The Hawthorns Bloom in May (15 page)

‘Da made this crane,’ she said shortly, leaning forward and drawing the metal arm out from its place. The chain dangling, it swung over the blackened hearth with a muted creak.

Alex’s face was in shadow. He nodded and said nothing, but she could see he was watching her closely.

As she stood there, all she could think of was the summer’s day when she and Sam had ridden over from Richhill Station to visit Thomas. Brilliant light glanced from the rich foliage of high summer and the air was heavy with heat. They’d stood in the sunshine talking to him, and then she’d taken pictures of him and Robert together, working at the
bench at the back of the forge where the dim light from the two dusty windows was just enough for an exposure.

Afterwards, they’d come to look at their old home. Sam had cut a spray of roses for her from a bush grown wild in the garden and she’d found the calendar for 1889 still hanging in the washhouse, the last days of their life there, some ten years previously, stroked off one by one in pencil. July 1889. The year of the disaster in which they had
not
perished.

‘Has Ma told you about the Rail Disaster?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Yes.’

‘And the time Thomas nearly died?’

‘Oh yes,’ he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing that Rose should tell him all the family history.

‘But we were living here then. Didn’t she say?’

Sarah couldn’t imagine how either tale could have been told without mentioning the two-roomed house they’d had to move to when their landlord found the means to serve notice and give their house at Annacramp to his son.

‘Maybe she did, Sarah, but I didn’t make the connection. I thought you’d always lived at Annacramp in that house Ned Wylie showed me.’

‘But why does it matter, Alex?’ she asked gently.

‘Because it’s part of
your
life, Sarah,’ he answered
firmly. ‘We made a promise to help each other two years ago. Don’t you remember? If I don’t know about your past, I won’t be able to understand why you’re the person you are. I’ll not be able to help you the way I want to.’

‘Yes, of course, I remember. But I’m not sure I’ve done very much to help you,’ she said sadly.

‘Oh yes, you have,’ he came back immediately. ‘You took my word. You’ve shared your family with me. You’ve kept my secret.’

Sarah shivered and pushed the crane back into its place. It seemed such a strange thing that it had remained here, exactly where it had always been for the last fifteen years. The whole world had changed for her and for everyone else and yet the crane on which her mother had cooked over the open fire was just as Sam had left it when he pushed it back into its place that glorious summer day.

‘We ought to go back, Alex. Back to the present,’ she said ruefully, knowing now quite clearly there was something in her present she could not bear.

‘You’ve been good to me over my past, Sarah. I’ll do my best to be good to you over your future,’ he said firmly. ‘I think I can see it clearer now after today.’

He held open the door for her and she walked past him out into the dusk. There were times when she couldn’t understand Alex at all, but she
had never had any cause to doubt his kindness, his goodwill, or his strange wisdom. He most certainly had kept his side of their pact.

‘Are you foundered with cold?’ John asked, as he and Rose pushed open the door and stepped into their dark, chilly kitchen.

‘No, I’m not
that
cold, love. You had me well wrapped up in those rugs,’ she replied, dropping her hat on the nearest chair. ‘But I’m cold at heart and so are you,’ she said, looking up at him in the patch of pale moonlight that filtered through the front window. ‘We’ll light the lamps and make up a good fire,’ she went on, putting a match to a single candle sitting ready on the windowsill.

She waited for the flame to steady, then carried it over to the stove so she could see to light the gas lamps.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘No. I can’t say I am,’ he replied honestly. ‘Ach shure I’ve no heart for food. But a mug of tea would go down well.’

‘Come on then,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘You light the paraffin stove and I’ll get the fire going. I’ve plenty of good kindling all ready here in the box and a bit of turf to hurry it up. We’ll have a blaze in no time,’ she went on, rubbing her cold hands together. ‘Keep your coat on for a while till we get some heat. I think we’ll have another frost tonight.’

‘Aye. The sky was very clear coming back,’ he said wearily, making an effort to sound less dispirited than he felt. ‘But there’s a good stretch on the evenings now.’

Rose knelt in front of the stove, piled in two large handfuls of bone dry twigs and arranged slivers of turf around them before choosing small pieces of coal to go on top. The moment she set a match to the twigs they crackled into flame, the small, familiar noise bringing comfort. Moments later, the turf smoked and glowed, filling the room with a perfume that lifted her heart. In all the worst moments of her life, she had tended the fire on the hearth for the sake of John and the children coming in from work, from school, from rain and cold.

She drew in the pungent aroma that took her back to her earliest years and remembered her mother bent over the hearth in the thatched house up in the Derryveagh Mountains. The flames flickered more vigorously. She added larger pieces of turf and more coal. Satisfied it was well alight, she got awkwardly to her feet, her back sore from standing, her body stiff with the cold and the tensions of the day.

‘Away and change your clothes, John,’ she said quietly, as he came back into the kitchen carrying a can of paraffin in case the oil stove might need refilling later. ‘Maybe you’d bring me down that
nice wool shawl you gave me at Christmas. It’s in my top drawer.’

She saw the bleak look on his face soften slightly as he turned towards the stairs. It was even colder in the dairy as she filled the kettle to boil it on the gas, so she put the whistle on its spout and shut the door quickly behind her.

‘That’s more like it,’ she said, a little later, as John reappeared, his black suit replaced by corduroys, a Fair Isle pullover she’d knitted for him years ago and an old tweed jacket.

She slipped off her best cape, wrapped the shawl round her and poured from the waiting teapot.

‘Ye were right about the fire,’ he said, looking into the dancing flames as he sat down. ‘It would put heart in ye.’

‘Are you very upset about Thomas?’ she began cautiously, as she sipped her tea, the warmth of the fire already thawing out her feet.

‘Ach I am in one way, but not in another,’ he said slowly. ‘Sure we all come to it. He was a good age and didn’t suffer much. I’m more upset about Sarah,’ he said abruptly.

‘Sarah?’ she repeated, completely taken aback.

‘Aye. Sure the wee pale face of her by that graveside. You maybe diden see her, for you were standin’ beside her, but I was across from ye’s after we put the coffin down. I could see her plain. Ach, I’m sure she was sorry about Thomas, but it was
beyond that. She looked as if all belongin’ to her was dead, as the sayin’ is.’

Rose shook her head and thought back through the afternoon.

‘You’re right about me not seeing her,’ she admitted. ‘I thought she was steady enough and I had my eye on Selina.’

‘Rightly too,’ he said nodding. ‘But even when we got back to the house, her face was like one o’ those marble sculptures in the church. I gave her a drop o’ whiskey an’ she took it, for all she doesn’t like it,’ he said sharply.

‘It’s only two and a half years since Hugh,’ Rose reminded him. ‘I thought she was much better after her holiday last year,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘She talked about going over to London at Christmas and seemed very keen, but then there was nothing more said about it.’

‘D’ye think there’s anythin’ between her an’ Alex?’

‘Alex?’ Rose repeated, amazed that John should even have thought of such a possibility.

‘Aye. He was watching her all the time,’ he said, nodding his head emphatically. ‘Every time I looked over at her, I saw him looking too. And then they went outside together. An’ she seemed more like herself when they came back.’

Rose smiled and refilled their mugs.

‘Alex
is
fond of Sarah, you’re quite right. And
she’s fond of him too, I know. But it’s no more than that,’ she said gently. ‘If there is a man in question, I think it would be that friend of Teddy’s that carried her camera at their wedding. The one she couldn’t even remember. Simon Hadleigh. I told you he was there at Ashleigh in the summer and Hannah and Anne have said how well they got on together.’

‘Would that be it, then?’ John came back at her. ‘Is she not settled in her mind what she should do? Sure Hugh would only want to see her happy, if this man was right for her. What do Hannah and Lady Anne think of him?’

‘It’s hardly as simply as that, love. I think they’d be very happy to see Sarah and Simon together, but Sarah’s maybe thinking of the children. And maybe, indeed, of us. Simon Hadleigh is a diplomat. Anne says he’s a very able man and will go far, but he’s in Russia at the moment. He told her he was due to come back to London soon, but with the way things are going in Europe he may not get back.’

‘What d’ye mean?’ asked John, alarmed.

‘Well, with all this talk of war, he might be needed where he is. I don’t think you can choose where you go unless you’re
very
senior,’ she said soberly. ‘Or perhaps very junior,’ she added as an after thought.

‘Aye, well,’ he said finishing his tea and stretching out his legs in front of the roaring fire, ‘it’s hard to know what to do for the best. I’d be a happy man if
she found someone even half as good as Hugh, God rest him,’ he said with a great sigh.

‘Even if she went to live in England like Hannah, or had to live somewhere far off in Europe?’ she asked, a note of caution in her voice.

‘Even so,’ he said, nodding firmly. ‘She’s a grown woman, Rose, an’ you and I are gettin’ on now. You’re sixty and I’m sixty-two. I hope we’ve a few more years yet, but we’ll not always be here. I’d like to see Sarah look powerful different to the way she looked today.’

As in the rhyme Granny Sarah had taught all her grandchildren, the March of 1914 came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. After the cold of February and the rattle and bang of the wind, day after day, all through the early weeks of March, the change came with a suddenness that took everyone by surprise. A morning dawned in perfect stillness, the sun poured down from a clear sky and both plants and creatures responded to the real warmth in its rays.

Late in the morning, Rose finished the letters she’d had in mind for a week or more and came to the door to stand bathed in the sunlight. She cast her eyes along the garden path and smiled to herself. The daffodils, that only yesterday had pointed thickened spikes up at the stormy sky, now bent their heads and were beginning to unfurl even as she watched. All around her, the birds were active. Sweet songs poured down from the trees
and bushes, swooping flights descended upon the last of the crumbs put out at breakfast time, while others scuffled in the dried grass against the far wall of the garden, as they struggled to pull out building material for their nests.

‘
Between one day and the next
,’ she said to herself.

She was amazed how easy it was to forget that change isn’t always slow. Today, everything was different, but then, she reflected, some changes are long-prepared. However wild and stormy the last weeks, they had not been particularly cold. The daffodils had continued to grow quietly and unobtrusively but it needed the warmth for them to bloom.

She tramped down the path to inspect the fat pink buds of her camellia. No sign at all of frost damage. She was so absorbed in her search for new growth she didn’t hear the light step on the hill. Only when the garden gate clicked behind her did she turn to find her brother grinning at her, the sunlight glinting from his hair, thinning now, but still perceptibly red.

‘Sam,’ she cried, in delight, ‘I wasn’t expecting you for two days.’

‘Hallo, sissy,’ he said hugging her. ‘I got my dates wrong. I said I’d be in Dublin for Lily’s birthday. Then I thought you might
not
be pleased if I only stayed two nights.’

‘You are
quite
right,’ she said, trying to look severe. ‘Where’s your suitcase?’

‘Left it at the station,’ he said easily. ‘Thought I’d ask Sarah to run me down later to collect it. I want to warn her about the vagaries of Dawson Street, among other things.’

‘Tell me more about this visit,’ she said, as they went indoors and settled themselves comfortably. ‘I
was
surprised when Lily invited her
and
the children for Easter, but Sarah seems very pleased and Helen and Hugh are full of it. Apparently Lily mentioned the zoo
and
the seaside
and
Fairyhouse Races in her letter. D’you think she really means it?’

Sam laughed and shook his head as Rose offered to draw the kettle forward and make him tea.

‘Oh yes, she means it all right,’ he said, nodding vigorously. ‘She doesn’t have the best of health, but when she’s well there’s no stopping her,’ he began, smiling. ‘She loves being out and about. Just put a sketchbook and a sandwich in a bag and she’s happy. I’ve never met such an extraordinary woman. Can talk to
anyone
. Not just people of her own class.’

‘I’m still wondering why she never married, Sam,’ said Rose thoughtfully, her mind moving back to the days at Currane Lodge when the lovely young Lady Lily had been surrounded by admirers. ‘Do you think she was secretly in love with
you
all along?’ she asked, teasing him.

‘No, I’m afraid it was something much sadder,’ he replied, his smile disappearing. ‘Almost the first time we met in Dublin she told me quite openly that her mother was the reason she’d never married. From the time Lily could wear a dress, her mother talked to her about one thing only. Marriage and children.
Always
marriage and children. Who she should marry, where she should live, how many children she’d have. Poor Lily couldn’t bear it. By the time she was fourteen she’d vowed she’d never marry at all. Isn’t that a dreadful thing to happen to any girl?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she agreed promptly. ‘It’s a hard thing if a woman chooses badly, but even that might’ve been better than all those years looking after her father. She must have been lonely then,’ Rose went on, suddenly thinking of the large, silent rooms and the echoing corridors she’d known at Currane when all the family were away.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, nodding matter-of-factly.

‘But not now?’

‘No. Lily being lonely was resolved long before I turned up. When I first asked her to dine at the Shelbourne, I’m afraid it was only from sheer selfish curiosity,’ he said, smiling wryly. ‘But she didn’t seem to notice. She was so pleased to see me and wanted to know all about what I was doing. Unlike me, she has the gift of accepting people just as they are,’ he said, looking his sister full in the face.

As the morning sun moved across the sky
Sam went on to tell Rose how Lily’s life had been transformed when she came to Dublin, how she’d kept open house and made many friends, in particular young men who were struggling as artists, or poets, or actors.

Rose listened fascinated. Sam had never before spoken so freely or with such affection for this woman she herself had met only twice since she’d left Currane Lodge herself.

‘Did you know that Lily went to the Slade?’ he asked, unexpectedly.

‘Goodness no, I didn’t,’ Rose replied hastily.

She’d been listening to all he said, but a part of her mind kept moving away, back to the young Lady Anne. She thought of the violent tantrums and rages and the way she’d say, ‘
We don’t need men, do we Rose? We’ll go off to London and the continent and let my sisters have the babies
.’ She heard again the edge of anxiety in the words and saw the look of determination on her face.

So it was Lady Caroline, the delicate invalid, who had pushed Anne, as well as Lily, to the edge of despair. She could hardly bear to think what might have happened to her dear friend, if she’d had no one to help her correct her violent reaction to her mother’s continual pressure.

‘When would that have been, Sam?’ she asked, making an effort to reconnect with what he was telling her.

‘Some time after I joined the Land League and you’d moved north. I’d no contact with Currane for years then. Not till Ma died and Sir Capel sent for me. She says when she went with her portfolio, they didn’t think much of it and advised her against coming, but she’d had a legacy from her god-mother, so she could pay the fees. Now, of course, she’s rather good,’ he said, with a satisfied tone that suggested justice had been done.

‘I’ve tried to persuade her to sell some of her pictures,’ he went on, ‘but she won’t hear of it. She still gives them away.’

‘Yes, I know,’ replied Rose quickly. ‘And I’m the richer for that. Is she short of money, Sam? Was that why she moved to Dawson Street when Sir Capel died?’

He nodded briefly.

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Rose said sadly. ‘It must be even harder if you’ve come from a family that once had plenty. Not like us, Sam,’ she said smiling ruefully.

‘Don’t worry about Lily,’ he said awkwardly. ‘She doesn’t let it bother her. To tell you the truth, Patrick’s sold another couple of old houses for me and I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how much that land is now worth,’ he added, glancing away. ‘I’m trying to find some way of helping her that she won’t notice. I’ve tipped one of her girls to keep the bills for me,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Would you believe, she just puts them in a drawer, then
she wonders why the coalman doesn’t come!’

Rose smiled too. She was so happy that Sam should have such pleasure from this unexpected friendship, but what really delighted her was the thought that Lily’s well-being was now being cared for by a rich man who’d once been her father’s stable boy.

‘Speaking of your Patrick, tell me about the rest of my nephews and nieces,’ she said glancing up at the clock. ‘Yours first and then Mary’s. Any news about any of them since you last wrote to me?’

Having started on the news from two large families, they were still talking when Rose heard John’s step on the path.

‘Oh my goodness, is that the time,’ she said laughing as she jumped to her feet. ‘John dear, you’ve caught us gossiping and not a bite of lunch for you,’ she went on, as he paused in the doorway and beamed at them.

‘How are ye Sam? How’s that shoulder of yours?’ he asked, as he strode across to greet his brother-in-law.

‘Just grand, John. Not a bit of trouble with it provided I do nothing. Neither spade, nor slane, nor pen,’ he retorted, laughing.

‘Aye, well,’ John said, as he hung his cap by the door. ‘We’re gettin’ on, aren’t we?’

Rose glanced at him over her shoulder as she
pulled out a drawer in the dresser. Beyond his pleasure and warm greeting, she could see he was weary, tired from some effort he’d had to make during the morning but he’d not be pleased if she mentioned it in front of Sam.

‘Sam was just telling me about Brendan,’ she said, as she spread a clean cloth and began to lay the table for lunch.

‘How’s he doin’ in Dublin now? Did he get another job after his friend’s shop had to shut?’ John asked, sitting down gratefully by the fire.

‘Nothing great so far,’ said Sam honestly, ‘but I hear he’s something of a celebrity at Liberty Hall on a Sunday night.’

‘Doing what?’ asked Rose, as she brought the morning’s baking in from the dairy and put it on the bread board.

‘It seems Michael Mallin plays the flute. He’s got up an orchestra if you please. Four of them. And Brendan sings.’

‘He does have a lovely voice, Sam,’ said Rose quickly, pausing on her way back to the larder for cheese and cold meat. ‘D’you think he might take up singing for a living?’

‘Never thought of that, Rose, but there’s enough pubs might be glad to employ him if they thought it was good for business.’

‘How are ye managin’ without him?’ John asked abruptly, as Rose waved them over to the
table and started cutting thick slices of new bread.

‘I miss him, John, but I couldn’t stand in his way. He worked hard for me, indeed he did, but he’s no real interest in the land,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s partly my own fault I’ve lost him. I’ve probably talked so much about the state of the workers in the cities, he thinks he should be doing something about it. I can hardly complain, can I? I was just the same at his age,’ he added with a wry smile.

‘Aye. It was a bad business that lock-out. All those poor people starvin’ for months till the relief ships came from the unions in Britain. Sure it was just as bad as a famine, though it were in the city. D’ye think anythin’ good will come out of it?’ he asked, his face sombre, as he buttered a slice of wheaten bread.

‘Well, it might,’ Sam replied. ‘Your good Belfast man, James Connolly, has moved to Dublin and he’ll get things organised at Liberty Hall if anyone can. It seems his boss, Larkin, has gone to America. I don’t know what to make of that. He might have given up trying, like I did, or he might be raising money. I sometimes think we don’t know the half of what’s going on, however much we read the newspapers and the manifestos. There’s a lot of rumour printed as if it were God’s truth.’

‘You’re right there, Sam,’ John replied, nodding vigorously. ‘I sometimes don’t know what to think
the way the world’s goin’ these days. All this talk of war and men drillin’. Hugh useta keep me right. Whatever I would put to him, he’d have another view to set alongside it. He was always that sensible. For all he might be annoyed, he’d never let himself get worked up,’ he said, his tone full of admiration and longing.

In the silence that followed, Sam and Rose glanced at each other. Despite John’s effort at conversation they knew John was not himself.

‘How’s young Alex making out?’ Sam asked, as the silence grew longer. With an eye to the clock, Rose got up to make a pot of tea.

‘The best at all,’ John replied, a touch more life in his voice. ‘He’s kinda quiet at times an’ I wonder what’s goin’ on at all in his head. An’ then he’ll give a big smile an’ he looks a differen’ man. An’ he’s sharp all right. Tell him a thing wonst an’ ye’ll not have to tell him again,’ he added, as he waved Sam to his own armchair and pulled a kitchen chair over to the fire to sit beside him.

‘Where are you for this afternoon, love? Back to Seapatrick?’ Rose asked, as John drained his mug and cast his eyes towards the clock.

‘Aye, but I hafta go to the hospital first.’

He paused as if there was no need to say anything else, but one look at Rose’s face and he knew he’d have to confess what was troubling him.

‘Ach there was a wee lassie at Lenaderg fainted
this mornin’,’ he began, looking at the floor. ‘One of the weeman said it was that time o’ the month. She fell forward an’ the guard had been left off the loom by the maintenance men. She’ll likely lose the arm,’ he ended abruptly as he stood up. ‘I’m away over to see her an’ sign the forms for the report.’

An hour later, as the sun began to filter into the shadowy dining room, Sarah put down her pen, picked up Simon’s long letter and read the final paragraphs yet again:

From somewhere outside she heard the sound of footsteps. She sighed, pushed the sheets quickly back into their envelope and dropped it into her drawer. A messenger, a request from a mill, she thought wearily. Mrs Beatty would open the door, but whoever it was would have to be seen.