by Anne Doughty
‘What is it, Ma?’ he asked, bursting out laughing. ‘Or is it’s specification covered by the Official Secrets Act? Or is it something even the War Ministry don’t know about, like the new plane they’re working on down at Walkers?’
Emily waved the miniature ladle in the air and laughed at herself. Whatever manual skills she might have, and she did acknowledge some of them, she was no good at all with things mechanical. It was one thing being able to prick out hundreds of seedlings from one packet of seed, but she couldn’t even get a new battery into a torch without a struggle.
‘It’s for Jane’s birthday tomorrow,’ she said triumphantly. ‘If she can get home as planned, we’ll be having a special dessert with whipped cream garnished with jewels of raspberry jelly. This is for skimming the cream out of the top of the bottles.’
‘Couldn’t you just pour it off?’
‘No. That’s the secret. If you pour the cream off it gets diluted with the milk and then you can’t whip it. If you use this device you get the cream and nothing but the cream …’
‘So help me, Mother,’ he added, laughing. ‘And what about the jewels?’
Emily stood up, went to the larder and brought back a large white plate covered with a thin layer of bright-red, well-set jelly.
She set it down in front of him and watched as he inspected it at eye level to see how thick the jelly was. One of the most endearing features of her son was that unlike many of his contemporaries who talked at length and in great detail about what interested them, he was interested in what she was doing and would listen to her as patiently as she listened to him.
‘When I have made the dessert, piled it up suitably in the best trifle dishes and put the whipped cream on top, I shall take a very sharp knife and cut this into tiny, tiny squares and scatter them over the cream in a kind of cascade.’
‘That will look lovely,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Clever Ma.’
‘Can’t take the credit, Johnny. It was Cathy read it in a magazine and wrote to me about it. Just hope it’ll taste as good as it looks.’
‘Of course it will. It always does. Ritchie says he doesn’t know how you do it. He thinks your food is great. He says his Ma is always complaining she can’t get this and can’t get that. That’s why he never asks me to go there. You don’t mind, do you?’ he added, suddenly looking anxious.
‘Mind what?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘Ritchie coming here and me never going there. It’s not really fair on you with rationing.’
‘Of course, I don’t mind. He’s your friend, so he’s welcome, even if I didn’t like him as much as I do. Are the pair of you doing one last night tonight?’
He nodded vigorously.
‘It’s been great going down to the mill every night these holidays. We’ve both learnt such a lot. It’s one thing building model planes, Ma, and it was a good start, but seeing the actual things they’re making down there, like the torpedo airtails, is just so different. And the really big thing is that a few of them are working on a real plane, a plane I mustn’t mention, even to you, because its not official in the first place. But they’re working on a prototype. They’re hoping to have something to test by the end of the summer.’
‘A plane? In Walkers? But surely there’s not enough room with all those pillars. I think I’ve only been in it once, long before it closed as a mill, but I can’t imagine how you’d get a plane in there.’
‘Depends on the plane, Ma. STOLs are small to begin with and you can easily work on the wings and the tailplane on their own and then put it together later. It’s all wood and very light, Canadian silver birch …’
He broke off as she raised her hand.
‘Please, sir, what’s a stall?’
He shook his head, his bright blue eyes shining with merriment.
‘S. T. O. L.’ he spelt out. ‘It means Short Take Off and Landing planes and they are very good at not stalling, that’s why they’re used as spotter planes. They’re designed to cope with small fields enclosed by trees, places where there’s no space for a runway, however small.’
Emily listened, following as well as she could the technical language that now came to him so easily. He’d always been good about explaining what she didn’t know. Putting up her hand was one of their jokes, but she didn’t like interrupting all the time. Often, she’d just memorise the unfamiliar words and look them up in the dictionary afterwards. But there were two problems with doing that. How did you spell a word you’d never seen or heard before? And what did she do if it was one of the many new technical developments the war had brought about and the word for it wasn’t in any dictionary?
‘Did I tell you, Ma,’ he said suddenly, ‘that Ritchie’s father says he’s giving us both some extra money for all the cleaning up we’ve done while we we’ve been fire-watching? Job specification didn’t say we had to clear up any pockets of sawdust we found, but we thought it was a hazard, so we did. That’ll be a bit extra and I’m going to save it for my kit,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘The stuff the RAF don’t provide,’ he added, when he saw her doubtful glance.
Emily nodded and tried hard not to let herself react to that word ‘kit’. Such a simple word, but look what it meant. Johnny going away. Johnny not tramping into the kitchen full of sleep in the mornings before school. Johnny not spreading his books and papers across the dining room table to work for his exams.
She pulled herself up short and focused on the expense ahead. She should be pleased about what he’d said.
Money wasn’t a big difficulty with Alex’s salary as a director and all the girls working away from home, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she’d tried to make all her children aware that money was important, especially if you didn’t have any.
When she’d first come to her aunt and uncle after her mother died, she hadn’t had a penny to her name. The Jackson’s farm was small and wasn’t doing well. Things did improve, but she’d never forgotten what it was like to have nothing to call upon however great their need might be.
‘Must go, Ma. Lots to do.’ he said, jumping to his feet.
‘Where to?’ she asked, as she glanced up at the clock, knowing it must be almost lunch time.
‘Dining-room,’ he said, briskly. ‘Revision. Unless we are dining.’
‘That’s tomorrow,’ she said, laughing suddenly. ‘You can have a bowl of soup when your father comes in, or when you get hungry, whichever comes soonest. But it will be served right here,’ she said, pointing down at the well-scrubbed surface of the kitchen table. ‘You could have a couple of biscuits to keep you going.’
‘Thanks, Ma. That would be great,’ he said, giving her a quick hug and reaching for the biscuit tin.
CHAPTER FOUR
Alex had long ago given up trying to keep either Saturday or Sunday clear to spend with his family. There were engine men he knew, good, solid Presbyterians, who had not darkened the door of their respective churches for months, so why should he be any different? In fact, the war meant people couldn’t expect to work regular or predictable hours any more. Time off was random, to be cherished when it came.
Fairly, there were those in the mills who were happy to do extra shifts and claim the overtime and his own friend and neighbour, Michael Cook, told him happily he’d never in his life been able to save money until now. With the larger herd, he admitted the hours were long, but he was his own boss, the price of milk was guaranteed and there was a nice cheque from the creamery every month.
The war had brought badly needed jobs to Ulster and life was better for many, especially small farmers like Michael. But it was still hard work, paid or unpaid, and people got tired. Not everyone worked with the sky and the fields for company as Michael did. Indeed, he was only too well aware how much sickness there’d been in the mills over this last year, not just in winter, but in summer as well, as the demands went up and energy began to flag.
On this last Sunday in April, a little before noon, the sun hi
gh on a perfect spring day, Alex cleaned the oil off his hands in the washroom at Millbrook and prepared to put all such thoughts out of mind. He’d told the four mill managers the previous day that short of disaster, he would not be available on Sunday after his usual morning visit to see what problems maintenance might have revealed. They’d all assured him they’d do their very best to make sure he’d be left undisturbed.
The Austin was hot from sitting in the sun. Amazed to find its interior almost as stuffy as it would be in summer, he opened wide the doors and stood looking round him, waiting for a few moments to let the light breeze blow away the heavy smell of hot leather.
‘Away home man and forget all about us,’ Robert Anderson said, as he rounded the corner of the mill and caught sight of him. ‘Sure isn’t it great wee Jane is able to get home,’ he went on, a broad grin breaking on his sweat-streaked face. ‘Say Happy Birthday from me. What age is she, if it’s not rude to ask a lady’s age?’
‘She’s nineteen today and very nearly finished her training,’ Alex replied, delighted by the enquiry. ‘And what’s more, Robert, Lizzie is coming too, though just for a couple of hours. She found someone only last night willing to change shifts with her.’
‘Ach, that’s just great, man, just great. Your whole family, bar Cathy. I’m sure your Emily is in the kitchen making some wee treat.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ began Alex laughing. ‘I was warned to keep well out of the way last night.’
‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve, as the saying is. Some of the things these women manage you couldn’t be up to,’ Robert said, shaking his head and pausing to lean against the roof of the car beside him. ‘One of my wee lassies went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago and came home and told us she had banana sandwiches.’
‘Shure when did we last see a banana?’ he asked, laughing. ‘The Missus and I though maybe she was imaginin’ things the way wee ones do, but at the heels of the hunt we found out that you can mash up cooked turnip with banana essence, if you have any left from before the war, and you wouldn’t know the difference. Especially if you’ve never met the real thing,’ he added, dropping his voice to a whisper.
They laughed together before Alex climbed into the driving seat and Robert walked away to finish his extra day shift in the silent mill. Before Robert left he’d have made sure every moving part of the hard-pressed machinery was inspected, adjusted, cleaned, greased or oiled.
There was neither car nor Army lorry on the road as Alex sailed along, all the windows open, the hot leather smell now replaced by the first hints of perfume from the dazzling, white blossoms on the hawthorn, the May blossom, arriving early in the south-facing hedgerows.
‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve.’
Unexpectedly, Robert’s words came back into his mind and he smiled to himself. The expression he knew well, but as he drove, he began to wonder why he’d always taken such a delight in the expressions and sayings that were such a part of Ulster life.
‘Here’s one for you, Da.’
He could hear Jane’s voice as she came into the room, a piece of paper in her hand. Someone in the hospital, a porter or a patient, had used a word or a saying that caught her ear and her first thought was always to share it with him.
‘Sure you could pass for a native, Da.’
That would be Johnny’s comment should he himself try one of the phrases now familiar enough for him to risk using it.
So why was he so fascinated and delighted by what he picked up? As suddenly and unexpectedly as if he’d just received a message written on a piece of paper the answer came to him. There were no expressions or colourful phrases in the orphanages, nor on the farms where he worked. Bare instructions. Do this. Do that. Bald questions. What age are you? Where was your last place?
No one had talked to him, except one lovely lady he would never forget. And no one expected him to talk to them, a lesson he had learnt very early on. Talking back was a crime and even the simplest reply to a question was regularly construed as talking back. Silence was much safer. Even in the barn with the other workers, as lonely and neglected as he was himself, it was often safer to say nothing.
All that had changed after he’d met Sam McGinley and made up his mind to come home and look for his lost family. He’d needed to earn more money, for it would take him years to save his fare from the pittance he was paid as a farm labourer.
He had managed to find a better place where he was allowed to work with the machines, but the pay itself was little better. What had actually earned his passage money was writing letters. Late in the evening after his work on the farm, when it was too dark to see any more, or when he was finally let go, he would make his way to the houses where the emigrants gathered. There he was made welcome, because for a very small fee he would write letters for them.
Most of them were illiterate, but even those who could handle a pen often found themselves defeated when faced with a sheet of notepaper. He had encouraged them, got them to talk about their homes, the people and places they once knew. Then he asked them about what they did now, how they felt about the new country and what they planned for the future.
For the first time in his life, here were people who talked to him and trusted him with their fear of not being able to express themselves for they had been glad when he suggested the subjects they might write about that might be useful to them. They found it hard to tell the folks at home how well they were doing, especially when they weren’t. They wanted to know how their families and friends were getting on and hoped they were remembered. Most of all, they wanted to feel they still had a place in that old life, even though they’d set out to make a new life in a country so far away and so very different.
To his own surprise, Alex discovered he always seemed able to find the right words and he had no difficulty remembering their stories. He was always ready to remind them of what they’d said in their previous letters, even without looking at the copies he kept for them. What they welcomed most of all were suggestions as to what they might say this time that was different from the last, when their lives were so full of hard work there was little to relieve the monotony of one day following the next.
Now he had his own stories. From the very first day he’d arrived in Ballydown and was welcomed by Rose and then by John, he had been told their family stories. By sharing their stories, they had woven him into the fabric of their life. As he looked back on the way he’d collected up the sayings and expressions used by the people around him, he saw that he had used sharing their speech and their humour to weave himself into the life of this new place.
The greatest unhappiness he could think of was to be a child with no story. Or a young man with no story, as he had once been.
He tooted his horn as he passed Cook’s farm, knowing that Michael in the yard, or Mary in her kitchen, or one of the children helping her would say: ‘There’s Alex going home early. It’s Jane’s birthday today.’
He smiled through the mist of his tears as he soared up the hill.
‘Go on then, Ma, tell us how you did it.’ demanded Lizzie, as Johnny stood up to clear away the dinner plates.
‘Not a lot for Fido,’ he commented dryly as he stacked them up.
The best dinner service with its pretty borders of flowers and its elegant serving dishes bore not the slightest trace of the succulent roast beef and its accompaniments, roast potatoes, carrots stored from last autumn’s bumper crop and tender, early cabbage from Emily’s cold frame in the sunniest part of the garden.
‘It’s a good thing you can feed a phantom dog on phantom scraps,’ he added, as he headed for the kitchen.
‘That was lovely, Ma,’ said Jane, when she stopped laughing at his comment. ‘I didn’t know roast beef still existed. How did you manage it?’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t ask, Jane,’ said Alex. ‘Your mother has ways and means that are not available to most of us,’ he added, his eyes twinkling.
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‘Did you chat up the butcher, Ma,’ asked Lizzie matter-of-factly.
‘Bit old for that, Lizzie dear,’ Emily came back at her. ‘And so’s he for that matter.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Jane insisted. ‘You’d make a lovely spy.’
‘Thank you, Jane, I’ll remember that on my bad mornings,’ Emily replied laughing.
If anyone would make a good spy it would be Jane herself, Emily thought, as she looked from one daughter to the other. Jane was wearing a pink jumper she’d knitted for her a couple of years ago over a white blouse, clearly a survival from schooldays, and a navy skirt that had most certainly seen better days, but she still looked lovely.
But then, Jane always did, for she had beautiful skin, huge blue eyes, soft, blonde curls and a smile that lit up her face and made you feel the world was a much nicer place than you’d thought it was.
‘I’d still like to know,’ said Lizzie firmly.
‘Well,’ said Emily, looking at her directly and knowing full well that Lizzie would not be satisfied until she had her explanation. ‘The secret lies in advance planning,’ she said, attempting a suitable solemnity.
‘She means she went out and killed a cow three weeks ago,’ Johnny declared as he returned for the empty vegetable dishes.
Jane giggled and Lizzie smiled patiently. She was not much given to smiles, though her face was lively and alert enough.
‘If you were to ask your father and brother what they had for Sunday lunch for the last three Sundays, you could probably work it out from that,’ Emily said with a sudden smile.
To her great delight, Johnny was tramping back and forth to the kitchen carrying the larger items of her precious dinner service one at a time. She’d never wanted to discourage him when he’d offered to help clear the table once Lizzie and Jane had both gone away, but for years now she’d sat, her heart in her mouth, watching him pile up their wedding present from Rose and John into a perilous tower even before he attempted to lift them and carry them out of the room.
