by Anne Doughty
As Mary O’Donoghue fell in beside her, Hannah gathered her straying thoughts and asked the children how many scholars there currently were in their school.
Neither Rose nor Sam were very sure about the number, but Mary, a year or two older than Rose, was quite clear about it. There were fifteen on the roll, she said, when they were all there, but mostly they weren’t all there at the same time. She explained that often pupils couldn’t come if they were needed at home, for driving the cow to the fair or planting the tatties.
‘But that’s a good thing, Mrs McGinley,’ she went on, as Rose and Sam fell silent. ‘If they were all there, the wee ones would have to sit on creepies. Mr McGee doesn’t like that, but there’s only room for twelve on the chairs and benches.’
Hannah nodded her agreement. The low, homemade stools might be all right for listening to a story, but they certainly weren’t suitable for any written work, or even reading aloud comfortably. She was surprised that there could be any thought of fifteen in a kitchen not much bigger than her own.
Moments later, as they turned off the main track and walked the short distance up to Daniel’s house, she saw Daniel himself waiting near the open door. He was greeting each child as they appeared.
‘Hannah, you’re welcome,’ he said warmly, holding out his hand to her before she had even opened her mouth.
She was completely taken aback. Of course he knew her voice, and he was well known for knowing everyone’s footsteps, but how did he know she was there when she hadn’t yet said a word?
‘Good morning, Mary; good morning, Rose; good morning, Sam,’ he went on briskly, then, taking her arm, he led her towards the stone seat where he sat so often when the evenings grew lighter.
‘I’m heart glad you were able to come,’ he said, as the three children ran into the big kitchen that served as the classroom. ‘I’d be even more glad if you could see your way to helping me out, but we’ll not say a word about that yet. Marie is going to start the work indoors and then she’ll come out and tell you how we manage between us and what we each do. I don’t want to give you a false picture. It’s hard work, I confess, but then you’ve never been afraid of that or you wouldn’t have married your good man. Is he still working on that house up at Tullygobegley?’
*
They sat and talked as old friends do, for Daniel was one of the first people she had met when she came to Ardtur. Patrick had taken her to meet him one evening when they’d been back only a week or so. She’d found a house full of people, not one of whom she yet knew, but Daniel welcomed her warmly, made her sit beside him by the hearth and introduced her new neighbours one by one with a story about each of them, or a joke. Then he had told a long, traditional story after which he encouraged his visiting neighbours to sing, or to recite.
There followed many evenings at Daniel’s house before the children were born. When he had someone with a violin, or a penny whistle, he’d insist the young ones take the floor. Once, indeed, to please him, she had taken the floor herself with Patrick to learn ‘The Waves of Tory’.
She would never forget that evening: being passed from hand to hand by young men in shirtsleeves, dipping her head below raised arms, making an arch herself with a new partner, and all the time the lilt and dip of the music mimicking the flowing waves.
Hannah’s regular visits to Daniel were interrupted when she had her first miscarriage and then again when Patrick went back to Scotland. It was only a week after his departure when Daniel himself came to call on her. He told her that he still expected to see her, Patrick or no Patrick, whenever she could spare the time.
So she had walked up there on her own, or joined with another neighbour from Ardtur, for the long months when Patrick was away in Scotland. And so the year turned and Patrick returned. But it was only after two more miscarriages that she finally managed to carry Rose to full term. Then, there could be no more evening visits for her until Patrick was at home over the winter.
But Daniel made it clear that he was not prepared to be deprived of her company for all those long months. If she could not come to him in the evening because of little Rose, then he would come down and visit her in the afternoons. That is what he then did, almost every week.
Sometimes he brought a book and asked her to read to him, sometimes they just talked, but always he asked her about ‘home’, her father, her brothers and sisters, their lives, their travels and their families. Slowly and very intermittently, he told her something about his own unusual background and how he came to have a formal education that included Latin and Greek.
It was while Rose was still a baby that he came one afternoon to tell her of a decision he’d made. He said that since a young man who took pupils had left the adjoining townland quite unexpectedly, there was now no school anywhere nearby. He had decided that unless he did something himself, a generation of children would grow up on the mountainside who could neither read nor write. He was going to start a school and he needed her advice as well as her encouragement.
Chapter 3
As the morning passed and the sun climbed higher, Hannah felt the warmth on her shoulders for the first time that year. Her spirits rose as, first Daniel, and then Marie, came to sit beside her on the stone bench a little way from the open door of the cottage, where the table and benches had now been rearranged and set up to serve as a schoolroom.
She was aware of the murmur of children’s voices. Like the hum of bees, it reflected the pattern of the morning’s activity, the sound oscillating but never intruding on the conversation she was having with whichever of the two teachers was sharing the stone bench with her.
It was Daniel who came first, joining her after he had conducted the roll call. She had heard him clearly as he called out the names and then less clearly as he asked his questions about the pupils who were missing. He explained later that he always asked those present about the absentees, whether they were needed at home, or on the land. If they were ill, then he wanted to know who was looking after them and whether there was any question of a doctor having to come.
Daniel’s first comments to Hannah when he joined her on the bench were on what they were trying to do with the children, encouraging them to speak out, to pay attention to other people, to ask questions and find out things for themselves. Marie, who came a little later, offered her detailed descriptions of each of the pupils, including Rose and Sam.
Hannah listened with growing interest and admiration. She was impressed by the way in which they dealt with the range of ages and abilities in the children who had come to them. There were several little girls barely five years old and some big boys already twelve. They were the ones most often absent if there were potatoes to be harvested or produce of any kind to go to market.
Daniel and Marie had managed to work out an overlapping pattern where the older children helped the younger ones and encouraged them to read aloud and recite the poems Daniel had taught them. At the same time, those who’d been present were asked to share what they’d been doing with those who’d been absent. Everyone was persuaded to talk about what they’d been doing at home, what visitors had called to see them and what answers they’d had to questions they’d been given by way of homework, things they could ask their parents, or other members of their family.
Daniel and Marie both said in their different ways, when they took their turn to talk to her, that they’d not realised to begin with how good it was for their pupils to be required to help each other in this way and what beneficial effects the shared activity had produced.
‘Shyness has little educational value,’ Daniel declared, when he sat down again after he’d taken a session on spelling. ‘These children need to be able to communicate with other people whatever their rank or status. We’re trying to develop their confidence. That way they can begin to educate themselves, however many, or few, their school years might turn out to be.
It was Marie who shared with her the surprise they’d had when they discovered Daniel’s inabil
ity to see could be turned to good purpose. Each new achievement of an individual, or a small group, was brought before Daniel, for it had emerged very early on, that once a child grasped fully that he could not see, then he or she saw for themselves the need to explain exactly what they’d done. The effort of explaining, telling him what letters, or words, they had learnt, what information they had found out at home, had meant that among other benefits there were no problems of behaviour, nor of bullying, such as might occur in a traditional school.
Hannah had to smile when Daniel referred to his own memory and what a resource it had been to him. She remembered so well when she and Patrick first visited his home on their arrival together from Scotland how amazed she had been listening to the first of the long, complicated stories he told.
Now, it seemed, Daniel used the gift to benefit each one of the pupils.
When they had to report to him on some lesson they had learnt, or information they had found out, he would respond by offering encouragement, then remind them of something else they had recently achieved. He’d continue by telling them a joke or asking a riddle. He would then ask more questions. He’d encourage their answers and if they didn’t have one, he’d ask them to go away and try to find one. They could ask other pupils if they wanted to, parents, or people they knew, or they could begin by looking up the indexes in the small selection of books they’d been given by a visiting English lady.
At one point, Daniel admitted freely that when they began their work in the schoolroom they’d been concerned his blindness would be a serious problem and put too great a burden on Marie, but they’d quickly come to see how facing the problem had actually shaped a way of working they might otherwise never have discovered.
Shortly after noon, the pupils all came outside carrying the pieces they had taken from their satchels. Hannah waved to Rose and Sam, then watched Mary O’Donoghue as she left her piece with Rose and came to ask the three adults if they would like mugs of tea. She and her friend then went and made it, Mary carrying it back outside to them on a tray, her friend carrying the milk jug separately so it wouldn’t spill on the clean tray as they moved over the bumpy ground.
Hannah was impressed and said so. Daniel smiled and said nothing. Marie and Hannah sat watching today’s class of twelve finish up the last crumbs of their lunch and begin their half hour of playtime. Some of them walked down to the lough shore in the hope of seeing the swans, others fetched a book and sat reading in the sunshine, and some played marbles on the flattest piece of ground they could find. Two of the older boys came and said they were sorry they had to go now. They explained they were needed at home to help plant the new crop of potatoes.
Hannah studied the two boys as they talked to Daniel. Scantily dressed, but robust, they smiled at him as he listened to them and then gave them a message for their parents.
‘Tell them,’ he said, pausing for effect, ‘you’ve divided up a whole bag of big numbers with Miss McGee this morning and planted a few rows of new words forby. If you do as well with your potatoes, you’ll have plenty to put by for the winter.’
Hannah had to smile when he got each of the boys to repeat his message until he was sure they had it word-perfect. Then he told them both to be sure to come tomorrow, even if it wasn’t for the whole day.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said one. ‘We’ll do our best,’ said the other, and they ran off cheerfully to pick up their battered satchels, which now contained only a pencil and an exercise book, all trace of the morning’s piece having disappeared. As they said their goodbyes she suddenly felt quite overwhelmed by sadness.
She was back in the grey stone school in Dundrennan where her sisters had sat before her. In that school, there were plenty of pencils and pens and a monitor to fill their inkpots when they practised their writing in copybooks. Behind the teacher’s desk there was a cupboard full of books, as well as those they each had in their satchels. There were proper wooden desks, and chairs, and maps, and pictures, hung around the walls. But in that Scottish school, where she herself had worked for three years as a monitor, the children were often too anxious to speak, even when asked a question during lessons.
‘Silence was golden’ indeed, in that school. If pupils were ever caught talking at any time except ‘playtime’ they would most certainly be caned.
But then the master, Mr McMurray, was a rigorous, older man who had no great love of children. In his youth he had wanted to be a minister but he had failed in his examinations to get enough marks in theology. The mistress was an elderly spinster whose favourite word was ‘discipline’.
The contrast between the two schools was stark indeed. While the parents of children in the small farms around Dundrennan were not particularly well off, their school was entirely free of charge and no child came to school hungry. Here on this mountain, where the meagre soil occurred only in patches, and parents struggled to feed their families, the pupils had little equipment to work with in this makeshift school, but Hannah was now absolutely clear in her mind they had something valuable that had been sadly lacking in Dundrennan.
She felt herself grow thoughtful, as memories of happy times with her sisters when she came home from school continued to flood back. She remembered how they had encouraged her to paint, and embroider, to read aloud to them and write poems. How fortunate she had been.
As they sat together in the warm sunshine enjoying the last of their tea, Hannah decided it would be much more fitting to celebrate all that Marie and Daniel had achieved in this unlikely situation, than regret what might be missing.
She had so many questions she wanted to ask in the remaining minutes of playtime, she hardly knew where to begin, but when Marie came and sat down again after picking up and comforting the littlest girl who had fallen and cut her knee, Hannah told Daniel she had one question, not of an educational nature, that just wouldn’t wait any longer, as she’d been puzzling about it all morning.
‘And what would that be?’ he demanded, turning towards her, his blue eyes twinkling in a way that seemed to suggest he ‘saw’ more than most sighted people.
‘Well, you did ask me to come when I could spare the time,’ she began, looking at him and smiling, ‘but you greeted me this morning before I’d even said a single word. How did you know I was there?’
‘Shall I tell her, Marie, or shall I keep it a secret?’ he asked, leaning towards his niece with a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I was wonderin’ about that myself?’ Marie replied promptly, her large, dark eyes opening wide.
‘Well then, if I have double my usual audience, my vanity will always get the better of my inherent modesty,’ he said, smiling and turning from one to the other and then seeming to rest his gaze on Hannah.
‘It is entirely a process of deduction,’ he began. ‘I heard footsteps and recognised Sam, and Rose, and Mary, as I would always do, when they walk towards me. But, I then observed that Sam was not talking to Rose in the way he usually does. Mary, however, had just finished making a comment that I did not hear properly, but I deduced from her tone that it had not been addressed to either Sam, or Rose, but probably to an older female companion. The most likely candidate was you, Hannah, my dear. You have a way of inspiring confidence in young people. And you are a very good listener. Don’t you agree, Marie?’
‘I do indeed, Uncle Daniel,’ she said warmly. ‘If I knew Hannah was going to come and help you here I could go off happy,’ she went on, turning to Hannah herself. ‘You see, Hannah, I think my Liam is really thinking of America when it comes to the bit, but he knows I don’t want to leave Uncle Daniel and the scholars if there’s no one to help him, so he’s not admitting it,’ she said, shaking her head.
Hannah looked away, touched by the real concern in her eyes. She knew, in that moment, that however much thought she should give to taking this new opportunity being offered to her, some part of her had already decided.
A handful of children in an out-of-the-way place in a
remote westerly corner of Ireland, with few prospects of work, or betterment, and no one apart from their ill-provided parents concerned for them. How could she turn her back on them any more than Daniel had, if there was anything she could do to help?
At the end of playtime, when Marie rose to go back to work, Hannah decided she needed some time to herself. She had not intended to stay so long and had brought no piece to eat. If she went back home she could have a bite by the fireside, and come back in time for Daniel’s story, which always ended the school day.
She was concerned that neither Marie nor Daniel had had anything to eat themselves, but when she mentioned it to Daniel he explained that he preferred his piece after playtime, while Marie was at work with the children. Marie, he explained, would have a cooked meal waiting for her at her mother’s house as soon as school ended, so she only brought food when her mother was away staying with one of her sisters.
One thing was very clear to Hannah as she walked back home to Ardtur and stirred up the dying fire – and that was how well Daniel and Marie worked together. She tried to remember how long it was now since they had begun their work. She counted on her fingers. Rose had been six and Sam not quite five. Rose was now nine and Sam just eight, so it was three years ago.
Perhaps she had thought it was longer because the children going to school seemed such a permanent part of their life, like the visits of the draper from Creeslough who collected her needlework, or their walks up to see Patrick’s Aunt Mary, ‘over the hill’ in Drumnalifferny, or her own visits to the much older couple she had met in Ramelton. The wife had once lived in Dundrennan, though that was long before Hannah was born.
It was when Hannah stood up to go and wash her mug and plate that she noticed the two envelopes on the table. One had been delivered by hand and she recognised the familiar brown envelope without needing to open it. It was the quarterly request for rent. The other envelope had a Scottish postmark and was addressed to Mr Patrick McGinley. The writing was just as familiar as the style and shape of the brown envelope had been. She picked it up and looked at it closely, her eyes filling with tears, staring at it as if there was something the envelope itself could tell her. But she already knew what the letter would say. It always said exactly the same thing.