The Hamiltons of Ballydown

by Anne Doughty

  ‘But Hugh dear, I’m not an educated man,’ said John awkwardly.

  ‘You can read and write can’t you? You can draw plans. You can invent useful things. What more do you need?’ retorted Hugh crisply.

  ‘But sure don’t partners have to put a pile of money into a company?’ he replied uneasily, his eyes focused entirely upon one of Elizabeth’s flourishing fuchsias.

  ‘Not unless it’s going public. And even if it was, it’s been known for a partner to put in a pound note.’

  John stared at him and could think of nothing whatever to say.

  ‘I do intend to find us some more partners,’ Hugh went on conversationally, giving his friend time to recover himself, ‘but they’ll not be working partners. They’ll be advisors. They’ll get a fee for attending Board Meetings, but not a salary. Richard Stewart might be one, if you agree. Sprott of Dromore, the J.P. might be another. You don’t know him yet but he’s a good man. Very shrewd, and very successful in the hemstitching business,’ he explained. ‘I also have in mind a certain young woman, when she reaches the age of twenty-one,’ he went on with a half smile.

  ‘Who would that be?’

  ‘Your younger daughter. Miss Sarah Hamilton,’ said Hugh grinning.

  ‘Sarah? Why Sarah?’ John exclaimed, entirely confused by this new line of thinking.

  ‘Because John, with her on the Board, we need never have the slightest worry about Factory Inspectors. Sarah will give us a far worse time on behalf of the staff than any of them will ever do.’

  He grinned more broadly as John shook his head and laughed. He knew his own daughter well enough to see that Hugh was perfectly right.

  ‘Come on, John,’ Hugh said encouragingly as he stretched out his hand. ‘It’s a family business. Yours as well as mine. Or do I have to go to Rose and get her to make you see sense? All I’m asking is that you do what you’ve done for years, but accept a proper appreciation and recompense for it. You wouldn’t say no to me, would you?’

  ‘Ach, no. I couldn’t do that.’

  Smiling sheepishly, as he put out his hand and shook Hugh’s firmly.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  On a mild, late September morning, a hint of mist still lying in the valley bottoms, Sam Hamilton got off the train at Richhill Station. He made his way up a long lane, crossed the broad track used by the road vehicles delivering to the furniture and jam manufactories, and walked on to the village itself. Much to his mother’s apparent delight and amusement, his father had explained that Richhill Station was about a mile from Richhill. He’d then added that though Pearson’s Haulage was Pearson’s of Portadown, their premises were about a mile on the Portadown side of Richhill in a townland called Ballyleny.

  The distance was immaterial to Sam. Since Doctor Stewart had taken his plaster off two weeks earlier, he’d been walking miles every day for the sheer joy of it. Dressed in his second best coat and trousers, carefully shaved, with his boots polished till they gleamed, he strode out, noting as he went the wheel marks of the various engines that had passed earlier in the day. He found Pearson’s with no difficulty whatever, the smell of hot engine oil borne on the breeze alerting him before he was anywhere near the wide space with its large, newly-built engine sheds.

  ‘And what age are you Mr Hamilton?’ said the overseer, a man in his fifties, wearing working clothes and a hard hat.

  ‘I’ll be seventeen in October,’ said Sam steadily.

  ‘And you say you’ve been drivin’ for three years?’ he asked doubtfully, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sam, pricking up his ears and casting a quick glance out of the window.

  ‘Have you ever driven a Fowler?’

  ‘Like the one that’s comin’ into the yard, or the newer one?’ Sam asked promptly.

  To Sam’s surprise, the overseer hurried to the window and stood there for several minutes looking out. Only when a cloud of smoke and steam blew through the open door as the engine crossed the yard did he turn round and face Sam again.

  ‘How did you know it was the Fowler was comin’?’ he demanded.

  ‘Sure, I heard her out on the road,’ Sam said easily. ‘She’s the only engine makes that sound. She tends to run a wee bit high in damp weather and there was mist about this mornin’.’

  The overseer looked at him more closely, asked him where he’d look for a cross head and what he’d do if there was steam coming out of the fusible plug.

  Sam answered him cheerfully, taking the odd glance out the window where the well-maintained machine was now at rest steaming gently.

  ‘Would ye like to drive her into Portadown and back with Sammy?’ the older man asked, a slight easing in his somewhat hostile manner.

  ‘Aye, I’d like that fine,’ he replied, beaming.

  An hour later Sam met Harry Pearson who asked courteously about Hugh Sinton and his sister and then enquired if Sam would like him to find lodgings for him. He hoped he could start the following Monday.

  Sam tramped back to the station, a grin on his face and a cheery greeting for every one he met. Not only had he got a new job, but Harry Pearson had told him he was hoping to expand his business and move into road vehicles of all kinds. He’d ordered a Siddley for himself and he wanted a lad who’d be interested in all the new motor vehicles, not just the haulage engines that made up their present business.

  As he passed the last farm before the station, a low, thatched dwelling with blue painted window frames, he suddenly remembered something Thomas Scott had said to him when he was a wee boy. ‘One of these days Sam, you’ll be comin’ to see me in yer motor car.’ Well, indeed, it might not be long before he had a chance to prove him right.

  By the end of the first week in October, Sam was comfortably lodged in Richhill. On his weekly visits home it was clear he was thoroughly enjoying his job and was already making friends. Hannah too, was writing lively letters from the enormous castle-like building that had been converted to create her finishing school. The best news of all was that Elizabeth had yielded to considerable pressure from Rose and Hugh and agreed to a wedding date in early April.

  As the weather grew colder and the first autumnal storms began to strip both trees and hedgerows, Sarah cycled to and from school with less and less enthusiasm each day.

  ‘But why do I have to stay on at school?’ she demanded one Thursday evening, as she banged her books shut and pushed them back into her satchel.

  Rose put her library book down, but John went on reading.

  ‘Sarah, it’s very important to have a good education. You know that,’ she said soothingly.

  ‘But Sam left school at fourteen. Look how well he’s doing. He loves his work,’ she retorted sharply.

  As John shuffled his newspaper and folded it up, he caught Rose’s warning look.

  ‘Sarah, if we were all the same, it wouldn’t be good, would it?’ he said agreeably.

  He noticed the dark shadows under her eyes and remembered what her mother had said about how tired she got towards the end of the week. Every afternoon after school there was something on. Choir or Dramatic Society, hockey or Debating Society. Like all young women there were times when she got very short-tempered. He knew that well enough by now. Take her the wrong way when she was tired as well and you’d get the kind of storm they used to have when she was a child.

  ‘Sam’s a great practical man, God bless him,’ said John as calmly as he could manage, ‘but you’re a clever girl, Sarah. You could do things, Sam or Hannah, could never do. That’s not just what your Ma and I think, it’s what better educated people like James Sinton and Hugh and Elizabeth think too. They say you could go to college, now that there’s places for women. Would that not be a great thing?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. It would be just awful,’ she spat out fiercely. ‘It’s bad enough being stuck at school, but then, to get out of that and go into Queen’s College for three or four more years. I’d go mad. I’d do something desperate,’ she said he voice risin
g ominously. ‘I can’t stand being cooped up day after day with the same boring old teachers and the same boring old lessons and not even Hannah to share it with,’ she said, bursting into tears and sobbing as if her heart would break.

  John looked at Rose helplessly as she stood up and put her arms round Sarah. She held her close, feeling the narrow shoulders shaking, the warm tears soaking through the light fabric of her own blouse.

  Over the dark, ruffled curls, they exchanged glances. Rose knew he would back her up as best he could, but she would have to find a way. He’d never had much idea what to do when any of his children were in distress, but Sarah always defeated him completely.

  ‘Things always look grim when you’re tired, Sarah,’ her mother said softly, stroking her curls. ‘How would it be if we had a talk about it after school tomorrow or on Saturday afternoon, when we’re all fresher? If you’re not happy, we’ll find some way to make it better. Didn’t we find a way for Sam when he was so upset losing his job?’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t find a way for Jamie,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Sarah dear, Jamie didn’t let us try, did he? You’d give us a chance, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

  ‘How about some cocoa and a nice hot water bottle?’

  Sarah shivered, suddenly cold with tiredness and tears. She nodded. She was sure they’d try to help her, but she couldn’t see what they could do. She was fourteen. She was a girl. No going off like Sam at fourteen to find a real job in the real world. Three or four more years of Banbridge Academy lay in front of her before she could have any life of her own.

  At this moment, the enormity of the acres of boredom to be endured was so appalling she thought she’d rather be dead.

  Rose did her best. She talked to Elizabeth and went to see the only one of her teachers Sarah seemed to like. They both said wise things about the adjustments Sarah was making in her life. In the course of the summer she’d grown up, she’d lost a beloved sister, whose constant companionship she’d never questioned. Her favourite brother no longer lived at home. Sarah’s teacher didn’t know about Jamie, so it was Elizabeth who suggested she might be blaming herself for his absence.

  ‘Why can’t I just leave and get a job in the mill, Ma? That’s what other girls have to do. Why do I have to be coddled up at school?’ she demanded one wet October afternoon when she arrived home soaking.

  ‘Sarah dear, if you just went into the mill, how would you ever do the things you want to do?’

  ‘What things? What things do I want to do?’ she shouted.

  ‘Well, you want to take pictures, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And I don’t need to go to school for that. What use is school to me?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s a good way of using time till you’re older, Sarah. You can’t just go off like Sam, you know that. After all, he had to do the equivalent of another three years at school when he went to Tullyconnaught as an apprentice.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s what he wanted. I don’t want any of what they’re teaching me. Nor all those boys being silly and the girls giggling in corners. I can’t stand it, Ma, I can’t stand it.’

  She searched vainly for words of comfort, but nothing she said seemed to touch Sarah’s distress. She was forced to watch her dragging herself from day to day, weighed down by a burden of frustration, her discontent floating round her like a cloud.

  It had been agreed there’d be no question of her going to Queen’s College. They’d also gone as far as saying she could leave at seventeen, but for Sarah, the gap between these last months of 1897 and the longed-for freedom the summer of 1900 would bring was still an eternity of time almost impossible to visualise and equally impossible to survive.

  Rose tried everything she could think of to cheer and encourage her, but her intuitions told her so much depends upon how we see things for ourselves. Searching back through her own early years, she remembered times when she too had been dogged by the same weariness. She too had blamed the slow passage of the days and weeks for her frustrations.

  ‘But is it really time, or is it circumstance?’ she asked aloud, one dim, December morning as she looked around the tidy, well-swept kitchen and thought how she’d spend her own solitary day.

  John would not be coming in to lunch and Sarah had a rehearsal after school. Nothing to prevent her doing whatever she chose.

  ‘Is today a wonderful opportunity to do what I want to do?’ she asked herself, ‘or a miserable piece of time to be filled as best I can?’

  She made up the fire and settled in her chair to watch the leaping flames. She smiled to herself. She felt well, there was no immediate problem or weight of sadness to press upon her. She had books from the library. Sewing and embroidery under way. Letters to write to family and friends. If it stayed dry, she could dig up some of her perennials that needed splitting.

  She sat on quietly, thinking of Sarah, and suddenly, she saw herself sitting on a hillside, her sleeves rolled up, the top buttons of her blouse undone, a soft breeze stirring the tassels on the fuchsia and cooling her warm skin. She was in Kerry, on her one afternoon off, the only time in her busy life as a servant at Currane Lodge that was really hers. Time was only your friend when you were free to act as you wished.

  She thought of the early months of the year and shivered slightly, thinking of the weeks after her illness when time was a blur, the days slipping into weeks as she slept and rested. Then came the months when she was well enough to know what she wanted to do, but not well enough to do any of it.

  Perhaps that was Sarah’s real problem. She could see so clearly what she wanted to do, but present circumstances would not let her do it. She was simply not old enough and the waiting was intolerable.

  Even with all the reassurances she’d had from Elizabeth and Doctor Stewart, it hadn’t been easy to believe health and strength would be returned to her, if only she waited patiently. How much worse it must be for Sarah. There was no way of reassuring her what she knew she wanted would come to her if only she could be patient.

  Of course the months and years would pass. This long century of dramatic change would end, and with it her schooldays. But what comfort was that when the burden of the time ahead lay so heavy upon her?

  So far, she’d discovered it was not school work in itself which bored her, but the fact that school stood between her and making her own life. Twice recently, she’d seen the old sparkle return and both times it was school work had done the trick. A history project on The Great Famine set her reading every book and paper she could lay her hands on. She’d talked about it at great length to anyone who would listen. An essay on the Industrial Revolution had the same effect. She’d filled notebook after notebook with the plight of the rural unemployed as they flocked to the towns to be herded into miserable little houses in the shadow of mills.

  ‘But what do I do for her now?’ Rose asked herself, gazing out at the damp, uninviting day.

  She thought of her Quaker friends waiting patiently on guidance. She’d tried that, but nothing had come to help her. She sat on, her mind moving to the affairs of her friends and family. Elizabeth’s marriage plans. Hugh and John working yet more closely in their partnership. Hannah and Sam, each happy with the future they’d chosen. And Jamie?

  To her great surprise, it was thinking of him that finally gave her an answer to her question. Obvious, once you saw it. There was nothing she could do for Sarah, any more than there was anything she could do for Jamie. She could love them, cherish them, think of them, but what was ultimately important to them, that they had to find out for themselves.

  It was only as spring came with flickers of dazzling light and lengthening days that unexpected hope and possibilities began to diminish Sarah’s sadness and frustration and restore Rose to her happier self.

  Elizabeth had been granted permission to marry by their local Monthly Meeting, but, there couldn’t be a Quaker marriage as Richard Stewart was a Presbyt
erian. As a Quaker, Elizabeth couldn’t be married by an ordained minister of any other church. The only solution was for Elizabeth and Richard to be married in a Registry Office. To make up for this loss of a ceremony they decided to have a small celebration afterwards in Richard’s house in Dromore where they were to live after their marriage. Elizabeth came down from Rathdrum especially to ask Sarah if she would take some pictures for them.

  Sarah was delighted. She hadn’t touched her camera since she’d taken a picture of Sam on crutches, to use the one remaining exposure on the roll for the journey home from Ashley Park. Now, she took it out again, loaded it up and began to practice. She wanted to be sure her hand was steady and her eye was in, for she’d decided she would make an album for Elizabeth and Richard. Just like Mr Blennerhasset had for Ma and Da all those years ago.

  Ballydown,

  May 1898

  My dear Hannah,

  Thank you for your lovely long letter. It was great! It wasn’t quite as funny as your account of learning to ski, but now I shall always think of you whenever I see someone wearing a cap and apron. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to measure the exact angle of a cap, or the distance from apron to floor. I really can’t see you spending your time bossing your servants round like that, but it was funny. Especially as you had to practice on Marianne who was being ‘pert’.

  Elizabeth’s wedding was lovely. You knew she wouldn’t be having a wedding dress because Quakers don’t, but she did wear a most lovely new gown. It was perfectly plain as always, but it was silver-grey. I never realised what wonderful grey eyes she has until I saw her standing looking at Dr Stewart, though she says I must call him Richard now. She looked quite beautiful and I so wished I could catch the exact colour of her eyes and the dress.

  Hugh says one day there’ll be colour film, but in the meantime he was going to see if he could have some of my pictures hand-tinted. A few days ago he showed me one of his mother, very delicately done, like one of your best water colours.