No Peace for Amelia

by Siobhán Parkinson

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary Ann, moving her head awkwardly, still trying to read an item, even as Amelia’s gesture crumpled the paper.

  ‘Mary Ann!’ Amelia sang out again.

  ‘Umm,’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Mary Ann, if you want to read the paper, why don’t you take it into the house and spread it out on the table?’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Mary Ann.

  ‘Only, you’re causing something of an obstruction in the middle of the garden path. The Pim family is on its way to Meeting and it doesn’t want to be late.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mary Ann suddenly came to as if out of a dream. She lowered the paper immediately, beamed at everyone, gave a little skip on the cream and red tiles of the garden path and made her way to the house, shouldering past the Pims saying ‘Excuse me, excuse me, please,’ as she went. When she reached the hall she remembered her manners and called to the retreating backs, now almost at the gate: ‘A Happy Easter to yous all too!’ Then she flung the paper up in the air and did a little jig in the doorway. The Pims, who had turned at the sound of her voice, exchanged amused glances. The spring seemed to be having the oddest effect on Mary Ann.

  Of course, they weren’t to know what it was that Mary Ann had read in the paper, and if they had seen it, they probably wouldn’t have understood its significance anyway. It was a notice from Captain John MacNeill, cancelling all the Volunteers’ manoeuvres for that day, Easter Sunday. This could only mean one thing – the Rising was off! Mary Ann’s prayers had been answered. At least, that wasn’t exactly what she had prayed for, but if she was entirely honest with herself, she knew that was the only way her prayers could have been answered. The Rising was cancelled, Patrick was safe, there would be no bloodshed on the streets of Dublin.

  Her first reaction was one of great joy and relief. But then, almost immediately, another, vaguer feeling began to replace that feeling, a feeling of nagging disappointment. Yes, she knew it was good that there was to be no fighting, it was good that Patrick was still alive and well; but yet, part of her was sorry that the Rising wasn’t going to happen, the English weren’t going to get their comeuppance this Easter Day, and the nagging feeling lingered and grew and filled her mind with cold thoughts like a dark shadow blotting out the sun of happiness and peace that had only just dawned in her. Mary Ann was thoroughly confused. She kept reading MacNeill’s curt words over and over, as if trying to find a hidden meaning in his cryptic message. Why had he cancelled the Rising they had all been working for for so long? Surely it was a waste to have so many men at the ready with guns and ammunition and then to call it all off on the very day it was due to go ahead. He must have been let down in some way. He must have seen the impossibility of it all.

  She sank her head on the paper and tried to squeeze out a few tears of relief and disappointment mixed, but she could not find the comfort of tears, and presently she lifted her head, folded away the fateful newspaper, and started to pack a basket of provisions to take to her family that afternoon. Maybe, now that it was all off, Patrick might call to the family home also, and she could meet him and talk to him and find out what had happened.

  Mary Ann served up the lunch in a flurry of suppressed excitement, punctuated by moments of deep distraction. The Pims didn’t know what to make of her moodiness. At one point, she stood with a dish of glistening parsnips in her hand, her head cocked on one side, and not the foggiest idea that five hungry people were waiting for her to put the dish on the table.

  At last, Edmund said gently: ‘Mary Ann, I got an Easter egg.’

  Mary Ann looked at him as if he had said he’d got a Christmas tree.

  ‘It’s made of chocolate, and it’s all wrapped up.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Mary Ann vaguely, still holding the parsnips.

  ‘Only I must eat up all my lunch first.’

  At last Mary Ann understood and realised she was holding part of poor Edmund’s lunch in her hand. With a cackle she plonked it on the table and said: ‘Well, you’ll be wanting yer veg then, won’t you?’ as if it was all her own idea that Edmund should have the parsnips.

  When Edmund was at last allowed to open his egg, which came wrapped in purple crepe paper and with a large yellow bow, looking like a fat clown with a funny hairstyle and a floppy bowtie, he shared it with everyone, including Mary Ann. She thanked Edmund for her piece and dropped it into her apron pocket ‘for later’. Amelia knew this meant she was saving it, not to eat later at all, but to divide into even smaller pieces and take to her little brothers and sisters that afternoon.

  Book II

  Easter Monday

  It was only afterwards that the wretched irony of it struck Amelia. At the time, she’d thought it a fine and promising omen, as if Frederick himself were speaking to her across the seas and giving her words of encouragement and approval. They were sitting in the waiting room at Ranelagh station, all except Edmund, who was peering out of the murky window in case he missed a single train. Amelia was fussing with their bank holiday ‘luggage’: a large hamper and a pile of mackintoshes and rugs and Grandmama’s walking stick (just in case) and Papa’s large and ungainly camera, which he had insisted on taking. At last she had arranged everything to her satisfaction. She sat back on the funny little wooden bench and stretched her back muscles. It was then that she saw the picture. In fact she looked straight into his eyes.

  It was a young and laughing-eyed soldier whose eyes she met when she straightened her back. He wore his peaked cap so you couldn’t mistake him, and his brass buttons and epaulettes too proclaimed his honourable estate. His merry face was looking out of an image of a Victoria cross. ‘For Valour’ it said. Amelia’s heart rose. What a splendid word! And she read on: ‘Have you no wish to emulate the bravery of your fellow countryman?’ the recruitment poster asked her. Oh yes, yes, Amelia said in her heart. This was a far more heart-warming poster than the one she had seen before, with Frederick, on that Sunday outing and Amelia was quite seduced by it. This was her idea of how a soldier should be.

  What was Frederick doing now, this minute, in distant France or Flanders? she wondered. Did they observe bank holidays in the war? No, silly; she shook herself inwardly. Wars are too important for bank holidays. But at least it must be Easter there too. Oh happy feast!

  Just then Mary Ann caught at Amelia’s elbow and whispered excitedly, ‘Look, look.’ Mary Ann was in unaccountably high spirits today and was clearly determined to enjoy her day out. Amelia followed Mary Ann’s gaze, over the top of Edmund’s bright head and saw through the little window a wedding party – of course, it was Easter Monday, the whole world’s favourite wedding day – coming scurrying along the platform. The bride was young and breathless in a striped cream and green costume, the jacket with large round buttons big as pennies and covered in a matching fabric, and the skirt elegantly cut and sweeping, a sprig of orange blossom done up with a lacy ribbon in her hair so you knew she was a bride, and carrying a spray of rosebuds. She was accompanied by a not much older man in a suit slightly too large for him, wearing a nosegay in his lapel so you knew he was a bridegroom, and a gaggle of people in what looked like their best clothes.

  The bridal couple were both laughing, and they waved their arms about a lot and touched each other shyly with little feathery touches. Could they be off on their honeymoon still in their wedding finery? Perhaps that was all they had to wear. But they didn’t seem to care. They just looked at each other and brushed each other’s hands and laughed, though neither of them seemed to say anything to make the other laugh. Amelia gazed on them with a sudden longing in her heart. She didn’t quite know what it was she longed for, but whatever it was, these two young people had found it. She turned to Mary Ann, and they both smiled the same slightly self-conscious, sentimental smile.

  The wedding group passed on, still laughing, still scurrying, the bride putting her hand to her head to make sure her headdress was still in place, and holding the gleaming, satiny folds of her skirt up from the grimy floo
r of the station with the other hand. Amelia looked back to the poster, as if to smile at the young soldier portrayed there, to include him in the tender moment, but the elation she had felt a moment ago when she read its rousing message had seeped away. In its place was a dull emptiness in her insides, and she felt a sudden desire to stretch out on the wooden form in the waiting room and close her eyes and rest her limbs. She looked then at the hamper and thought she couldn’t face its enticing and delicious contents.

  By the time they got to their picnic spot, however, her appetite had returned, and she ate with gusto, like the rest of them. They’d only got a little way up Bray Head, but Papa said the hamper was dashed heavy and he had already dragged it from Albert Walk, all the way along the blue and orange splendour of the promenade and halfway up the side of a mountain, and he was blessed if he was going to carry it any further, and Mary Ann, who was puffing as she dragged the hamper by the other handle, said she felt exactly the same and sat down with a sudden movement and great conviction on a boulder and started to fan her face with a dock leaf. Grandmama was pretending to be using her stick to beat down the springy heathers and prickly whins, but Amelia thought she leant on it rather a lot too. She was feeling hot and sticky herself under the weight of all the rugs and things, and Mama was carrying the camera very awkwardly. Only Edmund, unburdened, skipped ahead and found his footing with ease on the well-worn path.

  ‘Oh come on, you others, do get a move on!’ he commanded at intervals, pausing to look over his shoulder at the straggling party behind him.

  But this time they shook their heads and hallooed at Edmund to come back. Amelia found a nice patch of springy ground among the trees off the path and Mama confirmed her choice by immediately diving into a carpet bag she was carrying and spreading a blue and white check cloth on the earthen floor. The cloth rose up like a sail under Mama’s hands, as a playful little breeze caught it, and then it sank with a graceful billowing movement onto the pine-needle-soft ground. Amelia and Mary Ann found some large, heavy stones to anchor it, and Grandmama scattered rugs and coats about for people to sit on. Papa, recovered now from his toil with the hamper, put up a knowing finger to test the direction of the wind and then moved off a bit to light his little campfire in the shelter of a moss-covered boulder, while Amelia and Mama unpacked the goodies. Mary Ann exclaimed and squealed over everything as it was unpacked, even though she knew precisely what was in the hamper, as she’d helped Amelia to pack it that morning. But she was determined to extract her full quota of delight from this lovely day.

  Papa cleared a patch of well-packed earth of its carpeting of needles and then built a small airy wooden pyramid on the clean-swept earth. In a moment the womenfolk could hear crackling as the fire caught. Papa came back to the main settlement to get his billycan, and, putting Mary Ann under strict instructions to mind the fire, set off in the direction of the sound of a stream to fill his can. The sharp smell of burning wood drifted across the hillside, camouflaging the earthy, piney scent of the little grove where the family gathered and the distant salt tang of the sea, and Mary Ann sang as she poked ecstatically at the fragrantly burning wood, wielding her makeshift wooden poker like a sabre and slashing at the fire. ‘Get back, you divil you,’ she could be heard to cry at intervals, stamping furiously on any sparks that dared to escape the fire onto the surrounding earth.

  By the time the billycan was settled on the fire, on a funny little tripod Papa built out of thick branches which he said wouldn’t burn through before the water had boiled, Amelia had the feast all spread out on the cloth. Her splendid fish mould in the shape of a fine finny fish had got a bit jostled on the journey, and some of the tomato-slice scales looked a little mushy, more like a rather robust tomato ketchup than elegant slices of the fruit, but the stuffed-olive eyes were most realistic and everyone admired it wonderfully. Mary Ann spread butter, which had been carried in a small earthenware jar, on thick slices of soda bread for everyone, and Mama produced a fine leafy salad to complement the main course. They had slices of cold beef marbled with fat as well as the fish mould, and mustard out of a little pot with a dear little china spoon. It was the same china spoon they always used for mustard, but somehow it looked more appealing here on the side of a mountain, daintier and sweeter than it ever looked on the dining table.

  When they’d all eaten their main course, washed down with Seltzer water for the grown-ups and lemonade for Edmund, Mama scraped the scraps onto a torn-open paper bag and Amelia wrapped it all up and then twisted the little parcel into a greasy knot which she tossed into the hamper. Mary Ann stacked the sticky plates cheerfully and ran the knives and forks into the good sweet earth to clean them before tidying them all away. Then came a cold steamed chocolate pudding, in glass sweet dishes Mama had carefully wrapped in tea-towels against the journey. Somehow she had managed to transport a bowl of ready-whipped cream, covered with an ingenious cap devised of greaseproof paper and string. The cream was a little on the warm side, and runny underneath, but nobody minded, and they all had second helpings.

  Then Mary Ann laid out the cups and the milk in a naggin bottle on the tablecloth, but the billycan still hadn’t boiled, so they were going to have to wait for their coffee.

  ‘Just time for a family photograph!’ Papa declared.

  Edmund clapped his hands at this news and executed a little dance, like a highland fling, only in knee-britches instead of a kilt, and inadvertently stood on the tablecloth.

  ‘Shoo, Edmund,’ cried Mama, brushing impatiently and ineffectually at the footprint with the side of her hand, and Edmund immediately changed from a highlander to a chicken and ran flapping and clucking about out of reach of the farmer’s wife’s hand.

  While he worked at setting everything up, Papa explained the principle of light photography to Edmund who had stopped being a chicken and had put on a scientific face and nodded gravely at intervals, though Amelia was sure he didn’t understand any of it.

  Then they all posed dutifully, Grandmama sitting on the hamper, Edmund at her knee, and Amelia and Mama behind. Mary Ann stood aside, but Mama beckoned to her to join them.

  ‘No, no,’ she muttered, ‘it’s a family snap.’

  ‘Oh, Mary Ann, you’re practically family,’ said Mama kindly. ‘I’ll tell you what. You join in this one, and then for the next one, my husband will show you how to operate the camera, and then he can join in the pose and you can take the picture.’

  Still Mary Ann hung back, embarrassed, and also rather alarmed at the idea of having to operate her employer’s extraordinary machine.

  ‘Mary Ann!’ said Edmund. ‘There’ll be a gap in the photograph if you don’t join in.’

  ‘Oh very well then,’ said Mary Ann, and sidled up beside Amelia.

  She stared at the camera’s glass eye and wondered what sort of expression to put on. Amelia stared too, and thought of the face of the young man on the poster and tried to emulate his smile. Perhaps she could ask Papa to get an extra print made of the picture that she could send to Frederick to keep him company. Grandmama didn’t think much of photography, but she didn’t like to criticise, so she sat stonily, looking beyond Papa’s shoulder. Mama looked thoughtful, as she often did, and sweet-faced too, as always. Only Edmund smiled a wide and winsome smile and thought excitedly about how the picture would look.

  ‘Watch the dickie-bird!’ cried Papa. ‘And say cheese everyone.’

  ‘Cheeeeeese!’ they all said dutifully, but it didn’t really make them smile. The thoughtful ones still looked thoughtful and the distracted ones still distracted. They just looked thoughtful or distracted with their mouths slightly open. Amelia knew this, because she saw the photo later (though she never did get to send a copy to Frederick), and afterwards she often looked at this picture and tried to conjure up that momentous day, to remember what it had felt like on that blessed and sun-warmed Easter Monday afternoon on the mountainside, before any of them knew how momentous it was. None of them knew then that by the time the
photographs were developed, everything would have changed so completely.

  It was evening when they arrived back in Dublin, tired and dishevelled from their climb and their journeying. After the photographs, everyone except Mama and Grandmama had climbed on, to the top of Bray Head to see the view of Dublin across the bay and the Wicklow Mountains to the south. It had not been an arduous climb, but the weather was warm and they were hot and footsore by the end of the day. As the train chuffed into Bray railway station, the sun was going down and the cool of the evening was settling over the town.

  The train was packed with holiday revellers, and most people were as unkempt and weary-looking as they. The babble of voices in the carriage was to be expected with such a crowd, but it seemed somehow to be particularly relentless and intense his evening, as if people had a great deal to say to each other. Amelia and Mary Ann chattered away together for most of the journey home and giggled at things each other said and generally behaved as young girls do when they are free from work and cares and have had plenty to eat and lots of exercise and fresh air. Because they were so involved with each other, neither of the girls heard any of the rumours that were flying up and down the carriage, but Mama and Papa and Grandmama heard things that made them grimace and exchange worried and puzzled glances.

  At the station they all piled out and went to queue up for the tram, but there was no sign of one, and people told them there hadn’t been a single tram car all afternoon.

  ‘Well, bother, bother, bother!’ exclaimed Amelia in great exasperation. ‘I’m really too tired to walk. It’s too bad of them. Is it Mr Martyn Murphy and the workers quarrelling again, Papa?’ She was remembering a dispute that there had been some years before between the owner of the tram company and his workforce, which had led to very serious industrial trouble and no public transport for some time in the city.

  But Papa didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Everyone had a theory as to the reason, but nobody really seemed to know what was wrong. There had been some sort of trouble, that much was clear, but it didn’t seem to have anything directly to do with the trams.