by Anne Doughty
‘Do ye not now?’ he asked more sharply. ‘I wonder now why that might be, for he thinks so well of you. He often says how good you’ve been to him and how much he likes talking to you. He thinks he’s very lucky to have someone like you when he’s so far away from his own family. And indeed, I see his point,’ he added, breaking off to greet each of the small group of pupils arriving together from further up the valley.
‘Have you all had a bite to eat?’ he asked.
Hannah saw the look of concentration as he listened for a ‘no’ or a missing response. Daniel’s hearing was very sharp.
‘And what about you, Sean?’
The reply was muffled. Daniel was not satisfied.
‘Now then, Sean. I may be blind, but I am not deaf. Did you say “not much”?’
Sean nodded and then realised that was no use to Daniel either.
‘There was only a crust left and no milk, except for the baby,’ he said slowly.
‘Anyone else?’ Daniel asked, looking severe.
Hannah watched the faces as they chorused, ‘No, sir.’
‘Now then, Sean,’ he said more gently, ‘go over to Missus Delaney and tell her I sent you for a bite to eat. Take your time. We’ll not start anything new in class without you.’
Hannah watched Sean run off and waited till the other children dispersed.
‘Is that a new one, Daniel, or has it happened before?’
‘It’s happened before,’ he replied, nodding. ‘Not often, but it has happened. Would you take a walk over to Bridget Delaney at lunchtime and ask her if she knows anything I don’t know. The family may need more help,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Glad you’re here this morning, Hannah; she’ll tell you more than she’ll ever tell me.’
While Rose and Sam sat in the sun eating their piece with the other children, Hannah went over to Bridget, a kind-hearted woman, who, like herself, sewed napkins to supplement the postal orders her husband sent from London where he worked on building sites for most of the year.
‘Indeed, Hannah, the poor chile was hungry indeed. I’d say lookin’ at him eatin’ that slice of bread and jam I give him, he maybe hadn’t had anythin’ last night either. I haven’t had time to go over to see Teresa for a day or two, but I did hear tell there’s lay-offs even in London, forby Liverpool and Glasgow. Maybe she’s had nothin’ in the post this week. More’s the pity of her.’
‘Oh dear,’ sad Hannah slowly. ‘You’re probably right. Can you manage to give him a bowl, or a bagful, to take home? Is the sack holding out?’
‘It is. There’s corn in Egypt yet, as the sayin’ is, but it’ll not go much further. Maybe just another week, if I’m any judge of it. Are we due yet for another one?’ Bridget asked, her face failing to conceal her anxiety.
‘Not sure, Bridget dear,’ Hannah said, not wanting to worry her unless she had to. ‘I’ll check with Daniel and let you know on Friday. It’s John who organises these things, but Daniel has it all in his head. He always knows exactly where we’re up to on deliveries, even if John and I have both forgotten,’ she said easily, trying to reassure the older woman, even if she was fairly unsure herself.
The afternoon classes were underway and the buzz of voices flowed out on the still and warm air. Daniel was sitting in the sun where she had left him, just finishing his piece.
‘Well, Hannah,’ he said, as she approached. ‘Have we another family in need?’
‘Looks like it,’ she said, dropping down beside him. ‘Apparently there are lay-offs even on building sites in London. Did you know that?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he said soberly. ‘These days, there’s so much Irish labour around that men can walk miles in a day looking for jobs they’ve heard about and then find they’ve gone by the time they get there.’
‘I didn’t know that, Daniel,’ she said sadly. ‘Bridget has meal for tonight for Sean to take home, but she said the sack is low. Are we about due for a new one?’
‘Not till August, I’m afraid. I know it’s school holidays but we were still planning to carry on with the pieces. Are you telling me we’re likely to run out of meal and flour?’
‘I think it does look likely,’ she said sadly, the weariness of her busy morning working with the children catching up on her, as she remembered the washing and cleaning awaiting her at home.
‘Now don’t you worry yourself, Hannah,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘You sound tired. Away home now like a good woman and sit down and sew a couple of napkins till you’ve rested yourself. I can worry about this one till I see you again on Friday. Then you can take over and worry for us both,’ he said, making a gesture of shooing her away.
She laughed, as she stood up and looked down the rocky path, catching the sparkle of the lough behind the hawthorns, their snow of blossoms now gone, clusters of green berries already beginning to change colour. ‘That’s a fair deal, Daniel. I’ll give it a try,’ she replied, as cheerfully as she could manage, before she set off down the rocky track.
*
She was thinking of a large mug of tea and hoping that the neglected fire might still have a few bright embers, when coming up to her own front door she caught sight of something that scattered her thoughts completely. There, in an old black pot full of mint was a small red geranium with one floret wide open and a number of surrounding buds showing colour, prior to opening themselves. It was a rich, strong red, enhanced by the background, the textured, fresh green leaves of common mint.
‘Oh, you little beauty,’ she said aloud, as she bent to touch the dappled cream and green leaves of the cutting she had planted the previous year and forgotten all about.
Now, she looked down at the bright eye and remembered the broken fragment she’d found on the path after a night of wind that had toppled a large pot and rolled it up against the wall of the potato garden. The main plant was battered, but still in its pot, even if much of the soil had spilled out. This broken fragment had been too healthy to throw away, so she had simply made a hole with her finger in the space at the front of the small, undisturbed mint pot, pressed it into the moist earth and completely forgotten about it.
She straightened up as her back began to protest, immediately thought of painting it, then laughed at herself. Not only did she not have any paints of her own, but she hadn’t touched watercolour for years, except to show Johnny how to lay a wash when he won his prize. She stopped, looked again at the vigorous bloom and wondered about Johnny. Would he give flower painting a try if she asked him to, or would he think that painting flowers was only something girls did?
Well, she said to herself, no need to speculate. Dermot would be here in a couple of hours’ time. She might find the small, black pot heavy to carry up the hill, but he wouldn’t. He could take it under his arm and judge for himself what it was best to say when he got there.
She went in and caught the fire just before it went out. She was still just as thirsty and longing for that mug of tea, but feeling much better than she had felt walking back from school. A flower blooming in spite of all that surrounded it.
*
It was only after she’d had her tea, sewn a couple of napkins and was about to begin making bread for their supper, that she noticed the envelope on the table. She picked it up hastily, turned it over and saw a familiar Scottish postmark. Waves of anxiety hit her when she studied the handwriting. It was neither her father’s, nor Patrick’s.
Something must be wrong. Her father must be ill, or perhaps it was Patrick who was ill and one of the other men from the valley was writing to tell her. Certainly, it was handwriting she had never seen before. Panic-stricken, she tore the envelope open so fiercely that a slip of paper fell from it unnoticed as she unfolded the single, large sheet of writing paper she pulled out.
She was somewhat surprised that the letter was written in English.
Dear Mrs McGinley,
I am requested to write to you by some men that you will know as they are colleagues of your husband, Patrick.
; There is a slight problem with what I need to say next. Something happened last week that they do not wish me to speak about. Your father, Mister Mackay, would be angry if he knew, but the men tell me that you would not give them away and get them into trouble. Sadly, a number of them went drinking and got involved in some betting. You will understand if I do not give you the details of this enterprise. It took place some distance away from their work on their weekly half-day holiday.
Thanks to a kind man who saw how drunk they were and offered to let them sleep in his barn, they were able to sober up and arrive back early next morning so that Mr Mackay did not know the details of the outing. They offered a generous amount of money to their host who had also provided them with breakfast. When he enquired about the money they were offering they confessed about a wager, which they had won. He asked them what they were going to do with the money.
It seems that they didn’t know what to do and were somewhat at a loss as to how to dispose of so large a sum without owning up to what would most certainly cause difficulties, if not actual dismissal. The kind man, whom I think may have been a minister, suggested sending the money to someone they could trust who would use it well and not give them away. He also suggested that they ask me to write a letter on their behalf.
I hope I have adequately explained the awkwardness of the situation and I enclose the money order provided for them by the gentleman in question.
I am, madam,
Your faithful servant,
Andrew Campbell (Teacher)
For a moment, Hannah was panic-stricken.
‘What money order?’ she said aloud, as she stepped back from the table. She saw it flutter to the floor from the folds of her skirt, caught it up, looked at it in total disbelief, and burst into tears.
The money order would not only provide for the needs of the school, but also keep up the supply of meal and flour for the valley, for months and months to come.
Chapter 19
There was much less sunshine as the days lengthened, though the grasses and trees still flourished along with drifts of buttercups and bright-eyed daisies and the fresh new growth on the heather. But increasingly the weather became damp and muggy with little sunlight managing to break through the low cloud.
With the downturn in the weather disappeared all hopes for the few remaining potato crops that hadn’t already showed signs of blight. Except in a very few counties in the north-east of the country, workhouses began to fill and newspapers were reporting scenes of appalling distress as people queued for food, anywhere it was known to exist, or where it had recently been made available.
Hannah, whose own anxieties about the food supply for the school and their neighbours had been mercifully quieted by the extraordinary intervention of an unknown man in Galloway and the behaviour of a small group of drunken harvesters, listened as calmly as she could to the occasional outbursts of her young colleague, John McCreedy.
John had always seemed to Hannah to be a kind and gentle young man, and he most certainly showed no change in his dealings with Rose and Sam and the other pupils in the school, but in the last few months, on the now rare occasions when they were alone together, he relayed the news from Sophie’s papers with an anger bordering on fury.
Unlike Hannah, who found the arguments of politicians and the Westminster Parliament utterly depressing, John studied the speeches and letters in all the newspapers he had access to, taking to heart the material and quoting accurately from what he had he read.
Hannah listened, as he condemned the things said by politicians. They were, he insisted, a weak and divided government and were doing as little as they could to help the situation. Some of them had even been heard to say that the famine was ‘God’s judgement on the idle Irish’.
‘How can you call a man idle,’ he said, his voice rising to a quite unaccustomed pitch, ‘when his labour is so utterly limited by the small amount of land he has? How can he be other than “idle” when there is no other work he can turn to, no matter how much he might try?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Could Westminster not at least stop both Irish and British merchants from profiteering?’ he demanded. ‘They just use the shortages to increase their prices week by week and no one can lift a finger to stop them!’
Hannah couldn’t disagree with what he was reporting, as much of it was already being said by other friends, some who spoke in sorrow rather than in anger, but she grew increasingly anxious at the bitterness with which he spoke. It reminded her of the way he had once spoken about ‘the English’ when she had first known him. She wondered what could have happened to bring back the particular bitterness he was now expressing.
Since his return from his visit to his grandparents in Galway the previous year, he had been sharing the evening meal with her and the children as had been agreed when he became Sophie’s lodger, but for months now, he had not lingered to talk afterwards as he had previously done.
At first, she assumed that it was out of good manners, or his kindly commitment to Sophie who so enjoyed being read to, or even his own obvious commitment to his work at school. Anything they ever decided to do in school always had John’s full backing. He regularly prepared plays, and readings, quizzes and spelling competitions.
Of course, that all took time, as she herself well knew, but as the weeks passed and he still hurried away after saying a polite ‘thank you,’ and making sure, once Patrick had gone in April, that there was nothing she needed, like pails of water or creels of turf, she decided at last she must find some opportunity to ask him if there was anything wrong.
Time seemed to pass so quickly. She herself always had a list of things to do for school, another list of letters she wanted to write, a pile of napkins to sew, as well as all the household tasks. Then, to her surprise, on a lovely summer evening, the light just beginning to fade into a golden dusk, the children in bed hours ago, she looked up from her sewing to find John at the open door, poised as if he weren’t sure whether to knock or not.
‘John, I thought perhaps you had work to do this evening,’ she said easily. ‘Could you drink a mug of tea? I was just thinking of making one.’
He nodded and watched her put down the kettle and stir the fire.
‘Hannah, I’ve had some news,’ he began hesitantly. ‘It was waiting for me after supper, but Sophie put the envelope on the mantelpiece and then forgot about it until I noticed it myself, just a little while ago,’ he said awkwardly.
To her surprise, he pulled out a single, large sheet of stiff, good quality paper from his pocket and handed it to her. The heading was embellished with a design of shamrocks and Irish wolfhounds and the Dublin address laid out below was in embossed letters. She had to read it twice before she began to grasp what it was saying.
‘So, they actually want to publish what you’ve written?’ she gasped, staring at him open-mouthed.
‘Well, they say it won’t be for at least a couple of months,’ he said sheepishly. ‘There was also a note apologising for the delay in replying to me, but, as far as I could find out, this publisher is a very small concern and has to rely on grants and subsidies. If they’d had funding they could have let me know sooner about my submission. When I didn’t get any reply, I just thought they didn’t want to be bothered and hadn’t the decency to return my manuscript.’
‘And all those long weeks you were waiting, they were passing your work round folklorists and established researchers, it says here.’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking yet more awkward. ‘I got very upset about the delay. I know now I should have told you – you’d have understood how I felt, but I couldn’t face it when I was so angry. Please forgive me, Hannah. I can’t think why I was so silly.’
‘Now, John, there’s nothing to forgive,’ she said firmly, as she finally realised why he’d gone on disappearing so promptly after supper even in recent months. ‘There you were, working away every night after your day’s work in school and reading to Sophie. Going through all those stories you’d col
lected, looking at the patterns and themes and producing a manuscript. You didn’t just send them stories, you made “a valuable analysis of the patterns and form”. That’s what they say here,’ she said, looking back at the letter.
‘My goodness, John.’ She paused to make the tea. ‘What a labour of love, and by lamplight as well, for most of the time. No wonder you got upset when there was no response. So, what will you do now?’ she went on, surprised that he was taking an actual offer from a publisher so calmly. ‘Would you think about going to Dublin and looking for a research post? With your first book behind you, you should be able to find something that would pay you to go on with what you clearly are so good at.’
‘No,’ he said firmly, looking at her directly for the first time. ‘My job is here. I’m not giving that up, but now,’ he added, with a wisp of a smile, ‘I’m not giving up the stories either. If someone doesn’t do it, they’ll be lost,’ he went on steadily. ‘As Daniel always says: Once they’re gone, they’ve gone forever. That’s why I was so angry – I thought no one cared any more about our history and traditions. It was like my father all over again, just thinking about the present, and about money. That’s why I avoided Dermot Donnelly, to begin with, when I heard he was trying to find Johnny a place as a servant. Servants aren’t exactly given time to “paint wee pictures” are they? But just think of what a talent would have been lost if his father had managed what he wanted.’
Hannah watched him carefully. She’d never noticed that he’d avoided Dermot, who had by now become a good friend of both Patrick and herself. She tried to remember back to that day when she’d first gone to speak to Johnny’s mother and Dermot had appeared at the door later with the packet of drawings. She would never forget how distraught the poor man was when he admitted he couldn’t see any way of feeding his family. Once that anxiety was taken away, his whole personality seemed to change.
She wondered if there was any way she could remind John that Dermot was a very different person now, that anxiety can change and distort how a person thinks and behaves.