by Anne Doughty
‘Sure is it any wonder that blacksmiths are being put out of work,’ Charlie began, one evening. ‘In 1939, there were over 75,000 horses in Northern Ireland and only 858 tractors. By 1948, the horses were down below 60,000 an’ the tractors was up till 11,222. An’ if I’m not mistaken in the last four years since I studied the figures, the trends have continued. Numbers of tractors and vehicles have continued to rise, the horses are disappearing from the workplace. They’ll only survive where there’s money to keep them for pleasure.’
‘An’ what about the auld blacksmiths, Charlie? What’ll ye do wi’ them?’ asked Robert.
‘Ah tell ye what I’ll do, Robert, if this young lady here will give me permission,’ he said, turning to Clare with a very serious face. ‘I’ll call roun’ for you tomorra night about seven an’ take you over to Loughgall for a couple o’ pints of Guinness. They do say that older equipment benefits from extra lubrication.’
Charlie had just bought a little car with the money from a legacy Kate had put away for him. It gave Robert the first outings he’d had for years and something to look forward to as the weather got colder and damper and the dark evenings longer and longer. However much he complained to Clare about Charlie’s political views and his way of ‘talking as if he’d swallowed the dictionary’, he always acknowledged how generous and good-hearted Charlie was. More than once, she saw the look of disappointment on his face when the kitchen door opened in the early evening and the visitor wasn’t Charlie.
She enjoyed the regular, quiet evenings when the two of them went off together. She was able to spread her work out on the table under the window in the soft, yellowey light of the Tilley lamp, the comforting glow from the stove all around her and revel in the pleasure of having space and warmth. Usually, as winter came on she had to do her homework sitting up in bed, fully dressed, a board across her knees, a rug around her shoulders in the unheated room, the older Tilley lamp perched precariously on the washstand, which sloped away from the wall at the same angle as the slope of the floor itself. Often, by nine-thirty, when she emerged to make a cup of tea for whoever had called, her hands were so cold she could barely take the lid from the teapot without dropping it.
She studied hard all through the long autumn term. As the weather got worse, Saturday night visits to the Ritz became few and far between and she saw Jessie only on Sundays, when they rode into Armagh to go to church, a ritual Robert and Mrs Rowentree always insisted on.
‘Have ye heard from yer man yet?’ demanded Jessie afterwards, as they propped their bicycles outside the paper shop and got out their purses.
‘Which one?’ Clare replied unthinkingly.
‘Woud ye listen to it,’ Jessie cried, raising her eyebrows and staring into the heavens. ‘“Which one?”’, she mimicked. ‘How many boyfriends d’ye have these days?’
Clare laughed.
‘Come on, Jessie,’ she said, still grinning. ‘Even you can’t make a boyfriend out of a cousin in Liverpool and boy I met once who’s sent me two postcards in three months.’
‘Well, it’s better than nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t call the Ritz in Belfast and a meal afterwards “nothing”,’ Clare retorted promptly. ‘Especially not when repeated at regular intervals,’ she added slyly.
Jessie blushed and tossed her hair.
‘There’s nothin’ in it, I told you. He’s just at a bit of a loose end, that’s all. He hasn’t been long in the Belfast shop and he’s lonely.’
‘And who’s been getting all their art materials at way below cost and their framing done for nothing?’ Clare added, as they went into the small, front-parlour shop where the Sunday papers were laid out beside racks of wrapped bread, packets of bacon and sausages and trays of eggs from the hen run out at the back.
‘Bet ye a fiver ye end up with yer man Andrew,’ pronounced Jessie, as they put their newspapers into their carrier bags and struggled into plastic raincoats ahead of the heavy shower gathering itself over the cathedral.
‘And if I had it, I’d bet you a fiver on your man Harry. As it is, I’ll make it a prediction. Can I be your bridesmaid?’ asked Clare, as they pedalled out of the shelter of the houses and into the rain.
When they parted at the pump opposite Charlie’s, Clare made sure to look up at the house and wave, but Charlie must have been out at the back with the chickens or the goats.
She watched Jessie disappear at speed towards Tullyard and began pedalling slowly homewards herself. The rain cleared as quickly as it came. The sky opened and through great rents of blue the sun poured down on the wet countryside. In the hedgerows, the few remaining leaves, tattered fragments of russet and gold, each carried a shimmering raindrop on its sodden, downturned point.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Clare was overwhelmed with sadness. Jessie would marry Harry. She was quite sure of it. It might be a year, or two years, or even more, but it would happen. It was perfectly clear Harry had fallen for Jessie. He’d taken one look at her bright face, listened to what she’d said about paintings she’d never before laid eyes on and started to teach her about colour and brush technique. Already, she was producing saleable work of her own and his genuine delight in her success could mean only one thing. Everything she’d told her about him spoke of his interest and commitment. Her disparaging comments were only caution. She couldn’t yet believe her good fortune, because Harry was not only tall and good-looking, he was heir to a family art and antique business well-known throughout Ulster.
Term ended so close to Christmas Clare had to work very hard indeed to get everything ready for the annual visits of her uncles, Bob and Johnny. Apart from writing all the letters and cards to the family in Canada, a job she had taken over from Robert many years ago, there was the extra cleaning she felt necessary when the aunts were due to appear, their cautious glances preceding any descent into a chair or onto the settle by the stove.
With no long-learnt skills in the area of housework, Robert knew he was not much help. As if to make up for this, he regularly exhausted himself clearing up small jobs in the forge or at the front of the house. Just before Christmas itself, after a long afternoon’s work outdoors Robert decided on a lie down before his tea. Charlie called unexpectedly to deliver a crate of stout and one of mineral water, his contribution to their Christmas festivities and she was left to entertain him alone.
‘God bless all here. Erin go brach,’ he roared as he came round the door.
‘Shh.’
Clare put her finger to her lips and saw an anxious look wipe away the grin on Charlie’s face.
‘Is he poorly?’
Clare shook her head. ‘He’s tired himself out clearing up in the forge because he’s excited about Christmas. Will you drink a cup of tea? He’ll probably be up before you’ve it finished.’
‘A cup of tea woud go down well, Clarey. Oh, it’s bitter out there this afternoon.’
The kettle was already boiling and the teapot warm in the rack over the stove. A few minutes later, she poured for them both. Charlie curled his fingers contentedly round the large delph cup.
‘Charlie, what does “Erin go brach” mean? I went to look it up but there’s no Irish dictionary in school.’
‘No, there wouldn’t be, more’s the pity. Why would a good Protestant school give house room to the language that was driven to the bogs and the mountains?’ he asked bitterly. ‘I wonder how many of yer good, loyal Ulstermen realise that the Gaelic is on their lips day in and day out. If you told them that they wouldn’t thank you.’
‘How do you mean, Charlie?’
‘Tullyard and Drumsollen, Lisanally and Mulladry, Kilmore and Mullnasilla,’ he replied quietly. ‘All places you know, Clarey. But do you know what they mean? And if I drove you and Robert a few miles north of Granda and Granny at Liskeyborough and showed you Derryloughan, Derryvore, Derrykinlough, Derrytrasna and Derrycarvan would you be able to tell me what particular tree dominated the woodland that once covered that whole area down by Lough
Neagh?’
Clare’s eyes widened as Charlie warmed to his task.
‘Clarey, what does Robert call that wooden object that keeps out the worst of the draught these cold nights?’
‘You mean the kitchen door?’ she asked, baffled by his question.
‘Now think again, Clarey. I asked you what Robert calls it.’
She grinned broadly as she caught his meaning.
‘You know very well, Charlie. He always says “Shut the do-er”.’
‘Aye indeed. Do-er. And sure what is “do-er” but one pronunciation of the Irish for oak. And isn’t that what doors would be made of? And isn’t that why all those wee townlands up by Lough Neagh are all Derry this or Derry that. If ye have a knowledge of the Irish you can take out a map and read the shape of the land, its nature and condition, its history. Ach, a whole world of knowledge is there in the names that were put on the land in the Irish.’
‘Do you speak Irish then?’
‘I do, I do indeed. And it is not that long ago when there was plenty of Irish spoken in this part of Armagh and not just the Catholic servants in the big houses. And at the same time County Down was full of Scots who brought the Gaelic with them from Scotland and kept it up even when they mastered the English as well. There were Englishmen too who had respect for what they found here. Have ye ever heard of Brownlow?’
She shook her head.
‘Great man was Brownlow. An Englishman from the Midlands, a small fault in a good man, as the saying is. Got a grant of land around Portadown, learnt Irish himself and saw to it that all his workpeople could speak it whether they were Catholic or not,’ he began, pausing to drink deeply from his tea cup.
Clare watched him twist the cup in his fingers as he stared into the fire, his whole manner more quietly thoughtful than usual.
‘That’s why my father and mother who worked for him, never let their Gaelic drop. They were Scots and good Presbyterians forby and I admit there are differences between the Gaelic and the Irish spoken in Ulster. But it’s no great thing to get over. They taught me Irish from when I was a child. Ye see the world differently if ye can see it through another’s language,’ he added slowly. ‘But ye know that yerself, don’t ye, Clarey, with yer French and German?’
‘Now that you mention it, yes, I do. But I hadn’t thought of it before,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose that explains why people are so sad when a language dies away. So much goes with it.’
‘Aye, a whole world of living and learning by experience. Sure what’s stories and poems but the distillation of what one has picked up on the way through life?’ he ended sadly.
‘Are ye rightly, sir?’ he said turning away and hailing Robert in his usual voice. ‘I hear you were havin’ a rest.’
‘I was,’ said Robert, yawning hugely. ‘But I’m glad to see ye. Stay an’ eat a bite of tea.’
Clare smiled to herself as she went to the cupboard to see what they had. It wasn’t a lot, but that wouldn’t bother Charlie. And more to the point, it wouldn’t trouble Robert either. To Clare’s surprise, Robert never tried to keep up any appearances with Charlie.
As she laid the table, she thought over what Charlie had said about Irish and how important the language was to him. There was something strange there, as there was about his relationship with Robert. One way and another there were a whole lot of things she’d like to know about Charlie. Perhaps the best time to ask would be when Robert came back from one of their outings. Sometimes after a few pints of Guinness he was more forthcoming than usual.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
January was never Clare’s favourite month. She hated the wild, windy weather that always began just as school started again after the Christmas holidays. On the more exposed parts of the road she sometimes had to get off her bicycle and walk until she reached the shelter of trees or the angle of the road changed, so she wasn’t pedalling straight into the eye of the wind. There were sudden sleety showers that stung her face and made the road slushy and dangerous until it melted properly. Whenever the morning bus or an occasional car overtook her, she was sure to get her shoes and stockings soaked with spray.
In fact, everything she did was more difficult in January. It was still dark when she got up in the morning, the candle flickered in the icy draughts under her bedroom door, the lino was as cold as stone if her warm feet missed the thin, rag rug. Although she kept her underclothes in bed with her, there was nothing to be done about her blouse and tunic. They hung on the back of the door and she shivered as she pulled them on. Often she wore an old jacket over them as she cooked breakfast on the smoking stove, her fingers numb from washing in cold water, the big kitchen only a little less chill than her own icy bedroom.
The wind roared in the chimney pots and sent smoke and soot billowing down around her. Depending on its direction, the wind would blow the fire in the stove so that it glowed orange and burnt itself out while Robert was in the forge, or made it sulk and smoke so much the potatoes took twice the time to boil, the oven was slow and the water in the stove’s tank was only tepid when she had grimy shirts to wash.
Day after day she struggled back from Armagh and hung her school Burberry to dry on the back of the kitchen door. Despite the plastic pixie hood tied over her beret, her hair was always wet. She got soaked so often, it amazed her she so seldom caught a cold. But that was something to be grateful for. What on earth would she do if she wasn’t fit to go to school and couldn’t do their shopping afterwards?
She tried to save Robert the journey into town in the worst of the weather because she was so worried about him. Every time he coughed she felt herself wince. Even in summer he’d had a cough, as long as she had known him, but in January it was always worse. She could hardly bear to look at him when he coughed, his cheeks hollowed as he struggled for air. His whole body shook as he fumbled for his handkerchief to clear his mouth. She tried to persuade him to go and see the doctor but he only shook his head.
‘Ach sure there’s no point childear. Alfie Lindsay’s a gran’ doctor. If ye break an arm, or need the hospital, he’ll have ye seen to as quick as wink, but he’ll tell ye straight what he can’t mend an’ he told me years ago there’s no cure for this cough. It’s Miner’s disease, he says. It has some other fancy name I can never mind, but it means the same. It’s the coal dust in the lungs. There’s no cure for it.’
‘But he might have something to ease it,’ she protested.
‘Well …’
That was encouragement enough. She made up her mind and went to the surgery the next day after school.
The moment she sat down in Dr Lindsay’s room with its big old-fashioned desk and its bright lights over the work surfaces, she was glad she’d come. Dr Lindsay listened to her carefully. He said a balsam would break up the mucus and make the cough less racking and he’d a tonic he was sure would improve Robert’s appetite. He asked her if they had any whiskey in the house from Christmas and when she said they had, he told her how to make a hot toddy with sugar and lemon and a bit of spice.
‘It may not improve his chest,’ he said, laughing, as he took the bottles from his store cupboard, ‘but if it makes him feel better he may get a good night’s sleep.
‘Now is there anything else you need? I can put it all on the one prescription so it’ll still only cost you a shilling. Thanks be to the National Health. What about some Disprin for headaches? Maybe you might need a couple yourself at certain times of the month.’
She nodded and smiled, touched by his thoughtfulness. She hadn’t seen Dr Lindsay since she was a little girl, but he’d changed very little. He had always smiled at her and made little jokes.
‘I don’t know what we’ll do if ever Dr Lindsay retires, Clare,’ her mother said one day, when they’d been to the dispensary to have Clare measured and weighed. ‘He’s always so kind.’
Suddenly, Clare saw herself walking down Russell Street with her mother pushing William in his pram. Ahead of them, the bright sun reflected from the marble
slabs of White Walk, the path that ran between the cricket pitch and the huge circular pond put there for the firemen to use if the German planes came and dropped their bombs.
‘Are we going past the status water tank, Mummy?’
‘No love, not today. We’ve to go and get orange juice and Robeline at the dispensary.’
‘Why is it called a status water tank?’
‘It’s not status, Clare, its static. Say “static”.’
‘Static.’
She’d repeated the word carefully. Her mother went on to explain that ‘static’ meant ‘standing still’, ‘staying in the one place’. Something static was something that didn’t move. She always explained new words to her like this. She loved having new words to remember.
‘Wouldn’t it be funny, Mummy, if it got up and walked away?’
Her mother laughed and said yes it would be very funny, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. Because it might be needed where it was. They crossed the road and walked along under the shade of the trees, until they were opposite the red-brick house where Dr Lindsay used to work before he had his new house and surgery on the other side of the Mall.
That lovely summer’s day must have been before she went to school. So long ago. Her mother took the two of them out every afternoon, William so small he slept in his pram most of the time. Sometimes there was shopping to do, but often they went for long walks. That was when her mother told her the names of all the different trees and flowers they met by the roadside or leaning over the garden hedges. She learnt the names of the places where they walked, Lisanally Lane, Mullinure, Drummond, Drumadd. She often said them over to herself, or made them into a song when she was playing by herself.
