24

The spring of 1960 came for Clare, neither on the Champs Elysées with Louise, nor in the Bois de Boulogne with the St Clair family, but in the Dolomites, in a small skiing resort that turned itself into a conference centre as soon as the first of the snow began to melt. After three dull, cloudy days, well matched by the series of lectures Clare had endured, the sun suddenly appeared.

She could hardly believe it when she drew back her curtains and opened the shutters. Dazzling white, the mountains rose into a clear blue sky, but below their precipitous peaks, the upland meadows, still snow-covered the day she’d arrived, now emerged green and fresh, so close in the clear mountain air she felt she could lean out of her window and touch them.

She stood in her dressing gown, breathing in the sharpness of the air, feeling the warm touch of the sun on her face. A little way below her, between a pair of older wooden houses, she saw a narrow path leading up towards the high meadows. The cattle were still indoors, but a few days more and they would be moved up the path to their summer pastures.

She’d never been here in summer, but there’d been enticing pictures in the brochure advertising the financial management course that Robert had felt she should attend. It was the easiest thing in the world to imagine the meadows full of flowers, pink and yellow and blue, whose names she knew in English and French, German and Italian, but whose delicate blooms she’d never seen or touched.

Feeling a sadness she couldn’t explain, she turned away reluctantly from the window, showered, dressed and collected up the folder of papers for the morning’s seminar. It would no doubt be valuable. Like all the sessions she’d already sat through, it would focus on some aspect of the economic developments the Treaty of Rome had brought to Europe.

Given how quickly things were changing, it would be useful to know precisely what was going on in the other European countries. She would listen, make notes, ask pertinent questions, and wonder if she might hear the sound of cow bells before she flew back to Paris.

She breakfasted with an earnest young German who had a particular interest in iron and steel, escaped as soon as she decently could and walked down the road to the largest of the new hotels where those who skied by day danced at night. This week, however, its vast ballroom accommodated well-dressed students from every part of Europe. With the heavy curtains shutting out the sunlight, the only peaks in view were the projections of economists and financial experts.

As she came level with the little path, she glanced at her watch, crossed the road and walked a short way on its rough, frost-shattered surface. Despite her high heels and the slim skirt of her costume, only a few minutes away from the main street, she found she had stepped into a different world.

The tall gable of a shallow-roofed house cast a dark shadow on the path, so that she shivered in the crystalline air, but ahead of her, beyond its barns and outhouses and their sheltering trees, she could see the lowest of the meadows. A moment later, she moved out of the shadow, stepped off the path and stood on the edge of the soft, green grass, the sunlight pouring round her, its warmth like the comfort of an embrace.

The view was different than from her hotel bedroom, but the elements were the same, the high peaks soaring into the clear air, their swelling shoulders shining with melting snow, the lower slopes green, so strikingly green after the city streets and the lifeless, grey vistas of the last three days.

‘I’ll make up my mind in the springtime,’ she said to herself, as she moved quickly back to join the last few hurrying figures on their way to begin work.

 

The first wisps of cloud floated past the cabin window. They were beginning to lose height already. This was the point when the brilliant, sunlit snowfields that still made her think of Canada were suddenly transformed into grey, enveloping murk. She hated this bit, trapped and enclosed, until land appeared and she heard the wheels come down.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be arriving at Aldergrove Airport. Will you fasten your seatbelts and extinguish all cigarettes …’

She listened attentively to an unmistakably Ulster voice pronouncing the familiar words with as much care as if she were speaking a foreign language. At any other time, it would have made her smile. But not today.

As they sank through the cloud, she went over again the sequence of events that had brought her back to Ireland on an April morning when she should have been preparing for a visit to Lyons.

‘Mam’selle, I regret there is a telegram. I hope it is not bad news.’

Perhaps it was the echo of that phrase ‘mauvaises nouvelles’, the sudden remembrance of her grandfather’s death, or simply the look of distress on Madame’s face as she put the envelope in her hand, but she felt a sudden wave of panic, an overwhelming sense that her life was about to fall to pieces.

All she remembered was ripping open the envelope and reading the short message.

‘Jessie poorly. I need you badly. Please ring. Harry.’

Her hands had trembled so much, she’d dropped her address book on the floor when she went to find their home number. She’d phoned Harry when she’d been in London in February, but the last time she’d phoned Belfast from Paris was the morning her degree results came out. It still took an eternity of time to get through.

Jessie had been in bed for a week now. The gynaecologist had said there was no specific problem he could discover, but she was badly run down. Unless she built up her strength before her labour she might lose the child. That was bad enough, but what came over in waves as Clare listened to Harry was his real fear that he was going to lose Jessie herself.

The moment she put down the phone she unpacked her suitcase, sorted the contents and immediately repacked it. She’d thought of ringing Robert at home, but it was already late. There was nothing to be done before morning. She’d spent a long, restless night, short patches of dream-filled sleep alternating with hours of lying wide-eyed, going over and over every detail of her last visit to Belfast, all that had happened to Jessie since the evening when the four of them had dined together in the new home and Jessie had asked her and Andrew to be godparents to the coming baby.

She dressed for work as usual, but took her suitcase with her and went up to Robert’s room as soon as Paul let her know he was in.

‘You must go, of course,’ he said, picking up his phone. ‘Denise, book a flight to Belfast via London for Mam’selle ’Amilton, an open return for the first possible flight. Allow enough time for her to get to Orly by car.

‘I think your dear Jessie may need you for some time, perhaps even until her child is born, which you say is maybe a month away. You must stay till then, if you feel it necessary. But keep me informed. I shall be concerned for you and for her. Write or telephone, whatever is convenient. Do you have any sterling?’

She admitted she hadn’t even thought about money. Looking at him, as he stood by his desk, ready to do anything he could to help her, the tears sprang to her eyes. They dripped on the lapels of her moss-green costume, sitting on the surface of the close-textured fabric as if she’d been caught in a shower of rain.

‘There now, my dear. It is hard for you. Take courage,’ he said, as she took out a minute handkerchief from the equally minute pocket of her jacket. ‘I have only a little knowledge of the problems of pregnancy, but there is one piece of advice I must give you. Keep up your spirits. Do not allow your own anxiety to take away your warmth, or your humour. These may be the medicines that Harry and Jessie have most need of,’ he said, as he took her hand and held it for a moment.

‘Bon voyage,’ he continued, quietly. ‘And a happy return. I shall miss you. I shall think of you. I may even light a candle for you. You will not mind that, will you?’

‘I should like that, Robert,’ she said, mopping her eyes again. ‘I think I shall need all the help I can get. Thank you,’ she said, leaning forward and kissing his cheek. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

By the time she’d walked down to reception, Paul was already waiting with a hundred pounds in sterling, an authorisation for setting up an English bank account for her to sign, and her suitcase. Denise had the number of the tickets awaiting her at the BEA desk at Orly.

While Robert’s chauffeur brought the car to the front of the building, she ran back to her office, but Louise was already on the way to the banking hall to meet her. She’d spoken to Paul and had come to kiss her goodbye.

The plane’s descent steepened. Only five hours ago, she’d been driving through Paris at the end of the morning rush hour. She saw below her now, in misting rain, a patchwork of tiny fields, the white shapes of cottages and farms slipping away under the wing. As the grey murk dissolved they made a wide sweep over Lough Neagh.

She stared out at the flat grey waters, calm in the light, drifting drizzle, and saw a cart track leading to a small beach, a framework of poles covered with nets hanging up to dry. It might be the place they had picnicked; it might be another beach just like it. After all the anxiety and distress, to her sudden surprise, she felt steadier than she’d felt at any time since yesterday’s call to Harry.

The wheels touched the wet runway, the engines roared and they taxied towards the newly completed airport buildings. In the rich grass verges of the new runways, the hares scattered as the Vanguard moved past. A few minutes later, they resumed their interrupted feeding as if nothing whatever had happened.

 

In spite of all Harry had told her, Clare was still shocked when she saw Jessie propped up on her pillows. Earlier, Harry said, she’d tried to come downstairs to be there when she arrived, but the effort was too much for her. She’d had to go back to bed.

‘Hallo, Jessie,’ she said gently, as Harry pushed open the bedroom door. ‘Harry said you weren’t feeling great.’

Ginny’s scars had been hard to bear, but she found the paleness of Jessie’s face and the blue smudges under her eyes every bit as bad. She heard Harry slip out of the room behind her. She moved closer to the limp figure lying back on the pillows and saw tears streaming down her face.

‘What is it, love? What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong,’ she said, perching on the side of the bed and putting her arms round her.

‘I think I’m goin’ to die, an’ what’ll Harry do wi’ wee Fiona?’ she sobbed, clutching Clare as if she’d never let her go.

‘Who said anything about dying, Jessie? Who told you that?’

‘Oh, nobody says it, but they’re all that nice to me, the doctors and the nurse that comes. An’ I feel so awful. I’m sure I’m goin’ to die.’

‘And I’m absolutely certain you’re not,’ said Clare firmly. ‘If you go and die on me, I’ll never forgive you.’

Jessie stopped sobbing and looked up at her for the first time.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Think what?’

‘That I won’t die.’

‘Sure you know only the good die young,’ she replied matter-of-factly. ‘Unless you’ve got religion since I went away, I’d have said you were safe as houses.’

Jessie stopped crying. Her eyes were still wet, her face thin and peaky, her lovely, wavy brown hair, lank and unwashed, but a touch of the old Jessie suddenly broke through as she grinned and said, ‘Yer lookin’ great. Ye diden buy that suit at C and A’s, did ye?’

Clare laughed and the moment she did, Jessie laughed too. Coming up stairs with a tray of tea, Harry couldn’t believe his ears.

‘What’s the joke?’ he asked.

‘Go on, show him,’ said Jessie, poking Clare with surprising vigour. ‘Take it off an’ show him.’

Clare stood up and slid off the jacket of her costume, turning it so that Harry could read the label.

‘I thought they made perfume,’ he said vaguely, as he looked round the room for somewhere to put down the tray.

‘Would ye listen to him, Clare,’ she said, raising her eyes heavenwards in a familiar gesture. ‘That, Harry,’ she said, pointing to the label, ‘is a famous dress designer, and Madam here said in one of her letters he makes all the overalls for her firm. Could ye believe her?’

 

Clare slept well that night, whether from relief or sheer exhaustion, she couldn’t tell, but she woke early next morning and tried to think through what she ought to do. Jessie was indeed in a bad way, but something had changed since her last visit. Then, she’d been physically well but abstracted, totally preoccupied with Fiona. She’d often been sharp with Clare, reluctant to sit down and talk. This time, she was very unwell, but in many ways she was much more the direct and affectionate Jessie she had once known.

‘She told me the other day you were the only one who could help her,’ said Harry, as they washed up together later that evening.

‘Did she say why, Harry?’

‘No, I couldn’t get her to say another word. I don’t think she knew herself, to tell you the truth.’

‘And the gynaecologist and the doctor have no suggestions?’

‘The doctor said it might be some personal matter. He suggested our minister of religion,’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

‘How did that go down?’

‘Not well,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But I tried. I’ve tried everything, Clare,’ he said, a dangerous catch in his voice.

‘I know you have, Harry,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Now look, if she says I can help her, then probably somehow or other I can, even if I’m just as in the dark as you are. But we’ve got to keep our spirits up. That’s the advice my boss gave me before I left. Let’s make up our minds it’s going to be all right, and see what we can do. How about it?’

‘Whatever you say, Clare. You’re the boss this time. I’ll do whatever you tell me.’

 

The week that followed was one of the grimmest Clare had ever spent. Each morning Jessie would wake up in despair and lie weeping till Clare came and sent Harry off to make his own breakfast. Each morning, she’d talk to her, encourage her, help her to do her hair, put on make-up. By afternoon, Jessie was in good spirits, able to get up, play with Fiona when her grandmother brought her to visit, eat a proper meal in the evening. But next morning, the despair had returned as if nothing were any different.

There was nausea and sickness, as there had been in the first pregnancy, but the medical problems paled beside Jessie’s fears and anxieties. That was the heart of the problem. It was just so unlike Jessie to be fearful.

Clare spent many a quiet night hour trying to think what could have triggered such a change. She talked to Harry, who said all had gone well enough till after Fiona’s birth. He’d asked the doctor about post-natal depression, but the doctor said he didn’t think the symptoms fitted the pattern. That was when he’d suggested they consult their minister of religion. They both knew there was no way forward there. After enduring church every Sunday morning when she was in Armagh, a ‘dog-collar’ was the last person Jessie would ever talk to.

Try as she would, Clare couldn’t see anything that Harry or the doctors had missed. She talked to him about Jessie’s fathers death. He assured her she spoke of her father quite naturally, though not very often. That was hardly surprising, for he’d been away for so long in the war, he’d played a very small part in her life.

Each day, Clare set out hopefully, trying to find something to fill up the bottomless well of despair. One day, Jessie confessed she was afraid she’d lost her looks and that Harry would go off with someone else, so Clare washed and set her hair, made up her face, insisted she wear a dress instead of a nightie. When her mother came up from Armagh to visit that afternoon, Clare took a bus into town and bought Jessie a bottle of perfume, a box of handmade chocolates and some peaches from Sawyers.

She was so preoccupied with thoughts of Jessie, it was only on the way back from the city centre she registered where she was. The bus had just stopped outside Queen’s. She watched as crowds of students poured across the pedestrian crossing. A moment later, peering out of her window, down Elmwood Avenue, she just glimpsed the bay of her old room, still visible, because the trees here in Belfast were only just coming into leaf, unlike those she’d left behind on the quay by the Seine.

Suddenly and passionately, she wished she were back in Paris, having coffee under the trees in the Champs-Elysées with Louise, or in the Bois de Boulogne with Marie-Claude, or sitting by the window of Robert’s office, under the watchful eye of the chestnut mare.

That was when the solution came to her at last. Jessie was lonely. She’d been lonely since she’d had to leave the gallery. She was sure that was what it was. Harry was Harry, the dearest of men, but beyond him, who had Jessie got to share her thoughts, or her life?

Then, a more chilling thought struck her. It was just when Jessie had to leave the gallery, that she and Andrew had parted. They had been Jessie and Harry’s closest friends. A week later, she herself had gone off to Paris and shown no signs of ever coming back.

Pregnancy had taken Jessie out of the gallery, where she so enjoyed talking to customers. Later, illness shut her up at home and little Fiona had to be parked round the corner at her grandmother’s. Who had Jessie to talk to? Who was her Louise? Her Marie-Claude? Her Robert? Who was there with whom Jessie could be the self she’d been before marriage, pregnancy, motherhood and illness had changed her life?

‘What about Jessie’s sketching and painting?’ she asked herself.

It struck her that she’d not seen so much as a pad of paper about the house, never mind watercolours, or oils. She recalled how totally dismissive Jessie had been when she’d mentioned the subject the last time she was over.

Suddenly, the hills appeared beyond the end of Balmoral Avenue. What a joy it always was to look up and see them, the broad strip of ordinary fields and hedges still surviving, sandwiched between the housing estates on the lower slopes and the angular screes and fierce rock outcrops that marked the summit ridge. How often she’d gazed up at them, in sunshine and in rain, old friends and companions that always reminded her of the countryside not so very far away, even when her work kept her shut up in rooms and lecture theatres in the city.

She stood up quickly, laughed at herself, as she picked up her parcels and made her way to the back of the bus. She’d gone on three stops beyond the stop for Jessie’s road.

It was no matter. Her parcels were light and her heels not very high. It would be a pleasure to stroll back under the trees. She felt such a longing for the countryside – Italian countryside, French countryside or Ulster countryside, it didn’t seem to matter which, just so long as it was countryside, with wind, sun or rain. Firmly, she put the thought out of mind as she quickened her step. No thinking about that until Jessie was back on her feet again.

 

Two weeks after Clare’s arrival, just as she was beginning to doubt the value of all her efforts, Jessie announced she’d love to go out to lunch if they could find somewhere with big holes cut out of the tables. It was the sign Clare had been waiting for. They had an excellent meal. Jessie tackled it like her old self, and by the time they got to coffee she’d even begun to tease Clare in her old way.

Clare sat up late that night, writing a long letter to Robert. She shared with him her feeling that it was the radical changes in Jessie’s life that had almost overwhelmed her. Because everything had gone so well for her from the moment she met Harry, poor dear Jessie just hadn’t been prepared for the unhappinesses and disappointments that had come upon her. ‘Perhaps,’ she wrote, ‘it is easier to face adversity if you know that’s what you’re doing. I don’t think Jessie could see she had a problem. So she couldn’t begin to deal with it.’

The first week in May was the date given for the birth of Jessie’s child. It was now the third week in April. Doctor and gynaecologist agreed that the longer Jessie could carry her child the better. She’d begun to put on weight and they expected the child to do likewise. Clare rifled through all the cookery books she could find, searching for recipes that would encourage her to eat more. She was actually thinking what she might cook for dinner the following evening, when Harry made a proposal that caught her completely unawares.

‘How would you girls like a little outing tomorrow?’ he said, as they were drinking coffee in the sitting room. ‘I’ve got some calls to do up around Armagh. You could visit home territory, the scenes of your former conquests.’

‘Fine, count me in,’ said Jessie promptly. ‘I’ll produce Number Two tonight, leave it with Granny tomorrow, and be ready for the road by nine. That’s if my lady-in-waiting can have my make-up and hair done by then.’

Harry looked at her blankly, hardly able to believe she could move back into her old self so completely. He laughed and looked sheepish.

‘Sorry, love, I suppose that was silly. The car makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh, no. I’m grand, but it doesn’t like it. It wants to stay at home. But I’ll be fine on my own. Mrs D’s here anyway. You must take Clare. She hasn’t been anywhere since she came. Are you for Drumsollen?’

Clare was so taken aback at the sudden question, she nearly spilled her coffee.

In the last week, they’d talked about everything that had been part of their life together except Andrew, till suddenly, one morning, Jessie herself brought up his name.

‘D’you think you did the right thing when you broke it off, Clare? He was desperate cut up, Harry says. I didn’t see him meself at the time. He’s not been up in Belfast much since ye went. Has he got anyone else d’ye think?’

‘I really don’t know, Jessie. He’s working in Armagh now, but that’s about all I do know.’

‘I still think he’s yer man. I always did,’ she said, a look of such sadness on her face that Clare was immediately on the alert. ‘Sure I never thought you’d go to Canada. Or if ye did, ye’d be back in no time and we’d wheel our prams down the road together.’

As the implications of what Jessie was saying dawned upon her, she had a very bad moment. Perhaps that was why Jessie had been so distant, so unwelcoming, a year ago. She blamed her for going away and breaking up that small circle of support she’d been relying on to see her through.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Jessie,’ Clare had said, recovering herself and seeing an opportunity. ‘If you do what you’re told and eat up like a good girl and produce another lovely little Burrows, I’ll contact Andrew before I go back and see if we can still be friends. Then we could be godparents to Number Two. How about that? Don’t say I don’t try to meet you halfway.’

‘You’re on. Before witnesses. I’ll tell Harry tonight.’

 

Harry was much more sympathetic than Jessie when Clare admitted she didn’t want to run into Andrew without warning. She’d really had too much on her mind to think how she wanted to go about a first meeting. Driving up to Armagh, he reassured her that Andrew was never at Drumsollen during the week. Their arrangement was for Harry to call when June Wiley was there and she’d help him pack whatever he’d left out ready. Harry had told June he was hoping to bring Clare up and June had been delighted. It would be a pity to disappoint her.

Thus reassured, Clare sat back and enjoyed the gentle April morning. While she’d been so totally preoccupied with Jessie, spring had finally reached Ulster. The warmth of the last few days had sprayed the hedgerows with green, the chestnuts were fully dressed and even the oaks, always the slowest to wake from winter, were showing tender leaves on lightly-clothed branches in the pale morning sun.

Clare felt her spirits rise. It was such joy to be in her own beloved countryside again, driving along familiar roads, looking forward to seeing such a dear old friend as June Wiley. When Harry said he’d drop her at Drumsollen, come back to collect her and the pictures when he’d done his other calls, she was happy to agree. She wouldn’t let him drive her up to the house, but insisted he drop her off by the gates.

She stood and waved to him as he drove off into Armagh, crossed the empty road and looked down into the stream, the tiny trickle of water in its deep ravine, where she and Jessie once talked secrets. The willows and alders had grown up too much to see their old sitting place, but the steep slope down to the water’s edge was unchanged. The bustling flow of the brown water was as it had always been.

‘When we’re old we’ll have a whole team of fellas to lower us down on ropes,’ Jessie had once said.

Clare sat on the low wall of the bridge, thinking of her, watching the sunlight filter through the new leaves and reflect back from the rippling water. They may have been country children, but their life was not the idyll celebrated in glowing reminiscences. Growing up hadn’t been easy either. Their paths appeared so totally different, yet in the end, they’d both had to face despair and anxiety and learn to accept that none of us manage very well on our own. As Robert Lafarge had once admitted, if we try, we become distant, withdrawn and closed in upon ourselves.

She sat for a little longer, grateful to be alone, the sun warm on her face, her mind moving between past and present. She let it go where it wished, recalling memories, thoughts, images. The lane to the forge on a summer morning, beaded with dew, the russet of vine leaves on a hillside in France. The sound of cow bells in an alpine meadow. Feeling suddenly such a quiet sense of well being, she stood up and walked across the road to the gates of Drumsollen, standing open and lit up by the bright morning sun.