Friday was always a busy day for Sarah at Castle Dillon whether Sir George was in residence or not. To begin with, Thursday’s post sat unopened on the highly polished desk and, before noon, Friday’s post would also arrive, carried on a silver salver by James.
By the time Annie had appeared with tea, neatly arranged as always on a tray, bearing a cloth with a crocheted border that was spotlessly clean and well starched before it was ironed, Sarah would have some measure of her tasks for the day. Once Friday’s post arrived, she could then decide on whether it would be best to take half a day’s work home to complete at her own kitchen table, or whether it would be better to come in for the whole day on Saturday.
The advantage of coming in was that she would be undisturbed at her desk and have her lunch cooked for her, but the disadvantage was having to get up early to make sure there was a midday meal for Sam and Scottie.
As Sam regularly pointed out, he was not entitled to a midday meal – that was a requirement that only applied to apprentices. Sarah had finally stopped trying to persuade him that it was no trouble and little expense to offer him a meal given how hard he worked. She had often reminded him how often he did jobs for her which were certainly not forge work, but that hadn’t reassured him either. Now she just smiled if he protested.
‘Now, Sam, who would keep an eye on Scottie and make sure he ate up all his food if you weren’t here?’ she would say. Sam would laugh heartily, for Scottie had a good appetite and left his plate so clean he might well have been accused of licking it.
Friday 11th December 1846 on Sir George’s calendar began no differently from many other Fridays. Daisy was handed over to Robert Ross who had become a favourite with her. She blew down his neck affectionately and nibbled his ear. Robert had Scottie’s gift of making animals feel easy and Sarah could sense Daisy’s disappointment if Robert had gone on some errand into Armagh. Tommy, his helper, was perfectly competent, but Robert had won Daisy’s affection.
A fall of snow in the night was still lying on both roads and fields. On parts of the back driveway exposed to the chill wind, it had turned into a crust of ice and a narrow path had been cleared from the stables to the housekeeper’s entrance. Sarah followed it gratefully, for walking on the adjacent snowy surface would have been like scrunching over a pebble beach, hard on the back and potentially dangerous.
She settled herself with Thursday’s letters and felt her spirits descend as she began to read the current week’s workhouse report. It was all bad news: the fever was carrying off so many, but even more poor people were queuing up to take their places so the admissions just kept on rising. Worse still, a number of staff members had fever themselves. The pharmacist had already died. One look at the guardian’s expenses for the week told her that the debt was also increasing all the time; the average cost of feeding a pauper had gone up steadily since the last of the potatoes and turnips had been used.
She took a deep breath and began to make notes for an abstract to send to Sir George. He was not at all interested in the arguments over diet, but he was always concerned over the effect of costs which would have to be met from the rates and over the progress of local presentments for relief works.
He had begun drainage schemes himself on his own land and at his own expense, but he knew they were but a drop in what he called ‘a bucket with a hole in it’. Only at county level could schemes large enough to be of value be funded. And even if the government did agree to match local funding, there was then the problem of finding the local funding in the first place.
She had a number of abstracts to send out to local landowners before she even began on the rest of the pile. Mostly they were regularly recurring queries that flowed in with steady repetition, but they still had to have a written answer.
The tentative knock at the study door took her by surprise. Though she’d been aware for some time that her porridge had been a long time ago and admitted she was longing for a cup of tea, she had still lost track of time. Annie, now balancing the tray one-handed, shut the door behind her with a practiced push and walked steadily over to the desk.
‘Hello, Sarah, did the stall go well yesterday?’ she asked, smiling.
‘Yes, it did. A bit down,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘but I think it was only because it was so cold some women stayed at home. Do you like the snow?’ she asked, half-joking, for most people, even the children, had got weary of the regular falls and it being so cold.
But Annie did not answer. Having put the tray down on the desk, she was still standing beside it, waiting to see if Sarah would ask her to sit down for a minute or two, as she often did. Suddenly, she doubled over, her arms hugging her stomach, her eyes wide as she moaned with sudden pain.
‘Annie, what’s wrong?’ Sarah said, dropping her pieces of paper and coming from behind the desk to put an arm around her.
‘Would it be “the time of the month”?’ she asked, knowing that sometimes, even in pregnancy, one could have unexpected pains at that time.
‘No, I’ve niver had a pain like that before,’ Annie said, gasping and wiping sudden tears from her eyes. ‘D’ye think it’s the baby comin’?’ she asked, her eyes wide, her voice now steadier.
Sarah’s first thought was what a mercy it was that she and Mary-Anne had talked about Annie as they had on Wednesday evening, but about the pain she couldn’t be sure. She had lost two children herself, but the first was very early in pregnancy and the second only a month or two further on. Annie was certainly much further on than she had been.
‘Sit down, Annie, and just try to breathe normally,’ she said, taking a cup from her own personal drawer in the bottom of the desk. She shared the tea between them and watched Annie carefully, noticing her hands shaking as she drank, her skin deathly pale.
When the pain came again a few minutes later, she got up and pulled the bell, praying it would not be Smithers who came to answer it.
‘Sarah, I think I’m bleeding on the good chair,’ Annie whispered, her voice dropping even lower in her distress.
‘Don’t worry your head about that; we’ll get some help in a moment. Drink your tea now like a good girl,’ Sarah said steadily, as she tried to keep her own anxiety firmly under control.
One of the other housemaids knocked briefly and walked across the room towards them. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when Lizzie, only a little older than Annie herself, took one look at her friend and immediately focused on Sarah.
‘Lizzie, dear, I have three messages for you and I want you to be as quick as you can. Now, can you manage to remember three things?’
Lizzie assured her that she could and listened hard.
‘I want you to go to Mrs Carey and say Mrs Hamilton needs her help in Sir George’s study and will she please come immediately and bring some clean napkins.’ She paused and waited till Lizzie nodded. ‘Then I want you to find James and tell him Mrs Hamilton needs his help in Sir George’s study right away. And thirdly, I want you to go out to the stables and tell Robert or Tommy that Mrs Hamilton needs transport immediately at the front entrance to go to Drumilly Hill and back.
‘Can you remember all that, Lizzie?’ Sarah asked, a hint of anxiety in her voice.
‘Yes, I can,’ Lizzie said firmly, as she glanced sideways at Annie. ‘If no one’s lookin’, I’ll run,’ she said, making for the door.
Lizzie was as good as her word. Minutes later, James arrived, got down on his knees beside Annie, held her hands and told her she’d be all right, that Mrs Hamilton would see to that. When Bridget Carey swept in, she took one look at Sarah and asked James to go and fetch Annie’s shawl and an extra blanket from her storeroom.
When he came back, Annie was on her feet, a clean napkin covering the damp patch on the chair. He helped her wrap her shawl around her and then picked her up as if she were no weight at all and carried her to the front entrance where Robert himself helped Sarah up into the driving seat, wrapping the warm trap rugs he had brought with him around Annie the moment he saw her little pale face.
‘Can I come with you, Mrs Hamilton, please?’ said James, steadily.
Sarah paused. Leaving the house without permission was a serious matter. But it would help both Annie and him if they could meet Mary-Anne together.
‘Yes, you can. We won’t be long.’
She turned to Robert, now standing by Daisy’s head.
‘Robert, would you do me a favour? Would you go to Mrs Carey and tell her I’ve removed James without permission but only for a short time? And could she please tell Smithers if the question should arise?’
Robert smiled and nodded briskly. He knew well there was no love lost between Smithers and Mrs Carey but if anyone could deal with his bossiness it would be her.
‘Take care now, safe journey,’ he said, saluting them as they drove off.
Once Annie had been delivered into Mary-Anne’s safe keeping, Sarah knew she’d have to get James back to work, but the young man, who’d made such an effort to be steady for Annie’s sake, was now much easier in himself. When they arrived, Mary-Anne had assured him that they’d done the right thing to bring Annie to her till they saw what was happening. She managed to make them both smile when she reassured James that she’d never lost a father yet.
While Mary-Anne and Sarah had a quick word together, James sat with Annie. She now looked less pale and as he got up to go, she assured James firmly that he wasn’t to worry. She’d be fine now with Mrs Halligan to look after her.
It was Sarah who felt completely exhausted as James helped her back up into the trap for the return journey.
As she came back into Sir George’s study, she noticed that the chair where Annie had sat had disappeared, Friday’s letters had arrived and there was a note tucked into the blotter.
It was brief and to the point. Bridget Carey would be expecting her for lunch in her own room.
By the time Sarah arrived home before it was fully dark, she was longing for the quiet of her own fireside. It would be an hour or more before Scottie appeared for supper and she needed the time badly to absorb all the happenings of the day.
Among the pile of Friday’s delivery, there was one from Sir George in London. He told her he was hoping to come to Castle Dillon sometime in the next few days, probably accompanied by his eldest son. Lady Emma was reluctant to travel in such bad weather and did not think it would be good for the children. Sir George wanted her to begin at once the arrangements for an earlier than usual staff Christmas party as she had done last year with the help of Mrs Carey.
Clearly he intended to be in Dublin on Christmas Day itself but did not want to disappoint his staff at Castle Dillon. At least Bridget Carey was now a friend, as well as a colleague, a practical woman with no time for making a fuss, but it was going to make a lot of extra work just when she was hoping to have a little extra time off during Jonathan’s visit.
Except that the timing of Jonathan’s visit was now in some doubt. He was certainly coming to Ireland and the itinerary planned with some fellow Quakers was going ahead, but he was writing to warn her that bad weather in Donegal might affect their plans to spend some time together over the Christmas period.
Among Friday’s letters, she found a short note from him, sent to Castle Dillon at the same time as a letter to Drumilly in case her postman had not been able to get up the hill. From what he said, it looked as if the weather in Yorkshire had been even worse than in Ulster. He’d ended by warning her that sailings might be cancelled if there were more gales like those in November.
She sat looking into the flames of the restored fire, grateful for the cheering warmth but feeling incredibly sad. She had been so looking forward to seeing him, sharing with him all the plans and projects they both had, the successes as well as the failures in their efforts to help people in dire straits.
Now, if there were gales, he might not get to Ireland in the first place and even if he did, the plans they had made would have to take second place to the commitment he had to his colleagues from the Quaker Central Relief Committee who were charged to provide updates on projects already in place in some of the most deprived areas.
How long she sat, she had no idea, but when she heard footsteps outside the kitchen door she assumed it was Scottie arriving for his evening meal. She realised she’d closed her eyes and must have dozed off. She had not even got as far as beginning to lay the table.
But it was not Scottie who came in: it was Jamsey, a dusting of fresh snow on his hair and shoulders. It needed only one glance to see that he brought news, and good news at that.
‘Great news, Sarah,’ he said, taking off his jacket. ‘That wee Annie has had her baby, a wee boy, and Ma says he may be small but he’s lively. She said to tell you she thinks they’ll both do.’
To her great embarrassment, and to Jamsey’s surprise, he saw Sarah’s eyes stream with tears.
‘Oh Jamsey, what a lovely Christmas present,’ she said, as she searched for her handkerchief to mop them up.
‘I’m going over now to Castle Dillon to tell James,’ he said happily. ‘He’ll maybe get let out to come an’ see Annie the morra.’
Sarah nodded and said she hoped the snow was only a shower, but she knew Jamsey was a determined young man and a good driver. Clearly he had already made up his mind. He was going to Castle Dillon, snow or no snow.
‘When you get there, Jamsey, ask if you can speak to Mrs Carey. Tell her, Mrs Halligan says, “she was right about the stain on the chair”, and that all is well. She’ll know what that means. And tell her I’m so grateful for all she’s done to help. She’ll probably arrange for James to come up tomorrow to see his son,’ she ended quickly, as she felt tears well up again.
‘Ach, isn’t it great to have good news for a change?’ said Jamsey, unexpectedly. ‘I’ll away on and leave ye to tell m’ friend Scottie when he comes in for his tea.’
‘I will indeed,’ said Sarah happily. ‘And you can tell your mother when you get back home that she has another satisfied customer to add to her score. You may not know, Jamsey, for she doesn’t talk about such things, but she looked after me when I was in a bad way after John died. Without her, I might not be celebrating with Annie and James tonight.’