The Hawthorns Bloom in May

by Anne Doughty

  ‘You will, be damned,’ said the cabby furiously, pulling on the reins to turn the cab away from the barricade, just as Sarah was getting down.

  As the cab rocked violently, she held on to Sam’s hand and jumped. Landing awkwardly, she tipped forward and just managed to avoid falling headlong as a loud report rang out just beside her. She felt something whiz past her like an angry insect and a moment later there was a scream of agony as the horse pitched forward on its knees, blood pouring from its wounded leg.

  Clinging desperately to the roof of the cab, the driver managed to slither to the ground just before the poor animal fell sideways, pulling the cab over with it. It lay there, its eyes rolling, emitting heart-rending groans.

  ‘You bloody fool,’ the officer shouted, spinning round and glaring at a pale-faced lad who stood horror-stricken, his rifle still pointed towards them. ‘Put the safety catch on, now, this minute. And get back to work,’ he shouted angrily, as he unslung his own rifle, sighted carefully on the struggling animal and shot it neatly through the head.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said gently, looking down at Helen and Hugh. ‘I love horses, but there was nothing else I could do for the poor creature.’

  He signalled to his men to add the body of the horse to the barricade and use the cab to complete the blocking of the street.

  The suitcases now lay on the road beside them. Sarah shook her head as Sam went to lift the largest one. ‘Leave it, Sam,’ she said quickly. ‘We’ve a long walk back. We can probably manage the two small ones. You take the lighter one and Hugh and I’ll share this one.’

  She put her arms round Helen, whose face streamed with silent tears.

  ‘He didn’t suffer, darling,’ she said, dropping to her knees.

  As Helen buried her face in her shoulder and sobbed, she saw Sam take out his wallet and give some notes to the cabby. Over the noise of men dragging furniture and hammering nails to anchor the strengthening wire, she caught only the odd word, but she saw the cabby nod and look less furious as he pocketed the notes.

  ‘I’ll see ye next week then, sur,’ he said, tipping his hat to him as he turned away. ‘God bless ye, sur.’

  He walked with such a very bad limp, Sarah wondered if he’d been wounded in the Boer War.

  ‘Now, darling, dry your eyes,’ she said, stroking Helen’s long hair back from her damp face. ‘We must go home and see how Auntie Lily is. She’s all by herself and she won’t know what’s happened.’

  Helen sniffed, accepted Sarah’s hanky and collected herself.

  ‘I don’t think she’ll be frightened,’ she said thoughtfully, as Sarah took her hand and led her to the pavement where Sam and Hugh stood waiting. ‘But she might be lonely. And she’ll wonder where we’ve all gone.’

  They walked in silence, two by two, trying to keep in what shadow there was as the afternoon grew hotter and hotter and dazzling light reflected back at them from streets and buildings. The noise of gunfire was sporadic and mostly distant, but several times they saw a shop, or a house, being occupied as they passed busy road intersections.

  An officer, usually a young man, like the one in charge of the barricade, would knock on the door and explain that the building was needed for the security of the new government. The inhabitants were given the option of leaving, or retreating to the back rooms or the cellar.

  At one handsome three-storey house, there was no one at home but a very young maid. She stood at the open door, trembling, a small figure in black with a white cap and a minute white apron, staring at the heavily-laden figures who confronted her.

  ‘Away and get your coat and go home to your Ma,’ said one of them kindly. ‘When they come back from the races, we’ll say we chased you out. They’ll not blame you,’ he said reassuringly, as she hovered in the doorway, close to tears.

  Sarah had no idea how far it was back to Dawson Street. The cab had got up a good speed and they were certainly well on their way to the station when they’d been stopped. She didn’t know the city all that well, but what was certain was that Helen was not a good walker. At the best of times, she tired easily and after her experience at the barricade, this was not the best of times. By now, she was walking so slowly Sam and Hugh were having to stop regularly to let them catch up.

  ‘Let me carry the case now for a bit, Hugh,’ Sarah said, smiling encouragingly.

  ‘No mama, I’m fine,’ he said firmly, as he swung the case to his other side and prepared to set off again.

  ‘Ma, I’m so thirsty,’ Helen whispered, stopping again only a few minutes later.

  Sarah was longing for a drink herself. It was hardly surprising they were all thirsty and hungry. They’d shared the toast at breakfast, a slice and a half each from a modest loaf. They’d only had one cup of tea, which was all the kettle on the fire could produce if they were not to wait indefinitely, and that was a long time ago now.

  ‘How far is it now, Sam?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘A bit yet,’ he said coolly, ‘but there’s a shop that might be open not too far away. A fruit shop. Grapes and oranges and big juicy pears,’ he added, rolling his eyes, so that Helen managed a small smile and Hugh brightened visibly.

  It must have been at least another half mile to the shop. The awning was still out to cast a shadow on the window, which was full of beautiful fruit. Lined up in rows, resting on pink, or white, or silver paper, or displayed in baskets with paper shavings, they saw mouth-watering grapes and melons, pears and oranges. But the door of the shop was firmly shut and barred.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Sam, looking at their downcast faces. ‘It’s not far now. We can take a short cut down the alley behind the hotel and come in the back way. The kitchen door is never locked. There might be some lemonade in the larder,’ he said hopefully, as they turned off Grafton Street into the narrow alleyway that ran behind the Royal Hibernian Hotel.

  There was no lemonade in the larder, but there was plenty of water in the tap. They all stood and drank large glasses before Sam went to look for Lily and Helen, and Hugh ran upstairs to the lavatory.

  It was only as they hurried out of the room, that Sarah noticed a loaf on the kitchen table. Freshly baked, with some of its new bread smell still lingering and partly wrapped in a piece of paper, it had a set of grubby fingerprints on one soft, white side, and a dint in its dark upper crust. She picked up the loaf to examine it more closely and saw lying on the table the same lines of print she’d glanced at quickly in the cab when Hugh passed over the piece of paper Sam brought back from his visit to the post office.

  She sat down abruptly and began to read:

  POLACHT NA H EIREANN

  THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT

  OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC

  TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

  Irishmen and Irishwomen: in the name of God and of the dead generations …

  She broke off as Helen reappeared. Still very pale, but smiling now, she came and put an arm round her mother.

  ‘Ma, I’m so hungry,’ she began. ‘But Auntie Lily is up and dressed and she says there’s sure to be something to eat in the larder. Maureen and Bridget only took one day’s rations so there should be plenty left.’

  Lily was a very optimistic person, but her optimism was not always well-founded. By way of lunch, all Sarah could produce was bread, thinly spread with butter and plenty of damson jam, followed by generous slices of her mother’s Simnel cake. There was tea as well, once the kettle boiled on the hot fire, but there was no more milk.

  ‘My goodness, what a long walk you’ve had,’ said Lily as she finished off her cake. ‘Why didn’t you take a cab?’ she asked, looking from Sarah to Sam and back again.

  ‘There weren’t any to take, Lily,’ Sam said quietly. ‘It seems we are in the middle of a rebellion.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I was afraid something unpleasant was going to happen. Poor Willie told me last week he might not be able to come to our Thursday painting session,’ she said sadly, ‘and now, I suppose
he’s in the post office with his brother and you say it’s all barricaded up.’

  ‘Who’s Willie, Auntie Lily?’ asked Helen promptly, her delicate colouring and good spirits restored by her unusual lunch. ‘Is he one of your young men?’

  Lily laughed merrily.

  ‘Yes he is, Helen,’ she said smiling. ‘One of the painters. Willie Pearse. Not a very good painter, but a dear boy. I just wish he wouldn’t follow his brother everywhere he goes. He won’t like it one bit in the GPO if its all barricaded up and there are guns going off.’

  ‘Sam, dear, did you say you’d seen Maureen and Bridget going in, as well?’ Lily asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes, I did. There was a whole group of Cuman na mBan, loaded down with stuff. I think they were carrying first aid kits.’

  ‘Oh you don’t think anyone will get hurt, do you?’ she said, with a look of startled amazement.

  Sarah busied herself with the empty tea cups and left it to Sam to reply. Lily’s vagueness and unrelatedness could sometimes be endearing, but the look on Sam’s face suggested he was having difficulty keeping his impatience in check.

  ‘Well, provided the British Government doesn’t take it amiss that they’re being attacked in time of war and don’t bring in troops and artillery to clear them out, they ought to be all right,’ he said steadily. ‘Did Maureen and Bridget leave you a note then?’ he went on quickly, hoping to turn the conversation before either Helen or Hugh joined in.

  ‘Oh yes, dear girls,’ she said smiling. ‘They left it under my paint-box,’ she explained, waving her hand towards a table with a half-finished water colour. ‘They said they’d been mobilised, whatever that means, and they’d each taken a day’s rations. They said they’d pay me out of their wages for their rations and they hoped I’d be all right until they came back in a few days time.’

  Sam sighed and bent forward to make up the fire. It might be hot outside, but the sitting room was now in shadow and getting uncomfortably cold. As he placed lumps of coal on the fire, a burst of gunfire broke the silence in the room. It went on for some time, during which no one said anything.

  ‘Well, how about some Scrabble, Helen?’ said Lily easily. ‘Perhaps, Hugh, you’d like to play too. I can finish my painting later.’

  She stood up and moved her drawing board aside to make a bigger space between her collection of Chinese porcelain bowls.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Sam, ‘Sarah and I will just do the washing up and see what we’re going to have for supper.’

  He picked up the tray she’d just loaded and headed for the kitchen, leaving her to follow with the other half of the Simnel cake. ‘What are we going to do, Sarah? he said anxiously, as she shut the kitchen door behind her. ‘We can’t survive long on that cake and things can only get worse.’

  ‘In what way, Sam?’

  ‘Well, it might only be a matter of hours, a day or two at the most, till the fight starts,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The British will send in the troops to clear out the rebels. A lot of people will be caught in the crossfire.’

  He dropped his eyes sadly and caught sight of the proclamation which she’d smoothed out and begun to read at the kitchen table.

  ‘There’s something I couldn’t tell you, Sarah, on our way to the station.’

  He paused awkwardly and studied the crumbs on the bread board where Sarah had carefully cut a thin slice from the loaf to remove the dirty finger marks.

  ‘I think I know where the loaf came from,’ he said, nodding at the crumbs. ‘On the way to the GPO I saw a group of uniformed men stopping a bread cart. I thought they were just buying loaves for their own use, but I think now they probably requisitioned the lot, like the cab and the furniture.’

  He paused and Sarah felt herself grow unbearably tense. To her surprise, he dropped down in one of the kitchen chairs, his eyes glistening with tears as he buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Sarah, I saw Brendan there in St Stephen’s Green with Michael Mallin. I’m sure that’s who sent the loaf.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When Rose drew back the curtains on Easter Monday a beautiful spring morning greeted her. Immediately, she thought of all the jobs that would be so much easier to do on such a bright and fresh day. With John at Millbrook until early evening she had a clear run right through the day.

  ‘What a lovely day for the races,’ she thought, as she put out crumbs for the birds.

  It would be so good for them all to have a real treat. She sighed. Perhaps in Dublin, with Lily and her friends there wouldn’t be so much talk about what was happening in France.

  Sometimes she felt all people ever talked about these days was the war, especially since the Ulster Division had left for the front and rumour circulated that a big offensive was being planned for the summer.

  However hard she tried, the steady flow of men from the four mills lost in action depressed her spirits, and now there seemed no prospect of an end to it. At the beginning of the war everyone had clung to the hope that a man reported missing might reappear, but now they all knew, that except in very rare cases, it meant they’d been killed, for the worse the battle, the less chance of burying the dead, and there would be no comrade to remove the identification papers.

  ‘But should you not put it out of mind?’ Rose asked herself, as she came downstairs with the first pair of curtains for the wash.

  If you thought about it all the time, it was much harder to laugh. And that seemed wrong. Losing your capacity to laugh was only going to add to the weight of the burden, not help you to support it. But if you didn’t keep in mind what was happening at all, what did that say about you?

  That was the sort of question she always put to her dear friend Elizabeth as they packed parcels, or knitted socks, for the local Red Cross to send to the front. The sort of question she could never resolve to her own satisfaction.

  She smiled to herself as she lifted the first kettle of water from the stove, carried it through to the deep Belfast sink in the dairy and shivered as she felt the chill of the dairy envelop her. She turned on the tap, stood back as the powerful stream of icy, cold water splashed droplets on her apron and turned it off quickly. An inch or two was all she needed.

  John had been talking about building on at the back of the house, enlarging the dairy and putting in a boiler that would give hot water and feed two radiators. He said he noticed the cold more, now he did less physical work himself, but she’d always felt the cold, so it must be worse for her. Back in the summer, she’d made light of it, but after another winter, she had to agree with him.

  Suddenly and unexpectedly, she thought of their very first meeting. By the side of Currane Lake, he’d climbed up a hillside to ask for her help, the coach he was attending halted in the hot sun, one of the horses having lost a shoe. She’d been so reluctant to come down to talk to a young man wearing a coat at least two sizes too small for his broad shoulders.

  Standing in for one of Sir Capel’s regular grooms, he’d laughed when she pointed it out. ‘Shure a blacksmith niver needs a coat.’

  She drained away the dirty water, well satisfied with its dark colour, and began rinsing the pretty patterned curtains till the water ran clear, letting her thoughts run on over all the long years of their time together. They’d shared such happiness and such sadness. She’d known too many couples who’d grown out of love as time went by, others who’d replaced love with resentment. She gave thanks that John still loved her, even to thinking about her red hands on cold mornings when she rinsed clothes in an unheated dairy.

  By the middle of the morning, all the curtains were blowing on the clothes line. She dried her damp hands on her apron, chose a small tea pot from the dresser, made tea, and sat down gratefully by the fire, wrapping her red hands gratefully round her mug to warm them.

  ‘It’s desperate quiet without Sarah.’

  Only the previous evening John had put his newspaper down and spoken the words. She’d almost laughed, the image of the turbulent you
ng girl who blew into the house like an East wind conjured up before her, but the look on John’s face was no laughing matter. Bereft almost, as if Sarah’s absence opened up a silence he could hardly bear.

  ‘Yes, you’d miss her popping in, or hearing the motor on the hill,’ she replied gently.

  ‘Ach, I know it’s only a couple of days this time, but I was thinkin’ of when she goes for good, as surely she will. An’ harder on you love, than me, with you here at home all the time.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll miss her,’ Rose agreed calmly. ‘And the young ones too, though it’s only in the holidays they’re in and out every day.’

  ‘I was thinkin’ that maybe when she goes, we might move to Dromore,’ he said abruptly. ‘There’s some nice houses there, not far from Elizabeth and Richard. Ye’d have more company and less hard work keepin’ the place right. We’re not gettin’ any younger, ye know.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough, love,’ she agreed, hiding the surprise she felt that he should have been thinking ahead in this way. ‘I suppose it would all depend on who we got in Rathdrum. I don’t think Sarah would want to keep it lying empty for most of the year and she did say Simon was very likely to be posted abroad.’

  John nodded silently.

  ‘Like enough she’ll sell it,’ he said sharply. ‘There’s nothing worse than property left empty, even though we’d keep an eye on it. Is there any word of Simon gettin’ his call back home? She says he’d applied for it before the war started. That’ll be two years in August.’

  ‘I think the war changed everything, John. In the ordinary way, he’d have applied and been moved in a couple of months perhaps, but if there was no one else to do his job in Petersburg, he’d have had to stay. Not every man at the Foreign Office speaks Russian and German and French.’