‘You have your wish, my dear,’ said Robert Lafarge, as they walked out of the hotel to the waiting car. ‘It will be beautiful for your homecoming.’ He looked up at the almost cloudless sky, while they waited for their cases to be loaded into the boot.
‘Yes, it will be a lovely evening here, but the clouds may come to meet me,’ she said, laughing. ‘On any sunny day in Ulster you suddenly see great clouds in the west. The next thing you know, it’s pouring with rain. And all the time London basks in the sun. Sometimes it might as well be two different worlds,’ she said cheerfully.
‘You are excited about your journey? Or is it the attentions of the handsome Monsieur Langley? Something is making your eyes sparkle even more than usual,’ he observed dryly, as they settled themselves comfortably in the chauffeur-driven limousine.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted honestly. ‘It seems such a long time since I left Belfast, though it’s not even a year ago till July. So much has changed. I don’t know how I feel. Perhaps I’m more agitated than excited,’ she said easily.
‘You will come back, won’t you?’
‘Robert!’ she exclaimed, amazed by the edge of anxiety in his tone. ‘What on earth are you thinking of? Why would I not come back?’
He looked sheepish, gazed out of the window at the boarded-up houses below a newly built flyover.
‘Perhaps an old love will claim you,’ he said flatly, without looking at her.
‘If something like that happened, you’d be the first person I’d come and tell.’
‘Eh bien.’
She smiled to herself. When Robert said ‘Eh bien’, it meant that he was satisfied, content, at ease, a meaning not to be found in the dictionary. It reminded her of the first Robert. The way he used to say, ‘Well …’ It had taken her quite a while to work out this was his own way of saying, ‘Yes, so be it.’
Outside the Domestic Terminal, Robert insisted on getting out to see she had a trolley for her cases.
‘Bon voyage, chérie’, he said, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Come back safely.’
She hugged him and said nothing, because she thought she might cry if she did, and stood watching him drive off to the International Terminal for his flight to Paris, waving to the car even though he probably couldn’t see her through the crowds of passengers. Partings were so painful, even when they were only for a short time.
She stood on the escalator and looked down at the pattern of moving people below. All rather different from Auntie Polly going off to Canada with Uncle Jimmy when they were newly-weds. Grange band had turned out in force for them on the morning of their departure. Marched them into Armagh Station with all their family and friends, then lined up on the platform to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as the train steamed out.
‘The captain and crew of Vanguard flight VA five, two, three, eight, welcome you aboard …’
Clare smiled. The voice was using a prepared script, but the careful pronunciation had done little to modify the stewardess’s accent. It had more than a hint of Scots, but that ‘eight’ was a particular old friend. As her fellow passengers settled themselves, she heard the short vowels and rapid delivery of Ulster voices all around her. Her homecoming had already begun.
The sky stayed clear as they corrected course over the Chilterns and flew north towards Liverpool. The only cloud was over the Lancashire coast. It looked like puffs of smoke from a bonfire. The sea beyond lay still, its clear blue darkening to navy as the sun went west, the slanting light still strong on the long May evening.
She sat looking out of the window, her book unopened on her knee.
‘An old love may claim you.’
Robert’s words came back to her as the wing dipped and they crossed the County Down coast, flying north-west towards Belfast, where the lough gleamed in the sunlight, the air so clear she could see both the hills of North Down and the Mournes, sharply outlined against the southern sky, now turning to pale gold as the light faded.
With the city below them, she picked out the curves of the Lagan. On the edge of the city, it flowed between patches of woodland. The whole broad, green lowland that led into the heart of Ulster appeared briefly as they flew inland, following an arcing curve that swung them north over the darker, hard-edged hills that bounded the city. Suddenly, the vast mass of Lough Neagh appeared, as they began to lose height, glistening and sparkling in the evening light. All around it, as far as the eye could see, in every direction, rich with the green of summer, edged with hawthorn hedges, white with blossom, the small, irregular fields lay side by side, as well fitted together and as comfortable as the patches in a quilt.
Looking down, anxious not to waste one moment of this extraordinary experience, able to make a map of her world unlike any map she’d ever had before, she saw how ambiguous Robert’s words had been. There were more loves that could claim you than the love of a man.
The landing at Nutt’s Corner was smooth, but it took her slightly by surprise. One moment there was nothing below the wing but the lough with a fringe of water-loving trees. Next, the hares that had been feeding quietly on the rich grass fringing the runways twitched their ears and scattered in all directions, as the plane touched down and the engines roared into reverse. They taxied slowly towards a long, low building. She had arrived.
‘Clare, you’re looking powerful well, as they say. Did you have a good flight?’
Harry hugged her, completely disregarding the flow of passengers trying to move through the small, dilapidated building that constituted the reception area.
‘It was great. I just wished I’d had longer. I could see for miles. I think I saw the hills of Donegal as we turned over Lough Neagh.’
‘Oh you would have. On an evening like this, you’d see most of the north. Come on and we’ll see what they’ve done with your case.’
‘New car, Harry?’ she asked as they turned out of the airport, between the same hawthorn hedges she had looked down upon.
‘D’you like it?’
‘Very posh. Is business good?’
He nodded vigorously as they cleared the handful of cars leaving the airport and headed for the city.
‘How are Jessie and Fiona?’
‘They’re grand,’ he said, less convincingly.
She looked at him sharply, saw lines around the eyes that she was sure had not been there a year ago. But then, they were both a year older. Harry must be nearing thirty and Jessie was twenty-four in June.
‘It was awfully good of you to come for me. I could have got the bus and had a taxi from Victoria Street.’
‘Sure, it’s a chance to show off,’ he said lightly. ‘Jessie and I don’t go out much, though my mother’s happy to babysit,’ he went on uneasily. ‘You’ll see Jessie changed,’ he said honestly, ‘but then I suppose we all change, whether we like it or not.’
Harry fell silent and Clare studied the pattern of fields and hedgerows till the road bent in a steep horseshoe and began to run rapidly downhill towards the city. The sun was going down into grey-purple cloud. Across the lough, the hills of Down looked more remote now, as the light dimmed towards dusk. They drove through shabby suburbs, where children played on pavements and men stood on street corners.
The rows of back-to-back houses that turned their gable ends to the main road had not changed, the open spaces where weeds grew high were still there – a legacy of bombs that had missed the docks, or had been dropped on the roofs of weaving sheds that shone in the moonlight in mistake for the regular targets, the aircraft factory and the machine sheds of the shipyard.
Here and there, with windows boarded up, an empty house peered blindly across a street, once quiet, now full of traffic. Dwarfing these tiny houses, a red brick chimney towered above a solid four-storey mill, its windows alight with sudden gleams of gold as the sun slipped from under the cloud and dropped further towards the horizon.
Sadness crept over her as they moved on, down into the heart of the city, past the end of Linenhall Street where two summers ago she’d lived and worked. Up into Shaftesbury Square, on past the front of Queen’s. She barely glimpsed tree-lined Elmwood Avenue where she’d worked so hard for four long years. To her surprise she found herself thinking of the roads to Salter’s Grange and Liskeyborough, equally familiar when she was a little girl, when she called out the names of farms and houses, places her father had taught her. What she’d expected to feel driving these last two miles through streets and roads she knew so well, she didn’t know. What she did feel was a sense of loss, of disappointment. There was no welcome for her from the city she knew best.
‘Ach sure there ye are. I thought ye’d a’ been another half hour. I say, the style’s crushing.’
Jessie turned at the bottom of the stairs, Fiona in her arms, as Harry opened the front door and stepped back to let Clare go ahead of him.
‘Hallo, Jessie. It’s great to see you.’
She’d have liked to give her old friend a hug, but she couldn’t hug her with Fiona in her arms.
‘Hallo, Fiona,’ she said quietly, touching the baby’s arm with her finger.
‘Say hallo, Fiona,’ said Jessie softly, as the child wriggled shyly in her arms. ‘Mind you, we’d get an awful shock if she did, an’ her not eight months yet. Say Da-Da.’
Harry held out his arms for the baby, but Jessie seemed not to notice. She went on talking to her while Clare and Harry waited.
‘I’ll just bring your cases in, Clare,’ said Harry, who was beginning to fidget.
‘Cases? How long did ye say ye were stayin’?’
Clare laughed for the first time since she’d arrived. This sounded more like the old Jessie.
‘I’ve been working in London for three days, so I have all my stuff from that. Two suits and an evening dress. And all the bits.’
‘Listen to it,’ Jessie said, addressing the baby, ‘an’ I’m like a tramp.’
‘No you’re not,’ Clare protested.
‘Yer just sayin’ that,’ she said sharply. ‘Come on up an’ I’ll show you yer room. It was where we used to keep the paint.’
Clare climbed up the wide carpeted stairs behind her, remembering the noise their feet had once made when the whole house was bare boards. The room where they had kept paint, brushes and dustsheets, was now equally transformed. A pretty rose-patterned wallpaper matched curtains and bedspread, the carpet was a paler shade of rose, and white paintwork picked out the deep-set window and the built-in wardrobe below the slightly sloping ceiling.
‘What a lovely room, Jessie. Did you choose this paper?’
Jessie shook her head and bent towards the baby.
‘No, Harry got it. By the time Fiona came, I’d had enough of decoratin’.’
‘Well, it looks lovely, really lovely.’
‘You like it then?’ said Harry, coming up behind them.
He put down her suitcases under the window and looked pleased as he ran his eye round the room.
‘I’ll away and put Fiona to bed.’
Jessie disappeared along the landing without a backward glance.
Clare watched her go. When she turned towards Harry she saw him gazing after her. She caught a look that made her heart sink. For a moment, she could think of nothing to say. Then it came to her. Standing in the hall, waiting for Jessie to move, she’d smelt food cooking.
‘Can I give you a hand with the meal, Harry,’ she said gently.
He nodded sharply as if he didn’t trust himself to reply. As they moved back out on to the landing and headed down the stairs, he turned on his heel and smiled at her.
‘That would be great,’ he managed. ‘It sometimes takes Jessie a while to settle her.’
Next morning, Harry brought Clare her breakfast in bed. He’d made her a pot of tea and toasted some soda farl. She loved soda farl, but these pieces had curled up in the toaster and come out burnt at the edges and pale in the middle. Just like old times, she thought, as she removed some of the burnt bits. A pity he’d forgotten the marmalade.
She sat up in bed and munched unhappily. Although it was Saturday, Harry was wearing a suit and hurrying to get away. In another life, he’d once done a Saturday to give her a day out with Andrew, but she’d a feeling that Saturdays were now a regular event. She wondered how much time Harry spent at home. She wondered more if Jessie noticed his presence even when he was there.
‘Sure, tell us all about Paris,’ Jessie had said, last evening, as she served the roast chicken.
‘Well, I have a lovely wee apartment,’ began Clare. ‘It looks out over the Seine. I can sit and watch the barges at night, all lit up.’
‘Are ye not out enjoyin’ yerself? Shure I thought Paris was supposed to be romantic.’
‘Don’t forget Clare’s a working lady,’ said Harry, as he helped himself to the vegetables they’d prepared and cooked together.
‘Have ye found yerself a Frenchman yet?’ Jessie went on.
‘Oh, the place is full of them. They’re not hard to find.’
Clare was pleased that Harry laughed, but Jessie was not amused. She picked irritably at the very good roast chicken and ignored the wine Harry had brought out with such enthusiasm.
‘There’s not much point bein’ in Paris if yer sittin’ in every evenin’.’
‘Oh I’m very seldom in. I’m often away. And sometimes we have visitors at the bank and they have to be entertained.’
‘In evening frocks?’
‘Yes, has to be. The bank takes its visitors to the Opéra. It’s very posh. All red and gold. Big marble staircase and chandeliers. Paintings and statues everywhere. Harry would love the décor. You’d enjoy the style, Jessie. Some of the women are very elegant.’
‘Ach, sure there’s no being elegant once there’s a baby.’
Clare abandoned the soda bread, poured another cup of tea, looked around the pretty bedroom and wished she hadn’t come.
The morning that followed did nothing to improve her spirits. A fine mizzling rain was falling steadily. It brought out the rich greens in the garden, where rolling lawns and new shrubs had replaced the weed-infested space and dank rhododendron shrubbery she remembered so well, but it filled the house with a grey light that the new carpets and beautiful polished furniture did nothing to offset.
When she’d finished breakfast, she had to go to the downstairs cloakroom to have a pee. She waited half an hour for the bathroom while Jessie changed Fiona. Washed and dressed, she went downstairs to find them, but the kitchen was fully occupied by a large woman taking the gas cooker to pieces so she could scrub all the bits. The sitting room was immaculately tidy and stone cold, full of the chill of unused rooms. As she went back upstairs for a sweater, she heard a sound from one of the bedrooms. Through the open door, she saw Jessie sitting by Fiona’s bed reading a story to the sleeping child.
That set the pattern for the day. Everything revolved around Fiona. She herself was a good-natured child, given to sudden smiles and waving of small, podgy arms. Clare had no difficulty in entertaining her in the rare moments when Jessie left them together.
‘How is Aunt Sarah?’ Clare asked, as they settled in the window seat of the dining room with their coffee after a picnic lunch at the kitchen table.
‘She’s fine. Can’t walk much, but has all her marbles.’
‘Can she manage her shopping?’
‘Don’t know at all. Ye may ask me mother when you go up.’
‘I’ll be going to see her. What’ll I say when she asks for you?’
‘I’m grand.’
Clare tried the odd ‘Do you remember?’ but Jessie was dismissive, if not actually disparaging. Eventually, as one attempt after another came to nothing, she asked Jessie if she did any painting these days.
‘Sure there’s no more to do,’ she said with a short laugh. ‘Have ye not looked round yet? Harry has it all done. He got a man in to do the papering and he did the rest.’
‘I meant your own painting, watercolour and oils.’
‘Ach, for goodness’ sake, Clare, how would I have time for that now? Ye don’t know what it’s like at all.’
‘No, I don’t, Jessie, but I know most women try to keep up something they’re good at.’
‘Ach, I wasn’t much good. It was just a pastime.’ She broke off. ‘I think maybe I hear Fiona.’
Clare finished her coffee and listened. She couldn’t hear anything.
‘Well, what d’you think, Clare?’
‘I think it looks wonderful. Far more spacious. And I love the new lighting.’
Harry looked pleased, as Clare stood taking in every detail of the extended gallery. The storeroom had gone, the extra space integrated into the main room.
‘Come and see,’ he said, a grin on his face that told her how excited he was. ‘I’ll go first in case there’s a paint pot in the wrong place,’ he said, looking at her navy trousers and the light, reversible raincoat she was wearing.
She followed him up the steep stairs to the flat. The doors stood open. The kitchen now displayed newly fitted pine units, new cooker, fridge and breakfast bar. The sitting room was ringed with metal shelving, stacked with boxes and cartons; the bedroom was now Harry’s office.
‘How about this?’
‘What a lovely desk, Harry. Where on earth did you find it?’
‘In an outhouse once used as an estate office.’
He told her how he’d searched for someone skilled enough to restore the damaged veneer work and someone to match the worn leather. It had taken months to restore the polish where the back had been mouldy with damp, but he’d persevered.
She glanced at the walls of his room. She was not surprised to find a group of prints of well-known houses, mostly Georgian, some very old sepia-coloured prints of his grandparents, two studio portraits of Jessie and a large photograph of Jessie and himself with Fiona held between them.
‘Are you sure you won’t let me drive you up to Armagh? It’s no distance at all.’
‘Oh yes it is, Harry. I know the way the work piles up if you’re not in the gallery first thing on a Monday morning. But I’ve some business to do before anyone comes along. I owe you a hundred pounds and an awful lot of favours. I suppose you wouldn’t accept interest?’
‘You suppose correctly. I would be offended,’ he said, trying to look severe.
He walked across to the safe and opened it while she wrote her cheque.
‘Are you sure you can afford it, Clare? There’s no hurry at all, you know. Things are going well, as you can see.’
‘Yes, I can, Harry. And I’m so delighted. You’ve worked so hard. But I might be broke again some day,’ she said laughing, as she handed him the cheque and he put a small red box in her hand.
She stood looking at the box quite unable to speak.
‘Oh Clare, I’m sorry. I’m an absolute fool.’
Harry snatched the box from her hand and replaced it with a larger box that now held the two gold rings she’d found under the settle in the house by the forge.
She took them out and touched them, quite overcome by the memories that had flowed back when Harry put the box containing her engagement ring into her hand. She hadn’t needed to open it to see the wink of the garnets surrounding the tiny fragment of diamond, nor put it on to feel its snug fit round her finger.
She took a deep breath and looked Harry straight in the eye.
‘How is Andrew?’
‘He’s all right now. But the estate’s in a bad way. I’ve been able to help him a bit, selling stuff,’ he said carefully.
Harry had always been honest with her, but she could see he was having doubts about whether or not he ought to say more.
‘Go on, Harry, I want to know.’
‘I think he has a girlfriend. She’s been with him a couple of times when he’s brought stuff up here. Tallish, red hair. Didn’t catch her name.’
‘Ginny?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Nice girl. D’you know her?’
‘Yes, I do. She is nice. She taught me to ride.’
‘But isn’t she his cousin?’
‘Only by marriage. Edward was his cousin. Ginny was Edward’s half-sister,’ she explained, amazed she could feel so calm, when the sight of the little red box had thrown her completely.
‘Time I was going for that bus, Harry,’ she said briskly. ‘Will you keep these for me?’
‘Don’t you want to take them with you?’
‘No, they belong in Ireland. You can charge me rent.’
‘I shall,’ he said, putting the box with the gold rings back in the safe and standing up. ‘A big hug as often as you come home,’ he said, putting his arms around her and holding her close.
‘Come in, come in, Clarey dear. Sure I’m glad to see you. You’re lookin’ the best. I think the French capital is agreein’ with ye.’
‘It’s lovely to see you too, Charlie. How’s the work going?’
‘Not bad, not bad. I’ve become very pretentious in my old age. I no longer have a sitting room in which nobody sits, I have made it into a writing room. Come in, do. These old wing chairs are far more comfortable than those damned armchairs that go with the settee. I got rid of them. Sure once I sat down in them I couldn’t get back up again.’
‘I have the same problem at airports,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They must think all passengers have long legs. If I sit back in their armchairs, my feet don’t touch the floor. If I want my feet on the floor, I have to sit up straight, then my back aches,’ she went on. ‘These are great. Where did you get them?’
‘Sale room in Armagh. There’s great stuff about if you have the time to look. I go in regular, because they sometimes have books. Job lots. They buy them at auctions, a pound for a boxful and then sell them for a bob or two each. Makes a good profit and I’m happy to buy. But there’s some fine old libraries being sold off like that, more’s the pity.’
Clare looked round the tiny, cluttered room. Apart from Charlie’s desk and the pair of wing chairs that looked down over the uncut grass to where the pump still stood on the far side of the road, there was a settee, entirely covered with books and newspapers, and three lopsided bookcases leaning drunkenly against each other.
The faded wallpaper was covered with sections cut from the one-inch and two and a half inch maps of Salter’s Grange, sketches of roads, fields, the location of derelict houses and lists of books to be consulted, all stuck up with drawing pins. On a calendar of Majestic Canada, hanging on a nail, she could see her own name written in large letters in the square allocated to the third Thursday in May.
‘I’m sure you see great changes since you’ve been away. New houses, roads and schools and suchlike.’
‘No, actually, I don’t think I’ve noticed anything like that. Perhaps I haven’t been in the right places. I did see a bridge for the new motorway from the bus.’
‘I’m afraid I was being sarcastic,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’m sure you know that Armagh Rural District has great plans. They have one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four houses unfit for habitation. Twenty-four per cent of all rural housing. They’re planning a programme to replace them. They expect it to take thirty years.’
‘Thirty years?’ she repeated. ‘You’re joking, Charlie.’
‘I wish I was. I don’t know what’s the matter at all, things are just not getting any better. Not round here anyway. Sure, the urban district needs five hundred and fifty houses just to clear the slums in the town, never mind start housing the young couples. Listen to this, Clarey.’
He scuffled down a pile of copies of the Armagh Guardian, found the one he wanted. ‘“The building of houses is, as you know, a very slow process, especially in Armagh,”’ he read. ‘That’s the Chairman of the City Council. I’m sure it’s not like that in France.’
‘No, it’s not, Charlie. There’s an awful lot of new business and industry. But then there’s American money coming in.’
‘And sure what’s to hinder us getting American industry in here as well? This country is being run for the gentry and the landowners. They’re doing fine. Them and a few big people in linen and textile machinery. But they may watch out. When Japan and Germany get back on their feet, they’ll take the legs from under them.’
He threw back his head and laughed.
‘Ach dear, Robert would have thrown me out if I’d said that in front of him, God bless him and rest his soul. I think he thought I was a communist forby being in the IRA. Did you know they were active again?’
‘No, I’m afraid I only hear what gets as far as Le Monde.’
‘An’ I’m not too surprised it didn’t make it. One meal lorry and one culvert down near the border in Fermanagh. Not exactly strategic targets. But de Valera condemned it anyway. Him and Brookeborough, six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as go-ahead governments are concerned. I think ye’re better off in France, Clarey.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Clare suddenly. ‘Matilda Wolfe Tone. That’s what she decided. She said she was French, not Irish. She sent her son to the cavalry school at St Germain and he went and fought with Napoleon. She even managed to get herself a French pension.’
Clare opened up the back of her handbag, took out folded sheets of handwritten text and gave it to him. He scanned the lines avidly.
‘This is great. I had a feeling the same lady was no weeping widow. It was good of you to do all that work for me.’
‘I wish I had, Charlie, but I can take no credit. All I did was translate it from French. My friend Marie-Claude did the work. She’s gone back to do another degree in history. She says you’ve given her a good idea. She hasn’t decided yet, but she might take up the role of Irish émigrés in French political life.’
‘Well now, isn’t that very interesting. Will you give her my kindest regards? I am much in her debt,’ he said, as he laid the neatly written sheets on his desk.
Cycling back to Liskeyborough in the last of the evening light, the smell of hawthorn heavy on the evening air, Clare decided that her visit to Charlie was the best thing yet. Amidst all the disappointments, the hours she had just spent stood out like an island of pleasure in a sea of discomforts.
It had never occurred to her how hard it would be to be a visitor in the home of old and dear friends, seeing their, life at close quarters, picking up the tension and awkwardness between them. She’d been so miserable most of the time she’d been with Jessie and Harry, she was positively looking forward to going to see her grandparents. In the event, that had turned out even worse, from the first moment she’d stepped into the house.
‘Hallo, yer a stranger. Put yer case in the room outa the way. Mrs Loney is due anytime to do the turns.’
‘How are you, Granny?’
‘Ach, just the same. An’ yer Granda gets deafer. He only hears when ye tell him to come to his tea.’
‘What about William?’
‘What about him?’ she said bitterly. ‘He’s had a dozen jobs since he left school and lost them all. He won’t be told anything. Not the same boyo. All he’s interested in is motorbikes and cars. If it weren’t for wantin’ the money to buy one or other, he’d likely not go to work at all.’
Clare sighed as she turned off the main road and took the narrow road through Annacramp, past the new Grange School that had replaced Aunt Sarah’s schoolroom in the 1930s. The south-facing hedge beyond where Alfie Nesbitt used to live was full of honeysuckle. She’d like to stop and pick some, but Granny Hamilton seemed not to care about flowers any more. It was Granda who filled the tub by the door with marigolds and nasturtiums and Granny who didn’t want them in the house because of the mess they made when they died.
Monday had been a difficult day, her attempts at conversation no better received by her grandmother than by Jessie. She’d retreated to the workshop and fared slightly better with her grandfather, despite his difficulty with his hearing aid, but in the end, she’d gone for a walk, tramping up the road to climb Cannon Hill.
She’d stayed there till tea time, hoping the presence of Auntie Dolly and William might make things easier.
‘Hello, Clare, how are you?’ said William, coming through the door and drawing up to the tea table in oil-stained dungarees.
Granda looked at him severely. He got up, ran his hands under the tap at the kitchen sink, wiped them roughly and sat down again.
‘How’s Paris?’
‘Great,’ she replied, smiling at him.
She was amazed at the change in his manner towards her. It was the first time she could ever remember him saying ‘Hallo’, without having been told to, and never before had he shown the slightest interest in her affairs.
‘Would you like to see the new lamp and saddle I’ve put on your bicycle, Clare?’ he said as they finished their meal.
Granda hadn’t been able to make out what he was saying. Granny assumed he was getting out of the washing up as usual and Dolly looked at Clare blankly, as puzzled by this sudden change of attitude as she was.
As they walked towards the barn where he kept the bicycle, Clare made enquiries about his present job, but William was striding along so quickly she had difficulty keeping up with him.
‘A bicycle’s all very well when yer young, but I want a car,’ he began, when they stepped inside the low stone building. ‘Dolly says the money’s great where you are, Clare. Will you lend me a hundred pounds?’
It was raining steadily when Harry drove her to Nutt’s Corner the following Saturday. Jessie hadn’t wanted to come. The car, she said, made Fiona sick. They’d said their goodbyes in the hall while Harry put her cases in the boot.
‘Don’t be long till yer back,’ said Jessie.
Clare wondered if she meant it, or whether she was just saying the traditional phrase out of habit. She waved to her as they slid slowly down the drive. Looking back, she saw Jessie slowly waving Fiona’s arm.
‘Thank you, Harry dear, you’ve been so good to me. I’ll give you a ring any time I’m in London and I can talk to you at the gallery. I know Jessie’s not herself, but I’ll have to think about it. Take care of yourself, won’t you.’
He hugged her tight and kissed her cheek.
‘What would I do without you, Clare?’
She felt tears trickle down her cheeks as she picked up her cases and headed for the check-in desk. There had been good things, and Harry and the success of the gallery had been amongst them. But overall it was a week she’d never want to live through again.
She watched the terminal buildings slide by, the rain-streaked window of the Vanguard blurring their outline. The engines roared and for a few brief moments she glimpsed the small, sodden fields, the white blossom dropping, its gleaming softness gone. The lough, grey and misted, lurched uncomfortably to one side as the wing dipped and the aircraft turned upwards and eastwards. Greyness enveloped her, clinging and featureless. Like the long minutes and hours of cold and boredom she’d endured all through the last week.
She wondered if she would ever come again, or if, like Matilda Wolfe Tone, she would decide she was French, her life to be lived in another country.
The grey mist began to thin. Gleams of light caught the raindrops running off the wing. Then suddenly, joyously, the light returned. Sunlight poured down on the mountains of pure white cloud that now lay below them. She felt herself relax; the effort of the past few days flowed away. No doubt there were lessons to be learnt. No doubt, indeed. But it could all wait. Here and now she was happy and knew she was happy. This time she really was going home.