by Anne Doughty
‘You’re in luck, children,’ she cried. ‘Aunt Mary’s sent us down our butter. Shall we make some toast with yesterday’s bread?’ she asked, as she peered at the other large item, her own baking bowl that contained chopped-up potatoes.
For a moment she was puzzled. The potatoes were not peeled but they had been cut in pieces.
‘Of course,’ she said to herself, smiling as she remembered the message Daniel had made the two boys memorise earlier in the day when they’d sat in the sun at playtime. She tried to recall it: You’ve divided up a whole lot of numbers and planted some rows of words … if your potatoes do as well you’ll have plenty to put aside for the winter… Well, something like that, she decided, as Sam asked if he could fill the kettle for her and Rose began to fetch mugs from the dresser.
A moment later, Patrick appeared at the door, his face streaked with sweat, a second, slightly smaller baking bowl in his hands.
‘Da, are ye plantin’?’ cried Rose.
‘Can I come and help you, Da? asked Sam. ‘When we’ve had our tea and toast,’ he added quickly.
Patrick kissed them all and then met Hannah’s gaze.
‘We got finished quicker than we thought and yer man let us go early,’ he explained, ‘an’ I foun’ yer father’s letter waitin’ on the table. Ye’ve not looked at it yet,’ he went on, glancing at the brown envelope, sitting just where he had left it. ‘He wants us at the end of next week.’
Hannah’s heart sank. ‘So soon?
‘Aye, well it’s not far off the usual. The season’s a wee bit earlier in your part of the world, but I thought I’d better make a start on the tatties, seein’ we’ve a wee bit more groun’ since old Hughie died.’
She nodded and took the water bucket from Sam who had fetched it from the cupboard. There was just about a kettle full left in the bottom. The seed potatoes and the plans for next week could all wait till they’d stirred up the fire, made the tea and sat round the table exchanging the news of the day from Casheltown and Tullygobegley, over toast and Aunt Mary’s butter.
Chapter 5
Cutting the seed potatoes to create an ‘eye’ in each portion was not a very skilled job, but Patrick, always cautious by nature, and knowing the children would want to help as soon as they came home, had made sure they were done properly by cutting the pieces himself and leaving them ready on the table.
Now, when he went back to the work of planting the main crop, Rose and Sam followed him, knowing exactly what they had to do. As he turned over the soil, they would place the cut portions, eye side up, where he pointed. Without their help the continuous bending would have made the job both painful and exhausting.
Hannah was grateful that the children were now old enough to help him with the planting. As she began to clear the table and think what needed doing next, she was equally grateful that she had an empty kitchen. There was quite enough to do to catch up on the day’s tasks, but now she also had to give her mind to all the extra things that needed doing to get ready for Patrick’s departure.
Part of her mind was indeed focused on what had to be done right now – making up the fire, fetching drinking water and washing water and making champ for their supper – but, try as she might, she could not stop thinking about the experiences of the morning.
She had been quite amazed at Daniel’s capacity to teach so effectively despite his disability. She’d always assumed Marie had done most of the work and Daniel had confined himself to Irish history and storytelling. Then she thought of how amazed she’d been to find he had such a command of English. But, most of all, what simply would not leave her mind was the unbearable thought that should he not manage to get his pension reinstated, he’d not only have to give up the school, and his dream of teaching his pupils English, but he might have no option but to go into the workhouse.
And then her eyes fell on the napkins, still waiting to be hemmed.
The napkins were the least of her worries. It was true that the draper, expected tomorrow, would not pay for an incomplete dozen, but given the rest of her month’s work, baled and wrapped ready in the dust and smoke-free safety of the bedroom, that was no cause for worry. She’d almost finished her full assignment. He would take all she had done, make a note of the missing four and pay her for that complete dozen when he came next time.
When he handed over the money for this month’s work, she’d already have enough to pay for the meal and flour they bought regularly, the milk from her neighbour and the butter from Aunt Mary. The delayed income on the final dozen would not leave her short this month.
She took a deep breath and tried to collect herself. She reminded herself that it was not just a question of money. She always felt anxious and unsettled when Patrick was going away and this was the way it usually showed itself. She’d simply worry quite unnecessarily about something or other.
‘Surely, after all these years, I should be used to it,’ she said aloud in the empty kitchen.
Of the two of them, she was the more practical one. She was certainly better at ensuring they always had enough money for food and the essential clothing for Patrick she couldn’t make herself, the heavy trousers and the underwear he needed till the weather got warmer, the boots that got such hard wear, the cap he wore both winter and summer.
Compared to most of their neighbours, especially those with five or six children, they were well off. She saved in the summer when Patrick sent home money every week and had it by her if there was no work for him over the winter. Of course, this last winter there had actually been some work on the roof of the farmhouse at Tullygobegley so she had not had to dip into so much of last summer’s savings.
Sometimes too, her father sent her a gift of money after the harvest, but this she never used. The gold coins rested in a small fabric bag she’d made for them and were kept in a box that had a place in the hard earth under their bed.
Patrick had smiled and shaken his head some years back when she’d asked him to dig a hole to hide the old wooden box. Sometimes, since then, he would make her laugh by suggesting some extravagance like a new dress for her, or a waistcoat for himself. Then, knowing he was joking, she would say: ‘But if I did that I’d have to get you to dig under the bed.’
She smiled, feeling easier, as she peeled the last of the potatoes for supper and went outside for the handful of scallions to chop up and mix in with them when they were cooked and mashed with Aunt Mary’s butter.
‘Come on, Hannah,’ she said to herself, as she waved to Patrick and the children at the far end of the garden. ‘Why don’t you just accept that you wish he didn’t have to go, so you could share your bed every night and have the comfort of his arms?’
*
Supper was later than usual that evening and both children were so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open while they ate. They’d done very well, Patrick insisted. Sure, they were nearly half the way down one side and now they had the whole weekend ahead of them. There was no school and he would have his two helpers for both days. Sure, wasn’t that just great?
Rose and Sam smiled at him wearily, looked pleased and made no protests whatever about going to bed.
‘I don’t think we’ll be far behind them,’ said Patrick, as she came back from tucking them in.
‘You’re right there, love. I don’t think I could thread a needle this evening, never mind hem another napkin.’
‘Aye, ye look tired. Did ye have a busy day?’ he said gently. ‘I wondered where ye were when the house was empty for ye said last night ye’d a batch to finish.’
She looked across at him. His face was still tanned even after the winter, his hair as dark as his eyes that looked straight at her, as they always did, with that gentleness she remembered from their very first meeting when she was only seventeen.
‘I’m going to miss you so much, my love,’ she said, suddenly, surprising herself.
‘An’ sure, d’ye not think I’m goin’ to miss you just as much?’ he replied briskly. ‘It
wou’dn’t be much good, wou’d it, if it didn’t matter all that much one way or another?’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘You’re quite right, but I’d love to have you home all the year round.’
‘Aye, well. I’d need no persuadin’, but sure what is there by way of work here? An’ even if we were in Scotland an’ me not an educated man, I’d still have to travel about the place,’ he said, his voice dropping.
‘Being educated is not the be all and end all of a man. There are other things just as important,’ she said firmly.
He just looked at her as he bent down to the hearth to smoor the fire with turves, so it would stay alight all night.
She watched him placing the turves methodically with his habitual look of total concentration, then got to her feet and lit the small oil lamp to take them to bed.
*
In the end she told him the whole story of Daniel and the school and how he wanted to teach his pupils English. Sitting by the fire, on their few remaining evenings, she didn’t even put out her hand for her sewing bag, but sat enjoying a mug of tea with him as she waited to see if he had yet more questions to ask.
‘An’ if he could get his pension back, wou’d he be able to pay an assistant to take the place o’ Marie?’
‘Well, it would be a start, but then the income from the children is very variable,’ she said steadily. ‘You know Rose and Sam have their two pennies each, every week, and the turf’s not a problem, but there are other children who would be less regular and there must be some can only pay at certain times of the year when there’s less flour and meal to buy.’
‘Aye, it depends, doesn’t it?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘An’ if yer man were to put the rent up, sure that has to come first, or the family’s out on the street! Have ye any idea what to do to help him? Sure, you’re far better at these things than I am. I wou’dn’t have any idea what to do.’
His face was a picture of distress and she longed to be able to tell him it was all going to be all right. But she couldn’t do that. He’d been honest and she would try to do the same.
‘Well, I can certainly write letters for him. But I’d need to know who to write to and what to say,’ she began, laughing. ‘It’s not so much my command of Irish as having to use the right legal phrases and so on. I thought I’d ask our friends in Ramelton. Joseph and Catriona know all the professional people, the doctor, and the land steward, and the minister. I’m sure there must be a solicitor they know as well who would be able to tell me how to go about it.’
‘Ye might have to go under the bed for that,’ he said promptly, a small smile flickering across his face. ‘But it might be worth it. Wou’d ye like to go back to the teachin’ yerself, like ye did afore I stole ye away?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it before,’ she confessed. ‘But like I told you Daniel hoped I might be able to help him out.’
‘I know what yer father wou’d say,’ he went on quickly. ‘That money is meant for you, Hannah, to use in any way you want.’ He looked at her, his usually mobile face almost stiff with concentration, his eyes sharply focused on her. ‘Say the word and I’ll dig it out fer you in the morning.’
‘But, Patrick, we might need that money,’ she protested. ‘What would we do if one of the children needed a doctor? Or if you had an accident, heaven forbid, and couldn’t work …’
‘Hannah, you know I’m not a religious man an’ I only go to Mass now an’ again to keep Aunt Mary and the priest happy, but I think you always know what wou’d be the right thing. Just you send up a wee prayer and you’ll not go far wrong. An’ I’ll do all I can to help, for Daniel’s a good man and I know you’re a great teacher yerself … sure, didn’t you teach me an’ those other young fellas who were with me then long years ago at the farm? Some o’ them had never even held a pencil, or a pen, in their lives before.’
To her great distress, Hannah felt tears stream down her face. She wondered if perhaps, in the firelight, they might not show, but what Patrick did next was unambiguous. He came and put his arms round her, took out his large, crumpled handkerchief, wiped away her tears and held her close.
‘Not a word now,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll go and sleep on it and see what the light of day shows us in the mornin’. You do the lamp an’ I’ll see to the fire.’
*
The remaining days flew by. The potatoes were planted, the draper came and collected Hannah’s consignment of napkins and left her a bale of new ones. Before she’d even counted them, she mended the older pair of Patrick’s working trousers and reinforced the new pair he’d bought in Derry on his way home last autumn. She baked wheaten bread and oatcakes that would supplement what food the men could buy on the journey and threaded new shoelaces into well-polished boots.
Patrick himself went round the house looking for jobs that might need doing. He borrowed a ladder and replaced some worn straw rope on the thatch of the roof ridge just to be sure it would not suffer with summer storms, then he took the donkey and cart and collected turf from his piece of bog to replenish the stack by the gable and build it up as high as it would go in case of bad weather.
One morning he got up very early indeed. He needed to walk over to Churchill to look for the carrier he knew there and catch him before he set out on his day’s work. For some years now, Keiran Murphy had brought his wagon over to the old churchyard by St Columbkille’s tiny, ruined church at the head of Lough Gartan. There he waited till the men from round about who were bound for the Derry boat came with their families. It was the custom when the men were going off for many long months for the family to walk with them and keep them company as far as the church, join with them in asking a blessing and then say their goodbyes.
Now, Patrick paid Keiran a deposit out of the money his father-in-law had sent him and when the day and time were agreed, walked back to Ardtur knowing it would not be long before Hannah would be back there with him to say their farewells.
Hannah had always found both parting and the accompanying rituals hard to bear. She agreed bidding goodbye to the men bound for Scotland was not as sad as when families went to a place like The Bridge of Tears at the back of Muckish, to say what would probably be a final farewell to immigrants bound for America, but she still found the parting weighed heavy, surrounded by weeping women and distraught children.
Patrick had long ago agreed with her that the children should not come, but would go to school as usual, but she knew he needed her to be there with him, particularly so she could meet all his workmates, some of whom were going for the first time. These men and boys would be his constant companions for the next six or seven months. So she would go, she would try not to cry, but as the time grew shorter she longed for the parting to be safely over and Patrick’s first letter to her, written on the Derry boat, secure in the pocket of her apron.
*
The April departure day was cloudy with the odd drifting shower, but there was no cold and the air was so still that the early evening crossing from Derry would probably be flat calm.
As Hannah walked back alone from the stone-built oratory where each man had laid a tiny item on the altar – a coin, or a woven cross, or a card with a prayer on it – she felt a dragging weariness. She blamed it on the early rise and the long walk, but a mile or so from the ancient churchyard she felt a familiar dampness between her legs.
She sighed and knew the first thing she had to do when she got home was to fold a pad of old, torn fabric from the supply she kept in the bedroom and put her stained knickers to soak in cold water before she tried to wash them.
She was glad the door was still closed when she walked wearily up the last rocky slope. No letter on the table, no offering from a neighbour, nothing to prevent her making herself comfortable and then sitting by the fire with a mug of tea.
She did what was necessary and sat down gratefully. Comfortable now, the pain in her back eased by a cushion carefully placed, she sat looking into the fire and found herself overwhelmed with
sadness. For days now she’d been aware that her monthly bleeding was late. She’d had to keep reminding herself not to tell Patrick. If she had told him, he would have been so pleased, and so hopeful, for he had long wanted them to add to their small family. But it was not to be. At least she had not raised his hopes. There was no harm done.
Patrick’s wish to add to their family was not the familiar pressure of a man wanting sons, like her father had, it was a longing for the family he himself had never had. His mother had died in childbirth and he had been brought up an only child, by his Aunt Mary, who had never married. He had longed for brothers and sisters then. It was some time after they were married before Rose and Sam appeared and he had been so delighted.
But their arrival had not happened easily. There were delays and difficulties. Hannah had miscarried several times. She had been reassured by friends and neighbours that miscarrying once, twice, or even three times, before a first child was not unusual. But when that happened to her, Patrick was beside himself with distress.
Sadly, even after the safe arrivals of Rose and Sam there were further miscarriages. That was why she’d been so hoping for this last week or more, that she might carry a third child while Patrick was in Scotland. That would have been such good news to share in their letters. But the stain had made it clear. She was simply late. There was no pregnancy to celebrate.
Suddenly, she felt overwhelmed with weariness and sadness, feeling the emptiness of the house and the long months ahead before Patrick’s return. Whatever this year of 1845 might bring she could now be sure it would not bring the longed-for third child.
Chapter 6
It was a mild, sunny morning a few days later when Hannah, hearing the sound of footsteps, looked up from her sewing and found a tall stranger standing at the open door clearly deciding whether to rap with his knuckles on the wood itself or to use the impressive knocker, the work of a local blacksmith and a gift brought as a welcome present from her Scots friend, Catriona, who lived in Ramelton.