by Anne Doughty
‘I think it’s about the only time I’ve ever seen your mummy really cross,’ he said, as he wrapped up the dirty feather in the damp newspaper.
‘But the best of it was that those cosies sold like hot cakes. Everyone thought they’d been made especially with ripped out wool and they wanted her to make more of them. So in the end she had to laugh.’
He’d gone out to the dustbin in the back yard and come back into the kitchen still smiling.
‘Sometimes Clare, when all else fails you have to laugh.’
The large black hand of the clock had moved at last. It hadn’t stopped after all. But it was still only five past three. Clare finished the final hem on her piece of gingham, anchored the thread with a double stitch and bit off the piece left over with her small, even teeth. She spread the rectangle on the desk and looked at it, pleased that it wasn’t dirty or crumpled after her efforts as some of the other girl’s work was. Then she caught a glance from Miss McMurray and immediately picked up the two pieces of blue check that she was to join together with a ‘run and fell’ seam.
She knew perfectly well what she had to do but she wondered about the name. She thought of running and falling which she and William often did when they raced each other in the big field in Cathedral Road, just round the corner from where they lived. William always cried when he fell. Even if his knees were only rubbed green from the grass he’d lie there bawling and crying for Mummy.
‘If you want Mummy, we’ll have to go home,’ she’d told him time and time again. ‘Come on then.’
But William would neither pick himself up nor let her take him home. He’d just sit up and start snivelling even though he had a clean handkerchief in his pocket. Sometimes Clare got cross with him and pretended to walk away but it was only pretend for her mother had said she was never to leave him alone. He was too small to come back by himself even though there was no road to cross between the field and the adjoining row of red brick houses.
William was at school now and would soon be six but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the way he behaved. He would still sit wherever he had fallen and cry till his teacher came to pick him up. Then when they came home from school he’d go straight to Mummy and cry all over again as he showed her the graze on his knee or the sticking plaster the teacher had put on.
‘Oh dear a dear, poor old William,’ she’d say, giving him a hug, ‘Sure you’re here to tell the tale, it can’t be that bad, now can it?’
Often her mother would nod to Clare over William’s dark head for she had once told Clare that sometimes boys were far harder to deal with than girls, though most people seemed to think it was the other way round. She said that her own mother, Granny Scott, had always said it was the boys that had her heart broke with their complaints and worries while the girls just seemed to make the best of things.
‘Not all wee boys are like William, Clare, just some of them. Your Daddy would never have been like that, but your Granny Hamilton said that your Uncle Jack was never away from her skirt tail till he got his first job in the fruit factory. And look at the age he’d have been by then.’
There was no doubt, Clare agreed, boys were funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha, as her father would say. You could never tell what they were going to do next. Whatever it was, it was usually a nuisance. But, as her mother always said, what you can’t change you must thole.
The last of the line of big girls had reached Miss McMurray’s desk. She stood awkwardly as she presented her work, the ‘garment’ which represented the culmination of the years of sewing samples and the previous year’s effort of making an apron with two pockets outlined with bias binding in which to place dusters.
Mary Bratten’s garment was large and shapeless and although Clare knew that it was either a blouse or a pair of knickers it was quite impossible to tell which. Of course, if it were knickers the elastic would go in last. But, even allowing for that, the voluminous spread of green gingham looked more like a laundry bag than either of the possible garments it was supposed to be.
Clare knew exactly what her mother would say if she saw it: ‘It would fit Finn McCool and leave room for Mary as well’.
Miss McMurray spread the fabric out, surveyed it wearily and reached for a box of pins. Mary shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other and tried to avoid the glances of her friends sitting in the back row. She looked all around the room as if desperate to escape the sight of the green shape that twitched and writhed below Miss McMurray’s pins.
Clare felt sorry for Mary. It was all very well if you liked sewing or were good at it, but it wasn’t very nice for you if you didn’t. And it was clear that Mary didn’t like sewing and was no good at it at all.
The clock clicked audibly in the quiet of the room where even the senior girls had fallen silent, their gossip expended or their observation of Miss McMurray judging it expedient.
From the corridor, footsteps sounded, firm and measured. As Clare glanced towards the window on that side of the room, she caught sight of a blue figure. The dungarees were a blur behind the moulded glass of the lower panes, but where the panes reverted to plain glass above the level at which pupils could be distracted from their work, the head and shoulders of Mr Stinson, the school caretaker, were clearly visible as he moved steadily past.
Clare didn’t know Mr Stinson very well because his store room was on the Senior corridor and he was seldom to be seen in her part of the school. Occasionally he would appear with a bucket and mop when some child had been sick in the classroom and every few weeks he would arrive with a huge bottle of ink to refill the inkpots. She always liked seeing him because he wore exactly the same blue overalls her father wore for work, and like her father, they nearly always had marks of grease or oil from some job they had been doing.
‘I’m sorry Ellie, they’re a bad job this week,’ her father would say when he came downstairs on Saturday afternoon wearing his old trousers for the allotment and carrying the blue overalls on his arm. ‘Ye may put in a drop of that stuff I got from Willie Coulter down at the depot.’
‘Never worry, Sam, there’s no work without mess. I’ll soak them in the children’s bathwater tonight and they’ll have all Sunday to loosen up. Sure the better the day, the better the deed. Your other pair came up a treat last week even after you working on Jack’s car. That car grease is far worse than bicycle stuff.’
‘That’s true, Ellie. It’s far heavier, it has to be, for the moving parts are so much bigger. But it’s hard on you, love, that has to wash them.’
‘Never worry yourself. Sure when you get the shop won’t I send it all to the laundry and act the lady?’ she’d say, laughing at him.
Clare loved to hear them talking about the shop. It would be a bicycle shop because that was what Uncle Harry had and he was going to retire one day and Daddy was going to buy it and it would have Samuel Hamilton over the door instead of Harold Mitchell. Her father had all sorts of plans for when he took over. Most of all he wanted to branch out into the sale and repair of motorbikes. He loved motorbikes and in the photograph album there were pictures of him in the Isle of Man at something called the TT which was a race. He said he never won but that wasn’t the point, it was experience. You learnt more about a bike by riding it than by stripping it down and putting it together again.
He had sold his motorbike when they got married. Her mother didn’t want him too but they needed the money to buy furniture and besides, in Edward Street, there was nowhere to keep it. But one day when they had a house with a garden and a workshop, he would have his own motorbike again and she and William would go for rides on the pillion. That was what you called the seat for the passenger and when you rode you would have to put your arms round his waist and hold on tight.
There was a knock at the classroom door. Surprised, Clare looked up and saw that Mr Stinson had come in. He didn’t have an inkbottle or a window pole in his hand but when Miss McMurray handed Mary Bratten back her work and looked up at him he to
ok a piece of paper from his top pocket and said something to her in a low voice with his head turned away towards the blackboard.
Miss McMurray stared at him and shook her head.
‘Alison Hamilton,’ she said aloud, as she turned back to scan the front desks and the unfamiliar faces of the juniors who sat there.
No one moved and although Clare was quite sure the message was for her, for a moment, she was too surprised to put her hand up.
‘Please miss, I’m Clare Hamilton.’
‘Have you a wee brother called William in the infants?’ asked Mr Stinson quietly.
She nodded and watched as the two adults exchanged glances.
‘Clare, the principal wants to see you in his office,’ began Miss McMurray. ‘Leave your work here and take your schoolbag with you. Mr Stinson will go with you.’
There was complete silence in the classroom as Clare put down the joined fragments of blue fabric, run but not felled, and fastened the buckles on her schoolbag. She stood up and found her legs were shaking. Something was wrong. Something had happened to William. He’d fallen down and broken his leg and he wouldn’t stop crying or he’d forgotten where he lived. This was what happened in books. They always sent someone to fetch the hero, or heroine, like in David Copperfield. But that was his mother.
An awful thought hit her. Maybe it was her mother who was ill. She’d not been well this morning. She’d had an awful headache and in the middle of washing William she’d had to run outside to the lavatory. When she came back she was pale and her forehead was damp but she’d said she was fine.
‘Women sometimes feel bad at certain times, Clare. You’ll understand when you’re older. I’ll away and lie down when you go off to school. I’ll be as right as rain by the time you come home.’
The principal’s desk was empty when Mr Stinson knocked and opened the door but the school secretary was at her typewriter under the window and sitting on one of the hard upright chairs by the door was William. He appeared to be completely absorbed in studying a marble he had taken from his pocket.
‘There ye are,’ said Mr Stinson quietly. ‘I’ll leave you with Mrs Graham and your wee brother.’
‘Sit down, dearie, the principal’ll not be a minute,’ Mrs Graham called over her shoulder as Clare sat down beside William.
Clare heard a car stop outside the main entrance and the heavy tread of the principal as he came up the steps. He looked hot and uncomfortable as he stepped back into his office. His large, bald head was sweating as profusely as his forehead and the remains of his hair was damp.
‘Ah, there you are, Clare and William,’ he said jovially. He put out his hand to pat their heads, a habit he had when he spoke to children. He paused, withdrew his hand abruptly and stepped backwards.
‘Now I want you two good children to come for a little drive with me. I’m afraid Mummy hasn’t been too well today and she’s been taken to hospital just so that she’ll be more comfortable. I’m sure it’s this heat has made her feel so unwell. Now you’re not to worry at all. I’m going to take you to the hospital and when Mummy is feeling better you can go in and see her.’
‘But what about Daddy’s tea,’ Clare burst out, without a moment’s thought. ‘Who’ll make Daddy’s tea if Mummy’s in hospital?’
The principal took out a large, white handkerchief and mopped his brow. He looked even hotter, despite the fact that his office had no south facing window and was always cool, if not actually chilly, even in summer.
‘Don’t worry about Daddy’s tea, Clare. Daddy was feeling a bit sick too so he’s gone to the hospital as well. He’d want to be with Mummy wouldn’t he? So they are both quite safe and sound with nice nurses to make their tea. Why don’t we go off and see them,’ he said encouragingly, as he waved them through the door of his office. ‘Now we don’t want any arguments about who sits in the front seat with me, so why don’t you both sit in the back like grown-ups in a taxi,’ he added as they went down the steps.
‘I want to sit in the front’, muttered William sulkily.
Clare didn’t even nudge him for being rude, she just followed him to where the principal’s Austin sat gleaming in the sun. It was so hot you could smell the petrol and when she got into the back seat the leather was so hot she thought it might burn her legs.
William marched round to the front seat and to her surprise the principal just opened the door from the inside and let him climb in.
They drove across the empty playground and down the hill to the Courthouse, but instead of driving up College Hill and going up Abbey Street to the County Infirmary, the principal turned along English Street.
‘This isn’t the way to the hospital,’ cried Clare, who was very near to tears.
‘No, Clare, it isn’t. We’re going to a different hospital from the one you know. It’s a hospital where you can stay till Mummy and Daddy are better.’
Clare watched him wipe his perspiring face again. She could see his face in the rear-view mirror and he seemed quite different from his usual self. Daddy knew him well because they were in the same lodge, which was a kind of club men went to one Friday night in the month. He said he was a good sort, always ready for a joke. But today he didn’t look as if he could even smile never mind make a joke.
The principal was indeed a good sort. It was because he knew Sam Hamilton so well that he was in such distress. It was not his job to tell his children how bad things were, that Ellie Hamilton had aborted the child she was carrying and was in a critical condition and that Sam himself, as fine a man in his prime as you might wish to see, had collapsed in the street outside the shop where he worked.
He drove quickly along the empty road and turned right about a mile out of Armagh. He slowed down on the wide sweep of gravel that swung away across empty acres of grassland towards a hard-faced, grey building set on a slight elevation in the low, undulating countryside.
He was expected. As the car drew up, a white figure came down the steps to greet them, took a child by each hand and said the briefest of goodbyes to the man who stood towering over them, quite at a loss for anything to say.
As the principal of the Armagh Primary School made his way back from the Fever Hospital, one of his senior boys collected the bell from his office and walked up and down the corridors ringing it vigorously.
The clangour echoed round the empty corridors and escaped through the open windows. It was now half past three.
CHAPTER TWO
Two days after Ellie Hamilton lost her unborn child, the hot weather ended in thunderstorms and torrential rain. Rainwater streamed down the tall window of the bare, half-tiled room where her children played ludo and tiddley winks on the white surface of one of the two small beds that stood on the highly-polished floor. Whenever Clare raised her eyes from the game in which William was completely absorbed, the view over the surrounding countryside appeared only as a blurred wash of green and dark grey. For Ellie, her mother, the sun never stopped shining. As she moved in and out of consciousness responding sometimes to the nurses who bathed her face and hands or coaxed her to drink, she was aware only of the light, a warm golden light that spread all around her.
Late on the morning of her third day in hospital, she began to move towards the light. Suddenly, she found herself standing under the rose-covered arch that framed the front door of her parents’ home. On the fresh morning air she caught the hint of smoke from the newly-lit fire in the forge. Somewhere nearby a blackbird sang a joyous celebration of the new day. For a moment she felt reluctant to step outside, to break the deep sense of peace and stillness all around her. Then, quite suddenly, she heard Sam’s voice from the orchard. There was a burst of laughter from the children. At the sound of their voices she stepped through the doorway without another thought and was gone, the light enfolding her. By her bedside a young nurse stared in amazement at the sweet smile on her pale face and the tiny indentation made by her lifeless body on the surface of the high white bed.
The children w
ere not told of their mother’s death that day. After much discussion with her staff, the matron decided it would be better if their father told them when he himself had recovered enough to do so. In the meantime, the younger nurses were sent to play with them when they could be spared from other duties. They were brought books and toys. Each time a nurse appeared in the children’s room the little girl asked to see her parents and each time the nurse, as she had been instructed, told her gently that it would have to be a little longer before she could see either of her parents.
The little boy seemed indifferent to what was happening. His only wish was to go outside. As it was now clear that neither child had been infected, they were allowed out as soon as the lawn adjoining their ground floor room had dried after the rain. As long as Clare would kick back the football which one of the male orderlies had brought for William, he seemed perfectly happy, paying not the slightest attention to where he was, or to the comings and goings of nurses and doctors, or the fate of either of his parents.
It was a shock even to the most experienced of the nursing staff when later that same day, before he had yet been told of his wife’s death, Sam Hamilton, who had been holding his own with the fever which had struck him, had a heart attack. The Fever Hospital was not equipped for such an event and though they acted promptly and did what they could, phoning the Infirmary in Armagh for immediate help, it was of no avail. While the doctor was driving between the city hospital, perched on its hill in the centre of Armagh and the isolated building only a mile or so away, Sam had a further attack and died.