by Anne Doughty
For one moment her heart stood still. No, it couldn’t be Robert. Robert’s days of hammering and lighting lamps were over. He was gone. And she was quite alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Robert Scott’s funeral to Grange churchyard was one of the largest anyone could remember. For so many who stood in the pale autumn sunshine Robert’s passing was not only an immediate personal loss, but one of those events which they recognised as a critical point in their own history and the history of their community.
The crowds of mourners flowed from the churchyard and spread out over the broad, roughly-surfaced space opposite the church gates. As they made their way slowly towards the ponies and traps tethered across the road, or the handful of cars parked under the wall of the churchyard itself, they greeted each other with nods and handshakes. A phrase as familiar as the time-honoured ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ spoken so often at the wake or at the graveside, echoed back and forth: ‘Ah, ’tis the end of an era, the end of an era.’
There were men who had sat on the hard wooden benches of the Orange Hall with Robert when they were just lads of seventeen and he had already served his time. Women who were infants in the schoolroom, when he was a big boy carrying turf for the fire. Their grown sons and daughters, who’d brought work to the forge since they were youngsters. All looked around bleakly as they turned their backs on his grave and called to mind friends and relatives already at rest on the hill top behind them.
Their own youth and prime was now long past, but harder still to bear was the disappearance of the world in which they had grown up, day by day. They knew they could no more halt the changes they saw at every turn than wind back the clock, regain their own lost vigour, or bring Robert back to his rightful place in the forge.
‘Ach, the place will be desperate quiet without him,’ said Harry Todd, as he shook hands with his cousin John Williamson.
Robert’s hammer had echoed like a heartbeat throughout Harry’s lifetime, its silences punctuating the weeks as clearly as the church bell.
‘An’ where will we go for the news?’ asked John, a well-off farmer, who didn’t appear to recognise either his telephone, or his new television set, as any substitute for the worn and grimy bench inside the half door.
A sudden chill breeze stirred the dust and blew yellowed leaves against the stone wall below the old schoolroom. Once, long ago now, both men had sat in that large, bare room with Master Ebbitt and young Miss Rowentree, chanting their multiplication tables, the names of the continents, of the kings and queens of England and of the counties of Ireland. The building was boarded up now, the roof rapidly deteriorating. It was beginning to look like the cottages where they themselves had been born, storehouses now, a short distance away from the newly-built bungalows with running water, electricity and wide picture windows.
‘It’s hard on the wee lassie, an’ her lost her parents not that long back,’ said John, with a slight backward glance to where the family still stood by the graveside, studying the cards on the wreaths laid out on the trampled grass, while the gravedigger and his helper shovelled back and tamped down the dry brown earth.
‘Aye. Clever girl she is too. He was that proud o’ her whin she got the scholarship. Ah niver heard Robert talk so much about anythin’ in all the years I knew him, as he did about that scholarship. What’ll happen to her now, I wonder?’
‘Sure only time will tell, man. But I’d say she’d make her way. She has a head on her shoulders forby being clever, though she’s heart sore at losin’ him. Did ye see her drop in the wee posy of flowers after Bob and Johnny threw down the earth? Fuschies, they were. I wondered to meself when I saw them where she had them growin’, to have them flower so late. But then, that house always was kinda sheltered.’
They paused and turned to watch June Wiley hurry past with her eldest daughter, Helen. They nodded knowingly as mother and daughter disappeared into the lane that ran from the top of Church Hill down past Robinson’s orchard, along by their horse trough and across the front of their potato house and machine shed to come out beside the forge.
‘She’s doin’ the tea for the relatives,’ said John, who was June’s uncle. ‘Bob and Johnny have a fair way to go the night, though I heerd Clarey is for Rowentree’s with her friend Jessie afore she goes back t’ Belfast.’
‘Is that so?’ Tom enquired, as he unhitched his pony and trap from the gate into his brother-in-law’s field and hoisted himself awkwardly into the driving seat. ‘Have ye yer car?’
‘Aye, but I parked it beyond by Colvin’s to be outa the way o’ the hearse,’ John replied, turning on his heel.
‘Ye’ll be down one night soon?’ Tom said quickly, to his cousin’s departing figure.
John raised a hand in acknowledgement, but didn’t pause. His bad leg had started to ache with all the standing. Once it started, it didn’t know when to stop.
‘Ye’ll be welcome,’ Tom called, raising his voice. ‘There’s not many folk call these days. It bees lonely of an evenin’.’
He gathered up his reins and called to the mare. With a last look at the Scotts arranging wreaths on the closed up grave, he turned the trap back the way he’d come, to his own empty house at Ballynick.
After the crowds of people who had packed the house since Friday evening, Clare found it strange to walk into the big kitchen with her Scott uncles and aunts. Uncle Jack had said he thought he ought to stay with Granny and Granda Hamilton when he took them back to Liskeyborough. Jessie said she’d be down when she’d seen Harry off. But Clare knew no one else would call today, not even dear Charlie. In the unwritten rules of the community, only ‘family’, or those especially invited by the family, might visit between the laying to rest of a loved one and the necessary taking up again of life on the following day.
‘There ye are, love, it’s all ready. There’s a second pot just brewing,’ said June Wiley as she greeted them at the door. ‘Now be sure ye eat somethin’ for I’m sure ye had no lunch.’
‘June, I don’t know what I’d have done without you. You’ve been so good,’ said Clare, as she walked outside with her. ‘And you too, Helen,’ smiling at the tall, fair-haired girl who’d so brightened the days for Robert, these last three weeks.
‘Aye, well, Clare, you’ve done your share t’ help yer friends. It’s a small thing to help you now. Come up if there’s anythin’ you want or if you feel lonely. You know yer way.’
She turned back into the house. Sarah and Sadie were handing round sandwiches. Bob and Johnny had brought extra chairs from the sitting room, but Sarah and Sadie seated themselves on the settle when they finished pouring tea. They looked as awkward as ever.
No one sat in Robert’s chair. The clocks were silent still but the kettle singing on the stove raised her spirits, a small continuing thing in a world that seemed otherwise to have stopped. She drew it aside before it boiled up and started rattling its lid and pouring out steam.
‘Desperate big crowd,’ said Johnny, when the silence grew too much for him.
‘And such a lovely lot of wreaths,’ added Sarah.
Clare listened as they repeated all the comments they’d already made at the graveside while they’d read the labels on the wreaths. That had been her own worst time. Even worse than seeing the coffin lowered into the dry earth. Her eyes were so misted with tears, she couldn’t read the words out loud, which they expected her to do. All she could think of were the cards once written for Ellie and Sam.
It was Jessie, dear Jessie who had stepped forward and read out the tributes for her in a voice Clare hardly recognised.
‘Clare dear, I don’t want to upset you on a day like today, but I think I ought to ask you about my father’s will,’ began Bob, tentatively, as he put his empty tea cup back on the table.
Clare smiled at him and shook her head.
‘I don’t think he had one. He never mentioned it.’
Bob nodded. It was no more than he expected.
‘Would there be
anywhere he kept papers or money? I think we should just make sure.’
They left Sarah and Sadie to search the Bible and the huge Bible commentaries, between the pages of which Robert sometimes kept a spare pound or two for emergencies and went into his bedroom. It was already dim and shadowy for as the afternoon drew on towards dusk the heavy furniture absorbed what little light filtered in through the tiny orchard window.
‘I think there’s an Ulster bank book in one of those tiny drawers,’ Clare said, pointing at the dressing table. ‘If there was a will, he’d have put it there.’
‘Have you the key?’
Clare shook her head and pulled opened both drawers. One contained his pension book and the freewill offering envelopes from the Presbyterian Church, the other held a battered bank book and a yellowed policy document. Provincial Friendly Society Burial Fund, it said. It was dated 1904, the year Robert was married, and was fully paid up in 1929.
‘As far as Johnny and I are concerned, Clare, anything father left is yours,’ he said quietly, as he picked up the bank book and opened it.
He smiled wryly and handed it to her.
The account had been closed a month earlier with a withdrawal of twenty-one pounds, two shillings and elevenpence.
‘Ye’ll need to be buying books and suchlike,’ Bob said, as she opened the envelope he’d handed her the night before she left for Belfast.
When she drew out the four papery fivers and protested that it was too much and too good of him, he’d laughed and said what he’d always said whenever he’d given her money, even as a very little girl: ‘Ah, sure there’s corn in Egypt yet.’
She stood leafing through the bank book, aware that Bob was watching her. The entries were almost all in the same hand, a flowing copperplate in black ink that had faded only slightly. The book began in 1931 with a Brought Forward entry of forty-seven pounds, two and tenpence. Over the next fifteen years, Robert’s saving had grown to three hundred pounds. In 1946, there were a cluster of withdrawals taking the account right back to fifty pounds. Then there was a deposit of two hundred and sixty. That would be the money for Granny’s funeral. She would have had a Burial Fund policy too. The next withdrawal was in August 1947. She knew from the amount that it was for her school uniform. From then on, Robert had made regular small withdrawals. Perhaps some of those payments for gates which Robert had said would cover the rent for weeks hadn’t actually turned up after all.
‘I’m sorry Clare, I could have done more. I didn’t realise things were so bad,’ said Bob, leaning against the chest of drawers by the door.
‘You’ve always been kind and very generous,’ she protested. ‘He was always saying how good you were, particularly at Christmas.’
For a moment, Clare thought Bob was going to cry himself.
‘He was very independent, in his own way,’ she went on quickly. ‘He wasn’t ungracious, just quietly determined. I think maybe I’m a bit like him.’
Bob smiled warmly.
‘Clare, will you let me pay the rent for you till you’re through university? You won’t want to give up the house will you?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that,’ she burst out, horrified at the thought of it. ‘It’s my home. It’s all I have now,’ she added more quietly. ‘But I can manage the rent. My grant is far more than I imagined it would be.’
‘That’s because it’s a full grant,’ he said, knowledgeably. ‘The grants are means tested and my father had no means. No means at all,’ he added, ‘and him worked that hard all his life.’
Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Bob did burst into tears and Clare put her arms round him.
‘Oh yes, he had, Bob,’ she insisted. ‘He had all the means he needed. When he said “We’ll get what’ll do us,” he meant it. I don’t think he’s ever wanted anything he couldn’t have. At least, not while I’ve known him.’
Bob mopped himself up on a large white handkerchief and nodded.
‘I think you’re right, Clare. It may not always have been like that, but I’ve felt he was content these last years. There’s not many end their life in as good heart as Robert. That’s worth more than a fat bank book,’ he ended as he put the tattered book back in the drawer. ‘What about this?’ he asked, picking up the policy.
‘I think he asked Charlie to see to that.’
‘And what about his clothes? Would you like us to take them all away with us, so you won’t have to go through them?’
Clare shook her head.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, but Charlie knows an old man in Ballybrannan whose badly in need of them. He says he won’t mind all the darns and mends, he’ll be only too glad to get them.’
‘So that’s everything then?’
Clare smiled weakly.
‘No, you’ve forgotten one thing,’ she said, as she pulled out the wide central drawer in Robert’s wash stand and handed Bob his silver fob watch.
He turned it over in his hand and read the inscription on the back;
‘Robert Scott 1902, From C. R. who will never forget.’
‘C. R.?’ he asked, surprised. ‘I though my mother gave him that as a wedding present.’
‘So did I,’ she admitted honestly, as she surveyed the other items in the drawer, hoping to find a keepsake for Johnny. ‘What about these for Uncle Johnny?’ she asked, producing a velvet lined box with matching tiepin and cufflinks. ‘Auntie Polly sent them from Canada and he was very proud of them.’
Back in the kitchen, Sadie and Sarah were brushing dust and fluff from their black suits. The Bibles and Bible commentaries were piled high on the table with the remains of the sandwiches and cake. Sitting beside them was a single pound note, streaked and grimy from the pocket of his working trousers.
‘It really is time we were going, Bob’, said Sadie sharply, as they came back into the kitchen.
Johnny was jingling his car keys when Clare offered him the box with the tiepin and cuff links. He looked at Sarah dubiously but thrust them into his coat pocket with a hurried word of thanks as his wife walked past him into the hall to use the mirror and the last of the daylight to put on her hat.
‘Ring me, Clare, if there’s anything either of us can do,’ Bob said, as he kissed her goodbye.
‘Yer a great girl, Clare,’ Johnny said, hugging her awkwardly.
‘I hope your studies go well, Clare,’ said Sadie, tottering slightly in her very high heels, as she followed after Bob into the gathering dusk. ‘There’s nothing like a good education to help you get on in life,’ she added as Clare walked down the lane with them to where the cars were parked below the forge.
Of the four black-suited figures she might not see again for many a day, only Bob seemed sad as he waved to her before he reversed down to the empty main road.
But the last word was Sarah’s. As soon as she’d arranged her skirt carefully beneath her bottom so that it wouldn’t crease, she wound down the car window and leant out.
‘Make sure you read your Bible every day, Clare,’ she said, as Johnny started the engine. ‘You can keep on re-using the notes I gave you last Christmas. There is just so much to be gained by rereading the same passages at regular intervals.’
And then Johnny, too, reversed down to the empty main road and set off on the long journey back to Fermanagh.
There was still light outdoors as the dusk faded and the hush of evening deepened over the quiet land. Clare stood under the rose trellis at the front of the house for a long time, listening to the blackbirds as they called and scuffled before settling to roost. When she glimpsed the first star she stepped back into the kitchen and found it so dark she couldn’t have picked her way between the abandoned chairs but for the glow of the stove, which cast their tall shadows against the distempered walls.
She carried the chairs back to their place in the sitting room, ignored the scattered remains of tea and dropped down on the settle. It was the first time she had been able to sit quietly by herself since the moments by the well in th
e orchard the previous day.
She’d always loved the kitchen when it was lit only by the radiance from the stove. Often, when Robert, rose to light the lamp, she felt sad as the kindly shadows were driven away. In the flickering firelight, one was not aware of the soot-blackened ceiling or the scuffed, varnished paper that covered the lower half of the walls. The dirt and grime she struggled to keep at bay simply disappeared and she could enjoy the gleam of well-loved objects, the wag on the wall with its brass weights, the shiny black noses of the china dogs on the mantelpiece, the well-polished surface of the mahogany drop-leaf table that saw service only at Christmas, the wink of the glass panes in the corner cupboard.
She looked across at the empty chair and for a moment imagined she saw the faint haze of smoke from his pipe. She smiled to herself. She was sure the smell of his tobacco would always linger in her mind. Judging by the pained look on Sarah’s face when she’d come back with Uncle Bob from Granda’s room, the Bibles and Bible commentaries were thoroughly pickled in his favourite Mick McQuaid tobacco.
On the mahogany table, an old stone jar, held a bunch of gold and bronze chrysanthemums. They were not the impressive blooms the local florists had used for the wreaths, they were spray chrysanthemums, garden grown, smaller and more homely, with a wonderful spicy smell. They had been waiting for her when she came back from the orchard and found John Wiley lighting the Tilley lamp under the watchful eyes of Sadie and Sarah.
‘The Senator and the Missus sent these for you, Clare,’ he said, drawing her over to the scrubbed table where he’d laid the blooms in their brown paper wrapping. ‘An’ I’ve a wee somethin’ here from Andrew forby,’ he added quietly, as she bent down to see if there was any rainwater left in the galvanised bucket in the big cupboard.
‘Does Andrew know about Granda?’ she asked, straightening up immediately.
‘Aye. He phones his Granda fairly regular,’ he explained, ‘but the Richardsons were up at Caledon on Friday, so he got June, an’ of course she tol’ him. So he rang again later, an’ asked the Senator for these.’
