by Anne Doughty
She thought of the way Robert would say to some visitor, parked on the settle by the fire on a winter’s night, ‘Ach, sure you’d wonder where the time goes.’
‘Aye, it seems no time at all since we were trying to set a trap to catch Master McQuillan on his way to school,’ would come the reply.
Sitting quietly in her corner, she’d heard stories enough of Robert’s childhood escapades. She treasured them. From them she’d put together parts of his life that through a mixture of shyness and reticence he never thought to speak of, even when she encouraged him.
The theme of all these conversations with his contemporaries was always the same. Life sweeps you forward and before you’ve really got the measure of it, you find you’re getting old. As she listened on the long, dark evenings, she observed how some of those who sat by the stove were wryly regretful about growing old, others were resigned, while some few were angry and bitter, behaving as if somehow life had cheated them. It often seemed that a single event was the focus of all their discontent. It kept coming into whatever story they told. Always they spoke as if the whole of their life would have been different, so much more to their liking, had the particular event not happened.
‘Sure if I had my time over again, I’d not do …’
Almost like a refrain, the same phrase ran through her winters at the cottage.
Some of the men who sat back on the settle laid the blame on marriage and the demands of rearing a family, some spoke of the lack of opportunity in the countryside, even in the Province itself. There were those like Granny Hamilton had planned to emigrate and changed their minds. There were some who had come back home in the end, but now wished they’d stayed away. There were men who blamed the war for taking away the jobs that were beginning to open up for them when it began and women who said that it was children tied you to a grindstone of hard labour.
From beyond the steps, floating up from the entry, Clare heard the sound of voices and high, forced laughter. It must be almost time. She felt so reluctant to move. It was such a short distance, the path and the entry between where she now sat and the doorway where the school secretary would pin up the results on the old blackboard, but once she travelled that short distance, the world would change for ever, one way or another.
The cathedral clock struck the hour just at that moment. It didn’t take her by surprise. Having no watch, she’d grown so practised at judging time she was seldom wrong. If she was paying attention that was. Only when she felt free to let her mind follow its own paths did time steal away on her unobserved.
As she stood up, collected herself, and began to walk steadily down the path, she remembered that Uncle Jack had promised her a watch if she passed. He insisted he’d been saving up for some time now.
The disorderly mass of girls clustered around the board in front of her suddenly dissolved, as they dived into the building to collect their individual slips of paper. Heart in mouth, she stared at the scatter of F’s in the right hand column. There were quite a few who had failed, and as Jessie herself had guessed, she was one of them. A distinction in Art, which she loved, a credit in Domestic Science, which she was good at, a scraped pass in English; and then the single figure percentages in the subjects she hated or found boring.
Alison Clare Hamilton came just above the crease across the middle of the big sheet of paper. For a moment, Clare wasn’t sure if the black stars beside some of the marks were hers or belonged to the person above. Gradually she made out that they were indeed hers. She had distinctions in six of her ten subjects, good credits in the rest, even in geometry, which she always found difficult. And as if to confirm the obvious, at the end of her row, it said PASS in big letters.
Jessie was right. Only yesterday she’d said; ‘If I had a fiver, I’d bet you’d pass, I’m so sure.’
She stepped down into the back entrance of the left-hand house in which the headmistress had her rooms and made her way along the dim corridor to the staircase that led to the office. The girls ahead of her had dispersed. She heard their footsteps echo on the bare boards of the art room as they followed the one way system across into the other house and down its matching staircase into its maid’s pantry which led out through a tiled lobby into the carriage entrance.
‘Well done, Clare. I knew you’d do well, but you’ve done even better than I expected. How did you manage those wonderful marks in French and German?’
Clare shut the door with a clatter, surprised to hear the familiar voice when what she’d expected was one of the office staff. A slim, dark-haired woman with bright, mobile eyes, held out a brown envelope with her name written on it.
‘I think we might apply for one of the overall prizes on those results,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘I can’t imagine many people doing better than you’ve done. Especially in German. After only two years. There are some very nice, large, book tokens,’ she went on, knowing only too well Clare’s weakness for books and her slender means.
‘I haven’t quite taken it in yet,’ admitted Clare weakly.
‘But you are coming back, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I wanted to come back. But I knew I had to have a scholarship.’
‘Well, you have that now. No doubt about it. And really, on those results, you ought to start thinking about a University Scholarship. If you go on like this, they’d certainly have you at Queen’s,’ she added, as she turned to greet the next girl who had just pushed open the door.
She freewheeled down Asylum Hill, as she always did. As she began bumping fiercely on the rough surface opposite Mill Row, suddenly the penny dropped.
‘I’ve done it,’ she said to the empty road. ‘I really have done it,’ she announced, as she whizzed past Richardson’s gates. She was glad there was no one about, for she knew she was grinning like an idiot and she couldn’t do a thing about it.
‘I must write to Ronnie tonight,’ she declared for the benefit of a large crow that regarded her thoughtfully from the roadside verge and made no attempt to fly off.
It was because of Ronnie she’d managed such good marks in French and German. He might not believe her, but she’d tell him anyway.
She slowed down as the road steepened and passed between the railway bridge and the low mound where Mosey Jackson’s cottage stood hidden among the trees.
A few months after she’d begun at the High School, Granda Scott’s wireless packed up. He’d been very upset about it. The wireless was an important part of his life. He listened to the news first thing every morning and then again at midday. At night, he set his erratic, old alarm clock by the time signal at nine o’clock. They both knew it couldn’t be the battery, for Clare had taken it into Armagh to have it recharged quite recently. And if it wasn’t the battery, it had to be something in the works. That meant getting the wireless itself into town for a repair and there was no knowing how much that might cost.
‘There might be dirt in around the valves, Granda,’ Clare said tentatively.
‘Aye,’ he replied, in a tone which wasn’t so much agreement as a hope that he might receive some further information.
‘If it was, we could clean them with methylated spirit and a feather,’ she went on, watching him closely.
When he was anxious the whites of his eyes always seemed more prominent and she was more conscious of the stoop of his shoulders.
‘Daddy showed me how to do it,’ she went on firmly, ‘but we’d need to bring it onto the table for the light.’
‘Well, sure we could do that,’ he said, sounding relieved.
He lifted the wireless from its dark corner on to the table by the window and then looked at it helplessly.
‘It was yer father got this wireless for me,’ he began. ‘He bought it off some man second-hand an’ did it up. The wood of the case was all scraped an’ he revarnished it. Made a lovely job of it,’ he went on, running his hands over the greasy but undamaged surface. ‘I’m sure he took it to pieces as well.’
‘Oh yes, he did. I rem
ember it now. There’s four wee screws so you can take the whole back off.’
‘Well …’
Poor dear Granda, Clare thought as she pedalled on. He was always so afraid of things being broken, for he had never succeeded in fixing anything very much himself. However skilled he was in the forge, he was no use at all at mending even the simplest household object. Over their years together she had seen him try but in the end she had to agree with what her mother had said long ago and admit that he had no hands.
Clare had cleaned the inside of the wireless exactly the way she’d seen her father clean Ronnie’s. Robert watched anxiously. When she switched on and produced a blast of sound much louder than she’d expected, he’d shaken his head and laughed.
‘Sure you’ve great hands, Clarey. You can put them to anythin’ takes your fancy,’ he said, beaming with delight.
They moved the wireless from its old place on his table by the stove and put it on top of the floor-standing gramophone, which had finally given up the ghost. Away from the stove, it wouldn’t get so dirty. And it was much easier to see the numbers on the dial.
Some days later, alone in the cottage, Clare turned the knobs, found dance music, classical music and a babble of foreign languages. She remembered her evenings with Ronnie in Belfast and the fun they’d had trying to pick up foreign stations. On this set, she found Paris was amazingly easy.
From then on, when she was alone, or in the evenings when Robert dozed by the fire or read his paper, she would tune in to whatever French or German station she could best pick up. News broadcasts she particularly liked, for after a little while she was able to work out what was going on. She made a game of picking up new words and searching for them in her dictionary. Often, she’d get distracted and end up making a lovely collection of new words, but forget the one she’d set out to find in the first place.
Robert was curious. No longer anxious she’d break the precious wireless by twiddling the knobs, he wanted to know what she was listening to. Sometimes, she’d turn the volume right up so that he could hear for himself. He would sit, his best ear cocked toward the set as if he were taking in every word.
‘D’ye mean to say ye know what them people are sayin’ to each other?’ he asked in amazement.
‘Not all the time,’ she replied, laughing. ‘But you get used to words if you keep on hearing them. The French are having awful trouble with their government. I hear about that so often, I can nearly always follow it.’
‘Aye, I’ve heard tell o’ that. But you’re hearin’ it from the French themselves, aren’t ye?’
When she had the chance to join the German class, a year later, Clare jumped at it, her ear already familiar with the sound and pattern of the language, even if she knew only the call signals of a few stations, the names of the broadcasting orchestras and a handful of words.
‘Well, what’s the news?’ Robert asked, putting down his hammer and leaning against the anvil as she reached the door of the forge.
By the smile on his face, she was sure he’d guessed.
‘I passed.’
‘Aye, ah know. An’ came out up at the top of yer class forby?’
‘Who told you that?’ she asked in amazement, as she sat down on the bench inside the door.
‘I heerd it on the wireless.’
She laughed in pure delight. She could see he was as pleased as punch.
‘Missus Rowentree phoned the school to see about Jessie an’ she knows that teacher ye talk about, so she asked how you’d done an’ got all the details. She says yer language teacher is powerful pleased.’
‘Did she come down to see you?’
‘Aye, she came to leave a message to say thank you for helpin’ Jessie out last night. She says she’s a differen’ wee girl the day. But she’s askin’ if you’ll sit with her at the funeral on Tuesday.’
‘With Jessie?’
‘Aye. An’ why not? Sure the pair of you might be sisters for all yer that different.’
‘Jessie didn’t get her exam, Granda,’ said Clare sadly.
‘No, she diden. An’ the mother’s not one bit put out. She says Jessie is no hand at the books, but it did her no harm to have her four years at the High.’
‘How was Mrs Rowentree? I hardly got speaking to her last night.’
He considered for a moment. She saw him make up his mind to speak and turn to look her straight in the face.
‘She was rightly considerin’. She said Jack had an awful fear of illness, an’ that his own mother died in agony with cancer. If he had to go it was better for him. She’d been in a bad way over Jessie findin’ him, but she’s over that now. Missus Taylor is staying with her an’ is a great help to her, she says.’
‘Mrs Taylor has been very kind to me too, Granda. If it hadn’t been for her encouraging me I’d not have got the Qualifying.’
‘Aye, an’ now I heer ye can think of the university,’ he said, looking pleased again.
‘I doubt if we could afford that, Granda, even with a scholarship,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘Not at all. Sure we’ll get what’ll do us. Haven’t we managed fine since ye came with yer Auntie Polly and Uncle Jack and yer wee bag o’ clothes an’ the teddy-bear? We’ll manage fine,’ he said with surprising firmness.
He moved across to the bellows and leant gently on the long, smooth handle. The fire on the raised hearth had dropped so low that only a fine thread of pale smoke showed it was still alight. He pressed again and the embers glowed briefly. She watched as his arm rested on the shaft. The gentle pressure increased, the glow strengthened. In a few moments, the fire would be ready to work again.
‘Did you have any other callers?’
‘I did indeed. Sure I’ve two bits of news for you,’ he laughed, pushing his cap back and scratching his forehead. ‘Eddie Robinson was here and had great news. The we’ean arrived at breakfast time. It’s a wee girl and ye’d think Eddie had won the Irish Sweepstake, he’s that pleased.’
Clare clapped her hands together.
‘Oh that’s great. Just great. Margaret was afraid it’d be another boy and her with three already. She says three was quite enough, but Eddie was mad for a wee girl.’
‘Well, he’s got his wee girl an’ Margaret’s fine. She’s expecting you after dinner as usual.’
‘It’s all good news today, isn’t it, after such bad news yesterday,’ she said slowly, as she got to her feet.
‘That’s always the way. It’s always a mix. Never all bad, but never all good,’ he said as the fire broke into an orange and gold cavern ready to take the half-finished decoration for the top of a garden gate.
‘If I’m going to Margaret as usual I must get the potatoes on.’
‘D’ye not want the other message I was bid give ye?’
‘What other message?’
‘The one from the young man on the chestnut mare?’
She giggled.
‘D’ye think I’m jokin’?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ he said with a grin. ‘A nice young man, well-spoken. Knew yer name an’ that I was yer Granda. D’ye not mind him?’
Clare was baffled. Apart from Jessie’s older brother John, and Eric, the youngest of the Robinson brothers who was about her own age, there were no young men in Clare’s life. There were certainly no young men with chestnut mares.
‘He came to ask if you got home all right. He said you had a wee bit of a problem with your bicycle.’
‘Oh … Andrew Richardson,’ she gasped, as light dawned. ‘Some boys from the Mill Row let our tyres down when we left our bikes up against the wall by the Richardson’s gate and he pumped them up again.’
‘Aye,’ said Robert, as he pressed the iron bar into the heart of the fire. ‘Well, it’s good for business. He said he was for England in a day or two, but when he was next back he’d bring the mare for her new shoes.’
He looked at her sideways and smiled to himself.
‘To te
ll you the truth, I don’t think it was shoes for the mare he was after atall. But we’ll see. We’ll see,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Give us a shout when the dinner’s ready.’
Clare wheeled her bicycle up to the house. As she parked it under the gable, she wondered whether or not, given the dimness of the forge, Robert had managed to see that she was blushing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The autumn of 1951 was wet in Ulster. Morning after morning, Clare cycled to school in pouring rain. Day after day, the return journey in the late afternoon was just as bad. But often, during the hours between, the clouds opened. From great patches of blue sky, the sun poured down with enough warmth to dry the leaf-strewn paths across the Mall. The golden radiance flickered through the lightly-clad branches where the surviving leaves, bronze and gold, fluttered and fell. They caught in the uncut grass that edged the saturated rugby and hockey pitches, grass so lank with growth and so sodden with the regular downpours that it seldom dried out at all.
In these golden intermissions, when strong shadows fell on the worn paintwork and dusty mouldings of whichever classroom she found herself in, Clare would gaze out through the rain-spattered windows, restless and strangely discontent. She felt such weariness upon her. She longed to be free to sit in the sun or cycle down the quiet lanes with nothing to do but please herself.
At moments in the school day, as she changed into hockey boots, or collected her books before walking up the hill to the science laboratory, or ran her finger along the shelf of foreign language literature in the tiny library, she found herself trying to imagine life beyond the present. Would there ever be a time without the endless cleaning, the collecting of rations, the preparing of food, the mending of clothes? Would a day come when she didn’t have to puzzle and calculate how to make the little she and Robert could produce between them stretch to meet their very modest needs?
