The Teacher at Donegal Bay

by Anne Doughty

  ‘Ah niver says no till a lady,’ he said shortly as he dropped his toolbag on the floor and sat down on the chair opposite mine.

  In the few moments it took me to make two mugs of instant, he sat with his shoulders hunched, looking gloomily at the dirty floor tiles. I was quite surprised when he straightened up and managed a smile as I put his in front of him.

  ‘I hafta go roun’ the back whin a come next door.’ He jerked his head in the direction of Karen’s and I had to suppress a smile. I could not see Ernie being allowed to limp down the wall-to-wall Wilton in Karen’s hall.

  I mentioned the washing machine and the manner of its passing. He raised his eyes heavenward. ‘Them’s buggers, missus, ivery wan the same.’

  I nodded encouragingly. ‘Funny you say that. I’ve never liked it either. Not that I’m any good with household stuff,’ I added. ‘A nice two-stroke tractor engine now, I could have a go at that if I had the specification. But not that thing.’

  ‘Begod, ye could do better nor me,’ he said, staring at me in amazement. ‘Is that yer job?’

  I shook my head and laughed. ‘No, I’m a teacher, but I used to work in my father’s showroom when I was a student. Erwin’s of North Street?’

  ‘George Erwin? Farm machinery an’ suchlike?’

  ‘That’s right. You know it then?’

  ‘’Deed an’ I do. Tho’ indirect like. Bro’er wrought there on a paintin’ job, lass job he did afore he wos took ill. Said George Erwin was a powerful dacent man.’ He drank noisily and wiped his drip with one brown arm.

  ‘Was your brother’s name Willy?’

  ‘Aye, it twas. Did ye iver meet ’im?’

  ‘No, but I saw his work. He made a lovely job of that old showroom. I liked his colour scheme.’

  He nodded and tightened his lips. ‘Han’s for anythin’, our Willy. Usta make lampshades for my missus, like somethin’ ye’d see in a book. Aye, an’ toys fer the childer, a wee fire engine with the ladder. Just the rale thing, only minacheer-like. Forty-three he was, an’ a wife an’ three we’ans. Cancer of the throat. All them clivir docters standin’ roun’ his bed and not a damn thing wan o’ thim could do. Makes ye wonner, wouden it?’

  I nodded silently as he finished his coffee at a single gulp and drew his sleeve across his lips.

  ‘What about his family?’ I asked, tentatively.

  ‘Aye, now yer askin’. The missus an’ I have thim wi’ us. Six childer in wan house.’ He raised his eyes heavenward as he stood up and laughed a hard little laugh as he followed me out to the garage. ‘It’s all graft, missus, ’cept Lodge nite an’ Bann nite. Tha’s the way, in’t it?’

  The job on the machine was clearly not a simple one. While I was mowing the back lawn, I heard vigorous banging, and when I brought the mower back into the garage, it looked as if the entire inside of the machine was spread out over the floor. I said a few friendly words and took myself off to the bottom of the garden.

  There were three sprays of chrysanthemum in bloom. Not enough yet for a big arrangement, but stripped down to individual florets and mixed with foliage, I could fill a bowl for the lounge and have a few left over for my own room. I touched the heavy gold heads and smelt their spicy, autumn smell.

  Two years ago, my own form in Birmingham had given me a pot of chrysanthemums as a leaving present. The pot had travelled with me from Birmingham to Belfast, carefully wedged between bags and boxes in the back seat of the Mini. It had sat in Maisie’s hideous pink guest bedroom and in our friend’s chilly attic flat. In late January, with all its blooms gone, I carried it up to the teddy bear room and vowed I would never part with it. I’d read up propagation in one of Daddy’s books and waited anxiously for the first new shoots to appear.

  Standing in the soft earth of the flowerbed, with the brilliant gold blooms in my hands, I knew very well that you can’t hold on to the past. The second form who’d inscribed their names on a huge card for me would be leaving school next year. They’d scatter far and wide. But for just a little while they’d been ‘my’ second form and I wanted something to remind me of that past happy time. My cuttings had flourished. I had made something from what they had given me that would go on blooming for me every year at this time.

  Behind the chrysanthemums, in the angle where the six-foot fence joins the three-foot fence, there was a place where you could look out over Belfast Lough, the houses of the estate invisible behind you. I pushed my way gently between the forsythia and the escallonia and climbed on the upturned bucket that gave me the extra bit of height I needed.

  As I gazed out, a fleet of small boats appeared, sails taut triangles of sharp colour against the ruffled water. Then they were gone, as suddenly as migrating swallows. I sniffed the crisp air and caught the scent of woodsmoke from the council estate. The willows screening the shabby brick houses had begun to sway. As the breeze stiffened, the whole mass expanded, dipping and stretching, becoming the wind itself.

  ‘I wish it was always like this,’ I muttered to myself. The drills, the saws, the car-cleaning devices and the radios had all disappeared indoors as the temperature began to drop. Not a single child shouted or dog yapped across the whole expanse of well-trimmed gardens. I closed my eyes for a moment and caught the tang of salt on the wind. I saw myself standing on a rocky headland on the north coast of Donegal, the grey-blue mass of the ocean sweeping around me, the breakers swollen with the full fetch of the Atlantic behind them.

  Inishowen and Lough Swilly, Fanad Head and Mulroy Bay, Rosguil and Sheephaven. The names came to me like the lines of a poem. As I spoke them softly to myself, the falling cadences brought back the crash of waves, I saw the seabirds circling below towering cliffs and the light suddenly spill across a misty hillside as a shower passed along the coast, leaving pools of brilliant light to flow over the sodden greens and vibrant yellows and the dark gashes of peaty streams, tumbling their way down steep slopes to the deep inlets that pierced that rocky coast.

  Abruptly, the image was shattered. A neighbour’s television blared out, then subsided to a nagging grumble. I opened my eyes and saw the beginning of the day’s Sports News escaping through the open vents of the nearest picture window. Behind me, other flickering screens jumped into life. So close. So inescapably close. I felt my heart sink as I acknowledged the fact, for the umpteenth time, that there was no quiet to be had in Loughview, neither the quiet which comes from the absence of noise, nor the quiet which flows from the absence of intrusion.

  No, it had to be faced. You came to Loughview to put your life on show. And like one of the new stage sets, there were neither wings nor backstage. You were visible all the time, and your performance was assessed even when you had no lines to say. All very well for the Karens of this world who chose this play and knew their lines, but different for me. I didn’t choose the play, nor did I like it, and I refused to learn my lines. But what was even worse, I was beginning to feel I should never have let myself be cast for the play in the first place.

  I got down from my perch, wiped my muddy feet on the edge of the lawn and walked back up the path. It occurred to me that Ernie Taggart probably didn’t much care for his part either.

  ‘How’s it going, Mr Taggart?’

  ‘Rightly,’ he said, his face contorted with effort. He was lying full length on the cold concrete floor, struggling with something at the back of the machine. After a moment he sat up, wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at me. ‘I think that’ll do it,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘There was a short surkit forby thon bit that ‘id perished.’

  ‘Just for good measure,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I didn’t know you were an electrician as well.’

  ‘Dear aye. Turn ma han’ to most things, ‘cept decoratin’. Jack of all trades they say, master a none,’ he added dismissively.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that at all,’ I replied firmly as he got to his feet awkwardly. ‘Would you have a moment to look at a towel rail while you’re here? Or is it too near teatime?’r />
  ‘Aye surely,’ he replied easily. ‘Sure, I oney live doun the bottom o’ the hill.’ He stood back from the machine, eyed it as if he expected it to have a will of its own and then thumped it gently with his fist. ‘Behave yerself now, when Ernie tells ye.’

  He picked up his tools and followed me back into the kitchen. ‘Missus, would ye mine if I got ma wee transistor from the van?’

  ‘Not a bit. But don’t bother fetching yours.’ I picked up the radio from the breakfast bar and carried it upstairs to the bathroom. ‘Are you hoping for a win?’ I asked as I set it down and gathered up the clean towels from the rail.

  ‘Ah, divil the win, missus. Iss the news I’m waitin’ fer. Them buggers is marchin’ in Derry the day. I wan till hear whass happ’nd.’

  At the mention of Derry, a wave of panic swept over me. I had been so preoccupied with my own concerns, the march had gone completely out of my mind.

  ‘You mean the civil rights march?’ I said.

  ‘Civil rights? Naa,’ he said, his tone sour with distrust. ‘A lota codology that. Pay no heed till that at all, missus, they’d tell ye anythin’, them’ens – a crowd of Catholicks out fer what they can git. Stirrin’ up trouble. That’s all they’re good fer. Sure, aren’t they gettin’ everythin’ as good as we are and into the big jobs as well and lukin’ more. Niver know whin they’re well off that lot.’

  I stared at the empty towel rail as he dropped to his knees. There was nothing unfamiliar in what he’d just said. I had heard the same thing put in different ways and in different accents all my life. Put most brutally by work people and cleaning ladies, small farmers and shop assistants. But I’d heard them too from those who could choose words more carefully to give an impression of tolerance and liberality. The feelings were the same. Maisie and my mother would line up with William John and agree wholeheartedly with what Ernie said.

  My father was a different matter. Brought up as he had been in one of the glens of Antrim where most of the people were Catholic, he had always refused to categorise people. He had never joined a Lodge and never asked anyone applying for a job on his small staff whether they were Catholic or Protestant. He had been roundly abused by my mother for ‘not being one bit loyal’. In the months after Harvey’s marriage, she had argued furiously that he had made me as bad as he was, reading books and plays written by the Other Side. Once, when my father cut a poem out of the newspaper, there was a blazing row because it had been written by one of my English lecturers at Queen’s, Seamus Heaney. She just looked at the name and exploded. Seamus was a Catholic name, and that was enough.

  I shivered in the chill bathroom and busied myself with the towels. I had no words to offer the man who knelt at my feet. The taste of his bitterness was too much for me. I had too many memories of my mother attacking anything and anyone who threatened to change what she saw as the unalterable law of the universe.

  ‘Can you fix it, do you think?’ I asked, just to have something to say.

  ‘Dear aye,’ he responded easily, as he reached for a screwdriver. ‘Don’t ye worry yersel’, missus. Ernie’ll fix it, just like our ones ‘ill fix them other buggers we wos speakin’ off. There’s a lock o’ the boys knows the sauce for them’ens. I’m tellin’ ye, them’ens ‘ill get all they’re askin’ fer.’ He looked up at me over his shoulder, a glint in his pale eyes, an ugly twist on his mouth.

  ‘You think there’ll be trouble then?’ I said feebly.

  ‘Trouble, how are ye?’ he replied shortly. ‘There’ll be blue bloody murder, if I know the lads. Them’ens needn’t think the polis and Specials ‘ill stand up for them. They’ll get what they desarve, I’m tellin’ ye. About time they wos taken down a peg or two.’

  I stood staring down at him as he struggled with the cover of the rail. I knew perfectly well he was probably more aware of what was going to happen than anyone I knew. Except Keith, of course. Keith had no illusions about what was going to happen. He’d tried to reassure me, yes, but he’d not pretended all would be fine, just fine, like his brother would have done. No, he’d said the march was going forward and the cameras would be there. He left me to make up my own mind.

  That was one reason I liked Keith so much. Even when we disagreed, he respected my point of view. He was interested in what was the case, not what people wanted to believe. One evening about a year ago, he’d come to supper and stayed on to talk to me when Colin said he had work to do. I’d taken out the ironing board and asked him about his canvassing for the Labour Party in East Belfast.

  To begin with, he said little. Then he admitted how depressed he’d been by the blank hostility they’d met among the solidly working-class men and women they’d talked to.

  ‘But Keith, are you surprised? If they’re all loyal Orangemen who always vote Unionist, what do you expect? You’re asking them to turn their world on its head.’

  He looked at me closely, as if he were trying to decide whether or not I was worth the effort. Clearly, he decided I was, because he launched into a detailed account of sectarianism and socialism, vested interests and political power, all set in the matrix of the social, economic and cultural history of the Province. And as he talked, for the first time I began to grasp that however important concern and compassion might be, without access to real political power all you can do is tinker with the big things, like equality of opportunity and social justice.

  My political education had begun that evening. When next we met, I told him I’d try hard not just to be upset by what distressed me in future but to step back a moment and look at the underlying causes just as he had laid them out for me.

  ‘Ah, missus, these’ns are buggers too,’ Ernie said suddenly, tapping the metal bar with a spanner. ‘Ah’ll hafta turn the power off agane. Is that alrite?’

  He stood up and limped back along the landing. I was halfway down the stairs, still thinking about Keith, when the phone rang.

  ‘Helen’s Bay, three—’

  ‘Jenny, what’s wrong! I’ve just got your message.’ Colin’s voice was loud and agitated and from the racket in the background it sounded as if he was using the same awful phone box.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I said steadily. ‘I left a message asking you to ring because I’m going out. I particularly said it wasn’t urgent.’

  ‘Well, this note says “Urgent, please ring your wife”,’ he replied irritably, though his relief was evident.

  ‘Before eight o’clock,’ I added shortly. ‘You promised you’d ring, so we could talk, and as you hadn’t, I thought you might try this evening,’ I explained. ‘It’s Val’s party. Had you forgotten?’ I was amazed at how steady I was able to be, given how I was actually feeling.

  ‘Look, Jen, I can’t chat now. The old man’s taking me out to dinner and you can guess what that means. He’ll be down any minute.’

  ‘Well, he can wait a couple of minutes, can’t he?’ I said sharply. ‘I’ve been waiting to speak to you all day. You know there’s something we need to talk about. Couldn’t you have managed a few minutes this afternoon? The session ended at four thirty, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Jen, you know how he hates being kept waiting,’ he broke in, as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. ‘Look, I can see him coming now. I’ll phone you later, when I get back, say between eleven and twelve.’

  ‘No, Colin. That’s what you said last night. Don’t bother to ring. I’ll make up my own mind and I’ll see you sometime tomorrow,’ I said abruptly, as I dropped the phone back in the cradle.

  I sat staring at it, amazed and horrified by what I had done. I felt tears in my eyes. He’ll ring back, I told myself. He knows he’s upset me. He’s sure to ring back and apologise. I sat and watched the phone, willing it to ring.

  From upstairs, I heard the radio. The six o’clock news. I could tell by the pattern and tone. I sat on miserably, rigid with tension, waiting.

  As the broadcast ended, I heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Screw loose,’ Ernie said ab
ruptly. ‘I put them towels back, wos that alrite?’

  ‘That was very thoughtful,’ I replied weakly. ‘I was afraid it might be another big job like the washer.’

  ‘Naa,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Wish all the jobs was that aisy.’

  ‘Well, I’m very grateful indeed. Now how much do I owe you?’

  I stepped into the cloakroom for my handbag, looked hopefully at the telephone and observed that Ernie was moving awkwardly from one foot to the other, his eyes firmly fixed on the carpet.

  ‘Two ten all right?’

  I was quite shocked. Three hours skilled work, work that was also physically demanding, and he felt he couldn’t ask more than two pounds ten shillings. I wondered what Keith would say when I told him.

  I opened my wallet and was relieved to find a five pound note at the back. I folded it and handed it to him.

  ‘Saturday’s double time,’ I said as lightly as I could manage. ‘Besides, that washer was bonus rated.’

  He looked puzzled as he drew out a battered notecase from his back pocket. ‘Ah niver says no till a lady,’ he mumbled as he put the note away. ‘Give us a shout, now, if ye have ony more trouble with yer man,’ he added, jerking his head in the direction of the garage. ‘The wife’s usually there and ye have ma number.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ I nodded. ‘I could do with someone to thump things for me.’

  ‘Well, Ernie’s yer man.’

  I looked at the small figure, his face streaked with oil from his dungarees and dust from the garage floor, and thought of the battered notecase with only a few ten shilling notes in it. Yes, Ernie was my man.

  ‘Does your wife make apple tarts, Ernie?’

  ‘’Deed aye, she does. She’s a great cook, tho’ she says I’m no credit to her at all.’

  I waved to him to follow me out into the garage. ‘There you are, a little present for the children,’ I said as I removed the paper cover from a box of Bramleys.

  ‘Thems lovely. I coulden take yer good apples, missus.’