The Hawthorns Bloom in May (3 page)

‘So you’re kept busy, Sam. Do you not get a day of rest at all?’ Rose asked quietly.

‘Well, I take Sunday mornin’,’ he confessed sheepishly. ‘I’ve been goin’ over to the meetin’ in Richhill an’ after that I go on an’ meet a few friends down on the railway banks till dinnertime. We lie down there and talk about the news, aye, an’ put the world to rights, as the sayin’ is.’

‘What do you do when it’s wet?’ asked Rose promptly.

Sam laughed, his face lighting up with the sweet smile Rose used to know so well and hadn’t seen for a long time.

‘Ach, then it has to be the goods shed. Tommy Buckley has the key to it if we’re bate.’

Rose settled herself to listen as John and Sam began to talk about the pump he’d been working on. She’d listened to so many of their conversations over the years, she could follow most of what they
said, but before they’d decided the next step in the process, a small figure came flying into the barn.

‘Granny, granny, yer here,’ cried Emily, scrambling up on Rose’s knee with all the energy of a five-year-old.

‘Hallo, Emily,’ Rose said, hugging her warmly. ‘Where’s Sammy?’

‘He’s comin’. He can’t run as fast as I can,’ she added proudly, as six year old Sammy appeared breathless, with eyes only for his grandfather.

‘CanIve a ride inthemotor?’ he gasped, fixing John with bright blue eyes.

John laughed and picked him up.

‘Maybe if you said hello to your Granny, we could manage something.’

‘Hello, Granny,’ said Sammy, so promptly that all the adults laughed.

‘And me,’ insisted Emily. ‘There’s room for me too, Granda.’

‘Come on then,’ John said, smiling at Rose and Sam as he took the two children by the hand.

Through the open doors of the barn, Rose watched him cross the yard, Emily swinging on his arm in her excitement, young Sammy talking nineteen to the dozen. She was about to comment on how much both children had grown since Christmas when she saw Martha come striding into the yard, the baby in the pram, young Rose perched across it.

‘I’ll away and say hello to Martha and the wee
ones,’ she said, as she stood up and saw Sam now running a finger thoughtfully up and down a piece of metal.

‘Hello, Martha, how are you?’ she asked, as the younger woman lifted Rose from the pram.

Martha was heavily pregnant, but she swung the child to the ground with the greatest of ease.

‘I wasn’t expectin’ ye,’ Martha replied with a little laugh. ‘I’ve the cows to milk before I can make tea for anyone,’ she said sharply, looking down into the pram to make sure Bobby was asleep.

‘Oh, we’ll not stay for tea, Martha. You’ve enough to do,’ said Rose, reading the familiar signal. ‘We’ll be off as soon as John gives the children their ride in the motor.’

Martha turned the pram to face away from the lowering sun and looked down at little Rose who was sucking her thumb.

‘Here you are, Rose, here’s your Granny, come to see you,’ she said quickly. ‘She’ll play with you while Uncle Joe and I do our work,’ she added as she picked up the weary child and handed her to Rose.

Behind them, Uncle Joe came to the door and strode silently past on his way to bring in the four cows from the low field.

‘An’ ye mean t’ say that was all the conversation ye had wi’ her, an’ you hasn’t seen her or the childer since Christmas?’

John took his eyes off the empty road and glanced at her as if he couldn’t believe her words without seeing the look on her face.

‘That’s all, John,’ she said firmly. ‘I had a good deal more conversation with little Rose, for all she’s not three yet and there wasn’t so much as a doll or a wee toy for us to talk about. Sam hasn’t much time for making toys from what I can see,’ she added sharply.

‘Aye, ye’re right there,’ he said sadly.

He pressed his lips together and looked up at the clear sky, now paling from blue to palest yellow.

‘There’s a quare stretch on the evenin’s when ye get a good day to see it,’ he said, looking round him carefully as they turned on to the Banbridge road. ‘We did the right thing goin’ on to Thomas and Selina’s diden we?’ he said more cheerfully.

‘Yes, you were right, and I was wrong,’ she admitted laughing. ‘I know I said it was too near teatime to call, but they were so glad to see us, weren’t they? I think it did us both good to be made that welcome. Even if Selina had nothing but baker’s bread and shop jam, she’d have put it on the table. She’s a great baker, isn’t she?’ she went on, her mind still moving on the warm welcome they’d had from John’s old friend and his second wife.

‘You don’t think Martha and Sam are just very
short of money?’ Rose asked, as she thought of the scones and cake so generously provided.

‘How would they be, Rose?’ John replied, a note of irritation in his tone. ‘Sam’s a skilled man. He’s earnin’ far more than I iver earned before we moved to Ballydown. She’s no money to find for her milk and eggs and as far as I know the farm has no mortgage on it, though it was in a bad way when Joe got it. An’ forby that Sam is workin’ all the hours there are, but for Sunday mornin’. He told me he earns a brave bit from the repairs and suchlike.’

Rose shivered and drew the car rug closer over her knees.

‘Are ye cold, love?’

‘No, I was just thinking of Selina’s bright fire and her young Isabel running out to meet us. She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she? Though I can never look at her without thinking of wee Sophie.’

‘Aye. That should niver have happened,’ said John sharply, for he still felt angry over her death. A rabid dog had bitten the three-year old and ended her short life, because the police hadn’t taken the trouble to hunt it down when it was reported.

‘I thought at the time Thomas wou’d niver get over it, but then Ned came along and then wee Isabel. Sure he’s had a second family with Selina and its healed many a hurt that Mary-Anne laid on him.’

John fell silent and the harsh and bitter words she’d once endured from Thomas’s first wife came back into Rose’s mind. A woman firm in her Christian views and active in her Bible reading but totally devoid of love or compassion. She’d shadowed many a good day when they’d lived in the house opposite Thomas’s forge. Putting Mary-Anne firmly out of mind, Rose gazed round at the silent countryside as the evening shadows were lengthened moment by moment. The air was cooling fast beneath a clear sky. Later, there would be a mass of stars and probably a touch of frost before dawn.

‘Did ye notice when I asked Thomas if young Ned was thinkin’ of goin’ to America, that he diden mention
his
eldest boy? He’s been in America for years now and I was waitin’ for Thomas to say how he was doin’ an’ where he was. But Thomas niver said a word about him. D’ye think young James Scott might be like another James we know?’ he asked, glancing across at her.

Rose took a deep breath. It wasn’t often John mentioned their eldest son and it made her sad he still felt so hurt by the way James had rejected them, turning his back on the whole family, because he thought their Catholic relatives might somehow get in the way of his ambitions.

‘Well, it’s about the only reason I can think of why Thomas wouldn’t talk about him,’ she said
slowly. ‘We can’t talk about our James either, even if we wanted to. What could we say? He’s probably still with Harland and Wolff. I’m sure he’s a manager or better, but he never let us know. We know he’s married, but whether or not he has children we’ve never found out. It looks as if Thomas is in the same boat.’

‘I suppose it happens in all families,’ said John thoughtfully. ‘Sure, look at my two brothers. When they went to America they wrote for a wee while and then that was that. My mother kept goin’ for a bit longer and then she gave up. Maybe they just wanted to forget where they came from. Like our James. I’ve been told there’s a brave few does that.’

Rose fell silent as he concentrated on the hill, drove to the top, turned in the wide space outside the gates of Rathdrum House and came slowly back down to park alongside their own wall. She was tired. Despite the pleasure of the visit to the forge house, she felt oppressed by what she’d seen at Liskeyborough.

While John lit the gas lamps, she stirred up the fire. It had almost burnt itself out, so she encouraged it with small sticks and fragments of turf. She thought back to the talk she’d had with Selina when Thomas and John stepped down to the forge to look at a new rotary drill and they’d laid the tea table together.

‘What would you do, Selina?’ she asked, as she spread the crisp, crocheted cloth. ‘You’d be heart sore if you saw the wee ones barefoot in the cold weather. I’m sure you went barefoot as a child and so did I, but times have changed, thank God. I could help her out if she’s short, but she bought shoes and boots with the money I sent and she has them in the cupboard. She told Sam they were for Sunday, but today was Sunday and all I saw was bare feet.’

‘What about her mother, Rose? Is that the trouble?’

‘Her mother died some years ago, but she has two sisters. They’re both older, but neither are married. She seems fond of them. Certainly she’s always going up to see them when Sam’s at home.’

Selina paused and put down the china cups she was holding.

‘Poor Rose,’ she said smiling. ‘Thomas has always said how kind you were to him and how good you were to your own wee ones. It’ll be hard for you. But there’s nothing you can do,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘Sam’s not chosen well, any more than I think our Robert has.’

‘Oh Selina, I wondered you didn’t mention him. He’s been married four or five years now, hasn’t he?’

‘Indeed he has. And I did my best to like the girl, but from the first day I met her she had something to complain about. Though in those days she made
a joke of it,’ she added wryly, as she filled the sugar bowl from a jar she took out of the corner cupboard. ‘Well, it’s no joke now. When Robert comes down from Church Hill to see us, I think it’s the only peace and quiet he gets.’

‘So what do we do to help them?’

‘There’s nothing we
can
do, Rose,’ she replied steadily. ‘They have to make their own lives and their own mistakes. Hard as it is, we have to stand out of the way until such time as something might change.’

Rose looked across the table at the older woman and knew she was thinking of her dear Thomas and the loneliness he’d suffered when he was married to Mary-Anne. She nodded and agreed. It was something her own mother had always said, interference only made things worse.

The fire burnt up and the kettle began to sing just as John came back indoors after putting the tarpaulin cover over the motor.

‘Cup of tea, John?’

‘Aye, that would be great. I think we might have a frost.’

As she made the tea, Rose reflected that the prospect of either their Sam or young Robert Scott having a second chance to find happiness was remote indeed.

Rose put down her pen, rubbed her neck, stretched her shoulders and then read through her reply to her elder daughter’s most recent letter.

Rose tried again to ease the crick in her neck. She enjoyed writing letters to family and friends, but however hard she tried to write slowly, she always ended up scribbling furiously and then her hand, her arm, her neck, or all three, started aching.

‘Arthritis, I suppose,’ she said wryly, as she cast her eye beyond the open door, pleased to see new growth in the flowerbed she and John had created last autumn.

A new ground floor room with a large bedroom above had been added to the house last Spring. It was ready just in time for Hannah arriving in the summer with all four children. When the fence was moved to accommodate the extension, the old flowerbed looked so strange. After twenty-two years, the precious cuttings brought from their home at Salter’s Grange had grown into shrubs tall enough to take the light from the windows of the new sitting room.

She sighed as she remembered the struggle it had been to take them out. She wasn’t having someone come to do a job that needed such care and thought, but afterwards her back ached for days.

When she visited her good friend Elizabeth and her doctor husband, she’d asked Richard about the pain and stiffness in her neck and the limp that sometimes slowed up her housework.

‘Rose dear, we are all getting older. Even you. And you’ve worked hard all your life. You’re bound
to get bits and pieces of arthritis here and there. There’s not much any of us can do about it,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Rest, if you can. Try aspirin. Elizabeth says a hot water bottle is the best remedy, but I’ve pointed out the success of her method may be that in order to apply the said hot water bottle she has to sit down. Neither you, nor my dear Elizabeth, have been much given to sitting down if there’s work to be done.’

He paused and grinned. ‘Maybe you could write more letters.’

She laughed as she recalled the moment, always cheered by the thought of Elizabeth and the late marriage to Richard that had brought such joy to them both. Their only child, James, was but two months older than Hannah’s eldest boy, Francis. She took up her pen and told her daughter about his recent successes at school. Then she added an account of the happy visit to Selina and Thomas Scott at Salter’s Grange, making only a brief mention of Martha and Sam in passing.

She paused as she dipped her pen in the inkpot and listened carefully. She glanced at the clock. Only eleven, far too early for John, but it did sound like a motor on the hill. It would hardly be Sarah. She worked at her table all morning and called in the afternoon on her way to the post office, or to one of the mills.

Before she’d even put her pen down, a vehicle stopped outside, footsteps hurried along the garden path and Sarah stood in the doorway.

‘Sarah dear,’ she said, taking one glance at the pale, drawn face. ‘Is anything wrong?’

Sarah nodded silently, crossed the room and threw herself down in her father’s fireside chair.

‘I’ve bad news, Ma,’ she said quietly. ‘I came to tell you before you’d hear it from someone else.’

Rose felt her stomach lurch. She thought of Sarah’s children, Hugh and little Helen just home for the Easter holidays. Something had happened to one of them. An accident. Or one of them was ill. Or perhaps Sarah herself was ill and hadn’t told her.

She rose from the table with a steadiness that surprised her and sat down in the fireside chair opposite her. She shivered, suddenly chill despite the mild, April morning and the warm glow of the stove.

‘Da sent me a message up from Ballievy,’ Sarah began. ‘The big ship’s sent out signals for help, but there’s no other ship very near.’

‘What! The
Titanic
?’ Rose gasped. ‘But how can she be in trouble? They say she’s unsinkable. What’s happened? What’s gone wrong? And how did Da hear?’

Rose looked at her daughter steadily. She was sitting up straight in the easy chair, her hands stretched along its wooden arms, her fingers grasping the worn-smooth ends. She was wearing a high necked blouse pinned at the neck with a favourite brooch and a plain dark-blue skirt, her favourite colour. Apart from the look on her face,
she seemed the calm, controlled Sarah who’d taken up her life and Hugh’s work with so little hesitation and such steadiness immediately after his death.

‘Someone got the news from the White Star office in Belfast this morning and it went round the mills like wildfire,’ she explained. ‘Some of the men have brothers in the crew or know someone in the handover group and several women have relatives who are passengers. There’s two families in second class emigrating from Belfast. My Mrs Beatty has a niece who’s a stewardess,’ she went on, taking a deep breath. ‘You’ve met her, Ma. She used to be on the cross channel ferry, before she was moved to the
Olympic
. They were short staffed for
Titanic
, so they moved her again. Mary Sloan?’

Rose nodded silently. She’d had more than one conversation with her over the last years when she’d crossed the Irish Sea to visit Hannah and her mother-in-law, her own oldest friend, Lady Anne.

‘Oh, Sarah,’ she began, waving her hands helplessly. ‘Whatever
has
gone wrong? Was it a storm?’

Sarah shook her head again, but did not look away. Her blue eyes lacked the old animation, gone with Hugh’s death, but they never wavered. However painful the news, she’d tell her straight.

‘Da telegraphed our agents in New York first thing this morning. They said nearby ships had taken off all the passengers and she’s being towed to Halifax. But a little while ago, they heard from the London office. Montreal had telegraphed that she’d gone down. Apparently, she sent out CQD for a couple of hours and then this new signal, SOS. But then all went silent.’

Rose was so shocked she could hardly get her words out.

‘Sarah, Sarah, dear. All those poor people. And poor Mrs Beatty. She’ll be so anxious about Mary. Is there nothing we can do to find out what’s really happened?’

‘I’m on my way to the post office. I’ll talk to Billy Auld. If anyone can find out, he can. He’s in charge of telegraphs now,’ she said abruptly, as she stood up.

Rose sat where she was, still staring at her daughter who walked across the kitchen but made no move to leave.

‘Who were you writing to, Ma?’ Sarah asked as she caught sight of the unfinished letter on the table.

‘Hannah. I was telling her the good news about Uncle Sam in America …’

Rose broke off, aware that Sarah was watching her closely. For one more moment she sat, confused and bewildered, and then it dawned on her why
Sarah had come. She put a hand to her mouth and gasped.

‘Sam,’ she said, in a whisper. ‘Your Uncle Sam,’ she said, looking up, her eyes wide. ‘He should’ve been on her.’

Sarah smiled bleakly, came and put an arm round her, kissed her cheek.

‘Yes, I know. He showed me the newspaper advertisements when he was last here. He said a touch of Louis Quinze and potted palms would be quite an experience after years of travelling steerage. It would be something to remember.’

Tears sprang to Rose’s eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks. First Hugh and then Sam. The very thought of losing her own brother after the loss of their dear friend and son-in-law. It was just too much for her. She sobbed and Sarah comforted her.

By the end of the day, everyone knew that the big ship, such a part of life since her launch the previous year, had indeed gone down, but it was an enormous relief that all the passengers were safe. A list of ships in the area, many of them with familiar names, were said to have come to her aid. Some of them were White Star liners, like the
Titanic
herself. Others had been built in Harland and Wolff’s yards in Belfast where she too had been built. But
Titanic
was lost. The ship launched with such pride and
celebration less than a year ago lay some two miles below the Atlantic waves.

Rose and John sat silent by the stove after their evening meal. The daily paper had no knowledge of what had happened in the early hours of the morning on the other side of the Atlantic. They were both fully aware that whatever messages were being tapped out back and forth across the ocean no further news would reach them till the
Belfast Newsletter
arrived in Banbridge on the earliest of the morning trains.

‘D’you remember Sarah and Hugh taking the children to see her?’ Rose asked suddenly, breaking the heavy silence.

‘Aye. An’ wee Hugh was that excited he couldn’t eat his breakfast,’ replied John, looking up at the clock, as if it would tell him something he needed to know.

‘When they got back he tried to tell me how big she was and he just ran out of words,’ she said smiling sadly. ‘Then he said it would hold everybody in Banbridge and they could go for walks along her decks just like we do on Sundays.’ She paused. ‘How many would there be on board, John?’

‘Some say two thousand, some says three. Wee Hugh isn’t far wrong, though, she’s the biggest ship that’s ever been built. It’s an awful blow for all those that wrought on her, never mind the White Star Line and the owners.’

‘But how would you get them all off and on to other ships?’ Rose demanded, thinking of the huge cliff that towered above them when they’d gone with Richard and Elizabeth to the launch.

John rubbed his chin and studied the toes of his shoes.

‘Ye might be able to get another ship alongside if the big ship’s engines weren’t runnin,’ but more likely ye’d have to lower the lifeboats and move people that way. It wou’d depend on the sea too, if it was rough. It wou’d be a hard job with childer and older folk.’

‘And it would be cold, wouldn’t it?’

‘Ach yes, sure it’s only April. There’s talk about icebergs, so it must be,’ he said, standing up and putting out the gas lamp on his side of the fireplace.

‘And we’ll go to our nice, warm bed and pray those poor people are safe,’ she said, her voice wavering.

‘That’s all we can do, love,’ he said kindly, as he lit a candle to see them upstairs to the large, new bedroom where they now slept.

But Rose’s mind was still racing. For a long time she lay motionless, reluctant to disturb John, who’d fallen asleep within moments of getting into bed. Then she slid out gently, drew on her dressing gown and tiptoed barefoot to the window. She drew back an edge of curtain and saw the moon appear through a mass of racing storm cloud. For
a moment, it beamed a cold, silvery light over the familiar fields, then, as the clouds closed over again, the details of the landscape were blotted out, only the shape of the little hills, dark upon even darker, rolled away to the horizon. She looked in vain for a light, a friendly signal in the empty space. But it was late and all their neighbours were in bed. There was no light to comfort a passing stranger, or someone adrift in the darkness in the cold night hours.

She shivered and felt her teeth begin to chatter, told herself firmly to get back into bed and put away such desolate thoughts. ‘Think of something pleasant,’ she said to herself, as she slipped cautiously beneath the blankets. ‘Flowers and trees and the song of birds.’

She tried but it was no good. She lay on her side, her feet two blocks of ice, her arms folded across her breasts, as she felt her body shake and a cold sweat break on her face.

‘We’ll divide the ship here,’ the man said, looking up at her, his hands full of stones. ‘An’ we’ll take the first piece down to the bottom an’ come back for th’ other. The doors is locked so you’ll be safe.’