The Teacher at Donegal Bay
The Teacher at Donegal Bay
Anne Doughty
‘An engaging story of opportunities lost and refound’ Express Can love help her through the most difficult decisions? When Jenny McKinstry is offered a new post as the Head of English at her Belfast school she’s elated! Yet she can’t help but feel conflicted about the position. With all those around her mounting the pressure to start a family and her husband’s career about to take off, Jenny feels bound by an overwhelming sense of duty. Will she be able to support her husband’s ambitions and land her dream job… Prepare to be spirited away to rural Ireland in this stunning new saga from Anne Doughty. Previously published as A Few Late Roses. Readers LOVE Anne Doughty: ‘I love all the books from this author’ ‘Beautifully written’ ‘Would recommend to everyone’ ‘Fabulous story, couldn't put it down!’ ‘Looking forward to the next one. ’
ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_4475a192-5252-5c05-b8d1-a80558251b12)
The Girl from Galloway
The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay
Last Summer in Ireland
Copyright (#ulink_9bc9880d-1221-5db4-8db0-b3fd8625daa4)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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First published as A Few Late Roses in 1997
This edition published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019
Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008328818
Praise for Anne Doughty (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’
‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’
‘I have read all of Anne’s books - I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’
‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’
‘A true Irish classic’
‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’
For Peter
Contents
Cover (#u8614ab86-aaf4-5aac-8206-221784888078)
About the Author (#ub2ab347c-daa6-5817-9b3e-87bedb7e8d97)
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_2ecf714d-c2ff-5d39-8257-2f13f955f32d)
Title Page (#u02bd8bc7-b02d-577a-9cfa-feffee732328)
Copyright (#u3a5e4a39-4c72-5a5e-8b96-6bd91bc34cb1)
Praise (#ulink_ff746a8c-2acc-592f-b247-8085ae45c434)
Dedication (#u2b6fb094-a659-5608-8f7b-7387307630dd)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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Prologue (#ud7bf8e47-ac43-5dd6-bb30-a024f7697fec)
OCTOBER, 1995
My mother never talked about the past. What happened long ago was over and done with, water under the bridge, as far as she was concerned. She was wrong, of course. You can’t ignore the past. It always remains part of you. It shapes your present and your future and if you do try to ignore it, you could well end up as she did, bitter and disappointed and so out of love with herself and the whole world that she cast a dark shadow all around her.
That was how she nearly ruined my life.
Even in her dying my mother managed one final, bitter act. The morning after she died, my brother remembered the sealed envelope she had deposited with him some years earlier. He assumed it was a copy of her will, the provisions of which she’d quoted so many times we already knew them off by heart. It was indeed her will. But with it was a document he had not expected, a letter of instruction, handwritten in her own firm and well-formed copperplate.
‘Jenny dear, what in the name o’ goodness are we gonna do? Shure I had it all arranged with her own man and the undertaker down the road from the home. Hasn’t she upset the whole applecart?’
I knew he was badly shaken the moment I snatched up the phone in the bedroom where I was already packing. The steady, well-rounded tones that made him such a success with the patients in his Belfast consulting rooms had disappeared. I hadn’t heard Harvey sound like this since we were both children.
‘What d’ye think, Sis?’
I wasn’t surprised he’d had arrangements already made. For two years she’d been bedridden and almost immobile. She’d been at death’s door so many times that the kind-hearted staff at the nursing home became embarrassed about calling us yet once more to the bedside.
‘What exactly does it say, Harvey?’ I asked.
‘“I wish to be interred with my own family in the Hughes apportionment situated in Ballydrennan Churchyard, County Antrim, and not with my deceased husband George Erwin in the churchyard adjacent to Balmoral Presbyterian Church on the Lisburn Road.”’
He read it slowly and precisely, so that I could imagine her penning it, her lips tight, her shoulders squared. The more angry and bitter she was about something, the more formal the language she would use. In a really bad mood, she’d end up sounding like a legal document as she piled up words of sufficient weight and moment to serve her purposes. Consistent to the very end, I thought, as I listened.
‘And there’s a bit about the flowers,’ he added dismissively.
‘Oh, what does she say about flowers?’
‘She wants flowers. She says this idea of asking people to send money to some charity or other is a lot o’ nonsense and quite inappropriate.’
‘She would, wouldn’t she?’ I laughed wryly. ‘Shall we send a pillow of red roses, Harvey? Or one of those big square wreaths that say “Mum”, like the Kray brothers’, when they were let out of prison for their mother’s funeral?’
I heard him expostulate and made an effort to collect myself.
‘Sorry, Harvey, I’m not quite myself at the moment. I just can’t believe she’s gone. I’m all throughother, as she might say. In fact, when you rang I was standing here with one arm as long as the other when I’m supposed to be packing.’
He laughed shortly, but seemed comforted.
‘You’re the boss, Harvey. You backed me when Daddy died,’ I said gently. ‘If you want to go ahead with the Lisburn Road as planned, I’ll not object. We’re the only ones concerned, let’s face it.’
‘You’re shure, Jenny?’ he went on, a trace of relief already audible in his voice.
I stared round the disordered bedroom where two cases sat open and small piles of panties, Y-fronts, shirts and blouses were already lined up. I sat down abruptly, sweat breaking on my forehead.
‘No, no, I’m not sure, Harvey,’ I said weakly. ‘The minute I spoke, I knew it wouldn’t be right. Isn’t it silly? Can’t we even get free of her when she’s dead?’
In different circumstances, a countrywoman wanting to be buried with her family in the place where she was born could be a matter of sentiment. But there was no question of that with our mother. She’d never gone back to Ballydrennan after her father died, not even to visit her sister Mary who lived with her family only a few miles away. What was more, she’d never had a good word to say about the place. No, there was no question of sentiment. Only of spite.
Daddy had done all he could to give her what she wanted while he lived. When he died, he’d left her with a house, a car and a decent income. Now, one last time, she was rejecting him in the most public way possible. But something at the back of my mind told me we had to go through with it.
‘Harvey, I’m sorry, but I think we’ve got to do it. I can’t give you a single good reason why we should, but I have to be honest,’ I confessed. ‘I’m not being much help to you,’ I ended up lamely.
‘Yes, you are, Jenny. Being honest’s the only way. Took me a long time to see you’n Mavis were right about that. But you were. I’m much beholden to you, as they say,’ he added, with a slight, awkward laugh.
‘Maybe there has to be one last time, Harvey,’ I said quickly. ‘But it’ll make a lot of extra work for you.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Jenny,’ he replied easily. ‘Ring me when you’ve got your flight time and I’ll pick you up at Aldergrove.’
Two days later, in the crowded farm kitchen of our only remaining Antrim relatives, I took a large glass of whisky from the roughened hand of one of the McBride cousins and wondered how I could add a good measure of water without attracting attention. Before I could move, a huge figure embraced me.
‘Ach, my wee cousin.’
Jamsey McBride had always seemed large to me. When he’d carried me about on his shoulders as a little girl, he’d been like a great friendly bear, his remarkable physical strength offset by a surprising gentleness of manner.
‘Jamsey!’ I replied as the whisky sloshed in my glass.
‘Ach, shure Jenny, how are ye? Begod, shure I haven’t laid eyes on ye since your poor fader went. God rest his sowl, he was the best atall, the best atall. That mus’ be neer twenty year ago now. Dear aye, ye’ll see some changes in this place since last ye wor here. Aye, changes an’ heartbreak too.’
His eyes misted and I looked down into my glass to give him time to recover. Jamsey’s eldest son had been killed by paramilitaries early in the eighties and he still couldn’t speak of it without distress.
‘Now drink up, woman dear,’ he urged me after a moment. ‘Shure ye’ll be skinned down at the groun’. Yer fader usta say that wee hill the church stan’s on was the caulest place in the nine glens.’
So I drank my whisky as obediently as a child and listened to the ring of his Ulster Scots and tried to keep the tears from springing to my own eyes. No, it was not sorrow. Not tears for my mother or her passing, or even for Jamsey’s son, whom I had barely known, but tears of regret for the world I once knew, the people and places of my childhood.
Standing there in the large modern house that had replaced the low thatched cottage where my aunt and uncle began their married life, I mourned my links with the land and that part of my family who still lived closest to it. For these were people my mother had no time for, people whose hard-working lives she despised, whose successes and failures she treated with indifference or contempt.
A red-faced figure appeared at my elbow, the neck of a bottle of Bushmills aimed at my glass.
‘No, Patrick, no,’ I protested, laughing. ‘If I have any more, I won’t be able to stand up in church, never mind kneel down.’
He laughed aloud, clutched me by the arm and turned me to look across the crowded kitchen.
‘Jenny, is that yer girl over there forenenst that good-looking dark-haired lad?’
‘Yes, that’s Claire and her brother Stephen,’ I nodded. He winked at me, and pressed his way towards the next refillable glass.
Jamsey watched his brother work his way across the room and was silent for a moment.
‘Gawd Jenny, we’re all gettin’ aul,’ he began, sadly. ‘But that girl of yours is powerful like her granny. In luks, I mane,’ he added quickly.
‘I’m glad you added that, Jamsey,’ I said, laughing. ‘My mother could be a bit sharp.’
‘Ach, say no more, say no more,’ he muttered hastily. ‘Shure, don’t we know well enough she’d no time for the likes of us. But yer Da was a differen’ story. Ye’ve got very like him, Jenny. D’ye know that?’
‘It’s my grey hair, Jamsey. I see it’s in the fashion round here as well.’
‘Ach, away wi’ ye,’ he laughed, dropping a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘Shure you’ve only a wee wisp or two at the front, an’ me has no hair atall, no moren a moily cow has horns. Tell me, d’ye like England, Jenny? Is it not too fast fer ye? Boys, I go over for Smithfeeld Show ivery year and the traffic gets worser. ’Twould run ye down and niver stop to cast ye aside.’
After the warmth and noise of the big kitchen, the chill of the October day took my breath away when we stepped outside. I shuddered so violently that Claire came and linked her arm through mine. ‘Get Daddy,’ I saw her mouth to Stephen, as the whole party set out on the short drive down one glen and into the next. A little later, the four of us walked up the rough path to the small grey church. Down by the gate, the cars were parked erratically on the grassy verge of the minor road, as if their occupants had gone fishing in a nearby lake or were playing football in someone’s field.
From behind the massed clouds that had threatened rain as we left McBride’s farm the sun suddenly appeared, casting one side of the deep glen into such dark shadow that the whitewashed houses gleamed like beacons. The church was in the light. Beyond its low hill and the curve of the Coast Road, full of the whiz of Saturday afternoon traffic, the white-capped rollers sparkled as they crashed on the rocky shore.
We followed the coffin into the empty, echoing church, its pale, peeling walls dappled with sunlight that fell through the high, undecorated windows. As we filled the first row of dark wooden pews, the undertaker’s men manoeuvred in the tiled space below the pulpit and placed the coffin on trestles so close to us I could have reached out and touched it.
We waited for the minister to appear and ascend to his vantage point. The silence deepened and the damp chill of the air and dead cold of the hard wooden bench began to eat into me. But, as the minister threw up his arms and made his opening flourish, I forgot all about being cold. At the first resounding reminder that we are all born to die, I heard, not the words, but the accent. Sharper and quite different from Jamsey’s slow drawl, his speech and his turn of phrase took me straight back to childhood, just like Jamsey’s had.
I did try to listen to the words from the pulpit but all I could hear were voices from the past, telling jokes and stories. Tears sprang to my eyes and I had to dab them surreptitiously while pretending to blow my nose.
‘She tried to take that away as well,’ I said to myself.
I stared at the wooden casket in disbelief. Yes, it was true. As far back as I could remember, she had tried to stop me visiting our relations in the glens. If it hadn’t been for my father I wouldn’t even have known they existed.
I shivered, tried to concentrate on the sermon, on the carved oak of the pulpit, on the scuffed wooden top of the untenanted harmonium. Anything to keep my mind away from what she had done. I wanted to weep as inconsolably as the child I had once been.
‘Brethren, let us pray.’
I breathed a sigh of relief as we shaded our eyes and bent our heads discreetly forward. It was so long since I’d been to a Presbyterian service I’d forgotten about not kneeling down. I hadn’t even warned Claire or Stephen, but they seemed to be taking it in their stride. I glanced sideways at Claire and found her grey eyes watching me from beneath her shaded brow. She smiled at me encouragingly.
I couldn’t think what on earth she and Stephen were making of the funeral service with its emphasis on repentance and the shortness of our mortal span. Their grandmother had never to my knowledge repented of anything and she had lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight.
We stood up to be blessed and remained standing while the black-coated figures hoisted up their burden; one oak coffin with brass handles as specified by Edna Erwin, late of this parish, as per Harvey’s letter of instruction.
While we were in church the wind died away completely. When we emerged, a few handfuls of people marked out by our formal clothes as mourners, we stood blinking in the sunlight. McBride cousins in dark suits and well-polished shoes, elderly ladies wearing hats and hanging on the arms of sons or grandsons, a few people from Balmoral Presbyterian Church, discreet in grey or navy. Together, we found ourselves by the church door, bathed in the sudden warmth of the low sun.
Borne aloft on the stout shoulders of the undertaker’s men, the coffin glinted as we scrunched along the gravel on the south side of the church, tramped across the rich green sward beside the recent burials, and stepped cautiously onto the newly beaten path that meandered between the overgrown humps of unmarked graves and the tangles of long grass still laced with summer wildflowers.
Here, in the oldest part of the churchyard, in a burying place far older than the church that now stood empty behind us, we waited till the last able-bodied person had made the journey to the graveside. Beside my own small family stood Harvey and Mavis, their son Peter, and Susie their younger daughter. Beyond, the dark figures of Jamsey and Patrick McBride with their wives, Loreto and Norah. A dozen people altogether. Most of whom she disapproved of one way or another.
Words were spoken and the first shower of earth from the chalky mound piled up beyond the damp trench spattered on the shiny surface of the oak casket. Suddenly, the air was full of a rich, autumny perfume. The sun’s warmth playing on the mass of waiting flowers had drawn out their sweet, spicy smells.
Standing there by the open grave, I felt a surge of pure joy. Joy in the brilliance of the sky and the sparkle of the sea, joy in my own reconnection with this place I had once known so well, and joy in the three people dearest in all the world to me, who stood so close by my side, so ready to comfort me as I so often comforted them.
It was a moment of totally unexpected wellbeing I shall never forget. As I listened to the fall of earth and pebbles and the familiar words of the committal, I could think only of the joys of my own life, the happiness of my home and family, the success of my work, the pleasure of friends, the problems and difficulties survived and overcome. As the damp earth obliterated the polished plaque on which my mother’s mortal span had been clearly visible, Edna Erwin, 1902-1990, I remembered yet again that this moment of joy might never have been if she’d had her way. However mixed and variable its character, my happiness these many years could just as easily have been buried in my past.
I stood in the sunshine, the rhythmic crash of the breakers and the peremptory call of the jackdaws etching themselves into my memory. It was twenty-two years, almost to the day, since the weekend that had changed the course of my life. It was time I went back and found out what really happened that weekend.
Chapter 1 (#ud7bf8e47-ac43-5dd6-bb30-a024f7697fec)
BELFAST 1968
The door clicked shut. As the footsteps of my sixth-formers echoed on the wooden stairs, I put my face in my hands and breathed a sigh of relief. My head ached with the rhythmic throbbing that gets worse if a fly buzzes within earshot or a door bangs two floors away. There was aspirin in my handbag, but the nearest glass of water was on the ground floor and the thought of weaving my way down through the noisy confusion of landings and overspilling cloakrooms was more than I could bear.
I made a note in the margin of my Shakespeare and closed it wearily. I enjoy the history plays and try to dramatise them when I teach, but today my effort with Richard III and his machinations seemed flat and stale. Hardly surprising after a short night, an early start, and an unexpected summons to the Headmistress’s study in the lunch hour. After that, I could hardly expect to be my shining best, but I still felt disappointed.
I stretched my aching shoulders, rubbed ineffectually at the pain in my neck, and reminded myself that it was Friday. The noise from below was always worse on a Friday afternoon, but it came to an end much more quickly than other days. Soon, silence would flow back into the empty classrooms and I might be able to think again.
I looked around the room where I taught most of my A-level classes. Once a servant’s bedroom in this tall, Edwardian house, the confined space was now the last resting place of objects with no immediate purpose. Ancient textbooks, music for long-forgotten concerts, programmes for school plays and old examination papers were piled into the tall bookcases which stood against two of the walls. Another tide of objects had drifted into the dim corners furthest from the single dusty window: a globe with the British Empire in fading red blotches; a bulging leather suitcase labelled ‘Drama’; a box inscribed ‘Bird’s Eggs’; a broken easel; and a firescreen embroidered with a faded peacock.
There were photographs too, framed and unframed, spotted with age. Serried ranks of girls in severe pinafores, accompanied by formidable ladies with bosoms and hats, the mothers and grandmothers of the girls who now poured out of the adjoining houses which made up Queen’s Crescent Grammar School.
I wondered yet again why the things of the past are so often neglected, left to lie around unsorted, neither cleared away nor brought properly into the present, to be valued for use or beauty. I thought of my own small collection of old photographs, a mere handful that had somehow survived my mother’s rigorous throwing out: Granny and Grandad Hughes standing in front of the forge with my mother; my father in overalls, with his first car, parked outside the garage where he worked in Ballymena; and a studio portrait of my grandmother, Ellen Erwin, clear-eyed, long-haired and wistful, when she was only sixteen. That picture was one of my most precious possessions.
My husband, Colin, says I’m sentimental and he finds it very endearing. But I don’t think it’s like that at all. I think your life starts long before you’re born, with people you may never even know, people who shape and mould the world into which you come. If I were ever to write the story of my life, it would have to begin well before the date on my birth certificate and I couldn’t do it without the fragments that most people neglect or throw away, like these faded prints at Queen’s Crescent.
The throb in my head had eased slightly as the noise level dropped from the fierce crescendo around four o’clock to the random outbursts of five minutes past. Another few minutes and I really would be able to get to my feet and collect my scattered wits.
I stared out through the dusty window at the house opposite. In the room the mirror image of mine, there were filing cabinets; a young man in shirt sleeves bent over a drawingboard under bright fluorescent tubes. On the floors below, each window framed a picture. Girls in smart dresses sat on designer furniture, in newly decorated offices with shiny green pot plants. They answered telephones, made photocopies and poured out cups of Cona coffee, disappearing with them to the front of the house, to their bosses who occupied the still elegant rooms that looked out upon the wide pavements of the next salubrious crescent.
Colin would be having tea by now. Outside the large conference room in the thickly carpeted lobby, waitresses in crisp dresses would pour from silver teapots and hand tiny sandwiches to men who dropped their briefcases on their chairs and greeted each other with warm handshakes. Beyond the air-conditioned rooms of the beflagged hotel, I saw the busy London streets, the traffic whirling ceaselessly round islands of green in squares where you could still hear a blackbird sing.
Daddy would probably be in the garden. He might be talking to the tame blackbird that follows his slight figure up and down the rosebeds as he weeds, working steadily and methodically, as if he could continue all day and never get tired. ‘Pace yourself, Jenny,’ he’d say, as he taught me how to loosen the weeds and open the soil. ‘No use going at it like a bull at a gate. Give it the time it needs. Don’t rush it.’
He was right, of course. He usually was. A mere two hours since I’d been summoned to Miss Braidwood’s study and here I was, so agitated by what she’d said that I’d gone and given myself a headache when I had the whole weekend to work things out.
I glanced at my watch and thought of all the things I ought to be doing. But I still made no move. My mind kept going back to that lunchtime meeting. I looked round the room again. This was where I worked, where I spent my solitary lunch hours, a place where I was free to think, or to sit and dream. It wasn’t a question of whether I liked it or not, it was what it meant to me that mattered.
Up here, I could even see the hard edge of the Antrim Hills lifting themselves above the city, indifferent to the housing estates which spattered their flanks and the roads which snaked and looped up and out of the broad lowland at the head of the lough.
At the thought of the hills, invisible from where I sat, I was overcome with longing. Oh, to be driving out of the city. I closed my eyes and saw the road stretch out before me, winding between hedgerows thick with summer green, the buttercups gleaming in the strong light. Daddy and I, setting off to see some elderly relative in her small cottage by the sea or tucked away in one of the nine Glens of Antrim, whose names I could recite like a poem. The fresh wind from the sea tempering the summer heat, the sky a dazzle of blue, we move through meadow and moorland towards the rough slopes of a great granite outcrop.
‘Well, here we are, Jenny. Slemish. Keeping sheep here must’ve been fairly draughty. Pretty grim in winter even for a saint. Can we climb it, d’ye think?’
‘Oh yes, please. We’ll be able to see far more from the top.’
Bracken catching at my ankles, the mournful bleat of sheep, the sun hot on my shoulders as we circle upwards between huge boulders. A hawthorn tree still in bloom, though it is nearly midsummer, shelters a spring bubbling up among the rocks. We stop and drink from cupped hands. There isn’t another soul on the mountain and no other car parked beside us on the rough edge of the lane below. As we climb, the whole province of Ulster unrolls before us, until at last we stand in the wind, between the coast of Scotland on one far horizon and the mountains of Donegal, blue and misted, away to the west.
‘Isn’t that the Mull of Kintyre, Daddy?’
‘Yes, dear. That’s the Mull of Kintyre,’ he replied, as if his thoughts were as far away as the bright outline beyond the shimmering sea.
Reluctantly, I got to my feet. Daydreaming, my mother would call it, but the tone of her voice would make the weakness into a crime should she catch me at it.
‘Jennifer, you have got to get to that bookshop,’ I said to myself severely. There was shopping as well and whatever else happened I had to be at Rathmore Drive by 5.30 p.m.
The staffroom door was ajar. Gratefully, I pushed it wide open with my elbow, dropped the exercise books on the nearest surface and breathed a sigh of relief. No one sat on the benches beside the long plastic-covered tables. There was no one by the handsome marble fireplace, peering at the timetables and duty lists pinned to the tattered green noticeboard perched on the mantelpiece. Best of all, no one crouched by the corner cupboard, where a single broad shelf was labelled ‘J. McKinstry – English’.
I winced as the light from naked fluorescent tubes flooded the room. Mercilessly, it exposed the peeling paintwork of cupboards and skirtings, layers of dust on leafy plaster interlacings. It also revealed a folded sheet of paper bearing a badly smudged map of the world in an empty corner of the message board. Across the width of what survived of Asia, my name was neatly printed. Hastily, I read the note:
I should like to have a word with you about Millicent Blackwood. Could you please come to me in the Library on Monday at 1 p.m. before I raise the matter with Miss Braidwood. E. Fletcher.
My heart sank as I picked up the tone. Millie, poor dear, was yet another of the things I had to think about over the weekend. Oh well. I tucked the note in my handbag, switched off the lights and left the building to the mercy of the cleaners.
‘Bread,’ I said to myself. The pavements were damp and slippery with fallen leaves, the lights streamed out from shops and glistened on their trampled shapes. I looked up at the sky, heavy and overcast. There was no sign at all of the hills. I’d have given so much for a bright autumny afternoon. Then the hills would seem near enough to touch, just down the next road, or beyond the solid redbrick mill, or behind the tall mass of the tobacco factory.
But today they lay hidden under the pall of cloud, leaving me only the less lovely face of the city that had been my home for most of my childhood and all but two of my adult years. Thirty years ago Louis MacNeice called it ‘A city built upon mud; a culture built upon profit’, and it hadn’t changed much in all the years since.
I made my way to the little bakery where I buy my weekly supplies, a pleasant, homely place where bread and cakes still come warm to the counter from behind a curtain of coloured plastic ribbons. In my second year at Queen’s, Colin and I used to visit it regularly, to buy rolls for a picnic lunch, or a cake for someone’s birthday. It hadn’t changed at all. Even Mrs Green was still there, plumper and greyer and more voluble than ever.
She prides herself she’s known Colin and me since before we were even engaged. She’s followed our life as devotedly as she watches Coronation Street. Graduation and wedding, first jobs in Birmingham and visits home. I remember her asking if she might see the wedding album and how she marvelled at the enormous and ornate volume Colin’s mother had insisted upon. These days, she asked about the house or the car, the decor of the living room or the health of our parents, Colin’s prospects or our plans for the future.
I paused, my fingers already tight on the handle of the door. I turned my back on it and walked quickly away.
‘No, I can’t face it. Not today.’ No one had seen me, but I was shocked by what I had done. ‘Jenny McKinstry, what is wrong with you?’ I asked myself as I hurried on, grateful to be anonymous, invisible in the crowd.
It was something about having to perform a ritual. Having to say the right things, in the right tone. Responding to hints and suggestions in the right way. Taking my cue and playing the part of the young, married, working wife, as Mrs Green wished it to be. She was a good-hearted, friendly woman, but today I couldn’t keep up the bright bubble. It would have to be bread from the supermarket.
‘Telly, miss. Sixth edition. Telly.’
I put down briefcase and basket and hunted for change. The newsboy had no mac, only the worn jacket of a suit several sizes too big for him. I put coins into his damp, outstretched hand and read the headline as I picked up my things.
Thank God for that. The march was off. I didn’t read the details. The fact was enough. One less thing to worry about, for Keith and Siobhan would certainly have marched in Derry and everyone knew the police and B Specials had orders to teach them all a lesson.
‘You’re a coward, Jenny McKinstry,’ I said to myself and wondered if it was really true. Would I have the courage to march if I were a student, like Keith and Siobhan, or would I need to be as politically minded as they both were. Or was the problem more that I was one half of ‘a respectable young couple’?
That was the phrase on the bank manager’s file. Though it was upside down and in small print, I had managed to decipher it that day when he interviewed Colin about the loan for the car we were hoping to buy. We had laughed over it all the way back to our borrowed flat, where our worldly goods were stacked high, awaiting their final destination. It became a joke between us, a couple of words that encoded a moment in time, when we were happy, looking forward to our new jobs, and our first proper home.
I had stepped into the bookshop before I quite realised it. I turned round at the sound of my name.
‘Hello, Mr Cummings. My goodness, you’re busy this afternoon.’
‘Indeed, we are,’ he agreed, nodding vigorously. ‘Never known the place so busy. Come on down to my wee office. It might be best if I lead the way!’
I followed the tall, stooping figure between the book-lined aisles to the newly constructed and unpainted cubicle he dignified as an office. Beneath the sloping roof there was space for neither filing cabinets nor cupboards, but from rows of hooks on every vertical surface hung clips full of invoices, pink and yellow and blue. From beneath a small table piled high with similar clips, he drew out two stackable stools.
‘Do sit down, my dear. I think we’ve got them all, but we’d better make sure.’
He unhooked a clip, flipped through it deftly and extracted a sheet of pink paper. I glanced quickly down it and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Wonderful, Mr Cummings. You’ve got the whole lot. I don’t know how you’ve managed it but I’m so grateful. I really was caught out, you know.’
He smiled broadly and settled back on his stool. ‘You shouldn’t make your subject so popular, Mrs McKinstry. Look at the problems it gives your poor bookseller when you come in and tell him your classes have doubled.’
I laughed easily at his mild complaint. Mr Cummings was an old friend. For years we had shared our passion for poetry and our enthusiasm for the young Ulster poets we both knew personally.
‘You’re very good to take all this trouble over such a small order. Three knights sharing a single copy of Richard III does rather cramp the dramatic style!’
He laughed and nodded at the bulging clips all around us. ‘There’s no lack of orders these days,’ he said flatly. ‘And you could hardly believe the sales on the fiction side. But it’s the quality that counts, isn’t it?’ he ended sadly.
I nodded silently. When his pleasant face shadowed with regret like this, I always thought of my father. They were probably about the same age, but whereas my father had an air of wry humour about him whenever he reflected upon his life, Mr Cummings always spoke as if his plans had never come to anything and it was now too late in the day to hope for anything better.
‘Another year, Mrs McKinstry, and the quality of business won’t be bothering me. At last I’ll be able to read all the books I’ve never had the time for.’
I saw the sadness deepen. I was wondering what I could possibly say when he checked himself and turned towards me.
‘Which reminds me,’ he went on briskly. ‘What’s this I hear about Miss McFarlane retiring? To the best of my knowledge, she still has several years to go. I remember taking her by the hand to the village school when I was in the top class. Surely she isn’t serious?’
‘I think Miss McFarlane’s mother has been unwell a great deal recently,’ I said cautiously.
I saw his lips tighten and his head move in a curious little gesture he always made when someone, or something, had really upset him.
‘Quite a character, old Mrs McFarlane,’ he said shortly. ‘She must be nearing ninety now.’
His tone told me that what I’d heard in the staffroom about Connie was probably not exaggerated after all. At the age of fifty-seven, her mother, it appeared, still treated her like a child. Each morning she got up at 6.30 a.m. to light the fire and see to her mother’s needs before she left for school. After school, she did the shopping and the housework. At weekends, Mother liked to be read to and taken for drives in the countryside. Of all this, Connie never spoke, though just occasionally she would refer to ‘Mother’ in excusing herself from an evening engagement.
‘A great admirer of yours, Mrs McKinstry. I’m sure you’ll miss her when she goes.’
‘Oh, I shall indeed. She’s been so kind to me since I came to Queen’s Crescent.’
‘So, it is true.’ He nodded to himself and looked quizzically at me over the curious half-glasses he always wore in the office. ‘Another new face, perhaps? Or perhaps not. Perhaps a face I know very well?’
I blushed. For all his rather formal manners and old world air, Mr Cummings missed very little.
‘Perhaps, Mr Cummings,’ I began awkwardly. ‘You’ve guessed, of course. She is going. I have been offered the Department. Miss Braidwood wants to advertise right away, so I’ve got to decide this weekend. It’s not an easy decision.’
He looked so puzzled that I wondered if he’d forgotten about young couples and families.
‘It would be a big responsibility indeed,’ he offered finally. ‘But very rewarding, I’m sure,’ he went on quickly, as if he were happy to be back on firmer ground. ‘With the new building, I expect you’d have all kinds of resources.’
I nodded and told him about the English workshop and drama areas already planned for the new building on the outskirts of the city. He listened attentively, but when I finished he reminded me that a Department is only as good as the people who run it. He said he was sure he knew who Connie would want.
‘The trouble is,’ I began uneasily, ‘I’m not a free agent. Everyone talks about equality, and women pursuing their own careers these days, but attitudes don’t change that quickly. As far as most of my family and relatives are concerned, we might as well be living in eighteen sixty-eight as nineteen sixty-eight,’ I said, a sharpness in my voice that quite surprised me. ‘Of course, my husband’s very understanding,’ I corrected myself hastily. ‘But his family’s a different matter. It’s a touch of Dombey and Son, you see. Or rather Grandson, to be precise.’
Suddenly, I was aware of time passing. I stood up abruptly. Mr Cummings rose too.
‘It’s hard, Mrs McKinstry, I know it’s hard,’ he said as we shook hands. ‘But remember, you’ve only got one life to live. You can’t give your best if your heart’s not in it.’
He looked so incredibly sad that I stopped where I was, ignoring the press of customers around the entrance to his tiny cubicle.
‘I needn’t talk, you know. I did what others wanted of me. But there’s a price to pay. It can cost you dear for the rest of your life.’ He released my hand, suddenly aware he was still holding it, long after the handshake could properly be said to have ended: ‘If you take the job, I expect I shall have to call you Madam,’ he added, with an awkward attempt at lightness.
‘If I take the job, Mr Cummings, you’ll have to call me Jenny,’ I replied.
He went ahead of me to the main entrance. At the door I put my hand lightly on his arm. ‘Thank you very much for your advice, Mr Cummings,’ I said firmly. ‘If I do take the job, I’ll need every friend I’ve got. I’ll let you know on Monday.’
I turned away quickly and didn’t dare look back at him. I couldn’t trust myself not to burst into tears.
The mizzling rain was heavier now. The dim light of the afternoon had faded further towards dusk. From the square-cut ledges of the City Hall came the squabble of hundreds of starlings as they began to roost for the night. Double-deckers swished past the office workers who poured in from the roads and avenues around the city square. I made my way towards the long queue for the Stranmillis bus.
‘Jenny.’
I stopped in my tracks, puzzled and confused, so far away in my thoughts I didn’t recognise the familiar voice.
‘Keith!’ I exclaimed, as my eye moved up the worn duffle coat and discovered the familiar face of my brother-in-law, smiling and brown after his vacation job.
‘The very man. How’s yourself?’
‘Fine, fine. When did you get back?’
‘Only last week. Job was great, paying well, so we stayed as long as we could. Heard things were moving here. Come on an’ we’ll have a coffee. Colin won’t be out for half an hour yet, will he? Tell us all your news.’
‘I’d love to, Keith, but I can’t. Colin’s in London with William John and I’m due up at home at five thirty. I’m running late as it is and you know what that means.’
He reached out for my briefcase, dropped his arm lightly round my shoulders and turned me away from the bus queue.
‘Surely I do. I’ll run you up. Bella’s on a meter round the corner. Come on. We can talk on the way.’
It took me all my time keeping up with Keith’s long strides. He wasn’t much taller than Colin, but put together quite differently. While Colin was fair like his mother and moved as if he had all the time in the world, even when he was in a hurry, Keith was dark and spare and full of edgy tension. In the last year, he’d grown a beard. Now after a summer in Spain he was deeply tanned and there were fine lines etched round his eyes. His face had lost its youthful look. Though still only twenty-two, it was Keith who now looked the older of the two brothers.
‘Keith, what’ve you done to poor Bella?’ I asked as we stopped by his ancient Volkswagen.
‘Isopon,’ he replied briskly as he searched in his pockets for his car keys. ‘I was afraid the rust molecules might stop holdin’ hands. Bella’s going to have to last a long time. No company car for the prodigal son, ye know.’
There was not a trace of malice in his voice despite the fact that Colin had had a red Spitfire for his twenty-first. You’re a better person than I, Keith McKinstry, I thought, as I settled myself on the lump of foam rubber he’d used to mend the collapsed passenger seat. He accelerated as the lights changed and overtook the crawling traffic ahead.
‘How’s your father, Jenny?’
‘Pretty good, thanks. He’s still managing to go into work two days a week though sometimes he lets Gladys Huey collect him and bring him home.’
Keith nodded easily. He and my father got on well. On the few occasions the two families had been together they talked agriculture and politics. They had ended up with a considerable respect for each other, even where they had to disagree.
‘And your dear mother?’ he continued, raising an eyebrow.
I sighed. ‘’Bout the same. Bit worse, perhaps. I think she’s been seeing a lot of your mother. You know how I feel about that. When they’re not trying to score points off each other they just reinforce each other’s prejudices.’
‘You’re right there,’ he said, with a short, hard laugh. ‘I’d a pretty cool reception when I got back. Cut off my allowance for a start. They know fine well I can’t get a grant with the old man coining it.’
‘Keith, why? What reason did they give?’ I asked, outraged.
‘Ach, Jenny, it’s simple. Quite logical. If I’m independent enough to go against all their wishes in my choice of company and in my course of study, then I may as well be totally independent. Just simple blackmail.’
I looked at him in amazement. How could he be so steady, so easy? How could he possibly manage without a student grant or an allowance?
He shook his head and glanced at me as we drew up at traffic lights. ‘So that’s that. Know any good hotels that need a waiter? Speek Engleesh var gud,’ he went on, grinning broadly.
I had to laugh, but what he’d said wasn’t at all funny. ‘Oh, Keith, you can’t manage a job in your third year, you need all the study time you’ve got.’
‘That’s what Siobhan says.’
‘Well, she’s right. Tell her we’ll have to work out something. When can you come to supper? I’ll talk to Colin about it. We might be able to help.’ I stopped short, aware of the implications of what I’d just said. Unless we could persuade William John to change his mind, the only real way I could help Keith was out of my own salary. And that was bound to cause trouble in both families.
‘Did Maisie quote Paisley at you?’ I asked as the traffic came to a halt yet again.
‘Paisley?’ Keith sounded horrified.
‘I thought I’d better warn you,’ I went on quietly. ‘I think the pair of them have been going to some of his services. My mother has a whole set of new catchphrases and you know she’s never original. We could even be in for a religious phase.’
‘Oh Lord. Your poor father. How does he stand it, Jenny?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said sadly. ‘He seems to let a lot of it pass over him. But then I suppose he hasn’t much alternative. Daddy’s always been a realist, as you know.’
We crawled slowly into Shaftesbury Square and I spotted the newsboy I’d met on the way down.
‘So the march is off, Keith. Are you very disappointed?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘The march isn’t off, Jenny. Don’t pay any attention to the papers. If the organisers can’t get it together, the Young Socialists will still march. There’s a meeting tonight. It’s got to go ahead. It’s just got to. Even if there’s only a handful of us.’
I opened my mouth to protest and then shut it again. ‘And Siobhan’s going too,’ I said quietly.
‘Of course.’
We stopped at the pedestrian crossing opposite the front gates of Queen’s. Students streamed in front of us, clutching books and ring files. Five years ago, I would have been among them, walking along this very pavement, hurrying up the hill, past the Ulster Museum, the great grey block of the Keir Building and the familiar shops of Stranmillis village.
‘How’re we doing?’ Keith asked as he accelerated again.
I saw the lights go out in the bakery. ‘About half past, I expect,’ I said, as casually as I could manage.
‘Sorry we’ve been so slow. The bus would have been even worse.’
We turned into Rathmore Drive and stopped outside the Victorian villa with the beech hedge that had borne the name of ‘home’ for me ever since I was six years old.
‘I wish we’d had time for that coffee,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ I said unhappily as I got out and came round to the pavement.
He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Perhaps she’ll be in a good mood,’ he suggested lightly.
‘Oh damn that, Keith,’ I said vehemently. ‘It’s not my mother I’m worried about. It’s time I learnt to cope with her. It’s you and Siobhan. D’you think there’ll be trouble?’
He nodded easily. ‘Of course there’ll be trouble. But there’s no other way. And you’ve forgotten something. We do have one weapon.’
I couldn’t think what it could possibly be. That was the whole point. All I could think of were crowds of students and young people, unarmed, totally unprotected, up against a force of trained men who’d been ordered to work them over. The thought of it made me feel sick with fear.
‘The cameras, Jenny, the cameras,’ he said as he leaned into the back seat and brought out my briefcase and basket. ‘I can’t promise you it won’t be nasty, perhaps very nasty, but the cameras will be some protection.’
He stood looking down at me, a slight reassuring smile on his face. ‘It’s one thing people just hearing about police brutality, it’s another thing when they see it themselves in their own living rooms at teatime. And the B Specials know that now too. It’s some protection. All right, not a lot. But some.’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Now don’t worry. I’ll give you a ring Sunday night when we get back,’ he went on, bending down to kiss my cheek. ‘Don’t take the Saturday newspapers too seriously. Wait till you get the Sundays.’
I looked up at him and managed a smile. At least I could try to take the comfort he was offering me. ‘Good luck, Keith. Give Siobhan my love,’ I said firmly. ‘Supper next week. We’ll make a date on Sunday.’
‘Right ye be.’
‘Thanks for running me up.’
‘And good luck to you, too,’ he said, raising his eyes heavenward at the thought of my mother.
‘I’ll need it,’ I said, laughing ruefully as I opened the garden gate and hurried up the crazy paving path between the rosebeds.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
George opened his eyes. The log cracked again in the fire and a spark arced through the air and struck the log basket. Lucky it didn’t get as far as the new rug, he thought, as he straightened himself up and reached for the polished brass poker. Edna would not be well pleased if she came home and found a scorch mark on it and the fire so low it was almost out.
He’d been thinking about the specifications for those new tractors Bertie had brought back from the exhibition in Birmingham and the next thing he knew he was away back in Ballymena fitting a new axle on a traction engine with old Willie Prentice. Years ago that was. The only place you’d see that engine now was in a museum. Wasn’t it funny the things that came back to you if you nodded off for a minute or two after your lunch.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly three. Surely he hadn’t slept that long. He leaned over for another log without getting out of his chair. He tried to place it in the hottest part of the glowing embers but the pain caught him unexpectedly and the log fell short.
‘Bad luck, George, you should’ve stood up in the first place,’ he said aloud. He put a hand to his chest and straightened his shoulders cautiously. ‘And if that’s the way the wind’s blowing you’d better take your pills and forget all about hoeing that rose bed.’
He stood up awkwardly, clutched at the back of his well-worn wing chair and waited for his knee joints to respond to the call for action. His pills were in the drawer of his bureau but as he picked them up he remembered he could never swallow them without water.
The kitchen was empty, spotless and shining. He looked around and shook his head. Surely to goodness the new cleaning lady would suit. He’d heard her working like a Trojan all morning and when she’d brought him his sandwich before she left, it was on a tray with a cloth and had bits of parsley and tomato to make it look nice just like those pictures in the women’s magazines. But there was no pleasing Edna these days. It was a long time since she’d had a good word for him. There wasn’t much he could do about it now.
He swallowed the pills, rinsed the glass and turned it upside down to drain by the sink. Then he looked at it and thought again. He dried it and put it away. As he closed the cupboard door the pain surged. He put out his hand and held on to the sink.
‘Go away,’ he said to it. ‘Come tomorrow, when it doesn’t matter so much.’
He felt the sweat break on his brow and wondered if he should sit down. But the kitchen was not a place where he ever felt comfortable. Edna hated him in the kitchen and if she arrived back from town just now she’d make a fuss and say he’d been doing something he’d been told not to do. How was she to get her jobs done if she couldn’t leave him for five minutes? She always said five minutes when she’d been gone most of the day.
‘Come on, George, get going. Tell yourself it’s downhill.’
He made his way back along the hall and into the dining room. To his surprise the pain began to ease.
‘Great stuff,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Let’s get this fire made up while the going’s good. Shure, what does it matter if I have to sit here the whole afternoon, so long as I’m all right for Jenny coming.’
Gladys would laugh if she could hear him. His secretary for twenty years and his friend and confidante for most of them, she’d told him only last week that he mustn’t talk to himself or people would get the wrong idea.
‘An’ d’ye not talk to yourself, Gladys?’ he asked her teasingly.
‘’Deed I do,’ she replied promptly. ‘But I make sure no one’s listening.’
He made up the fire and sat down gratefully. The pain had eased a lot but it had left him feeling weak. Or maybe that was the tablets. Whatever it was, he’d have to behave himself today. Rest, the doctor said. Rest. There hadn’t been a lot of rest in his life and it didn’t come easy to him now. But he could read. Wasn’t he lucky he had good eyesight and enough books to thatch houses with, as the saying was.
He picked up a small leather-covered volume from his side table. A spot of Goldsmith in the dying months of the year. Sweet Auburn, perhaps. A link with times long past when the world was simpler, if not better. He opened it and looked at the familiar handwriting inside the cover. ‘To Daddy with love, because your old copy is falling apart. Happy Birthday, Jenny.’
‘Daddy, can we go up to Granny’s house before we go home?’
He looked down at the small hand clutching his arm and the earnest regard in the dark eyes. ‘It’s a bit of a walk for you, love, and it’ll be wet after the rain.’
‘But I have my boots, Daddy. Granny McTaggart says I could go anywhere in my seven league boots.’
Mary McTaggart laughed and took the brown teapot from the stove. ‘Have anither drap o’ tea, George. I think ye may go, for she’s talked ‘bout nothin’ else all week. She’s had Lottie gae up there three or four times a’ready. She’d ’ave gone hersel’ if I’d let her.’
He looked at his watch. Edna would be expecting her back for bedtime at seven and the Austin was not exactly the world’s fastest car.
‘Please Daddy. I’ve had such a lovely holiday with Granny McTaggart and she’s told me all about you when you were a little boy.’
‘Oh dear,’ laughed George, looking up at the old woman who had always been so kind to him. ‘Has she told you all my secrets?’
‘Yes,’ said the child promptly. ‘But I can keep a secret, can’t I, Granny?’
‘Oh, ye can do mony a thing, my little lady. I hope yer auld granny is still here in ten years time to see ye.’
‘When I’m sixteen and all grown up?’ she said, as she fetched a small pair of Wellingtons from a corner of the big kitchen where those of Mary’s youngest son and his family were lined up against the wall.
The rain had cleared and the late August sun was warm on their faces as they avoided the puddles in the farmyard, George stepping carefully in the brown leather shoes he wore in town. Five months now since the move. A hard time it had been. Worries about the loan on the showroom, the tractors and trailers he had ordered from England, the cost of the glossy catalogues he’d distributed with reapers and binders and combines too big and too costly to stock. The mortgage on the house in Stranmillis, the only one Edna had liked, was far more than he had planned and the work it needed took up every hour when he was not at the showroom. But it had been his own choice. For the first time in his life he was his own boss. You couldn’t have that and peace of mind as well.
In this last month things had begun to move. The war years had been profitable for farmers with every bite of food sure of its market and a good price guaranteed, and the three years since had been good too, though labour had to be a problem with wages so low. The farmers were beginning to spend what they had accumulated, confident now that the old hard times were past. First they bought a motor car for themselves, then they put in a bathroom for the family and then they looked at their old-fashioned and worn-out farm machinery. Having a tractor was the first step. He’d be sad himself to see the plough horses go, but the change had begun during the war on the big farms and now he was sure the smaller farmers were beginning to follow on. A tractor could do the work of a couple of men.
Well, it would take a lot of tractors to put Harvey through his seven years. He’d set his heart on being a doctor and the sixth form master at the new school said he had every chance of passing his exams. That had really pleased Edna. In fact, since the move from Ballymena, things had been easier there. She had joined the Church ladies and went out more. Sometimes on a Saturday when he was decorating or fitting up shelves she would bring him a mug of tea. At times she seemed almost content.
‘Did you always come this way when you went to school?’
George glanced down at the small figure skipping along at his side. She never walked unless she was thinking about something and then you would see her move one foot at a time, with a dogged deliberation, her brow deeply furrowed. On her first day at her new primary school down the road she had walked solemnly off with her mother and then come skipping home with a friend. That was typical of Jenny. The surprise in his life, the daughter he never expected, closer to him from her earliest years than the son of whom he had had such hopes.
‘No, usually I went down beside the stream till I got to the road. I only came this way to see Granny McTaggart.’
‘Didn’t you get your shoes wet going down by the stream?’
‘I didn’t wear shoes.’
‘But you can’t wear Wellies for going to school,’ she protested. ‘Did you take your shoes in a shoe bag?’
‘I didn’t have any shoes or Wellies. Lots of children didn’t in those days.’ He looked down again and saw the familiar furrow as she considered this piece of information. She was walking now with her eyes focused on the toes of her boots and the rough surface of the almost overgrown path.
‘Didn’t the stones hurt when you tramped on them?’
‘Sometimes, but your feet got hard and you didn’t notice, mostly.’
At that moment they reached the first of the two streams that crossed their path.
‘How did the stream know where to go under the ground?’
‘It didn’t. It just felt around and wherever it found a hole or a crack, in it went.’
‘Do you think it likes being under there?’
George smiled to himself. She could go on like this for hours. And he would be happy to let her for the workings of her mind never ceased to intrigue him. But it made Edna angry. Always asking questions, and such silly nonsense too. She blamed him for encouraging her.
‘Look, Jenny, you can see Scotland now.’
‘Where?’
He saw her bend down and peer out to sea between two gorse bushes. He laughed at himself, picked her up and felt the soft touch of one arm as she wound it round his neck. She waved the other towards the sea, greeny-blue and flecked with white caps after the passing shower.
‘Is that Scotland?’
‘Yes, love. That’s the Mull of Kintyre.’
‘Mull of Kintyre,’ she repeated solemnly as if she were learning it by heart.
He stood and pointed out the landmarks of his childhood world, and then, still carrying her, strode up and across the stepping stones to the abandoned house where the thatch had fallen in at one end and been overwhelmed by a tangle of roses, a few of which were still in bloom.
‘The door’s not locked, Daddy, but Lottie wouldn’t let me go in. She says there might be a ghost.’
The door had never had a lock. What was there to steal and who was there to steal it? Andy McTaggart had said it would make a storehouse for potatoes, but young Harry, always more practical, said it was too far away and not worth the carrying. So, after his mother died it had stood empty. He had removed her few possessions, put away the few pieces of delph as keepsakes for his brothers and sisters and planted fuchsias in the couple of three-legged pots which had survived.
He pushed open the door. He was surprised that there was no smell of damp, but then the back windows were broken and it was summer, the flagged stone floor was dry and only slightly dusty. Jenny walked in under his arm and stood regarding the empty hearth.
‘What’s that, Daddy?’ she asked, pointing her finger at the metal crane which still stood over the hearth, the chain dangling, untenanted over the absent fire. He saw flames spring up and shadows move and smelt the soda farls fresh from the griddle. It wasn’t all hard. There had been happiness in this place too. He knew now why his mother would not leave when he married in ’31. All the things she had loved were here. She had insisted firmly that she would stay and Mary McTaggart, ten years younger and now widowed herself had backed her up. Edna had said these old people can’t move with the times. It was better to let them alone.
‘Mmm, what’s that, love?’ he said, collecting himself and looking down again at the two bright eyes that regarded him unblinkingly.
‘Have you seen a ghost, Daddy?’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps I have, Jenny. It depends what you think a ghost is. Some people think ghosts are just what we remember inside our heads. I was remembering your Granny Erwin and your aunties and uncles in Scotland, and England, and America. I’ll tell you about them on the way home in the car if you’re a good girl. But we must go now. All right?’
‘All right, Daddy, but can I walk across the stepping stones all by myself?’
He hesitated. There was only a little water over the stones, hardly enough to wet his own shoes, but they were always slippery. She might fall and the boulders were rough in the stream bed. She could hit her head. How could he bear to lose this child, never to see those eyes again watching him, trusting, questioning. He felt tears mist his vision. What you love most you fear to lose. But you must face that fear or you destroy something of what you love. That was what his mother always said.
He nodded shortly and saw her run out of the cottage and across the rough grass. Before he had pulled the door behind him and opened his mouth to say a word of warning she was away and across. Standing on the far bank, a small, self-contained figure, she was waving to him.
‘Come on, Daddy, hurry up, you said it was time to go.’
He followed her cautiously and reached for her hand as she skipped along beside him.
Remember that, George. Let it be a lesson to you, he said silently to himself. Don’t ever try to put her in a cage to keep her safe, he added, as they moved together along the valleyside where the heather murmured and shook with the passionate harvesting of the bees . . .
George woke abruptly, the buzzing still in his ears. Pain oscillated in his chest. Suddenly the room seemed very warm. He leaned back in his chair, wiped beads of perspiration from his brow and thought longingly of the cool air of the glenside in the early morning, of the path he had walked with Jenny in his arms only moments ago in his dream.
The pain began to subside and his breathing became easier. He settled more comfortably in his chair. Lulled by the quiet, the warmth of the fire and the powerful drugs that dilated the arteries of his chest, he dozed off again. As the minutes of the long afternoon clicked past on the broad face of the clock on the mantelpiece, he moved far away in time and place.
The rain came in the night. It swept down the deep glen in soft grey curtains, catching fragments of light from the half-obscured moon. At first, the fine droplets slid over the summer dry grass, then, as the few dark hours of the short night passed, the thin soils became sodden and tiny rivulets began to trickle into the dry stream beds. By the time the sun rose and the sky cleared, the air was full of the splash of brown, peaty water as a dozen streams dashed headlong to the valley floor.
It was not the sudden bustle in the deep-cut watercourses that woke young George Erwin from his dream-filled sleep. It was the steady drip from the thatch and the bright dappling on the ceiling, where the sunlight reflected from the pools of water shimmering in the morning breeze on the swept stone flags outside the cottage. He lay, warm and still, only his eyes moving round the familiar features of his small, bare room.
The tiny window that looked south across the great trench-like hollow of the glen was spattered with raindrops and shadowed by the climbing rose his father had planted for his mother long ago. When he brought his young bride away from the comfortable, slate-roofed house where she had lived with her parents, and taught in the village school, she had come without regret, and made no complaint at the hardness of her new life, but down there, near the sea, where the soil was deep and had been worked for centuries, she’d had a garden and an orchard and he knew that she missed them. To comfort her for the loss of which she never spoke, he sent all the way to Antrim for a pink rose like the ones she had left behind.
Exposed to the strong wind on the valley sides and the thin soils of the crumbling basalt, it had struggled to get its roots down. Seeing its need, his father had collected soil from the lowland stream banks and manure from the farm where he laboured. He’d carried it up on his back and tended the young root with the same warm affection he offered to her and his children. The rose had flourished as their life had flourished. Now, when he was gone, it was his mother’s greatest joy. Apart from her children, all grown and gone away except for himself, there was nothing she loved more dearly than her climbing rose.
He could tell by the strength of the light and the shadow of the window thrown on the whitewashed wall that it was late. Usually by this hour he had milked the cow and searched for the eggs laid in strange places by the hens who had gone broody. Sometimes he would light the fire before he set off for school, or dig potatoes for their supper, or tether the goat in some new place where it had not already eaten all the meagre grass. Today there would be no time to do any of those tasks and he wondered why she had not called him an hour ago.
Just at that moment, she did call. A light, soft voice unmarked by the hardship of her life and the loss of so many she had loved.
‘Georgie. Time ye were up. It’s a grate mornin’.’
He jumped out of bed, poured water from the delph jug into the basin on the washstand, gave his face and hands a perfunctory wipe and pulled on his shirt and trousers. As he opened the door into the big, dark kitchen, he saw his mother was sitting outside. She was already at work. While she sat on one kitchen chair, another close by held her workbox and a pile of napkins. She was turned towards the light, her needle flying, her movements so fast he could hardly follow them. She heard him come, let the damask drop in her lap and reached up to kiss him.
‘How mony more?’ he asked, returning her kiss.
‘Seven forby. But ’tis early yet. He’ll not likely be here a while yet,’ she said, reassuring him. ‘Are ye weary the morn?’ she went on, looking at the droop of his shoulders and eyes filmed with sleep. ‘Ye were way late last night,’ she added gently.
‘No, I’m nae tired at all,’ he said brightly.
She smiled at him and took up her work, knowing now that he was tired. And how would he not be tired with the jobs McTaggart gave him, and him not strong. She felt her eyes mist as she looked at him, twelve years old and trying to do a man’s work with a child’s body. ‘Away now an’ eat a bite, I left it ready for ye,’ she said quickly as she concealed the end of thread at the back of her work and trimmed it off neatly with her fine scissors.
‘Have ye had yourn?’ he asked, his eyes on her hands and the small practised movements she made as she picked up the next napkin and checked that the tracing was in the right place and on the proper side of the fabric.
‘Oh, long since,’ she laughed as she squinted into the light, moistened the white thread and manoeuvred it into the eye of the crewel needle.
He knew she hadn’t eaten, just as she had known that he was tired. But neither felt any shame in their deception. In the important things of their life, their love for the hard but beautiful place in which they lived, their joy in the creatures who shared their bare hillside, and the pleasure of the few books which had survived the struggle to make ends meet, they could be honest. There was between them both friendship and love.
The fire was not lit, though there was turf in the basket and kindling stacked in a corner by the wooden settle. No need of warmth on such a fine summer morning, but without fire there could be no cooking. The empty hearth told him that both the flour sack and the meal barrel were empty. Unless there were some dollars from Nellie in America or a postal order from Glasgow or London, they would remain so. The few shillings from the man who collected the white work would have to go on baker’s bread. And in June and July they had to buy potatoes till the new crop were ready to dig. In all the old stories they read on winter’s nights, July was the ‘hungry month’. As he bit into the dry crust of bread, Georgie wondered why it was only July, for June was just as bad.
Most mornings they had tea, made weak and brewed well over the fire, but he knew that there would be no more tea till after Friday’s cart. He looked at the glass of buttermilk set by his plate and winced. He hated its sour taste and the little globules of fat that settled on your upper lip as you swallowed it. But he knew she would be anxious if he left it untouched and drank instead a glass of spring water from the white enamelled pail in the cupboard.
‘Drink it, Georgie, ah do. ’Tis good for ye. Ye hav tae build yer strength.’
He imagined he heard her voice, even though she was outside, bent over her work, the sunlight catching the grey in her once dark hair. He knew what she was thinking when she said that, too, though the words were never mentioned between them.
Three years ago, for weeks of the summer he had lain side by side with his younger brother in the room now used only when some of his brothers and sisters came to visit. Between the two narrow beds his mother had sat, hour after hour, wringing bits of cloth in a pail of water cold from the stream to wipe their faces and bodies. He had felt sweat pour from his brow and found his limbs ached so much he could hardly manage to use the chamber pot. It had gone on for weeks, sleeping and dreaming and not knowing which was which. He had had nightmares, called out in his sleep and seen them move his brother to another room. Only at the end of it, when he could just manage to stand again, did they tell him that Jamsey had died from the same rheumatic fever from which he was beginning to recover.
It had taken his brother to the churchyard behind the grey stone church at the valley’s mouth. From his place in the schoolroom in the shadow of the church he could see the gleam of the marble stone. The names he could not see, but he had no need, he knew them by heart for they were the history of his family. Despite the rain and wind of these three years, the new letters were still sharp: ‘And Jamsey, aged 7, youngest son of Ellen and the above James Erwin.’
He drank the buttermilk as quickly as he could and wiped his lips on his sleeve. On the scrubbed wooden table next to his plate were two brown eggs in a paper bag. He took them up reluctantly, fetched his satchel and reading book, and went out into the sun.
‘Tell Mary I’m behind wi’ my allocation, I’ve not baked a bite yet. She’ll give ye a piece for school.’
Mary McTaggart was a kind neighbour and had been good to them in many ways. But her husband was a different matter. He had been amiable enough when James Erwin was his tenant and hired labourer, working long hours without overtime and paying his rent without fail. But young George could only manage half a man’s work, and even when the hours after school and at the weekends were enough to pay the rent, it no longer brought it in cash. If there was one thing Harry McTaggart liked, it was cash. On the nail.
‘Have ye learned yer poem?’ she asked, her needle poised over the initials she was working on the damask.
‘Aye. Will I say it over tae ye?’
She shook her head. ‘Nay, nay, ye’ll be late. Ye’ll say it for me the night, when the work’s away tae Belfast.’ She smiled up at him and held out the napkin she had just begun. ‘Look, Georgie, these must be for ye. There’s half a dozen for G.E.’
He stood looking down at the intertwined letters with their broad satin-stitch bodies and delicate chain-stitch swirls. It had never happened before. In all the allocations, the dozens of pieces she had worked, there had never before been a G.E. He reached out a finger and touched the letters cautiously, knowing full well that a dirty mark would mean a deduction in the payment. She held out the others, five more large squares of finest damask, each traced lightly in blue with his own initials.
He looked at them wistfully. By the end of the afternoon they would be finished, and long before he got back from the farm they would be wrapped in clean cotton rag, tied into a bale with the others and carried up the track to the waiting carrier. He would take them to Belfast and somewhere in the crowded streets of the city, in a warehouse or in a factory shed, they would be smoothed and folded, tied with fine green ribbon and put in boxes lined with soft white tissue. Made in Ireland. Hand finished. In tiny gold letters. So she had told him. And then they would go on their way to those who could afford to buy such things, to some great house in some other part of Ireland, or to England, or across the ocean to America.
‘Some day, Georgie,’ she said quietly, breaking into his thoughts, ‘ye’ll have napkins, an’ books, an’ things of yer own. Make sure ye lissen hard to all the master says. What gaes into your head, Georgie, belongs to ye, e’en when you’ve nae piece to take to school.’
There were two ways down to McTaggart’s farm. You could climb upwards on a rough track till you struck the metalled road and then follow it along for a mile or more, till it dipped into the head of the glen and then rose up out of it again to strike across the plateau to Ballymena, or you could drop down the hillside and pick your way along a narrow path which followed the valleyside just where the overlying basalt met the underlying chalk and the rough, hungry land of the dark rock became suddenly gentler and greener.
George chose the low path and set off downhill between the gorse bushes, the rush of water in his ears. Their own stream from which he carried the buckets for washing and cleaning was in full spate and the broad flat stepping stones his father had placed there were well covered. He stepped gingerly across, the cold water tugging at his ankles, concerned for neither his much-mended clothes nor his bare feet but for the book tucked inside his battered satchel. Once safely across, he took to the straggling grass, still wet from the rain and scattered with wildflowers. Soon the walking became easy. With chalk beneath, the turf was short and springy, dry already after the rain and sprinkled with the yellow stars of tormentil and the blue bell flowers of milkwort.
He stopped on a small, grassy lawn and listened to the muffled roar of a stream in its subterranean course. He tipped back his head and looked up. Over the black, frost-shattered basalt flowed one of the many streams that coursed down the rock-strewn beds they had carved out for themselves. Where he stood, it had already dived deep, seeking out the cracks and fissures in the porous rock. Only in the wettest of winters did these streams overflow their underground routes and flood across the patches of springy turf like this one where he stood wriggling his toes luxuriously in the softness.
Below him the valley lay green and shining in the sunlight, the two grey trackways weaving their way along either side of the river until they met the Coast Road. Beyond the straggling village on the southern side of the glen, an arc of sand dazzled in the sunlight. Blue and barely rippled by the breeze, the sea lay so calm, so tranquil. It was hard to imagine the winter storms churning the waves into great crashing breakers, brown with sand and broken shell, boiling up the beach and snatching hungrily at the concrete base of the new road that took the visitors in their jaunting cars to see the sights of the rocky coast, from The Glens to Ballycastle and beyond.
Across the calm water lay the coast of Scotland, so sharp and clear he felt he could reach out and touch it. He smiled, remembered his father and what he used to say on all the fine summer days like today when he came back into the cottage, calling out for Ellen. ‘Boys it’s a powerful day, Ellen. Iss tha’ clear I ken see them tossin’ ther hay o’er in Scotlan’.’
Reluctantly he walked on, his eyes still moving over the valley below. The hawthorn had flowered late, right at the end of May, but it had blossomed so richly the branches looked as if they were laden with snow. The scent lay heavy on the air and he drank it in, savouring it like the smell of delectable food, bread fresh from the griddle or bacon frying over the fire.
As he strode up a small rise where the path opened into a broad track leading to the farm, he must have closed his eyes for a moment to taste its richness, for suddenly he found his way blocked. He was looking up at Andy McTaggart, the eldest of the McTaggart sons, astride one of the big plough horses. Andy stared down at him, the reins in one hand, an elegant-looking whip in the other.
‘’Tis a gae fine mornin’,’ Georgie said agreeably as he waited for the horse to get used to his presence and allow him to pass by. But the rider made no motion to let him through.
‘Is ther nae shorter way fer ye tae gae doun an’ o’er tae the school?’ he asked unpleasantly.
‘Ther is, aye. But I hae a message for yer mather.’
‘Oh, an’ what’s that?’
Georgie felt the blood rush to his face as he remembered the two eggs in his satchel. For a moment he thought he might make up some message, a greeting, or a bit of news. But it was no good, he knew he wasn’t quick enough for the likes of Andy McTaggart.
‘’Tis for hersel’,’ he said, flustered.
‘Oh aye, it is. We all nae tha’. Come to beg yer piece tae tak tae school. Ye’re a beggar, Georgie Erwin.’
The horse shuffled, suddenly uneasy, and McTaggart struck him with the whip. It was not a hard blow but it made a crack that sounded loud in the stillness of the morning. Georgie knew that he was showing off, copying some horseman he had seen when his father took him to the Antrim Races. But the knowledge helped him not at all. He felt his face stiffen and the pleasure of the June day fall away as if a thunderstorm had rolled down the valley and shut off the sun.
‘I am nae,’ he said fiercely, ‘I hae me piece in me bag, so I hae. Ye can tell yer mather I’ll be late the day. I hae an errand to the shop.’
So saying, Georgie darted past, his eye level with McTaggart’s boot in the short stirrup of the saddle. It was well-polished and so new it had not even been mended. He didn’t make for the path down into the valley but struck out between the bushes and the outcrops of rock, indifferent to the sharp stones and brambles he encountered that bruised his feet and tore at his bare legs.
‘I’m nae a beggar. I’m nae a beggar,’ he said, over and over again as he reached the road and strode out along it as fast as his legs would carry him. And all the while, high above his head, he could hear the crack of the whip and the noise of hoofs on the track that led back to McTaggart’s farm.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
When the grandfather clock in the hall chimed four, George opened his eyes again and breathed a sigh of relief. The pain had gone. No sign of it at all. He did feel very drowsy and a bit confused, but he managed to make up the fire without bending over and without setting off the pain again. As the fresh logs sparked and crackled, he sat back gratefully and looked at the clock.
‘That’s another week over, dear,’ he said aloud, thinking of Jenny.
He’d been to her school on its Open Day last year and he could imagine her coming down those stairs with her pile of exercise books and the briefcase he’d bought her when she got her scholarship. He wondered when she would arrive. With her shopping to do and no car to help, it would hardly be much before six. He’d asked Edna at supper time last night but clearly he shouldn’t have. She’d snapped his head off. How was she expected to know, she’d said, for didn’t Jennifer always suit herself?
It was a sad thing that Edna got so little pleasure from her daughter, but it seemed as if nothing Jenny did ever pleased her. No matter what, her mother still complained. He couldn’t understand it himself. But then, he’d long ago stopped trying to understand Edna. He, too, had tried to please her once, but he hadn’t managed it. Not for very much of their life anyway.
He sighed, picked up his book and read a few lines. He put it down again. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept wandering. One minute he was thinking about Jenny and listening for her key in the door, and the next he was puzzling over why Edna had been so very sharp last night when he had only asked a simple question.
He leaned back and fell asleep almost immediately.
He was back in the schoolroom in Ballydrennan. He could smell the turf from the fire which swirled round them when the wind blew down the chimney and hear the squeak of chalk on slate. Above the blackboard was a Union Jack and a map of the world patterned with the brightly coloured red patches of British territory. Morning and afternoon Master McQuillan said prayers. He prayed for the King and the Empire, for rain to plump up the potatoes if it went dry in May, or sunshine for the hay in July, or dry weather for the grain harvest in August and safe journeys for the men going to Scotland to look for work, and God’s blessing on the sick children and widowed women the glen so seldom lacked.
The three Hughes sisters came to school together. He used to see them as he came across the river and stopped to dry his feet on the soft grass by its side. Edna was some years older than himself and already a monitor with duties teaching the younger children. She walked straight-backed, unswerving to the door marked Girls, with Mary and Annie by the hand. They always sat as far away from the boys’ side as she could get them. Boys were dirty and rough, she said when she scolded them for playing Hide and Seek and Tig with them in the lunch break.
He had never taken any notice of girls when he was at school. There were books on a shelf by the master’s desk that could be borrowed during the breaks and he read in every free minute he had. Up at McTaggart’s, clearing out stables and byres, he would go over in his mind the things he had read during the day. It was a long time before he began to notice girls and the first time he saw Edna after he’d left school, she completely ignored him.
Working at the farm, George was often sent down to the forge with some item to be repaired. He and Robert got on well together and sometimes George would suggest a mend that was quicker and more effective than the way Robert had been using for years. When he left school, the smith told him there was work enough for two. He could serve his apprenticeship in the usual way, receiving as payment only his daily food, but if he concentrated on the farm machinery and left Robert free to do the work he most enjoyed, the shoeing of horses and the making of gates, then he would pay him a small weekly wage as well.
The first day at the forge came as a blow to George. Well used to hard work, he set off cheerfully enough only to discover he could barely lift the heavier hammers. When he pulled on the bellows to blow up the fire, nothing much happened and he laboured till the sweat ran down his face before he could even move them. Reluctant to admit such weakness, he exhausted himself. By evening he was so weary he could hardly stand. And that was when Edna appeared. Still wearing the long black skirt and high-necked white blouse she wore for her work, she came to bring them tea and thick buttered slices of bread for their evening meal.
It was a summer evening. He looked up from the dark corner behind the hearth and saw her standing in the doorway, the sunlight pouring round her, catching her fair hair and touching her pale skin. She seemed to glow in the warm radiance of the sunlight and yet remain cool and fresh. He was sure that angels must look just like she did. He gazed across at her and saw her give a sudden sweet smile to her father. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, she shot a glance around the workshop, turned on her heel and went walking up the path to the house, her skirt brushing the daisies in the grass, her back as straight and unswerving as always.
She never spoke to George or acknowledged his presence beyond the barest minimum in the five years he worked with her father. Indeed, if three events had not occurred within the space of as many weeks in the spring of 1930 it is unlikely she would ever have spoken to him again.
The first of those three events George created himself, though he did not know that he had. He had been working in Ballymena as a mechanic with a firm producing traction engines. In April, he finally completed work on the motor car he had bought after it had collided with one of the twisted pine trees on the bog road between Ballymena and Ballymoney. The owner was a wealthy young man who had been happy enough to get rid of it, having barely escaped with his life when the steering column sheared. It had taken George six months to rebuild. On his first free weekend he drove the car home to show to his mother. When she had admired every detail of its construction, stroked the leather of the seats and been driven a few miles up the road and back, George left her to rest and drove down the new road into the valley to visit Robert at the forge.
Robert was delighted to see him. He was well enough, he said, but Lizzie wasn’t so good. The doctor had told Edna that it was only a matter of time before her mother was a complete invalid. On the other hand he’d had great news from Toronto. Annie was engaged to be married and was saving up for her trousseau, whatever that was. It seemed her future husband had a big job with a motor company called Ford and she was going to be well looked after. Her intended had promised to bring her home on a visit, as soon as they were married.
When Edna came down the path to call her father to his supper, she didn’t recognise George at first. But when she did she smiled at him, ran her hand across the leather seat and said how well he was looking. Within a few weeks it was common knowledge that Edna Hughes and George Erwin were walking out. They were married within the year.
George woke twice more in the course of the afternoon. The first time he got slowly to his feet and went to the window hoping that Jennifer might suddenly appear in the Drive or coming up the garden path. The second time he knew he could no longer avoid going upstairs to the bathroom. As he passed his bedroom, he remembered the little pile of new catalogues. Edna always complained about them if she found them in the dining room but she was still in town and besides, Jennifer would take them back up for him when she came.
Halfway down the stairs he realised he’d made a mistake. They were too heavy for him to carry one-handed and he felt so unsteady he had to keep his other hand firmly on the banister. Reluctantly, he let go of all but one, and watched them bounce and slither their way down the stairs ahead of him.
When he got to the bottom, he manoeuvred them one at a time with his toe through the dining-room door and across to his chair by the fire. He looked at them wryly. Today was one of those days when he knew better than to bend over, but only a contortionist could make them into a neat pile with one foot. He sat down gratefully, opened the volume he was carrying and fell asleep again almost immediately. He did not wake when Combine Harvesters thudded softly into the dense pile of the new hearthrug, nor when his wife banged the front door behind her, tramped down the hall and peered round the open door at him on her way to the kitchen.
‘A grate help he is,’ she said as she dropped her carrier bags on the work surface by the sink. ‘He can run off all right to that office of his when the notion takes ’im, but not a hand’s turn does he do at home.’
She pushed off the elegant high-heeled shoes that had punished her corns all day and jerked open the larder door for her pull-ons. They weren’t there. Without her high heels she looked small and stooped. At sixty-six, with a look of sour discontent on her face, she could have been taken for more. The social graces she considered necessary for her public appearances and particularly for her meetings with Maisie McKinstry she habitually cast off with her shoes. Now, in her own kitchen, she made no attempt to check the catalogue of her discontents.
‘Never so much as “Can I help you”. Not that he’s any use anyway and him so slow. All day to peel a potato. What good is that when you’re in a hurry?’
She squinted up at the clock, her eyes narrowing, the lines of her mouth slack. Jennifer would be arriving at half past five. Expecting her supper no doubt, just like her father. He’d sit there till she came and then it would be a different story. Jennifer this and Jennifer that, and would you like a wee sherry, dear. He never asked her if she’d like a wee sherry. Not that she ever drank sherry but it was manners to ask.
She pulled a paper bag full of soda farls out of her carrier so fiercely one of them escaped and bounced to the floor. She picked it up, saw its pale floury surface was unmarked by the fall and put it in the bread bin with the others. These cleaning women were all the same. Everything bright as a new pin the first few times, then you’d only to look to find what they hadn’t done.
She put away the rest of her shopping, collected a colander full of potatoes from the sack in the larder, and filled the basin with hot water. As the warmth released the smell of earth, unbidden and unwelcome the voice of her old grandmother came to her from the long past.
‘Ed-na, Ed-na,’ it called, high-pitched, peremptory.
‘I’m busy,’ she called back, knowing it would not have the slightest effect.
‘I’ve slipped down the bed.’
‘Not far enough, ye haven’t,’ she muttered as she dried her hands and went into the small, dark bedroom.
Mary Anne lay barely visible, her bright eyes peering over the mound of disordered bedclothes, her small head overhung by the pillows. She watched the girl’s every move. Critical. Malevolent.
‘Where’s Lizzie? Where’s yer mather? It’s her place to cum up and see ta me.’
‘She’s nae well hersel’. Ye know that.’
‘An’ what’s wrong wi’ her, a young thing like her? She’s no right to be takin’ to her bed at her age. Lift me up. How canna ate me supper lyin’ doon? Is it not near ready yit?’
Edna tried to lift her up but the old woman grabbed at her arms and almost pulled her over. Edna breathed in the odour of her unwashed body. It smelt of age, of decay. Like the cottage itself with its rotting thatch and damp walls. She hated coming here. And she hated this old woman who bossed her around just like her mother did. Always wanting something. Edna this and Edna that. Fetch and carry. Well, she’d show them. She’d show them all. She’d get out of this place if it was the last thing she did. And they could rot together for all she cared.
She rinsed the potatoes and dropped them noisily into a copper-bottomed saucepan. Every time she washed those filthy potatoes George had brought home from some farm or other, it reminded her of the old days. Well, she wasn’t going to put up with that. The past was over and gone. And good riddance. She’d give the rest of those dirty old potatoes away. The women on the garden produce stall at the Autumn Fayre would think they were just great. More fool them. Then she could go back to buying clean ones at the supermarket. George would never notice the difference.
‘Hello, Edna. Can I do anything to help?’
She turned, startled by the quiet voice. ‘Oh, so you’re awake,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Can I lay the table?’ he continued mildly.
‘Well, you know where the cloth is.’
He nodded to himself and turned to go. Something had upset her. But what was anybody’s guess. Sometimes she didn’t even seem to know herself.
‘And you might just redd up those catalogues lying round the place,’ she shouted as he closed the door gently behind him.
She bent down to the fridge and pulled out the casserole she had cooked the previous day. She caught the handle of a small china jug. It fell over and spilled milk down into the crisper drawer, showering a limp cabbage, a handful of carrots and a couple of mouldy tomatoes.
That was just typical of what she had to put up with, wasn’t it? Maisie McKinstry didn’t have to wear herself out bending down and poking around in her fridge. All her stuff was eye-level. But then her husband had money. William John McKinstry could buy and sell George Erwin and not even notice it. The man might have no education and no manners, but he did have a bit of go about him. And that was one thing you could never say about George. If he’d ever listened to her he might have made something of himself. He could have done just as well as any McKinstry if he hadn’t been so pig-headed.
She turned the oven full on, pushed the casserole in and banged the door. If it hadn’t been for her they’d still be stuck in that wee house in Ballymena. He said they couldn’t move till he had some capital behind him, but that was just an excuse. What capital did William John have? And now Maisie could have anything she wanted.
‘Shure why don’t you and George buy a nice wee bungalow down at Cultra, Edna? Surely George doesn’t haff to go on working,’ she said aloud, exaggerating the sweet-as-pie tone Maisie had used over lunch.
She’d passed it off, said George didn’t feel quite up to a move. She wasn’t going to let Maisie McKinstry think they couldn’t afford it. But George wouldn’t move for her or anyone else. He had always done exactly what he wanted with never a thought for her. And Jennifer was every bit as bad. Like father like daughter. If it weren’t for Harvey, her life would hardly be worth living.
The phone rang with a peremptory note. She hurried into the hall. Out of habit she composed her face muscles in just the same manner as she did when it was the doorbell. She picked up the receiver.
‘I’d have phoned you earlier, Edna, but Karen said she saw you in Brand’s and you and Mrs McKinstry were having a day out, so I didn’t want to bother George. How is he, Edna?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Working away as usual,’ she replied automatically. It was only Mary Pearson from the other side of the Drive about the church flower rota and as usual she was looking for information. Well, she wasn’t going to get any. ‘I’m just getting a meal, Mary, can we have a chat another time?’
‘Oh, yes, how thoughtless of me. I forgot. Karen did say Jenny was coming this evening. In fact, Edna, I think a car has just stopped at your house. I’ll see you at the P.W.A. meeting on Monday and we can arrange things then. ‘Bye.’
Edna dropped the receiver as if it had suddenly become hot and hurried in her stocking feet into the sitting room. The curtains on the large window that overlooked the front garden and the road beyond were still undrawn. The room which ran the full depth of the house was empty and dark, except for patches of light where the street lamp outside had begun to flicker in the low light of the overcast evening. Cautiously, she edged herself into the one place where she had a good view of the garden gate but could not herself be seen.
A car had stopped, but it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with her. It was an awful old thing with white patches here and there as if someone had been trying to mend it. Probably some workman coming to collect his money on a Friday night from some of the better neighbours who were having improvements made.
She was just about to draw the curtains to shut out prying eyes when she saw a movement and drew back. Someone was getting out of the car. She’d just wait and see who it was.
‘My God,’ she breathed as she recognised the familiar figure. ‘Has that girl no sense at all?’
She peered forward as a second figure, equally familiar, unwound itself from the driver’s seat and stood leaning against the car door looking down at her daughter.
‘Keith McKinstry,’ she said to herself, her voice thick with fury. She was sure Mary Pearson would be looking out of her upstairs window to see who it was. Of all people, it was that beggar. She’d never liked him but she’d thought if he was clever enough to study law at Queen’s he’d have more wit than to go running around with a crowd of Catholics and troublemakers. Young Socialists, was what they called themselves. So Maisie said. Though to her credit she and William John had told him where to go. Letting them down like that after all they’d done for him.
He was getting something out of the back seat of the car now. What was it? Only her basket and her briefcase. And there she was standing there looking up at him, all big eyes and smiles. As she watched, Edna saw Keith McKinstry bend down and kiss her on the cheek.
‘Oh, that’s very nice, isn’t it, in front of all my neighbours,’ she began furiously.
She would have said more but Jennifer had turned away and now had her hand on the garden gate. She scurried down the hall, shut the kitchen door firmly behind her and pushed her feet back into the high heels which she had kicked under the kitchen table. Then she took out the scouring powder and began to clean the sink vigorously.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
I looked back over my shoulder as I put my key in the lock. Beyond the shrubs and trees that screened one side of the Drive from the other, the black and white shape of Keith’s Volkswagen headed for the main road. I waved, but he didn’t see me.
I closed the front door behind me, tucked my baggage under the hall table and hung up my coat. At the end of the hall, the kitchen door was firmly shut. The crash of pots and pans escaped to greet me. A bad omen. The dining-room door was ajar and I caught sight of my father as I passed. He had been listening for me, his newspaper folded on his knee. He raised a hand in greeting but said nothing.
As bad as that, I thought. I opened the door of the kitchen and went in. When my mother is in a good mood, she leaves it open, so she can hear the phone and the doorbell. When she’s not, she shuts it tight and her hearing becomes even more acute. On such occasions any delay on my part is seen as an unfriendly act. Conversation with my father becomes rudeness to her. On a really bad day she treats it as an act of conspiracy.
‘Hello, Mummy, sorry I got held up.’
She turned round from the sink, a look of feigned amazement on her face. ‘Oh, so you’ve arrived after all,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’d given you up half an hour ago.’
‘The traffic gets worse all the time,’ I replied easily.
The signals were clear. Whatever I said would be wrong. All I could do for the moment was try to ignore them.
‘Now you can’t tell me, Jennifer, that it was the traffic kept you since four o’clock,’ she began, slapping down her dishcloth on the draining board. ‘You may think I’m a fool, but I’m not that big a fool. Give me credit for some sense. Please.’
The ‘please’ was squeezed out with such self-pity, I could hardly bear to go on looking at her. The lines of her face were hard and her careful make-up did nothing to soften it. Indeed, the Gala Red of her lipstick only accentuated the tight, unyielding line of her mouth. I felt the old, familiar nausea clutch at my stomach.
If Colin were here, she’d be fussing over the dessert she’d made especially for him, making polite inquiries about William John, arch remarks about young directors and comments about hard-working young men needing good suppers at the end of a busy day. It required a fair amount of tolerance but it was better than this.
‘I had to go into town about the A-level texts,’ I said coolly. ‘I thought you said “the usual time” on the phone.’
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ she snapped, turning her back on me and continuing to scrub. ‘You must’ve been buyin’ the whole shop,’ she threw over her shoulder. She laughed shortly, pleased with herself. She rinsed the sink noisily and then threw back a sliding door and searched through a row of tins.
For two years now, ‘the usual time’ for a Friday evening visit was as soon after five as Colin could get away, collect the car, crawl through the traffic, pick me up in Botanic Avenue with the shopping, and get back across to the Stranmillis Road. It was seldom before five thirty. Often enough it was a quarter to six. But I knew from long experience the facts were not relevant. There was no point whatever in mentioning them.
She opened a tin of peas, flung down the opener and strode across the kitchen towards me. For a moment I thought she was about to strike me, so hostile was the look on her face.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.
I moved hastily aside as she wrenched open a cupboard behind me and pulled out a saucepan.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ I asked quietly.
She tipped the peas into the saucepan so fiercely the unpleasant-looking green liquid splattered the work surface. She tossed her head and smiled a tight little smile. ‘Well, you might just think of putting a comb through your hair.’
Without a word, I turned and left the kitchen, collected my handbag and made for the stairs. As I passed the dining-room door, I looked in, smiled with a cheerfulness I certainly didn’t feel and pulled an imaginary lavatory chain. My father grinned, looked somewhat relieved, and picked up his paper again.
I locked the bathroom door and glanced around. I felt like the hero in a B movie, looking for something to barricade it with. But there was nothing handy. Brightly lit and dazzlingly clean, all the room offered me was multiple images of myself.
I sat down on the pink velvet stool in front of the vanity unit and stared at a face I hardly recognised. The dark eyes that had won me the part of Elizabeth Bennett in a school production were dull and lifeless, with deep shadows under them. My pale complexion looked much too pale and my long, dark hair had come to the end of the week before I had. I pulled the ribbon from my pony tail and watched the dark mass flop around my face.
‘How about the witch of Endor?’ I said aloud as I pulled faces in the mirror. ‘You look just right for the part.’
But I couldn’t laugh. My dear mother was no laughing matter. I sighed and tipped out my make-up on the immaculate grey surface in front of me. If I did a proper job I might just work off some of the anger I was feeling.
I slid open the nearest bathroom cabinet. My mother never throws anything away and I was sure I’d seen a bottle of cleansing cream the last time I had to look for an aspirin. There it was, at the back, a brand I hadn’t used since I was a teenager. As the cold liquid touched my skin, the faint floral fragrance stirred layers of memory. I shivered.
Harvey’s wedding. My mother in an expensive silk suit. Daddy looking handsome in tails. Everywhere the smell of carnations. Buttonholes for the ushers and sprays for female relatives. My mother had helped me into my bridesmaid’s dress of pink organza and tulle. It was not what I would have chosen, but I had to admit it was pretty and the posy and garland of fresh flowers for my hair that Mavis had sent had quite delighted me. My best friend, Valerie, said the garland made me look like Titania.
I enjoyed the wedding. Managed to do the right thing at the right time. Drank my first glass of champagne and danced with all Harvey’s colleagues after the meal. I even managed to kiss Harvey goodbye with a fair imitation of sisterly love, given how supercilious and condescending he had become since his graduation from medical school. Everything seemed to go so well that I was completely unprepared for the storm that broke over me once we were home from the reception.
I was standing in my slip in my bedroom, the pink organza at my feet, when my mother stalked in and just let fly. I still don’t know what I said or did to provoke her outburst. She said I was full of myself, didn’t know how to behave, was spoilt, big-headed, lazy and idle, and that Mavis would never have asked me to be her bridesmaid if it hadn’t been for her. I’d made a real exhibition of myself at the reception, hadn’t I, smiling up at all the men and chattering away to Mavis’s family as if I actually knew them.
Hurt and taken by surprise, I had demanded to know what exactly was so wrong about the way I’d behaved. What had she expected of me that I hadn’t done? And if I’d done something awful, why hadn’t Daddy said anything? That was when she shouted at me so loudly Daddy heard her in the garage and came hurrying upstairs. Then she turned on him.
It was all his fault. He had spoilt me since I was no size. Running after me and giving me everything I asked for. Always reading to me, and books not suitable for a young girl. Now I was so full of myself there was no standing me. I just did what I liked and walked over her. And he was just as bad as I was. It was two to one against her, all the time.
I applied a little lipstick to my chin and cheekbones and pressed powder gently over fresh foundation. Sometimes the tricks of the drama workshop came in handy. A new face in six minutes flat. But new perspectives take longer, much longer.
From that day, in my seventeenth year, I was never easy at home again and seldom felt free to enjoy my father’s company as I had before. We still did some of the things we’d done previously, theatre, concerts and poetry readings, but there was always a price to pay. Either my mother would insist on coming with us and then pour scorn on whatever we had enjoyed, or she would insist she knew when she wasn’t wanted, stay at home and then sulk for days.
I escaped when I married. But for my father there was no escape. I put my make-up away and wiped up the flecks of powder with a piece of Supersoft toilet paper. Then I mopped up the drops of water in the handbasin. There must be nothing for her to complain about when I was gone. For a long time now, this kind of avoidance had helped me get by. But it didn’t solve anything. As I walked slowly down the thickly-carpeted stairs, I knew I had problems that couldn’t be avoided any longer.
‘Come on now, George. At least come to the table when it’s ready. That’s your father’s,’ she said, handing me a hot plate.
She glared at me as I put it down quickly and picked it up again with my napkin.
‘Thank you, dear,’ he said quietly as I put it in front of him.
He did not look up at me. The effort of walking across the room and bending down to switch off the television had left him breathless. His skin had a slight yellowy look. But he seemed composed, at ease almost, as if nothing she did could trouble him any more.
‘There isn’t any pudding,’ she announced as she sat down heavily, a drained look on her face. ‘But there’s plenty of fruit in the bowl.’
I passed her the potatoes. She waved them away. ‘No potatoes for me, I’m dieting.’ She spooned a large helping of peas on to her plate and studied the beef casserole minutely for traces of fat. ‘You wouldn’t know what to have sometimes,’ she said in a pained tone.
An effort had to be made. I collected my wits, passed the peas to my father and said agreeably, ‘Yes, I know what you mean, I usually run out of ideas by Friday.’
‘Well, of course, Jennifer, you can’t really complain now, can you?’ She wore that facial gesture which always meant she was about to say something hurtful but expected it to be let pass, because she was actually smiling.
‘I don’t think you’ve much to complain about, one way and another. I wonder if sometimes you might not consider Colin just a little bit. D’you ever think it might be hard on him, workin’ away all day and comin’ home and no meal ready?’
I opened my mouth to speak, but she didn’t pause.
‘It’s all very well havin’ a job, and the extra money’s very nice, I’m sure, but you can’t just have everythin’ your own way.’ And she was off again on the old familiar circuit. She stood up abruptly and reached across the table for the jug of water before I could pass it to her. The gesture was a familiar one. It meant, ‘No one so much as offers me a glass of water.’
‘Mummy, you know I’m not teaching just because of the money. I’ve had four years at University, at the community’s expense. I don’t think sitting at home is any way to repay that.’
‘Oh, that’s all very well. You can’t tell me very much about community, with all I do for the Church. But charity begins at home, Jennifer, doesn’t it? Do you not think it’s nearly time you were to show a little consideration to your husband and his family?’
I grasped my glass of water and swallowed slowly. When Karen Pearson from across the Drive had her second baby, six months ago, my mother had spoken her mind on the subject. But it had been all right then. Colin was there, he’d laughed and told her she was far too young to be a grandmother, and besides, we still hadn’t got the house straight. Now it looked as if she was going to have another go at me with Colin safely out of the way.
‘You have to accept, Jennifer, that Colin is the breadwinner. He is the one with the responsibility. Surely you give a wee bit of thought to his future. Just a wee bit.’
It was her squeezed toothpaste tone again. Like that ‘please’ in the kitchen. If she goes on like this, I’ll pour the peas over her blue rinse. She’s still talking about breadwinners in 1968. My stomach did a lurch as I tried to control myself.
‘Mummy, we came home from Birmingham because of Colin’s future. We took the house in Helen’s Bay because of Colin’s future. I didn’t want to give up the job in Birmingham and I didn’t want to live in Loughview Heights. What do you mean, “giving thought to Colin’s future”? We give it thought all the time.’
She swallowed hard, like a blackbird consuming a piece of crust that’s too big for it. Her chin poked forward with the effort. ‘Well, I don’t see much sign of it. There’s not much comfort for Colin with you correctin’ exercises in the evenings or runnin’ off to the theatre with those girls. I don’t think Colin has much say in what you do. It doesn’t look like it, does it, heh?’
From the corner of my eye I saw my father put down his knife and fork. He looked as if he were about to speak, but he paused, thought better of it and remained silent.
‘Mummy, Colin and I discuss everything we do,’ I replied patiently.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure you do,’ she retorted. ‘And you make sure you get what you want. And I have to hear from another party that you can’t go on holiday with your husband at Easter because you’re busy gallivantin’ with your friends.’
‘Easter?’ For a moment I was so surprised I couldn’t even think where in the year we were.
‘Yes, Easter,’ she repeated, her voice rising a degree higher, her flushed cheeks wobbling with vehemence. ‘It’s a quare thing when I have ta find out from another party.’
‘Another party’ was Maisie. At least now I’d guessed what she was talking about.
‘I’m going to a conference on English teaching,’ I said coolly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with going on holiday. Colin didn’t want to go to Majorca with Maisie and William John any more than I did.’
‘Oh, is that so? Is that so indeed?’
And then she took off. Just like the day of Harvey’s wedding. There were some new lines since then, but the refrain was basically the same. I wasn’t behaving as she thought I ought to behave. I made my own decisions, which clearly I had no right to do. She commented on my lack of loyalty to my husband, my family and my country, catalogued misdemeanours such as taking my A-level girls to see plays put on by the Other Side, ‘running around’ with Valerie Thompson and that arty crowd of hers, and being ungrateful to the McKinstrys who had been ‘more than generous’ to me.
‘My fine friends’, as she called them, were a recurring theme. Everyone I knew and cared about came in for some unpleasant comment. It was on that topic I finally took my stand.
‘You and your fine friends will get a comedown one of these days,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘Let me tell you, that Keith McKinstry is a real bad one, him and that Catholic crowd he runs around with. I’ll thank you not to bring that dirty-looking beggar to my front door where any of our decent neighbours might see him. Colin has more sense than to have anything to do with him.’
She had to pause for breath, so I took my chance.
‘Mummy,’ I said firmly, ‘I don’t know what Maisie has been saying about Keith, but whatever it was, it has nothing to do with Colin and me. Keith and Siobhan are friends of ours and will go on being friends of ours.’
‘Nothing to do with you?’ She twitched with fury as her voice rose higher.
I poured myself another glass of water and tried to find some logic in the flood of abuse and accusations she was stringing together. But I couldn’t. When she finally stopped, I didn’t know where to begin. But she completely misread my silence. Encouraged by it, she began again in a tone several degrees less hysterical than before.
‘You know, Jennifer, we all have to accept that we only have one life to live and that life is for the service of others. I don’t think if you had to give an account to your Maker, you could really say you’ve done the things you ought to have done, now could you?’
I listened hard. Not to the words, but to the tone. Did she really think that by lowering her voice and making the odd reference to God, her message would sound any different?
I waited till she stopped. My hands were stone cold and my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a huge pork pie. Suddenly, a moment from my childhood sprang back into my mind and in the midst of the angry words and all my anxieties I felt a totally unexpected sense of unshakeable calm. I saw myself as a small girl, hand in hand with my father. I was trailing my feet through the puddles, utterly confident of the magical water-repellent qualities of my new Wellington boots. The memory was extraordinarily comforting. I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, Mummy, I agree. We do have only one life to live.’ My voice was so steady I couldn’t believe it. ‘Where we disagree is about who decides how you should live it. I think each person has to decide for themselves. I don’t think you should let other people decide for you.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sprang to her feet. ‘Oh no, you’ll not do that, Jennifer. You only want to hear what suits you. As long as you’re all right, you couldn’t care less about poor Colin, or me, or anybody. I might as well talk to the wall. All you’re interested in is yourself. Self. Self. Self.’
She flung her napkin down on the table.
‘That’s all you ever think about. That, and making others like you. Well, I’m not stayin’ here for you to make skit of me. You take me for a fool. Well, I’m not. You’re not going to get everythin’ yer own way. We’ll just see who’s the fool.’
With a final vicious stare at me, she turned and strode out. She banged the door so hard a collection of old plates on the dresser rattled ominously. In the silence that followed, a full-blown rose on a small table by the door shed its petals in a soft shower on to the carpet.
I turned towards my father. To my amazement, he was smiling.
‘Good girl yourself. You didn’t cry.’
‘I think I might now,’ I said weakly.
‘Ach, not at all. We’ll have a drop of brandy and I’ll make us some coffee. I went down on the bus to Bell’s for a wee bag of Blue Mountain this morning. How about that?’
I nodded enthusiastically and then hesitated. ‘D’you think she’ll come back?’
‘No, not very likely. She’s got a television upstairs now and there’s something or other she watches at seven thirty. She might come down at eight. Shure there’s plenty o’ time.’
I looked across at him as he took the brandy from the cupboard. How could he be so cool, living with this woman, the fresh-faced girl he’d married thirty-five years ago, when he was my age and she a country girl from a cottage where they still used paraffin lamps and drew water from a well halfway up an orchard behind the single-storey dwelling.
‘Would you eat a bit of cheese, Jenny?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve got terrible wind.’
‘The brandy’ll help that,’ he said comfortingly. ‘I don’t know what set that one off,’ he went on ruefully. ‘I’d have said my piece if I’d thought it would’ve done any good. I’m glad I didn’t. It was better the way it was.’
We sat down together, glasses in hand and looked into the fire. I thought of all the times we had sat by this fireside, reading to each other. Plays and poetry and fairytales. Those were the days, from my early years right up to Harvey’s wedding, when my mother seemed happy enough, with the new house being done up to her liking, a round of coffee mornings and sales of work at the local church, and Harvey always wanting attention, help with his work, someone to look at what he was doing, or making. It was always my mother he called for. If Harvey wanted to go to the cinema, she was quite happy to leave my father and me to make our own supper. How we might amuse ourselves while they were gone didn’t seem to trouble her at all.
I knelt on the hearth rug, hands outstretched to the leaping flames, and looked at him over my shoulder.
‘Got offered a job today, Daddy.’
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Headmistress?’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘Head of English. Connie’s going to retire early. She recommended me. So Miss Braidwood said.’
‘You’ll take it?’
‘To take or not to take, that is the question. I’ve got to decide by Monday.’
‘How do you feel about it?’
‘I feel yes, but it’s not as easy as that.’
He looked slightly puzzled and I wondered if, like Mr Cummings, he too might have forgotten all the business about starting a family. Since his heart attack, I’d noticed he could forget things and then get very upset, once he realised what had happened.
‘What’s on the no side?’ he asked quietly. ‘Colin wouldn’t stand in your way, would he?’ he went on, more sharply.
I reassured him. Colin and I had agreed I’d pursue my career till I was well-established. No need to make a break till I was twenty-nine or thirty, he’d said.
‘No, it’s not Colin, Daddy. There are some parties who might think it’s not considerate to wait any longer. Not just Mummy. I have a nasty feeling Maisie and William John have been getting at Colin.’
‘But what do you feel about that?’ he asked, very gently.
‘I just don’t know, Daddy. I really don’t.’
‘But you do know about the job?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said honestly. ‘I’d love the job.’
He looked away for a moment and I wondered what he could be thinking. Suddenly my mother’s words came back to me and I felt so uneasy.
‘I’m not selfish, Daddy, am I?’ The question was out before I’d even thought it. My voice had wavered dangerously.
‘Selfish?’ he repeated, as if the very idea puzzled him.
For a moment I expected him to say, ‘Now don’t be silly, Jenny.’ But he didn’t. He just sat looking into the fire. It was a look I’d seen recently that worried me, though I couldn’t really say why. I waited for him to reply. In the firelight, his face looked very old and very tired.
He straightened up with a visible effort and turned back to look at me. ‘Jenny, dear, all human beings are selfish in one sense of the word. They have to be if they’re going to be any good to themselves or anyone else. Your self is all you’ve got in the end. No matter how much you care about anyone else, it’s you that you have to live with, for whatever time you’ve got.’
He paused. I could see he was short of breath, but he ignored it and went on.
‘Your mother was right saying you had only one life to live. But you’re right, too, about making your own decisions. It has to be you, Jenny, leading the life you choose, otherwise you end up living the life others choose for you.’
His breathing was rougher by now, and to my dismay I heard a sound I hoped I’d never hear again, the wheeze he was making in the intensive care unit at the Royal when I got there straight from the Birmingham plane. That was two years ago. They’d said then they didn’t think he’d pull round, the heart attack was massive. I’d held his hand and prayed, the way children pray. ‘Please God, let Daddy live and I’ll give up the job and come home as Colin and everybody else wants, and I’ll not complain about leaving a super school and kids I love.’ He’d pulled through but he’d had to retire early. And I’d kept my part of the bargain. But at times like tonight, I wondered if I’d actually been very selfish indeed.
He took a deep breath. The ominous sound disappeared. He went on, ‘Jenny, I’ve seen too damn much of living for others in my time. This island’s full of it. Women living for the house, or the family, or the neighbours, or the Church; men living for the business, or the Lodge, or the Cause. Any excuse so as not to have to live for themselves and make some sort of decent job of it. Shakespeare had it right, you know. “To thine own self be true, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Aye, or woman either. If that’s selfish, Jenny, I wish to goodness there was a bit more of it around.’
He leaned back in his chair, his face flushed with the effort he had made. I wanted to say so much, but I could see how tired he was. So I just said, ‘Thanks, Daddy, I’ll remember that.’ Then I offered to go and make the coffee, thinking he might well doze off in his chair.
He nodded gratefully and I was just putting my warm feet back into my shoes when the telephone rang loudly in the hall. I heard my mother’s step on the stairs. Her voice was as clear from the hallway as if she was standing in the room beside us.
It was Harvey, we gathered, honouring Rathmore Drive with one of his infrequent family visits for Sunday lunch. My mother was positively purring after the first few exchanges. There were a number of nauseating references to her favourite grandchild, Peter, the usual inquiries about Mavis and the two girls, and then, to my horror, I heard her assuring Harvey that I would be there too, that she was just about to ask me.
The call ended. I heard the heavy tread of her footsteps, the rattle of wooden rings as she pulled the velvet curtains behind the front door. The sitting-room curtains would come next. If she were going to come in, she would come in then. And as likely as not she would behave as if nothing whatever had happened.
My father was leaning back in his chair, listening to the pattern of the evening ritual. We exchanged glances and grinned ruefully at each other.
The door opened. She marched across to the fireplace, a smirk on her face. ‘My goodness,’ she exclaimed, ‘you’re sitting here all in the dark. Harvey rang a little while ago. They’re coming for Sunday lunch. Isn’t that nice? And Susie was asking for you, Jenny, so I said I was sure you’d be able to come, as Colin is away. Harvey will pick you up while I’m getting the lunch. I thought we’d have a leg of lamb for a change. What do you think, George?’
Chapter 5 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
I pushed the front door closed with my elbow, stepped over a pile of envelopes and dropped briefcase and basket on the seat in the telephone alcove. ‘Thank God to be home,’ I said aloud.
There was an icy chill in the hall and a pervasive, unpleasant smell hanging in the air. It felt as if I’d been gone for a month. I kept my coat on and went into the kitchen. It was exactly as I had left it at a quarter to seven this morning when Colin suddenly announced that we had to leave an hour earlier than usual, because he had to pick up his father on the Antrim Road for their nine o’clock flight.
Earlier, I was surprised and delighted when he wakened me with a mug of tea. Sitting up in bed, listening to him cooking his breakfast, I drank it gratefully and hoped it was a peace offering after the awful row we’d had the previous evening. Relaxed and easy as it was still so early, I went down in my dressing gown and to my surprise found my fruit juice and cornflakes sitting ready for me.
Now, I scraped the soggy residue of the cornflakes into the polythene box where I keep scraps for the birds and put it back in the fridge. I’d been halfway through them when he told me. That gave me precisely fifteen minutes to shower, make up, dress, organise the papers I’d abandoned in my study the previous evening and be ready to leave. The alternative was to leave on foot, twenty minutes after Colin, and spend an hour and a half travelling, three buses and a train.
I shivered miserably and tried to put it out of mind as I studied the control panel for the central heating boiler. It looked perfectly all right. On: morning, six till eight. Heat and water. Back on: Five. For getting home, early evening. Off, ten thirty. By which time we were usually in bed. I looked at my watch. It was only ten fifteen so why was it off?
‘Oh, not one more bloody thing,’ I said crossly as I tramped round the kitchen in frustration. The air was still full of the smell of Colin’s bacon and egg. I prodded the switch on the extractor fan. To my amazement, it began to whir. It hadn’t worked for weeks. I almost managed to laugh at my bad temper, but then I caught sight of Colin’s eggy plate. The very thought of the relaxed way he’d announced the change of plan made me furious again.
‘Come on, Jenny, concentrate. It was working this morning,’ I said firmly.
Among the many delights of Loughview Heights, as advertised in the colour brochure from any McKinstry Brothers agent and free to all would-be customers, was a range of modern conveniences ‘guaranteed to impress your visitors’. What the brochure didn’t say was that they also broke down at the slightest provocation. There’d been such a crop of failures recently I was ready to exchange them for reliable Stone Age technology like paraffin lamps and water from a well.
I stared at the control panel again. Somewhere at the back of my weary mind a thought formed. I was missing something blindingly obvious. I peered at the minute figures on the dial. Then the penny dropped. Slightly to the right of the control box was a large switch. It said ‘OFF’.
‘Off?’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘Who’s bloody OFF? I’m not OFF, I’m here and I’m freezing.’
I pushed it down. The loud click echoed through the dark, empty house. A red light flowered. There was a woosh and a shower of tiny ticks, like rain splattering a window. I shivered, cleared and stacked the breakfast things, and went through to the lounge and found an even worse mess.
I stepped round the ironing board and drew the curtains across the black hole that echoed the chaos around me. I switched on the table lamps and turned off the top light. Even with softer lighting, the walls looked almost as grubby as they did under the glare of the overhead fitment. I pushed a pile of Colin’s papers, magazines and instruction sheets off an armchair and sat down.
I’d had plans for those walls this weekend. Tuscan. A rich, earthy colour that might even bring out some quality in the hideous, mustardy velvet curtains. The tins of emulsion had been sitting in the garage since the summer. But it looked as if my mother had put paid to that little scheme. I sized up the walls again. Allowed for the mass of the stone fireplace and the picture window. Calculated how long it might take me to remove the adjustable shelving and all the books and objects by myself. Shook my head sadly. Bitter experience had taught me things always take longer than you think. The tin says ‘one coat’. But when I did my study, the same dirty white had grinned through one coat. Some bits had ended up needing three coats.
If I didn’t have to go to Rathmore Drive for Sunday lunch, perhaps I could have just managed it. But there it was. I did. One more weekend, to follow all the others. Something on. Not something we wanted to do, but one more ‘must do’ among all the many ‘must dos’ that had come to dominate our life.
I tried to remember when we last had a weekend when we could just be together, sit over breakfast, talk, drink cups of coffee, or pull on boots and walk down to the loughshore. We had had so little time together recently it wasn’t surprising, really; Colin could be so thoughtless and I could get so anxious and agitated about things never getting done.
The room was beginning to warm up slightly, but the hot air pouring through the vents was blowing Colin’s scattered papers all over the place. Wearily, I got up and gathered them together. Half were specifications for the new factory in Antrim, now his special project. I’d seen them so often, I knew them by heart. Then I found the instructions for making the homebrew. A pile of photocopies – Which reports on new cars. And down at the bottom of the pile still on the sofa I found an overflowing ashtray full of Neville’s cigarette stubs and ash from Colin’s cigar. At least that accounted for the peculiar, stale smell in the room. Accounting for the furious row we had when Neville finally left would not be so easy.
Neville had appeared from next door before we’d finished supper. He was laden with packets and boxes which he deposited all round the kitchen wherever there was a space. The weekly shop still hadn’t been put away, nor the supper dishes stacked, when he breezed in, but Colin shooed me away. Not to worry, he said, he’d sort things out while they were getting the brew going. No problem.
I retreated to my study and tried to read essays. Not exactly what I had planned, when Colin was going to be away all weekend. But I couldn’t concentrate. From downstairs, great bursts of laughter rose at regular intervals, together with an unpleasant smell which made me think of sodden haystacks steaming in the hot sun after heavy rain.
Time passed. There were noises on the stairs. ‘Mind how you go, Colin, old lad. You’ll give yourself a hernia, you will.’
‘Steady on, Neville. Watch where you’re putting your airlock. You can harm a young lad like that.’
By ten o’clock I felt desperate. I set off to go and tell Neville there was packing to do and plans to make for the weekend.
Colin hailed me halfway down the stairs. ‘Oh, Jenny, just in time. We’ve made some coffee. Are there any biscuits?’
The kitchen was exactly as I left it, only now there were sieves, bowls and large saucepans, full of the drying residue of boiled hops, stacked all over the floor, and the pedal bin was overflowing. I picked out the biscuits from the carrier where Colin had put them himself, declined coffee, and started to clear up.
It was nearly eleven by the time Neville went and Colin strode back into the kitchen, looking pleased with himself. ‘Oh, Jenny, you shouldn’t have washed up. I’d have helped.’
‘That’s what you said at eight o’clock,’ I replied sharply.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll do it now.’
‘Yes, it does matter. It’s nearly eleven and we haven’t had a moment to ourselves all evening and you still have your packing to do.’
He came and put his arms round me and nuzzled my ear. ‘Oh, come on, Jen. It’s not that late,’ he began persuasively. ‘I won’t be two ticks packing. You go on up and have a nice shower and I’ll be in bed with you in no time.’
At that moment the thought of a shower and of getting to bed without any further delay was utterly appealing. I nodded wearily but decided to finish drying up the saucepans while he packed. I heard him fetch his weekend case from the cloakroom and run upstairs whistling cheerfully. I bent over to empty the pedal bin.
The night air was cold as I replaced the lid on the dustbin, but looking up I saw the moon appear suddenly from behind a great mass of cloud. Light spilled all around me. A spray of yellow chrysanthemums gleamed in the big flowerbed at the end of the garden. Beyond the dark mass of the shrubs and the climbers I’d planted to hide the solid shape of the fence, the lough lay calm, a silver swathe laid across its dark surface. On the far shore, where the Antrim plateau plunged down to the coast, strings and chains of lights winked along the coastline like pale flowers edging a garden path. The still, frosty air was heavy with quiet.
‘Jen. Can you hear me? Where are you?’
Reluctantly, I went back into the house and found Colin peering down over the banisters. His good spirits had vanished and he wore a patient look that did nothing to hide his irritation.
‘What have you done with my white shirts, Jen? I can’t find them.’
‘Which white shirts?’
‘Any white shirts. They aren’t in the drawer,’ he went on quickly. ‘I’ve looked.’
‘They’re probably all in the wash,’ I replied steadily. ‘I’ve been handwashing your drip-dries since the machine packed up. There are two or three of those on the fitment in the bathroom.’
‘But they’re blue,’ he protested impatiently.
‘Since when has there been a rule about wearing white shirts at conferences?’ I asked crossly.
I went back into the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled a pedal-bin liner off the roll. I heard him pound downstairs and turned and saw him glowering in at me.
‘Jenny, you know perfectly well I always wear the white ones for conferences,’ he said with a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do? Wash my own?’
‘Colin, if you had let me ring someone two weeks ago about the machine neither of us would have to wash your shirts. But you wanted to fiddle with the damn thing. I told you I’d rather we paid to have it done so we’d have some time to do other things. But you said no. You’d order the part. You’d fit it yourself. Well, if you had, the drawer would be full of shirts. So don’t go blaming me.’
The wretched pedal-bin liner wouldn’t open. I stood there struggling with it as I watched him change gear. The glowering face disappeared and his tone was sweetness itself as he started to explain that he wasn’t blaming me. I just didn’t understand how difficult his position was. Didn’t I grasp what a big responsibility this new Antrim contract was? Couldn’t I see that he was run off his feet, he was so busy? And just how important it was for his future. He couldn’t really use office time to make domestic phone calls, now could he? Besides, he was out on site so much. Surely I didn’t expect him to be responsible for everything, even his own shirts.
Something about that rapid change of expression, perhaps, or something about that sweet-reasonable tone made me angrier and angrier. At one point, I nearly threw the roll of pedal-bin bags at him just to get him to stop. But I managed not to. Instead, I insisted he had plenty of other shirts. That he could have checked last night he had exactly the shirts he wanted. At the very least, he could have checked before he and Neville made both the kitchen and the bathroom unusable.
‘Why on earth did you have to invite Neville in on the evening before a conference anyway?’ I ended angrily.
‘Because I prefer not to spend all my time working, unlike some people,’ he threw back at me.
‘Unlike some people?’ I repeated furiously. ‘And what about these last three weekends? Who was working then?’
He went quite white, but I scarcely noticed as the pent-up resentment of the last weeks poured out of me.
‘Entertaining your wretched uncle from Australia because Maisie thinks he might just leave you something. And the bloke from British Steel, who might just wangle you a contract,’ I shouted. ‘Or maybe that doesn’t count as work because you could relax and wave your cigar around just like your father does while I lay on the meals. I suppose you think that’s what women are for. And I suppose you think I enjoy providing cut-price entertainment for McKinstry Brothers instead of having some time for us, like any working couple.’
Recalling the violence of my outburst, I shivered, although the room was now pleasantly warm. I looked at my watch. Ten fifty-five. The row had gone on for an hour or more. I ended up weeping from pure exhaustion. Colin apologised, insisted he loved me. Just wanted me to be happy. It would all be much better soon, he said. He thought he could promise me that. It might even be he would have some good news when he came back on Sunday night. Of course I was right about the shirts. They did look a bit creased but he’d manage with the blue ones. I was far more important than any old shirts.
So we’d made it up, and at half past midnight I got out the ironing board and did the bits of the blue shirts that showed. Going halfway, my father would call it. He always argued you have to go halfway to meet people, because we all make mistakes sometimes. No one’s perfect.
Eleven o’clock. Warm at last, I took off my coat and went and sat by the phone. Driving into Belfast this morning, Colin insisted he hadn’t told me about the early start because he didn’t want to upset me. He thought I mightn’t sleep as well if I knew we had to get up early. Hadn’t he done his best to help me, when he had so much on his mind? Didn’t I see how important this weekend was to our future?
I could see why it was so important for him. That was easy enough. After all, he’d talked about nothing else for weeks. He thought it would be the moment when his father offered him the directorship. And that was where our future came in, because it would mean more money, as he so frequently told me, besides the perks of his own office and a company car. Things would be easier for us. Of that he was sure. Why, I could even have my own little car, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice for me?
Outside school, he put his arms round me and kissed me. ‘I’ll phone you tonight between ten and eleven. I promise. Just as soon as I get away from the evening session.’ He drove off and I went slowly up the steps into the cold and empty building to put myself together for the day’s teaching, a full nine periods, most of them with examination classes.
The phone rang a long way off. Colin. At last. I set out to answer it, but I couldn’t find my way. I hurried, but didn’t seem to get any closer. Its peremptory ring got louder and louder. I struggled on. Tripped over things in the darkness. My basket. My briefcase. Then a pile of saucepans, which fell down and made a noise even louder than the phone. I woke up and found myself in bed, the room pitch black.
Colin’s alarm clock was still ringing its head off. And it was on his side of the bed. Desperate to stop the appalling racket, I fought my way through the tangled bedclothes, grabbed it one-handed and squashed its ‘Off’ knob against the crumpled pillow. I lay back exhausted, my heart pounding, the strident, metallic sound still vibrating in my ears.
I stared at the cold object in my hand, a wedding present from one of Colin’s friends. ‘Extra loud’, it had said on the box. A curtain of exclamation marks had been added. I was supposed to find it funny. Five forty-five, I read on its luminous dial. Yesterday’s early start. That wasn’t funny either. I just stopped myself flinging the wretched thing at the bedroom wall.
I switched on my bedside lamp, put my hands to my face and moaned, ‘Oh, couldn’t he have turned that bloody thing off instead of the central heating?’ Tears of anger and frustration sprang into my eyes. I’d so needed a good night’s sleep but the few hours I’d had were restless and dream-haunted.
Colin’s promised call hadn’t come till after twelve. The phone box he’d chosen was horribly noisy and the moment he spoke it was clear he only wanted to say he’d try again tomorrow, when he had more coins. I’d asked him to reverse the charges and quickly told him about the job and having to decide by Monday. But he couldn’t have heard properly. All he said was, ‘Well, if Monday suits you for doing it, that’s fine by me.’ Then I heard a voice call out. A woman’s voice. Very bright and sharp. ‘Do hurry up, darling, the taxi’s waiting.’ And he said, ‘Sorry, Jen, no more money. It’s all going fine, just fine. We’ll have a chat tomorrow,’ and hung up.
I sat up in bed and caught sight of my reflection in the glass-fronted wardrobes that lined the wall opposite me. I hardly recognised myself.
‘Stop it, Jenny,’ I said firmly. ‘That way madness lies. It’s dark and you’ve had a bad night. Don’t think. Act. Do something. Anything. Don’t dare think till you’re feeling more like yourself. Come on. Get going. You’re wide awake and you may as well make the best of it. Shower. Breakfast. One thing at a time.’
I turned my face up to the shower’s warm rain and felt my anger drain away. I let the water play on my aching shoulders and imagined my tension washing away down the plughole like so many slivers of metal. I shut my eyes and saw a sandy beach lapped by blue sea. A coral reef shut out the crashing breakers of the ocean beyond. In the sun-warmed waters of the lagoon, I could dive down and follow the flickers of tiny fish, jewel-bright against the pale silver sand, the fine residue of the reef beyond, swept in by the pounding waves.
Reluctantly, I emerged from my reverie and reached for a towel from the heated rail. The towel was cold, damp and smelly.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said as I dripped across to the airing cupboard for a dry one. The statement was purely rhetorical. It was only too easy to believe the towel rail had finally packed up. It had been on the blink for months. I pulled open the cupboard door, put out my hand for a bath sheet and swore vigorously.
Pushed in among the piles of towels, the bed linen and the table linen was an enormous glass bottle full of seething, yellow-green liquid. The bath sheets were squashed up against the wall behind it. As I reached past the intruding object, the airlock made a loud, hiccupping noise and released a tiny puff of foul-smelling gas. Only a few seconds later, it did it again. Even I knew it was going too fast. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before it blew out the airlock and spewed its contents all over everything. Unless, of course, as Colin had done, I turned off the central heating to keep it happy.
I scrubbed myself dry, ran back into the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Suddenly the penny dropped. All that racket on the stairs, on Thursday night, and the great jokes about straining your privates. Neville in his element and Colin egging him on. That’s what they’d been up to. And not a thought of ‘Do you mind?’ And now I was left to work out what in hell’s name I was going to do about it, given there was no way I could move the damn thing.
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Anne Doughty
‘An engaging story of opportunities lost and refound’ Express Can love help her through the most difficult decisions? When Jenny McKinstry is offered a new post as the Head of English at her Belfast school she’s elated! Yet she can’t help but feel conflicted about the position. With all those around her mounting the pressure to start a family and her husband’s career about to take off, Jenny feels bound by an overwhelming sense of duty. Will she be able to support her husband’s ambitions and land her dream job… Prepare to be spirited away to rural Ireland in this stunning new saga from Anne Doughty. Previously published as A Few Late Roses. Readers LOVE Anne Doughty: ‘I love all the books from this author’ ‘Beautifully written’ ‘Would recommend to everyone’ ‘Fabulous story, couldn't put it down!’ ‘Looking forward to the next one. ’
ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_4475a192-5252-5c05-b8d1-a80558251b12)
The Girl from Galloway
The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay
Last Summer in Ireland
Copyright (#ulink_9bc9880d-1221-5db4-8db0-b3fd8625daa4)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published as A Few Late Roses in 1997
This edition published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019
Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008328818
Praise for Anne Doughty (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’
‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’
‘I have read all of Anne’s books - I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’
‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’
‘A true Irish classic’
‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’
For Peter
Contents
Cover (#u8614ab86-aaf4-5aac-8206-221784888078)
About the Author (#ub2ab347c-daa6-5817-9b3e-87bedb7e8d97)
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_2ecf714d-c2ff-5d39-8257-2f13f955f32d)
Title Page (#u02bd8bc7-b02d-577a-9cfa-feffee732328)
Copyright (#u3a5e4a39-4c72-5a5e-8b96-6bd91bc34cb1)
Praise (#ulink_ff746a8c-2acc-592f-b247-8085ae45c434)
Dedication (#u2b6fb094-a659-5608-8f7b-7387307630dd)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ud7bf8e47-ac43-5dd6-bb30-a024f7697fec)
OCTOBER, 1995
My mother never talked about the past. What happened long ago was over and done with, water under the bridge, as far as she was concerned. She was wrong, of course. You can’t ignore the past. It always remains part of you. It shapes your present and your future and if you do try to ignore it, you could well end up as she did, bitter and disappointed and so out of love with herself and the whole world that she cast a dark shadow all around her.
That was how she nearly ruined my life.
Even in her dying my mother managed one final, bitter act. The morning after she died, my brother remembered the sealed envelope she had deposited with him some years earlier. He assumed it was a copy of her will, the provisions of which she’d quoted so many times we already knew them off by heart. It was indeed her will. But with it was a document he had not expected, a letter of instruction, handwritten in her own firm and well-formed copperplate.
‘Jenny dear, what in the name o’ goodness are we gonna do? Shure I had it all arranged with her own man and the undertaker down the road from the home. Hasn’t she upset the whole applecart?’
I knew he was badly shaken the moment I snatched up the phone in the bedroom where I was already packing. The steady, well-rounded tones that made him such a success with the patients in his Belfast consulting rooms had disappeared. I hadn’t heard Harvey sound like this since we were both children.
‘What d’ye think, Sis?’
I wasn’t surprised he’d had arrangements already made. For two years she’d been bedridden and almost immobile. She’d been at death’s door so many times that the kind-hearted staff at the nursing home became embarrassed about calling us yet once more to the bedside.
‘What exactly does it say, Harvey?’ I asked.
‘“I wish to be interred with my own family in the Hughes apportionment situated in Ballydrennan Churchyard, County Antrim, and not with my deceased husband George Erwin in the churchyard adjacent to Balmoral Presbyterian Church on the Lisburn Road.”’
He read it slowly and precisely, so that I could imagine her penning it, her lips tight, her shoulders squared. The more angry and bitter she was about something, the more formal the language she would use. In a really bad mood, she’d end up sounding like a legal document as she piled up words of sufficient weight and moment to serve her purposes. Consistent to the very end, I thought, as I listened.
‘And there’s a bit about the flowers,’ he added dismissively.
‘Oh, what does she say about flowers?’
‘She wants flowers. She says this idea of asking people to send money to some charity or other is a lot o’ nonsense and quite inappropriate.’
‘She would, wouldn’t she?’ I laughed wryly. ‘Shall we send a pillow of red roses, Harvey? Or one of those big square wreaths that say “Mum”, like the Kray brothers’, when they were let out of prison for their mother’s funeral?’
I heard him expostulate and made an effort to collect myself.
‘Sorry, Harvey, I’m not quite myself at the moment. I just can’t believe she’s gone. I’m all throughother, as she might say. In fact, when you rang I was standing here with one arm as long as the other when I’m supposed to be packing.’
He laughed shortly, but seemed comforted.
‘You’re the boss, Harvey. You backed me when Daddy died,’ I said gently. ‘If you want to go ahead with the Lisburn Road as planned, I’ll not object. We’re the only ones concerned, let’s face it.’
‘You’re shure, Jenny?’ he went on, a trace of relief already audible in his voice.
I stared round the disordered bedroom where two cases sat open and small piles of panties, Y-fronts, shirts and blouses were already lined up. I sat down abruptly, sweat breaking on my forehead.
‘No, no, I’m not sure, Harvey,’ I said weakly. ‘The minute I spoke, I knew it wouldn’t be right. Isn’t it silly? Can’t we even get free of her when she’s dead?’
In different circumstances, a countrywoman wanting to be buried with her family in the place where she was born could be a matter of sentiment. But there was no question of that with our mother. She’d never gone back to Ballydrennan after her father died, not even to visit her sister Mary who lived with her family only a few miles away. What was more, she’d never had a good word to say about the place. No, there was no question of sentiment. Only of spite.
Daddy had done all he could to give her what she wanted while he lived. When he died, he’d left her with a house, a car and a decent income. Now, one last time, she was rejecting him in the most public way possible. But something at the back of my mind told me we had to go through with it.
‘Harvey, I’m sorry, but I think we’ve got to do it. I can’t give you a single good reason why we should, but I have to be honest,’ I confessed. ‘I’m not being much help to you,’ I ended up lamely.
‘Yes, you are, Jenny. Being honest’s the only way. Took me a long time to see you’n Mavis were right about that. But you were. I’m much beholden to you, as they say,’ he added, with a slight, awkward laugh.
‘Maybe there has to be one last time, Harvey,’ I said quickly. ‘But it’ll make a lot of extra work for you.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Jenny,’ he replied easily. ‘Ring me when you’ve got your flight time and I’ll pick you up at Aldergrove.’
Two days later, in the crowded farm kitchen of our only remaining Antrim relatives, I took a large glass of whisky from the roughened hand of one of the McBride cousins and wondered how I could add a good measure of water without attracting attention. Before I could move, a huge figure embraced me.
‘Ach, my wee cousin.’
Jamsey McBride had always seemed large to me. When he’d carried me about on his shoulders as a little girl, he’d been like a great friendly bear, his remarkable physical strength offset by a surprising gentleness of manner.
‘Jamsey!’ I replied as the whisky sloshed in my glass.
‘Ach, shure Jenny, how are ye? Begod, shure I haven’t laid eyes on ye since your poor fader went. God rest his sowl, he was the best atall, the best atall. That mus’ be neer twenty year ago now. Dear aye, ye’ll see some changes in this place since last ye wor here. Aye, changes an’ heartbreak too.’
His eyes misted and I looked down into my glass to give him time to recover. Jamsey’s eldest son had been killed by paramilitaries early in the eighties and he still couldn’t speak of it without distress.
‘Now drink up, woman dear,’ he urged me after a moment. ‘Shure ye’ll be skinned down at the groun’. Yer fader usta say that wee hill the church stan’s on was the caulest place in the nine glens.’
So I drank my whisky as obediently as a child and listened to the ring of his Ulster Scots and tried to keep the tears from springing to my own eyes. No, it was not sorrow. Not tears for my mother or her passing, or even for Jamsey’s son, whom I had barely known, but tears of regret for the world I once knew, the people and places of my childhood.
Standing there in the large modern house that had replaced the low thatched cottage where my aunt and uncle began their married life, I mourned my links with the land and that part of my family who still lived closest to it. For these were people my mother had no time for, people whose hard-working lives she despised, whose successes and failures she treated with indifference or contempt.
A red-faced figure appeared at my elbow, the neck of a bottle of Bushmills aimed at my glass.
‘No, Patrick, no,’ I protested, laughing. ‘If I have any more, I won’t be able to stand up in church, never mind kneel down.’
He laughed aloud, clutched me by the arm and turned me to look across the crowded kitchen.
‘Jenny, is that yer girl over there forenenst that good-looking dark-haired lad?’
‘Yes, that’s Claire and her brother Stephen,’ I nodded. He winked at me, and pressed his way towards the next refillable glass.
Jamsey watched his brother work his way across the room and was silent for a moment.
‘Gawd Jenny, we’re all gettin’ aul,’ he began, sadly. ‘But that girl of yours is powerful like her granny. In luks, I mane,’ he added quickly.
‘I’m glad you added that, Jamsey,’ I said, laughing. ‘My mother could be a bit sharp.’
‘Ach, say no more, say no more,’ he muttered hastily. ‘Shure, don’t we know well enough she’d no time for the likes of us. But yer Da was a differen’ story. Ye’ve got very like him, Jenny. D’ye know that?’
‘It’s my grey hair, Jamsey. I see it’s in the fashion round here as well.’
‘Ach, away wi’ ye,’ he laughed, dropping a heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘Shure you’ve only a wee wisp or two at the front, an’ me has no hair atall, no moren a moily cow has horns. Tell me, d’ye like England, Jenny? Is it not too fast fer ye? Boys, I go over for Smithfeeld Show ivery year and the traffic gets worser. ’Twould run ye down and niver stop to cast ye aside.’
After the warmth and noise of the big kitchen, the chill of the October day took my breath away when we stepped outside. I shuddered so violently that Claire came and linked her arm through mine. ‘Get Daddy,’ I saw her mouth to Stephen, as the whole party set out on the short drive down one glen and into the next. A little later, the four of us walked up the rough path to the small grey church. Down by the gate, the cars were parked erratically on the grassy verge of the minor road, as if their occupants had gone fishing in a nearby lake or were playing football in someone’s field.
From behind the massed clouds that had threatened rain as we left McBride’s farm the sun suddenly appeared, casting one side of the deep glen into such dark shadow that the whitewashed houses gleamed like beacons. The church was in the light. Beyond its low hill and the curve of the Coast Road, full of the whiz of Saturday afternoon traffic, the white-capped rollers sparkled as they crashed on the rocky shore.
We followed the coffin into the empty, echoing church, its pale, peeling walls dappled with sunlight that fell through the high, undecorated windows. As we filled the first row of dark wooden pews, the undertaker’s men manoeuvred in the tiled space below the pulpit and placed the coffin on trestles so close to us I could have reached out and touched it.
We waited for the minister to appear and ascend to his vantage point. The silence deepened and the damp chill of the air and dead cold of the hard wooden bench began to eat into me. But, as the minister threw up his arms and made his opening flourish, I forgot all about being cold. At the first resounding reminder that we are all born to die, I heard, not the words, but the accent. Sharper and quite different from Jamsey’s slow drawl, his speech and his turn of phrase took me straight back to childhood, just like Jamsey’s had.
I did try to listen to the words from the pulpit but all I could hear were voices from the past, telling jokes and stories. Tears sprang to my eyes and I had to dab them surreptitiously while pretending to blow my nose.
‘She tried to take that away as well,’ I said to myself.
I stared at the wooden casket in disbelief. Yes, it was true. As far back as I could remember, she had tried to stop me visiting our relations in the glens. If it hadn’t been for my father I wouldn’t even have known they existed.
I shivered, tried to concentrate on the sermon, on the carved oak of the pulpit, on the scuffed wooden top of the untenanted harmonium. Anything to keep my mind away from what she had done. I wanted to weep as inconsolably as the child I had once been.
‘Brethren, let us pray.’
I breathed a sigh of relief as we shaded our eyes and bent our heads discreetly forward. It was so long since I’d been to a Presbyterian service I’d forgotten about not kneeling down. I hadn’t even warned Claire or Stephen, but they seemed to be taking it in their stride. I glanced sideways at Claire and found her grey eyes watching me from beneath her shaded brow. She smiled at me encouragingly.
I couldn’t think what on earth she and Stephen were making of the funeral service with its emphasis on repentance and the shortness of our mortal span. Their grandmother had never to my knowledge repented of anything and she had lived to the ripe old age of eighty-eight.
We stood up to be blessed and remained standing while the black-coated figures hoisted up their burden; one oak coffin with brass handles as specified by Edna Erwin, late of this parish, as per Harvey’s letter of instruction.
While we were in church the wind died away completely. When we emerged, a few handfuls of people marked out by our formal clothes as mourners, we stood blinking in the sunlight. McBride cousins in dark suits and well-polished shoes, elderly ladies wearing hats and hanging on the arms of sons or grandsons, a few people from Balmoral Presbyterian Church, discreet in grey or navy. Together, we found ourselves by the church door, bathed in the sudden warmth of the low sun.
Borne aloft on the stout shoulders of the undertaker’s men, the coffin glinted as we scrunched along the gravel on the south side of the church, tramped across the rich green sward beside the recent burials, and stepped cautiously onto the newly beaten path that meandered between the overgrown humps of unmarked graves and the tangles of long grass still laced with summer wildflowers.
Here, in the oldest part of the churchyard, in a burying place far older than the church that now stood empty behind us, we waited till the last able-bodied person had made the journey to the graveside. Beside my own small family stood Harvey and Mavis, their son Peter, and Susie their younger daughter. Beyond, the dark figures of Jamsey and Patrick McBride with their wives, Loreto and Norah. A dozen people altogether. Most of whom she disapproved of one way or another.
Words were spoken and the first shower of earth from the chalky mound piled up beyond the damp trench spattered on the shiny surface of the oak casket. Suddenly, the air was full of a rich, autumny perfume. The sun’s warmth playing on the mass of waiting flowers had drawn out their sweet, spicy smells.
Standing there by the open grave, I felt a surge of pure joy. Joy in the brilliance of the sky and the sparkle of the sea, joy in my own reconnection with this place I had once known so well, and joy in the three people dearest in all the world to me, who stood so close by my side, so ready to comfort me as I so often comforted them.
It was a moment of totally unexpected wellbeing I shall never forget. As I listened to the fall of earth and pebbles and the familiar words of the committal, I could think only of the joys of my own life, the happiness of my home and family, the success of my work, the pleasure of friends, the problems and difficulties survived and overcome. As the damp earth obliterated the polished plaque on which my mother’s mortal span had been clearly visible, Edna Erwin, 1902-1990, I remembered yet again that this moment of joy might never have been if she’d had her way. However mixed and variable its character, my happiness these many years could just as easily have been buried in my past.
I stood in the sunshine, the rhythmic crash of the breakers and the peremptory call of the jackdaws etching themselves into my memory. It was twenty-two years, almost to the day, since the weekend that had changed the course of my life. It was time I went back and found out what really happened that weekend.
Chapter 1 (#ud7bf8e47-ac43-5dd6-bb30-a024f7697fec)
BELFAST 1968
The door clicked shut. As the footsteps of my sixth-formers echoed on the wooden stairs, I put my face in my hands and breathed a sigh of relief. My head ached with the rhythmic throbbing that gets worse if a fly buzzes within earshot or a door bangs two floors away. There was aspirin in my handbag, but the nearest glass of water was on the ground floor and the thought of weaving my way down through the noisy confusion of landings and overspilling cloakrooms was more than I could bear.
I made a note in the margin of my Shakespeare and closed it wearily. I enjoy the history plays and try to dramatise them when I teach, but today my effort with Richard III and his machinations seemed flat and stale. Hardly surprising after a short night, an early start, and an unexpected summons to the Headmistress’s study in the lunch hour. After that, I could hardly expect to be my shining best, but I still felt disappointed.
I stretched my aching shoulders, rubbed ineffectually at the pain in my neck, and reminded myself that it was Friday. The noise from below was always worse on a Friday afternoon, but it came to an end much more quickly than other days. Soon, silence would flow back into the empty classrooms and I might be able to think again.
I looked around the room where I taught most of my A-level classes. Once a servant’s bedroom in this tall, Edwardian house, the confined space was now the last resting place of objects with no immediate purpose. Ancient textbooks, music for long-forgotten concerts, programmes for school plays and old examination papers were piled into the tall bookcases which stood against two of the walls. Another tide of objects had drifted into the dim corners furthest from the single dusty window: a globe with the British Empire in fading red blotches; a bulging leather suitcase labelled ‘Drama’; a box inscribed ‘Bird’s Eggs’; a broken easel; and a firescreen embroidered with a faded peacock.
There were photographs too, framed and unframed, spotted with age. Serried ranks of girls in severe pinafores, accompanied by formidable ladies with bosoms and hats, the mothers and grandmothers of the girls who now poured out of the adjoining houses which made up Queen’s Crescent Grammar School.
I wondered yet again why the things of the past are so often neglected, left to lie around unsorted, neither cleared away nor brought properly into the present, to be valued for use or beauty. I thought of my own small collection of old photographs, a mere handful that had somehow survived my mother’s rigorous throwing out: Granny and Grandad Hughes standing in front of the forge with my mother; my father in overalls, with his first car, parked outside the garage where he worked in Ballymena; and a studio portrait of my grandmother, Ellen Erwin, clear-eyed, long-haired and wistful, when she was only sixteen. That picture was one of my most precious possessions.
My husband, Colin, says I’m sentimental and he finds it very endearing. But I don’t think it’s like that at all. I think your life starts long before you’re born, with people you may never even know, people who shape and mould the world into which you come. If I were ever to write the story of my life, it would have to begin well before the date on my birth certificate and I couldn’t do it without the fragments that most people neglect or throw away, like these faded prints at Queen’s Crescent.
The throb in my head had eased slightly as the noise level dropped from the fierce crescendo around four o’clock to the random outbursts of five minutes past. Another few minutes and I really would be able to get to my feet and collect my scattered wits.
I stared out through the dusty window at the house opposite. In the room the mirror image of mine, there were filing cabinets; a young man in shirt sleeves bent over a drawingboard under bright fluorescent tubes. On the floors below, each window framed a picture. Girls in smart dresses sat on designer furniture, in newly decorated offices with shiny green pot plants. They answered telephones, made photocopies and poured out cups of Cona coffee, disappearing with them to the front of the house, to their bosses who occupied the still elegant rooms that looked out upon the wide pavements of the next salubrious crescent.
Colin would be having tea by now. Outside the large conference room in the thickly carpeted lobby, waitresses in crisp dresses would pour from silver teapots and hand tiny sandwiches to men who dropped their briefcases on their chairs and greeted each other with warm handshakes. Beyond the air-conditioned rooms of the beflagged hotel, I saw the busy London streets, the traffic whirling ceaselessly round islands of green in squares where you could still hear a blackbird sing.
Daddy would probably be in the garden. He might be talking to the tame blackbird that follows his slight figure up and down the rosebeds as he weeds, working steadily and methodically, as if he could continue all day and never get tired. ‘Pace yourself, Jenny,’ he’d say, as he taught me how to loosen the weeds and open the soil. ‘No use going at it like a bull at a gate. Give it the time it needs. Don’t rush it.’
He was right, of course. He usually was. A mere two hours since I’d been summoned to Miss Braidwood’s study and here I was, so agitated by what she’d said that I’d gone and given myself a headache when I had the whole weekend to work things out.
I glanced at my watch and thought of all the things I ought to be doing. But I still made no move. My mind kept going back to that lunchtime meeting. I looked round the room again. This was where I worked, where I spent my solitary lunch hours, a place where I was free to think, or to sit and dream. It wasn’t a question of whether I liked it or not, it was what it meant to me that mattered.
Up here, I could even see the hard edge of the Antrim Hills lifting themselves above the city, indifferent to the housing estates which spattered their flanks and the roads which snaked and looped up and out of the broad lowland at the head of the lough.
At the thought of the hills, invisible from where I sat, I was overcome with longing. Oh, to be driving out of the city. I closed my eyes and saw the road stretch out before me, winding between hedgerows thick with summer green, the buttercups gleaming in the strong light. Daddy and I, setting off to see some elderly relative in her small cottage by the sea or tucked away in one of the nine Glens of Antrim, whose names I could recite like a poem. The fresh wind from the sea tempering the summer heat, the sky a dazzle of blue, we move through meadow and moorland towards the rough slopes of a great granite outcrop.
‘Well, here we are, Jenny. Slemish. Keeping sheep here must’ve been fairly draughty. Pretty grim in winter even for a saint. Can we climb it, d’ye think?’
‘Oh yes, please. We’ll be able to see far more from the top.’
Bracken catching at my ankles, the mournful bleat of sheep, the sun hot on my shoulders as we circle upwards between huge boulders. A hawthorn tree still in bloom, though it is nearly midsummer, shelters a spring bubbling up among the rocks. We stop and drink from cupped hands. There isn’t another soul on the mountain and no other car parked beside us on the rough edge of the lane below. As we climb, the whole province of Ulster unrolls before us, until at last we stand in the wind, between the coast of Scotland on one far horizon and the mountains of Donegal, blue and misted, away to the west.
‘Isn’t that the Mull of Kintyre, Daddy?’
‘Yes, dear. That’s the Mull of Kintyre,’ he replied, as if his thoughts were as far away as the bright outline beyond the shimmering sea.
Reluctantly, I got to my feet. Daydreaming, my mother would call it, but the tone of her voice would make the weakness into a crime should she catch me at it.
‘Jennifer, you have got to get to that bookshop,’ I said to myself severely. There was shopping as well and whatever else happened I had to be at Rathmore Drive by 5.30 p.m.
The staffroom door was ajar. Gratefully, I pushed it wide open with my elbow, dropped the exercise books on the nearest surface and breathed a sigh of relief. No one sat on the benches beside the long plastic-covered tables. There was no one by the handsome marble fireplace, peering at the timetables and duty lists pinned to the tattered green noticeboard perched on the mantelpiece. Best of all, no one crouched by the corner cupboard, where a single broad shelf was labelled ‘J. McKinstry – English’.
I winced as the light from naked fluorescent tubes flooded the room. Mercilessly, it exposed the peeling paintwork of cupboards and skirtings, layers of dust on leafy plaster interlacings. It also revealed a folded sheet of paper bearing a badly smudged map of the world in an empty corner of the message board. Across the width of what survived of Asia, my name was neatly printed. Hastily, I read the note:
I should like to have a word with you about Millicent Blackwood. Could you please come to me in the Library on Monday at 1 p.m. before I raise the matter with Miss Braidwood. E. Fletcher.
My heart sank as I picked up the tone. Millie, poor dear, was yet another of the things I had to think about over the weekend. Oh well. I tucked the note in my handbag, switched off the lights and left the building to the mercy of the cleaners.
‘Bread,’ I said to myself. The pavements were damp and slippery with fallen leaves, the lights streamed out from shops and glistened on their trampled shapes. I looked up at the sky, heavy and overcast. There was no sign at all of the hills. I’d have given so much for a bright autumny afternoon. Then the hills would seem near enough to touch, just down the next road, or beyond the solid redbrick mill, or behind the tall mass of the tobacco factory.
But today they lay hidden under the pall of cloud, leaving me only the less lovely face of the city that had been my home for most of my childhood and all but two of my adult years. Thirty years ago Louis MacNeice called it ‘A city built upon mud; a culture built upon profit’, and it hadn’t changed much in all the years since.
I made my way to the little bakery where I buy my weekly supplies, a pleasant, homely place where bread and cakes still come warm to the counter from behind a curtain of coloured plastic ribbons. In my second year at Queen’s, Colin and I used to visit it regularly, to buy rolls for a picnic lunch, or a cake for someone’s birthday. It hadn’t changed at all. Even Mrs Green was still there, plumper and greyer and more voluble than ever.
She prides herself she’s known Colin and me since before we were even engaged. She’s followed our life as devotedly as she watches Coronation Street. Graduation and wedding, first jobs in Birmingham and visits home. I remember her asking if she might see the wedding album and how she marvelled at the enormous and ornate volume Colin’s mother had insisted upon. These days, she asked about the house or the car, the decor of the living room or the health of our parents, Colin’s prospects or our plans for the future.
I paused, my fingers already tight on the handle of the door. I turned my back on it and walked quickly away.
‘No, I can’t face it. Not today.’ No one had seen me, but I was shocked by what I had done. ‘Jenny McKinstry, what is wrong with you?’ I asked myself as I hurried on, grateful to be anonymous, invisible in the crowd.
It was something about having to perform a ritual. Having to say the right things, in the right tone. Responding to hints and suggestions in the right way. Taking my cue and playing the part of the young, married, working wife, as Mrs Green wished it to be. She was a good-hearted, friendly woman, but today I couldn’t keep up the bright bubble. It would have to be bread from the supermarket.
‘Telly, miss. Sixth edition. Telly.’
I put down briefcase and basket and hunted for change. The newsboy had no mac, only the worn jacket of a suit several sizes too big for him. I put coins into his damp, outstretched hand and read the headline as I picked up my things.
Thank God for that. The march was off. I didn’t read the details. The fact was enough. One less thing to worry about, for Keith and Siobhan would certainly have marched in Derry and everyone knew the police and B Specials had orders to teach them all a lesson.
‘You’re a coward, Jenny McKinstry,’ I said to myself and wondered if it was really true. Would I have the courage to march if I were a student, like Keith and Siobhan, or would I need to be as politically minded as they both were. Or was the problem more that I was one half of ‘a respectable young couple’?
That was the phrase on the bank manager’s file. Though it was upside down and in small print, I had managed to decipher it that day when he interviewed Colin about the loan for the car we were hoping to buy. We had laughed over it all the way back to our borrowed flat, where our worldly goods were stacked high, awaiting their final destination. It became a joke between us, a couple of words that encoded a moment in time, when we were happy, looking forward to our new jobs, and our first proper home.
I had stepped into the bookshop before I quite realised it. I turned round at the sound of my name.
‘Hello, Mr Cummings. My goodness, you’re busy this afternoon.’
‘Indeed, we are,’ he agreed, nodding vigorously. ‘Never known the place so busy. Come on down to my wee office. It might be best if I lead the way!’
I followed the tall, stooping figure between the book-lined aisles to the newly constructed and unpainted cubicle he dignified as an office. Beneath the sloping roof there was space for neither filing cabinets nor cupboards, but from rows of hooks on every vertical surface hung clips full of invoices, pink and yellow and blue. From beneath a small table piled high with similar clips, he drew out two stackable stools.
‘Do sit down, my dear. I think we’ve got them all, but we’d better make sure.’
He unhooked a clip, flipped through it deftly and extracted a sheet of pink paper. I glanced quickly down it and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Wonderful, Mr Cummings. You’ve got the whole lot. I don’t know how you’ve managed it but I’m so grateful. I really was caught out, you know.’
He smiled broadly and settled back on his stool. ‘You shouldn’t make your subject so popular, Mrs McKinstry. Look at the problems it gives your poor bookseller when you come in and tell him your classes have doubled.’
I laughed easily at his mild complaint. Mr Cummings was an old friend. For years we had shared our passion for poetry and our enthusiasm for the young Ulster poets we both knew personally.
‘You’re very good to take all this trouble over such a small order. Three knights sharing a single copy of Richard III does rather cramp the dramatic style!’
He laughed and nodded at the bulging clips all around us. ‘There’s no lack of orders these days,’ he said flatly. ‘And you could hardly believe the sales on the fiction side. But it’s the quality that counts, isn’t it?’ he ended sadly.
I nodded silently. When his pleasant face shadowed with regret like this, I always thought of my father. They were probably about the same age, but whereas my father had an air of wry humour about him whenever he reflected upon his life, Mr Cummings always spoke as if his plans had never come to anything and it was now too late in the day to hope for anything better.
‘Another year, Mrs McKinstry, and the quality of business won’t be bothering me. At last I’ll be able to read all the books I’ve never had the time for.’
I saw the sadness deepen. I was wondering what I could possibly say when he checked himself and turned towards me.
‘Which reminds me,’ he went on briskly. ‘What’s this I hear about Miss McFarlane retiring? To the best of my knowledge, she still has several years to go. I remember taking her by the hand to the village school when I was in the top class. Surely she isn’t serious?’
‘I think Miss McFarlane’s mother has been unwell a great deal recently,’ I said cautiously.
I saw his lips tighten and his head move in a curious little gesture he always made when someone, or something, had really upset him.
‘Quite a character, old Mrs McFarlane,’ he said shortly. ‘She must be nearing ninety now.’
His tone told me that what I’d heard in the staffroom about Connie was probably not exaggerated after all. At the age of fifty-seven, her mother, it appeared, still treated her like a child. Each morning she got up at 6.30 a.m. to light the fire and see to her mother’s needs before she left for school. After school, she did the shopping and the housework. At weekends, Mother liked to be read to and taken for drives in the countryside. Of all this, Connie never spoke, though just occasionally she would refer to ‘Mother’ in excusing herself from an evening engagement.
‘A great admirer of yours, Mrs McKinstry. I’m sure you’ll miss her when she goes.’
‘Oh, I shall indeed. She’s been so kind to me since I came to Queen’s Crescent.’
‘So, it is true.’ He nodded to himself and looked quizzically at me over the curious half-glasses he always wore in the office. ‘Another new face, perhaps? Or perhaps not. Perhaps a face I know very well?’
I blushed. For all his rather formal manners and old world air, Mr Cummings missed very little.
‘Perhaps, Mr Cummings,’ I began awkwardly. ‘You’ve guessed, of course. She is going. I have been offered the Department. Miss Braidwood wants to advertise right away, so I’ve got to decide this weekend. It’s not an easy decision.’
He looked so puzzled that I wondered if he’d forgotten about young couples and families.
‘It would be a big responsibility indeed,’ he offered finally. ‘But very rewarding, I’m sure,’ he went on quickly, as if he were happy to be back on firmer ground. ‘With the new building, I expect you’d have all kinds of resources.’
I nodded and told him about the English workshop and drama areas already planned for the new building on the outskirts of the city. He listened attentively, but when I finished he reminded me that a Department is only as good as the people who run it. He said he was sure he knew who Connie would want.
‘The trouble is,’ I began uneasily, ‘I’m not a free agent. Everyone talks about equality, and women pursuing their own careers these days, but attitudes don’t change that quickly. As far as most of my family and relatives are concerned, we might as well be living in eighteen sixty-eight as nineteen sixty-eight,’ I said, a sharpness in my voice that quite surprised me. ‘Of course, my husband’s very understanding,’ I corrected myself hastily. ‘But his family’s a different matter. It’s a touch of Dombey and Son, you see. Or rather Grandson, to be precise.’
Suddenly, I was aware of time passing. I stood up abruptly. Mr Cummings rose too.
‘It’s hard, Mrs McKinstry, I know it’s hard,’ he said as we shook hands. ‘But remember, you’ve only got one life to live. You can’t give your best if your heart’s not in it.’
He looked so incredibly sad that I stopped where I was, ignoring the press of customers around the entrance to his tiny cubicle.
‘I needn’t talk, you know. I did what others wanted of me. But there’s a price to pay. It can cost you dear for the rest of your life.’ He released my hand, suddenly aware he was still holding it, long after the handshake could properly be said to have ended: ‘If you take the job, I expect I shall have to call you Madam,’ he added, with an awkward attempt at lightness.
‘If I take the job, Mr Cummings, you’ll have to call me Jenny,’ I replied.
He went ahead of me to the main entrance. At the door I put my hand lightly on his arm. ‘Thank you very much for your advice, Mr Cummings,’ I said firmly. ‘If I do take the job, I’ll need every friend I’ve got. I’ll let you know on Monday.’
I turned away quickly and didn’t dare look back at him. I couldn’t trust myself not to burst into tears.
The mizzling rain was heavier now. The dim light of the afternoon had faded further towards dusk. From the square-cut ledges of the City Hall came the squabble of hundreds of starlings as they began to roost for the night. Double-deckers swished past the office workers who poured in from the roads and avenues around the city square. I made my way towards the long queue for the Stranmillis bus.
‘Jenny.’
I stopped in my tracks, puzzled and confused, so far away in my thoughts I didn’t recognise the familiar voice.
‘Keith!’ I exclaimed, as my eye moved up the worn duffle coat and discovered the familiar face of my brother-in-law, smiling and brown after his vacation job.
‘The very man. How’s yourself?’
‘Fine, fine. When did you get back?’
‘Only last week. Job was great, paying well, so we stayed as long as we could. Heard things were moving here. Come on an’ we’ll have a coffee. Colin won’t be out for half an hour yet, will he? Tell us all your news.’
‘I’d love to, Keith, but I can’t. Colin’s in London with William John and I’m due up at home at five thirty. I’m running late as it is and you know what that means.’
He reached out for my briefcase, dropped his arm lightly round my shoulders and turned me away from the bus queue.
‘Surely I do. I’ll run you up. Bella’s on a meter round the corner. Come on. We can talk on the way.’
It took me all my time keeping up with Keith’s long strides. He wasn’t much taller than Colin, but put together quite differently. While Colin was fair like his mother and moved as if he had all the time in the world, even when he was in a hurry, Keith was dark and spare and full of edgy tension. In the last year, he’d grown a beard. Now after a summer in Spain he was deeply tanned and there were fine lines etched round his eyes. His face had lost its youthful look. Though still only twenty-two, it was Keith who now looked the older of the two brothers.
‘Keith, what’ve you done to poor Bella?’ I asked as we stopped by his ancient Volkswagen.
‘Isopon,’ he replied briskly as he searched in his pockets for his car keys. ‘I was afraid the rust molecules might stop holdin’ hands. Bella’s going to have to last a long time. No company car for the prodigal son, ye know.’
There was not a trace of malice in his voice despite the fact that Colin had had a red Spitfire for his twenty-first. You’re a better person than I, Keith McKinstry, I thought, as I settled myself on the lump of foam rubber he’d used to mend the collapsed passenger seat. He accelerated as the lights changed and overtook the crawling traffic ahead.
‘How’s your father, Jenny?’
‘Pretty good, thanks. He’s still managing to go into work two days a week though sometimes he lets Gladys Huey collect him and bring him home.’
Keith nodded easily. He and my father got on well. On the few occasions the two families had been together they talked agriculture and politics. They had ended up with a considerable respect for each other, even where they had to disagree.
‘And your dear mother?’ he continued, raising an eyebrow.
I sighed. ‘’Bout the same. Bit worse, perhaps. I think she’s been seeing a lot of your mother. You know how I feel about that. When they’re not trying to score points off each other they just reinforce each other’s prejudices.’
‘You’re right there,’ he said, with a short, hard laugh. ‘I’d a pretty cool reception when I got back. Cut off my allowance for a start. They know fine well I can’t get a grant with the old man coining it.’
‘Keith, why? What reason did they give?’ I asked, outraged.
‘Ach, Jenny, it’s simple. Quite logical. If I’m independent enough to go against all their wishes in my choice of company and in my course of study, then I may as well be totally independent. Just simple blackmail.’
I looked at him in amazement. How could he be so steady, so easy? How could he possibly manage without a student grant or an allowance?
He shook his head and glanced at me as we drew up at traffic lights. ‘So that’s that. Know any good hotels that need a waiter? Speek Engleesh var gud,’ he went on, grinning broadly.
I had to laugh, but what he’d said wasn’t at all funny. ‘Oh, Keith, you can’t manage a job in your third year, you need all the study time you’ve got.’
‘That’s what Siobhan says.’
‘Well, she’s right. Tell her we’ll have to work out something. When can you come to supper? I’ll talk to Colin about it. We might be able to help.’ I stopped short, aware of the implications of what I’d just said. Unless we could persuade William John to change his mind, the only real way I could help Keith was out of my own salary. And that was bound to cause trouble in both families.
‘Did Maisie quote Paisley at you?’ I asked as the traffic came to a halt yet again.
‘Paisley?’ Keith sounded horrified.
‘I thought I’d better warn you,’ I went on quietly. ‘I think the pair of them have been going to some of his services. My mother has a whole set of new catchphrases and you know she’s never original. We could even be in for a religious phase.’
‘Oh Lord. Your poor father. How does he stand it, Jenny?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said sadly. ‘He seems to let a lot of it pass over him. But then I suppose he hasn’t much alternative. Daddy’s always been a realist, as you know.’
We crawled slowly into Shaftesbury Square and I spotted the newsboy I’d met on the way down.
‘So the march is off, Keith. Are you very disappointed?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘The march isn’t off, Jenny. Don’t pay any attention to the papers. If the organisers can’t get it together, the Young Socialists will still march. There’s a meeting tonight. It’s got to go ahead. It’s just got to. Even if there’s only a handful of us.’
I opened my mouth to protest and then shut it again. ‘And Siobhan’s going too,’ I said quietly.
‘Of course.’
We stopped at the pedestrian crossing opposite the front gates of Queen’s. Students streamed in front of us, clutching books and ring files. Five years ago, I would have been among them, walking along this very pavement, hurrying up the hill, past the Ulster Museum, the great grey block of the Keir Building and the familiar shops of Stranmillis village.
‘How’re we doing?’ Keith asked as he accelerated again.
I saw the lights go out in the bakery. ‘About half past, I expect,’ I said, as casually as I could manage.
‘Sorry we’ve been so slow. The bus would have been even worse.’
We turned into Rathmore Drive and stopped outside the Victorian villa with the beech hedge that had borne the name of ‘home’ for me ever since I was six years old.
‘I wish we’d had time for that coffee,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ I said unhappily as I got out and came round to the pavement.
He looked down at me and smiled. ‘Perhaps she’ll be in a good mood,’ he suggested lightly.
‘Oh damn that, Keith,’ I said vehemently. ‘It’s not my mother I’m worried about. It’s time I learnt to cope with her. It’s you and Siobhan. D’you think there’ll be trouble?’
He nodded easily. ‘Of course there’ll be trouble. But there’s no other way. And you’ve forgotten something. We do have one weapon.’
I couldn’t think what it could possibly be. That was the whole point. All I could think of were crowds of students and young people, unarmed, totally unprotected, up against a force of trained men who’d been ordered to work them over. The thought of it made me feel sick with fear.
‘The cameras, Jenny, the cameras,’ he said as he leaned into the back seat and brought out my briefcase and basket. ‘I can’t promise you it won’t be nasty, perhaps very nasty, but the cameras will be some protection.’
He stood looking down at me, a slight reassuring smile on his face. ‘It’s one thing people just hearing about police brutality, it’s another thing when they see it themselves in their own living rooms at teatime. And the B Specials know that now too. It’s some protection. All right, not a lot. But some.’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Now don’t worry. I’ll give you a ring Sunday night when we get back,’ he went on, bending down to kiss my cheek. ‘Don’t take the Saturday newspapers too seriously. Wait till you get the Sundays.’
I looked up at him and managed a smile. At least I could try to take the comfort he was offering me. ‘Good luck, Keith. Give Siobhan my love,’ I said firmly. ‘Supper next week. We’ll make a date on Sunday.’
‘Right ye be.’
‘Thanks for running me up.’
‘And good luck to you, too,’ he said, raising his eyes heavenward at the thought of my mother.
‘I’ll need it,’ I said, laughing ruefully as I opened the garden gate and hurried up the crazy paving path between the rosebeds.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
George opened his eyes. The log cracked again in the fire and a spark arced through the air and struck the log basket. Lucky it didn’t get as far as the new rug, he thought, as he straightened himself up and reached for the polished brass poker. Edna would not be well pleased if she came home and found a scorch mark on it and the fire so low it was almost out.
He’d been thinking about the specifications for those new tractors Bertie had brought back from the exhibition in Birmingham and the next thing he knew he was away back in Ballymena fitting a new axle on a traction engine with old Willie Prentice. Years ago that was. The only place you’d see that engine now was in a museum. Wasn’t it funny the things that came back to you if you nodded off for a minute or two after your lunch.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly three. Surely he hadn’t slept that long. He leaned over for another log without getting out of his chair. He tried to place it in the hottest part of the glowing embers but the pain caught him unexpectedly and the log fell short.
‘Bad luck, George, you should’ve stood up in the first place,’ he said aloud. He put a hand to his chest and straightened his shoulders cautiously. ‘And if that’s the way the wind’s blowing you’d better take your pills and forget all about hoeing that rose bed.’
He stood up awkwardly, clutched at the back of his well-worn wing chair and waited for his knee joints to respond to the call for action. His pills were in the drawer of his bureau but as he picked them up he remembered he could never swallow them without water.
The kitchen was empty, spotless and shining. He looked around and shook his head. Surely to goodness the new cleaning lady would suit. He’d heard her working like a Trojan all morning and when she’d brought him his sandwich before she left, it was on a tray with a cloth and had bits of parsley and tomato to make it look nice just like those pictures in the women’s magazines. But there was no pleasing Edna these days. It was a long time since she’d had a good word for him. There wasn’t much he could do about it now.
He swallowed the pills, rinsed the glass and turned it upside down to drain by the sink. Then he looked at it and thought again. He dried it and put it away. As he closed the cupboard door the pain surged. He put out his hand and held on to the sink.
‘Go away,’ he said to it. ‘Come tomorrow, when it doesn’t matter so much.’
He felt the sweat break on his brow and wondered if he should sit down. But the kitchen was not a place where he ever felt comfortable. Edna hated him in the kitchen and if she arrived back from town just now she’d make a fuss and say he’d been doing something he’d been told not to do. How was she to get her jobs done if she couldn’t leave him for five minutes? She always said five minutes when she’d been gone most of the day.
‘Come on, George, get going. Tell yourself it’s downhill.’
He made his way back along the hall and into the dining room. To his surprise the pain began to ease.
‘Great stuff,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Let’s get this fire made up while the going’s good. Shure, what does it matter if I have to sit here the whole afternoon, so long as I’m all right for Jenny coming.’
Gladys would laugh if she could hear him. His secretary for twenty years and his friend and confidante for most of them, she’d told him only last week that he mustn’t talk to himself or people would get the wrong idea.
‘An’ d’ye not talk to yourself, Gladys?’ he asked her teasingly.
‘’Deed I do,’ she replied promptly. ‘But I make sure no one’s listening.’
He made up the fire and sat down gratefully. The pain had eased a lot but it had left him feeling weak. Or maybe that was the tablets. Whatever it was, he’d have to behave himself today. Rest, the doctor said. Rest. There hadn’t been a lot of rest in his life and it didn’t come easy to him now. But he could read. Wasn’t he lucky he had good eyesight and enough books to thatch houses with, as the saying was.
He picked up a small leather-covered volume from his side table. A spot of Goldsmith in the dying months of the year. Sweet Auburn, perhaps. A link with times long past when the world was simpler, if not better. He opened it and looked at the familiar handwriting inside the cover. ‘To Daddy with love, because your old copy is falling apart. Happy Birthday, Jenny.’
‘Daddy, can we go up to Granny’s house before we go home?’
He looked down at the small hand clutching his arm and the earnest regard in the dark eyes. ‘It’s a bit of a walk for you, love, and it’ll be wet after the rain.’
‘But I have my boots, Daddy. Granny McTaggart says I could go anywhere in my seven league boots.’
Mary McTaggart laughed and took the brown teapot from the stove. ‘Have anither drap o’ tea, George. I think ye may go, for she’s talked ‘bout nothin’ else all week. She’s had Lottie gae up there three or four times a’ready. She’d ’ave gone hersel’ if I’d let her.’
He looked at his watch. Edna would be expecting her back for bedtime at seven and the Austin was not exactly the world’s fastest car.
‘Please Daddy. I’ve had such a lovely holiday with Granny McTaggart and she’s told me all about you when you were a little boy.’
‘Oh dear,’ laughed George, looking up at the old woman who had always been so kind to him. ‘Has she told you all my secrets?’
‘Yes,’ said the child promptly. ‘But I can keep a secret, can’t I, Granny?’
‘Oh, ye can do mony a thing, my little lady. I hope yer auld granny is still here in ten years time to see ye.’
‘When I’m sixteen and all grown up?’ she said, as she fetched a small pair of Wellingtons from a corner of the big kitchen where those of Mary’s youngest son and his family were lined up against the wall.
The rain had cleared and the late August sun was warm on their faces as they avoided the puddles in the farmyard, George stepping carefully in the brown leather shoes he wore in town. Five months now since the move. A hard time it had been. Worries about the loan on the showroom, the tractors and trailers he had ordered from England, the cost of the glossy catalogues he’d distributed with reapers and binders and combines too big and too costly to stock. The mortgage on the house in Stranmillis, the only one Edna had liked, was far more than he had planned and the work it needed took up every hour when he was not at the showroom. But it had been his own choice. For the first time in his life he was his own boss. You couldn’t have that and peace of mind as well.
In this last month things had begun to move. The war years had been profitable for farmers with every bite of food sure of its market and a good price guaranteed, and the three years since had been good too, though labour had to be a problem with wages so low. The farmers were beginning to spend what they had accumulated, confident now that the old hard times were past. First they bought a motor car for themselves, then they put in a bathroom for the family and then they looked at their old-fashioned and worn-out farm machinery. Having a tractor was the first step. He’d be sad himself to see the plough horses go, but the change had begun during the war on the big farms and now he was sure the smaller farmers were beginning to follow on. A tractor could do the work of a couple of men.
Well, it would take a lot of tractors to put Harvey through his seven years. He’d set his heart on being a doctor and the sixth form master at the new school said he had every chance of passing his exams. That had really pleased Edna. In fact, since the move from Ballymena, things had been easier there. She had joined the Church ladies and went out more. Sometimes on a Saturday when he was decorating or fitting up shelves she would bring him a mug of tea. At times she seemed almost content.
‘Did you always come this way when you went to school?’
George glanced down at the small figure skipping along at his side. She never walked unless she was thinking about something and then you would see her move one foot at a time, with a dogged deliberation, her brow deeply furrowed. On her first day at her new primary school down the road she had walked solemnly off with her mother and then come skipping home with a friend. That was typical of Jenny. The surprise in his life, the daughter he never expected, closer to him from her earliest years than the son of whom he had had such hopes.
‘No, usually I went down beside the stream till I got to the road. I only came this way to see Granny McTaggart.’
‘Didn’t you get your shoes wet going down by the stream?’
‘I didn’t wear shoes.’
‘But you can’t wear Wellies for going to school,’ she protested. ‘Did you take your shoes in a shoe bag?’
‘I didn’t have any shoes or Wellies. Lots of children didn’t in those days.’ He looked down again and saw the familiar furrow as she considered this piece of information. She was walking now with her eyes focused on the toes of her boots and the rough surface of the almost overgrown path.
‘Didn’t the stones hurt when you tramped on them?’
‘Sometimes, but your feet got hard and you didn’t notice, mostly.’
At that moment they reached the first of the two streams that crossed their path.
‘How did the stream know where to go under the ground?’
‘It didn’t. It just felt around and wherever it found a hole or a crack, in it went.’
‘Do you think it likes being under there?’
George smiled to himself. She could go on like this for hours. And he would be happy to let her for the workings of her mind never ceased to intrigue him. But it made Edna angry. Always asking questions, and such silly nonsense too. She blamed him for encouraging her.
‘Look, Jenny, you can see Scotland now.’
‘Where?’
He saw her bend down and peer out to sea between two gorse bushes. He laughed at himself, picked her up and felt the soft touch of one arm as she wound it round his neck. She waved the other towards the sea, greeny-blue and flecked with white caps after the passing shower.
‘Is that Scotland?’
‘Yes, love. That’s the Mull of Kintyre.’
‘Mull of Kintyre,’ she repeated solemnly as if she were learning it by heart.
He stood and pointed out the landmarks of his childhood world, and then, still carrying her, strode up and across the stepping stones to the abandoned house where the thatch had fallen in at one end and been overwhelmed by a tangle of roses, a few of which were still in bloom.
‘The door’s not locked, Daddy, but Lottie wouldn’t let me go in. She says there might be a ghost.’
The door had never had a lock. What was there to steal and who was there to steal it? Andy McTaggart had said it would make a storehouse for potatoes, but young Harry, always more practical, said it was too far away and not worth the carrying. So, after his mother died it had stood empty. He had removed her few possessions, put away the few pieces of delph as keepsakes for his brothers and sisters and planted fuchsias in the couple of three-legged pots which had survived.
He pushed open the door. He was surprised that there was no smell of damp, but then the back windows were broken and it was summer, the flagged stone floor was dry and only slightly dusty. Jenny walked in under his arm and stood regarding the empty hearth.
‘What’s that, Daddy?’ she asked, pointing her finger at the metal crane which still stood over the hearth, the chain dangling, untenanted over the absent fire. He saw flames spring up and shadows move and smelt the soda farls fresh from the griddle. It wasn’t all hard. There had been happiness in this place too. He knew now why his mother would not leave when he married in ’31. All the things she had loved were here. She had insisted firmly that she would stay and Mary McTaggart, ten years younger and now widowed herself had backed her up. Edna had said these old people can’t move with the times. It was better to let them alone.
‘Mmm, what’s that, love?’ he said, collecting himself and looking down again at the two bright eyes that regarded him unblinkingly.
‘Have you seen a ghost, Daddy?’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps I have, Jenny. It depends what you think a ghost is. Some people think ghosts are just what we remember inside our heads. I was remembering your Granny Erwin and your aunties and uncles in Scotland, and England, and America. I’ll tell you about them on the way home in the car if you’re a good girl. But we must go now. All right?’
‘All right, Daddy, but can I walk across the stepping stones all by myself?’
He hesitated. There was only a little water over the stones, hardly enough to wet his own shoes, but they were always slippery. She might fall and the boulders were rough in the stream bed. She could hit her head. How could he bear to lose this child, never to see those eyes again watching him, trusting, questioning. He felt tears mist his vision. What you love most you fear to lose. But you must face that fear or you destroy something of what you love. That was what his mother always said.
He nodded shortly and saw her run out of the cottage and across the rough grass. Before he had pulled the door behind him and opened his mouth to say a word of warning she was away and across. Standing on the far bank, a small, self-contained figure, she was waving to him.
‘Come on, Daddy, hurry up, you said it was time to go.’
He followed her cautiously and reached for her hand as she skipped along beside him.
Remember that, George. Let it be a lesson to you, he said silently to himself. Don’t ever try to put her in a cage to keep her safe, he added, as they moved together along the valleyside where the heather murmured and shook with the passionate harvesting of the bees . . .
George woke abruptly, the buzzing still in his ears. Pain oscillated in his chest. Suddenly the room seemed very warm. He leaned back in his chair, wiped beads of perspiration from his brow and thought longingly of the cool air of the glenside in the early morning, of the path he had walked with Jenny in his arms only moments ago in his dream.
The pain began to subside and his breathing became easier. He settled more comfortably in his chair. Lulled by the quiet, the warmth of the fire and the powerful drugs that dilated the arteries of his chest, he dozed off again. As the minutes of the long afternoon clicked past on the broad face of the clock on the mantelpiece, he moved far away in time and place.
The rain came in the night. It swept down the deep glen in soft grey curtains, catching fragments of light from the half-obscured moon. At first, the fine droplets slid over the summer dry grass, then, as the few dark hours of the short night passed, the thin soils became sodden and tiny rivulets began to trickle into the dry stream beds. By the time the sun rose and the sky cleared, the air was full of the splash of brown, peaty water as a dozen streams dashed headlong to the valley floor.
It was not the sudden bustle in the deep-cut watercourses that woke young George Erwin from his dream-filled sleep. It was the steady drip from the thatch and the bright dappling on the ceiling, where the sunlight reflected from the pools of water shimmering in the morning breeze on the swept stone flags outside the cottage. He lay, warm and still, only his eyes moving round the familiar features of his small, bare room.
The tiny window that looked south across the great trench-like hollow of the glen was spattered with raindrops and shadowed by the climbing rose his father had planted for his mother long ago. When he brought his young bride away from the comfortable, slate-roofed house where she had lived with her parents, and taught in the village school, she had come without regret, and made no complaint at the hardness of her new life, but down there, near the sea, where the soil was deep and had been worked for centuries, she’d had a garden and an orchard and he knew that she missed them. To comfort her for the loss of which she never spoke, he sent all the way to Antrim for a pink rose like the ones she had left behind.
Exposed to the strong wind on the valley sides and the thin soils of the crumbling basalt, it had struggled to get its roots down. Seeing its need, his father had collected soil from the lowland stream banks and manure from the farm where he laboured. He’d carried it up on his back and tended the young root with the same warm affection he offered to her and his children. The rose had flourished as their life had flourished. Now, when he was gone, it was his mother’s greatest joy. Apart from her children, all grown and gone away except for himself, there was nothing she loved more dearly than her climbing rose.
He could tell by the strength of the light and the shadow of the window thrown on the whitewashed wall that it was late. Usually by this hour he had milked the cow and searched for the eggs laid in strange places by the hens who had gone broody. Sometimes he would light the fire before he set off for school, or dig potatoes for their supper, or tether the goat in some new place where it had not already eaten all the meagre grass. Today there would be no time to do any of those tasks and he wondered why she had not called him an hour ago.
Just at that moment, she did call. A light, soft voice unmarked by the hardship of her life and the loss of so many she had loved.
‘Georgie. Time ye were up. It’s a grate mornin’.’
He jumped out of bed, poured water from the delph jug into the basin on the washstand, gave his face and hands a perfunctory wipe and pulled on his shirt and trousers. As he opened the door into the big, dark kitchen, he saw his mother was sitting outside. She was already at work. While she sat on one kitchen chair, another close by held her workbox and a pile of napkins. She was turned towards the light, her needle flying, her movements so fast he could hardly follow them. She heard him come, let the damask drop in her lap and reached up to kiss him.
‘How mony more?’ he asked, returning her kiss.
‘Seven forby. But ’tis early yet. He’ll not likely be here a while yet,’ she said, reassuring him. ‘Are ye weary the morn?’ she went on, looking at the droop of his shoulders and eyes filmed with sleep. ‘Ye were way late last night,’ she added gently.
‘No, I’m nae tired at all,’ he said brightly.
She smiled at him and took up her work, knowing now that he was tired. And how would he not be tired with the jobs McTaggart gave him, and him not strong. She felt her eyes mist as she looked at him, twelve years old and trying to do a man’s work with a child’s body. ‘Away now an’ eat a bite, I left it ready for ye,’ she said quickly as she concealed the end of thread at the back of her work and trimmed it off neatly with her fine scissors.
‘Have ye had yourn?’ he asked, his eyes on her hands and the small practised movements she made as she picked up the next napkin and checked that the tracing was in the right place and on the proper side of the fabric.
‘Oh, long since,’ she laughed as she squinted into the light, moistened the white thread and manoeuvred it into the eye of the crewel needle.
He knew she hadn’t eaten, just as she had known that he was tired. But neither felt any shame in their deception. In the important things of their life, their love for the hard but beautiful place in which they lived, their joy in the creatures who shared their bare hillside, and the pleasure of the few books which had survived the struggle to make ends meet, they could be honest. There was between them both friendship and love.
The fire was not lit, though there was turf in the basket and kindling stacked in a corner by the wooden settle. No need of warmth on such a fine summer morning, but without fire there could be no cooking. The empty hearth told him that both the flour sack and the meal barrel were empty. Unless there were some dollars from Nellie in America or a postal order from Glasgow or London, they would remain so. The few shillings from the man who collected the white work would have to go on baker’s bread. And in June and July they had to buy potatoes till the new crop were ready to dig. In all the old stories they read on winter’s nights, July was the ‘hungry month’. As he bit into the dry crust of bread, Georgie wondered why it was only July, for June was just as bad.
Most mornings they had tea, made weak and brewed well over the fire, but he knew that there would be no more tea till after Friday’s cart. He looked at the glass of buttermilk set by his plate and winced. He hated its sour taste and the little globules of fat that settled on your upper lip as you swallowed it. But he knew she would be anxious if he left it untouched and drank instead a glass of spring water from the white enamelled pail in the cupboard.
‘Drink it, Georgie, ah do. ’Tis good for ye. Ye hav tae build yer strength.’
He imagined he heard her voice, even though she was outside, bent over her work, the sunlight catching the grey in her once dark hair. He knew what she was thinking when she said that, too, though the words were never mentioned between them.
Three years ago, for weeks of the summer he had lain side by side with his younger brother in the room now used only when some of his brothers and sisters came to visit. Between the two narrow beds his mother had sat, hour after hour, wringing bits of cloth in a pail of water cold from the stream to wipe their faces and bodies. He had felt sweat pour from his brow and found his limbs ached so much he could hardly manage to use the chamber pot. It had gone on for weeks, sleeping and dreaming and not knowing which was which. He had had nightmares, called out in his sleep and seen them move his brother to another room. Only at the end of it, when he could just manage to stand again, did they tell him that Jamsey had died from the same rheumatic fever from which he was beginning to recover.
It had taken his brother to the churchyard behind the grey stone church at the valley’s mouth. From his place in the schoolroom in the shadow of the church he could see the gleam of the marble stone. The names he could not see, but he had no need, he knew them by heart for they were the history of his family. Despite the rain and wind of these three years, the new letters were still sharp: ‘And Jamsey, aged 7, youngest son of Ellen and the above James Erwin.’
He drank the buttermilk as quickly as he could and wiped his lips on his sleeve. On the scrubbed wooden table next to his plate were two brown eggs in a paper bag. He took them up reluctantly, fetched his satchel and reading book, and went out into the sun.
‘Tell Mary I’m behind wi’ my allocation, I’ve not baked a bite yet. She’ll give ye a piece for school.’
Mary McTaggart was a kind neighbour and had been good to them in many ways. But her husband was a different matter. He had been amiable enough when James Erwin was his tenant and hired labourer, working long hours without overtime and paying his rent without fail. But young George could only manage half a man’s work, and even when the hours after school and at the weekends were enough to pay the rent, it no longer brought it in cash. If there was one thing Harry McTaggart liked, it was cash. On the nail.
‘Have ye learned yer poem?’ she asked, her needle poised over the initials she was working on the damask.
‘Aye. Will I say it over tae ye?’
She shook her head. ‘Nay, nay, ye’ll be late. Ye’ll say it for me the night, when the work’s away tae Belfast.’ She smiled up at him and held out the napkin she had just begun. ‘Look, Georgie, these must be for ye. There’s half a dozen for G.E.’
He stood looking down at the intertwined letters with their broad satin-stitch bodies and delicate chain-stitch swirls. It had never happened before. In all the allocations, the dozens of pieces she had worked, there had never before been a G.E. He reached out a finger and touched the letters cautiously, knowing full well that a dirty mark would mean a deduction in the payment. She held out the others, five more large squares of finest damask, each traced lightly in blue with his own initials.
He looked at them wistfully. By the end of the afternoon they would be finished, and long before he got back from the farm they would be wrapped in clean cotton rag, tied into a bale with the others and carried up the track to the waiting carrier. He would take them to Belfast and somewhere in the crowded streets of the city, in a warehouse or in a factory shed, they would be smoothed and folded, tied with fine green ribbon and put in boxes lined with soft white tissue. Made in Ireland. Hand finished. In tiny gold letters. So she had told him. And then they would go on their way to those who could afford to buy such things, to some great house in some other part of Ireland, or to England, or across the ocean to America.
‘Some day, Georgie,’ she said quietly, breaking into his thoughts, ‘ye’ll have napkins, an’ books, an’ things of yer own. Make sure ye lissen hard to all the master says. What gaes into your head, Georgie, belongs to ye, e’en when you’ve nae piece to take to school.’
There were two ways down to McTaggart’s farm. You could climb upwards on a rough track till you struck the metalled road and then follow it along for a mile or more, till it dipped into the head of the glen and then rose up out of it again to strike across the plateau to Ballymena, or you could drop down the hillside and pick your way along a narrow path which followed the valleyside just where the overlying basalt met the underlying chalk and the rough, hungry land of the dark rock became suddenly gentler and greener.
George chose the low path and set off downhill between the gorse bushes, the rush of water in his ears. Their own stream from which he carried the buckets for washing and cleaning was in full spate and the broad flat stepping stones his father had placed there were well covered. He stepped gingerly across, the cold water tugging at his ankles, concerned for neither his much-mended clothes nor his bare feet but for the book tucked inside his battered satchel. Once safely across, he took to the straggling grass, still wet from the rain and scattered with wildflowers. Soon the walking became easy. With chalk beneath, the turf was short and springy, dry already after the rain and sprinkled with the yellow stars of tormentil and the blue bell flowers of milkwort.
He stopped on a small, grassy lawn and listened to the muffled roar of a stream in its subterranean course. He tipped back his head and looked up. Over the black, frost-shattered basalt flowed one of the many streams that coursed down the rock-strewn beds they had carved out for themselves. Where he stood, it had already dived deep, seeking out the cracks and fissures in the porous rock. Only in the wettest of winters did these streams overflow their underground routes and flood across the patches of springy turf like this one where he stood wriggling his toes luxuriously in the softness.
Below him the valley lay green and shining in the sunlight, the two grey trackways weaving their way along either side of the river until they met the Coast Road. Beyond the straggling village on the southern side of the glen, an arc of sand dazzled in the sunlight. Blue and barely rippled by the breeze, the sea lay so calm, so tranquil. It was hard to imagine the winter storms churning the waves into great crashing breakers, brown with sand and broken shell, boiling up the beach and snatching hungrily at the concrete base of the new road that took the visitors in their jaunting cars to see the sights of the rocky coast, from The Glens to Ballycastle and beyond.
Across the calm water lay the coast of Scotland, so sharp and clear he felt he could reach out and touch it. He smiled, remembered his father and what he used to say on all the fine summer days like today when he came back into the cottage, calling out for Ellen. ‘Boys it’s a powerful day, Ellen. Iss tha’ clear I ken see them tossin’ ther hay o’er in Scotlan’.’
Reluctantly he walked on, his eyes still moving over the valley below. The hawthorn had flowered late, right at the end of May, but it had blossomed so richly the branches looked as if they were laden with snow. The scent lay heavy on the air and he drank it in, savouring it like the smell of delectable food, bread fresh from the griddle or bacon frying over the fire.
As he strode up a small rise where the path opened into a broad track leading to the farm, he must have closed his eyes for a moment to taste its richness, for suddenly he found his way blocked. He was looking up at Andy McTaggart, the eldest of the McTaggart sons, astride one of the big plough horses. Andy stared down at him, the reins in one hand, an elegant-looking whip in the other.
‘’Tis a gae fine mornin’,’ Georgie said agreeably as he waited for the horse to get used to his presence and allow him to pass by. But the rider made no motion to let him through.
‘Is ther nae shorter way fer ye tae gae doun an’ o’er tae the school?’ he asked unpleasantly.
‘Ther is, aye. But I hae a message for yer mather.’
‘Oh, an’ what’s that?’
Georgie felt the blood rush to his face as he remembered the two eggs in his satchel. For a moment he thought he might make up some message, a greeting, or a bit of news. But it was no good, he knew he wasn’t quick enough for the likes of Andy McTaggart.
‘’Tis for hersel’,’ he said, flustered.
‘Oh aye, it is. We all nae tha’. Come to beg yer piece tae tak tae school. Ye’re a beggar, Georgie Erwin.’
The horse shuffled, suddenly uneasy, and McTaggart struck him with the whip. It was not a hard blow but it made a crack that sounded loud in the stillness of the morning. Georgie knew that he was showing off, copying some horseman he had seen when his father took him to the Antrim Races. But the knowledge helped him not at all. He felt his face stiffen and the pleasure of the June day fall away as if a thunderstorm had rolled down the valley and shut off the sun.
‘I am nae,’ he said fiercely, ‘I hae me piece in me bag, so I hae. Ye can tell yer mather I’ll be late the day. I hae an errand to the shop.’
So saying, Georgie darted past, his eye level with McTaggart’s boot in the short stirrup of the saddle. It was well-polished and so new it had not even been mended. He didn’t make for the path down into the valley but struck out between the bushes and the outcrops of rock, indifferent to the sharp stones and brambles he encountered that bruised his feet and tore at his bare legs.
‘I’m nae a beggar. I’m nae a beggar,’ he said, over and over again as he reached the road and strode out along it as fast as his legs would carry him. And all the while, high above his head, he could hear the crack of the whip and the noise of hoofs on the track that led back to McTaggart’s farm.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
When the grandfather clock in the hall chimed four, George opened his eyes again and breathed a sigh of relief. The pain had gone. No sign of it at all. He did feel very drowsy and a bit confused, but he managed to make up the fire without bending over and without setting off the pain again. As the fresh logs sparked and crackled, he sat back gratefully and looked at the clock.
‘That’s another week over, dear,’ he said aloud, thinking of Jenny.
He’d been to her school on its Open Day last year and he could imagine her coming down those stairs with her pile of exercise books and the briefcase he’d bought her when she got her scholarship. He wondered when she would arrive. With her shopping to do and no car to help, it would hardly be much before six. He’d asked Edna at supper time last night but clearly he shouldn’t have. She’d snapped his head off. How was she expected to know, she’d said, for didn’t Jennifer always suit herself?
It was a sad thing that Edna got so little pleasure from her daughter, but it seemed as if nothing Jenny did ever pleased her. No matter what, her mother still complained. He couldn’t understand it himself. But then, he’d long ago stopped trying to understand Edna. He, too, had tried to please her once, but he hadn’t managed it. Not for very much of their life anyway.
He sighed, picked up his book and read a few lines. He put it down again. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept wandering. One minute he was thinking about Jenny and listening for her key in the door, and the next he was puzzling over why Edna had been so very sharp last night when he had only asked a simple question.
He leaned back and fell asleep almost immediately.
He was back in the schoolroom in Ballydrennan. He could smell the turf from the fire which swirled round them when the wind blew down the chimney and hear the squeak of chalk on slate. Above the blackboard was a Union Jack and a map of the world patterned with the brightly coloured red patches of British territory. Morning and afternoon Master McQuillan said prayers. He prayed for the King and the Empire, for rain to plump up the potatoes if it went dry in May, or sunshine for the hay in July, or dry weather for the grain harvest in August and safe journeys for the men going to Scotland to look for work, and God’s blessing on the sick children and widowed women the glen so seldom lacked.
The three Hughes sisters came to school together. He used to see them as he came across the river and stopped to dry his feet on the soft grass by its side. Edna was some years older than himself and already a monitor with duties teaching the younger children. She walked straight-backed, unswerving to the door marked Girls, with Mary and Annie by the hand. They always sat as far away from the boys’ side as she could get them. Boys were dirty and rough, she said when she scolded them for playing Hide and Seek and Tig with them in the lunch break.
He had never taken any notice of girls when he was at school. There were books on a shelf by the master’s desk that could be borrowed during the breaks and he read in every free minute he had. Up at McTaggart’s, clearing out stables and byres, he would go over in his mind the things he had read during the day. It was a long time before he began to notice girls and the first time he saw Edna after he’d left school, she completely ignored him.
Working at the farm, George was often sent down to the forge with some item to be repaired. He and Robert got on well together and sometimes George would suggest a mend that was quicker and more effective than the way Robert had been using for years. When he left school, the smith told him there was work enough for two. He could serve his apprenticeship in the usual way, receiving as payment only his daily food, but if he concentrated on the farm machinery and left Robert free to do the work he most enjoyed, the shoeing of horses and the making of gates, then he would pay him a small weekly wage as well.
The first day at the forge came as a blow to George. Well used to hard work, he set off cheerfully enough only to discover he could barely lift the heavier hammers. When he pulled on the bellows to blow up the fire, nothing much happened and he laboured till the sweat ran down his face before he could even move them. Reluctant to admit such weakness, he exhausted himself. By evening he was so weary he could hardly stand. And that was when Edna appeared. Still wearing the long black skirt and high-necked white blouse she wore for her work, she came to bring them tea and thick buttered slices of bread for their evening meal.
It was a summer evening. He looked up from the dark corner behind the hearth and saw her standing in the doorway, the sunlight pouring round her, catching her fair hair and touching her pale skin. She seemed to glow in the warm radiance of the sunlight and yet remain cool and fresh. He was sure that angels must look just like she did. He gazed across at her and saw her give a sudden sweet smile to her father. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, she shot a glance around the workshop, turned on her heel and went walking up the path to the house, her skirt brushing the daisies in the grass, her back as straight and unswerving as always.
She never spoke to George or acknowledged his presence beyond the barest minimum in the five years he worked with her father. Indeed, if three events had not occurred within the space of as many weeks in the spring of 1930 it is unlikely she would ever have spoken to him again.
The first of those three events George created himself, though he did not know that he had. He had been working in Ballymena as a mechanic with a firm producing traction engines. In April, he finally completed work on the motor car he had bought after it had collided with one of the twisted pine trees on the bog road between Ballymena and Ballymoney. The owner was a wealthy young man who had been happy enough to get rid of it, having barely escaped with his life when the steering column sheared. It had taken George six months to rebuild. On his first free weekend he drove the car home to show to his mother. When she had admired every detail of its construction, stroked the leather of the seats and been driven a few miles up the road and back, George left her to rest and drove down the new road into the valley to visit Robert at the forge.
Robert was delighted to see him. He was well enough, he said, but Lizzie wasn’t so good. The doctor had told Edna that it was only a matter of time before her mother was a complete invalid. On the other hand he’d had great news from Toronto. Annie was engaged to be married and was saving up for her trousseau, whatever that was. It seemed her future husband had a big job with a motor company called Ford and she was going to be well looked after. Her intended had promised to bring her home on a visit, as soon as they were married.
When Edna came down the path to call her father to his supper, she didn’t recognise George at first. But when she did she smiled at him, ran her hand across the leather seat and said how well he was looking. Within a few weeks it was common knowledge that Edna Hughes and George Erwin were walking out. They were married within the year.
George woke twice more in the course of the afternoon. The first time he got slowly to his feet and went to the window hoping that Jennifer might suddenly appear in the Drive or coming up the garden path. The second time he knew he could no longer avoid going upstairs to the bathroom. As he passed his bedroom, he remembered the little pile of new catalogues. Edna always complained about them if she found them in the dining room but she was still in town and besides, Jennifer would take them back up for him when she came.
Halfway down the stairs he realised he’d made a mistake. They were too heavy for him to carry one-handed and he felt so unsteady he had to keep his other hand firmly on the banister. Reluctantly, he let go of all but one, and watched them bounce and slither their way down the stairs ahead of him.
When he got to the bottom, he manoeuvred them one at a time with his toe through the dining-room door and across to his chair by the fire. He looked at them wryly. Today was one of those days when he knew better than to bend over, but only a contortionist could make them into a neat pile with one foot. He sat down gratefully, opened the volume he was carrying and fell asleep again almost immediately. He did not wake when Combine Harvesters thudded softly into the dense pile of the new hearthrug, nor when his wife banged the front door behind her, tramped down the hall and peered round the open door at him on her way to the kitchen.
‘A grate help he is,’ she said as she dropped her carrier bags on the work surface by the sink. ‘He can run off all right to that office of his when the notion takes ’im, but not a hand’s turn does he do at home.’
She pushed off the elegant high-heeled shoes that had punished her corns all day and jerked open the larder door for her pull-ons. They weren’t there. Without her high heels she looked small and stooped. At sixty-six, with a look of sour discontent on her face, she could have been taken for more. The social graces she considered necessary for her public appearances and particularly for her meetings with Maisie McKinstry she habitually cast off with her shoes. Now, in her own kitchen, she made no attempt to check the catalogue of her discontents.
‘Never so much as “Can I help you”. Not that he’s any use anyway and him so slow. All day to peel a potato. What good is that when you’re in a hurry?’
She squinted up at the clock, her eyes narrowing, the lines of her mouth slack. Jennifer would be arriving at half past five. Expecting her supper no doubt, just like her father. He’d sit there till she came and then it would be a different story. Jennifer this and Jennifer that, and would you like a wee sherry, dear. He never asked her if she’d like a wee sherry. Not that she ever drank sherry but it was manners to ask.
She pulled a paper bag full of soda farls out of her carrier so fiercely one of them escaped and bounced to the floor. She picked it up, saw its pale floury surface was unmarked by the fall and put it in the bread bin with the others. These cleaning women were all the same. Everything bright as a new pin the first few times, then you’d only to look to find what they hadn’t done.
She put away the rest of her shopping, collected a colander full of potatoes from the sack in the larder, and filled the basin with hot water. As the warmth released the smell of earth, unbidden and unwelcome the voice of her old grandmother came to her from the long past.
‘Ed-na, Ed-na,’ it called, high-pitched, peremptory.
‘I’m busy,’ she called back, knowing it would not have the slightest effect.
‘I’ve slipped down the bed.’
‘Not far enough, ye haven’t,’ she muttered as she dried her hands and went into the small, dark bedroom.
Mary Anne lay barely visible, her bright eyes peering over the mound of disordered bedclothes, her small head overhung by the pillows. She watched the girl’s every move. Critical. Malevolent.
‘Where’s Lizzie? Where’s yer mather? It’s her place to cum up and see ta me.’
‘She’s nae well hersel’. Ye know that.’
‘An’ what’s wrong wi’ her, a young thing like her? She’s no right to be takin’ to her bed at her age. Lift me up. How canna ate me supper lyin’ doon? Is it not near ready yit?’
Edna tried to lift her up but the old woman grabbed at her arms and almost pulled her over. Edna breathed in the odour of her unwashed body. It smelt of age, of decay. Like the cottage itself with its rotting thatch and damp walls. She hated coming here. And she hated this old woman who bossed her around just like her mother did. Always wanting something. Edna this and Edna that. Fetch and carry. Well, she’d show them. She’d show them all. She’d get out of this place if it was the last thing she did. And they could rot together for all she cared.
She rinsed the potatoes and dropped them noisily into a copper-bottomed saucepan. Every time she washed those filthy potatoes George had brought home from some farm or other, it reminded her of the old days. Well, she wasn’t going to put up with that. The past was over and gone. And good riddance. She’d give the rest of those dirty old potatoes away. The women on the garden produce stall at the Autumn Fayre would think they were just great. More fool them. Then she could go back to buying clean ones at the supermarket. George would never notice the difference.
‘Hello, Edna. Can I do anything to help?’
She turned, startled by the quiet voice. ‘Oh, so you’re awake,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Can I lay the table?’ he continued mildly.
‘Well, you know where the cloth is.’
He nodded to himself and turned to go. Something had upset her. But what was anybody’s guess. Sometimes she didn’t even seem to know herself.
‘And you might just redd up those catalogues lying round the place,’ she shouted as he closed the door gently behind him.
She bent down to the fridge and pulled out the casserole she had cooked the previous day. She caught the handle of a small china jug. It fell over and spilled milk down into the crisper drawer, showering a limp cabbage, a handful of carrots and a couple of mouldy tomatoes.
That was just typical of what she had to put up with, wasn’t it? Maisie McKinstry didn’t have to wear herself out bending down and poking around in her fridge. All her stuff was eye-level. But then her husband had money. William John McKinstry could buy and sell George Erwin and not even notice it. The man might have no education and no manners, but he did have a bit of go about him. And that was one thing you could never say about George. If he’d ever listened to her he might have made something of himself. He could have done just as well as any McKinstry if he hadn’t been so pig-headed.
She turned the oven full on, pushed the casserole in and banged the door. If it hadn’t been for her they’d still be stuck in that wee house in Ballymena. He said they couldn’t move till he had some capital behind him, but that was just an excuse. What capital did William John have? And now Maisie could have anything she wanted.
‘Shure why don’t you and George buy a nice wee bungalow down at Cultra, Edna? Surely George doesn’t haff to go on working,’ she said aloud, exaggerating the sweet-as-pie tone Maisie had used over lunch.
She’d passed it off, said George didn’t feel quite up to a move. She wasn’t going to let Maisie McKinstry think they couldn’t afford it. But George wouldn’t move for her or anyone else. He had always done exactly what he wanted with never a thought for her. And Jennifer was every bit as bad. Like father like daughter. If it weren’t for Harvey, her life would hardly be worth living.
The phone rang with a peremptory note. She hurried into the hall. Out of habit she composed her face muscles in just the same manner as she did when it was the doorbell. She picked up the receiver.
‘I’d have phoned you earlier, Edna, but Karen said she saw you in Brand’s and you and Mrs McKinstry were having a day out, so I didn’t want to bother George. How is he, Edna?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Working away as usual,’ she replied automatically. It was only Mary Pearson from the other side of the Drive about the church flower rota and as usual she was looking for information. Well, she wasn’t going to get any. ‘I’m just getting a meal, Mary, can we have a chat another time?’
‘Oh, yes, how thoughtless of me. I forgot. Karen did say Jenny was coming this evening. In fact, Edna, I think a car has just stopped at your house. I’ll see you at the P.W.A. meeting on Monday and we can arrange things then. ‘Bye.’
Edna dropped the receiver as if it had suddenly become hot and hurried in her stocking feet into the sitting room. The curtains on the large window that overlooked the front garden and the road beyond were still undrawn. The room which ran the full depth of the house was empty and dark, except for patches of light where the street lamp outside had begun to flicker in the low light of the overcast evening. Cautiously, she edged herself into the one place where she had a good view of the garden gate but could not herself be seen.
A car had stopped, but it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with her. It was an awful old thing with white patches here and there as if someone had been trying to mend it. Probably some workman coming to collect his money on a Friday night from some of the better neighbours who were having improvements made.
She was just about to draw the curtains to shut out prying eyes when she saw a movement and drew back. Someone was getting out of the car. She’d just wait and see who it was.
‘My God,’ she breathed as she recognised the familiar figure. ‘Has that girl no sense at all?’
She peered forward as a second figure, equally familiar, unwound itself from the driver’s seat and stood leaning against the car door looking down at her daughter.
‘Keith McKinstry,’ she said to herself, her voice thick with fury. She was sure Mary Pearson would be looking out of her upstairs window to see who it was. Of all people, it was that beggar. She’d never liked him but she’d thought if he was clever enough to study law at Queen’s he’d have more wit than to go running around with a crowd of Catholics and troublemakers. Young Socialists, was what they called themselves. So Maisie said. Though to her credit she and William John had told him where to go. Letting them down like that after all they’d done for him.
He was getting something out of the back seat of the car now. What was it? Only her basket and her briefcase. And there she was standing there looking up at him, all big eyes and smiles. As she watched, Edna saw Keith McKinstry bend down and kiss her on the cheek.
‘Oh, that’s very nice, isn’t it, in front of all my neighbours,’ she began furiously.
She would have said more but Jennifer had turned away and now had her hand on the garden gate. She scurried down the hall, shut the kitchen door firmly behind her and pushed her feet back into the high heels which she had kicked under the kitchen table. Then she took out the scouring powder and began to clean the sink vigorously.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
I looked back over my shoulder as I put my key in the lock. Beyond the shrubs and trees that screened one side of the Drive from the other, the black and white shape of Keith’s Volkswagen headed for the main road. I waved, but he didn’t see me.
I closed the front door behind me, tucked my baggage under the hall table and hung up my coat. At the end of the hall, the kitchen door was firmly shut. The crash of pots and pans escaped to greet me. A bad omen. The dining-room door was ajar and I caught sight of my father as I passed. He had been listening for me, his newspaper folded on his knee. He raised a hand in greeting but said nothing.
As bad as that, I thought. I opened the door of the kitchen and went in. When my mother is in a good mood, she leaves it open, so she can hear the phone and the doorbell. When she’s not, she shuts it tight and her hearing becomes even more acute. On such occasions any delay on my part is seen as an unfriendly act. Conversation with my father becomes rudeness to her. On a really bad day she treats it as an act of conspiracy.
‘Hello, Mummy, sorry I got held up.’
She turned round from the sink, a look of feigned amazement on her face. ‘Oh, so you’ve arrived after all,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’d given you up half an hour ago.’
‘The traffic gets worse all the time,’ I replied easily.
The signals were clear. Whatever I said would be wrong. All I could do for the moment was try to ignore them.
‘Now you can’t tell me, Jennifer, that it was the traffic kept you since four o’clock,’ she began, slapping down her dishcloth on the draining board. ‘You may think I’m a fool, but I’m not that big a fool. Give me credit for some sense. Please.’
The ‘please’ was squeezed out with such self-pity, I could hardly bear to go on looking at her. The lines of her face were hard and her careful make-up did nothing to soften it. Indeed, the Gala Red of her lipstick only accentuated the tight, unyielding line of her mouth. I felt the old, familiar nausea clutch at my stomach.
If Colin were here, she’d be fussing over the dessert she’d made especially for him, making polite inquiries about William John, arch remarks about young directors and comments about hard-working young men needing good suppers at the end of a busy day. It required a fair amount of tolerance but it was better than this.
‘I had to go into town about the A-level texts,’ I said coolly. ‘I thought you said “the usual time” on the phone.’
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ she snapped, turning her back on me and continuing to scrub. ‘You must’ve been buyin’ the whole shop,’ she threw over her shoulder. She laughed shortly, pleased with herself. She rinsed the sink noisily and then threw back a sliding door and searched through a row of tins.
For two years now, ‘the usual time’ for a Friday evening visit was as soon after five as Colin could get away, collect the car, crawl through the traffic, pick me up in Botanic Avenue with the shopping, and get back across to the Stranmillis Road. It was seldom before five thirty. Often enough it was a quarter to six. But I knew from long experience the facts were not relevant. There was no point whatever in mentioning them.
She opened a tin of peas, flung down the opener and strode across the kitchen towards me. For a moment I thought she was about to strike me, so hostile was the look on her face.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.
I moved hastily aside as she wrenched open a cupboard behind me and pulled out a saucepan.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ I asked quietly.
She tipped the peas into the saucepan so fiercely the unpleasant-looking green liquid splattered the work surface. She tossed her head and smiled a tight little smile. ‘Well, you might just think of putting a comb through your hair.’
Without a word, I turned and left the kitchen, collected my handbag and made for the stairs. As I passed the dining-room door, I looked in, smiled with a cheerfulness I certainly didn’t feel and pulled an imaginary lavatory chain. My father grinned, looked somewhat relieved, and picked up his paper again.
I locked the bathroom door and glanced around. I felt like the hero in a B movie, looking for something to barricade it with. But there was nothing handy. Brightly lit and dazzlingly clean, all the room offered me was multiple images of myself.
I sat down on the pink velvet stool in front of the vanity unit and stared at a face I hardly recognised. The dark eyes that had won me the part of Elizabeth Bennett in a school production were dull and lifeless, with deep shadows under them. My pale complexion looked much too pale and my long, dark hair had come to the end of the week before I had. I pulled the ribbon from my pony tail and watched the dark mass flop around my face.
‘How about the witch of Endor?’ I said aloud as I pulled faces in the mirror. ‘You look just right for the part.’
But I couldn’t laugh. My dear mother was no laughing matter. I sighed and tipped out my make-up on the immaculate grey surface in front of me. If I did a proper job I might just work off some of the anger I was feeling.
I slid open the nearest bathroom cabinet. My mother never throws anything away and I was sure I’d seen a bottle of cleansing cream the last time I had to look for an aspirin. There it was, at the back, a brand I hadn’t used since I was a teenager. As the cold liquid touched my skin, the faint floral fragrance stirred layers of memory. I shivered.
Harvey’s wedding. My mother in an expensive silk suit. Daddy looking handsome in tails. Everywhere the smell of carnations. Buttonholes for the ushers and sprays for female relatives. My mother had helped me into my bridesmaid’s dress of pink organza and tulle. It was not what I would have chosen, but I had to admit it was pretty and the posy and garland of fresh flowers for my hair that Mavis had sent had quite delighted me. My best friend, Valerie, said the garland made me look like Titania.
I enjoyed the wedding. Managed to do the right thing at the right time. Drank my first glass of champagne and danced with all Harvey’s colleagues after the meal. I even managed to kiss Harvey goodbye with a fair imitation of sisterly love, given how supercilious and condescending he had become since his graduation from medical school. Everything seemed to go so well that I was completely unprepared for the storm that broke over me once we were home from the reception.
I was standing in my slip in my bedroom, the pink organza at my feet, when my mother stalked in and just let fly. I still don’t know what I said or did to provoke her outburst. She said I was full of myself, didn’t know how to behave, was spoilt, big-headed, lazy and idle, and that Mavis would never have asked me to be her bridesmaid if it hadn’t been for her. I’d made a real exhibition of myself at the reception, hadn’t I, smiling up at all the men and chattering away to Mavis’s family as if I actually knew them.
Hurt and taken by surprise, I had demanded to know what exactly was so wrong about the way I’d behaved. What had she expected of me that I hadn’t done? And if I’d done something awful, why hadn’t Daddy said anything? That was when she shouted at me so loudly Daddy heard her in the garage and came hurrying upstairs. Then she turned on him.
It was all his fault. He had spoilt me since I was no size. Running after me and giving me everything I asked for. Always reading to me, and books not suitable for a young girl. Now I was so full of myself there was no standing me. I just did what I liked and walked over her. And he was just as bad as I was. It was two to one against her, all the time.
I applied a little lipstick to my chin and cheekbones and pressed powder gently over fresh foundation. Sometimes the tricks of the drama workshop came in handy. A new face in six minutes flat. But new perspectives take longer, much longer.
From that day, in my seventeenth year, I was never easy at home again and seldom felt free to enjoy my father’s company as I had before. We still did some of the things we’d done previously, theatre, concerts and poetry readings, but there was always a price to pay. Either my mother would insist on coming with us and then pour scorn on whatever we had enjoyed, or she would insist she knew when she wasn’t wanted, stay at home and then sulk for days.
I escaped when I married. But for my father there was no escape. I put my make-up away and wiped up the flecks of powder with a piece of Supersoft toilet paper. Then I mopped up the drops of water in the handbasin. There must be nothing for her to complain about when I was gone. For a long time now, this kind of avoidance had helped me get by. But it didn’t solve anything. As I walked slowly down the thickly-carpeted stairs, I knew I had problems that couldn’t be avoided any longer.
‘Come on now, George. At least come to the table when it’s ready. That’s your father’s,’ she said, handing me a hot plate.
She glared at me as I put it down quickly and picked it up again with my napkin.
‘Thank you, dear,’ he said quietly as I put it in front of him.
He did not look up at me. The effort of walking across the room and bending down to switch off the television had left him breathless. His skin had a slight yellowy look. But he seemed composed, at ease almost, as if nothing she did could trouble him any more.
‘There isn’t any pudding,’ she announced as she sat down heavily, a drained look on her face. ‘But there’s plenty of fruit in the bowl.’
I passed her the potatoes. She waved them away. ‘No potatoes for me, I’m dieting.’ She spooned a large helping of peas on to her plate and studied the beef casserole minutely for traces of fat. ‘You wouldn’t know what to have sometimes,’ she said in a pained tone.
An effort had to be made. I collected my wits, passed the peas to my father and said agreeably, ‘Yes, I know what you mean, I usually run out of ideas by Friday.’
‘Well, of course, Jennifer, you can’t really complain now, can you?’ She wore that facial gesture which always meant she was about to say something hurtful but expected it to be let pass, because she was actually smiling.
‘I don’t think you’ve much to complain about, one way and another. I wonder if sometimes you might not consider Colin just a little bit. D’you ever think it might be hard on him, workin’ away all day and comin’ home and no meal ready?’
I opened my mouth to speak, but she didn’t pause.
‘It’s all very well havin’ a job, and the extra money’s very nice, I’m sure, but you can’t just have everythin’ your own way.’ And she was off again on the old familiar circuit. She stood up abruptly and reached across the table for the jug of water before I could pass it to her. The gesture was a familiar one. It meant, ‘No one so much as offers me a glass of water.’
‘Mummy, you know I’m not teaching just because of the money. I’ve had four years at University, at the community’s expense. I don’t think sitting at home is any way to repay that.’
‘Oh, that’s all very well. You can’t tell me very much about community, with all I do for the Church. But charity begins at home, Jennifer, doesn’t it? Do you not think it’s nearly time you were to show a little consideration to your husband and his family?’
I grasped my glass of water and swallowed slowly. When Karen Pearson from across the Drive had her second baby, six months ago, my mother had spoken her mind on the subject. But it had been all right then. Colin was there, he’d laughed and told her she was far too young to be a grandmother, and besides, we still hadn’t got the house straight. Now it looked as if she was going to have another go at me with Colin safely out of the way.
‘You have to accept, Jennifer, that Colin is the breadwinner. He is the one with the responsibility. Surely you give a wee bit of thought to his future. Just a wee bit.’
It was her squeezed toothpaste tone again. Like that ‘please’ in the kitchen. If she goes on like this, I’ll pour the peas over her blue rinse. She’s still talking about breadwinners in 1968. My stomach did a lurch as I tried to control myself.
‘Mummy, we came home from Birmingham because of Colin’s future. We took the house in Helen’s Bay because of Colin’s future. I didn’t want to give up the job in Birmingham and I didn’t want to live in Loughview Heights. What do you mean, “giving thought to Colin’s future”? We give it thought all the time.’
She swallowed hard, like a blackbird consuming a piece of crust that’s too big for it. Her chin poked forward with the effort. ‘Well, I don’t see much sign of it. There’s not much comfort for Colin with you correctin’ exercises in the evenings or runnin’ off to the theatre with those girls. I don’t think Colin has much say in what you do. It doesn’t look like it, does it, heh?’
From the corner of my eye I saw my father put down his knife and fork. He looked as if he were about to speak, but he paused, thought better of it and remained silent.
‘Mummy, Colin and I discuss everything we do,’ I replied patiently.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure you do,’ she retorted. ‘And you make sure you get what you want. And I have to hear from another party that you can’t go on holiday with your husband at Easter because you’re busy gallivantin’ with your friends.’
‘Easter?’ For a moment I was so surprised I couldn’t even think where in the year we were.
‘Yes, Easter,’ she repeated, her voice rising a degree higher, her flushed cheeks wobbling with vehemence. ‘It’s a quare thing when I have ta find out from another party.’
‘Another party’ was Maisie. At least now I’d guessed what she was talking about.
‘I’m going to a conference on English teaching,’ I said coolly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with going on holiday. Colin didn’t want to go to Majorca with Maisie and William John any more than I did.’
‘Oh, is that so? Is that so indeed?’
And then she took off. Just like the day of Harvey’s wedding. There were some new lines since then, but the refrain was basically the same. I wasn’t behaving as she thought I ought to behave. I made my own decisions, which clearly I had no right to do. She commented on my lack of loyalty to my husband, my family and my country, catalogued misdemeanours such as taking my A-level girls to see plays put on by the Other Side, ‘running around’ with Valerie Thompson and that arty crowd of hers, and being ungrateful to the McKinstrys who had been ‘more than generous’ to me.
‘My fine friends’, as she called them, were a recurring theme. Everyone I knew and cared about came in for some unpleasant comment. It was on that topic I finally took my stand.
‘You and your fine friends will get a comedown one of these days,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘Let me tell you, that Keith McKinstry is a real bad one, him and that Catholic crowd he runs around with. I’ll thank you not to bring that dirty-looking beggar to my front door where any of our decent neighbours might see him. Colin has more sense than to have anything to do with him.’
She had to pause for breath, so I took my chance.
‘Mummy,’ I said firmly, ‘I don’t know what Maisie has been saying about Keith, but whatever it was, it has nothing to do with Colin and me. Keith and Siobhan are friends of ours and will go on being friends of ours.’
‘Nothing to do with you?’ She twitched with fury as her voice rose higher.
I poured myself another glass of water and tried to find some logic in the flood of abuse and accusations she was stringing together. But I couldn’t. When she finally stopped, I didn’t know where to begin. But she completely misread my silence. Encouraged by it, she began again in a tone several degrees less hysterical than before.
‘You know, Jennifer, we all have to accept that we only have one life to live and that life is for the service of others. I don’t think if you had to give an account to your Maker, you could really say you’ve done the things you ought to have done, now could you?’
I listened hard. Not to the words, but to the tone. Did she really think that by lowering her voice and making the odd reference to God, her message would sound any different?
I waited till she stopped. My hands were stone cold and my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a huge pork pie. Suddenly, a moment from my childhood sprang back into my mind and in the midst of the angry words and all my anxieties I felt a totally unexpected sense of unshakeable calm. I saw myself as a small girl, hand in hand with my father. I was trailing my feet through the puddles, utterly confident of the magical water-repellent qualities of my new Wellington boots. The memory was extraordinarily comforting. I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, Mummy, I agree. We do have only one life to live.’ My voice was so steady I couldn’t believe it. ‘Where we disagree is about who decides how you should live it. I think each person has to decide for themselves. I don’t think you should let other people decide for you.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sprang to her feet. ‘Oh no, you’ll not do that, Jennifer. You only want to hear what suits you. As long as you’re all right, you couldn’t care less about poor Colin, or me, or anybody. I might as well talk to the wall. All you’re interested in is yourself. Self. Self. Self.’
She flung her napkin down on the table.
‘That’s all you ever think about. That, and making others like you. Well, I’m not stayin’ here for you to make skit of me. You take me for a fool. Well, I’m not. You’re not going to get everythin’ yer own way. We’ll just see who’s the fool.’
With a final vicious stare at me, she turned and strode out. She banged the door so hard a collection of old plates on the dresser rattled ominously. In the silence that followed, a full-blown rose on a small table by the door shed its petals in a soft shower on to the carpet.
I turned towards my father. To my amazement, he was smiling.
‘Good girl yourself. You didn’t cry.’
‘I think I might now,’ I said weakly.
‘Ach, not at all. We’ll have a drop of brandy and I’ll make us some coffee. I went down on the bus to Bell’s for a wee bag of Blue Mountain this morning. How about that?’
I nodded enthusiastically and then hesitated. ‘D’you think she’ll come back?’
‘No, not very likely. She’s got a television upstairs now and there’s something or other she watches at seven thirty. She might come down at eight. Shure there’s plenty o’ time.’
I looked across at him as he took the brandy from the cupboard. How could he be so cool, living with this woman, the fresh-faced girl he’d married thirty-five years ago, when he was my age and she a country girl from a cottage where they still used paraffin lamps and drew water from a well halfway up an orchard behind the single-storey dwelling.
‘Would you eat a bit of cheese, Jenny?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve got terrible wind.’
‘The brandy’ll help that,’ he said comfortingly. ‘I don’t know what set that one off,’ he went on ruefully. ‘I’d have said my piece if I’d thought it would’ve done any good. I’m glad I didn’t. It was better the way it was.’
We sat down together, glasses in hand and looked into the fire. I thought of all the times we had sat by this fireside, reading to each other. Plays and poetry and fairytales. Those were the days, from my early years right up to Harvey’s wedding, when my mother seemed happy enough, with the new house being done up to her liking, a round of coffee mornings and sales of work at the local church, and Harvey always wanting attention, help with his work, someone to look at what he was doing, or making. It was always my mother he called for. If Harvey wanted to go to the cinema, she was quite happy to leave my father and me to make our own supper. How we might amuse ourselves while they were gone didn’t seem to trouble her at all.
I knelt on the hearth rug, hands outstretched to the leaping flames, and looked at him over my shoulder.
‘Got offered a job today, Daddy.’
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘Headmistress?’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘Head of English. Connie’s going to retire early. She recommended me. So Miss Braidwood said.’
‘You’ll take it?’
‘To take or not to take, that is the question. I’ve got to decide by Monday.’
‘How do you feel about it?’
‘I feel yes, but it’s not as easy as that.’
He looked slightly puzzled and I wondered if, like Mr Cummings, he too might have forgotten all the business about starting a family. Since his heart attack, I’d noticed he could forget things and then get very upset, once he realised what had happened.
‘What’s on the no side?’ he asked quietly. ‘Colin wouldn’t stand in your way, would he?’ he went on, more sharply.
I reassured him. Colin and I had agreed I’d pursue my career till I was well-established. No need to make a break till I was twenty-nine or thirty, he’d said.
‘No, it’s not Colin, Daddy. There are some parties who might think it’s not considerate to wait any longer. Not just Mummy. I have a nasty feeling Maisie and William John have been getting at Colin.’
‘But what do you feel about that?’ he asked, very gently.
‘I just don’t know, Daddy. I really don’t.’
‘But you do know about the job?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said honestly. ‘I’d love the job.’
He looked away for a moment and I wondered what he could be thinking. Suddenly my mother’s words came back to me and I felt so uneasy.
‘I’m not selfish, Daddy, am I?’ The question was out before I’d even thought it. My voice had wavered dangerously.
‘Selfish?’ he repeated, as if the very idea puzzled him.
For a moment I expected him to say, ‘Now don’t be silly, Jenny.’ But he didn’t. He just sat looking into the fire. It was a look I’d seen recently that worried me, though I couldn’t really say why. I waited for him to reply. In the firelight, his face looked very old and very tired.
He straightened up with a visible effort and turned back to look at me. ‘Jenny, dear, all human beings are selfish in one sense of the word. They have to be if they’re going to be any good to themselves or anyone else. Your self is all you’ve got in the end. No matter how much you care about anyone else, it’s you that you have to live with, for whatever time you’ve got.’
He paused. I could see he was short of breath, but he ignored it and went on.
‘Your mother was right saying you had only one life to live. But you’re right, too, about making your own decisions. It has to be you, Jenny, leading the life you choose, otherwise you end up living the life others choose for you.’
His breathing was rougher by now, and to my dismay I heard a sound I hoped I’d never hear again, the wheeze he was making in the intensive care unit at the Royal when I got there straight from the Birmingham plane. That was two years ago. They’d said then they didn’t think he’d pull round, the heart attack was massive. I’d held his hand and prayed, the way children pray. ‘Please God, let Daddy live and I’ll give up the job and come home as Colin and everybody else wants, and I’ll not complain about leaving a super school and kids I love.’ He’d pulled through but he’d had to retire early. And I’d kept my part of the bargain. But at times like tonight, I wondered if I’d actually been very selfish indeed.
He took a deep breath. The ominous sound disappeared. He went on, ‘Jenny, I’ve seen too damn much of living for others in my time. This island’s full of it. Women living for the house, or the family, or the neighbours, or the Church; men living for the business, or the Lodge, or the Cause. Any excuse so as not to have to live for themselves and make some sort of decent job of it. Shakespeare had it right, you know. “To thine own self be true, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Aye, or woman either. If that’s selfish, Jenny, I wish to goodness there was a bit more of it around.’
He leaned back in his chair, his face flushed with the effort he had made. I wanted to say so much, but I could see how tired he was. So I just said, ‘Thanks, Daddy, I’ll remember that.’ Then I offered to go and make the coffee, thinking he might well doze off in his chair.
He nodded gratefully and I was just putting my warm feet back into my shoes when the telephone rang loudly in the hall. I heard my mother’s step on the stairs. Her voice was as clear from the hallway as if she was standing in the room beside us.
It was Harvey, we gathered, honouring Rathmore Drive with one of his infrequent family visits for Sunday lunch. My mother was positively purring after the first few exchanges. There were a number of nauseating references to her favourite grandchild, Peter, the usual inquiries about Mavis and the two girls, and then, to my horror, I heard her assuring Harvey that I would be there too, that she was just about to ask me.
The call ended. I heard the heavy tread of her footsteps, the rattle of wooden rings as she pulled the velvet curtains behind the front door. The sitting-room curtains would come next. If she were going to come in, she would come in then. And as likely as not she would behave as if nothing whatever had happened.
My father was leaning back in his chair, listening to the pattern of the evening ritual. We exchanged glances and grinned ruefully at each other.
The door opened. She marched across to the fireplace, a smirk on her face. ‘My goodness,’ she exclaimed, ‘you’re sitting here all in the dark. Harvey rang a little while ago. They’re coming for Sunday lunch. Isn’t that nice? And Susie was asking for you, Jenny, so I said I was sure you’d be able to come, as Colin is away. Harvey will pick you up while I’m getting the lunch. I thought we’d have a leg of lamb for a change. What do you think, George?’
Chapter 5 (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
I pushed the front door closed with my elbow, stepped over a pile of envelopes and dropped briefcase and basket on the seat in the telephone alcove. ‘Thank God to be home,’ I said aloud.
There was an icy chill in the hall and a pervasive, unpleasant smell hanging in the air. It felt as if I’d been gone for a month. I kept my coat on and went into the kitchen. It was exactly as I had left it at a quarter to seven this morning when Colin suddenly announced that we had to leave an hour earlier than usual, because he had to pick up his father on the Antrim Road for their nine o’clock flight.
Earlier, I was surprised and delighted when he wakened me with a mug of tea. Sitting up in bed, listening to him cooking his breakfast, I drank it gratefully and hoped it was a peace offering after the awful row we’d had the previous evening. Relaxed and easy as it was still so early, I went down in my dressing gown and to my surprise found my fruit juice and cornflakes sitting ready for me.
Now, I scraped the soggy residue of the cornflakes into the polythene box where I keep scraps for the birds and put it back in the fridge. I’d been halfway through them when he told me. That gave me precisely fifteen minutes to shower, make up, dress, organise the papers I’d abandoned in my study the previous evening and be ready to leave. The alternative was to leave on foot, twenty minutes after Colin, and spend an hour and a half travelling, three buses and a train.
I shivered miserably and tried to put it out of mind as I studied the control panel for the central heating boiler. It looked perfectly all right. On: morning, six till eight. Heat and water. Back on: Five. For getting home, early evening. Off, ten thirty. By which time we were usually in bed. I looked at my watch. It was only ten fifteen so why was it off?
‘Oh, not one more bloody thing,’ I said crossly as I tramped round the kitchen in frustration. The air was still full of the smell of Colin’s bacon and egg. I prodded the switch on the extractor fan. To my amazement, it began to whir. It hadn’t worked for weeks. I almost managed to laugh at my bad temper, but then I caught sight of Colin’s eggy plate. The very thought of the relaxed way he’d announced the change of plan made me furious again.
‘Come on, Jenny, concentrate. It was working this morning,’ I said firmly.
Among the many delights of Loughview Heights, as advertised in the colour brochure from any McKinstry Brothers agent and free to all would-be customers, was a range of modern conveniences ‘guaranteed to impress your visitors’. What the brochure didn’t say was that they also broke down at the slightest provocation. There’d been such a crop of failures recently I was ready to exchange them for reliable Stone Age technology like paraffin lamps and water from a well.
I stared at the control panel again. Somewhere at the back of my weary mind a thought formed. I was missing something blindingly obvious. I peered at the minute figures on the dial. Then the penny dropped. Slightly to the right of the control box was a large switch. It said ‘OFF’.
‘Off?’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘Who’s bloody OFF? I’m not OFF, I’m here and I’m freezing.’
I pushed it down. The loud click echoed through the dark, empty house. A red light flowered. There was a woosh and a shower of tiny ticks, like rain splattering a window. I shivered, cleared and stacked the breakfast things, and went through to the lounge and found an even worse mess.
I stepped round the ironing board and drew the curtains across the black hole that echoed the chaos around me. I switched on the table lamps and turned off the top light. Even with softer lighting, the walls looked almost as grubby as they did under the glare of the overhead fitment. I pushed a pile of Colin’s papers, magazines and instruction sheets off an armchair and sat down.
I’d had plans for those walls this weekend. Tuscan. A rich, earthy colour that might even bring out some quality in the hideous, mustardy velvet curtains. The tins of emulsion had been sitting in the garage since the summer. But it looked as if my mother had put paid to that little scheme. I sized up the walls again. Allowed for the mass of the stone fireplace and the picture window. Calculated how long it might take me to remove the adjustable shelving and all the books and objects by myself. Shook my head sadly. Bitter experience had taught me things always take longer than you think. The tin says ‘one coat’. But when I did my study, the same dirty white had grinned through one coat. Some bits had ended up needing three coats.
If I didn’t have to go to Rathmore Drive for Sunday lunch, perhaps I could have just managed it. But there it was. I did. One more weekend, to follow all the others. Something on. Not something we wanted to do, but one more ‘must do’ among all the many ‘must dos’ that had come to dominate our life.
I tried to remember when we last had a weekend when we could just be together, sit over breakfast, talk, drink cups of coffee, or pull on boots and walk down to the loughshore. We had had so little time together recently it wasn’t surprising, really; Colin could be so thoughtless and I could get so anxious and agitated about things never getting done.
The room was beginning to warm up slightly, but the hot air pouring through the vents was blowing Colin’s scattered papers all over the place. Wearily, I got up and gathered them together. Half were specifications for the new factory in Antrim, now his special project. I’d seen them so often, I knew them by heart. Then I found the instructions for making the homebrew. A pile of photocopies – Which reports on new cars. And down at the bottom of the pile still on the sofa I found an overflowing ashtray full of Neville’s cigarette stubs and ash from Colin’s cigar. At least that accounted for the peculiar, stale smell in the room. Accounting for the furious row we had when Neville finally left would not be so easy.
Neville had appeared from next door before we’d finished supper. He was laden with packets and boxes which he deposited all round the kitchen wherever there was a space. The weekly shop still hadn’t been put away, nor the supper dishes stacked, when he breezed in, but Colin shooed me away. Not to worry, he said, he’d sort things out while they were getting the brew going. No problem.
I retreated to my study and tried to read essays. Not exactly what I had planned, when Colin was going to be away all weekend. But I couldn’t concentrate. From downstairs, great bursts of laughter rose at regular intervals, together with an unpleasant smell which made me think of sodden haystacks steaming in the hot sun after heavy rain.
Time passed. There were noises on the stairs. ‘Mind how you go, Colin, old lad. You’ll give yourself a hernia, you will.’
‘Steady on, Neville. Watch where you’re putting your airlock. You can harm a young lad like that.’
By ten o’clock I felt desperate. I set off to go and tell Neville there was packing to do and plans to make for the weekend.
Colin hailed me halfway down the stairs. ‘Oh, Jenny, just in time. We’ve made some coffee. Are there any biscuits?’
The kitchen was exactly as I left it, only now there were sieves, bowls and large saucepans, full of the drying residue of boiled hops, stacked all over the floor, and the pedal bin was overflowing. I picked out the biscuits from the carrier where Colin had put them himself, declined coffee, and started to clear up.
It was nearly eleven by the time Neville went and Colin strode back into the kitchen, looking pleased with himself. ‘Oh, Jenny, you shouldn’t have washed up. I’d have helped.’
‘That’s what you said at eight o’clock,’ I replied sharply.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll do it now.’
‘Yes, it does matter. It’s nearly eleven and we haven’t had a moment to ourselves all evening and you still have your packing to do.’
He came and put his arms round me and nuzzled my ear. ‘Oh, come on, Jen. It’s not that late,’ he began persuasively. ‘I won’t be two ticks packing. You go on up and have a nice shower and I’ll be in bed with you in no time.’
At that moment the thought of a shower and of getting to bed without any further delay was utterly appealing. I nodded wearily but decided to finish drying up the saucepans while he packed. I heard him fetch his weekend case from the cloakroom and run upstairs whistling cheerfully. I bent over to empty the pedal bin.
The night air was cold as I replaced the lid on the dustbin, but looking up I saw the moon appear suddenly from behind a great mass of cloud. Light spilled all around me. A spray of yellow chrysanthemums gleamed in the big flowerbed at the end of the garden. Beyond the dark mass of the shrubs and the climbers I’d planted to hide the solid shape of the fence, the lough lay calm, a silver swathe laid across its dark surface. On the far shore, where the Antrim plateau plunged down to the coast, strings and chains of lights winked along the coastline like pale flowers edging a garden path. The still, frosty air was heavy with quiet.
‘Jen. Can you hear me? Where are you?’
Reluctantly, I went back into the house and found Colin peering down over the banisters. His good spirits had vanished and he wore a patient look that did nothing to hide his irritation.
‘What have you done with my white shirts, Jen? I can’t find them.’
‘Which white shirts?’
‘Any white shirts. They aren’t in the drawer,’ he went on quickly. ‘I’ve looked.’
‘They’re probably all in the wash,’ I replied steadily. ‘I’ve been handwashing your drip-dries since the machine packed up. There are two or three of those on the fitment in the bathroom.’
‘But they’re blue,’ he protested impatiently.
‘Since when has there been a rule about wearing white shirts at conferences?’ I asked crossly.
I went back into the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled a pedal-bin liner off the roll. I heard him pound downstairs and turned and saw him glowering in at me.
‘Jenny, you know perfectly well I always wear the white ones for conferences,’ he said with a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do? Wash my own?’
‘Colin, if you had let me ring someone two weeks ago about the machine neither of us would have to wash your shirts. But you wanted to fiddle with the damn thing. I told you I’d rather we paid to have it done so we’d have some time to do other things. But you said no. You’d order the part. You’d fit it yourself. Well, if you had, the drawer would be full of shirts. So don’t go blaming me.’
The wretched pedal-bin liner wouldn’t open. I stood there struggling with it as I watched him change gear. The glowering face disappeared and his tone was sweetness itself as he started to explain that he wasn’t blaming me. I just didn’t understand how difficult his position was. Didn’t I grasp what a big responsibility this new Antrim contract was? Couldn’t I see that he was run off his feet, he was so busy? And just how important it was for his future. He couldn’t really use office time to make domestic phone calls, now could he? Besides, he was out on site so much. Surely I didn’t expect him to be responsible for everything, even his own shirts.
Something about that rapid change of expression, perhaps, or something about that sweet-reasonable tone made me angrier and angrier. At one point, I nearly threw the roll of pedal-bin bags at him just to get him to stop. But I managed not to. Instead, I insisted he had plenty of other shirts. That he could have checked last night he had exactly the shirts he wanted. At the very least, he could have checked before he and Neville made both the kitchen and the bathroom unusable.
‘Why on earth did you have to invite Neville in on the evening before a conference anyway?’ I ended angrily.
‘Because I prefer not to spend all my time working, unlike some people,’ he threw back at me.
‘Unlike some people?’ I repeated furiously. ‘And what about these last three weekends? Who was working then?’
He went quite white, but I scarcely noticed as the pent-up resentment of the last weeks poured out of me.
‘Entertaining your wretched uncle from Australia because Maisie thinks he might just leave you something. And the bloke from British Steel, who might just wangle you a contract,’ I shouted. ‘Or maybe that doesn’t count as work because you could relax and wave your cigar around just like your father does while I lay on the meals. I suppose you think that’s what women are for. And I suppose you think I enjoy providing cut-price entertainment for McKinstry Brothers instead of having some time for us, like any working couple.’
Recalling the violence of my outburst, I shivered, although the room was now pleasantly warm. I looked at my watch. Ten fifty-five. The row had gone on for an hour or more. I ended up weeping from pure exhaustion. Colin apologised, insisted he loved me. Just wanted me to be happy. It would all be much better soon, he said. He thought he could promise me that. It might even be he would have some good news when he came back on Sunday night. Of course I was right about the shirts. They did look a bit creased but he’d manage with the blue ones. I was far more important than any old shirts.
So we’d made it up, and at half past midnight I got out the ironing board and did the bits of the blue shirts that showed. Going halfway, my father would call it. He always argued you have to go halfway to meet people, because we all make mistakes sometimes. No one’s perfect.
Eleven o’clock. Warm at last, I took off my coat and went and sat by the phone. Driving into Belfast this morning, Colin insisted he hadn’t told me about the early start because he didn’t want to upset me. He thought I mightn’t sleep as well if I knew we had to get up early. Hadn’t he done his best to help me, when he had so much on his mind? Didn’t I see how important this weekend was to our future?
I could see why it was so important for him. That was easy enough. After all, he’d talked about nothing else for weeks. He thought it would be the moment when his father offered him the directorship. And that was where our future came in, because it would mean more money, as he so frequently told me, besides the perks of his own office and a company car. Things would be easier for us. Of that he was sure. Why, I could even have my own little car, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice for me?
Outside school, he put his arms round me and kissed me. ‘I’ll phone you tonight between ten and eleven. I promise. Just as soon as I get away from the evening session.’ He drove off and I went slowly up the steps into the cold and empty building to put myself together for the day’s teaching, a full nine periods, most of them with examination classes.
The phone rang a long way off. Colin. At last. I set out to answer it, but I couldn’t find my way. I hurried, but didn’t seem to get any closer. Its peremptory ring got louder and louder. I struggled on. Tripped over things in the darkness. My basket. My briefcase. Then a pile of saucepans, which fell down and made a noise even louder than the phone. I woke up and found myself in bed, the room pitch black.
Colin’s alarm clock was still ringing its head off. And it was on his side of the bed. Desperate to stop the appalling racket, I fought my way through the tangled bedclothes, grabbed it one-handed and squashed its ‘Off’ knob against the crumpled pillow. I lay back exhausted, my heart pounding, the strident, metallic sound still vibrating in my ears.
I stared at the cold object in my hand, a wedding present from one of Colin’s friends. ‘Extra loud’, it had said on the box. A curtain of exclamation marks had been added. I was supposed to find it funny. Five forty-five, I read on its luminous dial. Yesterday’s early start. That wasn’t funny either. I just stopped myself flinging the wretched thing at the bedroom wall.
I switched on my bedside lamp, put my hands to my face and moaned, ‘Oh, couldn’t he have turned that bloody thing off instead of the central heating?’ Tears of anger and frustration sprang into my eyes. I’d so needed a good night’s sleep but the few hours I’d had were restless and dream-haunted.
Colin’s promised call hadn’t come till after twelve. The phone box he’d chosen was horribly noisy and the moment he spoke it was clear he only wanted to say he’d try again tomorrow, when he had more coins. I’d asked him to reverse the charges and quickly told him about the job and having to decide by Monday. But he couldn’t have heard properly. All he said was, ‘Well, if Monday suits you for doing it, that’s fine by me.’ Then I heard a voice call out. A woman’s voice. Very bright and sharp. ‘Do hurry up, darling, the taxi’s waiting.’ And he said, ‘Sorry, Jen, no more money. It’s all going fine, just fine. We’ll have a chat tomorrow,’ and hung up.
I sat up in bed and caught sight of my reflection in the glass-fronted wardrobes that lined the wall opposite me. I hardly recognised myself.
‘Stop it, Jenny,’ I said firmly. ‘That way madness lies. It’s dark and you’ve had a bad night. Don’t think. Act. Do something. Anything. Don’t dare think till you’re feeling more like yourself. Come on. Get going. You’re wide awake and you may as well make the best of it. Shower. Breakfast. One thing at a time.’
I turned my face up to the shower’s warm rain and felt my anger drain away. I let the water play on my aching shoulders and imagined my tension washing away down the plughole like so many slivers of metal. I shut my eyes and saw a sandy beach lapped by blue sea. A coral reef shut out the crashing breakers of the ocean beyond. In the sun-warmed waters of the lagoon, I could dive down and follow the flickers of tiny fish, jewel-bright against the pale silver sand, the fine residue of the reef beyond, swept in by the pounding waves.
Reluctantly, I emerged from my reverie and reached for a towel from the heated rail. The towel was cold, damp and smelly.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said as I dripped across to the airing cupboard for a dry one. The statement was purely rhetorical. It was only too easy to believe the towel rail had finally packed up. It had been on the blink for months. I pulled open the cupboard door, put out my hand for a bath sheet and swore vigorously.
Pushed in among the piles of towels, the bed linen and the table linen was an enormous glass bottle full of seething, yellow-green liquid. The bath sheets were squashed up against the wall behind it. As I reached past the intruding object, the airlock made a loud, hiccupping noise and released a tiny puff of foul-smelling gas. Only a few seconds later, it did it again. Even I knew it was going too fast. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before it blew out the airlock and spewed its contents all over everything. Unless, of course, as Colin had done, I turned off the central heating to keep it happy.
I scrubbed myself dry, ran back into the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Suddenly the penny dropped. All that racket on the stairs, on Thursday night, and the great jokes about straining your privates. Neville in his element and Colin egging him on. That’s what they’d been up to. And not a thought of ‘Do you mind?’ And now I was left to work out what in hell’s name I was going to do about it, given there was no way I could move the damn thing.
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Anne Doughty
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: ‘An engaging story of opportunities lost and refound’ Express Can love help her through the most difficult decisions? When Jenny McKinstry is offered a new post as the Head of English at her Belfast school she’s elated! Yet she can’t help but feel conflicted about the position. With all those around her mounting the pressure to start a family and her husband’s career about to take off, Jenny feels bound by an overwhelming sense of duty. Will she be able to support her husband’s ambitions and land her dream job… Prepare to be spirited away to rural Ireland in this stunning new saga from Anne Doughty. Previously published as A Few Late Roses. Readers LOVE Anne Doughty: ‘I love all the books from this author’ ‘Beautifully written’ ‘Would recommend to everyone’ ‘Fabulous story, couldn′t put it down!’ ‘Looking forward to the next one. ’