Golden Sisters

by Alrene Hughes

  ‘You know I can’t stay, don’t you? I have to go home,’ she whispered at last.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought that might be the way of it.’

  Chapter 19

  The privet hedge needed cutting, the windows needed washing, and Martha was already rehearsing the tongue-lashing those slovenly daughters would get when she saw them. She was reaching down to get the key from under the scrubbing brush when Sheila said, ‘Don’t bother, Mammy, the door’s not locked.’

  Inside, there were dirty dishes in the sink, a pile of ironing on the draining board and the fire in the range was out.

  ‘Right, Sheila, you get the fire lit while I take our bags upstairs.’

  Moments later there was a startled cry and Sheila rushed to the foot of the stairs. ‘Are you all right, Mammy?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the reply, ‘Pat’s up here.’

  ‘Why’s she not at work?’

  ‘I don’t know … away and get that fire going like I told you.’

  Pat was lying on her bed staring at the ceiling and had jumped up in fright when Martha came into the room.

  ‘Mammy, what are you doing here?’

  Martha didn’t reply, so shocked was she at the sight of her daughter. Pat’s face was thin, her skin almost transparent, and her hair lay flat against her scalp.

  ‘Oh Mammy, I can’t believe you’re home.’ Pat’s voice cracked with emotion and she began to sob.

  ‘God save us,’ whispered Martha and she took her daughter in her arms and hugged her close. ‘There, there, it’s all right.’ This was not the time for questions or explanations; comfort the body then calm the mind was Martha’s philosophy of healing.

  When Pat had quietened a little Martha said, ‘Now then, you tidy yourself up a wee bit and come down when you’re ready. We’ve brought some bacon, eggs and fresh bread home with us to have for our dinner.’

  Downstairs, Martha warned Sheila about the state of her sister. ‘Just chat away about what you’ve been up to in Dungannon,’ Martha told her. ‘Expect no conversation, mind, just let her listen.’

  By the time they’d finished eating, the range had heated the water and Martha ran a bath for Pat. ‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a good soak and washed your hair. While you’re doing that, Sheila’ll tackle the ironing and I’ll get this kitchen shipshape.’

  Later, in the warm kitchen that smelled of fresh ironing and with Workers’ Playtime on the wireless, Pat was settled in the armchair next to the range while Martha combed and teased the knots out of her hair. Pat tried to speak, but she couldn’t manage more than a few words.

  ‘Hush now,’ Martha told her, ‘sure you can tell us all about it later.’

  Martha was alone in the kitchen when Peggy arrived home from work. Pat had gone upstairs to lie down and Sheila had offered to sit and read to her. It was obvious that Peggy was exhausted too and whatever had taken place had brought great sadness to both girls.

  ‘You’re home then?’ was all Peggy said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’ve seen Pat?’

  ‘Indeed I have, but it’s you I need to speak to. Sit yourself down.’

  ‘Mammy, I can’t talk about all this now.’

  ‘Oh yes you can, my girl! I need to know why our Pat is in such a state and, more to the point, why you didn’t tell me what was going on here.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Couldn’t? Couldn’t!’ Martha’s voice rose. ‘I’ve a wee girl upstairs, the weight dropped off her, can’t string a sentence together, who looks to me like she’s had a nervous breakdown and should be locked up in Purdysburn!’

  ‘It’s not my fault!’ Peggy shouted through her tears. ‘I’ve tried to help her, but she just keeps crying all the time and I had to leave her to go to work, otherwise there’d have been no money. We’ve only just managed to pay the rent. If it hadn’t been for what I earned at the Plaza and the food Betty gave us we’d have starved!’

  ‘What? How long has she been off work?’

  ‘Two months, they stopped her money.’

  ‘Dear God, two months! And you never saw fit to tell me?’ Martha was incredulous. ‘We’re getting to the bottom of this right now. You tell me what’s caused this or I swear I’ll take my hand to you!’

  ‘I can’t!’ Peggy howled and sank to the floor.

  Martha stood over her weeping with frustration. ‘Tell me, tell me!’

  ‘Leave her be.’ Pat stood in the doorway. ‘I made her promise she wouldn’t tell you.’ Pat went to Peggy and helped her up. ‘She’s taken care of me. I’d have gone mad without her so don’t blame her, blame me.’

  ‘But I’m your mother. Am I not allowed to know what put you in this state?’

  Pat breathed deeply. ‘William Kennedy was killed by a bomb in Dublin. I loved him and now he’s dead. That’s all there is to know.’

  Martha could have left it at that, but the sooner Pat could speak of her grief the sooner she could begin to come to terms with it.

  ‘I didn’t always see eye to eye with William, but he was a decent young man,’ said Martha. ‘Why don’t we sit down and you can talk to me about him.’

  The following morning Pat received a letter from Stormont asking her to come for an interview about her future in the Civil Service.

  ‘They want to dismiss me,’ said Pat.

  ‘Do you want to be dismissed?’ asked Martha.

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case we’ve got three days to get you looking and sounding like someone who could hold down a decent job.’

  ‘How will we do that?’

  ‘We’ll start with a good breakfast then we’ll clean this house from top to bottom. Tonight when Peggy comes home we’ll cut your hair and sort out your clothes for the interview.’

  They carried the rugs out into the garden, shook them and hung them over the washing lines: ‘To let the air at them,’ Martha said. They swept every room and used plenty of hot water and carbolic to mop the oilcloth. Pat black-leaded the range in the kitchen while, in the sitting room, Martha polished the fender with Brasso. The delft cupboard in the kitchen was emptied, the shelves lined with fresh newspaper and the washed crockery restacked gleaming clean. On and on they worked until they felt the pangs of hunger. The sun was warm enough to sit side by side on the back step with their tea and bread.

  They ate in silence a while then Martha said, ‘You’ll have been thinking about him all the time.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘There’s no harm in that. At first, when your father died, I went over and over what had happened … ’ Martha sighed and shook her head. ‘Asking myself the same questions day after day. Could he have been saved? What should I have done differently? A burst appendix, they said – if only I’d realised and done something when he first felt ill. But, you know what, all the questions and thinking get you no further forward than the moment you knew he’d gone.’

  ‘Do those thoughts ever go away?’

  ‘They have to or you’ll never rest easy. Doesn’t mean you ever stop thinking about him, but you have to find a way to let him be there with you, hear him when he speaks to you, ask him what he thinks.’

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘Sometimes at night before I go to sleep I walk with him again up the lane like we did every Sunday when we were courting. We sit on the hill and I tell him what’s on my mind. Last night we talked about you.’

  ‘You told him what happened?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Martha smiled. ‘He said that you are the most sensible of our daughters.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘It was enough.’

  On the second day, Martha collected her pension and sent Sheila to the McCrackens with a shopping list, while she and Pat set about the front garden. Pat borrowed some clippers from Jack next door and trimmed the hedge and Martha we
eded the borders. The sun was hotter than the previous day and soon they were sitting on the front step drinking water.

  ‘Well, did you tell William what was on your mind?’

  Pat looked sideways at her mother, a little embarrassed, but after a moment she said, ‘We were in the wings waiting to go on stage. I told him about the interview at Stormont and how scared I was.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that I was his most sensible clerk.’

  Martha couldn’t help but laugh and to her surprise Pat laughed too.

  By the third day Pat’s appetite had returned. Her hair had been trimmed and shaped, the skirt of her best costume had been taken in at the waist and her skin was glowing after a day in the sun.

  ‘We’ll tackle the back garden today – Jack’s lent us his lawn mower,’ said Martha. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll push it.’

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Pat.

  ‘Are you strong enough?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The grass was long and lush and the sun was hotter than ever as Pat laboured back and forth and with each step she whispered William’s name. Let him be next to you her mother had said, but she had no sense of him there at all. Desperation gnawed at her as she pushed the length of the garden and back again and in her mind his name became an anxious plea. ‘William!’ He’d deserted her again … left her alone … when she needed him so much.

  ‘William!’ she cried and thrust the mower hard. It shuddered and the full force of her weight sent her crashing into it. A stone in the blade. She bent to remove it and there next to it sparkling in the sun was the diamond solitaire – his gift to her.

  ‘You didn’t have to come with me, you know,’ Pat told her mother.

  ‘I know, but I fancied a trip out to Stormont. Haven’t been out this way in many a year. I’ll walk around the grounds while you have your interview. You’re sure you’re fine with all this?’

  ‘Look, Mammy, I need to get back to work because I know there’s so much to be done. That’s what I’ll tell them.’

  Pat was directed to a part of the building she did not know and left alone in a small windowless waiting room with a ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ poster on the wall. Time dragged and no one came. Steadily her heartbeat quickened and the panic rose within her. She had to get out … but the interview … her hands were on her chest, there wasn’t enough air. Then she felt it. Beneath the thin cotton blouse on the chain round her neck was William’s ring.

  The man who interviewed her sucked on his pipe and shuffled the papers in front of him. ‘You’ve been ill, Miss Goulding.’ Pat couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question. She answered anyway.

  ‘Yes I have.’

  ‘And what was the nature of your illness?’

  ‘Scarlet fever.’

  ‘Really? A very dangerous illness; I trust you are fully recovered.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Unfortunately, during your absence we had, out of necessity, to replace you as clerk responsible for co-ordinating the air-raid reports. You were also, for a short period, I understand, clerk to the permanent secretary, Mr Kennedy, who is no longer with us.’

  Pat nodded.

  ‘I am able to offer you a position as a filing clerk.’

  ‘Filing clerk?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She had only to say ‘thank you’ and she would be back in employment with a wage every week. She hesitated.

  ‘I don’t think that would be right for me.’

  ‘Miss Goulding, I am offering you a chance to come back to work in the Civil Service.’

  ‘I’m very grateful for that, but I don’t want to file bits of paper. I want to do more. When I worked for the permanent secretary, I saw people so frightened that they left Belfast in huge numbers to sleep rough in the hills and the countryside – wretched people, bombed out of their homes, half-starved and in rags wandering the streets.’ She paused to gather her courage, to keep her voice measured and to hold back her tears. ‘Sir, Mr Kennedy had plans to give these people back their dignity and our city its pride and I want to be a part of that.’

  The man gave her a hard stare. ‘Wait here please,’ and left the room.

  ‘Oh, William,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve done it now, haven’t I?’

  Martha paced up and down beneath Carson’s statue. Why hadn’t she insisted on going with Pat to the interview? She knew it would have been odd for a grown woman to have her mother with her, but she could have supported her. Instead, Pat had probably broken down – even now they were probably trying to calm her and any chance of keeping her job would be disappearing with every tear she shed.

  ‘Come on, Mammy, let’s go home.’ Pat walked past her.

  Martha scanned her daughter’s face for any sign of the outcome. She noted only that Pat held her head high and that she walked in determined strides. Martha fell into step alongside her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The man who interviewed me offered me a job as a filing clerk.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Martha’s relief was evident.

  ‘I didn’t take it.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I told him it wasn’t the job for me.’

  ‘You told him!’

  ‘Yes, and then he offered me a job as clerk to a committee being set up by Sir Basil Brook to plan Belfast’s recovery because, he thought, I seemed like a very sensible clerk and ideal for such a position.’

  Chapter 20

  The cottage at Road End was everything Belfast wasn’t. Irene got used to waking up to blue skies and the sound of sparrows in the thatch and to having the whole day ahead of her to do as she pleased. At first she took long walks down the lanes, occasionally meeting someone with whom to pass the time of day along the way, or she came across a village and called into a shop. One afternoon, after she had walked to Ballyhalbert for some liver for Sandy’s tea, she popped into Jeanie’s house for some fresh milk.

  ‘Liver’s very good for the blood, you know,’ said Jeanie, ‘especially for young women like yourself.’

  ‘I’m not so keen on it.’

  ‘Do you cook it with onions?

  ‘Not too keen on onions either.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Irene had not been round the back of the farmhouse before and was surprised to see a large kitchen garden. Jeanie marched up the path pointing out what was growing on each side. ‘There’s the salad comin’ on. Over this side there are fruit bushes – gooseberry, raspberry, blackcurrant, all good for pies and jam. Here are peas and beans, then cauliflowers and cabbages, then onions, carrots and turnips and, all the way down to the fence, potatoes. Over the back there is the orchard with apples and damsons.’

  ‘It’s an entire greengrocers!’ laughed Irene.

  ‘It’s better than that – ye pick it when ye need it and it’s always fresh.’

  ‘It must be great to have a garden like this, growing all these things to eat.’

  ‘Aye it is, but it’s hard work, mind ye. Now this is what ye want,’ and she stooped to pull up two onion plants. ‘They’re not too strong and they’re sweet fried in the pan. Put them with the liver and then come back and tell me if ye still hate liver.’

  The next day, Irene was back in Jeanie’s kitchen telling her how much she and Sandy enjoyed the liver and onions.

  ‘So there ye are, another meal ye can cook for him.’ Jeanie rolled out some pastry on the kitchen table as she chatted. ‘What have you been up to the day?’

  ‘Cleaned the house, washed some clothes.’

  ‘Do ye find it a bit quiet in the country?’ Jeanie put a dinner plate on the pastry and scored a knife round the edge.

  ‘Ach, I don’t mind a bit of quiet.’

  ‘You’ve enough to pass your time, then?’ Jeanie lined the plate with the pastry and sliced the baking apples into it, sprinkled them with sugar and put an upturned egg cup in the middle.

  ‘I go for walks, read a bit in the after
noon.’

  Jeanie settled the pastry lid over the apples and the little dome of the egg cup, then turned the plate with one hand while the finger and thumb of the other pinched the edges to seal it.

  ‘Could you teach me to do that?’ asked Irene.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Make an apple tart.’

  Jeanie laughed and brushed the pastry with egg before putting the tart in the range. ‘I’ll tell ye what, why don’t ye come round in the morning and I’ll give ye a taste of what it’s like to be a farmer’s wife for a day?’

  The weeks passed and under Jeanie’s guidance Irene learned to plant and tend the garden. The sun turned her skin as golden as Jeanie’s shortcrust pastry. She fed the chickens and learned where to find their eggs each morning and, once she got the hang of it, helped with the milking. When the farm work was done she and Jeanie would pass the afternoon baking and making jam or homemade wine. Soon the world beyond Road End and Bally­halbert seeped away like water in a ditch at the height of summer and even the letters she received from her mother and sisters seemed irrelevant. Until one evening Sandy came home and announced that Ballyhalbert airfield was set to become operational. His work there would be finished and his next posting would be to an RAF base in England.

  ‘England? Why are they sending you there when you’ve been based over here all this time?’

  ‘That’s just the point,’ explained Sandy. ‘I’ve finished installing the wireless equipment in the planes and the control towers. It’s all been tested and works fine. Now I have to go and do the same at another base.’

  ‘But I’ve just got used to being here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Irene, but that’s what happens. I’m in the forces and there’s a war on. At least they’re not sending me overseas. An airbase in England is a good billet. It’ll be out in the country again, just like here. We can find another cottage.’