The Hawthorns Bloom in May (12 page)

Brendan caught up with him. High above their heads, its crown rising above the birches and elderberries, the pale grey twigs were newly leafed. Here and there, where the morning sun shone most directly on the low, sheltered branches, tight pink buds were already beginning to open.

‘It was here all right,’ said Sam, kicking his way through the undergrowth. ‘Look, here’s one corner. They must have missed this bit. You can see where even the foundations have been dug out for the stone.’

‘And this was where Ma and Aunt Rose went to school?’

‘Yes, it was a brand new National School. They came in different sizes. This one was the smallest. I’ve seen the specifications in the Public Records Office in Dublin,’ Sam explained. ‘But it only lasted two years,’ he added, as he turned his back on the apple tree, ran a practised eye back and forth across the track and the low stone wall bounding it.

‘Why? Why was that?’

‘Adair,’ he said abruptly, as he considered the overgrown fields beyond. ‘If you evict all the families, there’ll be no children left. No need for the school. I wonder who it was carted away the stone and what they built with it.’

‘May he rot in Hell,’ said Brendan softly, as he followed Sam across the roadway and along the side of an overgrown stonewall that joined it at right angles.

After a short distance, Sam struck to his right, heading for a small bracken-covered eminence.

‘Where are ye goin’?’ Brendan protested, as he struggled to follow him through the undulating ground. ‘’Tis desperate rough goin’.’

‘Spade rigs,’ said Sam without stopping, as he pushed through the thigh-high bracken and made a beeline for the highest point of the low rise.

Brendan watched patiently as Sam kicked his way through patches of nettles and brambles and walked up and down, casting an eye first towards the school, then towards the piled up stone
boundary wall which ran along the foot of the mountain itself. He stopped eventually on a slight rise covered with shorter grass.

‘Here, Brendan, here,’ he said at last, dropping to his knees and studying the ground in front of him. He took out his penknife and made three long shallow cuts. Then he peeled back the sod like rolling up a mat and revealed a broad, smooth-worn stone. On either side of it, half hidden in brambles were the fragments of two rotten posts.

‘That’s the doorstep of your grandfather’s house,’ he said firmly, as he rubbed soil from his hands and stood up. ‘Part of what we walked across would have been
his
potato garden. And over there,’ he went on, pointing to where bleached, straw-pale heads of last year’s corn stood swaying in the breeze, ‘is where he kept a horse or pony.’

He looked back again the way they had come, his eyes half-closed in the bright light, his arm waving in a leisurely way.

‘Where the grass is shortest is where the street was. The houses weren’t lined up, they were set at angles to each other,’ he began. ‘Nettles thrive on human waste, so where the nettles are thickest is where the barns were. You can see a patch at the back of each house and this one here, McGinley’s, is just a wee bit higher than its neighbours. Rose remembered that from the day she set off to climb the mountain to see what was on the other side.
She stood and looked back and she still remembers everything she saw, even the apple tree at the school gable.’

‘So what happened all these people?’ Brendan asked sharply.

‘Did your mother never tell you?’

‘No, she always said it was better forgotten. She told me Granny took you and Auntie Rose to Kerry and my two uncles went back to Scotland after Granda died. I know one of them went on to Nova Scotia. But she didn’t know where any of the neighbours went.’

‘Those that survived,’ Sam added automatically.

Brendan looked startled.

‘Do you really want to know?’ he went on, raising an eyebrow.

Brendan nodded and sat down on one side of the newly-excavated doorstone. As he waited for his uncle to seat himself on the other, it occurred to him that this must be a very strange homecoming for the older man. Of it being also a homecoming of his own, he was completely unaware.

‘I was a babe in arms when it happened, so I’ve no memory at all of my own,’ said Sam, twisting a stem of grass between his fingers. ‘But your Aunt Rose has never forgotten that day. She remembers how cold it was and how she knew something was wrong, but nobody would tell her. She saw Ma and
Da out talking to a neighbour and watched a lad they knew bringing news from further up the valley where the evictions started.’

He shook his head and smiled.

‘She was only eight and so small for her age, they put her in the wee turf cart with me and a few odds and ends of food and kindling. She says they just walked away when Adair’s man told them to get out. Your Granny told them all they were not to look back.’

‘And they destroyed the house?’

‘Oh yes. In other parts of the country where they pulled the roof off or knocked down the walls, the people came back and lived in the ruins. A bit of a wall’s better shelter than nothing. Adair’s men had orders to do a good job. He didn’t want anyone sneaking back when they’d gone.’

Sam looked at his nephew and saw that his hand was moving back and forwards across the surface of the wide doorstone on which they both sat. Worn by the passage of feet and the fall of rain for over a hundred years or more, and untouched by either for the last half century, it was now exposed to the hot sun, the soft mould of its covering drying to dust which Brendan was gently sweeping away.

‘How many?’ Brendan asked sharply.

‘According to the
Londonderry Standard
, 47 families, some 244 men, women and children,’ Sam replied. ‘Only 42 of the houses were destroyed. I
think he saved the others for the shepherds he brought in from Scotland,’ Sam continued. ‘I went and looked up the newspaper reports last year. There
was
a great deal of anger about what he was planning to do and questions were asked in Parliament, but no one lifted a hand to stop him. There were even 200 police standing by to make sure there was no disturbance of the peace.’

‘Why d’ye think Ma diden tell me when I asked her?’ Brendan demanded, his eyes wide with amazement.

‘Well, it might have been because of
her
Aunt Mary,’ said Sam thoughtfully. ‘I think Aunt Mary was actually your grandfather’s aunt, but she was certainly an old lady. Lived further up the valley. I’ve forgotten the name of the townland just for the moment. She had bad legs and could barely walk. Your mother used to go over every day and do the jobs, fetch the water and turf and boil the spuds for her meal. The morning of the eviction your grandmother sent your mother over with a can of milk, but she told her she was to hurry back. I think your mother was fond of the old woman,’ said Sam quietly. ‘Rose said she was worried about what would happen to her and she cried her eyes out when she heard she was dead.’

‘What happened her?’

‘It seems she wouldn’t go to the workhouse, but in the confusion no one actually saw
where
she
went. About a week later, your grandfather and one of my brothers found her curled up behind a stone on the mountainside with her Rosary in her hand. Goodness knows how she’d got there. She’d been dead for some time. It was very cold and there was frost and sleet that first night.’

‘The bloody English,’ said Brendan bitterly. ‘They’d wipe us out like vermin if they cou’d.’

‘No, Brendan. Let’s be accurate,’ said Sam sharply. ‘Adair was English, I grant you, but the men who pulled the houses down were Irish and so were the police that stood by and watched. And as my mother often said, “
We weren’t the first, nor will we be the last
.” This isn’t about nationality, Brendan, this is about power and privilege. It was the Sutherlands that evicted my mother’s people in Scotland a century earlier. Read your history and don’t go thinking that Irish people are the only ones to have suffered, or the English the only ones to have made them suffer. Name me the country and name me the century and I’ll tell you a story as bitter and as sad,’ he said, with a steadiness in his voice that surprised even himself.

Brendan looked sheepishly down at the doorstone, now swept clean.

‘Where did youse go that night?’ he asked, without meeting Sam’s eyes.

‘I’ll show you,’ Sam replied, standing up. ‘Like them, we have a bite of food from home,’ he said,
as he strode out into the rough grass and retraced his steps on the path he’d made. ‘But unlike them it might not be the last bite we’ll get.’

Brendan sat silent as Sam took the reins and urged the pony along the track, the heat of noonday now fierce where there were no bushes or trees to give shelter.

‘There,’ said Sam, pointing to a track running off to the right. ‘That’s where Casheltown would have been. They spent the night at the house of an old man called Daniel McGee. He was in his eighties and blind, but he was a great storyteller. He told his last story there. A week later, he died in the workhouse,’ he added, as he jumped down and tied the reins to a stone post that no longer supported a gate.

‘We’ll go over that way,’ he went on, nodding to the other side of the track, as he picked up the shopping bag Mary had filled for them. ‘The cashel should give us a good view over the lough. After all, that’s why it was built there in days long gone.’

They made their way through the tall, damp grass, skirting the brambles and the wet patches till they reached the great circle of rough unmortared stone. They climbed up cautiously and perched on the highest point, Mary’s shopping bag between them.

The whole of Lough Gartan lay spread out before them, the calm water sparkling in the
sunshine, the new green foliage at its freshest, small clouds of gnats rising and falling in the warm air.

Gratefully, they bit into Mary’s bacon sandwiches and shared the bottle of tea between them.

‘I did hear some of them went to Australia,’ Brendan offered, as he finished off the last of the sandwiches.

‘Yes. Some say 200. The figures disagree,’ Sam responded, still munching. ‘But they were fortunate. Only a few died on the voyage and there were three babies born. Not many emigrant ships do that well, but the
Abysinnia
was properly run. They were luckier than most.’

‘Did any of them come back?’

‘Not that I’ve heard off and I’ve asked around,’ Sam replied, ‘It’s not only your mother that doesn’t want to talk about it. I’ve been trying to put the bits together as best I could, but without Rose and my mother I wouldn’t have got beyond thinking I was born in Kerry. I might not even have known that my father was Irish and my mother the daughter of a Scottish Covenanter.’

‘What?’

Sam paused as he unwrapped a packet of fruitcake and looked at his nephew’s face. He had seldom seen such a look of outrage and incomprehension.

‘So, what difference does it make who our
ancestors were?’ he asked quietly. ‘We’re here now, in this place, with these problems. I do what I can or fail in the attempt. What more can a man do?’

‘He can be ready to lay down his life,’ replied Brendan firmly.

‘He can. But he’d be well advised to consider whether it would achieve anything or not,’ said Sam crisply.

To Sam’s sober correction, Brendan did not reply. He simply looked away down the track towards the field with the freshly swept doorstone and blinked his eyes against the dazzling light.

‘Are we nearly there, Mama?’

Sarah opened her eyes. One glance around the railway carriage and then through the dusty window told her she was moving through unfamiliar countryside and that the pleasant dreams she’d been having bore no resemblance whatever to reality.

‘Oh, Helen, I
am
sorry,’ she said, collecting herself. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Yes, we
must
be nearly there,’ she said glancing at her watch.

She scanned the sunlit landscape that streamed past the open window, but she could recognise no familiar feature in the rich Gloucestershire countryside. Not surprising, as it was some four years since she and Hugh had last made this journey.

‘Were you bored?’ she asked, smiling, as Helen left her window seat and came to sit close beside her.

Helen nodded towards the opposite corner of the empty carriage. Her brother was totally absorbed in
a book about the development of flying machines. She sighed wearily and shrugged her shoulders.

‘Poor Helen,’ Sarah said, as they exchanged knowing glances.

Hugh was miles away, just as indifferent to the unfamiliar countryside slipping past as he would have been to the green fields and little hills on the familiar journey between Lisburn and Banbridge.

‘Do you think Uncle Teddy will come to meet us?’ Helen asked, a hint of anxiety in her voice.

‘Well, perhaps not,’ said Sarah honestly as she tucked an arm round her and drew her close. ‘It depends on whether he has to be up in London, but Auntie Hannah will be there and your cousins. Perhaps not Frances and John,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘I’m not sure when their term ends. English schools go on later than ours.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I don’t think I know why,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘We’ll have to ask Auntie Hannah when we get there.’

Sarah became suddenly aware of the warmth of the small body leaning against her. At almost eight, Helen was an intelligent and imaginative child, her head full of the stories she was either reading or planning to write, but Helen was often anxious. Sarah had long since learnt to watch for the danger signs, which began with fatigue, moved through questions and irritability and could quickly result in tears and exhaustion.

Her father had always insisted it was the price she paid for being sensitive to the world around her. He felt it was not something they should try to cure, for the sensitivity was, in itself, a gift, but it was important she learn how to cope with her feelings and not to allow them to overwhelm her.

After Helen had to be put to bed on a lovely summer afternoon, Hugh once asked if she remembered an evening in her own childhood when she herself had to be carried off to bed, because she’d got so upset when he’d spoken of young children working in the mills.

‘It was unthinking of me,’ he explained, ‘but you’d been sitting so quietly all evening, I’d forgotten you always listened to everything, even if you looked totally absorbed in your own concerns.’

‘I don’t ever remember anything like that, Hugh,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What happened?’

‘Well, I had been talking to Elizabeth and your father and mother about the upsurge in orders caused by the American Civil War and the shortage of cotton and I’m sure I said there was so much work in the linen mills that children as young as nine and ten were being taken on, because there were families so poor they’d let them go. And you, my love,’ he added, ‘immediately looked up at Sam and Hannah and demanded to know if your family was poor.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes, and you were just as upset as Helen. Your
dear mother had quite a job of reassuring you. I went down next morning to apologise,’ he ended ruefully.

Dear Hugh. Would ever a day pass without her thinking about him? Missing him. Thinking of things to tell him if only he were there.

It was four years now since they’d made the journey to Cleeve Court, judging that young Hugh and Helen, would be old enough, at six and four, to cope with travelling and enjoy meeting their cousins. Hugh was able to stay only two weeks, but she and the children had a whole month with Hannah and her little ones. It had been such a happy time for all of them.

The following year, Anne had been born and Hannah’s visit to Ballydown had been postponed, but she herself had gone over to celebrate Anne’s first birthday. Before she set out for home, she and Hannah had made plans for the following year. A month later Hugh died.

Sarah hugged Helen and held her close, despite the warmth of the July afternoon.

‘Do you remember the photographs of Elizabeth and Anne with their little pony that Uncle Teddy sent us at Christmas?’ she said, making an effort to be lively.

Helen looked up at her and beamed.

‘Do you think they’d let me ride the pony?’ she asked quickly.

‘I’m sure they would. You might even find there was another pony there for the holidays. Auntie Hannah knows you like to ride.’

‘What will you do Mama, while I’m riding?’ Helen began, her good spirits fading again. ‘You won’t have to go to the mills and you won’t have all those papers in the dining room.’

‘But I shall have Auntie Hannah to talk to when you and your cousins are having all sorts of games and expeditions with Mademoiselle Challon,’ said Sarah reassuringly, picking up the thin edge in Helen’s tone. ‘And we’ll be going to see Grandma Anne and Grandpa Harrington over at Ashleigh Court. Just wait until you see the flowers in Grandma’s gardens. You’ll love them. And you’ll have all the watercolours you need if you want to paint, because Auntie Hannah will lend you hers.’

‘Do you think Mademoiselle Challon will make us speak French all the time?’ Helen asked, her brow wrinkling ominously.

‘No, of course not,’ replied Sarah laughing. ‘It’s the holidays. She’ll be finding you games to play and taking you out for drives in the governess cart or one of the traps. She’s a
holiday
governess, not a schoolroom governess. I’m sure she’ll be very nice.’

It was clear from the look on Helen’s face that she had no such confidence.

‘Nearly there,’ said Hugh firmly.

Surprised at the sudden sound of his voice, they both turned to look at him. They saw him put his father’s watch carefully back in his pocket, shut his book and stand up. Sarah was about to enquire how he could possibly know they were nearly there, as he hadn’t been to Cleeve Hall since he was six, when the train slowed visibly and Helen hopped up to look out of the window.

‘We’re here. We’re here,’ she cried excitedly. ‘And I can see Auntie Hannah and Uncle Teddy and Elizabeth and Anne, but not Frances and John, just like you said,’ she added, with a note of relief.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, Sarah felt sure that after all that had happened since they’d said ‘goodbye’ two years ago, the very sight of her dear sister was going to be too much for her. What on earth would she do if she greeted Hannah with a sudden outburst of tears?

The day planned for the journey to Ashleigh was the only really wet day in what had been a fine and settled summer. Sarah drew back her heavy bedroom curtains and looked in amazement at
the rain which poured down steadily and silently, creating shallow lakes on the gravelled area in front of the house.

‘Just like Hannah’s wedding day,’ she said smiling to herself, as she began to wash and dress. She wondered why it was some memories returned so frequently while others disappeared so completely. She always thought of Hannah’s wedding day when the rain poured down like this. Her mind moved back beyond that day itself to the previous summer, the summer when Lady Anne had invited Rose to stay after her dreadful illness earlier in the year.

‘How long ago was that?’

She counted on her fingers. Hannah was married in ’97, the year after she’d met Teddy, so the visit to Ashleigh was ’96. Seventeen years ago, more than half her lifetime. Then, she’d been a girl of thirteen, now, she was a woman of thirty, a mother herself, and a widow.

Weather, objects, places, colours. Since Hugh died she’d become so aware of the strange and varied things that had the power to release a stream of memories. Trivial things, like a pile of disordered papers, the sound of a motor on the hill, or swans flying in to land on the lake at Millbrook. After he died, she hadn’t known whether to let the memories come or to try to protect herself from them. She thought about putting away his pens and paperweights so she wouldn’t think of him every
time she began work, but in the end she decided to leave them exactly where they were. Hugh was not to be hidden away. He’d been part of her life since she was six years old. She could never imagine a time when he would not be there in her mind.

Unlike Hannah’s wedding day, when the old gardener had correctly predicted it would clear before noon, the rain continued all morning. It was still drizzling when the family coach arrived from Ashleigh to add its capacity to the vehicles at Cleeve and it persisted all through the drive, strengthening to a heavy downpour as they arrived at Ashleigh itself.

‘Oh my poor little ones, what a day. Run. Run quickly up the steps. Grandpa is there waiting for you and Mrs Partridge has a lovely tea for you.’

Sarah followed the children to the door of the coach as they greeted Grandma Anne, their voices high with excitement. They splashed down into the puddles and ran cheerfully through them towards the house. A warm, dry hand steadied her as she herself stepped down to the sodden gravel and embraced Anne who was wearing what looked like a coachman’s cape and a large pair of wellington boots.

‘Sarah dear, I’m
so
glad to see you here again. Do go on up with Simon while I go and say hello to Hannah and Teddy.’

It was only then Sarah discovered that the large
umbrella moving overhead, attempting to shelter both Lady Anne and herself from the worst of the rain, was being held by a tall, dark-haired figure who peered down at them both with a slight, diffident smile.

As Anne shot away through the puddles he nodded to her, offered his arm and marched her smartly through the confusion of grooms and house staff, who were collecting luggage all around them. He said not a word till they reached the shelter of the portico at the top of the steps.

‘Rather poor weather for photography, I fear,’ he said soberly.

Sarah laughed heartily.

‘I
do
remember you now,’ she said happily. ‘They’ve teased me unmercifully, because I thought I couldn’t. But I don’t remember you being taller than I was,’ she added, looking up at him, a puzzled look on her face.