For Many a Long Day

by Anne Doughty

  She thought over all that Daisy had said and made up her mind she’d have to say something to George. Quite what, she’d not decided when a letter arrived from Polly responding to her own in which she’d poured out all her distress.

  Thankfully, Ellie closed her bedroom door behind her. No one would interrupt her now she’d said her good-nights. She sat on the edge of the bed and took the letter out of her pocket. The June nights were so long, the sky so clear, she could still see to read it yet again, even though it was after ten o’clock and the window was half-masked by heavy sprays of pink, climbing rose.

  My dearest Ellie,

  I’m so sorry you’re so worried about George. I’d have thought you would have heard by now indeed, but remember NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS. If anything had happened to the ship it would have been all over the newspapers. If anything had happened to George himself then his uncle would have cabled right away to his parents. He’s maybe a bit through himself with all the excitement of going away from home and him never been further than Warrenpoint before. I’m sure you’ll have heard by the time you get this.

  Well, we are settled at our new address. The house is very small but there is a garden (a yard, they call it here) at the back, and just down the road there’s an enormous park with a lake and trees. I have never seen so many trees in my life as I did on the train journey here. No wonder Peterborough is one of the biggest lumbering centres in Canada. No doubt George will tell you all about that.

  There is some furniture here in the house which belongs to the company, but it’s all a bit bare. I have to confess I shed the odd tear when I remember the lovely new furniture we had when we first came out, but there’s many much, much worse off than us.

  Davy and Eddie are well but they are naturally a bit upset with the move. Davy has a bad habit of throwing stones when he finds them and I keep scolding him. Of course, Eddie copies everything Davy does. I hope it will help when Davy goes to school and perhaps I can get back to my sewing again. The money would be a great help. Ronnie is fine and is no trouble at all. I can’t understand how this child is so different from the other two!

  Jimmy is so glad to have a job. It’s not what he wants but he says it’s a foot in the door. It’s just maintenance which is a bit of a comedown for a skilled mechanic, but we mustn’t complain.

  What has been quite lovely though is the welcome we’ve had from the Quaker Oats Social Club. There are an awful lot of people from home, North and South, and Scotland as well. The day we arrived there was a wee basket of cake and biscuits and a bunch of flowers on the table waiting for us, and a whole folder of information about Peterborough. It really is a very go-ahead place, but I had to laugh when I got the boys to bed and Jimmy and I sat down to read all the history and the details of the way the industry has come on.

  It seems that the place used to be called Scott’s Plains and the very first wee girl born there that wasn’t native was a Scott. This was in 1820, three years before our house at home was built … that’s according to Charlie Running who is well up in these things as you know! Then apparently in the Potato Famine a man called Peter Robinson sent for people to come from Ireland. There was 50,000 wanted to come but he could only take 2,024. I could hardly believe what I read about those families arriving with nothing. But according to the leaflet each family was given a cow, eight quarts of Indian corn, five bushels of seed potatoes, a hammer, handsaw, a hundred nails, three hoes, a kettle, frying pan and an iron pot. I wondered what they lay on at night, no blankets or work clothes. They hadn’t a table or a chair. They must have cooked on a campfire and ate sitting on the ground. Children and all.

  But what was wonderful, Ellie, was what they managed. Good, brave people they must have been. In 18 months they had cleared 1300 acres with those trees that grow all over the place. I’ve never been quite sure what an acre looks like but Da once said Robinson’s biggest field in front of us on the far side of the road is five acres and you could get lost in it!

  It makes me so grateful for a wee house and beds with mattresses and a table and chairs and a stove to cook on. I have bed linen and clothes and one or two precious things from home, wedding presents that were small enough to bring. I think Jimmy has a hammer and a few nails. But after I read that, Ellie, I just couldn’t feel sorry for myself.

  Apparently it was to honour Peter Robinson that the name was changed from Scott’s Plains to Peterborough. And quite right too. That’s something really worth doing. Isn’t it amazing?

  Now, my dear wee sister, this letter has taken three days to write in bits and pieces and I’m sure I’ve repeated myself or forgotten half of what I was going to say but I do want to post it today. I promise I will write again soon. Your letters are so welcome. Jimmy reads them over and over again. I think by now he knows the friends and neighbours round home near as well as I do and he asks after you.

  Give all the family and friends our love and tell them we never forget them. Maybe it won’t be too long before you and I are able to go for a walk together again. It won’t be Annacramp or Church Hill but this is a lovely place in its own very different way.

  With love and kisses from your big sister,

  Polly

  Ellie folded the pages carefully, slipped them back in their envelope, put the letter down on her chest of drawers and started undressing. She shook out her skirt and brushed it, hung it over the back of the chair for the morning, then examined her blouse. She noted the dried out marks of perspiration under her arms and caught the stale odour. It would have to be yet another clean blouse tomorrow.

  It was always like this before the July sale. The top back room at the shop got the sun in the afternoon and that was where she prepared stock for the sale, labelling garments with reductions and cutting and folding remnants of the fabric brought in especially. The room got so hot, she could often smell her own perspiration, but she couldn’t open the window because the sash cords had long since perished.

  She didn’t think she’d like the heat in Indiana. She wasn’t sure she’d even like the heat in Toronto or Peterborough, but she was sure she’d get used to it if that’s where she and George were to make their home.

  She felt steadier now. She hadn’t realised how much she’d come to rely on Polly’s letters. It was just a stroke of bad luck she’d been too busy with the move to manage more than a few lines in the very weeks she’d been waiting for George to write.

  For five years now they’d been writing to each other almost every week. They’d always been open with each other even when Ellie was a little girl and her big sister really did seem so very much older. But the gap between them had shrunk to nothing over the years and though Polly was a married woman with children, only a month ago it seemed Ellie would soon be married too and the first wee one on the way. Now all that had changed so rapidly she still couldn’t take it in.

  But what hadn’t changed was that Ellie did have someone she could talk to. She gave thanks yet again that she had someone with more experience than her dear Daisy. Polly wasn’t all that good at sorting out her own problems and Ellie had long thought she just wasn’t firm enough with her two little boys, but that didn’t stop Polly seeing someone else’s problem quite clearly.

  Ellie unhooked her bodice, slipped off her knickers, stepped out of her slippers and walked up and down the tiny space between the chest of drawers and her wash stand. She stretched her weary body from side to side and rubbed the marks the waistband of her skirt had left behind. She smiled to herself as she slipped on her nightdress. It wasn’t often you could stand naked in this room. For most of the year she tried to get into bed quickly before she got cold, or frozen.

  She pulled the curtains back before she got into bed. There was not a wisp of cloud in the clear sky, the air perfectly still. It would be fine again tomorrow. She had always hated dark rooms, waking in the night and not knowing where she was or what time of night it might be. She climbed into bed, stretched out between the cool sheets and lay on her back looki
ng up at the pale, whitewashed ceiling, every knot and vein in each individual board familiar, all twenty-nine and a half of them.

  Polly, Mary, Florence. They had all gone away and none of them ever spoke of coming back. To see new places, find out about a whole different world. Was that what she wanted too? She’d never really thought about it before. She’d just assumed that a woman went where her husband could find work, enough to support her and their children and keep a roof over their heads. Just like Polly, she assumed wherever it was she would make the best of it.

  How many hoes was it Peter Robinson gave to each family? Three. One each for a man and his wife and perhaps the oldest child. Or perhaps the man worked on the land alone, so hard he’d wear out one hoe after another. Grain and seed. But what would they eat until the crops grew and they had a harvest? Birds and wild animals. Rabbits, perhaps. Wasn’t it turkeys the Americans found when they first came to North America and now ate for that very reason at Thanksgiving?

  Back and forth her mind moved in the gathering dusk. Polly walking along by a lake under trees with Davy and Eddy and little Ronnie in the pushchair. Perhaps she would walk there too with her children and George and Jimmy would talk together about their work and their bosses … all the things men talked about …

  She’d read Polly’s letter again in the morning and tell Daisy about Scott’s Plains and Peterborough. She’d enjoy that. It would make up to her for the letter from George where there was really nothing very much to share with anyone.

  She turned on her side, her arms folded across her chest, the way she’d slept since she was a little girl. And tonight she slept peacefully, some deep anxiety resolved though she had no idea at all what it had been and what had resolved it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Rich! Ri-ii-itch.’

  When the familiar, high-pitched voice finally got through to him, Sam Hamilton raised his head from the collection of small parts he’d laid out on a square of tarpaulin underneath the elderly Austin. Not an attractive voice by any means, he thought, but it certainly did the job.

  Although the June morning was fine and dry, the sun glancing off the white-painted walls of the work area, Peggy stood peering out of the showroom door as if the rain were teeming down and one step further might find her soaked to the skin. But it wasn’t the weather Peggy feared, he knew that by now, it was the prospect of getting even a speck of oil on her smart new shoes.

  ‘Aye,’ he shouted, peering round the offside of the motor jacked up in front of him.

  ‘Boss wants ye.’ she called. ‘Ten minutes, he sez. Test drive.’

  ‘Right,’ he replied, lifting a hand in acknowledgement, a small smile touching his lips and adding a sparkle to his bright blue eyes.

  He glanced down again at the pieces in front of him, picked up two that bore signs of rust and put them in the right-hand pocket of his dungarees. He’d leave them in stripper while he cleaned himself up and did his demonstration run to Richhill and back. He wondered if it would be the new model Austin or the Lagonda. He knew which he’d prefer.

  ‘Row, Ro–oooo-ooh.’

  Peggy was in such good voice that Sam Keenan, sanding a piece of metal at the workbench behind him, had jumped a couple of inches when he’d heard his call.

  ‘My goodness, we’re busy this mornin’,’ he thought, as he scrambled quickly to his feet and made sure he’d left nothing, neither parts nor tools, where anyone could trip over them.

  Sam smiled wryly to himself as he recalled the March day he’d come to Sleators to be interviewed for the job. Senior mechanic. A step up and quite a bit more money. It was Harry Mitchell’s suggestion he try for it. He didn’t want to lose him from his own cycle and motor-cycle business, he’d said, but in fairness he was worth more than he could pay him at the moment, and after all these years it wasn’t right to stand in his way when the job at Sleators would add to his experience.

  Harry’s encouragement couldn’t have come at a better time with him getting married as soon as he and Marion could find somewhere to live. If he got the new job, they might think of a place in Armagh. Marion said she wanted to be near her parents, who lived on the Portadown side of Richhill, but so far they hadn’t been able to find anything in Portadown that she liked at a rent they could afford. Armagh might be better.

  Sam remembered climbing the stairs to the large, untidy office on the first floor. The door was open and John Sleator was sitting behind a dust-covered desk piled high with invoices and receipts, his back to the uncurtained windows that looked out over the showroom’s narrow forecourt and across the road to the handsome, stone-built terrace known as The Seven Houses. To his amazement the owner of Sleator and Son, Motors was wearing a pair of dungarees.

  Admittedly they were a very clean pair of dungarees, but for Sam it was a great encouragement. He’d taken a real liking to the short, grey-haired man who came barely up to his shoulder when they stood side-by-side at the window working their way along the vehicles lined up outside on the forecourt below, sizing them up and sharing their experience of their weaknesses.

  It was not very surprising Sam should take to John Sleator. He and Harry Mitchell had been friends since their schooldays and Sam had served his apprenticeship with Harry Mitchell in Scotch Street. Later, when he was more experienced and could have made a move, he’d stayed with Harry and taken the place he’d offered him on his support team when he raced in the Isle of Man.

  Sam thought he remembered meeting John Sleator in the pits at the T.T. race some years earlier. And so indeed he had. The older man recalled that particularly hot summer and his friend Harry’s near-miss on one of the notorious bends. One reminiscence led to another and Sam’s interview had ended up being a long discussion of bikes and riders. If Sam had paused to wonder why John Sleator didn’t ask him about his qualifications, he might well have realised that Harry Mitchell would already have told his friend all he needed to know, for Harry had never made a secret of how much he valued Sam. ‘A wee puncture, or stripping down a whole engine, its all the same to Sam. He’ll never be satisfied with anything other than a good job,’ was what he used to say.

  Once they’d agreed wages and hours, holidays and overtime, John Sleator held out his hand.

  ‘Well Sam,’ he said, as he shook the young man’s hand firmly, ‘you’re welcome to Sleators and I hope you’ll be happy with us. I have only one difficulty with you,’ he went on, smiling broadly.

  ‘An’ what’s that, sir? asked Sam, smiling himself, pleased he’d got the job and pleased that his new boss was the sort of man you could talk to, as easily as you could talk to Harry.

  ‘Well, I thought I had a problem having two men called Sam in my workshop, Sam Deisley and Sam Kennan, but what are we going to do with three of you?’

  Sam laughed aloud and went on smiling as the older man continued: ‘Mind you, my father was John and his father before him. And my eldest son is John, as you know, and if the wee one on the way in Abbey Street is a boy there’ll not be much doubt about what his name will be.’

  ‘I think there’s a lot of families like that in this part of the world,’ Sam replied easily. ‘My father is Sam too, though my grandfather was John, but I remember Granny telling me that when her family was young they had two Sam’s, one was her brother, the other my father. Apparently my youngest aunt, Sarah, christened her uncle, Uncle Sam, America. And that was all very well. But then he came home and bought a wee farm in Donegal.’

  John Sleator laughed heartily and shook his head. ‘Ach dear, you’d think we could organise ourselves better than causing all this confusion. But the three of you may sort it out between yourselves. If I have to call someone in a hurry, I can’t afford for all three of you to come running.’

  He’d taken him back downstairs, asked Peggy to make them all a mug of tea and led the way out to the yard and workshops to show him round and introduce him to his new colleagues.

  ‘Sam this is Sam Deisley and this is Sam Keenan,’ he began, his fac
e perfectly straight, though his pale eyes were twinkling. ‘This is Sam Hamilton.’

  ‘Dear aye, what are we goin’ to do now, boss?’ demanded Sam Deisley, the older of the two men.

  Short and plump with huge, hairy forearms projecting from rolled up sleeves, he crushed Sam’s hand in his own, looked up at him, took in his broad shoulders and then directed his gaze to Sam Keenan, the apprentice, a young man of barely medium height, lightly-built, with pale skin and deep, dark eyes that dropped shyly when the older man looked towards him.

  ‘Where are ye from, Sam?’ the older man demanded, turning back to the newcomer.

  ‘Liskeyborough.’

  ‘Well that’s no good,’ he said dismissively. ‘That’s near Richhill, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye it is, near enough.’

  ‘An’ this good-looking lad here is from Mill Row,’ Sam Deisley continued, to the great embarrassment of Sam Keenan who blushed furiously and studied the ground at his feet as if he had lost a nut or a washer.

  ‘So what are you going to come up with, Sam?’ John Sleator asked, a broad grin beginning to spread across his face. He looked from one to another in the small group as Peggy appeared, carrying a tray with four mugs of tea and picking her steps with great care.

  ‘Sam Richhill and Sam Mill Row,’ he replied. ‘Rich and Row for short. Wouldn’t that do rightly?’

  ‘It would indeed, Sam, but what about yourself? You live on Workhouse Hill, don’t you?’ John Sleator asked, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  ‘I was christened Sam a brave while ago,’ Diesley replied firmly, ignoring the smiles of his namesakes. ‘Before either of these two were born or thought of. They’ll need to show a bit of respect,’ he said severely. ‘If I catch either of them callin’ me Wee Sam there’ll be trouble.’