The Blacksmith's Wife

by Anne Doughty

  ‘Well, I’m gathering myself to ask Bridget Carey for advice. She once frightened the life out of poor Annie, told her if she didn’t mind her manners she’d send her back to the workhouse. Do you remember, it was Annie called me “My lady” on her first day at work? And it was my first day as well …’

  ‘Ach aye, I remember ye tellin’ me that story,’ Mary-Anne said laughing heartily. ‘What age would she be now?’ she went on more soberly.

  ‘Sixteen and a half now. At least it sounds better than fifteen. She was a good way off sixteen when she came to Castle Dillon.’

  ‘So what will Bridget Carey do? Throw her out or send her back to the workhouse?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ said Sarah briskly. ‘But I certainly can’t see how to go about it. I’m waiting for inspiration.’

  To Sarah’s surprise, she saw Mary-Anne was thinking hard. Usually with her friend there was an instant response, to see her lost in thought was most unusual. Sarah got on with her sewing and waited.

  It was two nights later, Wednesday, the night before the second market stall in December, when they met again in Sarah’s sitting room. The small room with its tiny fireplace and mirror over the mantelpiece had seldom been used in the two years of Sarah’s marriage, the kitchen being larger and more welcoming. John insisted that his mother kept it spotless for the minister calling, or the doctor, but that no one else ever set foot in it. Now, it was in use all the time. Occasionally, as before the visit to Tartaraghan, it had held sacks of meal, but now it did have a regular weekly function.

  Piles of clothes, collected by Scottie and Jamsey accumulated during the week and on Wednesday evenings Sarah and Mary-Anne priced the garments, sorted them into bundles and tied them up ready to be loaded into the trap early on Thursday morning, before Scottie and Jamsey went to their own work in the forge and on the farm.

  Despite their hard work humping and tying bundles, they were both stone cold by the time they’d finished in the unheated room. Sarah had thought about lighting a fire, but she’d been anxious about the state of the unused chimney. Besides, the fireplace was so small she doubted if a fire could produce much heat even at the best of times. They’d agreed that with the likelihood of smoking out the clean clothes, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

  They both shivered as they came back into the warmth of the kitchen and Sarah put the kettle down to make tea.

  ‘You look pale as a ghost, Sarah,’ said Mary-Anne.

  ‘Well, you needn’t worry about me, for you look just as bad,’ Sarah replied, laughing. ‘We’ll be fine when we’ve had a mug of tea and a bit of cake.’

  ‘This cold is desperate bad news,’ Mary-Anne said anxiously, as she drew up close to the fire which Sarah had just made up with small logs and some pieces of coal. ‘I’m afeerd that with no good hot food the cold will do more harm to people than loosin’ the potatoes. What are we goin’ to do at all, Sarah? An’ all those poor people around us wi’ hardly the makins of a fire an’ nothin’ for their supper forby. Is there any hope at all?’

  ‘A bit, but not a lot,’ Sarah replied as she brought the teapot and mugs from the dresser. ‘They’ve got some boilers going in Tartaraghan now but there’s still arguing going on over relief works. “Presentments” is the big word I had to learn. It means arguing who pays for getting the work started. Then, even after months of arguing and work starts on drainage, or roads, or whatever, some of the men coming forward are so weak with hunger they can’t do a full day’s work, so their money gets docked and they still don’t get enough to eat.’

  ‘I heerd that the workhouse is full, an’ full of fever as well. Is that right?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ agreed Sarah, as she made the tea and let it stand to brew by the hearth. ‘They were built to hold a thousand people but it’s way over that even with using the attics and some workrooms. They’re trying to get the old cholera hospital going again for the worst cases and fever sheds are going up in the grounds, but it goes from bad to worse. There’s more coming for help every week. Some of the doctors who attend have got fever themselves, but it’s the poor children who are dying in droves. The younger they are, the less chance they have.’

  ‘So if that wee Annie of yours were sent back to the workhouse there’d not be much chance of her, or the chile, ever comin’ out of it. An’ that poor man, James, did ye say his name was? What’ll he do if he loses her an’ maybe his job as well?’

  ‘I hope it’ll not come to that. If it looked like that I’d go to Sir George, but he’s still in London and I’m not sure when he’s coming back. The roads are in a bad way with the frost and ice and Lady Emma hates travelling in winter. He’s not very likely to come on his own till after Christmas.’

  ‘So did ye see yer woman, Mrs Carey? How did that go?’

  ‘Well, a lot better than I expected and there were a couple of real surprises for me,’ said Sarah directly. ‘It seems that James is the son of the butler, who calls himself Smithers, though Bridget says his name is actually Smith. She says he had an affair with a kitchen maid who had a child and died a few weeks later. Smithers denied all knowledge of the girl and Sir George’s grandfather had the child adopted by one of the women staff in his Dublin house. The little boy went to school with the Molyneux children until he was ten or eleven and then when they all went to public school or boarding school and finishing school, he was left behind to become a servant.’

  ‘An’ yer man Smithers was his boss, was he? An’ did he still not admit who James was?’

  ‘No, according to Bridget, who was a kitchen maid herself in those days. James looks like his mother, who was a lovely girl with dark hair and dark eyes, and Smithers never had a good word to say for him. Bridget says he was a willing enough lad and did his best to do his work, but she thinks he had no great interest in being a servant.’

  ‘You tole me the other nite that Annie thought they’d done no wrong. Will Mrs Carey take any heed of that?’

  ‘That was my biggest surprise,’ Sarah said, pouring their tea. ‘She actually told me about the village in Clare where she was brought up and told me an expression she often heard. She said: “There’s some girls could pick it up off the grass.” I had to ask her what she meant and she said: “Sure a bit of rough and tumble in the hay field without a full act of intercourse and they’d fall pregnant.” That’s what she said and I know she doesn’t invent things.’

  ‘An’ she’s quite right too. I’ve heard that same expression and I’ve heard of a servant girl delivering her own child in a lavatory and not even knowing she was that way in the first place.’

  ‘I’m going to write to Sir George and suggest they are allowed to marry. I’ll tell him that Mrs Carey is reluctant to lose two good workers and that a room can be found for them in the stable building. Between you and me, once Bridget told me he could read and write, I suggested to her we could find him a job keeping stocklists and filing accounts. That actually went down very well with her, there’s a lot of that sort of thing she really dislikes, but it’s part of her job.’

  ‘Well now, isn’t that a bit of good news to brighten us up, for we’re sure to be froze the morra in Armagh,’ said Mary-Anne. ‘You can also drop a wee hint to Bridget Carey that ye know a wumman who has a room ready if the girl goes into labour. So she won’t be put out at all in her routine. All she needs to do is sen’ her up to me and sure isn’t there carriages galore in them big stables ye were tellin’ me about? Forby Daisy just waitin’ there ready to go home.’

  ‘But what about Billy and Jamsey, Mary-Anne, you don’t expect them to give up their room, do you?’

  ‘An’ why not? Sure I said maybe one day they’d need a han’ from their ma with a we’an of their own. Wou’d it not be a good idea to help her to keep her han’ in, doin’ a job they might need?’

  Sarah laughed. There was no doubt when Mary-Anne put her mind to something she got there in the end. As she helped her friend wrap up warmly for her walk back up the hill, she
remembered the one occasion when Jonathan had visited her, full of anxiety about her well-being, and left some time later saying he would hardly notice the journey back because his heart was so light.

  Whatever tomorrow brought, there was joy in knowing that Annie and James now had another friend, and a more reliable one it would be hard to find.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Friday was always a busy day for Sarah at Castle Dillon whether Sir George was in residence or not. To begin with, Thursday’s post sat unopened on the highly polished desk and, before noon, Friday’s post would also arrive, carried on a silver salver by James.

  By the time Annie had appeared with tea, neatly arranged as always on a tray, bearing a cloth with a crocheted border that was spotlessly clean and well starched before it was ironed, Sarah would have some measure of her tasks for the day. Once Friday’s post arrived, she could then decide on whether it would be best to take half a day’s work home to complete at her own kitchen table, or whether it would be better to come in for the whole day on Saturday.

  The advantage of coming in was that she would be undisturbed at her desk and have her lunch cooked for her, but the disadvantage was having to get up early to make sure there was a midday meal for Sam and Scottie.

  As Sam regularly pointed out, he was not entitled to a midday meal – that was a requirement that only applied to apprentices. Sarah had finally stopped trying to persuade him that it was no trouble and little expense to offer him a meal given how hard he worked. She had often reminded him how often he did jobs for her which were certainly not forge work, but that hadn’t reassured him either. Now she just smiled if he protested.

  ‘Now, Sam, who would keep an eye on Scottie and make sure he ate up all his food if you weren’t here?’ she would say. Sam would laugh heartily, for Scottie had a good appetite and left his plate so clean he might well have been accused of licking it.

  Friday 11th December 1846 on Sir George’s calendar began no differently from many other Fridays. Daisy was handed over to Robert Ross who had become a favourite with her. She blew down his neck affectionately and nibbled his ear. Robert had Scottie’s gift of making animals feel easy and Sarah could sense Daisy’s disappointment if Robert had gone on some errand into Armagh. Tommy, his helper, was perfectly competent, but Robert had won Daisy’s affection.

  A fall of snow in the night was still lying on both roads and fields. On parts of the back driveway exposed to the chill wind, it had turned into a crust of ice and a narrow path had been cleared from the stables to the housekeeper’s entrance. Sarah followed it gratefully, for walking on the adjacent snowy surface would have been like scrunching over a pebble beach, hard on the back and potentially dangerous.

  She settled herself with Thursday’s letters and felt her spirits descend as she began to read the current week’s workhouse report. It was all bad news: the fever was carrying off so many, but even more poor people were queuing up to take their places so the admissions just kept on rising. Worse still, a number of staff members had fever themselves. The pharmacist had already died. One look at the guardian’s expenses for the week told her that the debt was also increasing all the time; the average cost of feeding a pauper had gone up steadily since the last of the potatoes and turnips had been used.

  She took a deep breath and began to make notes for an abstract to send to Sir George. He was not at all interested in the arguments over diet, but he was always concerned over the effect of costs which would have to be met from the rates and over the progress of local presentments for relief works.

  He had begun drainage schemes himself on his own land and at his own expense, but he knew they were but a drop in what he called ‘a bucket with a hole in it’. Only at county level could schemes large enough to be of value be funded. And even if the government did agree to match local funding, there was then the problem of finding the local funding in the first place.

  She had a number of abstracts to send out to local landowners before she even began on the rest of the pile. Mostly they were regularly recurring queries that flowed in with steady repetition, but they still had to have a written answer.

  The tentative knock at the study door took her by surprise. Though she’d been aware for some time that her porridge had been a long time ago and admitted she was longing for a cup of tea, she had still lost track of time. Annie, now balancing the tray one-handed, shut the door behind her with a practiced push and walked steadily over to the desk.

  ‘Hello, Sarah, did the stall go well yesterday?’ she asked, smiling.

  ‘Yes, it did. A bit down,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘but I think it was only because it was so cold some women stayed at home. Do you like the snow?’ she asked, half-joking, for most people, even the children, had got weary of the regular falls and it being so cold.

  But Annie did not answer. Having put the tray down on the desk, she was still standing beside it, waiting to see if Sarah would ask her to sit down for a minute or two, as she often did. Suddenly, she doubled over, her arms hugging her stomach, her eyes wide as she moaned with sudden pain.

  ‘Annie, what’s wrong?’ Sarah said, dropping her pieces of paper and coming from behind the desk to put an arm around her.

  ‘Would it be “the time of the month”?’ she asked, knowing that sometimes, even in pregnancy, one could have unexpected pains at that time.

  ‘No, I’ve niver had a pain like that before,’ Annie said, gasping and wiping sudden tears from her eyes. ‘D’ye think it’s the baby comin’?’ she asked, her eyes wide, her voice now steadier.

  Sarah’s first thought was what a mercy it was that she and Mary-Anne had talked about Annie as they had on Wednesday evening, but about the pain she couldn’t be sure. She had lost two children herself, but the first was very early in pregnancy and the second only a month or two further on. Annie was certainly much further on than she had been.

  ‘Sit down, Annie, and just try to breathe normally,’ she said, taking a cup from her own personal drawer in the bottom of the desk. She shared the tea between them and watched Annie carefully, noticing her hands shaking as she drank, her skin deathly pale.

  When the pain came again a few minutes later, she got up and pulled the bell, praying it would not be Smithers who came to answer it.

  ‘Sarah, I think I’m bleeding on the good chair,’ Annie whispered, her voice dropping even lower in her distress.

  ‘Don’t worry your head about that; we’ll get some help in a moment. Drink your tea now like a good girl,’ Sarah said steadily, as she tried to keep her own anxiety firmly under control.

  One of the other housemaids knocked briefly and walked across the room towards them. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when Lizzie, only a little older than Annie herself, took one look at her friend and immediately focused on Sarah.

  ‘Lizzie, dear, I have three messages for you and I want you to be as quick as you can. Now, can you manage to remember three things?’

  Lizzie assured her that she could and listened hard.

  ‘I want you to go to Mrs Carey and say Mrs Hamilton needs her help in Sir George’s study and will she please come immediately and bring some clean napkins.’ She paused and waited till Lizzie nodded. ‘Then I want you to find James and tell him Mrs Hamilton needs his help in Sir George’s study right away. And thirdly, I want you to go out to the stables and tell Robert or Tommy that Mrs Hamilton needs transport immediately at the front entrance to go to Drumilly Hill and back.

  ‘Can you remember all that, Lizzie?’ Sarah asked, a hint of anxiety in her voice.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Lizzie said firmly, as she glanced sideways at Annie. ‘If no one’s lookin’, I’ll run,’ she said, making for the door.

  Lizzie was as good as her word. Minutes later, James arrived, got down on his knees beside Annie, held her hands and told her she’d be all right, that Mrs Hamilton would see to that. When Bridget Carey swept in, she took one look at Sarah and asked James to go and fetch Annie’s shawl and an extra blanket
from her storeroom.

  When he came back, Annie was on her feet, a clean napkin covering the damp patch on the chair. He helped her wrap her shawl around her and then picked her up as if she were no weight at all and carried her to the front entrance where Robert himself helped Sarah up into the driving seat, wrapping the warm trap rugs he had brought with him around Annie the moment he saw her little pale face.

  ‘Can I come with you, Mrs Hamilton, please?’ said James, steadily.

  Sarah paused. Leaving the house without permission was a serious matter. But it would help both Annie and him if they could meet Mary-Anne together.

  ‘Yes, you can. We won’t be long.’

  She turned to Robert, now standing by Daisy’s head.

  ‘Robert, would you do me a favour? Would you go to Mrs Carey and tell her I’ve removed James without permission but only for a short time? And could she please tell Smithers if the question should arise?’

  Robert smiled and nodded briskly. He knew well there was no love lost between Smithers and Mrs Carey but if anyone could deal with his bossiness it would be her.

  ‘Take care now, safe journey,’ he said, saluting them as they drove off.

  Once Annie had been delivered into Mary-Anne’s safe keeping, Sarah knew she’d have to get James back to work, but the young man, who’d made such an effort to be steady for Annie’s sake, was now much easier in himself. When they arrived, Mary-Anne had assured him that they’d done the right thing to bring Annie to her till they saw what was happening. She managed to make them both smile when she reassured James that she’d never lost a father yet.

  While Mary-Anne and Sarah had a quick word together, James sat with Annie. She now looked less pale and as he got up to go, she assured James firmly that he wasn’t to worry. She’d be fine now with Mrs Halligan to look after her.

  It was Sarah who felt completely exhausted as James helped her back up into the trap for the return journey.