Drumsollen House,
24, June 1963
My dear Robert,
I have some wonderful news. We have done it. We have broken even. Just. Only just, but as our good friend Emile used to say, ‘That my friends is a great achievement. Without that first step nothing else can happen.’
I still can hardly believe it! If you had seen me checking and rechecking the additions and not believing what they were saying you would have laughed. Had those been the figures presented by one of your clients I would have been satisfied right away.
Clare paused, shook her fountain pen impatiently, then reached for the bottle of ink. Perhaps, if she wanted to write as fast as this, she should use the typewriter, but Robert always wrote to her by hand. She was sure he felt it was more personal. Besides, there was the question of punctuation. As she was unlikely to find a typewriter with a French keyboard in one of the second-hand shops in Belfast, she’d still have to add acute and grave accents afterwards.
She wiped the excess ink from her nib with blotting paper. Immediately, she had a vivid image of the meticulous way Robert performed the same task, a small, robust figure hunched over his enormous desk, looking even smaller when set against its wide expanses of rosewood and polished leather and the tall windows overlooking the Place de l’Opéra reaching upwards behind him.
Five years ago, she stood in front of his desk for the first time and five years ago, this very month, she had made the journey to Paris, lonely and dispirited after breaking off her engagement. She had no idea where she could find a job or somewhere to live. All she had was a single suitcase and the Paris address of Marie-Claude, whose children she had cared for at Deauville for three summers in her student years. Marie-Claude had comforted her, dressed her like a Frenchwoman, and Gerard, her financier husband, had found the job with Robert and encouraged her to apply for it.
She put down her pen again and paused, overwhelmed by the memory of the vulnerable girl she had been, suddenly bereft of the love that had sustained her since the death of her grandfather. With no home to go back to in Ireland and no job awaiting her in France, she arrived in the lovely apartment in the Bois de Boulogne not knowing she was about to get a First, that Marie-Claude and Gerard would support and care for her and that Robert would take her on as his interpreter and personal assistant at a salary far in excess of anything she could ever have earned in Belfast.
Travelling with him and translating what he had to say to the businessmen who came to him for loans taught her about banking, about money, about risk and the problems of running a business. Now it was these very skills she deployed day and daily to make Drumsollen a viable proposition, its hoped-for success the basis for all their future hopes and plans.
Running a guest house in Ireland might seem far removed from the problems Charles Langley had faced importing fruit from France and Italy, even more so from those of the good-natured Texan entrepreneur who had decided to add some vineyards to his European investments, but she had grasped very quickly that business had its own logic, its own repeating patterns, and a whole set of variables to be considered and balanced against each other. Sometimes she thought the problems were like a difficult jigsaw. You searched for missing pieces and kept finding nothing would fit. At other times the difficulties she regularly translated for Robert’s benefit seemed to her more like a route march, a long, hard struggle over rough ground, littered with unforeseen obstacles to a distant goal which was just as likely to recede before you as be reached by your efforts.
She had enjoyed her work, the strangely varied people they met and the travelling together. Sometimes, listening to clients arguing their case, Robert or Emile asking for clarifications, she felt that the whole business of assessing the viability of a project was little better than guesswork. Sometimes she felt quite defeated by the sheer variety and complexity of the factors to be taken into account, like shifts in fashion, unexpected competition, the opening up of alternative markets, a sudden rise or fall in the exchange rate.
Once, in a light-hearted mood, she’d suggested to Robert that they might do just as well assessing the viability of their clients’ projects by gazing into a crystal ball. To her delight, Robert had laughed, a rare thing with him. Not many men in banking achieved the equivalent of the large desk set against those tall windows. There was no question as to how successful he was and how seldom one of the projects he financed had failed. She often wondered if it was his habitual sober consideration that had all but removed his capacity for humour.
It was a rule they had when they dined together on their travels that they never spoke about the work of the day, but on that occasion Robert had taken up her light remark and reflected upon it.
‘You see, my dear Clare, it is about possibilities,’ he said, refilling her glass. ‘You could take two situations that seem at first sight to be identical in practical terms, but then you look at the people involved. Perhaps it is a little like chemistry, of which I have no personal knowledge at all, except what I have read,’ he said, with a small wry smile, ‘but you will understand about catalysts, elements which enable other things to happen. People are like that. Simply by being who they are, they can cause things to happen that would not have happened without them. That is the secret of many successes.’
‘And do you think, Robert, that personal qualities can outweigh brute fact?’
‘But of course,’ he said, nodding. ‘A fact and a brute fact are two different things. It is the clear perception of a hard and unpleasant fact that mitigates its power to overwhelm.’
‘So you’re saying that facing facts, however unpleasant, gives you power over them.’
‘Yes, I am. It’s one of the many things I learnt from Emile. He is not a religious man any more than I am, but his father was deeply religious and Emile had the great wisdom to test in experience all that he learnt from him. One thing he used to say to me often was: Robert, in any situation there is always something we can do. But we have to believe that is true, otherwise we won’t even look.’
‘And if we don’t look, there’s no possibility of finding,’ she’d added, remembering how often round the negotiating table Emile had seen ways of proceeding no one else had even thought of.
‘That is why your crystal ball has its limitations,’ Robert continued. ‘It can show you a future, good or bad, but it cannot show you the resources of the people who will make that future, or indeed remake that future should circumstances move against them.’
Clare was still sitting at her desk, pen in hand, lost in her own thoughts, her letter barely begun, when Helen tapped at the open door and told her that some guests had arrived and would like to see her.
‘Oh yes, fine,’ she said hastily, her mind and her memory still lingering on a flower-lined terrace in Northern France. ‘Is there a problem?’ she went on more steadily as she gathered her thoughts. Helen was normally able to deal with new arrivals quite unaided.
‘No, no problem at all,’ she replied, laughing, ‘except that their name is Hamilton and they’ve just come from Annacramp.’
When Mary and John Hamilton chose the dining room for their welcome tray, Clare asked Helen to bring an extra cup and led the way, a sense of excitement bubbling up as she responded to their easy manner and friendly comments.
‘Now Hamilton has to be good news,’ she said, as they shook hands and exchanged Christian names, ‘but Annacramp is somewhat special. I sense a story to tell.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ John Hamilton replied, grinning broadly as he draped his jacket over the back of his chair. ‘The single word Annacramp brought my father back from Canada. One word, held in a child’s memory. That and his name pinned to his jacket on a luggage label was all he had of his life on this side of the Atlantic.’
‘My goodness, this is wonderful. You must be Uncle Alex’s son,’ Clare said, beaming at the smiling faces of her guests. ‘Granda Hamilton told me how your father came back and went looking for his family. And he did find them,’ she went on happily. ‘Or rather, he thought he had found his uncle, and that pleased everyone, but then, later on, in Manchester, he found out how he’d come to be sent to Canada in the first place. He also found out that the John Hamilton he’d thought was his uncle was actually his cousin. Their fathers were brothers, Tom and Lofty, and they both lived at Annacramp.’
‘Poor Mary,’ said John taking his wife’s hand. ‘She’s had to put up with the tangle of Hamilton family history for years now. She’s so good about it, and it’s quite unfair as she’s as orphan herself and the Hamilton tribe has more branches than an apple tree.’
Clare looked at the warm smile on the kindly face of the dark-haired woman opposite her and thought what a happy couple they were, for Mary was taking such delight in John’s pleasure.
‘I’m an orphan too, Mary,’ Clare said quietly, ‘and so is Andrew, my husband. Like John, I’m fascinated by family history, but Andrew couldn’t care less. He seems to me to be doing his best to forget his family entirely,’ she went on, laughing at her own frustration. ‘The awful thing is that his family were all excessively literate and were once wealthy, so there’s masses of information about them, letters and genealogy, leases and deeds and all the rest of it. I’d give so much to have even a fraction of what he could have, but my lot were mostly ordinary working people. Apart from Granda Hamilton’s stories, I don’t know much about them at all. My mother’s father, Granda Scott, was a dear man but he was very quiet and self-contained and hardly ever told stories and never about family. If it weren’t for a friend of his, Charlie Running, I’d have nothing at all on that side.’
‘Did you know your parents, Clare?’ asked Mary, as Helen arrived at the table and began spreading round plates of scones and cake.
Clare laughed as she glanced at the laden tray and introduced Helen to Mary and John. ‘I see you’ve already worked out that these Hamiltons really are family.’
‘Oh yes, when they told me a “Mister Charlie Running” had sent them, I knew they qualified for cake,’ she replied cheerfully.
‘Yes, I did know my parents, Mary,’ Clare went on, as she poured for them all. ‘They both died in 1946 in a typhoid epidemic in Armagh. I was just nine, but I do remember them well. Sometimes I can almost see my father walking about, or wheeling his bicycle, but it’s my mother I can still hear saying things. She was very loving and gentle, but sensible with it and as they say in Ulster, she had hands for anything. Very practical. What about you, do you remember your parents?’
‘My mother died when I was born,’ said Mary steadily. ‘My father left me with my grandmother and went away. Even Granny didn’t know where he went. But he never came back. She died when I was seven and that meant Dr Barnardo’s for me.’
‘But at least by the 1930s they’d stopped sending children abroad,’ interrupted John hastily. ‘And they were good to you, weren’t they?’ he insisted, turning towards her, his face shadowed with anxiety.
‘Yes, they were,’ she said promptly. ‘And I still went to the same school just outside Norwich. Some of the teachers there were very kind. I still have friends from those days,’ she went on, smiling, ‘but I always felt lonely. Till I met John that was,’ she said, looking Clare straight in the face.
Clare nodded, suddenly unable to speak, as tears jumped unbidden to her eyes. Mary’s look, one of complete and trusting honesty, was totally endearing. Clare would never forget it, nor the moment that followed when she asked herself if it was always like this for children who had lost their parents, or was it just coincidence that both she and Mary had felt such loneliness until they had found someone they could love, someone who would return their love and make a life with them.
‘I know Uncle Alex and Aunt Emily live outside Banbridge, but where do you live?’ she asked. ‘I can tell Mary isn’t from Ulster. Are you living in Norfolk?’
‘Yes, spot on, Clare,’ replied John. ‘I ended up on an air base there at the end of the war and we met at a camp dance. Married in 1947. We have two boys, fifteen and thirteen.’
‘And you’ve left them behind?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied John vigorously. ‘We’ve always wanted to come and visit Annacramp, but we couldn’t while the boys were small. By the time we could afford it, we’d decided we’d like to come on our own. First time, at any rate. We only have a week, so the boys are staying with our next door neighbours. We’ll return the favour when we get back.’
‘But what about Aunt Emily and Uncle Alex?’ Clare asked abruptly, suddenly aware she had no idea what had happened to them. They hadn’t been at Granda Hamilton’s funeral two years ago and she couldn’t even remember him having spoken of them on her few visits to Liskeyborough from Belfast and then France. Surely they hadn’t died and she hadn’t even known.
‘Dad retired in 1955 because his health wasn’t too good. Chest problems. He’d been having a bad time every winter and Ma was really worried about him. Doctor suggested moving to Spain or Italy if they could afford it, but neither of them felt happy about that. It was my sister Jane who solved the problem. She married a German prisoner of war. Lovely man called Johann. They’d tried to set up a small business outside Banbridge and found there was such ill-feeling towards Germans that it would never thrive, even though Johann had actually flown to Ireland to escape the Nazis, but no one seemed willing to believe it. So Jane suggested they all go to Australia.’
‘They came and stayed with us before they went,’ said Mary, breaking in, ‘so I did finally meet them. And Australia has been a great success. For all of them. Johann started a nursery and garden centre, which is pure delight to Emily. She and Jane work with him. There are two little girls now, both at school. They take it in turns to keep an eye on them. It’s a small town in an area called the Hunter Valley and it does sound quite lovely,’ she went on. ‘Alex is working on what he calls “An Orphan Project”. Having found out the story of his own past, he’s been studying the records of children sent to Australia, as well as, those sent to Canada and the United States. He says we “don’t know the half of it”, but one of these days he’ll have enough information for a book. Emily encourages him and tells us about some of his discoveries. And about the country too. We’ve learnt such a lot from her. She’s a great letter writer and she says that out there no one appears to know or care where you’ve come from. Australia is all about here and now. She wishes it were like that back in County Down.’
‘And doesn’t she miss County Down and her garden and the rain and all her friends?’ asked Clare anxiously, thinking how awful it would be living half a world away, weeks of travel by sea to get home or costing a fortune should you think of coming by air.
Clare noticed how Mary and John looked at each other when she spoke of ‘missing County Down’ as if this was something they often talked about. She wondered, too, how John felt about making a new life in Norfolk. Not as far away as Australia, but still a journey to make and an expense they hadn’t been able to afford until now.
‘Yes, she does,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Even John here admits he misses Ballydown and Corbet Lough and the view of the Mournes from the back garden of Rathdrum, the house where he lived as a boy, even though he knows he can come back. Not every year and probably not to live, not yet anyway, but at least to make sure the places he loves are still here,’ she said, glancing sideways at him. ‘Emily and Alex can never come back, at least not together,’ she added sadly, ‘but Emily says it is different when you’re old. If you’ve lived and loved in a place, then it is part of you and you have it forever, so long as you choose to cherish it. She says Australia has been kind to them. It’s given Alex back his health and a new project. It’s given Jane and Johann a fresh start. They all have work and there’s a future for the two girls and a different kind of beauty surrounding them.’
‘So you haven’t been back here since the war, John, and this must be your first visit, Mary?’
Mary nodded and smiled back at Clare but it was John who took up the story.
‘I’ve been back once. I wasn’t demobbed till the end of 1945 so I waited till the summer of 1946, the summer you lost your parents, Clare. Mary and I were engaged and I hoped by waiting she could come with me, but she was nursing and I’m afraid military hospitals were very overworked at that point. I stayed with my parents at Rathdrum but I did actually come to Armagh. Jane borrowed Da’s car and insisted on showing me the tree on The Mall where she and Johann got engaged while he was on a working party. Then we visited both cathedrals. If Da had been able to get away, we might have managed Annacramp then, but he couldn’t, so Jane and I went to see the Hamiltons at Liskeyborough on our way back to Ballydown . . .’
Clare listened carefully as John talked about the visit to her grandparents, his meeting with her grandmother, Martha, and Aunt Dolly and the time he’d spent with Granda Hamilton out in his workshop, sitting on the same two empty oil drums where he and his father had once discussed what they would do if war came in 1914. Uncle Jack was away working in Belfast, but her grandfather had told John where each member of the large family was, what they were doing and how they had fared. He’d mentioned her parents, of course, said they had a girl and a boy and were doing well.
How strange to see such an important part of her life through the eyes of someone older and more experienced, someone coming from outside the known places. She found it hard to believe how much she simply didn’t know about all these people who would have been so important a part of her parents’ world.
Andrew was home later than usual that bright, sunny evening. Tired and dispirited from a day in court when one more of his clients had suffered a raw deal, he parked the car at the back of the house, tramped along the basement corridor, found the kitchen empty, dropped his briefcase in their bedroom, then headed upstairs to find Clare. Surprised to hear laughter from the dining-room, he stopped at the top of the stairs just at the moment she appeared, a smile on her face, her eyes shining.
‘Andrew, we heard the car and were waiting for you. We have guests. Real guests. Come and meet them,’ she said, giving him a kiss and leading him into the dining-room.
‘Andrew, this is Mary and John Hamilton from Norfolk. John is Uncle Alex’s son. You remember Uncle Alex, don’t you?’ she added, a hint of anxiety in her voice.
‘Of course, I remember him,’ he said evenly. ‘Small boy in big ship. Exported to provide labour for colonial development. But he got away, came home and proved to be a true Hamilton,’ he said, managing a smile as he shook hands with Mary and then John.
Clare relaxed as she saw the two men size each other up. There was instantly an ease between them more commonly seen when men talked about cars or golf. Mary was watching them too, as Andrew sat down wearily and looked hopefully at the teapot.
‘Andrew, the tea’s stone cold,’ Clare said firmly. ‘But June has put a casserole in the Aga for us. If you and John would take the cases up to Number Two, Mary and I could clear away tea and lay dinner. It’s our night off, remember,’ she said encouragingly. ‘John Wiley isn’t here yet, but I’m sure he won’t be long.’
‘Would you like me to fetch some sherry from Headquarters?’ Andrew asked, beginning to look more cheerful.
‘Yes, please. But please do the cases first. Mary and John have had a long day. We’ve been talking our heads off ever since they arrived and suddenly they’re going to want to go to bed.’
‘What time did you get here?’ Andrew asked.
To his surprise everyone burst out laughing.
‘What’s the joke?’ he asked.
‘It was early afternoon,’ Mary replied, smiling. ‘But we got into family history, and there seems to be an awful lot of it on the Hamilton side. Don’t be anxious. When we heard the car, we promised Clare not to say another word about it for the rest of the evening.’
That evening was one of the happiest Clare and Andrew had spent for a very long time. It was like some of the good times they’d had with Harry and Jessie, helping to do up the house on the Malone Road when they’d just got married and Jessie, who swore she was only learning to cook, produced wonderful meals to share at the end of their long working days.
Over their meal, they shared talk about their respective jobs. Mary worked part-time in the orthopaedic department of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, while John ran an electrical business in Holt, the small town in North Norfolk where they now lived. Andrew said very little about being a solicitor in Armagh, but spoke enthusiastically about their plans for buying land and rearing pedigree cattle when they could afford for him to stop working as a solicitor and have some managerial help with running Drumsollen.
‘Can’t always do what you want, can you?’ said John sympathetically. ‘When the airbase closed, I had nothing to turn to. I’d left school and joined up the moment I was eighteen. I could have applied for a grant to go to university, but I’d already met Mary. Oh, she did offer to support me, and she would have, but I’m afraid I was too stubborn. One of the electricians on the base was going into business and offered me a job. I’d no electrical skills whatsoever. Flying Spitfires and Mosquitos doesn’t qualify you for much else,’ he commented wryly. ‘Happily, it worked out well. I picked things up very quickly and night-school helped. But actually, it’s boats I love. If I had lots of money I’d take up sailing, perhaps do half-crown trips to take visitors out to Blakeney Point to see the seals, or something like that,’ he ended laughing.
‘And have you any experience of sailing, John?’ Clare asked.
‘Only in a Mosquito,’ said Mary soberly.
There was a moment’s puzzled silence and then both John and Mary began to laugh heartily.
‘I ditched in the Mediterranean when we were delivering planes from North Africa to Italy. Mechanical fault. But it could have been the end of me. Parents got the usual Missing telegram. Poor dears, it was hard on them. Aunt Sarah got her Foreign Office husband to pester someone in the Air Ministry he’d been at school with, but even then there wasn’t much they could do. My chum had seen me go down, but that was the last I was heard of.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Clare, horrified at the thought of poor Aunt Emily and Uncle Alex thinking he was dead.
John grinned ruefully.
‘Well, I kept afloat and nothing ran me down or spotted me for quite a while. I could have been picked up by a ship or even an enemy sub. Being run down was much more likely. Not much protection on a plane made of light metal and balsa wood and designed for speed.
‘So what did happen, John?’ Andrew said quickly.
‘I was picked up by a fishing boat, a Greek caique manned by very loud, noisy, bearded Greeks. At least, that’s what I thought at the time,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s actually rather funny looking back now, but that’s what made it all so difficult. You see they weren’t Greek at all, they were British and it was a special ops job. They couldn’t risk giving the game away in case I was a German spy deliberately planted in a ditched Mosquito. They made me take off all my wet clothes and I wondered then why they wouldn’t give them back. They had to stick to their plans, so they couldn’t put me ashore till their job was done. They also had to make sure I didn’t hear them speaking English or using their radio.’
‘But how on earth did they manage that on a small boat?’ demanded Clare.
‘There was a cabin. Someone used the radio in there, while the rest made a noise. Sometimes they sang. Occasionally they did PT exercises, or hammered pieces of the rigging, and they shouted at each other all the time. I knew there was something funny about them but I couldn’t figure it out. The boss-man spoke “a leetle Englessh” with a thick American accent, said he had “sister in New York”. I think he decided I was genuine, but he still couldn’t put me ashore. Once I had to ask for help to get back to my unit, someone would be bound to ask how I’d got there in the first place. I found out afterwards, years afterwards actually, that they were all Oxford and Cambridge men and only one of them spoke any Greek at all and that was Classical. But they certainly did manage to fool me on that one.’
‘And after all that, you still think you’d like a boat?’ asked Clare.
‘Yes, I would. It was a very odd experience but I loved being on the water with all that space and sky. A strange longing for a real landlubber, brought up among the little hills of County Down, don’t you think? Must be a hand down from some ancient ancestor,’ he said lightly.
‘Maybe it is,’ said Andrew promptly. ‘My mother was so good with animals, especially horses, but she wasn’t from a country family. I’ve had no real experience with animals either, but I just know working with them is what I want. It’s the way I feel when I’m with them. I feel more myself in some strange way,’ he added, looking slightly foolish.
‘We’re certainly going to try it,’ said Clare, ‘if we can make a success of Drumsollen. How about you?’
‘Oh yes, there is a Grand Plan,’ Mary smiled. ‘We’ve bought two derelict cottages a little way back from the coast. Baconsthorpe, the village is called. Very small, just church, pub, general store and a few houses. We’re working on them, so we can let them as holiday cottages, or perhaps sell them.’
‘And buy a boat?’ asked Clare.
‘Spot on, Clare,’ said John grinning. ‘Then you and Andrew will have to come and visit us. Do either of you know Norfolk at all, or do you think it’s very flat, as they say in Private Lives?’
‘I’ve been a few times,’ said Andrew easily. ‘I had two aunts, one lived at Wiveton and one at Cley, my mother’s aunts actually. The elder one, Auntie Bee, died some years ago but her younger sister, Aunt Joan, still lives in Wiveton. She’s in her seventies now and keeps asking me to come and bring Clare. I haven’t been over for a while. When was it, Clare, when I painted Auntie Bee’s kitchen after the floods?’
‘Must have been 1954, or 1955. The floods were 1953, weren’t they?’ Clare said slowly.
‘What’s your aunt’s name, Andrew?’ Mary asked quietly, while Clare was still trying to remember exactly when it was. She’d been so worried about Andrew because he had to cross the Irish sea in winter when the weather was very stormy.
‘Well, she had three names and I’m not sure which she uses. Her family name was Ayton, but she married a doctor called Everett, who died, and then a man called Pye who bred donkeys. They were terribly happy together, but he died too, quite suddenly, and she’s been on her own for a long time now. She’s rather poor but doesn’t let it bother her. She has a holiday flat attached to her cottage and she grows old-fashioned plants and flowers and sells them in summer to the visitors.’
Mary and John looked at each other and shook their heads.
‘You’re not going to believe this, Andrew,’ said John slowly. ‘When the base finally closed and we had nowhere to live, my Commanding Officer said he had a friend who might be able to help, a Mrs Joan Pye at Wiveton. We lived in Joan’s holiday flat for two years till Sandy was well on the way. Your Aunt Joan is our son’s godmother.’
‘And you’re not going to believe this either, Mary,’ said Clare laughing. ‘This is the first time in living history I have ever heard Andrew say anything about any member of his family without it being prized out of him! Now what do you think of that?’