Mary-Anne arrived in a flurry, her skirt flying, clutching a bulging shopping bag. Sam was out of breath as he hurried to keep up with her. She took one glance at Sarah, who had raised her head when she heard the gate whine, and insisted on her lying down right away. She watched carefully as Sarah moved slowly and awkwardly from one steep wooden tread to the next, Sam Keenan close behind her, blocking the narrow stairway in case she should miss her step.
By the time Sarah got up into the bedroom, she was exhausted; a cold sweat was breaking on her face and her legs threatened to give way under her. She dropped down on John’s side of the bed, the one nearest to the door and heard, rather than saw, Sam and Mary-Anne come in behind her.
Before she’d even had time to collect herself enough to thank Sam for his help, Mary-Anne had hustled him out of the room.
‘Away home, good man,’ she said quickly. ‘Come back down, or send wee Scottie, or one of the childer in ’bout an hour,’ she went on. She dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘In case I need sen’ for the doctor.’
Sarah heard the words quite clearly but found she hadn’t the energy to protest. She simply lay back as she was told, aware of Mary-Anne pulling off her boots and undoing the buttons on the side of her skirt.
‘Now, lift up yer backside up if ye can, like a good wumman,’ she said softly, as Sam’s boots echoed on the stairs and they heard him pull the front door closed behind him. ‘Are yer monthly cloths in the chest?’ she went on.
Sarah wiped her forehead after the effort of raising her lower half so that Mary-Anne could remove her skirt and her damp knickers. She did say, ‘Yes,’ but the sound that came out was only a whisper.
It was all her friend needed. She bent down, pulled out the lowest drawer first and immediately found what she wanted. She’d never met a woman yet who didn’t keep well-washed, but stained cloths, somewhere handy in the bedroom.
She spread a couple of the largest squares underneath Sarah’s lower half, then draped the skirt across her body.
‘Now, just you close your eyes an’ have a rest, an’ I’ll lie on the bed beside you. Shure it’s not offen I get an excuse to lie down,’ she said cheerfully, as she took off her own boots and lay down gently on top of the bedclothes, without creating so much as a squeak from the bedsprings.
Sarah wanted to thank her, but couldn’t find the energy to speak.
To her surprise, she found tears running freely down her cheeks. Why tears, why now? she wondered. Were they for John? And why now, when they’d stayed away through all the long hours since he’d been brought home? Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she thought of Helen, her dear childhood friend, the only person other than John with whom she had ever shared a bed.
Helen was inches smaller than she was herself. She was blonde with curly hair, while she herself was dark, her hair long and straight. Helen seemed always to bubble with life and energy while Sarah was quieter, more thoughtful, sometimes almost solemn. ‘Chalk and cheese,’ her grandmother had called them, laughing, when she saw them coming back from a walk together, their arms round each other’s waists.
The much-loved, only surviving child of another Quaker family, Helen was one of the handful of children her grandmother taught. They had always sat beside each other, run errands together, shared whatever books or paper they received as gifts. They had been inseparable all through their childhood, their birthdays only three weeks apart. Then Helen had fallen in love at only seventeen, a man some six years older than herself, but the son of close neighbours whom she had also known from childhood.
Seeing what joy they had together and sharing the hopes they had for their future with them, Sarah had been so happy herself. But her joy in their relationship was short-lived. Helen’s parents opposed her marriage to a man who was not a Quaker.
Helen had gone ahead and married him with Sarah as one of her witnesses at the registry office in Armagh. By then, Helen’s intentions having been made clear, she was pronounced as being ‘out of unity’ by their Monthly Meeting. With her grandmother no longer well and unable to attend Meetings on Sundays, Sarah herself stopped attending.
Sarah’s eyes closed. Helen had been so hurt, not only by the pronouncement of their local Monthly Meeting, but by the coolness and even rejection of her family and many of her friends. She’d said that Sarah was the only person who had not changed in any way towards her as a result of her marriage.
But change had come upon them all. Happy as Helen and Daniel were in their love for each other, Daniel ran into difficulties with the cotton-spinning business he’d inherited from his grandfather. Customers, many of them Quakers, who were committed to fair trading, simply withdrew their support. His business began to fail. In desperation, they decided the only thing to do was emigrate. Like thousands of Presbyterians, Catholics and Quakers before them escaping discrimination and unfair levies and taxes, they decided to go to America, where Daniel had cousins in New England who would help him to get started again.
Helen had wept when she told Sarah what they’d decided and Sarah had wept with her when she accepted it was probably the only way. Yes, they would write and indeed they still wrote long, open letters to each other, but on that memorable occasion the tears had poured down her cheeks, tickling her ears and she couldn’t find her hanky. Just like now.
The hours passed as she moved in and out of sleep. She heard Scottie’s voice and felt the gentle movement of Mary-Anne on the bed beside her as she went down to speak to him. The light of the well-lengthened April evening had turned to a golden glow when Sarah found herself suddenly jerked from an uneasy, dream-filled doze by a sharp pain that made her body twitch so violently that Mary-Anne, who now lay beside her again, woke instantly.
Sarah gasped as Mary-Anne got to her feet in seconds, came round to her side of the bed, got down on her knees and put both hands on her stomach.
‘There now. Take deep breaths,’ she said softly, in a tone Sarah had not associated with Mary-Anne until today. ‘Shure the worst is near over, the pain itself won’t harm ye – the only danger is fear and ye’ve no call for that.’
She felt the pressure of Mary-Anne’s hands and sensed a warmth flowing from them. It reminded her again of childhood and her grandmother laying hands upon her when she was in any sort of pain, or was anxious or troubled.
‘Pain is all the same in one way,’ the old woman had often said. ‘Whether it is your heart or your head, if you are troubled in body, or in spirit, then you need to ask for healing. Now, sit down here on the floor where I can rest my hands upon you. Be still and listen to what comes to you. What picture comes into your mind? A person, or a place, or an object. They have a message for you. Just listen and keep still. Let the pain be the pain, it cannot harm you in itself.’
Sarah closed her eyes again and focused on Mary-Anne’s hands and the warmth that flowed from them. To her surprise what she heard was John’s hammer on the anvil. The long, slow strokes and the dancing rhythm in between. She would never forget that dancing rhythm. That was John, that was his trademark and he had left it with her. Like Helen had left her with laughter and her grandmother with love and comfort, John had left her a gift of love and lightness, epitomised by that dancing rhythm. These gifts would, in time, bring comfort. They could not replace his sheltering arms, but they would be with her for however long she might live.
‘Ach, that’s better, yer smiling,’ said Mary-Anne, as she moved away the skirt she had spread over her, replaced it with a cloth and put her hands back on her stomach.
There was pain, but it seemed to be happening to someone else; her body trembled, twitched and was still. Mary-Anne did what she had come to do. It was over. She had lost John’s child, but she had been strengthened in love. She fell asleep with Mary-Anne holding her hand, lying on the bed beside her.
It was dark when she woke, the pain gone, her mind clear again. In the fading moonlight through the undrawn curtains she could see Mary-Anne fast asleep beside her, still fully dressed, on top of the bedclothes. She moved very carefully so as not to disturb her, her own body stiff from long hours of lying on her back. She took it very slowly, managed to stand up and walk shakily to the south-facing window. She leant against the outshot made by the chimney stack coming up from the kitchen below.
As always, the projecting whitewashed flue was slightly warm from the heat rising from the fire on the hearth below, no doubt now banked down by Mary-Anne or Scottie. The fire on the hearth never went out, unless by accident on a night when a high wind blew up, roaring round the exposed house. Then, the wind could whip up even the well-damped-down embers so that in the morning there was only a pile of ash and a dusty hearth.
The fire had not gone out in the almost two years when she and John had tended it together, cooked their food on it, enjoyed its warmth and comfort evening after evening, as they sat and talked while she sewed or John read to her from the local paper.
Today must be Saturday. She counted on her fingers to be sure. Tuesday was John’s visit to Armagh, Wednesday a day of visitors and arrangements, Thursday was the service and burial in Grange churchyard. So yesterday was Friday. Sometime then she had lost her unborn child. At her feet she saw a pile of cloths. The one on top, larger than the others was clean, the stains ancient, but below she knew there were fresh bloodstains on the rest of the pile where Mary-Anne had staunched the flow and then washed her.
Loss and yet more loss, she thought calmly, aware that the moonlight was fading and already there was a hint of light in the eastern sky. Another day was dawning, and the fire had not been allowed to go out even during the biggest event in her life. She knew what her grandmother would say: Sure we cannot know what we are called upon to do, but the good Lord will help us whatever our grief or sadness. We must just trust him.
Her grandmother had suffered the loss of the young man to whom she’d been engaged. She had never married, but she had not let what had happened embitter her. She had an easy smile, a cheering word for everyone she encountered, a glow which radiated all around her. Sarah could see her wrinkled face, her stooped figure, her hobbling walk. They made no difference to her indomitable spirit. She had died in her nineties, sound of mind though confined to her chair by the fire, her body so light that Sarah had not the slightest difficulty lifting her for bed or commode.
She too had died in April, on a morning of sunshine and showers when Sarah herself had looked out at their small garden and told her that there’d been rain in the night, that there were ‘jewels on the trees’.
Reluctant to disturb Mary-Anne who had so freely admitted that she seldom got time to rest, Sarah did not go back to bed, but as the light grew stronger Mary-Anne stirred.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked in her normal sharp voice.
‘And why would I not be with such a good nurse?’ Sarah replied briskly.
‘Aye, well,’ she began more gently, ‘shure it’s hard if ye have no family to give ye a hand when yer not right. T’was the least I could do. Shou’dn’t someone be helpin’ you and you sayin’ you were keepin’ the forge goin’ because of Sam Keenan and his we’eans and Ben and poor wee Scottie. That wee lad has no one here belongin’ to him but his oul granny. An’ she wou’d never say a kine word if there was some cuttin’ remark she cou’d make,’ she added sharply. ‘Some oul people bees awful bitter, an’ sure what good does it do? We all have our time, rich or poor, and that’s the end of it.’
She had got up, sat on the side of the bed and now came to join her at the window. To Sarah’s surprise, she held out her arms to her. ‘Ye’ll not be like that,’ she went on, ‘ye’ll be like me twin sister, me double.’
Sarah saw the tears suddenly pour down Mary-Anne’s face. She moved into the open arms and embraced her warmly.
‘What age was she?’ Sarah asked, stroking her hair.
‘Ach, only seventeen,’ she replied, finding a handkerchief in her skirt pocket. ‘It was TB. I had it too, but threw it off. Some people do,’ she added, seeing Sarah’s puzzled look. ‘But now I have you, haven’t I?’ she said, a shake in her voice.
‘Oh yes, now you have me. We’ll have to do what we can for those who need us.’
‘Aye,’ Mary-Anne said strongly. ‘An’ the pair of us need our porridge as soon as we stir up the fire.’
The day passed slowly, a real April day of sun and showers. As the time passed, both good news and anxiety streaked the hours with a turbulence that matched the weather; interludes of brightness swept away by renewed anxiety and disappointments to follow.
After she had finally persuaded Mary-Anne to go back to her family, that she was perfectly all right, just a bit shaky on her feet, the postman was her first caller. He came, saw the front door propped open as usual, tramped down the short corridor to the kitchen door and found her sitting at the table, surrounded by papers, account books and an open cash box.
‘A powerful crowd at the funeral,’ he began awkwardly, not meeting her eyes.
‘Yes, I was amazed the church was so full,’ she replied, trying to make him easier, ‘but then John and his family have been here a long time and he knew everyone, didn’t he?’
‘Aye, he did that and a good word for everyone. Sure you’ll miss him sorely. Whit’ll ye do?’ he finally asked, plucking up courage and looking at her for the first time.
‘Well, I’ll try to keep things going as best I can, but I don’t know how I’ll manage. I’ll have to see what can be done …’
He saw her look at the papers and the cash box and shook his head.
‘I’m afeerd I’m not the bringer of help. I wisht I was,’ he said forcefully, as he took a large white envelope from his battered mailbag and handed it to her. ‘I think I maybe know what thon is, an’ sure cou’d they not ’ave waited a wee while?’ he added sharply.
‘Well, it has to be done; it’s someone’s job to send it out,’ she said opening it, aware that he was watching, his face creased with concern.
‘Is it what I think it is?’ he asked, his tone so soft she felt herself close to tears.
The single sheet of paper with its engraved heading was difficult to unfold, but the black figure for John’s burial was even stiffer than she might have imagined. She handed it to him and smiled.
‘I’ll have to sell my jewels, won’t I?’
‘D’ye have any?’ he asked, a trace of relief breaking into his voice.
She shook her head, smiling. ‘My grandmother used to tell me I didn’t need jewels, I had jewels hanging on the hawthorns every time we got sun after rain. And then she’d say “But we do have some tea in the caddy.” Will you have a cup with me while I have it?’
He thanked her but had to say no. He’d a long round to do, it being Saturday, but he wished her good luck and said he’d hope he had something better in his mailbag for her next week.
She heard his boots on the floor of the corridor and saw his short, sturdy figure cross the cobbles to the gate, which now stood open. A few minutes later, she heard hammering from the forge. Everyday life had begun again for all their friends and neighbours, but nothing would ever be the same for her. She put the bill in the empty cash box and closed it firmly. She now had six days, not seven, to find her way. The bill was one more mountain to climb.