by Anne Doughty
‘Clare,’ he gasped, relief spreading across his face as he spun round and clasped her in his arms. ‘I thought you hadn’t made it. I was down at the gate to meet you.’
‘I thought you would be, but I couldn’t see you,’ she explained, shaking her head. ‘The plane was full of large men. All I could see was business suits.’
He laughed and clutched her more firmly. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to let you out of my sight for a very long time,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve been going mad for the last hour.’
He stopped and looked sheepish as he released her.
‘I know I’m silly, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you again,’ he began. ‘Now tell me, did you have a good flight?’ he went on, making an effort to collect himself.
‘Not entirely,’ she replied honestly, as she smiled up at him. ‘In the end, it was quite wonderful, but I had a bad time too. There was thick cloud and I kept thinking about what happened to us two years ago. And then, when I did get here I couldn’t find you either.’
‘Pots and kettles,’ he said, his blue eyes shining, as he kissed her again. He dropped his arm round her shoulders and held her close as they made their way downstairs to the empty carousel.
She laughed, delighted by the familiar phrase. It was one she’d learnt from her grandfather. She could hear him now, see the wry look on his face; ‘Shure them two are always right, one’s as bad as the other, and when they give off about each other, it’s the pot callin’ the kettle black.’
All the pots and kettles at the forge house were black from the smoke from the stove. They’d have been even worse when they were hung on a chain over an open fire, as once they were in the days before there was a stove at all. Like everything else she had shared with Andrew from her life with her grandfather, he’d remembered it.
‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ she replied, offering him back the phrase his mother would have used.
For so many years, they’d exchanged words and phrases as they’d explored their very different life experiences. While Clare had never moved beyond ‘her teacup’, a small area round Armagh itself and her grandparents’ homes, Andrew had spent most of his time in England. He had been born at Drumsollen, the big house just over a mile from the forge, where his grandparents had lived, but after his parents had been killed in the London blitz, the very day they had taken him over to start prep school, Andrew was seldom invited back. Only when his grandfather, Senator Richardson, insisted on his coming, did his grandmother agree to a short visit.
‘Here, let me carry that,’ he said, reaching out his free hand for her cardboard box.
‘No, I’m fine. It’s not heavy.’
‘What is it?’
‘My wedding dress.’
He laughed and shook his head. ‘My dear Clare,’ he began with exaggerated patience, ‘it is only seeing you in it before the wedding that brings bad luck, not me carrying it.’
She laughed aloud, relief and joy finally catching up with her as he began to tease her.
‘Well, I’m taking no chances anyhow,’ she came back at him, as the first of the luggage appeared in front of them.
She had arrived and all was well. It wouldn’t even matter now if her luggage had gone to Manchester or Edinburgh. She had her dress. The rest could be managed.
‘So where are we spending the night?’ she asked, as they drove out of the airport.
‘Officially, you are staying with Jessie’s mother at Ballyards,’ he said, glancing across at her.
‘And unofficially?’ she replied, raising an eyebrow.
‘Jessie told her you were arriving tomorrow. Slip of the tongue, of course, but we can’t just have you arriving when she’s not expecting you.’
‘Of course not,’ she agreed vigorously. ‘I’ll just have to come home to Drumsollen with you.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ he said, as they turned on to the main road and headed for Armagh.
The sun had dipped further now, and with the light evening breeze that had sprung up, its golden light rippled through the trees that overhung the road. The first autumn leaves caught its glow and small heaps lying by the roadside swirled upwards in the wind of their passing.
‘Let me, Andrew,’ she said, as they drew up at the newly-painted gates of Drumsollen.
She paused as she waited for him to drive through, looking across the empty road, grateful for the fresh air after a day of sitting in cars and planes. This was where it had all begun, so many years ago. She and Jessie had left their bicycles parked against the wall by the gates while they went down to their secret sitting-place by the little stream on the opposite side of the road. They’d come back up to find Andrew bending over her bicycle. Jessie thought he was letting her tyres down, but Clare had taken one look at him and known that could not possibly be. In fact, he’d been blowing them up again after some boys from the nearby Mill Row had indeed let them down. She closed the gates firmly and got back into the car.
‘I can hardly believe it, Andrew. Drumsollen is ours.’
‘God bless our mortgaged home,’ he said, grinning, as they rounded the final bend in the drive. Ahead of them stood the faded façade of the handsome house where generations of Richardsons had lived, its windows shuttered, its front door gleaming with fresh paint.
‘Andrew! My goodness, what have you done?’ she demanded as he stopped by a large, newly-planted space in front of the house.
‘Parterre, I think is the word,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘But we could only manage half. John Wiley found the plan inside one of the old gardening books Grandfather left him, so we poked around to see if we could find the outline. We knew where it ought to be, because June remembered it from before the war. It showed up quite clearly when we started mowing the grass. What d’you think?’
‘I think it’s quite lovely,’ she said, running her eye over the dark earth with its rows of bushes. ‘Did you choose the roses?’
‘No, not my department,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Given I hadn’t got my favourite gardener at hand, I thought Grandfather’s choice would be more reliable. There was a list with the plan. We got the bushes half-price at the end of August, so I’m afraid there’s not much bloom.’
‘There’s more than enough for what I need,’ she said happily, as they parked by the front door and got out together. ‘Have we time to go up to the summerhouse before the light goes, or are you starving?’
‘There’s plenty of time if you want to,’ he said easily, drawing her into his arms again. ‘June left me a casserole to heat up. I think by the size of it she guessed you were coming, but she didn’t say a word,’ he added, as he took her hand.
They crossed the gravel to the steps that led up the low green hill which hid Drumsollen from the main road and climbed in silence. This was where they had come in April after their unexpected meeting. This was where they had agreed their future was to be together after all.
‘Little bit of honeysuckle still blooming,’ she said, as they came to the highest point and stood in front of the old summerhouse, which Andrew had restored over a year ago, his first effort to redeem the loss of the home he thought he must sell. They stood together looking out to the far horizon. The sun appeared to be sitting on the furthest of the many ridges of land between here and the distant Atlantic.
‘Clare, do you remember once saying to me that you loved this place, that you wanted to be here, but you’d be sad if you never saw anything beyond these little green hills?’ he asked quietly.
‘No, I don’t remember saying it, but I’m sure I did,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s true, of course. And you always did pay attention to the really important things I said.’
‘Makes up for my other unfortunate characteristics,’ he added promptly.
She turned towards him and glared at him until he laughed.
‘Sorry. I’m not allowed to refer to my less admirable qualities.’
‘Oh yes, you can refer t
o them if you want, but you are not allowed to behave as if they were real.’
‘But they feel real,’ he protested. ‘I’m no use with money. I can’t stand sectarianism, or arrogance, or injustice. What use is that in the world we’ve got to live in?’
‘Andrew dear, it only needs one of us to be able to do sums. I’ve had a holiday from the things you’ve been living with. I’m not ignorant of them, just out of touch. Does it matter?’
‘No, nothing matters except that we are together. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said to spoil your homecoming. Here of all places, where we were so happy last April.’
Clare looked at him and saw the distress and anxiety in his face. She thought of the little boy who’d been told on his very first day at prep school that he had lost his parents. ‘Andrew, my darling. We both have weaknesses. Look at the way we both got anxious when I was flying. With any luck our weaknesses won’t attack both of us at the same time,’ she began gently, taking his hands in hers. ‘Let’s just say that between us we’ll make one good one.’
He nodded vigorously and looked away.
She knew he was near to tears but said nothing. He’d been taught for most of his life to hide his feelings; it would take many a long day for him to be easy even with her.
They stood for some time holding each other and kissing gently. As the sun finally went down, they stirred in the now chill breeze and noticed that the sky behind them had filled with cloud. A few spots of rain fell and sat on the shoulders of Andrew’s suit until she brushed them off.
Clare laughed. ‘We’re going to get wet,’ she said cheerfully, as they turned back down the steps to the empty house below.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s been doing this all day. We’ll be fine. And what does it matter anyway,’ he added, beaming, as he put his arm round her. ‘We’ll be all right, come rain, come shine.’
Two
The little grey parish church built by the Molyneux family in the early 1770s for the workers on their estate at Castledillon, and their many tenants in the surrounding farmlands, sits at the highest point of the townland of Salters Grange. Not a particularly high point in effect, for the hills of this part of County Armagh are drumlins, low rounded mounds, their smooth green slopes contoured by moving tongues of ice that reshaped the land long ago, leaving a pattern of well-drained hillsides and damp valley bottoms with streams liable to flooding at any season after the sudden showers carried by the prevailing, moisture-laden west wind from the Atlantic, a mere hundred miles away.
Despite its modest elevation, the church tower and the thin grey spire above has an outlook that includes most of the six counties of Ulster. From the vantage point of the tower’s battlements, you could scan the surrounding lowlands, take in the shimmering, silver waters of Lough Neagh and, on a clear day, penetrate the misty blue layers of the rugged hills of Tyrone to glimpse the far distant mountains of Donegal.
From the heavy iron gates that give entrance to the churchyard, the view is more limited, a prospect of fields and orchards, sturdy farmhouses with corrugated iron hay sheds and narrow lanes leading downhill to the Rectory, the forge or the crossroads. Through gaps in the hedgerow, a glint of sun on a passing windscreen marks the line of the main road linking the nearby villages with their market town, Armagh, dominated by the tall spires of the Catholic cathedral and the massive tower of the Protestant one, regarding each other from their respective hills.
On this bright September afternoon, the sun reflecting off the grey stone of the tower, the gates stand open, a small, battered car parked close by, as two women make their way up to the church door, their arms full of flowers and foliage.
‘You divide them up, Ma, and I’ll get out the vases,’ said the girl, as she lowered her burden gently on to the pedestal of the font. ‘Aren’t they lovely? Where did Clare get them?’
‘Sure, they’re from Drumsollen,’ June Wiley replied, watching her eldest daughter finger the bright blooms. ‘Hasn’t Andrew and your Da replanted one of the big beds at the front?’ she went on, as she began to strip green leaves briskly from the lower stems. ‘They’ve half of it back the way it was in the old days when the Richardsons had three or four gardeners,’ she added, with a little laugh. ‘You’ll see great improvements at Drumsollen. Mind you, that’s only the start. They’ve great plans, the pair of them. They’ll maybe take away some of your trade from the Charlemont.’
‘That’ll not worry me after next week,’ Helen replied cheerfully. ‘I’ll have my work cut out keeping up with all these Belfast students cleverer than I am.’
‘Now don’t be sayin’ that,’ June replied sharply, as Helen lined up a collection of tall vases. ‘Sure didn’t Clare go up to Queens just like you’re doin’ and look where she’s got to. Just because you come up from the country, ye needn’t think those ones from Belfast are any better than you are. Didn’t you get a County Scholarship? How many gets that?’
‘Clare was the first one from round here, wasn’t she?’
‘She was indeed, an’ I’ll never forget the day she got the news. Her grandfather was that pleased he could hardly tell me when I called at the forge to ask. I thought he was going to cry.’
‘Wish he was here for tomorrow, Ma. He’d be so proud,’ Helen replied, looking away, suddenly finding her own eyes full of tears, so sharp the memory of the old man in his soot-streaked clothes.
‘Aye, he would. But the other granda’s coming from over Richhill way with her Uncle Jack. So I hear. But she hasn’t mentioned her brother who lives with them. She talks about the uncle often enough, but the brother I’ve never met. They say he’s kind of funny. Very abrupt. Unsettled. Apparently the only one can manage him is Granda Hamilton. The granny pays no attention to him at all.’
‘Is she not coming to the wedding?’
‘Oh no. Not the same lady,’ the older woman replied, her tone darkening. ‘Apparently she won’t go to weddings or funerals. Says they’re a lot of fuss about nothing. But I hear she’s bad with her legs, so maybe it’s an excuse,’ she added, a frown creasing her pleasant face as she laid roses side by side and studied the length of their stems.
They worked quietly together as the afternoon sun dropped lower and the light faded in the north aisle. June Wiley had always loved flowers and had learnt long ago how to make the best of whatever the gardener’s boy had brought into the big kitchen at Drumsollen. She’d started work there as a kitchen maid, progressed to the parlour and had been instructed in the art of flower arranging by Mrs Richardson herself, a formidable lady known to all the staff as The Missus. It was later that young Mrs Richardson had chosen June as nurse for her son. She was a very different woman from her mother-in-law, warm-hearted and kindly, devoted to her little boy. June herself had gone in fear of The Missus for most of her working life, but she ended up by caring for her right up until her death in the house only eighteen months earlier.
‘Have you seen her dress, Ma?’ Helen asked, as she knelt down and swept up small fragments of foliage and discarded thorns from the step of the font.
‘No, not yet. She said she’d bring it when she came to help me with the food this morning, but she had to leave it behind at Rowentrees. She said she hung it up for the creases to drop out for she didn’t want to risk the iron. I think it has wee beads sewn into it here and there.’
‘I wonder what she’s thinking about today,’ Helen said, half to herself. ‘She used to work at Drumsollen with you, didn’t she, washing dishes and making beds like me at the Charlemont, and now she’s the lady of the house.’
June gave her daughter a thoughtful look. A clever girl she was by all accounts, but she’d always made up stories in her head. That was not something June had much time for, her own life having been hard. She had tried to bring up her three girls so they wouldn’t get ideas that would let them down.
‘Oh, something sensible, I wouldn’t wonder,’ she replied crisply. ‘Oh, she loves him all right, she always has from ever they
met, but she’ll not think of him and her till she’s seen to what has to be done. Them visitors ye have at the Charlemont, Mr Lafarge and the French lady and her daughter. She’ll make sure they’re all right before she thinks about her and Andrew. Can’t remember their name.’
‘The girl is Michelle.’
June shook her head. ‘No, I meant the mother, Madame Saint-something. Clare said she was awful good to her when she first went over to France, bought her a suit for her first interview and taught her how to dress like the French do.’
She stopped suddenly, straightened up and laughed, so unexpectedly that Helen nearly dropped her dustpan.
‘What’s the joke?’ she demanded.
‘You should’ve seen her this mornin’,’ her mother said, shaking her head. ‘A pair of jeans I wouldn’t let any of you girls be seen dead in and an old shirt. It must have been Andrew’s before it shrank in the wash. I wonder what the French lady would have thought of that.’
‘It’s Madame St Clair, Ma, and she’s very nice. Speaks beautiful English. And Mr Lafarge is very polite. But I though he was American. He has an American accent.’
‘Oh aye. That’s another story too,’ June replied, lifting the first of the arrangements into place. ‘Clare says he learnt English from the Americans at the end of the war and he has some awful accent. Not the right thing at all in his job. I suppose the French are just as fussy about that sort of thing as they are here. Sure old Mrs Richardson, God rest her, was furious when young Andrew came back from a visit to Brittany with some country accent he’d picked up. Clare told me once that when he wants to make her laugh he asks her would she like ‘fish and chips’.
‘Poisson et pommes frites.’
‘Aye, maybe that’s the right way of it, but that’s not how Andrew says it. The Missus always used to talk French to him when he came visitin’ and when he landed back with this accent she was fit to be tied. A Richardson talkin’ like a servant.’