For Many a Long Day (21 page)

They mentioned George only briefly, the news of his departure and Ellie’s subsequent low spirits having been written about and despatched long ago. Instead, they talked about Daisy’s wedding, Ellie’s experiences buying for Freeburns and Rose’s most recent news from her family.

Sadly, they had to agree that Charlie Running was right. This man Hitler was on his way to the top. It seemed there was nothing he wouldn’t do to gain power and, worse still, no one was lifting a finger to stop him. But it did look as if Sarah and Simon would be coming home. They’d done their tour of duty in Germany with the so-called Trade Mission. Sarah said it would look suspicious if they weren’t replaced in the normal way and Rose confessed how grateful she was they’d be out of that country before anything worse could happen.

Back at work, Ellie began to encourage Susie to study fashion, not just read the magazines looking for things she’d like herself. She spent a lot of time too with Helen Adams, their new assistant, a pleasant, rather quiet girl who’d joined them straight from the High School at the end of the school year.

Helen had wanted to go to Queen’s University but her father had died suddenly in April and she had to get a job. Ellie felt so sad for her. It was just like Daisy all over again, except that, unlike dear
Daisy, and particularly unlike Susie, Helen was bright. You only had to tell her something once and that was that. By the end of September, she had mastered all the routine tasks and procedures and was literally looking for new fields to conquer.

Susie continued to walk home every evening with Joe, talk to Joe in her lunch hour when the rota permitted, and play tennis with Joe several nights a week. She had finally prevailed upon her brother Richard to intervene on her behalf with the Club Secretary. Susie, he argued, was in her seventeenth year. More to the point she was a better player than many of their older women.

Always a reasonable man, Charles Merrick proposed a trial game. Picking names at random, he set Susie and Richard to play against Harry Wright and Mrs Edwards. The score in favour of Susie and Richard was six games to two and to Ellie’s great delight, Susie Sleator became the youngest member of the Club.

By tradition, the Annual Tennis Club Dance took place at the beginning of the season, but this year that had not been possible. The City Hall, was in need of routine repairs and redecoration and the summer was the best time for the work both indoors and out. So this year the last event of the season was not the tournament, but the Annual Dance, now to take place on Friday the seventh of September.

Ellie felt strangely apprehensive about the event and couldn’t think why she should feel so. It wasn’t that she hadn’t a rather nice new dress, blue again because it seemed to suit her so well, but different in texture and a completely different cut from her last one. Nor was it that she enjoyed dancing any less than sixteen months ago. But some unease seemed to fill her with agitation every time she thought about it.

Sam was looking forward to it very much, however. Over the summer, they’d met often at the club and they’d gone to the pictures several times when the staff at Freeburns had organised one of their treats. Emily had asked Ellie to come and see them, but knowing it was a long way for her to cycle, she’d suggested Sam go and fetch her on a Sunday afternoon. It had been a most happy visit and they’d gone several times over the summer.

Ellie couldn’t help noticing that the first time Sam arrived on his bike at the forge house, he’d brought a windproof jacket for her in case she hadn’t one of her own. It was indeed far more effective than her warmest cardigan would have been. As for riding pillion, she was surprised at how much she liked it. But then, with Sam, she always felt safe.

As before, Mrs Sleator had invited Ellie to stay overnight for the dance and Helen as well. She was a very generous woman and Ellie saw as soon as she arrived that Mrs Sleator had already decided Helen
would be made to feel as welcome as Ellie herself. For his part, John Sleator was only too happy to repeat his chauffeur duty, this time with a new Chevrolet.

It was after supper that Ellie decided she needed a little rest. She and Sam went upstairs, tramped down to the very front row of the balcony and peered over.

‘Look, there’s Helen,’ said Sam, nodding downwards.

‘And there’s Susie and Joe,’ she replied.

A silence fell between them then, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Daisy and Frank were certainly part of those thoughts for the news had just come that Daisy was expecting a baby in February. After a little while Ellie felt ready to break the silence.

‘Sam, there’s something I want to ask you,’ she began quietly.

‘Ask away,’ he replied.

‘If there hadn’t been a woman that hurt you and a man that let me down, do you think we’d be in with a chance?’

‘Ellie,’ he said, startled. ‘Do you
know
what you’re asking?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘You’re asking me if I think you and me would make a good pair,’ he said, his blue eyes entirely concentrated on her face.

‘Yes, I am,’ she replied.

‘Well, yes we would, but that would mean you’d have to marry me.’

She looked him steadily in the eye and said nothing.

‘D’you mean, you’re sayin’ you’ll marry me?’

‘Yes, I do. If that’s a proposal, then the answer is yes.’

For a moment he sat stunned, unable to grasp his good fortune. His father had told him to wait. His Granny had told him not to hurry her. And he’d waited as best he could, knowing he would always love this woman whether she would have him or not. And now she’d said she’d have him. With Ellie, there’d be no going back.

He slipped his arm round her and kissed her.

‘Ellie, I want to tell the whole world. Do you mind?’

For a moment, she didn’t quite grasp what he meant, but then he took her by the hand and led her downstairs back into the ballroom. It began to dawn on her as he looked around, found the person he wanted, led her across to him and bent to speak into his ear.

Ellie was amused to see the slow smile and the bright gleam in his eye. Such a proper little man, the Club Secretary, so formal and yet so good-natured, he was now composing his features as the dance ended and the music stopped.

‘Stay right where you both are,’ he said firmly,
patting Ellie on the arm before he ran lightly up the steps onto the platform, spoke to the large Master-of-Ceremonies and had the microphone lowered by at least a foot.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, in his usual slightly clipped and precise tone, ‘you are aware that, for our Annual Dance this year we have been forced to break with tradition. Instead of being May, we are now in September. I am, however, glad to tell you that we appear to have established an important
new
tradition,’ he continued, pausing for effect.

‘Last year, the band, who have given us such pleasure, kindly agreed to play requests from the floor. I am happy to be able to make the first request myself. I should like them to play
again
this year; ‘
If you were the only girl in the world
,’ this time to celebrate the engagement of Ellie Scott and Sam Hamilton.’

Ellie thought she would never till the end of her life forget the shouts and cheers and clapping that completely drowned out the band for the first bars of the song. The floor cleared, as it had for Daisy and Frank, and she and Sam stepped out together, moving as they always did, as if they’d been dancing together all their lives.

Of all the people who heard the news of Ellie and Sam’s engagement in the days that followed the Annual Dance, there was only one who was not truly delighted. Charlie Freeburn expressed the most genuine of good wishes and did his best to feel pleased at what was clearly a happy match, but he found it hard to do other than regret that Ellie Scott would no longer brighten his life with her quiet presence, her smiles and gentle gaiety.

He did feel somewhat comforted when she said it would probably be some time before they could afford to get married and he felt better still when she went on to say they had the usual problem of having nowhere to live.

‘I think I might be able to be of some assistance to you there, Miss Scott,’ he said, brightening visibly. ‘Do you know Edward Street?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied, wondering what could possibly be coming next.

‘I have quite recently purchased a couple of
properties there,’ he said in a rather casual fashion, as if not to make too much of the fact that he was now buying property, ‘three in fact, adjoining each other. They do all have what are known as ‘sitting tenants’, he explained, ‘but one family is definitely finding the house too small and looking for something larger. One is occupied by a very elderly lady and one by a young couple planning to emigrate next year. I think we could be sure of finding something for you, if you thought the property suitable.’

Ellie did. A well-built brick terrace house, small, but with a yard at the back, the windows on that side looking out over playing fields. At the front, a wide, little-used street running between Cathedral Road and Abbey Street and only a short walk from both the shops and Sleators garage.

‘Of course, all these properties have been somewhat neglected,’ he went on, ‘they do need to be repaired and redecorated, which is my responsibility, of course. Perhaps that is actually a good thing,’ he said, smiling as the thought occurred to him, ‘then you can chose your own colours for paint and wallpaper.’

Ellie could hardly wait to tell Sam. It would make up entirely for the very bad time he’d given himself after two days of going round excitedly sharing his good news with any friend or acquaintance that crossed his path.

‘Ellie, I’ve some terrible bad news for ye,’ he
said, as they got out of sight of the forge and headed for the lane leading up to Church Hill.

She looked at him, startled, but failed to imagine anything that could have occurred since Friday night to make him look so distraught.

‘You married someone else yesterday?’ she said quickly.

‘Oh Ellie, it’s not a joke. I should have told you before you said yes. Ellie, I’ve no money.’

Ellie laughed.

‘Sam, I wasn’t actually marrying you for your money, but just as a matter of interest, what
have
you been doing with it all?’

‘Well, you know about the bike, and that’s still worth not far off what I paid for it, but all the rest I’d saved up for that furniture I told you about, I gave to Emily and Kevin to help them get the business started,’ he said, with a great sigh.

‘Good for you,’ she said promptly. ‘I nearly gave my savings to Daisy when we thought the bailiffs were coming, only I knew it wasn’t enough anyway. How much
do
you have?’

She laughed again when he told her.

‘Oh, Sam dear, that still seems an awful lot to me. When did you start saving again?’

‘The night you said I’d be in with a chance.’

‘You’ve done awfully well,’ she said honestly. ‘I’ve got about the same, but it’s taken me
four
years. It’s only in the last year since my salary was
raised that its grown a bit faster. If I did another year, we wouldn’t be so badly off at all.’

‘And you wouldn’t mind having to work another year?’

Ellie turned and looked at him full in the face.

‘Sam Hamilton, the only thing I’ll mind for the rest of my life is not being with you. But if we could both manage to save for a year it would give us a better start, wouldn’t it?’

Ellie and Sam’s wedding a year later was an even smaller affair than Daisy and Frank’s had been, but it was an equally happy occasion and the joy of the young couple as they welcomed their guests to their own new home in Edward Street was clear to everyone.

They had worked so hard on the house, helped well beyond the call of duty by their landlord. Weeks before the wedding, they had already recreated Ellie’s garden in the narrow backyard. For the marriage service itself, she was able to make her posy with Hamilton’s Pink, creamy-white carnations and two shades of heather and the bows and streamers she had saved from Daisy’s own bouquet.

There was one big difference, however, between their respective weddings. While Daisy and Frank had spent only two nights in a hotel in Bangor, before setting off for Fivemiletown, Ellie and Sam drove off from Edward Street in a gleaming blue,
three-seater Lagonda for a week’s touring in the west of Ireland.

They had certainly not planned such an adventure, but a month before the wedding a present arrived from Rose. They found enclosed in the carefully packed box of china, the tea set she herself had used for thirty years and an envelope addressed to Sam containing a note and a cheque.

At last Ellie understood just why Rose loved her mountains so much. Donegal was magnificent in October, the heather still bright on the hillsides, the valleys a rich green, the moving clouds changing the mountain slopes from sombre masses into glowing rock faces as the sun came and went. The sea was ever with them, the Atlantic itself, only a name in a battered atlas, now sometimes a brilliant blue or turquoise, now a wild, heaving mass dashing against cliffs, throwing spray so high that they saw rainbows before the brilliant drops fell back again
into the water below, now so calm the sea birds rode on it like little celluloid toys.

Sam drove and drove and enjoyed every mile, pressing on as much as Ellie would let him. He took joy in her delight with each new vista, the varied colour and texture of a part of Ireland of which she had only read.

At the end of their fourth day, full of wind and sun, they got as far as the Cliffs of Moher. Everyone had said that if they got as far as County Clare they must see the famous cliffs. They parked in a rough space with a single strand of barbed wire to prevent them from falling over the precipitous edge. They stared across at the layers of rock piled up like thick pages in a book and gazed up at the wide sky arcing from the land behind them to the furthest horizon. In the middle distance the Aran Islands lay quiet in the westering sun, their whitewashed cottages and pale stone walls reflected the light back so strongly they were visible across miles of dark blue ocean.

In a field nearby, less dramatic than the shadowy cliffs, they spread a rug, poured tea from a flask, ate the last piece of their wedding cake and gazed out towards the setting sun.

‘Well, we can tell Granny we did it. We got as far as Clare and we watched the sun go down on Galway Bay,’ Sam said quietly. ‘Are you happy, Ellie?’

‘I’ve never been so happy in all my life,’ she said simply.

For a long time they sat quiet, then Sam reminded her they would have to go soon for they still had to find a place to spend the night. Tomorrow they’d have to turn for home.

‘Sam, do you remember Rose asked us to bring something special back, an object, or a memory …’

‘Aye, I do. We’ll have a lot of memories, won’t we?’

She nodded happily, slipping her arm round his neck.

‘Sam, I’d like to bring
this
back, you and me here, looking out into the far distance.’ She paused. ‘Do you know what else I’d like?’

‘What?’

‘If we have a wee girl, I’d like to call her
Clare
, then we’ll have this day, all day and every day as long as we live.’

Sam nodded slowly.

‘I think that’s a great idea, just great,’ he said taking her in his arms.

By one of those coincidences which often happen but which many people refuse to believe, their first child was born almost a year later on the day of her parent’s first wedding anniversary, the eighth of October, 1936.

It was a long labour and having had to leave her in the Nursing Home on The Mall, late in the
evening, Sam was beside himself with lack of sleep when at 7.30 next morning, he heard the bars of a bicycle scrape against the wall next to the front door as he stood drinking a cup of tea by way of breakfast.

‘It’s a wee girl, Sam,’ said the elderly woman standing on the doorstep, ‘she’s a brave girl, your Ellie. It was hard, but she’s all right,’ she added quickly, seeing the look on his face. ‘About half an hour ago. She’s asleep, but you can come down from work an’ see her then. I’m away home to m’bed.’

‘Thank you, Nurse, thank you. It was good of you to come up here out of your way.’

‘Not at all. Now away man and eat a good breakfast, for you look just dreadful,’ she said, wheeling her bicycle into the street and riding off.

Sam was so unable to collect his wits that he went and asked John Sleator for the day off. He came home, cut a posy of flowers for Ellie and left them at the nursing home, then collected change for the telephone in the Post Office. He rang Freeburns and spoke to Susie. Rang Irish Road Motors and told his father. Rang Cranmore Park and asked for Rose.

‘She’s not just feeling too good, Mr Hamilton. Mr James has sent for the Doctor. Could you perhaps ring again or can we ring you?’ the housekeeper said. ‘It’s lovely news and she’ll be delighted, but she’s asleep at the moment.’

A shadow passed across Sam’s mind, but he set it aside, got out his bicycle and made the forge in record time.

‘Ach dear,’ said Robert, ‘an’ both well?’

‘Aye fine,’ Sam reassured him. ‘Nurse herself came an’ told me on her way home from night duty.’

‘Have ye any ideas about what’ll ye’ll call the wee lassie?’ asked Robert suddenly, rubbing at something he seemed to have got in his eye.

‘Indeed yes, we have the name ready. Clare. And Alison as well, just in case she doesn’t like Clare when she grows up. That gives her a choice.’

‘Clare Hamilton,’ said Robert nodding. ‘That sounds nice. Just wait till I tell Charlie Running I’m a Granda with a wee girl.’

It was obvious to everyone that Rose was fading. She slept a lot, though she was still perfectly coherent when she was awake, but she was having great difficulty getting out of bed.

Sam and Ellie took it in turns to telephone James, Sam from work, Ellie from the call box at the Court House where she could watch the sleeping child through the glass panes.

After two weeks, by which time Ellie looked less pale and Clare was already waving small fists in the air, they decided they must go and see Rose. Richard Sleator, the kindest of friends, brought his motor round on Sunday morning having placed
extra rugs in the back to make sure there would be no draughts to trouble either mother or child on the drive to Belfast.

Rose was in her bedroom, but she was sitting in her armchair by the window. She was not dressed, but this was not obvious for she had replaced her slippers with shoes and wore over the collar of her dressing-gown a pretty silk scarf. Her hair was brushed back from her face and caught up gently in a clasp at the back.

‘Come in, come in,’ she called, as James pushed open the door and stood back to let them past.

‘Ellie and Sam and Clare,’ she said carefully, as if to make sure she did not forget there were now three of them and that she had acquired yet one more great-grandchild.

‘She’s lovely,’ she said, as she took the child in her arms. ‘But aren’t they all? Was there ever such a thing as an ugly baby?’ she asked, never lifting her eyes from the small moving scrap in her arms. ‘You did so well, Ellie, to manage first time. I miscarried twice or even three times, I forget which, and my poor John was out of his mind with anxiety before I managed to produce James. But it
did
get easier,’ she said quickly, seeing the stricken look on Sam’s face.

Although Rose looked so easy and happy, James had warned them how she would suddenly become tired. It would be a pity to spoil such a happy meeting by staying too long, so after an hour they
stood up to go just as the November sun was setting and a slight mist had begun to rise from the grass in the park opposite.

‘I’ve just been thinking, and you must correct me if my arithmetic is wrong, but if little Clare lives as long as I have lived, she will end her life in another century. Imagine that! I was born in the nineteenth century, you dear children in the twentieth, but little Clare Hamilton, may well see the twenty-first.’