Even on Days when it Rains

by Julia O'Donnell

  Don’t ask me how she did it, but my sister, Margaret, escaped the hard labour that I went through. Margaret had to leave the island, of course, to find work, so she didn’t avoid that heartbreak. Coming up to the age of 16, she migrated to Glasgow where she immediately got a job as a waitress in the George Hotel. Like the rest of us, whatever money Margaret had left out of her earnings, after covering her living expenses, she sent home to our mother and father on the island every month. Although the work was easier than mine, it was still a hard life for her. Margaret was on her own in Glasgow. The digs where she was staying with some of the other hotel workers were very grim, and terribly cold in the wintertime. However, moving to Glasgow would eventually change the course of her life.

  It was in Glasgow during the war that she met and fell in love with a small, stocky but good-looking young American man called Bill Chancellor, who was in the navy and was stationed in Scotland at the time. After a whirlwind romance, Margaret and Bill married in June 1945. None of the family made it over for the wedding, as we couldn’t afford the expense of the trip. But Margaret had the blessing of our mother and father.

  Margaret and Bill were parted the following year when he returned to the States with his ship. Later, she was among the excited young women on a liner carrying what were known as the ‘GI brides’ to America. When she eventually landed in New York, Bill was there to meet her. Margaret was one of the lucky ones. Some unfortunate brides found themselves all alone in a foreign land after their ships docked. Their husbands seemed to have forgotten while they were overseas that they already had wives back in America. Later, Bill went to work in the oil business, and he and Maggie had three children. Bill did well, and the family were able to afford to travel back to Ireland to holiday on Owey. That was always an occasion of great excitement, not just for our family but for the entire island. Whenever ‘the Yankees’ were coming, everyone on Owey would join in the party.

  Bill was a lovely man. Everyone in the family was very fond of him. Sadly, he too has passed to the next life.

  chapter five

  * * *

  Francie

  THERE COMES A time in every young woman’s life when she yearns for love and romance. In the circle of life, she has her dreams of becoming a wife and a mother, and of making a home of her own. I was no exception. When I reached my 20s, I wanted that fairy tale too. Little did I know, as I took my first steps along the path, that as well as the joy that love brings, it can also cause terrible pain. The sweet and sour of love were things I would soon discover.

  Here I have to state that I feel it would be unfair of me to reveal the identify of a young man who caused me heartache and grief during that early period in my life. It was all so long ago, he is no longer with us on this earth, and I have no intention of hurting any soul, living or dead, in this book. But it would also be unfair to the reader to withhold such a personal trauma. It’s one of the blows in life that shaped me as a person. It’s through setbacks that you learn how to deal with the hard knocks. They make you wiser and stronger, and they make you appreciate the good things and the great people who wander through your life. So I’ll tell my story while protecting the name of my boyfriend.

  It had started out as an ordinary day on Owey. I woke up in the morning full of joy. I was home again on the island after another term of tattie howkin’ in Scotland. It was always such a great feeling to be back with my mother and father and my siblings in familiar surroundings. I slipped easily into the routine that involved attending to the various jobs that came my way. Now in my 20s, I was also enjoying the social activities on the island with people my own age. In particular I was looking forward to the local dance.

  There was a ruggedly handsome young man on the island who had taken my fancy. He was tall with lovely green eyes and a mop of brown, curly hair. He had a great smile, and he made me laugh whenever we met when we were out and about around Owey. There was no one else at the time that I was interested in. This was the young man I now dearly wanted. We had grown up together so there was nothing, I felt, that I didn’t know about him. Funnily, I hadn’t thought of him as a prospective suitor in my early teens. Then one day I suddenly became aware that I was attracted to him. It was like being struck by Cupid’s arrow, and I became smitten. Every day he was in my thoughts, and I wondered if he felt the same way.

  One day I met him by chance as he cycled along an island path. We made small talk, chatting about the weather and other tittle-tattle of little consequence. And then he asked me if I was going to the dance in the hall. My heart began to flutter as I told him that I’d be there.

  ‘See you there, then, and I’ll dance with you,’ he replied with a wink. Then he threw his leg over the bicycle and pedalled off into the distance.

  I couldn’t wait for the dance to come round. I just sensed that something was going to happen between us. And I wasn’t disappointed.

  We danced together all that night.

  ‘Do you want to go out with me, Julia?’ he asked afterwards.

  ‘Well, I’d like nothing better,’ I replied.

  We both smiled, and there was an easy silence between us. I think we were both relieved that we had finally got together. Obviously he had been interested in me for some time too. I now had a boyfriend, and he had a girlfriend. And in the blink of an eye it seemed the whole island knew about it. There were no secrets on Owey, at least not for long.

  From that moment we became a courting couple. I was so happy. Every morning, in the months that followed, when I’d wake up he was the first person I thought of. Soon, in my mind, I was making plans for our future together. I thought I’d found the man of my dreams. I thought this man was going to make a fine husband. We even talked about marriage, and he was keen. I had a skip in my step I was so happy. He was a good catch, or so I thought. Little did I know the heartache that lay around the corner.

  One day as I herded the cows along the path to the mountain, I truly didn’t have a care in the world. My life was going in a direction that I was very happy with. I began to daydream about the future with my man. It was still early days in the relationship, but I was looking forward to becoming a wife sooner rather than later. I loved children and was living for the day when I would become a mother myself. Like all my friends, I was excited about raising my own little ones, and happily it seemed I wouldn’t have to wait many more years. I was in love for the first time in my life.

  Suddenly I was jolted out of my thoughts by a familiar figure on a bicycle. It was a young man who was a cousin of my boyfriend. From his facial expression I could see that he was none too happy about something. I had always been quite friendly with this fellow and wondered if I had done something to offend him. His forehead was creased by a troubled frown, and he appeared to be slightly nervous as he approached me.

  He beckoned me over. Whatever had I done?

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  There was an uneasy silence that seemed to last for an eternity. Now I was beginning to be overcome by a feeling of nervousness.

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ he finally said, removing his cap.

  My heart started to pound. Had something terrible happened to my boyfriend? I looked into his eyes for some sign of what was troubling him.

  Then he said the words no girlfriend or wife ever wants to hear. He told me that my boyfriend was seeing another girl behind my back.

  At first the words rolled round in my brain and it was a few seconds before they struck home to my heart. I must have gone into shock for an instant, and I had to ask him to repeat what he had just told me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Julia,’ he added, when he told me what he had come to say to me. ‘I thought you should know.’ With that, he got on his bike and cycled off across the island. I was frozen to the spot as the humiliation of what he’d revealed to me sunk in. Then I broke down and sobbed my heart out, barely able to catch my breath amid fits of crying. I couldn’t believe that the young man I adored could treat me so cruelly
. I had loved that fellow with all my heart, and I’d never looked at another young man from the time that we started going out together.

  The rest of that day went by in a blur. The floodgates had opened, and I just cried and cried. I had endured physical pain all my working life, but it was nothing compared to the emotional trauma I was experiencing. ‘How could he do it to me?’ I asked myself over and over again.

  Up on the mountain I sat on a rock and cried my eyes out till the evening, when it was time to return to my home. I was in a terrible emotional state, and then I began to worry about having to face my family. There was no disguising my upset. Upon my return, I slipped into the house and quickly washed my face. If anyone had noticed that something was amiss with me, they said nothing.

  Later in the evening I saw my boyfriend going off on his bicycle. He had land over by the strand on the opposite side to where I lived with my family. I spotted him from the window of our barn and decided to follow him secretly. He went off in his currach, no doubt to see the other girl on the mainland. I broke down and cried again, my stomach churning at the thought of him with someone else. Later, I watched him return. Little did he know the pain he was inflicting on me. I was in floods of tears, but I didn’t go to confront him on the spot. I wasn’t in any fit state to face him.

  When we did meet, after he called round to see me the following day, I was more composed, though still very upset. By the look on his face, I knew he didn’t know what was the cause of my troubled state. I wasn’t long about telling him. I told him that I knew he’d been cheating on me with another girl and that I didn’t want anything more to do with him. He didn’t protest. The guilt on his face said it all as he turned on his heel and walked away. Again, my emotions came spilling out in the form of tears.

  They say that time heals all wounds, including heartbreak. I did come to terms with the betrayal and the loss; eventually, after a few months, the pain eased a good bit. The pain goes, but you never forget the hurt. It’s not something I would wish on any person.

  There’s an expression: ‘What goes around, comes around.’ Several months later I heard that my ex-boyfriend had split up with his girlfriend on the mainland. Apparently he went over to meet her one evening and caught her with another man. As hard as it is to believe, he then had the gall to come to my door and ask me to go out with him again.

  After the suffering he had put me through, he got an ice-cold reception from me. This time I wasn’t upset, just red in the face with rage. He had an awful cheek thinking that I would welcome him back. ‘I’m no better today than the day you left me for the other one,’ I told him as I closed the door and shut him out of my life.

  Judging by the look on his face, I knew he was feeling like a fool. Sending him off with his tail between his legs didn’t make me feel any better about what had been done to me. There was no winner in that situation. The only good thing that came out of it for me was the relief that I hadn’t married this person. And the dream of marriage and children was still there for another day. Somewhere out there was another man I could share my life with. I was sure of that. After all, I was still a young woman.

  When I joined the fish-gutting crew in Lerwick at the start of the following summer, I had no inkling of what fate had in store for me, other than steady employment for a few months. I certainly never suspected that my life would change for ever.

  At work one day, as I slit open a herring, one of the other girls started chatting about a Saturday-night dance. It was going to be held down in one of the big huts, known as ‘the Rest’. That kind of news was always guaranteed to lift my spirits: I lived for the joy of dancing at the time. It was the excitement of dancing itself, more than the men, that attracted me. As I washed and changed my clothes that night before making my way to the hut with a gang of the girls, the thought of romance wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. I was just looking forward to having a good time. On those occasions we’d dance into the early hours, putting all our cares behind us for the evening.

  That night the hut was packed with all of the men and women who were working at the fishing, and there was a great atmosphere. The musicians were in full flow when I arrived, not that they were a big band. Two men with a tin whistle and a mouth organ were providing the music to dance to.

  Among the crowd I noticed a tall and very handsome young man who had lovely brown hair with a wave through it. He was looking at me from across the room. It struck me that he had a strong physique and a great smile. I had seen this young man before, but something about him that night caught my interest. As I was thinking what a fine man he was, he came over and asked me to dance. He’s very good-looking, I thought to myself as we kicked up our heels on the floor among all the other dancers. He told me his name was Francie O’Donnell. We danced a couple of times throughout the night, and I realized that this young man was paying me a lot of attention. Now I was really interested. We’d part after the different sets, and sometimes we’d dance with other people. Late into the evening, instead of taking me up again, Francie asked another girl to dance and I wasn’t too happy about that. I suppose, if the truth was known, I became jealous that he was showing attention to another young woman. I left the dance and headed off up the road to my hut, which wasn’t very far from the Rest.

  When I was halfway there, I happened to turn around and look back. Francie was running up the road behind me. I pretended that I didn’t want to be caught and took off at a gallop myself. As I reached the top of the hill, there was a roll of barbed wire in my path, and I fell as I tried to avoid it. Francie came up, caught me … and it was there and then that we shared our first kiss. I knew from that moment that Francie O’Donnell was the man for me. I’m not sure how we know these things. There’s an instinct that tells you. The butterflies in my stomach were also a good indication. Francie left me at the door of my hut that night, and as we parted he said, ‘I’ll come up and see you tomorrow night.’ From that moment on, Francie O’Donnell was my man.

  When I reflect on it, we were obviously destined to be together. Francie came from Acres near Burtonport, which was on the mainland and in the vicinity of Owey Island. Yet I’d never laid eyes on him until we were both on the fishing crew at Lerwick in the Shetlands. I suppose it doesn’t matter what path you take to the one you love as long as you meet up at a crossroads somewhere along the way.

  After the dance in the hut, Francie and I became a couple, and I lived for the evenings when he’d come up to meet me. He’d be going out to farms to buy eggs, and he’d ask me to go with him. It may seem strange to people today, but we actually only spent a month together when we first met because it was coming towards the end of our work in Lerwick. But we both knew very soon that we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. People didn’t hang about in those times. We got to know each other very quickly. It helped, I suppose, that we were from similar backgrounds. I was familiar with the area in County Donegal where he’d grown up. During the remainder of our time in Lerwick, we’d go for long walks in the evening and sit and chat for a couple of hours. I told him all about my life growing up on the island. He told me about his background and the places he’d worked. Francie was a fine man and a good man. After my first experience of men, I had been cautious about a new relationship, but somehow with Francie I just knew he’d never let me down.

  By then, Hollywood had arrived in Lerwick, and we would occasionally go to the pictures. One night as we were going in, we met another couple from back home by the name of Paddy Bonnar and Mary Gallagher, who were from Belcruit. They had let it be known that it wouldn’t be long before they’d be getting married.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be going over to Belcruit when you go home to ask Paddy Gallagher for a cow and half of his manure,’ Francie joked with Paddy Bonnar.

  Paddy laughed at the suggestion that he’d be looking for a dowry when he married Mary. Francie was always joking and having a laugh.

  All too soon, however, the time came for us to part. Francie
was going on to another job pulling beet in Barrow-on-Furness in Scotland, while I was going home to the island. It was the first time that I had sadness in my heart returning to Owey.

  During the next couple of months, we continued our courtship by letter. We missed each other terribly, so every letter we received was treasured. They would always end with the line ‘Looking forward to seeing you.’ Later that winter we were reunited, this time in Yarmouth. It was so wonderful to be in Francie’s company again. I just loved being with him. It’s not that we were having a great life, because we both had to cope with very hard work in all weathers. There was nothing romantic about it, but we were just happy to be around each other. And the more time I spent with him, the more I saw his inner strength and his goodness.

  Francie, I could see, was a very religious man. He was a devout Catholic. He’d never miss Mass on a Sunday. Prayer was an important part of his life. He was serious about his religion and his work, but he was light-hearted too, and he made me laugh. He had everything I could have wished for in a man, including good looks. He was very athletic-looking at that time. So when Francie asked me to marry him during that period together, I had no hesitation in saying yes.

  ‘Are you happy enough to marry me?’ Francie had asked.

  ‘I am surely,’ I replied with obvious delight.

  When that fishing work came to an end for us, I went back home and he went to work on a Scottish farm. Once again our only contact was through letter-writing. Every week we spent apart made me realize just how much I wanted Francie in my life. The next time we saw each other was in June of the following year, when we were both back at the fishing work on a three months’ stint. Now we both had something to look forward to at the end of it. We had decided that we would wed on 22 September. I was the last in our family to marry. James had married his girlfriend, Peggy. Margaret, as I mentioned, married Bill. Edward married Mary, and Owenie married Muriel. (Edward’s wife Mary died and some years later he married Alice).