The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay

by Anne Doughty

  ‘I have the One Inch and the Geological in the car, if you’d like a look.’

  His words made me aware I’d fallen silent yet again, so confused and puzzled was I by what was going on inside my head. I tried to say something about his calls and having delayed him, but he just shook his head: ‘Don’t worry. The first call is down there in the trees. John Carlyle, the blacksmith. I doubt if John even has a clock. If he does, he pays no attention to it whatever.’

  We pored over the maps looking at the pattern of roads and settlements. It was the first time I had shared a map with anyone except another geographer. And George, of course. Maps were another thing George teased me about. He said he couldn’t understand why a geographer who is supposed to know everything about maps can never tell you which way to go at a crossroads.

  I’d had another letter from him at breakfast time. Only a single sheet by the feel of it and written in haste by the look of it. I was going to read it when I was getting ready to go out, but I’d sat talking to Mary and left myself short of time. Then I’d found I had no flat sandals to wear with my summer skirt and we’d had to search around to find the ones Mary thought Bridget had forgotten.

  I felt a sudden stab of guilt that it was still unopened in my bag, but as Patrick traced the outline of the brilliant white hills which lay beyond us, I pushed it out of mind and gave all my attention to the scene before me.

  ‘Paddy says the people on the limestone are different from the people on the shale, the “wetland” he calls it. What do you think?’

  ‘Certainly people around here are better off than around Lisara. The grazing is very good. They do a nice line in young calves. And sheep, of course. Too wet in Lisara for sheep.’

  ‘Do you think that sort of difference can affect personality? Paddy says the limestone people are “close”.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about that one,’ he replied as we folded up the maps.

  Just then we caught sight of a small, black car as it began to weave its way up Corkscrew Hill. The noise of the engine reached us over the song of larks and the twitter of small birds in the hedgerows nearby. Patrick winced as the driver crashed his gears. We waited, not wishing to meet this particular vehicle on the steep descent.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that car’s going to make it,’ he said, as the sound effects became more dramatic.

  ‘Patrick, you don’t think. . .’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘We could hop over the wall and hide.’

  ‘And take the car with us?’

  We got back into the car and sat waiting. It was indeed Feely. For a few seconds, as he came out of the last bend, his bonnet pointed straight at us. With a wrench at the wheel, he was past. He had no chance to recognise us, but his passengers certainly did.

  ‘I think they were the same ones we met last Saturday.’

  ‘Could well be. Priests usually stay a fortnight. Moyra’s got a dozen or more at the hotel. Don’t worry about them. As I said before, they gave me up as a bad job a long time ago.’

  I said nothing, for the descent was difficult in such a large car and Patrick was driving slowly so I could enjoy the view. I glanced sideways at him and saw a person I barely recognised. The lines on his face were hard and deep-etched as he concentrated on the hairpins. This was a quite different person from the one who had shared the landscape with me only minutes ago. Uneasy and sad, I felt as if the brightness of the morning itself had been shadowed by threatening cloud.

  We stopped in front of a rusty five-barred gate. At the end of a lane shadowed by sycamores, I could see the shabby plaster of John Carlyle’s house. As the engine died away and the buzz of insects and the sound of birds came back to us, the heavy air filled with the ring of hammer on anvil. My unease disappeared as suddenly as it had come and my spirits soared.

  ‘Could I come with you or do you want me to stay here?’ I asked, my words spilling out so quickly I nearly stuttered. ‘I do speak fluent blacksmith,’ I added, hopefully.

  ‘Yes, of course you do. Do come if you want to but I’m not sure what you’ll make of John. He looks like Abraham and he’s not much of a ladies’ man,’ he warned.

  Beyond the lane the cobbled yard was full of ploughs and harrows and bits of reaping machines. From a low, whitewashed building with a black, felted roof, fresh smoke rose and hung almost motionless in the still air. As we approached, the hammering stopped and a tall figure bent under the low lintel, his eyes screwed up against the light.

  He did look like Abraham. The flowing white beard and craggy face reminded me immediately of my Child’s Illustrated Bible. He was at least six feet tall and his height was accentuated by high boots and the long, worn leather apron which covered his working clothes.

  ‘Good day, John.’

  ‘Good day, sur.’

  ‘It’s a good day for the work.’

  ‘It is, it is . . .’

  ‘This is Miss Stewart, John. Miss Stewart is a student, she has an interest in these parts.’

  John Carlyle grunted and kept his eyes fixed on Patrick. He looked about as comfortable as if someone had brought him a wild animal on a piece of thin string.

  ‘How is he then?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Good. Ye’ll see him improved. He’s in the low field. ’Tis very rough.’

  He marched off without a backward glance. Patrick paused, disconcerted.

  ‘I’ll wait here, Mr Delargy,’ I said loudly, signalling to him to follow John Carlyle’s disappearing figure. ‘Mr Carlyle won’t mind if I look at his forge, will he?’ I raised my voice so the departing figure could object if he chose.

  Patrick still looked anxious lest I were offended, so I grinned broadly and shooed him towards the low field. This time he caught on, his relief palpable as he hurried away.

  I had met men like Carlyle before, but not for a long time. Shy, rather than unpleasant, they used to sit on the wooden bench in Uncle Albert’s forge, or lean against the entrance to the shoeing shed. Given time, they would get used to you and offer the odd word. Many a one had ended up saving sweets for me. They would slip them to me when no one was looking, sticky and hard to unwrap from having been carried round in an inside pocket.

  Still smiling to myself, I walked over to the door of the forge, looked into the darkness and breathed the old, familiar smell. A mixture of smells really. Smoke, certainly. A thick, creamy rope of it wound upwards from the damp slack on the fire. And dampness, too. Always in summer the stone walls of a forge transpire their stored up moisture, cooling the air inside. There was the acrid smell of metal. And axle oil. Burnt hoof from a recently shod animal. Blended together, the smell brought back to me what I now understood as the very best days of my childhood.

  I could see Uncle Albert in his leather apron, the strings tied behind and then in front, a horse’s hoof between his knees, pressing the hot iron shoe against the hoof so that it singed and smoked and left a mark that he could read. The shoe would go back into the fire, the bellows pumped till the metal glowed orange. The forge would fill with the ring of hammer on anvil.

  ‘Mind yerselves, childer,’ he would call out as the sparks flew, tracing bright arcs in the dimness. And the children would scatter, pushing and laughing, delighted to be frightened by the pursuing fragments. But I never ran away. My place was the corner by the bellows the sparks seldom reached. There, I would wait for my favourite moment, when the hammering stopped. A silence and then the water tank swallowed up the hot metal, seething and bubbling like a witch’s caldron, a cloud of steam enveloping me.

  I was never frightened in the forge as other children were. I knew when to move and when to keep still, when to ask questions and when to stay silent and watch, and how to drink scalding tea from an enamel mug with my hanky wrapped round the handle.

  John Carlyle’s forge was bigger than Uncle Albert’s. It had three anvils, all mounted on tree stumps sunk into the earth. There were long work benches, too, covered with tools and a machine for drilling h
oles in metal. A newly drilled bar of iron leaned against the wall and bright silvery filings glinted on the patina of black coal dust that covered the floor.

  I walked slowly across to the anvil and picked up the heavy hammer Carlyle had been using when we arrived. A ten pounder. A favourite one, for the wooden shaft was polished smooth with use. As I put it down the metal rang on the anvil and Uncle Albert’s words came back to me: ‘Each anvil has a different note. A smith can always pick out his own, even in a factory workshop with twenty going at once.’

  I drew a small hammer from the rack and struck each anvil in turn. Yes, they were all different. But what made them different? Was it the size? I experimented further and found that the second anvil was the one most like Uncle Albert’s. I tapped it thoughtfully, an old rhythm stirring on the edge of consciousness. Uncle Albert never just hit a piece of metal. He made the hammer dance, moving from metal to anvil and back again. There was a pattern in it like the stresses in poetry.

  ‘Turn ta-ta tum tum. Tum ta-ta tum,’ I sang to myself. I tapped out the tune with the light hammer, but it didn’t sound right. Well, of course it wouldn’t, would it?

  ‘Silly girl,’ I said aloud. ‘You’d never use a hammer that weight on the anvil.’

  I went back to the ten pounder and tried again. Yes. That’s more like it. But the rhythm was too slow and the blows too tentative. I tried again. And again. Each time it got better, but although my arm began to ache with the effort, it still wasn’t right. If I could get the pattern, I’d be back in the forge. I had not the slightest idea why I needed to get back to the forge, but with every attempt I grew yet more determined.

  A shadow fell across the anvil as I raised my arm once more. John Carlyle was in the doorway, his face dark in shadow, his arm outstretched for his hammer. His large figure seemed menacing as he strode towards me. I held out his hammer and retreated before him. Immediately, the forge filled with sound which echoed and vibrated from the walls and roof.

  ‘Try it again, miss. Ye were holdin’ it too tight.’

  He moved towards me, a patch of sunlight falling on his face. He was smiling broadly as I reached out and took the hammer from his hand.

  Chapter 10

  By the time we left John Carlyle’s, it was nearly two o’clock, the car was like an oven and we were ravenous. Patrick drove a short way, stopped in the broad entrance to a cornfield and nodded across the sun-bleached stubble towards a line of trees, a narrow band of deep shadow round their feet.

  ‘There’s a stream over there if you don’t mind the walk.’

  ‘I’d walk a mile for a stream,’ I answered truthfully.

  ‘So would I, usually. But today I might expire.’

  He handed me one of the picnic baskets, picked up a rug from the car and we set off. The stubble was very prickly and pieces of thistle poked through my sandals and stabbed my bare toes. The heat had built up since noon and it was further than it looked, but a few minutes later we were able to collapse on a mossy slope at the foot of a tall beech. We sat for a few moments just listening to the stream. There was very little water in the deep cutting it had made for itself, but what there was fell in a series of steps and filled the air with its splash and gurgle. Under the trees, the air was cool and full of the sound of birds.

  ‘How many people did Mrs Brannigan expect for lunch?’

  ‘What?’

  He looked up from the bottle he had just unwrapped, a preoccupied look on his face. He laughed when I repeated my question.

  ‘Just two. But I think Mrs Brannigan has been talking to Mr Feely. She doesn’t usually put in a bottle of my best sherry when I ask for a packed lunch.’

  ‘Well, there’s enough here to feed the five thousand,’ I declared, as I unpacked the larger basket.

  He handed me a glass.

  ‘Sherry, madam?’

  She certainly intended we shouldn’t starve. There were sandwiches in greaseproof packets, both beef and ham, a box of biscuits and cheese, two pieces of apple tart and a bunch of grapes. Packed in the basket with the sherry was a thermos of iced water and another of coffee. We leaned against the smooth tree trunk in silence, watching the wagtails dart about amongst the stones. After a while, I took out two mugs and balanced them on a flat stone.

  ‘Coffee?’

  He had been thinking and I saw the familiar shadow on his face as I spoke. It vanished when he turned and saw me struggling with the cap on the bottle that held the milk.

  ‘Can I help?’

  I gripped tighter and tried again. It was an old half-bottle that had once held whiskey and its rough metal cap dug into my hand. I took out my hanky and wrapped it round the neck. This time it gave.

  ‘Milk?’

  He was laughing and I laughed myself when it struck me how persistent I’d been with the wretched cap.

  ‘Elizabeth, you are a very determined young lady. Did you know that?’

  ‘Very unfeminine, so I’ve been told.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  It was George, of course. But somehow that was a name I had no wish to mention. I’d just been thinking what a fuss George made about unpacking a picnic basket whenever we went out together. Patrick had simply handed me one and tackled the other himself.

  ‘Oh, my grandmother for one,’ I began. ‘She thinks a woman should only think what her husband thinks and pretend she can’t do things so as to bolster his morale. She says men don’t like women who know too much.’

  ‘She has a point there, I suppose. Not every man would appreciate an incisive mind like yours. Some of them set greater store by the homely comforts. . . “kirche, küche, kinder”.’

  ‘Church, kitchen and children,’ I repeated tentatively, sure enough of the words, but not at all sure what the expression really meant.

  ‘It’s an old German expression for the lot that properly becomes a woman,’ he explained. ‘I believe it was a man who first said it.’

  ‘Naturally,’ I agreed, as I tucked the expression away for future use. It summed up very nicely something I had been trying to put my finger on. ‘Grandma Stewart used to nag my mother about my going to university.’

  ‘You mean she tried to stop you?’

  I nodded, surprised at his sudden anger.

  ‘And how did you manage it?’

  ‘Luck mostly. I won a scholarship and the headmistress sent for my father. I don’t know what she said to him, but I think he may have got a bit of a shock. Miss Mannering is rather elderly, a little person, rather bird-like. She used to wear lace blouses with cameo brooches or pearl chokers. I always liked her, but I think she really surprised Dad. After his interview, he wouldn’t even go to Prize Day.’

  ‘She sounds quite a woman.’

  ‘Yes, she was. I think most people underestimated her, because of how she looked, but she always managed to get her own way once she worked out what she felt was the right thing to do.’

  ‘She sounds rather like an attractive young woman of my acquaintance.’

  I wondered who he meant and was about to ask but I saw he was smiling at me in a way even I couldn’t miss. I had absolutely no idea what to say.

  ‘Look,’ he cried urgently, swinging round towards the river. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Only just. Was it a kingfisher?’

  ‘It was indeed. I’ve seen him here before. I hoped he might honour us. Come over this side, he might come back.’

  I moved over beside him and shared the one small space where we could both see the pool where the dappled shadows had glinted with blue. We sat very still, talking in whispers. But I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying about the habits of kingfishers. Inside my head, a dialogue was going on so fiercely that I wondered if it was the effect of the heat or the sherry, or both.

  ‘Attractive young woman,’ said one voice. ‘Incisive mind,’ said another. ‘Nonsense,’ came the reply. ‘Always did have a good opinion of herself,’ shouted the other. ‘Too sure of herself by far. Mark my words
, educate a woman and she loses leave of her senses.’

  If I was losing leave of my senses, I’d like to know which ones. I’d seldom felt my senses sharper. I was fully aware of my delight in Patrick’s company, the uneasy excitement of his physical closeness, the warmth of his body through the thin, creamy fabric of his shirt.

  ‘There he goes.’

  As we moved forward together intent on the blue-green flash our hands touched and clasped Unaware of his breathless audience, the kingfisher flew up and down the stream for a full fifteen minutes after.

  ‘I’ll not ask you to come with me this time, Elizabeth,’ began Patrick, when we drew up outside a handsome, two-storey house a few miles further north. ‘John Joe is as deaf as a post and never stops talking. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  I let my arm rest on the open window in the hope of cooling off. But it didn’t help. I thought of my cologne stick, reached for my handbag and found George’s letter. Before I paused to think, I had ripped it open.

  My darling Elizabeth, I got your letter yesterday and was so disappointed that I’ll have to wait a whole week till I hold you in my arms again.

  When was yesterday? There was no date on his letter and the postmark was fuzzy.

  Last night a crowd of us went to Bostock. It wasn’t very good and I missed you terribly. I gave Adrienne a lift home and we agreed there was no one there worth dancing with. But I have good news. Mum says I can have the car on Saturday but I must have it back on Sunday night. I’m sure you can be ready on Saturday. That old man seems to have been a great help with getting your maps done and counting the houses. I rang your mother and she says it would be lovely if I could collect you, it seems such an out of the way place. I don’t mind how far it is, darling. I just want you back home again. Write soon or phone Mum at the office to tell me you’ll be ready, afternoon probably. Must dash for post. Passionately yours, George.