On a Clear Day (14 page)

‘Yes. He doesn’t seem to have the knack of cooking. I was going to ask you about making stew and champ. You always give us such nice dinners when we come to see you.’

So Granny Hamilton sat down at her well-scrubbed kitchen table and explained how to fry soda bread without burning it round the sides, and how to prepare scallions to mash with the potatoes for champ and how to cook fish from the fish man slowly in the oven dotted over with a bit of butter and a shake of pepper.

‘Childdear, that’s enough for one lesson,’ she said, stopping abruptly, though Clare had never taken her eyes away from her for one moment. ‘Are ye really sure ye want to stay with yer Granda? He’s a good man but it’s a hard life for a girl or woman in the country. It’ll maybe get a
bit easier now the war’s over, if we could just get rid of the bread rationing. There’s talk that maybe the electric’s coming, but sure there’ll always be the heavy work, the stove to clean, an’ the water to carry. Ye’d have an easier time in Canada you know and Polly would take you as quick as wink. Ye’ll need to make up your mind about that on a clear day.’

Clare had always thought Granny Hamilton loved the country and liked being with the animals. She had often helped her to feed the hens or make up the feed for the calves. Sometimes, when she’d come to stay for a day or two there’d been a lamb by the stove in the kitchen who had to be fed from a bottle like a baby. But now she looked at Granny’s face and thought that it seemed not only lined with wrinkles but marked with sadness and weariness.

‘Would you have liked to go to Canada, Granny?’ she asked gently.

‘Aye, ah would. I very nearly did. I’d just saved up enough for my ticket when I met your Granda. So I bought a wedding dress instead,’ she said, with a regret that made Clare feel very sad indeed.

‘It’s all very well, Clare, however good the man ye might get, it’s hard labour unless yer born gentry with people to fetch and carry for you and nothin’ to do but ride about in a carriage or a car, like
the Cowdys or the Copes or the Richardsons. For an ordinary girl, there’s a better life in the town. At least it’s clean, it’s not scrubbin’ and cookin’ and feedin’ animals all the time. An’ if ye do well at school sure there’s a whole lot of things ye can do these days. Ye needn’t even get married at all,’ she said leaning on the table, as she pushed herself awkwardly to her feet.

Clare remembered that Granny had arthritis in her hips. The doctor had said there was nothing he could do for it. The only thing he could suggest was that she rest. Granny had told Mummy and Daddy what he’d said one Sunday when they’d come out to tea.

‘So I’m goin’ to lie on the settle there and wait for the fairies and the little people to come and do my jobs for me,’ she’d said with a funny laugh. Clare had seen the worried look on her mother’s face.

‘Now then, Clare, that’s enough of women’s talk. Yer Auntie Molly wants to go for a walk up to the obelisk. I can’t mind, have ye been up with Mummy and Daddy, or did they think it was too much for you? It’s a brave steep climb.’

‘No, I haven’t been. What’s an obelisk? Whereabouts is it?’

‘Away and find Jack and Molly and Bobby and Mary and tell them if they’re goin’ to go now while it’s fine an’ I’ll have the tea ready when they come
back. See if ye can read the words on the obelisk, I’ve half forgotten them meself.’

‘What about William and the wee boys from Stonebridge?’

‘Sure they can go if they want to, if you can find them. I never see William when they come up for the day,’ she said, half to herself.

Clare thought she sounded quite relieved at the thought of not seeing William. She went to the door and looked all around. But there was no sign at all of either William or his cousins. She stepped out of the long, low house and saw a small group of adults standing round a young chestnut mare. They were watching carefully as Granda Scott examined her feet.

‘I’m much obliged to you, Robert,’ said Granda Hamilton, warmly, just as she appeared at the edge of the group. ‘I’d never have thought of that bein’ the problem if ye hadn’t pointed it out to me.’

Granda Scott was looking pleased and when Clare passed on Granny’s message about them going up to Obelisk Hill while it was still fine, he seemed perfectly happy to walk on down the yard with Granda Hamilton, talking about horses and the fact that there were already far fewer of them on the land since the war. She heard Granda Scott say that once he used to have as many as forty horses a week to shoe and now he only had
three or four. He admitted that it was no bad thing in one way, for horses were heavy work and he wasn’t as young as he used to be, but it was a sad thing to see the machinery come in and take their place. A lot of older animals were being put out to grass where they didn’t need shoes and they were simply not being replaced when they died.

‘Come on then, up the hill we go,’ said Jack, as they set off down the lane and along past the Hamilton land.

Clare looked around her on the warm summer’s afternoon and saw the very first hint of yellow on a couple of heavy-leafed chestnuts. There were already rose hips in the hedgerows and long feathery grasses on the narrow verges of the lane which wound along beside the floor of a small stream and then twisted its way higher and higher till it came up the brow of a large, rounded hill.

‘D’ye think we can make it, Clare?’ said Auntie Molly, Jack’s youngest sister, a very thin, pale woman, who seemed amazed by the fact that she had produced three noisy and vigorous boys.

‘Oh yes, we can do it, can’t we Clare?’ said Uncle Bobbie, who talked very loudly and liked to sound jolly. ‘Do you good, Mary, get the beef off.’

Clare didn’t think she liked Uncle Bobbie very much and when she saw the look on his wife’s face after his remark, she wondered if Mary liked him very much either.

The hill was steep and the ground roughened from the tramping feet of sheep and cattle. Clare trailed her hands across the heads of tall, branching buttercups and kept her eyes on the worn stone finger that stood at the highest point. She got there first and stood looking in amazement.

She had never been anywhere so high before. She spun round like a top, trying to see in every direction all at once. Under an almost clear blue sky the green, sun-dappled countryside swept away to the far horizons. She could see houses and farms tucked into small windbreaks or huddled down in sheltered hollows, orchards with trees running like lines of children in a gym class and great sweeps of pasture, dark green or gold, depending on where the shadows fell from the few towers of cloud welling up in the warmth of the afternoon. Between the humpy hills little lanes appeared and disappeared again.

She turned slowly now and discovered she could see Armagh quite clearly, its two cathedrals perfectly outlined on their respective hills, the pale metal domes of the Observatory reflecting the light. But, best of all, was something she had never imagined she might see, the blue, shimmering mass of Lough Neagh stretching to far mountains. Beyond those mountains, more mountains, the furthest away like pale ghosts of those nearer at hand.

It seemed that the whole world lay at her feet. All the places she had ever been, or ever heard of, Salter’s Grange and Liskeyborough, Tullyard and Drummond, Lisnadill and Kilmore. She had only to listen to the four adults who pointed their fingers and argued as to who lived in which farm and where that lane led to and she would hear all the names she had ever heard her parents speak throughout her whole life. It was like seeing a story laid out in front of you, in colours and shapes instead of words.

There was a breeze up on the hill, not cold, but strong enough to catch her breath and bend the tall stems of buttercups. She walked away by herself and looked up at the crumbling stone face of the obelisk. She tried to read it and finally managed to fit the words together. But it was not the words written on the obelisk that seemed to stay in her mind, it was something Granny had said when they were sitting together in the well-scrubbed kitchen of the farm now tucked out of sight on the other side of the hill.

Granny had said that she’d need to make up her mind what to do on a clear day. Well it must be a clear day when she could see every house and tree for miles and the outline of mountains she knew were far away.

‘I’m staying here,’ she said quietly to herself, as she walked across the top of the hill to have
another look at Armagh. ‘I’m not going back to Belfast or over to Canada. I’m staying here, with Granda.’

She stood listening to the breeze and the song of the birds and it was only when Uncle Jack came and tapped her on the shoulder did she realise that the distant sounds she’d heard were her aunts and uncles calling to her, because they thought it was time now they were all going back down to the farm for their tea.

The second week of Clare’s stay at the house beyond the forge passed so quickly she could hardly believe it was Saturday when she woke on yet another fine, sunny morning, the one on which Auntie Polly was due to arrive from Belfast.

She lay looking up at the ceiling and listened for the sounds that would tell her it was time to get up. Granda Scott would light the stove, put the kettle to boil and carry the heavy griddle from its place in the cupboard. Then he would call her and she would fry the bread for breakfast and make the tea. That was just one of her jobs now.

All week she had been trying to see what she could do now there wasn’t even Jinny to do any work in the house. She had found plenty she could do. She’d even managed to wash and iron one of Granda’s shirts after she’d found a whole collection of flat irons mixed in with broken tools and old shoes under the corner cupboard in the kitchen.

‘Granda, why are there
four
irons?’ she asked as she lifted them out and began to blow off some of the dust and cobwebs.

He looked at them and tried to remember
the last time he had seen a woman smoothing. Suddenly, a smile lit up his face. Clare thought he looked extraordinarily pleased with himself.

‘Well, ye see, ye have to heat the smoothin’ iron on the stove and then ye pass it over the clothes. But the heat goes away awful quick so you take another iron an’ put the first one back. An’ I mind ye have to give the iron a wipe as you lift it from the stove for fear there’s dirt on the end of it to drop on the clean clothes.’

‘You haven’t got an ironing board, have you, Granda?’

‘No, there’s niver been one o’ those. I seed yer Granny fold up a sheet or an old blanket that had got kinda thin and put it on the table. That’s how she useta do it. Were ye goin’ to give it a try?’

‘I was, but I’ll have to take a sheet off my bed and use that.’

‘There was sheets …’ he said uneasily.

‘That’s all right, Granda, it’ll do my sheet good to be ironed. Clean sheets always feel lovely when they’ve been freshly ironed.’

It had been an awfully slow business. To begin with the top of the stove was so dirty and greasy she had to rub for ages to make a clean bit before she could put the irons to heat. One of the irons must have had a bit of rust on it but she didn’t notice until she’d ironed it on to the shirt. Fortunately it was only on the tail at the back which would
never show. And they did cool so quickly. You’d only just got down the front when the wrinkles stopped coming out and you had to go back to the stove for another one. No wonder Mummy always said her favourite wedding present was her electric iron.

She’d had a go at cooking herrings in the oven. That was nearly a disaster for the fire was too low. When she opened the oven at dinner time they were just as they’d been when she put them in. But then Granda came and made up the fire and gave it a good poke and when she looked again the butter was making a little fizzling sound and they agreed they just needed to wait a while longer and keep the potatoes warm on the side of the stove.

On Tuesday, when Granda Scott went into town she’d gone to spend the afternoon at Robinson’s next door. Going there the first time was nearly as bad as visiting Granny Hamilton because there were so many people and she couldn’t get all their names sorted out. Old Mrs Robinson was easy because she just sat by the stove in the farm kitchen and gave orders and young Mrs Robinson was fine because she was had lovely dark hair and eyes, but apart from Jamsey, she couldn’t work out which of the men were Robinsons and which were the hired hands. They all came and washed their hands at the pump and tramped into the big kitchen for their tea laughing and talking together.

Old Mrs Robinson asked her a lot of questions. She looked rather cross with her funny little spectacles and her habit of wrinkling up her forehead if she didn’t understand, but actually she was quite nice and when Clare said she had to go home to get Granda’s tea ready, she told young Mrs Robinson, who was called Margaret, to give her some extra eggs as a present and some scallions from the garden to make champ.

‘Sure the scallions is running wild in the garden, childdear. Wheniver ye want a few, come and take them. Don’t bother to ask anyone, just help yourself. An’ the next time ye come Margaret’ll have a cutting of thon red geranium that ye admired. Yer welcome any afternoon Robert’s in town.’

It was only a little cutting, but when she went back on Thursday Margaret had put it in a proper flower pot she’d found in one of the outhouses. Much nicer than a tin can they’d agreed as they stood in the dairy together washing eggs.

Clare thought it looked quite perky already though Margaret warned her it would take a while to root. Then it would be another while before it produced a flower bud. It might bloom this year if the weather stayed mild till Christmas as it often did, but it might not and then she must bring it indoors and keep it in a cool room so that it didn’t get the frost that would kill it, nor be forced into
growth by the warmth which it wouldn’t like either.

Clare was quite surprised that geraniums were so particular. When Mummy and Daddy visited Granny Hamilton, or some of their own friends who had gardens, they used to bring back bits and pieces of plants in a paper bag and just push them into the soil in the flowerbed Daddy had made with concrete blocks all down one side of the back yard. Everything grew and bloomed all over the place, especially some pretty blue stuff that trailed down and covered the concrete blocks so that they didn’t show at all. She wished she could remember its name but it had gone right out of her head.

There always seemed to be flowers in the back yard, even in winter. Indeed, when she thought about it she remembered Mummy saying that she’d like a garden that would give her a posy in every season of the year and last Christmas Eve she had a tiny, wee vase of flowers on the table for Christmas Day.

‘Look, Sam, we’ve managed it. Winter jasmine and a few rose buds. I think they may open yet in the warm. Not many people have garden flowers for Christmas like we have.’

She still cried sometimes when she thought of Mummy and Daddy but then she reminded herself that they were together and she was sure Heaven would have lots of flowers. That helped too.

She slid out of bed and began to wash. They’d been so lucky with the weather on Sunday. It had stayed fine all afternoon while they were at Liskeyborough but then after she went to bed, she’d heard the rain drumming on the roof. Granny Hamilton had said it would rain and it certainly did. It must have rained all night, for next morning there was a huge puddle right outside the front door. She was just coming out of her room when Granda opened the front door and a blackbird who was having a bath just looked up at him and then went on with his bath.

‘Ach that one’s been here for years now,’ he explained when she asked why he didn’t fly away. ‘I call him George. He coud next thing to talk to you, that bird. He’ll be back in the kitchen lookin’ for crumbs when he gets useta you. Niver throw the crumbs to him, that frights him, just drop them at yer feet an’ he’ll come right up to you an’ eat them up. Ye won’t have to sweep up after the same fella.’

The rainwater barrel was overflowing and the water was so clear you could see right to the bottom. And the earth in the newly-weeded flowerbed looked dark and inviting. When she was putting away the breakfast dishes, she saw Granda Scott turn aside on his way to the forge and stand looking at it. She was sure he looked pleased as he limped on down the damp path where the pear
tree still dripped bright drops after the night’s downpour.

The secret of not burning the bread was making sure it hadn’t curled up in the first place. And that meant seeing the lid was on the bread bin which Granda usually forgot. Then you had to make sure the fat was spread all over the pan and wasn’t just sitting in patches. It was so dark over the stove it was always hard to see the melted fat unless you tipped the griddle and made sure it was shiny all over.

Mummy had a flat thing called an egg slice for turning over bread in the pan but Granda hadn’t got one. There were no cooking tools left so she decided she would just have to pretend. She found a big spoon and picked out the largest of the surviving dinner knives and, between squashing and flipping, she managed to get each piece properly coated in fat before it had time to burn.

‘Yer a dab hand at that. Ye’ll make someone a powerful wife,’ he said, watching her later that morning.

She giggled. She couldn’t possibly marry anyone even if she wanted to because she’d have Granda to look after when he got old.

She’d finished washing her own vest, knickers and socks and had just hung them on the elderberry bush when she heard Jack’s car. She ran down to the forge to greet them.

It was only when she saw Auntie Polly that it came back to her that the fortnight had been a trial, to see if it would work. She had no doubts at all in her mind that she wanted to stay, but what would she do if Auntie Polly said she couldn’t, or if Granda got all anxious and uneasy and was too afraid to think that they could manage somehow.

She was so upset that for a moment she just stood and watched Polly and Jack getting out of the car and didn’t say a word.

There were kisses and hello’s and Jack told Granda Scott that the mare was as right as rain again and the father was very grateful to him. Polly wanted to know what Jack was talking about and Clare told her all about their Sunday visit as they walked up to the house.

‘Somebody’s been gardening,’ said Polly as she came up to the front door.

‘Aye, we pulled out a weed or two last Sunday. I think maybe we can find a few more about the place if we chanced to look,’ said Granda, laughing wryly.

‘I have stuff in the back of the car for Clare, a few wee shrubs and some bits of perennials m’ mother split up for her. Will I away an’ get them?’ asked Jack, as they stood looking at the empty flowerbed.

‘Oh, yes please, Uncle Jack, I’ll come and help
you,’ said Clare as they set off back to the car.

They brought the carefully wrapped bundles and packets and put them in the shade and then went into the house where Polly was making a cup of tea.

‘You’ve been a busy girl, I hear,’ she said, as Clare came back into the room with the sweet milk she’d fetched from the sitting room.

‘Aye, she’s wrought hard,’ agreed Granda.

‘Well, I’ve got great news for you all,’ said Polly as she poured for them. ‘Jack here phoned me up last Monday and told me about Jinny and the very next day I’d a call from Bob asking me if there was anythin’ wrong at home.’

She paused, put down her own cup of tea and scuffled in her handbag.

‘So, I told him the whole story and look what he sent you, registered post,’ she went on waving a bright envelope at them. ‘He says I’m to buy anythin’ you need immediately an’ I’m to make him a list of anythin’ else for the winter.’

She took out four five pound notes from the envelope and held them up. Clare had never seen a five pound note before and even Granda Scott looked amazed.

‘Ach, sure he shoulden a done that. It’s far too good,’ he said awkwardly.

‘It’s good enough, Daddy, I agree, but don’t forget Bob is a bank manager now and he’s just
been promoted. It took a brave few horseshoes to keep the backside in
his
trousers.’

Everybody laughed and Clare put out her hand for a note.

‘Why’s it got a piece of silver paper down one side?’ she asked, as she studied the flimsy paper with its delicate scrollwork and engraving of the King.

‘That’s to make sure it’s proper,’ explained Jack. ‘It’s very hard to forge a note if it has a wee stripe like that down it.’

‘Well, it looks as if we need to go shoppin’,’ said Polly as she emptied her cup. ‘Will ye come to Armagh with us, Daddy, or will ye let us do the stuff for the house and you to do yer usual this afternoon?’

‘Ach, sure I’m no use on linen an’ suchlike. Tear away. I’ll come on the bus and sure maybe ye’ll still be there.’

‘Very likely, indeed,’ said Polly cheerfully, as she produced another less exciting-looking envelope. ‘This is for Clare, from her Auntie Florence in London. “A pair of shoes and a winter coat or whatever she most needs”, she says, and she sends you both her love. Isn’t that nice?’

Clare couldn’t quite believe it. It looked as if, suddenly, not just one, but two fairy godmothers had appeared. But it struck her then that it was awfully funny that people never talked about fairy
godfathers. After all, Uncle Bob was a man. And so was Uncle Jack and he had brought her all those exciting-looking things to plant in the flowerbed.

‘I’ll see yez later, then,’ said Granda Scott, as Polly collected them up and got them moving. ‘Don’t buy up all Armagh,’ he laughed as he saw them to the car.

Clare guessed that after all the excitement he might have half an hour on the bed before he went back to the forge.

Shopping was hard work and Clare wasn’t much interested in blankets and sheets, but it was nice to be in Armagh again and go into shops that she used to go into with Mummy. Some of the people behind the counters remembered her and she made Auntie Polly promise faithfully they would go down Scotch Street and say hello to Uncle Harry and ask how her bicycle was coming on.

Buying a winter coat in John M. Wilson’s looked as if it was going to be very easy. The first one she put on fitted perfectly and was such a pretty dark blue that she didn’t want to take it off again.

‘Only one problem, sweetheart,’ said Auntie Polly. ‘I may not have enough clothing coupons. I tried to get extra ones for you but they haven’t come through yet. I’ve filled in at least three forms explainin’ what happened your clothes and why
you have to have new ones. But there’s such a lot of red tape these days.’

‘You mean I can’t have it, even with Auntie Florence’s money?’

Clare’s eyes filled with tears and she felt quite ashamed of herself.

‘Excuse me,’ said the assistant, who’d been pretending not to hear, ‘but are you Miss Scott of the Grange?’

Auntie Polly laughed and admitted that she was, but not for a brave while now. And the assistant nodded and said she thought she recognised her and forby she knew very few people called Polly.