The first week of October 1964 was one that people in Northern Ireland would remember for a very long time. The streets of Belfast appeared nightly on television, the cameras angled on burning vehicles, flaring petrol bombs, angry crowds of stone-throwers and heavily armed police. It was not only the residents of the quiet, damp and peaceful Ulster countryside that could not believe their eyes. Millions around the world now watched what the media set before them. For the first time in its brief history, Ulster was international news.
Clare and Andrew viewed the rioting only once, slipping into the back of the small television room and standing behind their solitary guest, who sat glued to the set, newspaper and can of beer abandoned by his chair. Afterwards, they made coffee in silence, took it back to the fire in Headquarters before they felt steady enough to say a word. Unlike the night Andrew brought home the news of the assault upon the Republican Headquarters there was no distress between them. The intervening days had given them time to think through what was happening. Tonight they needed but a short time to reach their conclusions.
‘We’re not pretending it hasn’t happened,’ Clare said firmly. ‘And we’re not pretending it’s not as bad news for us as for everyone else. But we’re not going to depress ourselves by watching what goes on in one small area of a large city. We’ll travel hopefully, as you say, until we see how things go. We won’t give up unless we have to. Is it a deal?’
‘It’s a deal, pardner,’ Andrew said, managing his Wild West accent well enough to make her smile.
They sat silent for a little, Clare thinking how comforting and friendly the flames were on such a miserable wet night. She tried to push out of mind the roaring flames of a burning bus, the crash of breaking glass, the faces distorted with anger, and the violence spilling all around the wet streets of a city where she had spent four years of her life.
‘You still haven’t told me about the latest Grand Plan,’ Andrew said suddenly, looking up from the fire after he’d added small logs to encourage the cheerful blaze.
‘Where was I when I left off?’ she asked, gathering her straying thoughts, determined not to let herself be distracted again by images about which she could do nothing.
‘Comforts Fund, out of Robert’s Waterworks shares,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got details of pond liners for you in my briefcase.’
She laughed heartily and shook her head.
‘My dear Andrew, you have few vices, and greed is not one of them, but you only ever shift yourself to get money out of me, or rather, out of our budget, when it’s birds, bees, wildflowers, or some poor wee creature threatened with extinction. Did you know that?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking sheepish. ‘You do think it’s a good idea, don’t you?’
‘I think it’s a splendid idea,’ she said reassuringly. ‘You could have a whole lake in the rest of the paddock if I could find the money. But I’ve got to find it first. That’s all part of the Grand Plan, of course.’
He sat back and listened attentively while she told him where she’d got to in her detailed planning.
‘So you really do think we can stay open over the winter and not have to dip into the money we made last year?’
‘No, I can’t say that,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘That’s crystal ball stuff. But I think it’s worth a try. Keeping a good team like June and Bronagh together is worth a lot of effort. I’d be hard pushed to find a pair as good if bookings do pick up next year. Just think how June would feel if I told her we didn’t need her till March. She’d have to find something else and she might not be able to come back.’
‘I’ve done some research, of course,’ she continued. ‘Armagh is not well equipped for quick lunches for people working in offices. A lunch box has to be easier and probably cheaper if it’s delivered to your desk. But having found that out and done some costings doesn’t tell me whether there will be any demand or not. That’s pure guesswork.’
‘Thelma brings a sandwich most days,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘But sometimes she asks if it’s all right to pop out and she always asks do I want anything for lunch.’
‘Thelma may not have time some mornings,’ she began easily. ‘She has her bus to catch from Markethill. That’s one of the unknown factors, isn’t it? Will people pay to save time in the morning? There certainly must be wives and mothers who’d be very pleased if they didn’t have to make a lunch, or several lunches,’ she said laughing, as she remember her own early attempts to do everything that was needed in their first months of coping with guests.
‘What about delivery? You’ll need the car.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Our car might be available on the odd day, but that’s no real help. It has to be regular and besides you have to have it for visiting clients and going to court. I haven’t solved that problem yet but I’m working on it.’
‘What made you think of birthday parties?’ he asked, going back to the other half of the Grand Plan she’d just outlined.
‘Oh, that was Jessie,’ she said wryly. ‘Fiona wants to have all her little friends from nursery school and Jessie is dreading it. You know she’s a good cook, but she doesn’t like baking. She says she can’t stand making small stuff like iced buns and she loathes clearing up the mess when children come to play. She says she’ll be buying everything and hiring an entertainer, but she’s still dreading it. Apparently a lot of women she knows feel just the same. But that’s posh Belfast. I don’t know if there are any in Armagh.’
‘But you do know who could make cakes and buns in her sleep,’ Andrew added with a smile.
‘June will love it, providing Bronagh and I do the sandwiches. That’s what June hates, always has done, ever since I was her Saturday girl, drafted in when she had to feed the five thousand, as she called it. Isn’t it funny the things we so dislike. No logic in them at all.’
‘Clare dear, I don’t think I’m up to philosophical speculations tonight,’ he replied yawning. ‘Have I now been fully informed about all the proliferations of the Grand Plan?’
‘No, actually,’ she replied, grinning. ‘I’ve spelt out all the nuts and bolts, but I’ve kept the best bit till last.’
‘Well, come on. Amaze me,’ he said, eyeing her cautiously.
‘Well,’ she began, giggling. ‘We are not closing over the winter, but we are closing for two weeks next July, the so-called Twelfth fortnight. Next year it occupies weeks one and two on the calendar.’
‘But why then?’ he asked, looking bewildered.
‘Market research,’ she said, teasing him. ‘I looked up the last four years and even the best of them has had far fewer bookings in July. I was still thinking about it when a very handsome young man from the Tourist Board came to ask if I would contribute our booking figures to their databank. He gave me rather a lot of useful information while he was having his coffee. Apparently, more and more people are going abroad in summer and the Twelfth fortnight is the peak time. So we’d do well to close and let the staff have their holiday then.’
‘Mmm . . . good idea,’ he said yawning again.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me where these staff are going for theirs?’
‘Er . . . where?’
‘Norfolk,’ she said triumphantly. ‘To visit your nice Aunt Joan who keeps asking us, and to see Mary and John. Mary’s already booked some time off for when we come. Isn’t that lovely of her?’
‘How splendid,’ he said, waking up considerably. ‘Aunt Joan will be chuffed and it’ll be lovely to see our Hamiltons again. AND we’re off to Fermanagh at the end of the month,’ he went on. ‘What a leisured life we do lead,’ he declared, grinning at her, as he put the fireguard in place.
‘Now, at last, I can show you my favourite piece of Norfolk. I thought it was never going to happen. I promise you it really is not flat.’
Clare’s twenty-eighth birthday fell on Thursday the eighth of October, but the week had been so overshadowed by public events, they decided to wait until Friday the sixteenth and celebrate by having a very nice dinner in a corner of their own dining-room, with a bottle of wine from Robert’s regular birthday case and John on guard in Headquarters. In the event, that same Friday would also be the first occasion when the house would be the venue for a children’s party, for it turned out there were mothers in and around Armagh just as reluctant as Jessie to put on the necessary show and affluent enough to pay someone else to do it.
Like with all first times, Clare was apprehensive. In the course of the preceding week she asked Andrew on at least three separate occasions what their liability was should a child fall downstairs or otherwise injure itself. Each time he explained patiently that you were not ‘in loco parentis’, technically, if the said ‘parentis’ had brought the said children of their own free will to the said ‘loco’ and had signed the usual disclaimer. Nevertheless, she still felt anxious as she stepped into the kitchen mid-morning after clearing her desk. She donned her apron, saw that June was well ahead and preparing to ice the birthday cake, while Bronagh was working methodically in the sandwich factory she’d set up at one end of the kitchen table.
Clare joined her and was halfway through her first sliced loaf when she remembered the aunt with whom she’d once made sandwiches for a whole Lodge of Orangemen, an awkward-looking woman who said little but had demonstrated a very effective way to make sandwiches. Clare was miles away, thinking of that first dance on the bare boards of Cloghan Orange Hall in the arms of her Uncle Jack, when the phone rang. June’s hands were covered with icing sugar and Bronagh had just taken trimmed crusts outside to the bird-table, so there was nothing for it but to pick it up.
‘Hello, Drumsollen Guest House, Clare speaking. Can I help you?’
There was silence on the line and then a cough. ‘I should like to speak to Mrs Richardson, please.’
There was something familiar about the voice, but Clare couldn’t place it. All their advertising said: Friendly family run guest house. Ring Clare or Andrew. No one ever called her Mrs Richardson, not even the Bank Manager.
She looked at the large black handset and observed some sticky fingerprints on the mouthpiece, but no further sound came to help her.
‘This is Clare Richardson speaking,’ she said clearly. She waited as the silence continued. Then, suddenly, with a stomach-turning wrench, she placed the voice. ‘Russell, is that you? Is His Lordship unwell?’
‘Not exactly, madam,’ Russell replied, his voice sounding perfectly normal. ‘I fear I have to tell you His Lordship is no longer with us.’
Tears sprang to Clare’s eyes as she picked up a strange muffled sound on the other end of the line. Oh, the poor man, she thought. Goodness knows how many years Russell and Hector had been together.
‘Russell, I am so terribly sorry, so terribly sorry. Can you tell me what happened? Was it a heart attack? I spoke to him a few days ago and he was in such good spirits,’ she went on, the tears trickling unnoticed down her cheeks.
‘His Lordship has been going down to the lake each morning,’ he began. ‘You may recall that he has an interest in the arrival of the geese.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Mrs Watkins and I became concerned when he did not return at his accustomed hour, so I went down to the lake myself,’ he continued, in his usual measured tones. ‘He was sitting there with his binoculars beside him, but he had passed away.’
Clare could not speak, but she was grateful for the clean handkerchief June pushed into her free hand before leaving her. She blew her nose as quietly as possible.
‘Russell, you must tell Andrew and me if there is anything we can do to help you and Mrs Watkins. We shall, of course, come down for the funeral. Perhaps I could ring you back later this morning when I’ve spoken to my husband,’ she said, knowing that the aching sob in her throat could not be held back a moment longer.
‘Thank you, madam, that would be most kind,’ he said, and rang off.
Clare dropped the receiver into its cradle, sat down at the table and laid her head on her hands among the abandoned remnants of the sandwich she’d been making. She cried as if her heart would break. She was still weeping when June peeped round the door and saw her.
June had never seen Clare so distraught. Nothing seemed to help her, though she drank the tea Bronagh made for her and nodded when asked if she could drink another cup. Finally, June suggested that she have ‘a wee lie down’ and more or less marched her along the corridor to the bedroom.
Clare lay there weeping silently, seeing so sharply in her mind’s eye the tiny, emaciated figure so full of life. She’d told Andrew once that hugging Hector was like embracing a skeleton with clothes on. He’d teased her about their embraces and said he had not had that pleasure.
‘No more hugs. No more Hector. Gone. Gone forever.’
She felt as if a light had gone out, taking with it some magic power she had been given without knowing she had it. How would she survive in a world with no Hector, with no one apart from Andrew who would let her say anything she wanted to say? She lay and wept and could not stop.
‘Clare, Clare darling, don’t cry. I’m here,’ Andrew announced, crossing the bedroom in two strides. He sat sideways on the bed and tried to coax her into his arms. ‘What is it, love? What’s making you cry so? It’s sad and it is a shock, but Hector was a very old man.’
‘I don’t know, Andrew, I just don’t know. I shouldn’t be so upset, I really shouldn’t. I’m just being silly,’ she gasped, the words rushing out between her sobs. ‘And why have you come home? Have you forgotten something?’
‘I came because you’re so upset,’ he said, as she struggled to sit up. ‘June phoned me. I knew it had to be bad if June was willing to pick up the phone.’
She swallowed hard and searched for the handkerchief June had given her. She couldn’t find it, took the one he offered her, wiped her face and blew her nose again.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Andrew,’ she said, making an effort to stop crying. ‘I was so looking forward to going down next week. Looking forward to seeing him and asking all the questions I didn’t ask last time. I was going to wear that lovely ring he gave me and take him some gloves to match the scarf I sent him for birdwatching. I only had him for a little while and now he’s gone. I know I have you and I’m so lucky to have you, but for a little while there was Hector as well.’ She buried her head in his shoulder and just managed to get out, ‘The people I love are always taken away.’
Faint though they were, Andrew heard the muffled words. Suddenly, what came back to him was the day he’d been told that both his parents were dead. He had not shed a tear that day or in the days that followed. Not then. Then he was told to be a brave boy. Boys didn’t cry in his world, did they? It was only years later, safe in Clare’s arms, the dam gave way and he had cried like the child he had once been.
He stroked her hair and wondered what to say. Loving someone didn’t make it any easier to find the words for a moment like this. Perhaps, in fact, it made it harder. He’d learnt how to say quite difficult and personal things to clients whom he barely knew, but someone you truly loved mattered so much, it made you nervous.
‘Russell said he was sitting by the lake with his binoculars, but when he leant over him, he knew he was gone,’ she said, speaking clearly for the first time.
‘Like when Jamsey found your grandfather slipped down beside the anvil.’
She stared at him as if he had said something quite extraordinary.
‘You’re right, of course. Granda. Much as I loved dear Hector and always will, his going shouldn’t make me feel it’s the end of the world, but it was the end of my world when Granda died. That’s how I was feeling, my love, till you came home. The end of my world,’ she said, clutching him tightly. ‘But it’s easier to bear now I can see it,’ she went on, drying her face. ‘Oh dear,’ she added, looking down with a small laugh, ‘I’ve got Lancôme foundation all over your nice clean hanky. I hope you’ve got some more in the drawer. I can’t remember when I last did any ironing for us.’
‘I’ll borrow some of yours if I haven’t,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just imagine what floral handkerchiefs would do to my practice.’
She giggled and stood up, caught sight of her face in the dressing-table mirror and laughed out loud.
‘Looks like I’d better cleanse and start again,’ she declared. ‘Definitely beyond repair.’
‘But you seem better,’ he said gently.
‘I’m all right now,’ she replied steadily. ‘As good as new, or nearly,’ she added, kissing him. ‘Can you stay and have some lunch?’
‘Not if you can spare me. I’ve three appointments lined up for this afternoon and Thelma will cancel them if I don’t ring her now or get back to the office before one.’
‘Three appointments, Andrew?’ she said, looking surprised. ‘Is there something you have not been telling me?’
‘Birthday surprise,’ he said, brushing a smear of make-up from the lapel of his dark suit. ‘Tell you tonight. Anything you’d like me to bring home with me?’
‘Just you, please. But I’d like if you’d ring Russell about the funeral. I said I would, but I think he’d manage better with a man. He had a very bad moment with me.’
‘Right, I’ll just say a word to June as I go,’ he said quickly, as he took a clean handkerchief from his top drawer.
‘So your wife does occasionally get as far as ironing your handkerchiefs,’ she said, grinning. ‘Tell June and Bronagh I’ll be about fifteen minutes. I need to change as well. Trousers, I think, for eight year olds?’
‘Absolutely,’ he agreed, putting his arms round her. ‘Good luck with this afternoon.’
The birthday party was a great success. A roaring success, as June said afterwards, not well pleased that the young gentleman whose birthday it was chose to greet his guests by pretending he was a lion about to eat them.
When it was clear his mother didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do with him, Bronagh took over. She gathered all the children round her and asked if anyone thought they could roar more loudly. After a short, sharp burst of concentrated roaring, she held up her hand for silence and then asked if anyone could whisper more softly than she could.
Clare watched fascinated as Bronagh manipulated the ten little boys as competently as the Pied Piper charmed the children of Hamelin. She was a joy to watch. By dropping her voice she managed to get their total attention till all thought of roaring had disappeared.
‘Bronagh, you were marvellous,’ Clare said, as they stood at the kitchen table after the roaring lion had gone off clutching a red balloon.
‘I have a lot of experience,’ Bronagh responded lightly, as Clare packed a box of goodies for her to take home. ‘There are ten in my family and I’m the eldest. It came in handy when I got the job in the nursery.’
Clare paused, hesitated, and then decided to take the plunge.
‘Bronagh dear, forgive me asking, but why did you give up your morning job at the nursery? You’re so good with children. I’m sure they were able to pay you more than we can and you’d have had holidays with pay as well.’
‘No such luck, Clare,’ she said evenly. ‘That’s why it was mornings only. I was only part-time, so I got paid by the hour on a weekly basis. I was grateful enough for that, but then the head decided it was time to make certain staffing changes,’ she continued, a strange, uneasy look flickering in her lovely dark eyes.
‘What sort of staff changes?’ Clare asked, already half aware of what the answer was likely to be.
‘No Catholics,’ Bronagh replied, her tone quite neutral.
‘Bronagh! I can’t believe it . . . except that I can . . . but I still can’t get my imagination round the ridiculousness of it. I suppose if you’d been a Buddhist or a Muslim, that would have been fine.’
Bronagh laughed. ‘My father was a Protestant, but he beat my mother up. She thought all Protestants were like him, so she insisted on bringing us up good Catholics . . . or a not-very-good Catholic in my case.’
‘And she put up with that for ten children?’
‘No. He left after three but she could never say No to a man. There was usually a boyfriend or an uncle, God rest her soul,’ she said, crossing herself.
‘She’s dead, Bronagh? She couldn’t have been very old.’
‘She died seven years ago. She was only forty and I’m twenty-four. I had a child too when I was fifteen, just like she did. But he died at birth, which probably saved me from the life of a penitent in a laundry somewhere or other.’
Clare sat down abruptly as Bronagh placed the box of cake and buns in a carrier bag.
‘How many still at home?’
‘Only the four youngest,’ she replied easily. ‘And I’ve a married sister that helps me out with clothes from her ones and the odd bit of money. It’s a bit of a squeeze with only two wee bedrooms, but it’s better than it was. If Brendan could find a proper job, we’d manage fine.’
‘What age is Brendan?’
‘Seventeen last week, but he looks older. He’s one of the brainy ones, he and Anne-Marie. She’s at the Convent. She got a scholarship at the Eleven Plus. Brendan got a County Scholarship to Queens last August but he knows we can’t keep going if he isn’t earning. He says he can study in the evenings and do a degree when he’s older.’
‘Bus or bicycle, Bronagh?’ Clare asked as they walked outside together.
‘Bus, today. Brendan has the bicycle. He’s doing a job for a man that lives off the Cathedral Road. Back of beyond, he says, no buses within miles.’
‘I’m sorry Andrew’s not back. If he was, I’d run you home.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Clare, but I’m well used to walking. The stop down on the road is very handy,’ she said cheerfully, smiling her lovely smile.
‘Can Brendan drive?’
‘Oh dear yes. Been driving for years, anywhere quiet where he’d not get caught without a licence. He’s a good driver. Anything mechanical just comes natural to him. I don’t think I’d be any good at it at all,’ she confessed, laughing, as they came round the corner of the house together.
‘I hope you have a good weekend, Clare,’ Bronagh said gently, as they paused by the front steps. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better. It was very sad about the old gentleman, but he was a good age, as they say.’
Clare nodded. ‘Thank you for all you did today, Bronagh, especially with the children. I’ll see you Monday afternoon. Don’t work too hard yourself.’
They parted and Bronagh walked down the long drive a small smile on her face. This was the easy part. The bus would come and she could sit for the time it took to reach the stop in English Street. Then there was the long climb up Dawson Street, on up past the hospital and down by the Gasworks into Callan Street, a street where the houses had been condemned for some years now. No action had yet been taken and none seemed likely at the present rate of going.