by Anne Doughty
They waved back, even though they knew the elderflower bush to the right of the gate had grown so big it now blocked the view from the yard to the lane.
‘Accordin’ to your granny, you were great company on their holiday,’ said Sam, as the last vibrations of the motor faded from the still air. ‘She said you were a great help to her, an’ that you could turn your hand to most things. She’s not keen at all to see you goin’ into service or gettin’ a job in a shop.’
Glancing round him, Sam caught sight of Martha, bucket in hand, appearing at the gate into the orchard. Without another word, he moved them briskly over to the barn and closed the door firmly behind them.
He sat down on an unopened barrel of lubricating oil and left Rosie the ancient armchair. Long evicted from the house, he’d mended its broken leg with angle iron and padded its sagging seat with cotton waste and an old blanket. Rosie had sat in this chair so often, over so many years, she’d come to love its oily smell and the happy memories it brought of so many hours spent watching her father work.
‘Granny says she and Granda would like to see you go for trainin’ to Belfast,’ he went on without further ado. ‘He says you’ve a real eye for paintin’ wee flowers an’ there’s good jobs in the mills for people like that. Better paid even than the weavers, he says. Forby, some of the mills has scholarships to encourage young people to do courses. Would that be something you’d really like, Rosie? I knew you did a wee bit of paintin’ and suchlike at Miss Wilson’s but you’d never said much about it.’
‘That’s because I didn’t think I was any good, Da,’ she explained. ‘Miss Wilson said I drew very well, but what I liked was watercolour and my landscapes never came out right. But down in Kerry, I started to paint flowers. Granny said my first attempts were very good, so she made me try all sorts of things, garden flowers and wildflowers and even leaves and berries and bits of grass. The funny thing was, it was so easy, and everybody said I was so clever. But I wasn’t. It just seemed to come out right.’
‘An’ you enjoyed it?
‘Oh yes, I loved it. I have three sketchbooks full home with me.’
‘Ah well then, that’s all I need to know. That’s a gift, an’ you know that we should all use whatever gifts we have. But there is a problem over the trainin’, an’ you’re old enough to understand. Granny an’ Granda have a bit of money and they could afford to pay your lodgings in Belfast. But I couldn’t do that myself with what I’ve put by. An’ if I could, then there’s Bobby who’d like to be apprenticed, an’ Jack who’s not long more at school, and young Dolly. The question is, Rosie, should I favour one of my children at the expense of the others?’ he said, a sad and troubled look crossing his face.
Rosie sat silent. She could say that he wasn’t favouring her, that it was Granny and Granda who were offering to pay for her. Yet she knew it wouldn’t help him to have it pointed out. Her older brothers and sister had had to make the best of whatever they could find. Billy had only had money since he joined the police. Without apprenticeship, it would be years before Charlie or Sammy would be paid other than as helpers, however skilful they’d become. Emily had been lucky, but even she could only put a few shillings in the Coronation tea caddy on a Friday night till it was worth the journey to the Post Office.
‘Granda says the courses don’t start till September,’ she said quietly, when the silence began to lengthen.
‘Aye, an’ I’m glad to have time to take counsel. It helps to have someone outside the family to put the case to. I have to think what’s best for the whole family. It would maybe be easy to say yes without due thought and then find there was bad feeling or bitterness that one could have avoided.’
Rosie wondered what he could be thinking about. She couldn’t imagine any of her brothers or sisters being bitter about her going away for a year to train as a textile artist. But then Granny and Granda hadn’t offered to pay for training for them.
She sighed. It all seemed much more complicated than she’d imagined and it really didn’t look very hopeful. But then Granny had warned that her father would need time.
‘I maybe should tell you that your Ma is very keen on you goin’ into service. There’s a place going at Castledillon in September,’ he said slowly. ‘Ladies’ maid, I hear.’
He paused, took in the look on her face, and said, ‘Ah well, we never know the way doors open for us. Don’t forget that’s how yer Granny started her life. An’ look what she made of herself.’
It was true, quite true, but the thought appalled her so much she couldn’t think of anything whatever to say.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As Uncle Joe sat himself down at the breakfast table next morning and gestured at Rosie to hurry up and pour his tea, he commented on the recent activities of Sinn Fein, the Shinners, as he always called them, the failure of the government to throw them out of what was now a Protestant state, and the disloyalty of people like her and her grandparents, who ran off for their holidays to the enemy’s country which was just the very thing to encourage them. Clearly, he was feeling better.
To her own surprise Rosie found she was quite indifferent to the old man’s tirade. She’d heard versions of the same complaint so often, over many years, and it had always distressed her before, yet this morning she saw him mouthing the familiar words as if she were watching a performance in a play.
Sitting in an out-of-the-way corner of the workshop while some neighbour occupied the one and only armchair, she’d heard tales of disaffection often enough. While other men complained of their job, their boss, the unprofitability of their farm, the demands of their family, or even the unreliability of the weather, only Uncle Joe had selected the political state of Ireland. Out of it he had woven a grim and hopeless garment that covered his entire dissatisfaction with the world.
At last, she understood why he never listened to any reply, nor indeed required any answer, to the irritable questions he threw out so freely. She decided she could safely ignore his morning devotions and get on with her work and not allow anything he said to trouble her further.
Her small satisfaction at coming to terms with Uncle Joe’s behaviour and the relief from his nagging tone as he drank thirstily and noisily from the tin mug which he insisted on using, disappeared promptly when she glanced across at her mother. Standing at the far end of the table, wisps of stray hair bobbing up and down with the vigour of her activity, she was cutting slices of baker’s loaf and buttering them for both Uncle Joe and Dolly and Jack. Unlike Uncle Joe, she couldn’t be ignored and left to rant. Her mother needed something much more immediate and tangible as a vehicle for her anger.
Thinking about it now, she could see her father had always been her mother’s chief target, but she’d observed over recent years he’d developed a cool, distancing manner which made it more difficult for her mother to goad him into comment. Looking back, she realised with a shock, how seldom he’d been available in the months before her visit to Kerry.
In the evening when he came home from work, there were farm implements and machinery awaiting his attention, lined up inside and outside the barn. She wondered if it was his absence from the house that had finally directed all the force of her mother’s anger towards herself. At the thought of the awful day of the accident, she felt herself shiver with apprehension. Should her mother treat her again as she had that day, she’d no idea how she would cope.
As to what she might expect or what her mother’s state of mind might be, the previous evening gave her little to go on. Martha had continued to ignore her while her father and some of her brothers and sisters were present. That was usual enough. The real test would come after breakfast when her father and Emily had gone to work and Jack and Dolly disappeared.
‘I’m sorry the place is so dirty, Rosie,’ Emily said in a whisper, as they got ready for bed the previous night. ‘I’d have done a bit more in the evenin’s after work, but she wouden have it. An’ ye know there’s no arguin’ with her.’
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�Never worry, Emily,’ she responded, as she pulled on her nightdress, ‘I honestly don’t mind the work. It just makes me angry the way she’s always looking for something to complain about. I’m afraid I’ll lose my temper one of these days.’
‘Now don’t go doin’ that, Rosie,’ Emily replied hurriedly. ‘It’ll only make her worse. Sure what does it matter for a few weeks if yer gettin’ away to Belfast to do this course ye told me about in yer letter?’
Rosie sighed and dropped down on the side of the bed.
‘Emily, I’m not sure Da will let me go.’
‘What!’ Emily exclaimed, so horrified she forgot to whisper.
‘Sure he wouden keep you here scrubbin’ and cleanin’ an’ runnin’ her messages when you coud be doin’ somethin’ better,’ she went on, whispering now, as Rosie put her finger to her lips and shushed her.
‘He’s worried that it isn’t fair,’ Rosie whispered back. ‘I know he has money saved, but it wasn’t enough to let the boys be apprenticed. You know he wouldn’t do one without the other.’
‘You’re all right, you clever girl,’ she went on, smiling at her sister, who had stopped applying curlers to her uncompromisingly straight hair and was staring at her open-mouthed, ‘but there’s Bobby and Jack and Dolly as well as me to think about.’
Emily shook her head and went back to struggling with the unyielding metal as Rosie told her quietly about their conversation in the barn.
‘Our da’s a good man,’ her sister said after a moment’s deep thought, ‘but sometimes he thinks too much about things. He shou’d jump at the chance of gettin’ you away to somethin’ you want to do.’
‘He did say he’d take counsel and consult his conscience,’ replied Rosie reassuringly, as Emily got into bed.
‘Aye well, I hope he hurries up about it. Mind you, I’m that fed up with baker’s bread and Ma’s cookin’, I’ll be glad to have you home for a wee while for some decent grub, if ye can put up with it.’
Rosie smiled, as she blew out the candle and climbed into bed beside her.
‘Well that’s something. At least someone will appreciate what I do.’
To Rosie’s surprise, her mother made no comment at all as she set about her normal morning routine, clearing the breakfast dishes, sweeping the floor and putting water to heat on the stove so she could make a start on scrubbing it. Martha herself disappeared to feed the calves and collect the eggs and still had not returned late in the morning when the first of her day’s visitors arrived, knocking at the open door, just as Rosie finished blacking the stove and cleaning the fender.
‘Hello, Rosie. Are ye back?’ a loud, high-pitched voice hailed her from the open door. ‘Sure, your ma’ll be glad to see you an’ her has so much to do. Is she still out workin’ with Uncle Joe?’
Before Rosie had even risen from her knees, the emery paper in her hand, the fender now restored to its silver-like finish, Martha appeared at the door, a warm smile of greeting for the heavily-built, grey-haired woman who was already standing by the stove, her bottom poised over the further of the two armchairs.
‘Sit down, sit down, Mrs Allen,’ Martha cried. ‘I’m sure you could do with a rest an’ you like m’self up from all hours.’
Rosie began to put away her cleaning materials in the bottom of the dresser, her ear already anticipating the familiar line, Rosie was just going to make us a cup of tea. When it didn’t come, she was completely taken aback.
‘I’ll make us a cup of tea in a wee minute,’ Martha began apologetically, ‘but Rosie here has messages up to her uncle’s. We’re right out of flour and bacon. Is there anything she can fetch for you while she’s about it?’ she continued, as she produced her purse, a piece of paper and a shopping bag.
‘Maybe Rosie, before you go, you might pay a wee visit to the wash house,’ Martha went on, smiling indulgently as she glanced at her hands, streaked and smudged with black lead. She cast a knowing glance towards Mrs Allen, now settled comfortably by the stove.
‘Aye Rosie, ye niver know who ye might meet ’tween here an’ the village,’ the older woman said, winking at Martha.
Martha nodded and smiled. The look that passed between the two women was simply to reinforce their often expressed view that all these young girls ever thought about was boys and if you weren’t watching them every minute of the day, you’d never get them to lift a hand to do a bit of work about the house.
‘Hallo, Rosie. Fancy seein’ you twice in one week. What’s got inta her?’
Lizzie Mackay put down the egg from which she’d just removed a speck of chicken manure and a small curling feather and placed it in one of the cardboard trays belonging to the wooden crate the egg man collected every week. She stared at her friend in amazement.
‘I’m not asking,’ said Rosie, laughing as she saw the look on Lizzie’s face. ‘“Why don’t you take a wee run up and see Lizzie?” she said, when I started to get out the baking board, so I did what I was told. I’ve run, before she could change her mind. Though I did meet Mrs Hutchinson on her way down the lane and I’m not asking you to guess where she was going.’
‘She keeps wantin’ to get ye outa the house,’ said Lizzie shrewdly. ‘She’s always sending you on messages or out to look for hens laying away. But that’s just great, for I’m fed up with these. Why can’t hens do what they have to do outside and not get it on the eggs for me to have to rub off?
‘Hold on a minit till I tell Ma I’ll be back in a while,’ she went on. ‘She must be havin’ a lie down for I haven’t seen her since lunch time. Sit yerself down a minit an’ wait for me an’ we’ll go for a walk.’
‘Isn’t it a lovely afternoon,’ Rosie began, as she and Lizzie fell into step on the short drive in front of the Mackay’s house. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘What about going over to Sandymount to see if they’re still pickin’ strawberries. Ma gave me money for sweets, but if there’s any still left, I’ll buy her some. She loves strawberries.’
‘How is she today, Lizzie?’
‘There’s no change,’ she said flatly. ‘The doctor says she’ll never be strong. I don’t think they ever knew what was wrong with her when she took so bad, but at least she’s better than she was. Da thought she was a gonner an’ he was near off his head. She said to tell you she was askin’ for you.’
‘That’s nice of her, Lizzie,’ Rosie replied, touched by the sick woman’s thoughts. ‘I’ll come and see her when she feels more like it.’
They walked quickly down the lane and passed the Hamilton farm without even glancing towards the open door. Across the railway line they moved more slowly, following the steep lane up as far as Harry McGaw’s smithy.
They turned left along the gable of the low, whitewashed building with its high-pitched roof. The much gentler slope along the hillside gave them back breath for talk.
‘So have ye heard anythin’ yet from yer man?’ Lizzie asked.
‘I had a letter this morning. It was five pages.’
‘Five!’ she exclaimed, her eyes wide with amazement. ‘What did he say?’
Rosie had considered bringing Patrick’s letter to show to Lizzie. They were, after all, very good friends who shared all their secrets. Unlike many of the other girls at Miss Wilson’s, Lizzie never gossiped or talked behind one’s back and she was far too good-natured ever to be jealous if Rosie had a boyfriend and she hadn’t. But Patrick’s letter didn’t exactly seem the kind you shared with a girlfriend the way she’d seen the other girls do, reading out the ‘good bits’, going into peals of excited laughter, teasing and making sly comments.
Most of Patrick’s letter was about books, telling her at length what he was reading and what he hoped to read. He went into great detail about W.B. Yeats and some argument he was having with the Abbey Theatre and what his friend Sean thought about the matter. About the Abbey, all she knew of it was its reputation for putting on controversial plays. She had no idea at all who Sean was.
To be honest she hadn
’t known what to make of the letter. On her first hasty reading, as page followed page, she’d begun to wonder if he would even mention their meeting, the time they had shared, or the events in Kerry that had brought them so suddenly together. She was halfway down the last page, her heart sinking as she realised the letter was almost at an end, when he began a new paragraph quite unrelated to what had gone before and wrote in his flourishing script: ‘I think of you often my lovely Rose and hope you flourish in your far country until we can meet again.’
There followed a fragment of Irish. She recognised some of the words he’d written in her book of sonnets. Then his scrawled signature, Padraig.
‘It’s a pity he’s away in Dublin,’ Lizzie said, puzzled as to what one did when the object of one’s affection didn’t live down the road, over in the next townland, or at least within cycling distance.
The narrow lane was dusty and made narrower still by the untrimmed hedgerows, shaggy with the growth of a hot summer, laden now with ripening berries and threaded with honeysuckle. The hedgebanks themselves were spiked with rosebay willow herb, its drying fragments floating in the warm air like fibres gyrating on a spinning floor. Dark brown stalks topped by fine rayed spikes, the remains of cow parsley already stood out amidst the long, seeding grass, stiff skeletons bearing little relation to the soft fronds of green and cream that in springtime had waved in every breeze like the surging of a stormy sea.
Lizzie looked at her friend curiously
‘Will ye write back? What’ll ye say?’
The idea of writing to anyone, never mind the longed for someone, had never entered her thoughts. But then, Rosie was different from all the rest of the girls at Miss Wilson’s. She was cleverer for a start. She even read books because she liked reading books.
Reading books didn’t appeal to Lizzie at all. What she enjoyed most was being out and about. Going into Portadown on her father’s lorry; buying things in shops for her mother; making clothes; looking at the film magazines and reading about the Hollywood stars and their frequent marriages and divorces. But, when she thought of her friend, she always remembered what her mother said, ‘Lizzie, people are different. You have to accept them the way they are, otherwise you’ll get very disappointed.’