by Anne Doughty
‘Ach hello, Mrs Hutchinson. Come in and sit down. Rosie was just goin’ to make us a cup of tea.’
Although she’d walked as quickly as she could, going up to the village and on the return journey, Rosie was only too aware that time was moving on. Henry had been slower than usual and although there was no clock in the shop, she knew the sun was higher and the shadows much shorter than when she’d set out. It was a bad sign too that there was no one about. Not a soul on the lane itself, and no one in the gardens or farmyards she passed. When she picked up the odour of boiled potatoes and fresh-baked bread, she knew it was certainly past one o’clock.
The smell of frying onions drifting over the wooden gate that led to the open door of their nearest neighbours reminded Rosie she was hungry as well as tired, but her thoughts were not on food. Part of her was already anxious about her mother’s reception. Another part was thinking longingly of a large mug of water from the enamel bucket in the wooden press.
The gate into the farmyard was open as it often was during the day. Only when the four cows were brought up for milking did Uncle Joe send Bobby running to close it. She tramped through gratefully, her eyes watering in the bright light, her neck and back aching from the weight of the bags dragging on her narrow shoulders, her gaze on the open door ahead and the thought of the cool dimness beyond.
‘Hello, Rosie. Ma thought you’d got lost.’
A small voice greeted her brightly as she crossed the threshold into the stone-floored kitchen.
‘Hello, Dolly,’ she replied wearily, managing a small smile for the little girl who sat by the stove rubbing a brass candle-stick with a piece of blackened rag.
She lifted up her bags, lowered them gratefully on to the kitchen table, propped them up against each other and began to unpack them quickly.
‘Mrs Hutchinson was here,’ Dolly went on, as she poured Brasso on the matching candlestick with more vigour than skill, her fingers as black as the rag she was using. ‘Ma’s just walking down the road with her. She said she thought you’d got lost.’
Rosie sighed and said nothing. The remark about getting lost was another way of saying she was late. Like many of her mother’s remarks, made to a neighbour, with a little laugh, it sounded like a joke, but it only sounded like a joke. Unless Mrs Hutchinson was still here and her mother had to behave as if it really was, then its true meaning would emerge. Unless some piece of news or gossip, had put her mother in a good mood, that remark about getting lost was simply advance warning that she could expect a telling off.
Halfway through the second bag and before she had dared pause for a drink of water, Rosie heard her mother’s step in the yard. Moments later the light from the door was blocked by her small, square figure.
‘Ach, so ye did come home after all. We thought you’d lost your way,’ she began, as she came to the table, an unpleasant smile on her face.
Rosie was not at all surprised when she turned away towards Dolly.
‘Aren’t those just lovely, pet,’ she enthused, as she picked up the candle sticks and placed them back on either side of the mantelpiece. ‘Haven’t you done a great job. Good girl yerself. Now away over to the barn and clean up your hands in the wash house. And then go and have a wee look and see if you can find where the white hen’s nest is. She’s laying away again. Have a good look an’ I’ll call you to yer dinner when it’s ready.’
Rosie saw the smile on her mother’s face disappear like snow off a ditch the moment her young sister was out of the house. She went on unpacking from the bottom of the second bag, a tight knot of apprehension gathering in her stomach.
‘What kep’ ye?’ Martha began, her lips snapping shut after her utterance.
‘There was a lot to get today. Uncle Henry said I’d a brave list,’ Rosie replied mildly.
‘Ye cou’d ha’ bought the whole shop in the time ye’ve been away,’ her mother replied, tossing her head.
Although her mother had grown increasingly stouter over the years, for some reason Rosie could not fathom, her face had not changed. It was still as she remembered it from her childhood, sharp and almost unwrinkled, the eyes small and bright, the nose pointed, her sparse hair drawn back into a meagre bun, pinned at the nape of her neck.
‘Maybe ye were seein’ yer man,’ Martha said with a sneer.
Rosie folded up the empty bags and stared at her, a look of amazement on her face.
‘Don’t you try to fool me, Miss Rosie,’ her mother said sharply, her tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Aggie Hutchinson saw you the other night. And right embarrassed she was to hafta tell me what any chile of mine was up to. Ye should be ashamed of yerself,’ she went on, poking her chin forward and flushing red with the fury of her words.
‘What are you talking about, Ma. What night?’
‘Last Wednesday night, as you very well know,’ she replied, nodding her head for extra emphasis on every word. ‘Choir practise was what you tole me. A pack o’ lies. That wee huzzey, Lizzie Mackay, an’ you, comin’ down the lane with a couple of boys. Kissin’ and huggin’. Lettin’ yourselves down a bagful. Paddy Doyle, indeed. Not even one of yer own sort,’ she spat out viciously.
Rosie felt the blood drain from her face as she recalled what had actually happened in the lane. A group of boys had rushed out from behind a hedge, mostly the young Doyles who had recently come to live nearby, shouting and egging each other on. Paddy had grabbed her, managed to kiss her awkwardly on the cheek and run away laughing. Lizzie didn’t even know the name of the red-headed lad who was more successful and kissed her on the lips before disappearing with his friends.
‘It was nothing, Ma. Just a couple of boys catching hold of us for a dare.’
‘Well, that’s not the way I heard of it,’ her mother snapped back. ‘Are you tryin’ to tell me that Mrs Hutchinson is stupid? That she hasn’t eyes in her head?’
Rosie looked away, the anger on her mother’s face too much to bear. Mrs Hutchinson might or might not be stupid, but she was well-known as a gossip. The more unpleasant the gossip, the better she enjoyed it.
She knew she couldn’t say that but before she had considered carefully enough what she could say, she heard herself reply.
‘Perhaps, Ma, if Mrs Hutchinson had watched a bit longer, she’d have seen the boys running away into Mackay’s field.’
Martha came round the table, where Rosie had abandoned her efforts to sort out the groceries, and advanced upon her.
‘How dare you! How dare you! You’re as bad a wee huzzey as Lizzie Mackay. I’ll not hear you say a word against your elders and betters.’
Rosie saw her draw back her hand to hit her, moved backwards to avoid the blow to her face and tripped on the uneven worn stone of the floor. As she felt herself falling, she grabbed wildly at the back of a chair standing against the wall that gave on to the farmyard, but she couldn’t stop herself. She hit the upper part of the open door, her head banging against its solid shape, her cheek scraping past the latch of the half door below as she crumpled on the doorstep.
Dazed and confused, she lay where she had fallen, her eyes closed against the blinding light.
‘Get up outa that.’
She felt the shadow of her mother come between her and the light and waited for her to go on. The fall had jerked tears to her eyes and she put up a hand to wipe them away. She felt blood on her cheek, warm and sticky.
‘What’s happened to Rosie?’
From a little way away, she heard her father’s voice, calm and steady as it always was. A moment later, she picked up the smell of lubricating oil as he put his arm around her and drew her to her feet, her face buried in his working dungarees.
‘Did you lift your hand to her?’
‘Not at all. She tripped over herself on that bad bit of floor,’ replied Martha quickly. ‘Sure she’s never lookin’ where she’s goin’ her head’s that full o’ books and stories.’
‘We’ll see about that later,’ he said shortly. ‘Send Dolly over with some te
a and plenty of sugar in it.’
He picked Rosie up in his arms as if she were a child and carried her over to the barn.
CHAPTER TWO
Sam Hamilton placed his empty plate quietly on the table beside him and looked down again at the slight figure of his daughter. She lay asleep on one of the four single beds placed in each of the corners of the large, low-roofed room that ran the full width of the barn above his workshop and the washroom he’d fitted out for his family when they’d first come to live at the farm with Uncle Joe, his wife’s eldest brother.
The high sun of early afternoon made two bright patches on the bare boards by the tiny windows overlooking the yard, but the rest of the sparsely-furnished space was cool, quiet and shadowy. Neither the random bellowing of cattle distressed by the heat, nor the whistle and hiss of the engines that steamed past on the railway line nearby penetrated the thick walls. As he sat watching the sleeping girl, his broad shoulders angled towards her, his large, square face immobile, the only noise he could hear was the regular click of the alarm clock that sat beside his empty plate.
Her dark hair had fallen across her face, but he could already see the outline of the bruise on her forehead. The scrape from the door latch wasn’t deep but it had bled a lot. He’d sat her down in the wash house, cleaned it and dabbed it with iodine from his first-aid kit. Painful, but reliable. He’d used it himself many a time and never suffered infection in a cut or a wound. She’d not said a word of complaint as he painted it on, though he knew well how much it stung.
The bruise would come and go, the cut would heal. She’d be none the worse. He sighed and looked around the room as if it would answer the questions shaping in his mind.
She’ll be all right, he said to himself, as he saw a hint of colour come back to her pale face.
Although she’d been confused for a while after he’d brought her over to the barn, he could see she’d taken no great harm. He thanked God it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared when he cycled into the yard and heard her cry and the bang of her head on the door.
The tea had helped. She’d drunk the whole mug his youngest daughter had brought over in the short time it took the child to pass on her mother’s messages. There’d be no dinner till evening when Billy was home. Did he want his bread and cheese on a plate where he was?
He had a fair idea of what had happened, but as soon as she’d drained every last drop of the tea, he’d tried to get her to tell him herself.
‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ he said encouragingly.
It was always so difficult with children. One moment you were trying to teach them not to carry tales and the next you needed to know exactly what had happened so you could do something to protect them. It was not the first time Martha had struck Rosie, though he had spoken to her sternly about it.
He shook his head sadly. But why was it always Rosie? She was such a willing girl, a hard worker who never complained when her mother gave her the jobs she didn’t want to do herself. Martha had never laid a finger on any of the boys. She might have smacked Emily or Margaret when they were very small and being naughty, but she certainly never raised a hand to them once they were older. As for Dolly, the youngest, the child born after he’d left Martha’s bed for good, she spoilt her outrageously, petting her and favouring her in a way she’d never done with any of the others.
There was no making sense of it. But then, he’d known for a long time there was no making sense of Martha. He’d accepted years ago that she didn’t love him. As the years passed, he’d finally come to the conclusion that she never had loved him, even when she was happy to have him in her bed. Martha was a law unto her self. The best he could do was to avoid angering her, to make sure she had enough money to care for the children properly, and to take pleasure in seeing them grow and thrive.
Nine children, five boys and four girls. A fine, long family, as they would say around Banbridge where he’d spent most of his own childhood in a well-built farmhouse that looked out over the rich Bann Valley to the Mourne Mountains beyond. He wasn’t sure if they had the same expression here in County Armagh, but then, apart from the men he worked with at Pearson’s Haulage Company and the other Quakers he saw on a Sunday at the Friends’ Meeting House in Richhill, he didn’t have much time or opportunity for conversation.
There was certainly no conversation with Martha. Mostly she ignored him, or sent him messages via the two youngest, Dolly and Jack. When he went over to the house, she set his food in front of him without a word. If something in the day had happened to please her, she’d talk excitedly while he was having his meal without once looking at him. Then she’d stop suddenly and before he’d had time to make any comment, she’d complain that he never listened to a word she said, that he was interested in no one but himself and his work.
Rosie stirred restlessly, her sleep troubled. He leant towards her, saw beads of perspiration break on her forehead and noted the darkening skin of the rising bruise.
What Martha said wasn’t true. He loved all his children and was happy to see them in his workshop. He could speak freely there and listen to their stories for Martha never came over to the workshop where he spent most of his time repairing tools and machinery when he was not doing his everyday job at Pearson’s. Maybe she so seldom saw him talking to the children, it did seem to her as if he wasn’t interested, but then he remembered how angry she was when Rosie used to come and sit hour after hour in the barn watching whatever he was doing. He sighed. Nothing he’d ever done was right for Martha and it wasn’t likely to change now.
He got slowly to his feet and moved cautiously across the bare wooden floor, avoiding a couple of boards that always squeaked. Downstairs in the workshop, he collected a piece of clean, spoilt cloth, folded it into a pad and stepped into the washroom. The cold water gushing from the tank on the roof splashed his blue dungarees as he soaked the fabric and pressed the pad between his large hands.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, he thought of his own mother, Rose, standing over the sink in the small, chilly dairy of their house at Ballydown, her hands red and chapped as she struggled with his and his father’s work clothes. Often stained with oil or grease, or the plaster from a wall where his father had squeezed into some awkward corner to repair a loom or a weaving frame, she would work away with a beetle or a washboard, a drip at the end of her nose, the steam from the hot water condensing on her cold face, singing.
When he was small she would sing nursery rhymes to him and his little sister, Sarah, as they played in the big kitchen, the door open so she could keep an eye on them. When they were older, at school, or at work, they would come in upon her unexpectedly and find her still singing, but those songs were different, quiet and sad, and she sang as if no one was meant to hear.
Years later, Sarah had explained why he could never make out what the songs were about.
‘It was Irish, Sam. That’s why you couldn’t understand it. Did you think it was your ears?’ she asked, laughing at him, teasing him as she always did, till he’d smiled and admitted that indeed the harder he listened the less he could make of it.
Rosie had turned on her right side while he’d been gone, making it easier to lay the pad gently on the bruise. As the cool fabric touched her damp skin, he was surprised to see her smile.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, her eyes flicking open. ‘I think I heard you going down, but I was busy dreaming,’ she went on, her smile broadening. ‘But it’s gone, can’t remember a thing about it.’
‘That’s the way with dreams,’ he said soberly. ‘The bad ones wake you up and the nice ones run away. That’s what your Aunt Sarah always used to say. She was a great one for dreams,’ he added, encouraged by the steady tone of her voice. ‘She used to keep us all sitting at the breakfast table while she told us every wee detail of some dream or other she’d had. We’d all ’ave been late for school if your granny hadn’t put in a word or two.’
Rosie sat up, caught the damp pad as it slipped, turned i
t over and pressed it back over the bruise.
‘Didn’t she ever scold you?’ she asked, a frown wrinkling her brow.
‘Ach, I’m shure she did,’ he replied, a small smile touching his lips. ‘Shure we were naughty too. But I never mind going to bed without a hug and a kiss. She always taught us never to hold a grudge or be upset with each other, even for a day.’
‘“Life is too short for hurting one another. If you can’t love someone, then at least let them be”,’ Rosie repeated quietly.
‘Aye, that was another of her sayings.’
He looked at her closely, wondering what else she’d picked up from his mother.
Each summer, two at a time, from the beginning of the school holidays, she had invited all the children to the farm-house, halfway up Rathdrum Hill, his old home in Ballydown. Billy and Charlie had slept in the bedroom where he and his brother James once slept, followed a week later by Sammy and Bobby.
He paused. Dear James, the older brother he’d followed around so devotedly throughout his childhood. Clever James, so ambitious he’d rejected his parents and himself for being foolish and backward, unaware of political and economic realities, indifferent to all the things James himself thought so important. James had spoken so bitterly to the parents that loved him, said untrue and unkind things to Hannah and Sarah, then turned his back on all of them, walked out of their home at Ballydown and out of their lives.
Sam shut his eyes momentarily and repeated to himself the blessing he always said for James: God protect you, James, if you are still with us, and keep your soul if you are not.
What had happened to his brother was a mystery. Were he still in Ireland, someone surely would have come across him, or at least read his name in the paper, but there’d been no word of him for long years now. Perhaps he had simply shaken the dust off his feet, like his own uncles who’d left the family home in Annacramp, gone to America, hadn’t written and never returned.
