by Anne Doughty
Patrick cleared his plate, pushed it away from him and crossed himself. ‘That was great,’ he said. ‘It would put heart in ye. Did they have a good day at school the day?’ he asked, as he moved his armchair nearer to hers.
She put her sewing back in its bag and took his hand.
‘They did indeed,’ she replied smiling. ‘Rose got all her spellings right and Sam managed to give out the slates this time without dropping any,’ she said laughing. ‘But there’s more news than that,’ she went on more slowly, suddenly concerned that he was so tired he might be anxious about what she was going to say next.
‘Oh, what’s that then?’ he asked, a flicker of a smile touching his lips.
To her surprise and delight, she saw his blue eyes light up.
‘Sure, ye know I always need a bit of news to pass on to the boys tomorrow,’ he said, his tone lightening as she watched him.
‘Well, it seems Daniel’s niece, Marie, has been walking out with a young man from Creeslough direction and they’ve named the day.’
‘Ach, sure, that’s great,’ he said. ‘That’ll be a bit of a gatherin’ at some point or other,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They’ll maybe have a kitchen racket at Daniel’s.’
Daniel’s house was not only the place used as the local makeshift school he presided over, but also a popular place for gathering to hear the best stories and songs shared between friends of an evening.
‘Yes, it is good news,’ she agreed, ‘but it will be hard on Daniel. She’ll be living down in Creeslough so she’ll not be able to go on working with him in the schoolroom. He can do so much and everyone says it’s like he’s got eyes in the back of his head, he’s so sharp, but he is blind. How can you teach children if you haven’t got at least one pair of eyes in the room, and a woman as well as a man when there’s wee ones to look after?’
‘Ach dear, it would be a great loss if that wee schoolroom were to be no more. Sure, where wou’d our childer go? I know there’s been talk of getting a National School up here for years now, but nothin’s ever come of it. If it weren’t for Daniel being an educated man there’d never have been anywhere up this part of the mountain where they could go. How could he do anythin’ at all on his lone? Sure, he can talk away, an’ teach them their history, and tell the old stories and hear their readin’ till the cows come home, but what about the writin’ an’ the figures? Sure, Marie must have done all that. How cou’d he do anythin’ where he had to look at their work?’ he asked, his voice suddenly weary again.
‘They did seem to work very well together,’ Hannah said slowly, her unease returning, now it had come to the point where she’d have to tell him about the note Marie had sent with the children.
‘Would you like a mug of tea?’ she asked, getting up and hanging the kettle over the fire.
‘That would go down well,’ he said, watching her carefully as she moved about the room fetching mugs and milk.
He always knew when she was thinking about something, for she moved more slowly and kept looking at the kettle as if she expected it to start singing at any moment when she knew perfectly well it would take a while. He waited till she had put his mug in his hand and then said: ‘Are you worried there’ll be nowhere for our pair to go?’
She couldn’t help but laugh, for he had taken her by surprise. So often, it was she who read his thoughts, but this time he had tried to read hers. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t got it quite right. It just somehow made it easier for what she needed to say.
‘Daniel was wondering if I would come and give him a hand,’ she replied. ‘Apparently, I told him once years ago that I was a monitor back in my own old school in Dundrennan. He has an extraordinary memory,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘An’ wou’d ye like that?’ he said quickly, his eyes widening. ‘Sure, it wou’d be company fer ye when I’m away,’ he went on, brightening as she looked across at him.
‘It wouldn’t pay very much, Patrick,’ she said cautiously. ‘Certainly not as much as the sewing.’
‘Aye, I can see that might be the way of it,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Sure, none of the families up here has much to spare. There must be childer Daniel takes in that can’t go beyond their pieces of turf for the fire. I know some of them bring cakes of bread and a bit of butter for Daniel himself,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘but that would be because there was no tuppence that week, or whatever it is these days, that wou’d otherwise be forthcomin’. How does Daniel manage at all? Sure, everyone knows the masters of these hedge schools don’t see a penny when times are bad and Daniel wou’d never be the one to turn a chile away if it hadn’t brought its few pence.’
Patrick himself had never been to school and he’d never figured out why people called these local places where children could learn to read and write ‘hedge schools’. But Daniel’s house, which he used for the school, was not typical. Most of the other schools in the area were far less robust: abandoned cottages, or caves, or even old cattle pens with a bit of a roof thrown over. But then, there was a time when running a school would have got you into trouble. There were laws against schools, like there were laws against celebrating Mass.
‘Maybe yer da will give us all a bit more money this year, if the price of cattle keeps going up,’ he offered cheerfully. ‘Are you thinking about doin’ it?’ he asked directly.
‘Well . . .’
‘Well, indeed. What wou’d stan’ in yer way if you had a mind to do it? Sure, Sam and Rose wou’d be there with ye . . . and sure, what’ll they do if Daniel has to give up? Though you could teach them yourself like you taught me, couldn’t you? Sure, you’re a great teacher and me no scholar,’ he ended sheepishly.
Hannah laughed and felt her anxiety drain away. She remembered again how she’d offered to help her father’s harvesters to write their letters home, and how, in the process, she had ended up learning Irish. Patrick had been a diligent pupil. He had learnt not only how to read and write, but also to make his way in English. It might well be English with a strong Scottish accent but it still stood him and his fellows in good stead when work called from south of the border around Carlisle, or even Lancaster.
She could still see the scrubbed wooden table in the farm kitchen where they had normally sat at mealtimes, covered with reading books in the evenings. Her own school, where she was then a monitor, had let her borrow what she needed for when she taught the haymakers, while her sister, Flora, the youngest of the three older sisters, still living nearby in those years, had bought jotters and notepaper for her pupils out of her egg money until she and her husband, Cameron, moved to take up a new job in Dumfries.
‘My Irish isn’t that great,’ Hannah said feebly now, remembering her own difficulties when she had first begun to teach the Irishmen and found they had so very little English to begin with.
‘An’ when have I ever not been able to understan’ you?’ he asked, his voice gentle, his eyes looking at her directly. ‘I’m for it, if it’s what ye want. Sure, why don’t we sleep on it,’ he added, standing up and putting his hand on her shoulder.
*
It was still dark next morning when Patrick picked up his piece from the kitchen table and kissed her goodbye. She walked out of the cottage with him, pausing on the doorstep as they looked up at the sky.
‘That’s better,’ he said, slipping his arm round her and pulling her close for a few moments.
It was a fine-weather sky, the sunrise clouds tinted pink, the air calm with a distinct hint of mildness. As she stood watching him make his way down towards the lough, she found herself hoping that the mildness might go on to the end of the week. If it did, then the last few days of the roofing job would not be as taxing as it had been, especially during the last weeks when the turbulent west wind had made the exposed site bitterly cold and the pitched roof more hazardous.
He stopped and waved to her as he reached the bend in the track. Beyond this point he would be hidden by a cluster of hawthorns and the last group of
cottages before the steep slope to the main track. She stood a moment longer till he was out of sight and then, already thinking of all she had to do, she turned and went back into the big kitchen.
She stood for a moment looking at the table, the empty bowls and crumbs from her breakfast with Patrick, as if they would help her to decide what to do. Certainly, she would always want to help Daniel in any way she could. Patrick was indeed keen for her to have company in the long months when he was away, but he had paid little attention to the possible loss of her earnings from the sewing.
This winter he had found quite a few jobs locally, but there were other years when there was no work of any kind. Then the only income was from her sewing. Without her sewing money and the savings she had made while he was away, she couldn’t have kept them in food and turf.
If she went to help Daniel teach, with the house still to run and the children to care for, the hours to spend sewing would be very hard to find, even with the better light of the long, summer evenings.
She glanced out of the open door as if there was some answer to be found out there. The light was strengthening and a few gleams of sunlight were reflecting off the whitewashed cottage walls. Whatever her decision would be, there was no need to delay her visit to Daniel.
She made up her mind to go up to Casheltown and see what Daniel had to say. She knew she needed to wake the children right away so that she had extra time to fit in washing and dressing herself, something she usually left till after they’d gone and she’d done the dustiest and dirtiest of the morning jobs.
They were both fast asleep in the tiny bedrooms Patrick had partitioned off from the single, large bedroom of their two-room dwelling, the bedroom where they had begun their married life, in October 1835, ten years ago this coming autumn.
Sam woke up the moment she touched him, threw his arms round her and hugged her. Rose was always harder to wake and was very often involved in some complicated dream that, given any possible opportunity, she would talk about until they were both ready to leave. This morning, Hannah knew she would have to discourage her usual recital if they were all to leave the house on time.
They did manage it, though as Hannah pulled the front door closed behind her, she was only too aware of all the tasks she had had to leave aside. Out of her normal morning’s routine, only the making up of the fire had been done.
Stepping into the brightness of the April morning, she set aside the crowding thoughts and focused on Rose and Sam who were now telling her what they were going to do with Miss McGee today and what story the master had promised them if they all did their work well.
Hannah listened carefully but as they picked their steps through the broken stones of the track and turned right towards Casheltown, she found herself looking up at the great stone mound, once a fortified place, that looked out over the waters of Lough Gartan. She thought of her own very different walks to school in the softer green countryside of Galloway. There, the sea was almost always in sight, the fields a rich green, the school itself a sturdy, stone building with separate entrances marked Girls and Boys, and a patch of land at the back where the older boys learnt gardening.
She remembered Flora taking her by the hand on her first day and walking her briskly along the familiar lanes to the school where she herself had been a pupil some twelve years earlier.
Suddenly feeling sad, thinking of her brothers and sisters scattered ‘to the four winds’ as her father often said, she was glad when a girl in a tattered shift ran down from a nearby cottage and greeted them all cheerfully.
As Mary O’Donoghue fell in beside her, Hannah gathered her straying thoughts and asked the children how many scholars there currently were in their school.
Neither Rose nor Sam were very sure about the number, but Mary, a year or two older than Rose, was quite clear about it. There were fifteen on the roll, she said, when they were all there, but mostly they weren’t all there at the same time. She explained that often pupils couldn’t come if they were needed at home, for driving the cow to the fair or planting the tatties.
‘But that’s a good thing, Mrs McGinley,’ she went on, as Rose and Sam fell silent. ‘If they were all there, the wee ones would have to sit on creepies. Mr McGee doesn’t like that, but there’s only room for twelve on the chairs and benches.’
Hannah nodded her agreement. The low, homemade stools might be all right for listening to a story, but they certainly weren’t suitable for any written work, or even reading aloud comfortably. She was surprised that there could be any thought of fifteen in a kitchen not much bigger than her own.
Moments later, as they turned off the main track and walked the short distance up to Daniel’s house, she saw Daniel himself waiting near the open door. He was greeting each child as they appeared.
‘Hannah, you’re welcome,’ he said warmly, holding out his hand to her before she had even opened her mouth.
She was completely taken aback. Of course he knew her voice, and he was well known for knowing everyone’s footsteps, but how did he know she was there when she hadn’t yet said a word?
‘Good morning, Mary; good morning, Rose; good morning, Sam,’ he went on briskly, then, taking her arm, he led her towards the stone seat where he sat so often when the evenings grew lighter.
‘I’m heart glad you were able to come,’ he said, as the three children ran into the big kitchen that served as the classroom. ‘I’d be even more glad if you could see your way to helping me out, but we’ll not say a word about that yet. Marie is going to start the work indoors and then she’ll come out and tell you how we manage between us and what we each do. I don’t want to give you a false picture. It’s hard work, I confess, but then you’ve never been afraid of that or you wouldn’t have married your good man. Is he still working on that house up at Tullygobegley?’
*
They sat and talked as old friends do, for Daniel was one of the first people she had met when she came to Ardtur. Patrick had taken her to meet him one evening when they’d been back only a week or so. She’d found a house full of people, not one of whom she yet knew, but Daniel welcomed her warmly, made her sit beside him by the hearth and introduced her new neighbours one by one with a story about each of them, or a joke. Then he had told a long, traditional story after which he encouraged his visiting neighbours to sing, or to recite.
There followed many evenings at Daniel’s house before the children were born. When he had someone with a violin, or a penny whistle, he’d insist the young ones take the floor. Once, indeed, to please him, she had taken the floor herself with Patrick to learn ‘The Waves of Tory’.
She would never forget that evening: being passed from hand to hand by young men in shirtsleeves, dipping her head below raised arms, making an arch herself with a new partner, and all the time the lilt and dip of the music mimicking the flowing waves.
Hannah’s regular visits to Daniel were interrupted when she had her first miscarriage and then again when Patrick went back to Scotland. It was only a week after his departure when Daniel himself came to call on her. He told her that he still expected to see her, Patrick or no Patrick, whenever she could spare the time.
So she had walked up there on her own, or joined with another neighbour from Ardtur, for the long months when Patrick was away in Scotland. And so the year turned and Patrick returned. But it was only after two more miscarriages that she finally managed to carry Rose to full term. Then, there could be no more evening visits for her until Patrick was at home over the winter.
But Daniel made it clear that he was not prepared to be deprived of her company for all those long months. If she could not come to him in the evening because of little Rose, then he would come down and visit her in the afternoons. That is what he then did, almost every week.
Sometimes he brought a book and asked her to read to him, sometimes they just talked, but always he asked her about ‘home’, her father, her brothers and sisters, their lives, their travels and their families. Slowly and ver
y intermittently, he told her something about his own unusual background and how he came to have a formal education that included Latin and Greek.
It was while Rose was still a baby that he came one afternoon to tell her of a decision he’d made. He said that since a young man who took pupils had left the adjoining townland quite unexpectedly, there was now no school anywhere nearby. He had decided that unless he did something himself, a generation of children would grow up on the mountainside who could neither read nor write. He was going to start a school and he needed her advice as well as her encouragement.
The next book from Anne Doughty is coming in July 2019
If you enjoyed The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay, then why not try another heart-warming read from HQ Digital?
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