The Hawthorns Bloom in May (27 page)

Alex smiled at her.

‘He’ll be all right,’ he said firmly, sitting down beside her.

‘What makes you think that?’ she demanded.

‘Can’t say. Just a feeling.’

She sat silent on the old wooden bench which Hugh used as an aeroplane. Yes, perhaps she too
felt it was going to be all right, but there was a tight knot in her stomach telling her that it wasn’t.

‘Even if he is, I’m not sure I can go, Alex.’

‘Not go? But you love the man.’

‘Yes, I do, but I’m so much needed here. Ma’s been so good, but she’s had nothing but bad news, first Uncle Sam, now Harrington. Even her postman was killed on active service. And Da’s beside himself between the loss of Uncle Sam and the change-over. You know that yourself.’

‘Sarah, you forget. No one is indispensable. If you’d stopped a bullet in Dublin, we’d all have had to cope.’

To Alex’s amazement Sarah laughed.

‘I almost did,’ she said easily. ‘If I hadn’t slipped and nearly fallen it might have got me. It came close enough to tear my skirt.’

‘Did Sam confess to you about his jacket?’

‘What jacket?’

‘His fairly new everyday one,’ he said lightly. ‘Your mother spotted a hole when he came over to see her and he told her it looked like a burn. She mended it one night while I was there so I knew perfectly well what it was. When I tackled him about it, he finally admitted he got it when he took the jam down to Jacob’s.’

‘You’re quite right, you know. No one is indispensable,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘But that’s not the point, is it? I
have
survived and so
has our Sam, thank God, but how can I leave them now, Alex? They’ve never needed me more,’ she said, tears springing unbidden to her eyes.

‘What would Rose say if you told her that?’ he asked quietly.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘She’d repeat what her own mother said to her,’ she began steadily. ‘I can’t remember the words, but it’s to the effect that no woman should ever hold on to her daughter and no daughter should ever stay when she meets the man that’s right for her.’

‘Well then?’

She sat silent, weary as after a long effort.

‘I have something in mind that might make the going easier,’ he said.

‘You have?’ she repeated.

‘Yes,’ he continued briskly. ‘John has been talking about moving house to make life easier for Rose. If you were to go, they could move up to Rathdrum. I would then ask her if I could rent Ballydown for my wife and myself.’

‘Alex!’

‘I have an understanding with a young woman, but I shall not marry till you do,’ he said firmly. ‘I made up my mind about that when we agreed you needed a brother.’

Sarah had just opened her mouth to reply when she heard a cry from the direction of the back door. She screwed up her eyes against the sunlight and
peered down the garden. Mrs Beatty was waving a tea-cloth, her usual way of announcing a visitor.

‘Shall I go?’ Alex volunteered.

‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully.

He returned a few minutes later. To her great surprise, he was followed by Billy Auld. Alex who had been looking so happy some minutes earlier had grown tense and anxious.

Looking from one face to another, Sarah wondered what more unhappiness was about to descend.

‘Sarah, this must have come in as we were shutting down. I hope it’s not bad news,’ said Billy as he handed over the sealed official envelope.

It seemed an age before she was able to pull out the telegram itself. It read:

She had to read it three times before it registered that Simon was safe.

‘It’s good news,’ she said, tripping over the words. ‘My fiancé is back in England. His ship hit a mine and I was told he’d been rescued … but..’

She handed the telegram to Billy, who was looking enormously relieved.

‘Actually, Sarah, your man’s in Scotland,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘He must have come home on
a destroyer,’ he added, as he pointed out the stamp of the post office where the telegram had been despatched.

‘War Department base near there,’ he said. ‘That’s why you’d no word sooner. Destroyers can’t use radio for fear of submarines.’

‘I told you he was all right,’ said Alex, grinning at her.

‘But you
didn’t
tell me you were going to get married,’ she came back at him, a sudden joyous sense of relief sweeping over her.

‘Billy, Alex and I are getting married,’ she said, laughing at the ambiguity of her remark. ‘I’m marrying Simon, but
he
hasn’t told me yet who he’s going to marry. What kind of a cousin is that, Billy?’

‘Ach, I can’t get over it,’ said John for at least the third time, as Rose brewed up the final tea of the day. ‘Sure we’ve had nothing but bad news for weeks and now this. The poor man must have been in an awful way not bein’ able to let her know he was all right and having to go away up to Scotland before he was put ashore.’

‘As bad as Sarah, cooped up in Dublin and not knowing if she’d get home safe,’ replied Rose promptly.

‘Aye, they’ve both had their hardship. An’ so have we, one way an another.’

She smiled at him as she poured their tea and then sat back in her chair, relieved that he’d laughed for the first time in weeks.

‘What d’ye think of this idea of us movin’ up to Rathdrum when Sarah goes?’ he asked casually.

‘I’d rather go there than Dromore,’ she said honestly. ‘I’d miss the mountains. An’ you’d have your workshop for when you retire.’

‘Well, if you were happy an’ had less work to do, I’d be for it.’

Rose smiled to herself. She’d always loved what she still sometimes thought of as ‘Elizabeth’s house’. She knew the garden as well as her own and if they moved there they’d have plenty of room for visitors and young Helen and Hugh would always have their first home to come back to.

‘What about this house, John?’

‘Well, that’s up to you,’ he said promptly. ‘It’s your house, but if you want to rent it to Alex and Emily, I’d be all for it. We’d have good neighbours there,’ he said warmly. ‘Aye, an’ there’d still be Hamiltons at Ballydown.’

The period from 1912 to 1916 was neither happy nor peaceful in Ireland, events both at home and in Europe casting dark shadows ahead of them. I am grateful to the librarians at the Linenhall Library in Belfast for guiding me through the enormous number of books written about these events. I am also grateful to my friends at the Irish Studies Centre in Armagh who produced newspaper reports alerting me to errors in even the most highly thought of eye-witness accounts of the Easter Rising.

Kind neighbours have lent me unpublished material written during the first world war, showed me photographs and postcards from the front and alerted me to an important new book, published while I was still at work.

No doubt continuing new research will alter our perspective on some of the events referred to in the text, but, writing in July of 2005, my concern is not
ultimately with the details of what happened, but with the courage and tenacity of individuals caught up in the events of their time, living in the shadow of anxiety, hardship, disease, rebellion and war.

My purpose is to remind the reader of the wisdom of Thomas Scott, a country blacksmith from Armagh, who said as often as need be, that …
Whatever way the world goes, the hawthorns bloom in May
.

The year is 1924. At nearly sixteen, Rosie Hamilton of Liskeyborough, is growing into a lovely young woman with a striking resemblance to her much-loved grandmother, Rose. With only another week to go at Miss Wilson’s school in Richhill, she is concerned and preoccupied with what her future might hold.

Rosie has always had to contend with her mother’s cruel jibes and her fierce temper which often leads to violence despite all the efforts of her kind and patient father. When Rosie has the opportunity to go to Kerry with her grandparents, Sam Hamilton is grateful for a breathing space in which he can consider how he can best help his daughter.

For Rose and John Hamilton, now in their early seventies, this expedition is a long-promised return to the place where Rose herself grew up and where she and John met, some fifty years earlier.

For Rosie, this visit is a step into a completely new world and a future that will lead to her finding her happiness just as her grandfather did as a result of his long journey to Kerry.

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A
NNE
D
OUGHTY
was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland. She is the author of twelve novels including
A Few Late Roses
which was longlisted for the Irish Times fiction prize. After many years living in England she returned to Belfast in 1998 and wrote the first of the novels that make up the Hamiltons series.

The Woman from Kerry

The Hamiltons of Ballydown

The Hawthorns Bloom in May

A Girl Called Rosie

For Many a Long Day

Shadow on the Land

On a Clear Day

Beyond the Green Hills