On a Clear Day (11 page)

Some little girl with tiny feet and sloping eyes, the visiting missionaries at Sunday School had told her about, had read the newspaper to her parents and then sent it away to a workshop so that someone could make silver bells. Bells for Christmas on the other side of the world.

She closed the cupboard doors carefully and began to study the pictures in their heavy frames.
Haggar and Ishmael she knew. They were from the Bible and they looked terribly unhappy. But who was the big lady with the huge bosom and the big dress, posing against the pot plant?

And then, quite suddenly, she found herself looking at her mother. To the right of the fireplace there hung a framed photograph of a Sunday school picnic. The grown-ups were standing up very straight and the littlest children were sitting on the grass in pretty white dresses. She recognised Granda and Granny at once, so those four children sitting in front of them had to be Polly, Ellie, Bob and Mary. Johnny and Florence weren’t there. Perhaps they weren’t born yet, or maybe they were too small to come on a picnic. And of course, poor little James who was never baptised, certainly wasn’t there.

How very tidy everyone was. They must all be wearing their Sunday best. Perhaps, after all, it was an excursion. But then, she could see the baskets of food arranged in the corners of the picture. Granda Scott must have a fob watch in his waistcoat pocket for she could see a chain quite clearly. His collar looked most uncomfortable but it was snowy white. Granny wore a pleated blouse with a high collar and a cameo brooch and a long dark skirt with frills. Polly was grinning, Mummy was looking wide-eyed at the photographer, Bob had moved, so you couldn’t see his face properly
and Mary was gazing across the picture at something far away.

‘A long time ago and a lot has happened since,’ she whispered to herself as she stood looking at all the people she didn’t know, friends and neighbours, all the people who went to the little church perched up on top of the hill.

The sun was making dappled patterns on the worn linoleum. The elderly three-piece suite was dark and split in places so that the stuffing leaked out of the arms. It was not a very cheerful room.

Suddenly, she wanted to be in the sunshine. She would go and reap the harvest of the prairies, just like that picture of the three in hand they had found in the bottom drawer of the chest in her room.

She ran down the path to the forge, picked her way carefully through the bits of metal and machinery and climbed up into the seat of the reaping machine that sat awaiting its repair. The seat was slightly springy and she bobbed up and down vigorously to take advantage of it. Below and around her the bright eyes of the dog daisies winked up through the tangled grass, nodding to her, watching her as she prepared to set off.

‘Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, here I come, harvesting the golden acres to give grain to all the world so that everyone, everywhere, will have enough to eat. Whatever darkness there may
be to come, the larders will be full. Hey there, Hup there, pull away my beautiful horses, we have a long way to go,’ she cried.

In the forge, Robert laid down the callipers and chalk beside the metal bar he was marking and moved silently across to the door of the forge. Out of sight himself, he watched the child set her face to the horizon, gather up the reins in her arms and launch herself across half of Canada. Then, shaking his head and smiling to himself, he went back to his work.

By the end of her first week at Salter’s Grange, Clare had put together a new world for herself. She had a room of her own, a home to come back to after her daily explorations and someone there whom she could love. Beyond all this she had the richness of the late summer countryside where the orchards were heavy with fruit and the hay fields lined with stacks ready to bring home. In all the farms and cottages the garden flowers poked up over well-trimmed hedges and spilt through every possible gap to brighten the roadside verges.

From her own front door her view was limited by the trees and bushes planted to give shelter to the house and to define the boundaries of the smith’s small parcel of land, but when she scrambled up the old bank by the forge, Clare could gaze out and beyond the county road to the low, humpy hills that roll across this part of north Armagh. Green and smooth, they lay peacefully across the horizon, separated from each other by boggy hollows where streams meandered and formed wide, shallow pools. From the windows of the train on her few journeys, Clare had seen the cattle drinking from the muddy edges of these
pools amid crowds of the golden flag iris that bloomed every June.

Although she couldn’t see very much of it from her chosen look-out point, Clare was aware of the patchwork of fields all around her, of the farms standing on the drier, south-facing slopes, of the orchards and barns and farmyards and the network of narrow lanes and well-tramped paths which wove their way between hawthorn hedges and along the edges of fields to connect up the families that had worked this rich but heavy land for centuries. Often she wished she could fly up into the sky so that she could see all around her. She imagined herself looking down and seeing as far as Armagh and Loughgall or even further. As far perhaps, as all the villages and townlands whose names she had heard but which she had never seen.

As the long, sunlit days passed, some of the loss she had suffered from the death of her parents was healed by a sense of their presence. It was a presence she felt but could not have explained. In Belfast, she had felt only their absence and a painful sense of having been taken away from them. But here, she was close to them, she was living in the world that they knew. They were dead and it was sad. She missed them. But here in this place where her mother had grown up, where her father had come to walk the lanes with her, they were still a part of her life.

She felt this most strongly when she stood and looked at her mother’s picture in the sitting room. Many of the people in that picture had died, like she had, though mostly because they were old. Granda Scott knew every one of them and she quickly learnt that, if she asked only one question at a time, he would tell her who someone was. Then, if she waited patiently and didn’t interrupt his thoughts, he would eventually tell her where they lived and what they did.

What she learnt to watch for was the small smile that meant he had remembered some story, or some expression, that person had used, or some mischief they had got up to when they were young. Then he would gaze up again at the figure in the photograph, clean and tidy and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth and laugh at the thought of the day they fell in the bog, or the winter they sledged down a hill on a homemade sleigh and ended up in the hawthorn hedge at the bottom.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that one of the straight-backed figures in a neat black suit and a stiff collar had once stuffed a potato sack down a neighbour’s chimney on Halloween night and that another had frightened the life out of a local drunk by appearing in a white sheet on the shortcut through the churchyard, or that the distinguished figure standing beside the rector had ‘scorched’
through the countryside on his motorbike before becoming a mill-owner and making his fortune in cotton spinning.

She thought then of what people would say now when they looked at their snapshots and pointed out Ellie Scott and Sam Hamilton. Sometimes that almost made her cry, but at other times she was glad that they would look and say what a pity it was. That way Ellie and Sam would not be forgotten.

Sometimes Jamesy called her Ellie when he did forget who she was, but she never minded that. She rather liked it. And every time her grandfather called her ‘Clarey’ she felt comforted. To begin with, she had been so disappointed by his silence. He wasn’t at all like Matthew Cuthbert in
Anne of Green Gables
and he most certainly wasn’t going to turn out like Heidi’s uncle. Granda Scott just didn’t fit in with these people in books. But when she thought about it, she realised that she had known that all the time.

In the course of her first week she met the Robinson’s from the nearby farm, the baker who came with his horse and bread cart on Mondays and Thursdays, the fish man who arrived on Fridays and some of Granda Scott’s many neighbours who sometimes came to bring a horse to be shod or a piece of machinery to be mended, but just as often came to sit on the bench inside
the door of the forge to hear the news. Most of the news of the townland and indeed much further afield was discussed under the high-pitched roof of the anvil shop or on the grassy bank outside the shoeing shed.

Not all the people who came to the forge had spoken to her, many of the older men had just looked awkwardly at her and nodded, but she wasn’t troubled, she knew very well that they would soon get used to her being there. For the moment she must just slip away and leave them to their talk.

It was not until Saturday morning that she had her first experience of not being made welcome.

‘Ye needen redd up this mornin’ childdear, Jinny’ll be here in a wee while. She’ll wash the delph.’

Clare had already collected up the breakfast dishes, brought out the tin basin from under the table and carried over a kettle of hot water from the stove.

‘But Jinny’s got such a lot to do today, Granda,’ she protested. ‘Auntie Polly said she’d got very behind while Granny was ill.’

‘Aye well,’ he said absently, as he shovelled more coal into the stove so there’d be plenty of hot water.

Before Clare had finished putting the dishes back in the press, she saw Jinny marching up the path
from the forge. She was a short, thickset woman who strode like a man in her short rubber boots. She wore a dirty cotton skirt and a short-sleeved blouse that strained over her huge, muscular upper arms. Her hair was cropped short and she wore a scowl which made Clare feel frightened before Jinny ever reached the house.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded as she opened the door and found Clare still clutching two clean plates.

‘I’m Clare. My Auntie Polly brought me up last Saturday.’

‘A wee Belfast lassie, are ye?’ she said sneeringly.

‘No. I lived in Armagh till my Mummy and Daddy died.’

There was no flicker of sympathy in Jinny’s small, piercing eyes. Clare noticed that she had dark hairs growing on her upper lip like a moustache and stubbly bristles poked out of her chin.

‘So now yer goin’ to come an’ live here with the oul fella, are ye?’ she demanded harshly, as she parked her large black shopping bag on the wooden settle by the fireside.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied truthfully.

Clare had planned to make friends with Jinny, had expected to help her as she had helped Auntie Polly, but one look at the woman told her that Jinny didn’t want her there and that the sooner she made herself scarce the better. She knew she was
frightened but she tried very hard not to show it.

‘Well, away ye go outa the way. I’ve me work to do,’ she said crossly, as she wrapped a dirty apron round herself and pulled out a floor brush from among a bundle of mops, rakes and scythe handles that stood behind the open front door.

Clare did as she was told, disappeared into the orchard and went to one of her favourite places, the deep pool under the roots of the big pear tree which once supplied the cottage with water until the Robinson’s got a pump and offered to send a bucket of drinking water over every day.

The morning was fine and sunny, glints of gold flickered on the surface of the water, but the water itself was so clear she could see the fine silt down at the bottom.

‘Sure all wells are bottomless in Ireland, Clare,’ Auntie Polly had said, when she’d asked her if it was very deep.

‘To tell you the truth I don’t think it can be very deep atall for it useta dry up sometimes in a hot summer and then we had to go all the way to the river and boil every drop forby. I think they tell that to children to frighten them. And don’t forget, Clare dear, my wee friend Dolly. Sure a flax hole is not all that deep but it was enough to drown her. Be very careful with water and never be tempted by the flowers. Sure it was a water lily that cost Dolly’s life. She reached too far and fell in and couldn’t get out.’

Clare stood up and walked on through the orchard up to the very top. There was a gap in the hedge there where she could squeeze through into the lane that ran all the way from the church at the top of the hill to the forge near the road at the bottom. But this morning she didn’t feel like going up the hill to meet the children who played on the broad empty space outside the churchyard gates. It was in front of the old schoolroom where all the Scott children had attended till they were fourteen.

She tramped back slowly under the trees, avoiding the longest grass where the dew still lay heavy. She had just stepped onto the path by the gable at the back of the house when she saw Jinny throw the contents of Granda’s chamber pot into the ashpit and then dunk the empty pot up and down in the rain water barrel.

Fortunately, Jinny didn’t see her, so she retreated back into the orchard, made her way through the hedge beyond the privy, and ran quickly down the common and across the big field to the stream.

She sat there under a willow tree for a long time, feeling lonely. She’d really have liked to go and fetch Edward James Bear but she was frightened to go back into the house. Even sitting here, so far away from the big kitchen she could feel Jinny’s presence and imagine her scowl as she filled the kitchen with the dust of her furious brushing.

The morning passed slowly. Clare had another
go at digging in her great-grandmother’s garden with an old coal shovel, for she had found that though she could lift and carry Granda’s smallest spade she couldn’t dig with it. The morning got hotter, great white clouds rose in towers above the green fields and became darker. When the first sixpenny-sized spots began to fall she knew she would have to go back to the house. She could hide under a tree or on the sheltered side of the old, ruined house that stood looking across at the front door of Granda’s house, but she knew she’d still get a bit wet and, though she didn’t mind, she knew Granda didn’t like her getting wet. He always came out and looked for her when the rain came on hard.

As she came into the hall, she saw Jinny’s black shopping bag sitting by the door. It was bulging at the sides and was so full that the zip couldn’t close properly. Sticking out of the open end, Clare saw the unmistakable ear of Edward James Bear.

Without a moment’s thought, she bent down, undid the zip and lifted him out. As she straightened up a blow hit her across the ear.

‘Ye wee skitter, what are ye doin’ wi’ my bag? Thon bag’s none o’ yer business. Me workin’ at this fukin’ place for all these fukin’ years an’ never a word o’ thanks. Jinny this and Jinny that. Do this, do that … thon aul woman wi’ niver a good word fer me. An’ now you, damn you.’

The voice went on but Clare didn’t stop to listen. With a cry of pain and blinded by sudden tears she ran for her life, down the lane and into the forge. She dodged behind Robert who stood at the anvil, his hammer poised, and didn’t stop till she’d climbed in under the bellows into a small dark space where Jinny could never reach her. She crouched there, crying in pain and fright, clutching Edward James Bear to her chest.

‘Childdear, what’s wrong wi’ ye atall?’

Robert dropped his hammer on the ground and a young man sitting on the bench by the door jumped to his feet and followed him to the corner of the forge where the child had disappeared. They looked in amazement at the small space where the child now crouched.

‘Did ye hurt yerself, chile?’ asked Robert, getting awkwardly to his knees so that he could see her better.

He leant towards her and saw that she sat clutching her ear with one hand and holding her teddy bear with the other. For a while he couldn’t make out what she said and then she said it more clearly.

‘Jinny hit me because I took Edward James Bear out of her bag,’ she sobbed, ‘She doesn’t like me … I’m afraid of her … she’s coming after me.’

‘Well, we’ll see about that,’ said Robert as
he pulled himself to his feet with the aid of the bellows.

He turned to the young man who had stood looking down at them both, his face full of concern.

‘John, will ye stay with the wee’n till I make an end o’ this. She’s gone too far this time,’ he said in a whisper as he threw on his cap.

‘Would ye not come out now?’ said John coaxingly. ‘She’ll not get at ye here. I won’t let her past me,’ he went on firmly. ‘Ye needn’t be feared of her, Robert’ll not let her hit you. Come on out now or you’ll get your nice wee dress dirty.’

Despite two children and a baby of his own, John felt he wasn’t doing very well. The poor wee thing was shivering against that damp old wall and he thought he saw blood on her fingers where she had put them up to her ear.

‘Robert wouldn’t think much of me if I couldn’t keep her away from you. I’m about twice the size of her. I useta be a boxer,’ he added, a touch of desperation in his voice.

Clare scrambled out, well-blackened with the soot and slack that lay in the bellows pit and wiped her eyes. To her amazement the kindly young man laughed at her.

‘You’ve got two big black marks on your face now,’ he explained. ‘You’d frighten anybody yourself,’ he said, taking off his jacket and putting
it round her. ‘Now come and sit down here beside me, till yer Granda comes back.’

Clare shivered violently and snuggled into the warm jacket. It smelt of oil, just like Daddy’s.