On a Clear Day (The Hamiltons Series)

by Anne Doughty

  ‘But it worked?’

  ‘Yes, it did,’ she said, as they reached the top of the hill and flopped down, breathless, among the tall stems of buttercup, bright with green seed heads.

  ‘Did he bring you here?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Poor dear Granda couldn’t take me anywhere because of his bad leg. But my other grandparents live just down the road. The curve of the hill hides their farm, but it’s not far. My Uncle Jack took Granda and I over to tea one Sunday and I came up here with a collection of aunts and uncles. I couldn’t work out who was who that day. There were ten in my father’s family.’

  ‘And your mother’s?’

  ‘Six. Aunt Mary doesn’t keep in touch. She’s in Michigan. Florence is in London, Bob’s in Antrim, Johnny’s in Fermanagh and Auntie Polly’s in Toronto now.’

  They stood up and began to view the wide expanse of countryside laid out before them.

  ‘I envy you, Clare,’ he said suddenly, throwing his head back and staring up at the bright white clouds streaming across the blue sky from the west. ‘You have your whole world spread out around you.’

  He waved a hand at the western horizon where the tower and spires of Armagh’s two cathedrals rose above the roofs and trees of the city. Then he turned round and gazed over the low hills to the east, their slopes dotted with apple orchards and farms, their small fields a patchwork of ploughed earth, tramped stubble and vivid, green pasture.

  ‘But Andrew, look at all you’ve done, all you’ve seen,’ she protested. ‘My world is like a teacup compared with yours. You’ve travelled abroad, you’ve lived in France, you’ve been all over England. You’ve been to Scotland. I’ve never been further from home than Belfast. I’ve never been in any counties other than Armagh and Down, while you’ve been to Dublin, stayed in Cavan and goodness knows how many other places in Ireland.’

  He smiled sheepishly as they sat down again in a patch of sunshine. They watched in silence as the bright white clouds cast their shadows across the patterned landscape. Clare looked at him cautiously. A hint of a smile still lingered on his lips, but his eyes were travelling hungrily round the small farms at the foot of the hill as if he were searching for something.

  ‘Don’t you want to go back?’ she asked.

  To her great surprise, he turned towards her, leant forward and kissed her. She made no effort to move away.

  ‘I’d rather stay here with you,’ he admitted. He put his arms round her and kissed her again. And again. As she responded something said to her that whatever this was, it wasn’t snogging.

  They sat very close together in the sunshine, their arms around each other. He told her he’d always loved Drumsollen and the countryside around it. All through his time at prep school he longed to go home, but his visits were always cut short. He’d hardly arrived when he’d be sent on to someone else. Some years, there was no visit at all, though his grandfather always wrote to him and was welcoming.

  ‘I’ve never really been able to understand why my grandmother so dislikes me, but I know she can’t stand the sight of me. If it weren’t for Grandfather I’d never set eyes on the place,’ he said sadly.

  For a moment, he fell silent, such a desolate look on his face she almost gasped.

  ‘Clare, you will you go on writing, won’t you?’ he burst out, a note almost of desperation in his voice.

  She pressed herself gently against him and squeezed his hand.

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll write, Andrew. Of course, I will,’ she said quietly. ‘On one condition, though.’

  He looked so crestfallen as she said it she put her hand to his cheek and kissed him gently.

  ‘Don’t look so alarmed. It’s not so difficult. I only want to know why you don’t like writing letters.’

  Clare looked at him as she waited for him to reply. The sunlight dappled his pale skin and pulled out hints of red in his fair hair. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck and a pair of grey flannels, just like any of the senior boarders from the Royal School who walked out the Portadown Road on a Sunday afternoon. Yet he seemed older by far than the two years separating him from the few boys she’d met through Debating Society. More poised, more relaxed.

  ‘Maybe I haven’t a problem anymore,’ he said slowly. ‘I did manage a page last time. And it was blue,’ he said, solemnly.

  He looked so bleak she couldn’t bear to ask him why the colour of the paper was so important.

  ‘I arrived at prep school on a Thursday,’ he continued, with a rush. ‘My parents were killed that night. I spent Friday in the San. With Matron. She was nice, played tiddlywinks with me. But she wasn’t there on Saturday and Sunday, so I had to go back to school routine, sport and prep and that sort of thing,’ he said flatly. ‘On the Sunday we went to the prep hall after lunch and they handed out these sheets of blue paper, so we could write to our parents. I just sat and looked at the paper. I couldn’t speak. I suppose I was afraid I might cry. Not done you know. I nearly got a detention when the master on duty wanted to know why I wasn’t getting on with it. And then some boy said: ‘Sir, Richardson’s mater and pater were killed in an air-raid in London.’

  He turned to her and smiled unexpectedly. ‘Isn’t it silly, after all this time?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It was a terrible thing to happen. That master should have been sacked. Or someone should. It was unforgivable if he knew, and if he didn’t, it was unforgivable for no one to have told him,’ she said angrily. ‘And you were only seven.’

  Suddenly she remembered the school in Belfast. All those rowdy, unknown children, the young man who waved his arms around and scolded them, the echoing yard full of the noise of traffic and her own tears over which she had no control whatever.

  ‘I was luckier,’ she said quickly. ‘I had Auntie Polly and Uncle Jimmy. But I ended up bottom of my class at school later that year, because I hadn’t my mother to help me learn my spellings.’

  He drew her even closer and she laid her head on his shoulder.

  ‘I hate to tell you, Andrew, but it’s time you were getting back.’

  ‘Oh Lord, so it is,’ he said, drawing her to her feet.

  ‘Why don’t you try writing to me on sheets of exercise book?’ she said as they hurried back down the slope, ‘or wrapping paper?’ she added as she climbed over the chained up gate.

  ‘Or toilet paper?’ he suggested.

  ‘Bit thin,’ she said. They both laughed.

  There was no one about in the narrow lane, so he took her in his arms again. She drew away reluctantly, suddenly aware of time passing. Kissing Andrew was the easiest thing in the world.

  ‘I’ll get back next summer, somehow or other, Clare. Don’t go marrying anyone in the meantime, will you?’ he said awkwardly, as they pulled in at the foot of her lane.

  ‘I’ll be far too busy,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m going to try for a scholarship.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, looking relieved. ‘You’ll get it. I know you will. We’ll celebrate together when I come,’ he said firmly.

  He looked around hastily. There wasn’t a soul anywhere to be seen. He leant over and kissed her.

  ‘I’ll write to you as soon as I get back,’ he promised, as he pushed off and freewheeled down the hill, one arm raised high in the air, waving to her until he knew he was out of sight.

  Andrew was as good as his word. He wrote regularly and at length through the months that followed. She’d draw out brightly coloured paper decorated with smiling faces or stick figures, laugh, and think longingly back to that one happy afternoon on Cannon Hill. At other times, she was just so glad to hear from him she hardly noticed the paper or decorations.

  To her surprise, the months seemed to move at twice the speed she’d expected. With little to look forward to other than the routine of school work and housework, Saturdays at Drumsollen and occasional visits to the Ritz with Jessie, she could hardly believe Christmas was long past and February’s mock exams already on top of h
er.

  She confessed to Andrew that she was afraid she’d never find time for all the work she felt she had to do. Writing back, he did his best to reassure her she’d probably done far more already than she realised. He even tried to warn her of the danger of overdoing it, but only the mock results made much difference. They left her little doubt that all would be well. Only then did she realise how anxious she’d been.

  One March evening Robert and Charlie went over to Loughgall. She managed to finish her homework early and sat down and wrote him a long letter.

  I really have been a pain, Andrew, as Jessie would say. I know I’ve talked about nothing but my own concerns in my letters for weeks now. I am sorry. The trouble is, the more I do, the more there seems to be and once I make up my mind about something I can be awfully stubborn. Or you could say determined, if you wanted to be more charitable.

  I know now you were right. I was overdoing it. Even Granda, who’s all for me getting a scholarship has been hinting I should maybe have a night out. He keeps asking me when Jessie will be home. Once or twice he’s even asked about ‘the young man on the chestnut mare’.

  However, I promise I shall now try to be more entertaining. But I do have a problem. I lead such a quiet life in my ‘teacup’ that often I think I’ve nothing to write about. ‘One of Charlie Running’s goats got out and chewed the straw jacket on the pump that keeps it from freezing. A fox got away with two of Margaret’s chickens. The daffodils at the back of the house are up, but not down.’ What stirring stuff compared with your adventures, visiting your great-aunt in Norfolk or going with your uncle to the Meredith’s shooting party.

  She paused, tapping the end of her fountain pen against her cheek, thinking of the enormous difference between their worlds. A few weeks ago he’d used notepaper from a top London hotel she’d often read about. He said he thought it would make a change from lined A4, so he’d asked his cousin to pinch some for him. She’d been there with his aunt looking the place over to see if she’d like it for her ‘coming out’ dance!

  Clare stared at the window on the orchard side of the house. It reflected back her own image in the lamplight as she sat imagining Caroline’s debut. Andrew would go, of course, and dance with all the beautifully dressed girls who had just been presented at court and were also ‘coming out’. He would tell her about it, no doubt. He always told her what he was doing, where he’d been and how much he’d like to have her there. And she knew he meant every word of it. It was very strange, very strange indeed.

  Only one thing was missing from his letters. In none of them did he say anything about his own work. When she asked him directly he admitted that he found Law studies boring, but he saw no immediate alternative. He’d do what was necessary, however, and get the relevant piece of paper. It would be his passport to a job in Belfast. He hoped his Grandfather would use his contacts to find him a place to do his articles.

  What he said made perfectly good sense to Clare. She couldn’t have spent her favourite month of the year shut up in the boys’ room for these last three years without having grasped that, often, you have to do what you don’t want to do, for the sake of the future.

  She sat for a long time looking at what she had written, thinking of him, remembering the comfort of his arms and the touch of his lips. Jessie always referred to him as ‘yer man, Andrew’ never as ‘your boyfriend’. That was strange too, given how anxious Jessie was to ‘get her fixed up’. Yet she knew it was no accident. Jessie was shrewd, and ‘boyfriend’ was definitely not the right word. She wasn’t sure she wanted ‘a boyfriend’, but she certainly wanted Andrew. She wanted his warm affection and his openness, his way of encouraging her and keeping her spirits up. ‘Boyfriends’ were passing features of the landscape. Andrew was something quite different.

  ‘How do I see him?’ she asked herself, in the quiet of the empty room, where only the tick of two clocks and the hiss of the Tilley lamp broke the quiet of the evening.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, aware of the ambiguity of her question. ‘I really mustn’t think about seeing him at all. It will be ages yet. He can’t possibly come before the middle of August and that’s on the other side of the examinations. And the results. An eternity away.’

  The results came out the first week in August and she cycled in to collect them. As she stood staring at the thin strip of paper in the spacious entrance hall of the new school building tears streamed down her face. She’d done even better than she’d dared hope, her average marks far higher than the figure which would give her a County Scholarship.

  Hastily, she made her way to the cloakroom, shut herself in one of the lavatories and sat there sobbing till the tears finally stopped.

  ‘What a way to celebrate,’ she said to herself, as she washed her face in one of the spotless new hand basins and dried it on an immaculate roller towel.

  She stepped out into the echoing corridor and walked slowly back to the entrance hall. All was quiet. Light poured down onto the wide, shallow stairs from the tall, staircase window. Through the wired glass doors of the assembly hall she saw the sunshine spill across the polished floor, obliterating the line markings for netball and badminton. Apart from the school secretary in her office upstairs, she hadn’t seen a soul. The handful of other girls who’d done A-level with her were away on holiday. Or had a phone to ring the secretary.

  She lingered for a moment longer, so aware that when next she stood in this place, she would be collecting her prizes, one of the very few girls not wearing uniform to walk across the platform. She would be eighteen, a student, her school days over.

  Feeling strangely sad and lonely, she collected her bicycle from the back of the building and was just about to ride down the driveway when she saw a tall, blue-clad figure waving to her. It was the school caretaker, the man who had once come looking for Clare Hamilton in her primary school, half her lifetime ago.

  ‘Hello, Mr Stinson, how are you?’ she asked, stopping beside him as he hurried over from his house to meet her.

  ‘Gran’. It’s very quiet wi’out all you wee lassies in the holidays.’

  ‘Less hard work I should think,’ she said, smiling at him.

  ‘Been up to see Elizabeth?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘Good news,’ she said. ‘I’m for Queens.’

  ‘Ach, good girl yerself. I said to the wife this mornin’ ye’d be in till see how ye did. Ah, she’ll be that pleased when I tell her. Congratulations. Ye’ve done well. Lass time I saw yer Granda in town he was full of it. Is he well?’

  ‘Yes, he’s in great form. He loves the warm weather.’

  ‘Aye, we don’t get a lot of it, but it’s been nice so far this summer. Tell him I was askin’ for him. I’ll look out fer ye on Speech Day,’ he said, raising a hand, as she set off down the avenue between the newly-planted rose beds.

  ‘Did ye get it, Clare. Did ye get it?’

  As she got off her bicycle at the foot of the lane, the eldest of the Robinson children bore down on her.

  ‘Yes, Charlie, I did.’

  Without another word, the little boy turned and raced back up the lane.

  ‘She got it,’ he shouted, without pausing, as he passed the door of the forge and flew round its far gable on the well-tramped grass path to the farm.

  The hammering stopped. Before she’d parked her bicycle against the wall, Charlie Running had rushed out and grabbed her hand.

  ‘Congratulations, Clare, this is just great.’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie,’ she said, as she looked up and saw Robert, his hammer still in his hand.

  ‘Diden I tell ye ye’d get it?’ he said, quietly. ‘Yer mother an’ father woud be proud o’ you. An’ so am I,’ he said, nodding vigorously. ‘Come on, Charlie, come up t’ the house. As you woud say, we’ve no champagne so we may make do wi’ a drop o’ tea.’

  He turned quickly, letting the hammer drop on the bench by the door, before he limped off. She was sure there were tears in his eyes.

  But
a moment later, they were all smiling again. As they reached the front door, a small figure shot up the shortcut from the farm, a plate gripped firmly in his two hands.

  ‘Here y’ar,’ he said, thrusting the plate with its freshly-iced cake into Clare’s hands. ‘Ma says “Well done, ye deserve it.” Coud I have a wee piece o’ cake too?’

  The weeks that followed Clare’s good news were among the happiest she’d ever spent. The weather stayed dry and warm, Robert was in excellent spirits, and the postman brought nothing but gifts and congratulations. Auntie Polly sent a dress, a skirt and some warm slacks to help Clare get ready for going up to Belfast. Ronnie wrote a long enthusiastic letter, hinting he might manage a visit the following year. As well as his full-time job on a Toronto newspaper he now wrote a regular column in a newspaper for Ulster-Scots exiles. He’d used her accounts of the forge and the events in the community, as the basis of some of his weekly articles. ‘Much better paid than the beauty hints,’ he explained, knowing that otherwise she’d protest at the number of dollars he’d enclosed.

  Even Sarah and Sadie wrote in reply to her letters. Sarah said that the Lord had looked kindly upon her and she must not stop going to church now she was a student. Sadie said there was nothing like a good education to help a girl get on in the world.

  But the letter that brought greatest joy was from Andrew. As he’d expected, he’d be spending a few days at Drumsollen at the end of August. His good news was that Aunt Helen had invited him to Caledon and she’d said she’d be happy for Clare to come and stay. If that wasn’t possible, she hoped she’d come over every day. She knew Ginny and Edward were looking forward to seeing her, as she was herself.

  Clare was touched by the warmth of the invitation and overjoyed at the prospect of spending so much time with Andrew. She didn’t feel she could leave Robert to go and stay at Caledon but Andrew assured her they’d collect her every day and stop in Armagh for any shopping she had to do.