On a Clear Day (The Hamiltons Series)

by Anne Doughty

  As John turned towards the open door to see what was happening, Clare clutched her teddy bear fiercely and tried to hide herself behind his broad back. But it was all over in minutes. The shouting subsided and she heard the irregular sound of Robert’s boots as he limped back into the forge.

  ‘Yer all right now, Clarey. She’s away an’ she’ll not be back. I told her I’d have her put in jail for stealin’ if I iver saw her face here again,’ he went on, as Clare emerged cautiously from behind John.

  ‘Now, yer grand again, Clarey. Just you forget all about it,’ said John Wiley kindly, as he put an arm round her.

  ‘Was she stealin’ on you, Robert?’

  ‘Aye, it’s been going on a long time but I thought it diden amount to much,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘She an’ the aul mother’s that poor I diden grudge her a bit o’ tea or sugar in thon bag as well as her five shillings. But she has the house stripped bare an’ me none the wiser till Polly goes lookin’ for the scissors, an’ the good cups, an’ some linen or other she was wantin’ for the chile’s room.’

  ‘Why did she want my bear, Granda, when she’s grown up?’

  ‘She’d take anythin’ to the pawnshop for a few shillings.’

  Tears rolled down Clare’s cheeks and made streaks through the dirty marks that had made John laugh. The thought of Edward James Bear in a pawn shop was too much for her. She sat and howled.

  ‘Leave her be, Robert,’ said John gently. ‘She’s had a shock and a wee cry will do no harm.’

  He took out a handkerchief and pushed back her hair where he had seen traces of blood. It was only a scratch. But it was probably one of Jinny’s long, dirty fingernails.

  ‘Have ye any TCP, Robert?’

  ‘Aye, I have. I keep it on the mantelpiece behind the tea-caddie so it should still be there. She probably coulden see it,’ he said sharply.

  ‘I’ll see if me wife can come down later. She’s a great nurse, though she never went for the hospital. She just seems to pick it up.’

  ‘I’m obliged te ye John, I don’t know what I’d have done without you,’ said Robert awkwardly, as John rose to go.

  ‘Your coat smells like my Daddy’s coat,’ said Clare, as she gave it back to him. ‘That’s how I knew you’d been mending a motor car,’ she went on, a trace of a smile appearing on her tear-streaked face.

  John laughed and shook his head at Robert.

  ‘That’s a good one. We’ll have to watch ourselves with this one around,’ he said, as he raised a hand in farewell and set off down the lane.

  The fire was nearly out when they went up to the house so it was a while before the potatoes boiled up for their meal. Robert reached up to the mantelpiece high above the stove, found the bottle of TCP and dabbed the scratch. Then he asked her if she had another dress.

  ‘Oh yes, I have two of everything, except cardigans. I only have one of those. And coats, of course. Auntie Polly had to buy me a raincoat.’

  He looked helplessly at the blackened ankle socks and the dark marks on the cotton dress. He sighed.

  ‘Maybe ye ought to wash yer face and put on yer other dress. I think ye may use warm water,’ he said, handing her the smaller of the two kettles that sat on the stove all day.

  By the time she had washed, changed and eaten her mashed potato with a big knob of fresh butter, Clare began to feel more like herself again. She was glad Jinny was gone but she knew Auntie Polly would be worried about the cleaning, even if she had been doing so little. She was wondering what she could do to help when Robert emerged from his bedroom, his face washed and shaved, a sign that he must be going somewhere.

  He was still in his stocking feet and he made no noise at all as he limped across the floor and took down the small New Testament that sat on top of the huge family Bible and the two volumes of Bible commentary stacked in the bookcase that hung on the wall in the alcove on the right hand side of the stove.

  Clare watched closely as he leafed through the pages. He shut the book abruptly, sat down in his wooden armchair and leant his head in his hands at the table where they had just eaten their dinner. Clare thought she had never seen him look so upset and angry before. Even when he came back from chasing Jinny away he hadn’t looked like this.

  ‘Have you lost something, Granda?’ she asked cautiously, for she had noticed that unlike Granda Hamilton, who read his Bible continuously, Granda Scott read nothing but the newspapers that neighbours passed on to him or that he collected when he was in town.

  ‘That … woman,’ he said, tightening his lips to silence in place of some forbidden word, ‘She’s taken the few pounds I had in my wee drawer for the shoppin’ an she’s cleared the Bible where I kept a pound or two to fall back on. I haven’t even got my bus fare to Armagh that I cud borrow a pound from one of me friends and there’s not a bite in the house but bread and potatoes.’

  Clare had never seen him so upset before. If it had been Daddy, or even Uncle Jimmy, she’d have gone and put her arms round him, but Granda wasn’t used to that. Even Auntie Polly only gave him a tiny wee kiss on the cheek when she was going home.

  ‘I might be able to help, Granda. Would you wait a wee minute till I go and see?’

  Clare hurried into her room, threw herself across the bed and waved her arm back and forth down the small space between the edge of the bed and the wall. Breathless, she wriggled back across the bed clutching the pink handbag Uncle Jack had bought her on their day’s shopping in Armagh. She opened it anxiously, took out her purse and knew from the weight of it that all was well.

  ‘Here y’are, Granda. We’re all right,’ she said, a note of triumph in her voice as she marched back into the kitchen.

  She opened the purse and turned it upside down on the oilcloth in front of him. A shower of coins fell out, half crowns, florins, shillings, sixpenny pieces, threepenny pieces, a few large pennies and one very battered ten shilling note.

  ‘Where in the name o’ goodness did you get all that?’

  Clare took his question literally and stood pointing at the relevant coins while he sat shaking his head.

  ‘That half-crown was Uncle Jack, that one was Granda Hamilton, those were Uncle Jimmy, those were Eddy for fetching his magazine every week, that was Davy for cleaning his shoes, that was Auntie Polly for all the sewing I did and that was Ronnie when I was leaving,’ she explained, picking up the ten shilling note. ‘He said it was for emergencies.’

  ‘An’ why did ye not buy sweets?’

  ‘Well, first I had no ration book, so I had no sweetie coupons and then when my new ration book came I gave them to Auntie Polly. I knew she was short because she was always buying sweets for Uncle Jimmy. He gave up the cigarettes when he went back on the Boru and she said sweets helped to take his mind off the cigarettes. So I gave them to her. Anyway, sweets are bad for your teeth, aren’t they?’

  He laughed to himself and counted out the money carefully.

  ‘That’s one pound, fifteen shillings and sixpence I’m borrowin’ off ye,’ he said. ‘Would you like an I OWE YOU?’ he asked seriously.

  She giggled. It was the first time she had ever heard him make a joke.

  He put the note in his empty wallet and the coins in his pocket and went back to the bedroom to find his shoes. He returned shortly with his hat and coat on, an anxious look on his face.

  ‘I can’t leave ye here yer lone.’

  ‘I could come too,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, looking perplexed as he considered this new possibility.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she offered, seeing his difficulty, ‘I could take a little walk and meet you at the bus to come home, while you call in at The Railway Bar and do the shopping.’

  ‘An’ who told you about The Railway Bar?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Mummy did,’ she replied promptly. ‘She says being a blacksmith is very hard work and a few Guinness when you’re in town helps to keep your strength up. But children can’t go in bars. I could walk down Albert
Place and along Lonsdale Street to the Mall and meet you at the bus.’

  ‘Would yer mammy let you do that?’

  ‘Oh yes, she says I’m perfectly sensible and she never worries about me crossing roads, even when I have William with me.’

  ‘We’d better away then, it’s near time she was comin’ up the hill. Here, put that in your purse.’

  He handed her a half crown and a long strip torn crookedly from his ration book. ‘I’ve plenty o’ points, so buy yerself something nice. Now an’ again won’t hurt yer teeth.’

  Clare was thrilled to be in a bus rattling into Armagh. They sat together on the hard wooden seats that Daddy had told her were called utility. She talked most of the way, checking out the features of the landscape as well as the names of all the houses and farms.

  ‘Why’s it called Riley’s Rocks?’ she asked as they passed the sudden outcrop that appeared beyond the Orange Hall at the end of long stretch of bog. ‘What’s that funny thing up on top of the hill, the arch with a kind of monument next to it? Where does that road go to? Is that the mill you and Granny used to work in when you were young?’

  She got some answers but not a lot of new information. She noticed a woman give Granda a big smile as they got off the bus together.

  ‘Are ye sure ye’ll be all right? How will ye know what time it is?’

  ‘I’ll listen for the cathedral clock.’

  ‘An’ how will ye put in your time?’

  ‘I’ll have a walk and then I might have an ice-cream in Geordie Stevenson’s and then I might watch the cricket, or maybe visit a friend. But I’ll be back for the bus in good time,’ she reassured him.

  Satisfied at last, he said ‘Mind yerself, then,’ crossed the top of Albert Place and pushed open the decorated glass door into the welcoming dimness of The Railway Bar.

  Clare skipped down past the red-brick houses of Albert Place and came to an abrupt halt where Albert Place joined Lonsdale Street. The shelter had gone. Where the flat-roofed, solid, grey shape had stood, surrounded by muddy puddles, there was now a space. Only a pile of broken rubble squashed flat by the steam roller marked the outline of the concrete building which she and Mummy had passed every time they went for a walk up Lisanally Lane with William in the Tansad.

  It had been a very ugly building when it was first built but it had soon been covered with painted slogans, Union Jacks and V-signs, so you could hardly miss it as you came to the corner and turned up between the seven brick houses and the stone wall of The Pavilion grounds before the lane became a proper country lane. And now it had disappeared. Like magic. It seemed so funny without it.

  She walked slowly along the street, smiling at the women who sat knitting in doorways or who had brought chairs outside to catch the sun. She knew some of them to see, but not to talk to.

  Half way along she saw some children who had been in her class at school. They were jumping back and forth over a muddy trickle which flowed under the road in the piece of waste ground between the last of the houses and the Catch-my-Pal Hall.

  ‘What happened to the shelter?’ she asked as she came up to them.

  ‘They knocked it down. It was great. They had a big metal ball on a chain an’ a man in a machine swung it. Bang. An’ the wall just fell down. The dust was somethin’ awful, but when it was all done there was a bonfire. We had a great time. Better than VE Day. Why did ye not come down?’

  ‘I was away,’ she said, hurrying on, because she didn’t want to explain.

  She bought her ice-cream and carried it carefully over to the wall surrounding the Mall, so that she could sit on it and dangle her legs.

  You could still see the marks in the stone where the old railings had been. She remembered the day she and Daddy had watched the men taking the railings down, not all of them, but the ones on the outside. Daddy explained that they could use the metal to build more Spitfires and that would help the war effort.

  ‘Like my collecting paper for school?’

  ‘Yes, just like that. How’s that going?’

  ‘Very well. I’m doing great. Granny Hamilton is clearing out all the boys’ old motorcycle magazines. Every time she comes to town she fills her shopping bag and leaves me some more to take in. I’m a Colonel now and if I get to be a Field-Marshal there’s to be a party in the City Hall and I’ll be asked to go.’

  She licked her ice-cream all round the edge of the cone so that it wouldn’t drip on her dress. It would be awful if she got this one dirty before the other one was washed.

  She thought of the party in the City Hall. They’d played games in teams and had prizes and then they’d had a most wonderful tea with sandwiches in neat triangles and small squares, with little flags sticking out of the top one to say what was in them. There were banana sandwiches which were very nice and small iced buns with tiny silver balls on top.

  Mummy had laughed when she told her about the banana sandwiches and asked whether they could have them for tea. She’d wanted to know what a banana looked like. You couldn’t get bananas any more, Mummy had said, but if you mashed up turnip and had any banana essence left from before the war it did taste a bit like the real thing. She’d been really surprised about the dragées. That’s what the silver balls were. It was amazing anybody had any left by now. You hadn’t been able to get them for ages.

  Daddy had teased her about the bananas, he said bananas were marvellous juicy things about three feet long and Mummy had scolded him and said they’d go and see if they could find a picture of one in the library.

  She pushed the rest of her ice cream down into the cone with her tongue and began to nibble the crisp edge of the cone itself. Then she saw a boy whiz past on a bicycle and suddenly thought of Uncle Harry. He and Daddy took it in turns to do Saturday afternoon in the cycle shop for a lot of people came in from the country then and you couldn’t afford to miss the trade these days.

  She finished the last little bit of her cone, licked her lips thoroughly and decided she’d go and see if Uncle Harry was in his shop. She got off the wall and went down the next lot of steps by the Mall Church so she could walk under the trees. When she came to the White Walk, one of the two paths that runs across the Mall, she was puzzled to see firemen in uniform rolling up hoses and running back and forth.

  She laughed at herself. You could hardly have a fire in the middle of all the grass. Of course, it wasn’t a fire. They were taking down the huge round pond that Mummy had called ‘a static water tank’. It had been there for the war to give the firemen extra water. Where it had been standing there was now a big brown circle in the grass, far too big for a fairy ring, it was more like a hole in a very large, green carpet.

  From the Mall she took the short cut up the back luter that brought her out in Scotch Street almost beside Uncle Harry’s shop. The door was propped open and the minute she walked in, her nose twitched. It always did. As sure as they popped in to say hello to Daddy, she would sneeze and Uncle Harry would say ‘Bless the child’.

  A boy behind the counter was rubbing a rusted wheel with wire wool. He looked up but didn’t stop.

  ‘Is Mr Mitchell in this afternoon?’

  ‘Aye, he’s out the back mending a puncture. D’ye want him?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He propped up the wheel and disappeared through a door entirely covered in coloured pictures of bicycles.

  ‘Well, look who’s here,’ exclaimed Harry Mitchell as he came back into the shop, wiping his hands on a piece of cotton waste. ‘I wondered who wanted to see Mister Mitchell. What happened to yer Uncle Harry?’ he asked, beaming down at her.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d still be my uncle … now I’m an orphan,’ she explained a little awkwardly.

  ‘Ach, surely, surely. I’ll always be your uncle. Now tell me what yer doing here. I thought you were in the big city.’

  Clare explained about her plans to come and look after Granda Scott if Auntie Polly could be persuaded. She told him some of the difficulties Auntie Po
lly had mentioned.

  ‘I can see her point of view,’ said Clare. ‘It would cost Granda a lot to send me to school on the bus and pay for school dinners unless I could take sandwiches. He hasn’t much money, though he works hard. I wondered if I could save up enough for a bicycle. It would be a great help not having bus fares.’

  ‘How much money have you got?’ Harry Mitchell asked, looking at her seriously.

  ‘Well, I had one pound, fifteen and sixpence this morning but I lent it to Granda Scott. There was a horrible woman who used to clean every week and she’s been stealing his money for a long time and he didn’t know. She tried to steal my teddy bear that Uncle Jimmy bought me and Granda told her not to come again.’

  ‘My goodness, that was bad luck on the good man. Did he get the police till her?’

  ‘No, he just told her not to come back. He says she’s desperate poor and has an old mother who never let’s her alone, shouting and complaining at her all the time.’

  Harry Mitchell considered the small figure for some minutes before he spoke again.

  ‘When will you be ten, Clare?’

  ‘October the eighth. It was Mummy and Daddy’s wedding anniversary. They said I was their anniversary present.’

  ‘Well, Clare, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll find a child’s bicycle for you this time. Not a new one, mind, and I’ll do it up for you. And I’ll have it ready for your birthday. And when you grow out of it you can trade it in for a ladies’ size. And the next thing you’ll probably be wantin’ a motorbike,’ he said with a broad grin.

  Clare giggled at the idea of a motorbike.

  ‘But Uncle Harry,’ she protested, ‘one pound fifteen and sixpence isn’t nearly enough for a child’s bicycle. Even a reconditioned one. Daddy said the price of bicycles is something desperate these days.’

  ‘Ah yes, but there is special discounts for young ladies. There’s only one catch,’ he said, pausing for effect.

  ‘What’s that?’