The Hawthorns Bloom in May (7 page)

Rose shook her head and noted how pale Sarah had grown.

‘It’s because, Ma, as it gets worse, the workers don’t have enough breath to do their job. They have to give it up. When they die, they aren’t working, so the report is able to state “there is no morbidity with byssinosis, there is therefore no need to legislate”.’

‘Oh Sarah dear, no wonder you’re angry,’ said Rose sadly. ‘But is the anger going to help?’

‘That’s what Hugh always said, but he’s not here to say it now,’ she said flatly.

‘Then perhaps I could say it.’

Sarah smiled weakly.

‘You might get fed up.’

‘Well, I’d be willing to try. But there’s one condition,’ replied Rose, pausing when she saw Sarah look surprised.

‘Yes …’

‘If your weakness is anger, Sarah, then mine is despair. I often fear I just haven’t the courage to keep going and cope with the next disaster, whether
it’s public or private,’ she said quietly. ‘How would it be if we agreed to watch each other?’

‘And remind each other of the last story ever told under Daniel McGee’s roof?’

‘Yes,’ said Rose, warmly. ‘Maybe that’s why it came back to me today, after all these years. Maybe we
both
needed it.’

‘You
will
remember to water our gardens, won’t you, mama?’ young Hugh had insisted on the pleasant April day she’d taken them back to school. ‘Even if it rains,’ he went on solemnly, ‘it may not provide enough moisture when plants begin to grow vigorously.’

Sarah smiled to herself as she visualised the look of concentration on his face as he instructed her. She’d never thought of herself as much of a gardener and clearly her son shared her view, but, she had to admit she’d thoroughly enjoyed keeping her promise to the children during these last few weeks.

Some three years earlier both Helen and Hugh had asked to have their own piece of garden. Encouraged by their Aunt Elizabeth and Grandma Rose, to whom they had applied for things to grow, they had dug and planted with
great enthusiasm, even if she’d had to tidy up a bit after them.

‘The early morning is probably the best time to water,’ her son had explained, fixing her firmly with his gaze, ‘but if you forget, then you must wait till the sun has gone round to the south-west and our part of the garden is in shade.’

‘You need to poke your finger in the soil like Grandma does,’ added Helen helpfully. ‘If your finger’s still clean afterwards, then you do
need
to water.’

Determined not to disappoint them, she’d made a large notice and propped it up on her desk at the beginning of June when the weather turned warm rather earlier than usual. Now, when she came into the dining room each morning, instead of making a start on the papers she’d left ready, she’d look up at the sky and fill her watering can instead.

Helen’s garden was a mass of bloom. Foxgloves, Canterbury bells and lavender were her favourites. Already, the worker bees were harvesting nectar, so involved with their own affairs that Sarah’s only concern was to avoid sprinkling them as she pushed the spout of her can below the flourishing plants. She watched the fine rain of moisture pit the dusty soil and trickle off the white stones and seashells which marked its boundaries.

Hugh’s garden was easier to water. In a
rectangular space the same size as Helen’s, but on the opposite side of the path, he had planted seven chestnuts and seven acorns. Every single one had sprouted and several of them had grown so vigorously, they would soon have to be found new homes. Between the young trees, small, annual weeds were springing up in the bare earth, just as he’d told her they would.

The ground was
very
dry. Even without her mother’s finger technique, she could see the water running across the dusty surface and forming tiny pools. She went back into the kitchen, refilled her can and worked her way slowly round the trees a second time.

‘
Great oaks from little acorns grow
.’

She couldn’t remember who’d said it, when they’d said it, or where they’d said it, but she could certainly see now
why
they’d said it. From those acorns, brought home in a trouser pocket, here were these seven vigorous specimens. If they grew this fast, where might they be in ten years, or twenty?

Tempted by the freshness of the morning and the quiet of her own thoughts, Sarah fetched a hoe and started dislodging the weeds in the soft, damp soil of her son’s plot. Later it would be warmer, much warmer. No papers were needed at the mills today so they could wait a little longer in the cool, shady dining room.

‘Mmm, perhaps I have picked up a thing or two,’ she said to herself some time later, when she straightened up and looked down at the trim edges of the grass path where she had been weeding the borders. As she went along, she’d found self-sown seedlings of borage and thyme and used them to fill in the odd empty space, stirring up the compacted soil to let it breathe. Now, looking down at what she’d done, she felt pleased, just as she did when she tidied up the sitting room or put fresh flowers in vases in all the windowsills.

Perhaps there were times when you learnt just by doing what needed to be done. Only when you began to take pleasure in what you’d achieved did you register the fact. She smiled to herself, wondering if either Helen or Hugh would observe her new-found skills, or whether they would both go on telling her how to look after their gardens with that slightly superior tone children sometimes adopt when they’re sure they know better than their parents.

She paused under an archway covered with a flourishing rose. There were no blooms yet, but the long, soft branches of new growth were shooting out in all directions well covered with fat buds.

‘
A little guidance needed here, as usual
.’

The words echoed in her mind and brought a smile to her face. She could see Hugh threading
the long stems back through the trellising, his tone slightly amused, as it always was when patience was required. He insisted he wasn’t a patient man, but he’d been practising for so long that no one believed him any more, even her.

‘Mrs Sinton, Mrs Sinton, where are ye?’

Sarah released the soft stem immediately and hurried back to the central path. Mrs Beatty, her housekeeper, was standing on the back steps peering anxiously into the garden, her eyes shaded against the strong light.

‘Here I am,’ Sarah said, hurrying up to her.

‘Ma’am, there’s a lad here from Ballievy,’ she began hastily. ‘He has a message from yer father, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I put him in the dining room. Was that right?’

‘Yes, it was,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I’ll just wash my hands and see what’s up,’ she said with a lightness she most certainly did not feel.

‘Jimmy, you have a message for me,’ she said quietly, as she slipped into the cool dining room, where Mrs Beatty liked to keep the curtains drawn for the sake of the furniture.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied, jumping to his feet and twisting his cap awkwardly in his hands.

‘Yer Da … yer father,’ he began, correcting himself hastily, ‘phoned our Mr Quayle from over at Millbrook. He said he’d like ye to go over t’ him
there right away. He said there wus a meetin’ in the dinner hour in the recreation hall.’

‘What kind of a meeting, Jimmy? Did Mr Quayle not tell you?’

‘No, ma’am,’ he replied, shaking his head vigorously. ‘He jus said t’ get on me bike an’ come up an’ tell ye an’ there wus no time to waste. He seemed awfall put out.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’ve been very quick,’ she said briskly. ‘Now, go back to Mr Quayle. Tell him to phone my father and say I’ll be over very shortly. I’d give you a ride in the motor, but you’ll be faster on your bike by the time I get it out of the motor house.’

‘Aye, ma’am,’ he said, venturing a smile at last. ‘It’s a good steep hill and ye can get up a great speed if you mine th’ holes.’

‘Well, see you mind them. There’s a few need filling that haven’t been seen to recently,’ she said, as she let him out through the front door.

‘A meeting,’ she said aloud, as she walked back down the hall and peered at her reflection in the tall mirror of the hallstand.

‘Not a board meeting on a Thursday surely,’ she thought, as she decided she’d have to change her clothes.

Robert Sprott and Gerald McHammond she couldn’t speak for, but Elizabeth and Richard were never available on Thursdays and Harry
Cunningham, their legal adviser, always worked from his Belfast office during the second half of the week.

It was as she straightened her blouse and skirt and reached for a brush to run through her dark curls that she remembered Jimmy had said the recreation hall. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked solemn and unblinking, like her own son when he instructed her how to water. She smiled at the thought of young Hugh. But the relief was only momentary.

Whatever had caused her father to send for her was no smiling matter. Built some five years earlier at the west end of the solid brick mill building, overlooking the new lake, the recreation hall could seat five hundred people. It could more than accommodate the entire workforce of Millbrook.

It was market day in Banbridge, the centre of the town full of stalls, carts, animals and crowds of people, who spilt out over the road with complete indifference to passing traffic of any kind. Although there were few motor vehicles other than her own, her progress was slow. She had to stop for straying cows and groups of curious onlookers. As she finally cleared the town, she reflected that she’d made better speed eleven years earlier when she’d heard there was a fire at Millbrook and had
borrowed a bicycle from a neighbour to get there as quickly as she could.

Two miles north of the town she turned off the public road and made her way cautiously down the steep slope towards the main entrance. To the right of the centrally-placed double doors her father’s motor was parked beside Tom, the mill manager’s. No sign of any of the other directors. She drew up beside them, her sense of unease growing all the time, for the air itself felt full of tension.

As she climbed down from the motor, suddenly it dawned on her why she felt so uneasy.

‘There’s no noise,’ she said to herself.

The entire length of the four storey mill sat bathed in sunlight and silence. Not a thread of steam hissed through the vents. Not a single spindle was turning. As she made her way through the entrance hall and turned towards the mill manager’s office, a straggle of women passed her going in the direction of the recreation hall. She smiled and greeted them. Some of them she knew, some she didn’t, but all of them dropped their eyes and avoided her gaze as they hurried away.

‘Da, Tom, what on earth is going on?’ she gasped as she closed the office door behind her and looked from one to the other.

Her father, grey-faced and anxious, nodded towards Tom who shook his head in despair.

‘I niver thought I’d live to see the day, Miss Sarah. There’s been bad times afore, but nothing like this,’ he said despairingly. ‘The men’s turned off the power, so that everyone can go to this meetin’ at twelve. They’re goin’ to call a strike here, so’s they can bring out the other three mills. They’ll close down the whole show.’

‘But who, Tom? Who’s behind this?’

‘We don’t rightly know,’ he said with a great heaving sigh. ‘Some o’ the men’s been goin’ up to Belfast to these Trade Union meetings and readin’ this man Connolly about a minimum wage of thrippence an hour. One o’ the greasers told me about it las’ week, but I diden take it serious. I’m sorry, Miss Sarah, I feel I’ve let ye’s down.’

Sarah dropped into the nearest chair and looked up at the huge clock that ticked out the individual minutes of the day and gave the signals for the change of shifts and the beginning and end of the working day.

‘Five to twelve,’ she said ruefully. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘If Hugh were here, he’d speak to them,’ said her father flatly. ‘But shure I coulden face them,’ he added honestly. ‘I coulden put two words together against them clever talkers.’

‘If I thought it wou’d be any use, I’d try, Sarah,’ said Tom, nodding his agreement with John. ‘I’d do anythin’ I could for Sintons after all they’ve done
for me an’ mine, but I have no gift that way.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to see what happens,’ Sarah said, glancing up again as the huge minute hand of the clock moved with an audible click.

‘If it comes to the bit, I may have to say something, Da,’ she went on, an awful sense of dread coming upon her. ‘And it’s time I was going. Would one of you like to come with me?’

‘Aye, certainly I’ll come,’ said Tom promptly.

‘I’ll not come, Sarah. Ye might do better without me,’ said John, dropping his eyes to the pile of paper in front of him.

‘Right Da,’ said Sarah, managing to smile at him. ‘Say one for us. It’ll all be the same in a hundred years, as the saying is,’ she added lightly.

There wasn’t a soul in sight as they turned out of the building and made their way along the front, the heat reflecting from the warm bricks, the windows flashing in the bright sunlight. As she strode out, all Sarah could think of was the day of the fire when she’d tramped the length of the mill to climb on the engine house roof to take her pictures. That was the day she’d found out for sure that Hugh loved her. The engine houses were at the east end of the mill now, but the change in colour in the brickwork where the west end of the mill had been rebuilt was still quite obvious. She cast her eye up the line of the new brickwork as they hurried past, turned the corner and saw a
small cluster of people disappear into the large, one-storey building in front of them.

The hall was packed. One glance told Sarah that groups of weavers from Lenaderg, hemstitchers from Seapatrick and bleachers from Ballievy had also come to the meeting. They were being greeted at the back of the hall by some men she’d never seen before.

‘Front or back?’

Even in such a large, crowded gathering, Tom knew there would be empty seats at the front. It was always the same, whether it was the local church or a public concert. The first arrivals were always too shy to sit in the front row. They would choose the second or the third. The front row was usually filled by late comers.

‘Front,’ she said quietly, as they slipped through the groups of men still congregated by the entrance and made their way down the central aisle between solid rows of women who sat silent, nudging each other as they passed.

The hall was thick with heat and the smell of sweating bodies. Only now was a man with a window pole opening the top sections of the tall windows that ran down both sides of the high roofed building. Sarah watched him quietly as if she had no other concern than the discomfort everyone must be feeling.

For a moment, before the first speaker climbed
the steps to the platform she had a clear view through the window he was opening on the north side. Dug after the fire to provide work and a new water supply, the waters of the new lake lay gleaming in the sunshine, willows dipping their lowest branches into the shallow margins.

‘Comrades, I have come here today …’

Sarah took a deep breath. The blow had fallen as Hugh had told her it would. As she drew her eyes away from the cool vision of peacefulness and prepared for what was to come, she caught a movement in the corner of her eye, glanced back again at the dazzling water and saw two swans move slowly, side by side, across the whole width of the lake she and Hugh had planned together and watched grow in the year of their marriage.