‘Is Mama all right?’ Helen asked fearfully. All her life she had been brought up not to worry her mother.
‘I think so. She just wasn’t fit for that long journey on top of worrying about you.’
‘It was long.’
Helen was very relieved not to be making the journey again until Monday night, when she would travel back to Belfast with Michael. She would see him off to the Front, as she had seen Sandy off. She would have to miss a day of school but she would work hard to make up for it. Somehow she felt like working hard now. And she was going to join the scholarship class no matter what Mama said. However uncertain she felt about – well, about so many things, surely learning how to think properly could only help her know who she was and what she believed in.
‘Were you not scared?’ Michael asked, and Helen, lost in a dream of college, blinked, then realised he was asking about her lone train journey.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I had to do it. I had to make up for letting you down. For being “a stupid wee girl”.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said. ‘I shouldn’t have – I was so angry – I didn’t know what I was –’
‘It’s all right. I had to let your family know how you felt. Even if it was too late.’
‘It wasn’t too late.’
‘No.’
They were silent then, looking over the valley and watching the shadows stretch across the fields. Soon, Helen thought, the shadow will reach the hedge and then it will be quite dark.
But before it did, a shadow detached itself from the house wall and, as it grew closer, Helen saw that it was Nora, a shawl pulled round her in the chill of the cloudless evening. She lifted up her head and called up to them, ‘Mammy says come in for your suppers.’
Helen expected her to turn and go straight back inside. She had refused to come out of her room to greet her brother even when Aunt Bridie had gone up to beg her.
But now she kept walking towards them, and as they got closer Helen saw that an uncertain smile flickered round her mouth.
Michael looked at Helen. ‘We’d better go in,’ he said, and they walked down the hill to meet Nora.
THE END
Name Upon Name Page 11
