases,’ suggested Rosie. ‘They’d be much better than stones, but getting them out might shake the motor.’
They stood staring at the Morris which now rested precariously on the steepest part of the hill, several hundred yards short of Alex and Emily’s house and a good half mile more from Rathdrum.
‘If you leant against it to steady it, I could get the suitcases out,’ she offered.
He looked at her in amazement.
‘You can’t possibly lift those suitcases,’ he protested. ‘It took Alex and me all our time getting them in.’
‘Of course I won’t lift them. I couldn’t manage that. But I often have to move heavy things. There’s a knack in it. It’s all in the way you manoeuvre them. But it takes time … and cunning. You’d have the harder job keeping the motor steady.’
‘Right then, boss. Tell me what to do,’ he replied, pulling his forelock.
She giggled and opened the back doors of the Morris and squeezed slowly and gently into the tiny space between the suitcases and the front seats. The new leather cases were shiny. She was able to edge the top one towards the door, just as she’d thought. When it was ready to pivot on its mid-point, about to tip over and fall, she lay across it and called Richard to spread a car rug on the road before she let it slide to the ground. Once the case was safely landed, she helped him drag the rug with its burden into place behind the back wheels.
Manoeuvring the second suitcase was easier, the vehicle now more stable and less liable to run backwards with one heavy obstacle already in place.
‘You are an extremely practical young lady, if I may say so,’ Richard declared, as they paused to rest, perspiring in the hot sun and breathless from their efforts.
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she replied laughing, as she wiped her forehead on her bare arm and smoothed down her crumpled skirt. ‘I daresay Emily will give us a glass of spring water if we can make it that far.’
‘Should I take the starting handle?’ he asked thoughtfully, as he considered the stationery vehicle.
‘Not much point I’d say. Only neighbours come up here on a Saturday and they’re not going to be able to start it anyway!’
‘What about the suitcases with all the presents?’ he asked, looking rather sheepish.
She laughed aloud and shook her head.
‘The only person who could pinch those cases would be a professional weightlifter who wasn’t afraid of being run over as he picked them up.’
Richard grinned and fell into step beside her. The thought of a large glass of spring water was suddenly very appealing.
They paused only briefly in Emily’s cool, shady kitchen for Mrs Love had a special lunch prepared at Rathdrum and everyone would be waiting for them to appear, especially as Emily thought it was at least half an hour since John drove past and tooted his horn.
‘He’ll be getting worried about you if you don’t arrive soon,’ she said as she walked out to the gate with them. ‘Give them both my love. I’ll be going up to see them tomorrow when Alex is here to mind the girls.’
‘Does Uncle John worry a lot these days?’ Richard asked casually, as they slowed down on the steepest part of the road, the far horizons blocked for the moment by the hawthorn hedges, the inserts of young oak trees casting welcome shade as the day grew even hotter.
Rosie looked at him quickly, but there was nothing in his face to give her a clue as to what he really wanted to know. But something was troubling her, a niggle at the back of her mind. In these last weeks she’d often seen her grandfather upset, anxious about the time, or the right running of the Bentley, or whether they’d be able to find petrol when they needed it.
She’d noticed too, how often her grandmother reassured him, as she’d done this morning when he worried about their reception committee.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I just wondered,’ he said, his tone lightly dismissive.
They paused to catch their breath, walked across and leant on a five-barred gate. Sloping away from them lay a meadow where cattle stood, twitching their tails, in the shade of one of the young oaks. Below and beyond stretched the green lowlands of the Bann valley, the river itself glinting wherever it was not hidden among the trees. On the horizon lay the mountains, their outline sharp against the sky though the heat haze increasing by the hour made them seem insubstantial.
‘Granny’s mountains,’ she said, half to herself.
‘I can see why neither of them wants to move from Rathdrum. Imagine looking out on mountains from the end of your own garden. I don’t think I could be prised away if it had been my home.’
‘Is anxiety a symptom of something?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes still firmly fixed on the far horizon. She looked sideways at him and waited. ‘Like pinking. It can mean different things. Plugs, magneto and …’
‘But unlike a car you can’t lift a man’s bonnet up and see which it might be,’ he ended, as they stepped back on to the road and continued up the hill. ‘In many cases you just have to wait and see.’
‘I’d find that very difficult if I were a doctor. In fact, I find it difficult even though I’m not a doctor. I sometimes hate not knowing what’s going to happen next.’
‘Don’t worry, that’s not a symptom. It’s just something we poor mortals have to live with. I’m probably no better than you when it comes to thinking about the future, but things usually work out all right in the end.’
They arrived at the top of the hill and tramped into the welcome shade of the big sycamore overspreading the entrance gates which had been left open for them.
To her great surprise, he reached out and took her hand as they passed between them.
‘Come on, Rosie, let’s put an inch to our step. Just think of Mrs Love’s nice lunch.’