The Teacher at Donegal Bay

by Anne Doughty

  ‘Look, Harvey,’ I said gently, ‘Mavis won’t leave you, not unless you really make a mess of things, and you won’t do that, not if you listen to what she’s saying. But you can’t do it all at once. Just one thing at a time. Avoid what can be avoided. That’s what I’ve been doing and it works. We’ve just got to get through the next few days, then we can talk. If you want to,’ I added tentatively.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I think we need to talk.’ He hesitated, tried to look at me, but couldn’t manage it. ‘I’ve not been much use to you, Jenny. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’ve not been much use to each other, Harvey,’ I said quietly. ‘Perhaps it’s not entirely our fault. Let’s not be too upset about it.’

  I saw him collect himself and I took my chance. I showed him what I had written. He glanced at it briefly, asked what we needed to do next, and sat listening as I filled him in on where we were up to. A few minutes later, when we went downstairs together, he had rearranged his black tie and his persona and looked as if he could cope.

  ‘I’m going to call on Bertie and the staff,’ I informed my mother when the door had shut behind the last of the morning visitors. ‘I’ll take the notices to the newspapers and go on from there, if that’s all right with you, Mummy, now that Harvey’s here.’

  ‘Yes, you do that if you feel you have to, Jennifer,’ she said dismissively, her face making it quite clear how unnecessary she felt it was to show any consideration towards mere staff. ‘Harvey and I will have some lunch together,’ she went on, much more enthusiastically. ‘I presume you’ll be back over again this evening with Colin?’

  ‘No, Mummy,’ said Harvey. He was in so quickly, I didn’t even have time to panic. ‘I think Jennifer has managed very well to do all she’s done, but she had no sleep at all last night. I really must insist she goes home and stays there until tomorrow morning,’ he said in his crispest consultant’s voice. ‘Mavis will come down this evening, as soon as she’s given the children their tea. She’ll be able to do whatever you might have wanted Jenny to do.’

  She was so busy agreeing with Harvey, she didn’t even bother to object when I collected Daddy’s car keys. I said my goodbye, reminded Harvey with a glance that he knew where to find me, and manoeuvred the Rover gingerly out into the Drive and down on to the Stranmillis Road. By the time I got to Erwin’s, I felt quite comfortable with the car, which I’ve always liked, but distinctly uneasy about what I would find in the place where my father had worked for over twenty years.

  I parked between Mrs Huey’s elderly Morris Minor and Bertie’s new red sports car and walked down the yard to the back entrance to the upstairs offices. I saw a movement at a window, looked up and waved to Loretto, the newest clerk, a cousin of Bertie’s from the nearby Falls Road. Before I got to the door, Bertie came rushing out to meet me, hauling on the jacket he seldom wears as if it were an obligatory token of respect.

  ‘Gawd, Jennifer, I’m sorry about yer father, rest his soul,’ he said, crossing himself. ‘There’s bin no work done in this place the day. Mrs Huey’s in a bad way,’ he went on. ‘Her an’ Loretto hasn’t had a dry eye among them all mornin’.’

  He put his arms round me and hugged me. Short in stature and tending to plumpness, Bertie has shoulders on him like a rugby forward, and his hug left me breathless. He led me up the stairs to the office that had remained my father’s even after he’d sold the business. During the handover, he and Bertie had got on so well my father suggested he return to work two days a week to help Bertie carry through the changes he’d planned. For his part, Bertie had insisted my father’s office was not to be disturbed. While staff were retrained and computers installed, it kept its slightly old-fashioned and very informal arrangements.

  ‘Haul on a minit, will ye, an’ I’ll away an’ get Mrs Huey,’ he said as he opened the door.

  I took in the strange, familiar blend of the smell of old, well-polished furniture mixed in with the odour of shiny new machinery catalogues, dust, and chrysanthemums. A large, fresh bunch sat in a copper jug on top of a filing cabinet.

  ‘I think I shud leave yis till yerselves a minit, but I’d like till take yis for a bite o’ lunch. A’ve got a quiet wee table at the Royal Ave’nue wheniver yer reddy,’ he said hastily, as he left me.

  I walked across to my father’s empty desk and sat down, and I was still sitting there, lost in thought, when Gladys came into the room. A warm, friendly woman, long widowed, I had known her all my life, and she had always been so very kind to me. One look at her gave me the answer to a question I’d had in my mind for many years, and it explained her great interest in my life. I walked across to her, put my arms round her and cried as if my heart would break, because I knew she had loved my father.

  ‘Now, now, sweetheart, don’ cry, don’ cry. Sure Daddy would hate to see you cry,’ she said, the tears streaming down her own face. I heard the door open and shut again behind us.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sniffed, ‘I’ve left make-up on your lovely clean blouse.’

  ‘And sure what matter that,’ she said, wiping her own eyes. ‘Now, com’on, Jenny. We’ll hafta to do better than this. Poor Bertie doesn’t know whether he’s cornin’ or goin’. He wants to come to the funeral and he’s afeard to menshun it, bein’ Catholic like. Ye may say somethin’ to the poor man.’

  I nodded and put my hand to my pocket, pulled out the piece of kitchen paper once more and looked at it.

  ‘D’you think Daddy would lend us some tissues?’ I said, wiping my eyes again.

  ‘Surely, he woud. Sure he has everythin’ in that desk of his,’ she went on, pulling out a drawer and handing me a box of Kleenex. ‘No matter what ye’d ask him for, he’d have it in that desk – if ye waited long enough. What’ll we do without him, Jenny?’ she said quietly and burst into tears again.

  ‘Gladys,’ I said, hesitantly. I’d never used her Christian name before, for my father had always called her ‘Mrs Huey’. ‘Gladys, if Daddy hadn’t died last night, he’d be wired up to two machines this morning, a ventilator and a kidney machine. I prayed for him to go. You would have too, if you’d been there, wouldn’t you?’

  She nodded, but could not speak.

  ‘Shall I tell you what his last words were?’

  She looked up at me, surprised, and I told her about driving up the Antrim Road in the sunshine, and hearing the story of him standing barefoot, with the backside out of his trousers, looking up at his neighbour on the horse. She stopped crying and began to smile and said she knew the story well.

  ‘I asked him if he’d be in work on Tuesday, and I said I’d come down from school. The last thing he said to me was, “Good girl, that’s great. I’ll get Mrs Huey to get us a bun for our tea”.’

  I had to re-do my make-up yet again before I could go and speak to the rest of the staff, but I managed it fairly well. Bertie had already told them the showroom would close so everyone could attend the funeral, if there were no objections from the family. Over lunch, I reassured Bertie and Gladys that if it were the last thing I were ever to do, I would see that all Daddy’s friends from work would stand together in the pew behind the family, Catholic and Protestant alike, exactly as he would have wished.

  Lunch was surprisingly enjoyable. Any group of businessmen casting an eye over the strangely assorted group we made in a quiet corner of the large dining room would not have guessed at the sadness which was our common bond. We talked about anything that came to mind, but returned again and again to remembrances of my father. Gladys told us stories about the early days of the business I had never heard before. With little capital of his own, my father had rebuilt old farm machinery as well as importing what was new. Bertie had done differently. Coming from a home no less poor than my father’s, he had worked in the building trade all through his teens and twenties, first in Glasgow and then in London. He’d worked every hour he could to build his capital, because his ambition was to have his own business. Erwin’s was just what he wanted, for he shared my fath
er’s passion for farm machinery.

  After lunch, I drove out of the city, free at last from telephone calls and arrangements that had to be made. I looked around at the autumn trees and the sparkle of the lough and wondered yet again how a day could still be so lovely and yet Daddy gone. I thought of the blue pansies in the Botanic Gardens, and the jug of chrysanthemums Gladys had put in his office that he would now never see. And then I remembered the tiny jug of late flowering roses in my study at Loughview where I would never work again.

  I parked the car outside the gates and looked across at the neighbouring houses for any signs of life. Mercifully, there were none. I remembered that Monday was Karen’s cleaning day. The babies were shipped off to her mother in the morning. By now, Karen would be on her way to collect them. She’d not be back for an hour or more.

  I walked down the hall and into the kitchen. The breakfast table looked just as it had on Friday night, except that there was no half-eaten bowl of cornflakes, just Colin’s eggy plate and the dregs of his coffee in the percolator. I turned my back on it and went upstairs.

  What did you expect, Jenny? I asked myself when I saw the unmade bed, the scatter of underwear on the floor, the abandoned pyjamas on the bedroom chair. I sat down at the dressing table and looked in the mirror.

  ‘Harvey was right,’ I said aloud. Although I was pale and had dark circles under my eyes, there was a lightness about the face I had not seen for some time. When I smiled experimentally, the solemn face in front of me responded with a twinkle that was quite unexpected.

  ‘Sitting admiring yourself.’ That’s what my mother always said if ever she caught me peering in a mirror. But she was wrong. I laughed aloud. How wrong she was about so many things. How wrong all of us could be, even about the biggest things.

  I cleared my dressing table except for the knicker-pink twin-set and the silver brush set which was Maisie’s engagement present. Then I had a go at the bathroom. I removed all signs of a female presence, down to the last tampon. I ignored the matching luggage we’d taken on our honeymoon and pulled out my old suitcases from under the bed. What was left over I packed in a box from the garage which said ‘Old Bushmills Whiskey’. I left my summer clothes in the wardrobe for another time and carried all my winter things to the car on hangers.

  Then I turned to my study. Too many books to take today, so I picked out all the new poetry and just a few others I might need for school. I looked at my collection of stones and driftwood and could not bear to leave it, even for a few days. I packed it carefully and took it to the car. When I came back, the room seemed strangely bare already. I unhooked Val’s sketches from the wall, and then my own. Less good than hers, they were still precious because they encapsulated the time and the place of their making – a sketch of the surviving gable wall of the cottage where my father began his life and one of the worn and weathered baulks of wood down at Ballydrumard, both of which I’d made on days I’d spent out with Alan.

  The car was full when I’d finished. I had to put Val’s lemon geraniums on the passenger seat and wedge the little jug of late roses in the door panel where Daddy kept his maps.

  I went back into the house one last time to go to the loo. There in the bathroom were the three red geraniums, very dead. Like my relationship with Colin. No need to spend time lamenting what had been. It was over. Finished. Long ago and in another country.

  I washed my hands, dried them on the warm, dry towel, and pulled open the airing cupboard. Covered in slimy ooze, the homebrew bottle now sat quiet. The smell was horrible. As I shut the door on it I had to laugh. Not with a bang but a whimper, I said to myself as I ran lightly down the stairs.

  I pulled up out of Loughview and pointed the car east. Another day I would go and see Ernie and pay him what I owed him and tell him about the possibility of a job with Bertie. But not today. Today, I had done as much as I could.

  I looked at my watch and saw there was time to drive down to Windmill Hill and look out over the green fields and work out which patchwork piece was mine. Or I could park somewhere and sit in the sun, or walk by the shore, or I could pick up the key from under the plant pot and go into a house that would welcome me.

  I could lie down and sleep and Val would cook my supper. I could worry about finding a home and Bob would tell me exactly how it was to be managed. I could ring Siobhan and make a plan to drive up to Derry and bring Keith home. I could falter and find my courage disappear and Alan would comfort me.

  I sat for a moment thinking about Alan. Not thinking in a deliberate, logical way, more allowing myself to be aware of him, remembering all that had been between us over the years and what had happened in these last incredibly extended days. His tenderness was no longer a threat to the job in hand, it was a gift, so unexpected, and so precious, I could hardly believe it was mine.

  Now that my life had been given back to me I was beginning to realise just how many wonderful things were mine for the taking.

  Chapter 22

  It came as a surprise when I saw the broken tree stump I’d glimpsed in the flare of Alan’s headlights on Saturday evening. Somehow I’d managed to overshoot the turn to Val and Bob’s. I was now heading south to Drinsallagh.

  Well, and why not? I said to myself, as I opened the window and felt the rush of fresh, autumny air.

  In no time at all, I came to the laneway. I reckoned I could probably get the car down to the cottage, but whether I could get it back up again was another matter. So I pulled off the road between the huge round pillars that had once supported a farm gate, scuffled in the back of the car for some flat shoes and set off down the lane.

  It was wonderful to be out, the air still warm though the sun was dropping towards the horizon. I paused by the tumbled stone wall where Alan had helped me choose fronds of gold and bronze bracken on Saturday night. The ancient hawthorn where I’d added a few sprays of brilliant red berries was bent with age. It curved protectively over a tangle of grass sprinkled with harebells, their delicate blue flowers swaying on fragile stems.

  Tears of joy sprang to my eyes. I felt as if I had emerged from some black and airless cave and been given back all the things I most loved: the space of the sky with the sea beyond, the glancing light on the turning leaves, and the flowers, the harebells that had been here all the time, but hidden by the darkness.

  I tramped on, my eyes moving over the hedgebanks. Nodding seedheads on the grasses, bright red globes on the honeysuckle, shiny black beads on the elderberry. Golden hawkbeards. Brambles laden with ripe berries. Such richness, I hardly knew where to look. And then, as I turned a corner, the cottage came in sight. Tiny windowpanes caught the westering sun. The plaster was peeling, shabby in the bright light, but the place was sturdy. A cottage with its feet in the earth, its back to the wind, its door opening to the south.

  I came round the gable and stood beneath the gnarled branches of the climbing rose and remembered how long ago, on the exposed side of a windy glen, my grandfather had planted a rose for my grandmother. ‘To comfort her, for what she had lost,’ my father always said. Ellen had been an educated girl from a comfortable home who married for love. She never regretted it, he said, though her life had been hard and she had suffered great loss.

  I took the key from behind the drainpipe and turned it in the lock. I smelt the clean, sour-milk smell of emulsion paint as I came into the big kitchen. One wall had been stripped of its peeling paper and was freshly painted. Its rugged plaster surface, pitted and scarred, gleamed in the dim light. I sat down in a wooden armchair by the hearth and stared at the row of cooking pots lined up at the back of the broad sunlit space below the smoke-darkened canopy.

  I tried to remember the name of the metal arm that swung out over the fire, so you could attach a pot or a griddle to the chain that hung from it. The name teased on the edge of consciousness. Then I thought of one of Daddy’s books with drawings of hearths and cooking equipment. He had taken it from the shelf that July day when Alan and I got soaked up at his o
ld home and I’d come back feeling so sad that nothing now remained but a piece of gable wall.

  ‘And the climbing rose, Jenny?’ he reminded me.

  ‘No, Daddy dear. That’s just it,’ I said, almost in tears. ‘Alan and I spent ages looking for any trace of it, but it’s gone.’

  ‘I’m sure it has, dear,’ he said easily. ‘But those four pink ones at the bottom of the garden are all cuttings from it, and there are plenty of younger ones I’ve taken from those,’ he said reassuringly. ‘That’s as well as the ones in Scotland and England and America, and a few more back up in the glens. Your Aunt Mary has a splendid one on her old home, though it’s only a storehouse now.’

  I thought of dear Aunt Mary, my favourite Hughes relative, with her large, unruly family, ‘my big cousins’ I had always called them, and Uncle Paddy, her good-natured farmer husband. I hadn’t been able to see them since before I was married and now they’d be coming to the funeral, with Jamsey and Paddy, the two youngest sons, the only ones who had chosen to stay in Ulster when their brothers and sisters had gone off to seek their fortunes, as so many Ulster offspring do.

  Harvey and I would make them very welcome, for my mother would no doubt ignore them, as she always did. She’d never forgiven her younger sister for marrying a poor Catholic lad from the next valley when she was only seventeen. But Mary and Paddy had been happy together. Now, surrounded by their grandchildren, Jamsey and Paddy’s sons and daughters, they were still happy, their new bungalow a focus for all the family, as their old cottage, and later their new farmhouse, had always been.

  I sat looking up at the sky through the smoke hole above the hearth. Their first home had been a cottage just like this one. When I visited it as a little girl, I’d sat on a low three-legged stool by the hearth. The stool was called a ‘creepie’, and my aunt used ‘piggins’ and ‘noggins’ when she measured milk and made butter. I learnt all the unfamiliar words she used every day and treasured them, but even as a very little girl I knew never to use any of them in front of my mother.