by Anne Doughty
A few hundred yards beyond the point where Rosie and Bobby had visited their father in the middle of the month, the big load stuck, bogged down in a hollow. Not even a battalion of road engines could shift it from its position in a sea of mud. For two weeks, no progress could be made, so the four-man team turned to dismantling predictable obstacles along the route that had been agreed. The road engines were so well looked after even the working parts shone. Mrs Braithwaite’s garden wall was completed and pronounced much superior to its predecessor, one the team had been forced to demolish.
In those two weeks of standstill the lady herself, a kindly widow in her forties, became a neighbour and a good friend to the haulage team. A mere fifty yards away from the site caravan, she offered the use of her kitchen to young Mr Charles who’d developed his cooking skills and had now outgrown the paraffin stoves provided. Her small sitting room was available to Sam Hamilton and the visiting surveyor when they had to consult over maps and plans and her kitchen stove provided warmth and dry clothes for everyone.
Rosie and Bobby braved the weather to visit their father and took an instant liking to Mary Braithwaite. A small, bright-eyed woman, she hurried out of her front door as soon as they appeared, carrying a batch of scones under a large umbrella. While tea was being made and the rain continued to pour down outside, she entertained the two of them with an account of the trials and tribulations of the team, who sat back and enjoyed the stories every bit as much as they did.
At the end of this turbulent month, between one day and the next, the weather changed. The barometer went up and fine dry weather settled in again. Rosie enjoyed the first fine days of sunshine, but, after the first full week without the smallest shower, the effects of May’s deluges had been completely erased. With long hours of hot sun and a small, warm breeze, the cart ruts grew dusty and the ground brick hard again. When Bobby dug the first spadefull of potatoes, it was obvious the crop would be poor.
For a week or two Rosie found the hot weather simply tiring, the nights hot enough to prevent the best of sleep, but the actual daily chores were easier. The freshly scrubbed kitchen floor was so quick to dry, she’d no need to fear someone would undo her work by tramping across its damp surface. The washing, hung out by mid morning, was ready to take in as soon as lunch was cleared away.
Only the milk going sour and the butter melting as soon as it was brought in from the dairy created extra work. The wet cloths hung over the milk jugs to keep them cool dried out in such a short time. Even the pieces of slate on which they sat in bowls of water in the coolest part of the dairy began to feel less than chill to the touch. Whenever she finished a job and wondered what came next, she would remember the milk jugs, hurry across the yard and soak the cloths yet again.
Halfway through June, the water tank her father had installed on the roof of the barn ran empty. The rainwater barrels normally used for washing and cleaning had long since been exhausted. Now the only water supply was the well at the far end of the orchard. Even in the longest drought, it had never run dry, but it was a long walk from the house and the galvanised buckets were heavy even before they were filled.
‘Hallo, Bobby. Do you come here often?’
Rosie put her buckets down and waited while Bobby finished filling his. Even from a distance she’d guessed by the set of his body that he was weary and dispirited. His lack of response to her small attempt at lightness told her all she needed to know.
‘How many buckets do the cows need?’ she went on, as he straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
‘Twelve,’ he said shortly. ‘Morning and evening both.’
‘Goodness, Bobby, I’d no idea they drank so much. I thought I was bad enough having to carry four buckets a day unless Ma’s in a good mood.’
‘And that means eight journeys for you,’ he replied, his tone softening slightly.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Saw you pouring one into the other up at the house. You’ve not got the Hamilton shoulders,’ he declared grinning. ‘Just as well, seeing you’re a girl.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Men don’t like strong women.’
Rosie burst out laughing and sat down on the trunk of an old apple tree fallen alongside the well a very long time ago. ‘What else don’t men like?’
Always the quietest of her brothers and not yet sixteen, Bobby had never yet asked a girl to go for a walk or to the dance in the Orange Hall on a Saturday night.
To her surprise, he came and sat down beside her, his overflowing buckets left sitting in the sun, the strong light reflecting from their oscillating surface.
‘They don’t like being told what to do all the time when they know rightly what to do.’
‘Does Ma tell you what to do?’
‘Oh aye.’
‘That is awful. I didn’t know that. She used to do it with me in the house, but she hardly ever even speaks to me now. But you don’t need to be told what to do, surely. You know just as much about the job as she does. After all you’ve worked the farm for three years now.’
‘Three years too many,’ he retorted, his tone bitter and bleak.
She had never heard Bobby speak like this before. But then, their paths seldom crossed in the course of the working day and when the family were together, he seldom said anything. As soon as he’d eaten his supper, he’d go off to the barn with Charlie. Sometimes she heard hammering from the workshop, but mostly all was quiet and she knew they were listening in and exploring the new wireless stations on the equipment Granda had bought for them.
‘It’s all right for you Rosie. You’re good-lookin’. You could marry one of them men at Granda’s funeral, the posh ones from England, like our Aunt Hannah did. But I could be workin’ here the rest of my life. Even if there were any jobs goin’, Ma’d never let me go. The only thing she likes is babies and cows.’
Rosie smiled to herself and tried not to laugh. It was so unlike Bobby to comment, but he wasn’t far wrong. There’d been no trouble with her mother when they were very small. She herself could remember Jack and Dolly as toddlers. They were always well cared for, petted in fact. But she’d had enough of them by the time they were five, as Emily had once concluded.
‘But Bobby, if a job came up you’d have to go. It’s your life. She can’t keep you here like a hired man.’
‘And what about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
He shook his head and looked at her gravely.
‘I know Da’s been great an’ given us a bit of money, but you’re just the same as me, as far as Ma goes, a hired girl. How are you goin’ to get away unless you follow Emily when she’s saved up for your ticket?’
‘I don’t know, Bobby. To be honest I haven’t thought about it very much. There’s been so much else on my mind since Granda died. But you’re right. I couldn’t go on living at home, year after year, any more than you.’
She stood up and smiled encouragingly at him.
‘Why don’t we go and see Da again? Tomorrow say.’
‘Aye. That would be great. This weather is just the best for them. They’ll be halfway to Armagh,’ he said with a grin.
‘Yes. And if they’re doing that well you might find Da could let you try your hand on one of the road engines.’
A smile lit up his face Rosie felt she would never forget. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud and lighting up the whole landscape, so the set of both his face and his body was transformed. He nodded as he picked up his buckets and set off through the orchard, a visible lightness in his step, as if the weight of the buckets was a matter of complete indifference to him.
Bobby was quite right about progress of the big load. After all the problems and setbacks, conditions were now ideal. By the fourth week in June they were cycling as far as Armagh itself. On a route that skirted the city, an old, broad track, rock hard in the dry heat, the whole encampment was moving steadily.
Sitting in the barn a fe
w days later, painting a spray of wild rose in the small area of workbench which Bobby kept free for her, she found herself thinking back over the long, slow progress of the big load. The weather had been fine and dry in the first weeks, but every day something had happened to bring them to a halt. Sometimes they couldn’t even get started. It had been an anxious and dispiriting time, whereas now everything was going forward, the day’s journey almost predictable, the team so well used to each other’s ways of working that when she and Bobby had stood and watched them, it looked as if they’d been doing the job all their lives.
She ought to try and remember the big load whenever she found herself beset by problems, struggling, or even completely bogged down as they’d been for those weeks almost outside Mary Braithwaite’s house.
‘No, that won’t do either,’ she said to herself, as she washed her brush and tried again to mix a shade of pink pale enough for the fully open bloom sitting in a jam pot in front of her.
She’d made her first attempts at watercolour when Miss Wilson insisted all her girls try either paint or pencil. She’d always loved colour, so she chose paint and had tried to work from the collection of picture postcards they’d been offered for inspiration, but nothing ever seemed to come out the way she’d imagined it. Only in Kerry had she first produced anything that began to please her, working directly from the flowers in the hotel garden.
She tried the pink on a spare sheet of paper. Still too dark, but better than it was.
She smiled to herself. If she were a writer, she could use the big load to write a fable. Like Pilgrim’s Progress. Or The Tortoise and the Fox. It would have something of the quality of those wonderful tales where the youngest son overcomes all obstacles and by hard work, patience and courage, rescues the princess and carries her off to live happily ever after.
Quite suddenly she thought of Patrick Walsh. That was probably what Patrick thought he wanted to do. He’d virtually said so in more than one of his letters. Descend upon the farm, preferably on a white horse. No mode of transport as prosaic as the train from Portadown would serve his turn.
The thought of him arriving on the doorstep, every inch the Fenian of Uncle Joe’s warped imaginings, and her mother’s likely reaction made her laugh.
‘Poor dear, Patrick,’ she said aloud.
It had taken Rosie some time to realise that Patrick didn’t live in the same world as herself, at least as far as matters like relating to someone you said you really cared about. In his second letter, written in reply to her account of her grandfather’s death, he did manage to say how sorry he was and how grateful he’d always be for his help in escaping from Currane Lodge, but even on that occasion he’d gone on to speculate on the nature of mortality, quoting a couple of lines from St Augustine and Joyce and then some verses in Irish.
She’d reminded him that she didn’t read Irish each time she wrote, but he never remembered to send the translations she’d asked for. When he wrote about her, he always used the high-flown, decorative phrases, the quotations from Irish poetry he’d used in his very first letter.
It was weeks now since she’d heard from him. The young postman who’d been so interested in the arrival of his letters had found himself a girlfriend and no longer looked out for the Dublin postmark and the elaborated swirls and curls of his script. Without quite meaning to, with a sudden shock, she realised she no longer looked out for the Dublin postmark either.
So was it no more than what Lizzie would call ‘a holiday romance’? Maybe she would have to accept that was all it was. Nevertheless, she had to admit every time she looked at small flowers blooming in rocky places, she would remember the drive from Waterville to Tralee with a boy who had kissed her twice.
Two days before the end of June, as her mother sat by the stove reading the Sunday paper and she herself was about to start peeling potatoes for the evening meal, Rosie heard a motor stop on the lane. There was a brief exchange between two men, the tramp of boots across the yard and a moment later her father stood in the doorway.
‘Da!’ she cried. ‘Have you got there?’
‘No, not quite. But we’re so near, the managers at Milford are providing the security tonight to give us a few hours off.’
He looked across at Martha, who remained hidden behind her newspaper and made no gesture of welcome.
‘Are any of your brothers here today?’
‘Yes, Sammy’s home. He’s with Bobby and Charlie in the barn. Jack and Dolly are down at Loneys.’
As she spoke, three figures crowded the doorway, one behind the other, as delighted to see their father as she’d been herself.
‘I read a bit about the big load in the Armagh papers. When’ll you be done, Da?’ asked Sammy, as all three shook hands with their father.
They pulled out chairs from under the table and sat down together. For some time, her father answered their questions in his customary precise and accurate manner, describing the present position and situation of the load. Before they had time to share their own successes with the wireless in the barn, Rosie saw him put his hand up to his jacket and take out an envelope from his inside pocket.
Instantly she knew what it was, for she and Bobby had delivered three similar envelopes in the course of the last months.
‘Here you are, Martha. You might like to read that,’ he said politely, as he handed the letter to her.
She threw him a tight, disagreeable look, grabbed the spectacles Rosie handed her without a word of thanks and pulled out the single folded sheet of paper from the open envelope.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said shortly. ‘Sure where would you get that amount o’ money an’ you always sayin’ ye have none.’
‘I’ve never said I had no money, Martha. Rather that I regretted I had not enough money to provide for so large a family. Despite that, what I had saved, along with the help of this big job and some small assistance from my boss, was enough to meet the figure the solicitors had agreed with the American Loneys. This house is now ours.’
‘Yours, ye mean. I’m sure you’ve not put my name on the deeds.’
‘In the event of my death, the house is yours for your lifetime. After that, our children will benefit according to their needs.’
‘What d’ye mean? Who’s goin’ to get the farm when I’m gone?’
‘There will be no farm, Martha. What I’ve bought is the house and outbuildings, the orchard and the small field beyond. The rest of the land will be let in the autumn. The income from that will repay the small loan the company have made me to make up the purchase money.’
‘An’ what about my cows?’
Rosie could hardly believe her ears. Her father had managed to buy their home and all she could think about were the cows.
‘I thought that securing our home for our children would be more important than providing for the cows. You could keep one in the orchard, could you not?’
‘Sure, what use is one? The milk float isn’t going to collect the milk of one cow. An’ then I’ll have no milk money either. An’ what’s Bobby gonna do? Kick his heels in the barn all day, listenin’ to the wireless?’
Bobby looked up quickly, his face pale. Sammy and Charlie shifted uncomfortably.
‘I have some news for Bobby. Young Jack Withers has done so well on the big job that Mr Lamb is letting him go to our associate company, Irish Road Motors. He’s suggested to me that Bobby might take Jack’s place. That’s if Bobby doesn’t mind being his da’s helper.’
Bobby’s face lit up, relief and pleasure mixed together.
‘That’d be great, Da, I’d like that fine.’
Charlie and Sammy clapped their brother on the back.
‘Good man, Bobby. You’ll be drivin’ engines yet.’
Rosie watched her father carefully and waited for what he would say next. She knew he’d written to the solicitors, gone to see them and had the farm valued, but she was amazed it had all happened so quickly. Then she remembered Emily’s first letter from New Y
ork had taken a mere five days to come, so speedy were the new transatlantic liners. She’d have to get used to the idea America was no longer as far away as it had once seemed.
‘What about Rosie?’
She was quite startled when she realised it was Bobby who spoke. Her mother twisted round in her armchair to stare at him. Bobby ignored her sour look and waited patiently for an answer.
‘Well, there’ll be much less work without animals, as you well know, Bobby. Rosie has worked hard too, especially since Uncle Joe began to fail, but it’s time now she found something that suited her better. We’ll just have to see what opportunities come up. You’ve been lucky, I’ll not deny that, but I don’t see why Rosie here shouldn’t be just as fortunate, even if it takes a wee bit of time.’
Sunday, 28th June 1925
Richhill
My dear Emily,
It is late and I’m half asleep, but I really must tell you the good news before I shut my eyes. Da came this afternoon and he’s bought the house. So we don’t have to think about moving. When you are rich and want to come home to visit, you will now have your own old home to come to. Needless to say, Ma couldn’t find a good word for Da after all his hard work. To make up the last bit of the money he needed, he’s let out our twenty acres to his boss. When she said, ‘What about my cows?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.
The next wonderful news is that Bobby is going to Pearson Haulage to be Da’s helper. Jack Withers has got promoted to the sister company, which is good news for him. Maybe now he and your friend Susie at Fruitfield will be able to get married. Oh Emily, how I wish you could have seen Bobby’s face when Da told him. He is just delighted.
Of course, this means that if Ma has no cows, she can look after the house herself. Da made it clear that I’m now free to find a job. I’ve no idea where I can even look for one, but never mind. Something will turn up. At least I can tell Miss Wilson and Lizzie’s parents and they’ll keep an ear open for me. I went through all this week’s newspapers this evening and as usual there is nothing except ‘Smart boy wanted’. It makes me furious.