6

As they drove up Lisburn Road, Clare realised with a shock it would soon be a whole year since they’d taken the road to Armagh together, the evening Ginny and Edward had collected her from Elmwood Avenue. She’d been up on her own, of course, to visit the farm at Liskeyborough. She’d been to her cousin Sam’s wedding in Richhill. But she could hardly believe they had not visited Armagh, or driven over to Caledon since last June.

‘Aren’t the trees glorious?’ she said, looking out at the burgeoning canopies, the branches almost fully clothed but the individual leaves still soft and translucent in the bright light.

The very last time she’d seen these familiar trees was early March. Sam was the first of her cousins to get married. She smiled to herself as she remembered how he’d been too shy to cross the floor to her, at her very first dance, the night Uncle Jack’s lodge unfurled its new banner.

According to Granny Hamilton, there were a whole set of weddings coming up among the cousins. At least now we’re engaged, she thought, we can go together. On your own, weddings could be very lonely affairs.

‘What did you say?’ asked Andrew, lost in his own thoughts.

‘I said the trees are glorious. I love them like this, when the leaves are still young, before they mature and darken.’

‘I hope we don’t lose too many of them when they start on the motorway.’

‘What motorway?’

He smiled and put aside whatever he’d been thinking about.

‘Don’t tell me it hasn’t reached Le Monde?’ he said, grinning. ‘Ulster’s very own motorway, Belfast to Dungannon. It’s actually been started. Some of the bridges and flyovers are underway, but the first bit won’t be open for ages. There’ll be plenty of fun and games up ahead with the compulsory purchase of the land they need, especially beyond Portadown. We’ll have a real spot of “No surrender, not an inch”. Not unless you pay me a small fortune, that is.’

She looked at him quickly, alarmed by the bitter sharpness in his voice. She was hearing it more and more often and it worried her for she’d heard that tone before. That was how Ronnie talked, just before he gave up trying to find a job as a journalist in Belfast and went to Canada.

Her friend, Keith Harvey, had a sister who worked in Toronto. She said Ronnie was building up quite a reputation for himself as a political commentator through his columns for Canadian newspapers with large Scottish or Ulster readerships. Andrew himself said how very well informed he was.

‘Could we go round by Loughgall?’ she said quickly, as they crossed the Bann and began to negotiate the Saturday morning traffic in the centre of Portadown. ‘I haven’t been that way since Jessie’s wedding.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, signalling right as they came out of the town.

‘I’m so sorry I missed Jessie and Harry’s wedding,’ he went on, as they took the minor road. ‘I’d love to go to a real country wedding, and that little church up on the hill would be just the place for it.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think, maybe, we could be married there?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ she responded promptly, delighted by his sudden enthusiasm. ‘I think there’s a residence qualification or something, but I could leave a suitcase with Jessie’s mother. I think that’s what you do. Anyway, I’ve a whole family grave full of residents. That must qualify me for something. The Rector’s still the one that buried Granda Scott.’

‘We could go and see him, couldn’t we? I think the Richardsons once paid for a new roof in the days when they had money,’ he added cheerfully.

There was no traffic on the road, so he was able to slow right down as they reached Scott’s Corner. They continued up the hill towards the point where the lane from the forge met the road.

‘I can’t stop opposite the lane,’ he said, knowing she’d want a good look at the house beyond the forge, ‘but I’ll park in the field entrance a bit further on, so we can take as long as we want.’

He put out his indicator as they came over the brow of the hill, but before he could pull in, a mere fifty yards beyond the lane end, Clare had seen enough to make her gasp.

‘Oh no, Andrew. It’s gone. The forge has gone.’

She fumbled with the handle of the door, and was still trying to remember which way it turned when he came round and opened it for her. They stood together in the field entrance in front of one of Robert’s gates and looked across the road at the old house, now entirely visible, its enfolding shelter of trees and shrubs all gone. Where once the forge had stood, a young pear tree at its south gable, all they could see was an open space of roughly levelled rubble. A battered van and an enormous pile of empty apple crates were parked on it. Of the gable wall of the old ruined house opposite, and the enclosed garden in its shadow, there was not the slightest remnant. The forge house itself sat empty and dilapidated, its uncurtained windows staring blankly over an open space entirely devoid of grass, or wildflowers, and liberally scattered with rubbish.

‘The arch over the door has gone,’ she burst out. ‘They’ve even stripped off the rose and taken away the flowerbeds. Oh, why did they have to do that?’

She burst into tears and wept helplessly. He held her till the sobbing subsided, a look of desolation on his own face.

‘Come on, my darling,’ he said, releasing her and offering her his handkerchief. ‘We can’t do a damn thing about it, but we can go and have that lunch you promised me. How about it?’

‘Yes, let’s do that,’ she said firmly, blowing her nose. ‘If we turn right at Riley’s Rocks and go by Ballyard, we can cut across to the Moy Road. It’ll be easier than going into Armagh and out again.’

‘That takes us past Jessie’s house, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s right. The main road’s about a mile beyond that. We turn left towards Armagh. The hotel’s on the left, only a little way further on,’ she explained, making a huge effort to collect herself. ‘It was June Wiley told me about it that evening after we’d been to Drumsollen. Helen’s got a job there washing dishes, Saturday and Sunday evenings. Drumsill House, it’s called. Nice name, isn’t it? I must ask Charlie what it means.’

‘Hill of the sallows, sallies or osiers, as a first thought,’ he said, as they turned into the lane opposite Charlie Running’s house, where the first clumps of primroses were unfolding in the pale sunshine that had broken through the morning’s pearly grey cloud. ‘Drumsollen may come from the same source. But no one seems to know. Pronunciation is the key, I’m told. But it’s three generations since a Richardson spoke Irish.’

 

Drumsill House was warm and welcoming, a huge wood fire scenting the air in the entrance hall. Family portraits hung alongside watercolours and engravings of the surrounding countryside. The fireplace wall itself was decorated with a collection of well-polished firearms and weapons, more varied than anything Clare had ever seen before. She sniffed appreciatively at the mixed odours of wood smoke and roasting meat, and ran her eye round the gleaming furniture in the comfortable reception area as they waited for the menu to be brought to them.

‘What d’you reckon Harry’d offer them for that grandfather clock?’ asked Andrew, teasingly, as he watched her note the finer pieces among the more homely items.

‘Rather a lot, I expect,’ she said abstractedly, her eye moving back to a row of tall wooden objects with metal points attached to the fireplace wall.

‘Andrew, are those pikes?’

He nodded, as the waiter appeared with enormous menus, the covers decorated with an etching of the house as it was in the early nineteenth century.

‘How did you know they were pikes?’ she asked, after they’d placed their order.

‘There used to be some at Drumsollen,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘Just like those. I can remember finding them once when I was little, down in the cellar, but I don’t know what happened to them.’

Clare looked at him closely. He was sitting easily in a large old chair by the handsome fireplace, very like those in Drumsollen itself, except that this fireplace was alive, with the crackle of wood and the flicker of flames, and all around there was life going on, people coming and going, greeting each other, talking, or moving in twos and threes into the dining room beyond.

‘Don’t you wish you could go to Drumsollen, Andrew? Not to visit the Missus. Just to look at it. To go round all the rooms and see the things that you used to know so well.’

‘I try not to think about it,’ he said ruefully. ‘Grandmother never wanted me at Drumsollen after my parents died. Grandfather did his best to keep in touch and have me there when he could persuade her to have me, but now he’s gone, I doubt if I’ll ever be invited again. Even for your sake.’ He smiled across at her. ‘Grandmother seems to like you a lot more than ever she liked me. Though fairly I ought to say she doesn’t seem to like Edward any more than she likes me. He told me she wouldn’t even see him when he went over to make sure the roof repairs had been done properly. He’ll probably sell the place as soon as she dies. It’s only hers for her lifetime. So there really is no point me thinking about going there.’

‘Any more than me thinking about the forge and that poor, sad house where I grew up,’ she said quietly. ‘Charlie Running told me that the forge is there on the 1835 maps and may be even older. How old is Drumsollen?’

‘It says 1771 over the front door, but there was an older house on the site before the present one was built. There was a Richardson in Bagnell’s army at the Battle of the Yellow Ford. He may have got a grant of land in lieu of pay. Officers often did.’

‘So that takes your family back to 1595?’ she said thoughtfully, as the waiter led them to their table in an elegant dining room with tall windows overlooking the garden.

Lunch was a great success. The food was good and the comfort of the surroundings made them feel Monday morning had receded into the far distance. For the present at least, they were together. They were happy. The burdens that pressed upon them would have to wait.

‘Think, Andrew. Just for today, no one can find us,’ Clare said, as she sipped her coffee. ‘We’re invisible. No one knows we’re here. We can do whatever we want. What shall we do next?’

‘What I’d really like to do is climb Cannon Hill,’ he said abruptly.

Clare smiled. She wasn’t entirely surprised. Cannon Hill had always been such a happy place for them.

‘Why not?’ she said, easily. ‘We can go back by Ballybrannan and drop into Granny Hamilton on our way home. I’d love to see those twisty lanes again. All right?’

‘All right,’ he said, as they stepped out into the reception area.

Clare went over to look more closely at the pikes.

‘But I think perhaps we should pay the bill before we go,’ he added with a smile.

 

At the entrance to the steeply sloping field that led up to the grey finger of the obelisk, there was a new notice saying that trespassers would be prosecuted.

‘Do we really risk prosecution?’ she asked lightly.

‘Down in Fermanagh they take an even harder line. “Trespassers will be persecuted.” It’s fairly dubious law. I think we could risk it.’

They climbed over the chained and locked field-gate and moved up the steep slope of the hill in silence, the sunlight bright on the fresh grass. Clare walked with her head down, scanning the turf at her feet for any sight of a wildflower that had learnt to survive on this heavily grazed, exposed site. As she’d hoped, she found the first minute pink flowers of centaury, growing close to the ground, a scatter of bright-eyed celandines and a flourishing crop of daisies. She looked up at Andrew, ready to share her delight. He was scanning the nearby hill slopes. All thought of the flowers vanished as she caught the look of pain and despair on his face.

‘Andrew, my love, why so sad?’ she said gently, as they reached the foot of the monument and stood leaning against it to get their breath.

‘Sad? Who me?’

‘Yes, you. Something’s not right. It’s not been right for a good while now and I want to know what it is,’ she said firmly. ‘And I also want to know why you’re looking around those hill slopes as if everything belonging to you was lost. You did it last time too. The evening we came up here with Ginny and Edward.’

‘Clare, I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he began, hesitantly.

For one awful moment she thought he was going to say he’d stopped loving her, that he wanted to end their engagement. One look at him told her not to be so silly.

He put his arms round her and held her so tight against him, she knew how desperate he must be, torn between telling her what was wrong and keeping his upper lip stiff, just as he’d been taught to do, all through his years at public school.

Since he was seven, he’d had to learn to hide his feelings, better not to have them in the first place. No matter what happened, he’d been expected to show a steady, even temper to the world. They’d talked about it often enough, but simply understanding the problem wasn’t going to help just now.

‘You must tell me, you must,’ she insisted. ‘I’m pretty sure I know what it is, but you must say the words yourself. For your own sake, you must say them. I know you must.’

‘Yes, I must, mustn’t I?’

She waited patiently as he ran his eyes over the flower-sprinkled grass, his face bleak, his body tense.

‘Let’s sit down,’ he said at last. ‘The grass is perfectly dry.’

It was dry, soft and tender, with the sun warm on her face as they settled themselves. Above their heads, the rapidly moving clumpy, white clouds added subtle texture to the blue of a lovely spring day.

‘It’s the job, Clare. I hate it,’ he said flatly. ‘I can’t stand the partners. I can’t stand their attitudes. It’s all about power and privilege. Who you know. Who knows you. Who’s done you a favour. Who you owe a favour to. And all the time, underneath, an unspoken sense of us against them. The privileged against the rest. There’s not much room for justice. None at all for equality before the law. I’m compromised at every turn.’

He dropped his head in his hands and for a moment Clare thought he might be crying. But Andrew never cried. ‘You must be a brave boy, Andrew.’ That was what the Housemaster had said, to the seven year old who’d just travelled four hundred miles from Ulster to a new school in Dorset and had been told, after his first night in a dormitory, that both his parents and his London grandparents were dead, killed in the massive raid that began the Blitz. She’d always wondered if it was the same man who’d supervised the writing of the weekly letter home the following Sunday afternoon, when Andrew had sat, blank and near to tears, mesmerised by the sheets of blue writing paper he was supposed to fill for parents who were no longer there.

‘It’s all right, my love. It’s all right,’ she said, kissing his cheek and taking his icy cold hands in hers. ‘If you hate the job, you must give it up and do something else. Or, give the job another try, far away from “the dead hand of Ulster”, as Ronnie calls it. You don’t have to stick it out because there’s no alternative.’

‘No stiff upper lip?’ he said, a small, bleak smile touching the corner of his mouth.

‘Definitely not. You can’t kiss properly if your upper lip is as stiff as a board,’ she said tenderly, stroking the back of his head. ‘Now come on, Andrew, tell me what you’d really like. Pretend you’re really rich and you can do whatever you like. What would you choose?’

To her surprise, he pointed across the valley. A small blue tractor was moving steadily up the slope of a field, turning the green sward into rich, chestnut-brown furrows. At the top of the field it paused, and with a deft, practised movement the driver brought the plough round in line to begin the next, dead straight furrow. As it came back down again, the rich brown earth curled away from the coulter like the bow wave of a trim, swift vessel.

‘That’s what I’d do. I’d farm. Dairy cattle in particular,’ he said, with an assurance totally out of keeping with his normally diffident approach to practical matters.

‘You know about dairy cattle?’ she asked, wondering if there could possibly be some part of his life she’d missed out on.

‘No,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I don’t. But I’d learn.’

She sat silent, amazed at his confidence. The implications began to break in on her. Questions poured into her mind, but she held back. The change in his appearance, his whole manner, told her all she needed to know for the moment. Suddenly an image came back into her mind. A wet afternoon during her first visit to Caledon, four years ago now. They were playing Monopoly and talking. While Ginny stacked up more and more money, she’d asked each of the three what they’d do if they were rich. Andrew had made them laugh. ‘I’d buy cows.’ It was his unexpected promptness that amused them, not just the cows. It seemed so unlikely a wish for a man about to spend the next three years articled to a firm of solicitors in Winchester.

‘Where would you farm, Andrew?’ she asked as steadily as she could.

‘Anywhere I could afford to buy land.’

‘Canada?’ she said, before she had even considered it.

He paused, looked out again at the opposite hillside, where the elderly blue tractor was now making its steady way back up to the top of the field. A smile played over his features.

‘Mm. Why not? Why not Canada?’

He paused once more and the smile faded as quickly as the light goes when a cloud crosses the sun. When he spoke again his voice was dull and heavy.

‘Canada. Or Australia. Anywhere. If it’s dreams we’re dreaming, what does it matter? It’s not real. Dreams never are, are they?’ he said bitterly.

‘If I hadn’t asked you what you’d do if you were rich, would you have told me you wanted to farm?’ she asked coolly.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well then, we’re that much further on. If you want to farm, I need a job to keep us fed until the farm can support us, so I can’t be a million miles from a town with a school,’ she began. ‘Would you have to buy land or can it be rented?’

‘Depends where. In Canada and Australia it’s still easy to get started, or I think it is. I’ve a cousin in Saskatchewan who went off with nothing about twenty years ago. They’ve got two hundred head now.’

‘Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta,’ she murmured, a sudden memory filling her mind. Ox-eyed daisies and an old reaping machine outside the forge, herself in the high seat, driving her horses across the prairie.

‘If we went to Canada, Ronnie would help us. He seems to know everything that’s going on. When I wrote and told him we were engaged he wrote back and asked where we were going, once we were married. He simply assumed we weren’t going to stay here.’

‘I couldn’t ask you to take the risk, Clare,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It could be pretty rough for you. To begin with at least.’

‘I’m not exactly made of Dresden china,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, a teaching post in Belfast isn’t exactly an exciting prospect. To be honest, I hadn’t thought of what I would do, except be with you.’

‘Nor had I,’ he confessed sheepishly. ‘I just reckoned, after all these years, I was stuck with law, whether I liked it or not.’

‘Well, let’s not get stuck with anything. Let’s see what we can think up.’

He gave her his hand, drew her to her feet and kissed her tenderly.

‘What would I do without you, my love? What would I do without you?’

They stood in the shadow of the great stone pillar and studied every detail of the fields and orchards that covered the little humpy hills all around them. The old cottages, long and low, white painted, were tucked into their hollows on the south-facing slopes, sheltered from the north and west by plantings of trees. There was the odd new farm building, and a few two-storey houses, edging the little lanes that turned and twisted, dipped into valleys and climbed over their smooth, well-rounded shapes.

The blue tractor finished its work. The driver unhitched the plough and drove off down the lane below them. Gleaming in the sunlight, the newly ploughed field was left to the gulls, which hunted up and down the straight, newly turned furrows.

‘You love this place, Clare, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d be heartbroken if I thought I’d never stand here again.’

She paused, remembering a summer Sunday long ago when she’d climbed up to the obelisk for the first time. Uncle Jack had been there and various aunts and uncles she couldn’t quite sort out. She was nine years old. She’d looked all around her and made up her mind that she was going to stay with Granda Scott, even if Auntie Polly wanted to take her with them to Canada.

‘I think I do belong here, Andrew, like you do. But I’d be sad all my life if I never saw anything of the world out there, beyond the green hills.’