On a Clear Day (34 page)

Clare loved the Caledon house, a long, low pavilion-style residence with tall windows looking out over the lawns to trees and meadows beyond. It was full of fine furniture, silver and family portraits, but had none of the clutter and neglect she had found at Drumsollen, for it was a much loved home, the rooms full of flowers and plants, books and painting materials.

Aunt Helen had always painted, but had had no heart for it after the totally unexpected, sudden death of her husband. Coaxed by Virginia in the last few months, she’d begun again. She made
sketches of the four of them and as the days passed it seemed that having four young people instead of two, did wonders for her spirits.

‘Such good practise,’ she would say, as she took out a pad and scribbled away, producing the head of one of them, a detail of a hand, the outline of the little group as they sat, or lay, resting after some activity.

‘I think I should practise on you, Clare,’ said Virginia, one afternoon as they relaxed after a vigorous three sets in the shade beside the tennis court. ‘Are you game?’

‘Depends what you want to practise, Ginny,’ Clare laughed, as she propped herself up on one elbow and looked across at her. ‘Not first aid, please.’

‘She needs to practise her backhand,’ said Edward wearily. ‘That’s why you and Andrew always beat us.’

Andrew grinned and settled himself more comfortably.

‘I’d say myself that you were just outclassed by superior players.’

Virginia poked him with her toe.

‘You are a silly. I meant I ought to teach Clare to ride. Practise my teaching technique. Besides, poor old Conker isn’t getting nearly enough exercise with all our jaunts and outings.’

‘Conker?’

Clare shaded her eyes from the dazzle of the sun and looked quizzically at Ginny who’d rolled over on her stomach and was now resting on her elbows.

‘My horse,’ she explained. ‘Her posh name is Tara Princess but I can’t exactly call her that when I’m trying to get her over a fence. She’s a chestnut, you see.’

Clare turned out to be an able pupil. She had no fear of either the chestnut mare nor the distance between her saddle and the ground. Ginny insisted on her practising every morning as soon as she arrived. Andrew and Edward observed her critically from the paddock gate. She sat straight-backed yet relaxed, as if she’d been doing it all her life.

‘You’re a natural,’ said Ginny, after ten days, as Clare slid from the saddle and came round to stroke Conker’s nose.

‘And you’re a very good teacher,’ replied Clare, ‘I’m sure you’ll end up with your own riding stables one day.’

To her great surprise, she saw Ginny blush with pleasure and stride off towards the house.

‘Come on, Clare. The boys will be waiting. Edward’s been working on a yet more ghastly form of his obstacle golf. We’ll have to show willing.’

The days passed quickly. Each one of the four young people grew increasingly aware that this
holiday was a boundary, the end of one part of their life and the beginning of something quite new. Ginny was excited about the new job but apprehensive and needed to be reassured by the others. Edward was going back to school to do his A-levels, but as yet he had no idea what he wanted to do after. Meantime, he refused to think about it. Apart from cooking omelettes, packing picnic baskets and doing his share of the chores, he devoted himself entirely to devising bizarre games of skill which he usually won.

For Andrew, there’d been success and disappointment. He passed his exams creditably and acquired his ‘piece of paper’ but his uncle insisted he join the family firm in Winchester to do his articles. As he’d paid for most of his education, there was little Andrew could do but agree.

‘Couldn’t your grandfather find you something in Belfast,’ asked Ginny, on one of the rare, wet afternoons. They were playing Monopoly on the big scrubbed table in the kitchen.

‘Yes, I expect so,’ Andrew replied sadly, ‘but that’s not the point. Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say.’

‘Hmm,’ said Edward sharply, as he decided to buy property on Old Kent Road. ‘Perhaps I’ll take economics, become a property developer, make a fortune and
then
decide what I want to do.’

‘What would you do Ginny, if you had a
fortune?’ asked Clare, fairly sure she could guess what her new friend would say.

‘Oh, you know, Clare. I’d breed horses and train up showjumpers. But it costs a fortune to do it properly.’

‘I’m sure Edward wouldn’t mind making a fortune for you,’ Clare said laughingly, as she saw Edward hold out his hand to Andrew for yet one more rent.

‘What about you, Andrew?’ she asked, as he handed it over. ‘If you had Edward’s stacks of money?’ She waved at his increasing pile of notes. ‘What would you do?’

‘Buy some cows.’

They all laughed, as Andrew threw a pair of sixes and began to protest.

‘Yes, I would. I’d rent some of your spare acres, Edward. Buy a cottage in the village and start a dairy herd. Once I’d got it going, I’d look for place of my own and see what arable I could have. I don’t believe in monoculture, it’s bad for the land,’ he said calmly, as he moved round the board and once again landed on a piece of Edward’s property.

‘But what about you, Clare?’ asked Ginny, as she lined up a new hotel on Bond Street.

‘Travel, I think. Far away places with strange sounding names. But Europe first, France and Germany, all the places I know so well from my reading but have never actually seen.’

‘But you wouldn’t go and live abroad, would you, Clare?’ asked Ginny, with a sideways look at Andrew.

Clare shook her head firmly.

‘Oh good,’ said Ginny with a sigh. ‘I shall need you for my bridesmaid when I find a nice millionaire. I think that would be quicker than waiting for Edward to get rich,’ she added, smiling with delight, as Edward landed on her most expensive piece of property.

Although they talked so much and spent so much time together, Clare and Andrew had very little time to be alone. Only in the evening, when he took her back to the forge, would they stop in some quiet field entrance before they arrived to say a proper goodnight. But one evening at the end of their second week Virginia and Edward went off to a birthday party for a woman who looked after them when they were small, leaving them to their own devices. They’d walked down from the house and turned along the narrow path beside the stream that bounded the estate.

‘Only two more days, Clare. How am I ever going to be able to part with you?’ he said, taking her in his arms as soon as they were out of sight of the house.

‘Perhaps your grandfather will come to our rescue, now he knows how you feel. When you
told him about your uncle’s plan, you said he hadn’t realised how much you wanted to come home.’

‘Mmm. He thought I’d be happy to be within reach of London and the bright lights. He said that’s what he wanted at my age.’

They moved slowly along the bank of the stream, the evening sunlight spilling through the leaves, catching the shallow ripples and turning them to gold. Clouds of midges rose and fell in the cool, dark shadows beneath the heavy foliage on the far bank. Somewhere a blackbird sang.

‘I suppose you do want different things at different ages,’ Clare said, wondering if she could ever feel happier than she’d felt in these last weeks.

‘I know what I shall always want,’ he said firmly, stopping on the narrow path and taking both her hands. ‘I want us to be together. However long it takes, that’s what I want.’

The next evening, they left Caledon early, so that Clare could bring him to meet Robert properly. Charlie was there when they arrived, but the moment they stepped through the kitchen door, he remembered he’d another call he simply had to make. She’d never seen him disappear so fast in all the time she’d known him.

To her surprise, Robert was not at all put out by Andrew’s presence on the settle by the stove.
By the time she’d made tea, he and Robert were talking about horses as if she wasn’t even there.

‘He’s a right fella,’ said Robert, when she came back from seeing him off. ‘Many’s a young fella looks fine on a well-turned mare, but he’s rightly on the ground forby.’

He lit two candles and prepared to put out the lamp before bed.

‘You’ll not go far astray there.’

The large minute hand of the dusty clock above the blackboard jerked into a vertical position. Despite the scrape of chairs on the bare wooden floor and latecomers dropping their books and files on the worn and battered desks, Clare heard its mechanical click quite distinctly. Lively greetings were thrown back and forth across the room as long, undergraduate scarves were unwound and draped over the backs of chairs. Ten o’clock precisely.

She smiled to herself, glanced across at the empty table below the noisy clock and went back to her study of the trees in University Square. The chalk smeared table would remain untenanted for at least the next ten minutes. The professor would arrive, apologise most courteously in French or in English, or even in his own inimitable mixture of both, and launch directly into an impassioned reading of French poetry which defied you to deny it was the most inspired poetry ever written.

Clare liked Henri Lavalle, enjoyed his lectures and sympathised with his difficulty in arriving on time. This very able scholar had never managed to figure out that his colleagues in the department
had learnt to lie in wait for him whenever he had a lecture. All his students knew that there was always someone on the landing who would want ‘a quick word’, a signature on a document, a decision on some piece of departmental business. As Henri Lavalle was far too courteous to reject their requests, they saved themselves the effort of a proper visit to his study and he ended up forever late for his lectures.

The trees in the square were an absolute picture. Even as Clare watched, a few golden fingers of chestnut floated slowly down through the spreading branches. Although there were rustling drifts of leaves on the pavements outside the handsome dwelling which now housed the French and German department, the trees themselves were by no means bare as yet. Silhouetted against the blue of the sky, or the warm red brick of the library, the remaining leaves glowed in the calm, frosty air, their rich colour further enhanced by the slanting beams of sunlight.

Clare thought of Robert limping down to the forge on such bright morning, the frost still silvering its black roof where the sun had not yet caught it, beads of moisture hanging on a pair of gates, the long grass still crisp in the shadow of the hedge. She always thought of him in the mornings, particularly when she woke up in the big room in Elmwood Avenue that had once been
Ronnie’s. For three weeks now, as she’d made her breakfast in the tiny shared kitchen, she’d thought of him lighting the stove, boiling up the kettle and frying his own soda bread on the griddle. Then, as she walked along the leaf strewn pavements to her lecture rooms, her mind filled with a growing sense of excitement, which seemed to expand, day by day, as the horizons of her world spread ever wider.

Despite the many real pleasures of being made welcome and making new friends, Clare’s first week in Belfast had not been easy or happy. The more she focused on her new life, the more she worried about Robert. By the time she stood on the Lisburn Road that first Friday evening waiting for Uncle Jack to pick her up on his way from work, she’d almost convinced herself the whole idea of being at university was impossible. She arrived back at the Grange, tense, anxious and uneasy, only to find Robert in the best of spirits, looking forward to seeing her.

‘Shure amn’t I as right as rain?’ he declared, as she sat herself down after their tea and asked him about his week. ‘Jamsey brings my dinner in a box of straw, as hot as it would be from the oven, aye an’ maybe hotter if the wind was in the wrong direction,’ he added, wryly. ‘I have more papers than iver I had with all these new ones Charlie brings me, an’ that wee lassie of June Wiley’s is
great. Comes in and redds up the place in no time an’ tells me all the news forby.’

‘Don’t you mind being on your own at night?’ she asked tentatively.

‘I might think long if I were t’ be awake,’ he admitted, ‘but sure I sleep the best at all.’

She had to admit all the arrangements she’d made with such care were working out really well. Margaret had said it’d be no effort at all to send over hot meals during the week and Clare knew she’d be able to pay for them once she had her first grant cheque. Charlie was only too happy to take Robert to do his shopping when he did his, and Helen Wiley who’d taken over Clare’s old job, looking after Margaret’s children on Saturday afternoons, was very ready to increase her earnings by coming in for an hour after school.

So Clare’s first weekend had gone better than she could have ever imagined. She’d whizzed through the washing and ironing normally done in bits during the week, caught up on the local news, read to Robert from the papers, as she always had, and even managed to get through some work of her own while he was having his rests. When Uncle Jack arrived to take her back to Belfast on Sunday evening, Robert greeted him warmly and said he was expecting Charlie to appear any minute.

‘Sure Sunday used to be a long old day, Jack,’ he added, as Clare came back into the kitchen with
her suitcase. ‘But sure I niver know the time goin’ these days what with one thing an’ another.’

After that first visit, Clare awoke each morning with a rising sense of excitement. Each day held out such promise. There were hundreds of books in the library, friendly people to meet and new places to go. Sometimes she felt so like the little girl let loose in the sweetie shop, hardly knowing where to begin.

In the middle of her second week, Jessie took her to lunch in The Cotter’s Kitchen. They sat in the warm, comfortable basement restaurant on a bitterly cold day and tried not to giggle as they read their way down the lengthy and mouth-watering menu.

‘Bit of a change from Caffollas an’ Fortes, an’ our ninepence worth of chips after the pictures, isn’t it?’ said Jessie, raising her perfectly plucked eyebrows as she studied every item.

‘Something smells wonderful,’ replied Clare smiling, as she took in the decor, the check gingham tablecloths, the old bits of kitchen equipment hung on the walls, the spinning wheel perched on top of the canopy over the hearth. ‘I think it must be the roast chicken.’

‘D’ye fancy that with chips? Ye can have what ye like, it’s my treat. I’ve had a pay rise.’

‘Another one?’

‘Mmm. Sold a couple of pictures last week.
Expensive ones. Mr Burrows says the other staff get commission when they sell pictures, but because I’m in the office such a lot it’s fairer to give me a payrise. He’s very decent like that.’

‘How expensive?’

‘Couple o’ hundred pounds,’ she said shyly. ‘Hunting scenes. I pointed out how good the horses were and the detail in the shadows. The woman wouldn’t have known one end of a horse from another, but the man caught on quick. He was out with the cheque book in no time.’

She winked at Clare as she waved to the waitress.

‘Have ye heard from yer man Andrew then?’ Jessie asked, as soon as she’d ordered.

‘Yes, I had a letter on Monday.’

‘A letter? D’ye mean he’s learnt to write at last?’

Clare laughed and nodded. She wondered whether it was worth reminding Jessie that Andrew had been writing real letters for nearly a year now. Dear Jessie, she’d never understand why Andrew had a such a problem writing letters. It wasn’t that she was unsympathetic, she just couldn’t imagine a difficulty someone else might have if she hadn’t got it herself.

‘Woud’ye just look at that,’ said Jessie, as the waitress put their meal in front of them. ‘Ye’ll be anybody’s full cousin if ye finish that lot.’

The food was tasty and cooked to a turn and
both girls were hungry. In the devoted silence that followed, Jessie forgot all about Andrew’s letter-writing capacity. When Clare looked across at her to say how marvellous the chicken was she found to her surprise that Jessie was totally wrapped up in her own thoughts.

‘What about apple pie and ice-cream?’ Jessie asked suddenly, as the waitress collected their empty plates.

‘Not sure I have room,’ admitted Clare honestly, as she returned to the present.

Her own thoughts had moved far away and at the very moment Jessie spoke she was remembering the warm summer days she had spent with Andrew, Ginny and Edward.

‘Ach, never mind having room, sure this is a celebration,’ insisted Jessie firmly.

‘Is it?’

Suddenly, Clare felt very uneasy. She felt sure something was about to happen that would bring change to her life. Whatever it was, however good it might be, she didn’t want it to happen. Too much was happening already. But she knew you could never say things like that to Jessie.

‘I’d love some apple pie,’ she said brightly. ‘Now tell me the good news.’

To her surprise, Jessie blushed. It was so unlike her, for a moment Clare was completely taken aback.

‘We’re goin’ out tomorra to choose the ring,’ she said abruptly.

‘Oh Jessie, how marvellous. I’m so pleased,’ she said as positively as she could manage, aware that tears were threatening to spill down her cheeks.

She was angry with herself. There was no reason why such happy news should make her feel so ridiculously apprehensive.

‘Are you having a party?’ she asked quickly.

‘Yes. One here and one in Tullyard. Ye’d better be free for both or there’ll be trouble. Tullyard on Saturday week. Ye’ll be home, won’t ye?’

‘Yes, of course, I will. What would you and Harry like for your engagement present?’

‘Ach, away wi’ ye. Ye need all the money ye’ve got.’

Clare smiled. What Jessie lacked in perception she more than made up in kindness. As Robert had once said of her, ‘Sure Jessie’s that good-natured she’d give you the bite goin’ inta her mouth.’

‘You won’t believe this, Jessie,’ she said, as she sampled her apple pie, ‘But I’m better off than I’ve ever been. I can’t understand all this business about penniless students. I can pay for Granda’s dinners and Helen Wiley to do a bit of tidying and my food, and rent, and the odd coffee in the Union and still have money left over.’

‘That’s only because ye can make it go twice as far as anyone I know,’ said Jessie promptly. ‘I don’t
know how ye manage it. Ye ought to be working in a bank. You’d make their fortune.’

Clare laughed easily, so grateful the dark shadow had passed. How silly one could be sometimes. Jessie and Harry were getting engaged and she would be there at their party in Tullyard, with Mrs Rowentree and Aunt Sarah and all Jessie’s friends and neighbours, nearly all of whom she knew herself. She was looking forward to it already.

‘
Mam’selles
,
Messieurs
,
je regrette beaucoup …
’

The familiar voice cut through Clare’s thoughts just as she’d begun to consider what she should wear to Jessie’s party the following evening.

She rose to her feet as the professor swept in, the sleeves of his gown flapping like an agitated hen trying to collect her chicks.

‘
Asseyez vous
,’ he said, hastily, his eyes running round the familiar faces.

Suddenly Clare felt chill, though the room was now warm from the ancient radiators and the heat of young bodies.

‘Mademoiselle Hamilton,’ he began.

Although he continued in French and referred to one of the college porters as a ‘custodian’ his message was clear. A gentleman had arrived by car looking for her. The custodian was waiting for her downstairs. He sincerely hoped it was not
mauvaise nouvelles
, but the look on his face suggested it was. She stumbled from the room and
found the porter at the foot of the stairs. When she saw his face, she felt ‘mauvaise nouvelles’ was the very phrase for it.

‘There’s a Mr Jack Hamilton, miss, at the main entrance. I’m afeerd its bad news but he wouldn’t say what,’ he explained as he fell into step beside her. He reached out a hand for her books which she was in danger of dropping.

‘Is there anyone in the family poorly?’

‘Well, all my grandparents are elderly, but my brother lives with Uncle Jack’s parents. He can be a bit wild. He’s broken his arm once and he had to have stitches in his leg when he fell off his bicycle. He will go racing around the place,’ she said breathlessly, as they rounded the library at speed and made for the main entrance.

She could see Uncle Jack’s car parked in the space normally used by important visitors.

‘Mr Hamilton.’

At the sound of his name, Uncle Jack jumped up from his seat by the fire in the porter’s lodge and came towards her in two great strides. The minute she looked at him, she knew it wasn’t Granny or Granda Hamilton or William.

‘It’s Granda Scott, isn’t it?’

He nodded sadly.

‘Aye, it is. Jamsey found him in the forge about an hour ago. He’d slipped down beside the anvil. It must’ve been very quick.’

Clare didn’t even notice the chair that suddenly appeared behind her nor the ‘custodian’s’ sad shake of the head.

‘Would ye drink a cup of tea, Miss? It wouldn’t take a minute.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Clare said, amazed that her voice was perfectly normal. ‘But I shall need to be getting home right away.’

As she walked to Uncle Jack’s car, all she could think of was that she had to get out Robert’s best shirt and a starched collar. He always got so anxious if someone died and he couldn’t find what he needed.

By the time Clare had visited Elmwood Avenue to collect clothes, tell Mrs McGregor what had happened, leave a message for Jessie at the gallery and phone Uncle Bob to ask him to contact the rest of the family, the sun was high in the sky and the promising morning had turned into the loveliest of autumn days.

As they drove out of the city only the merest wisps of cloud remained in the clear blue sky. Beyond the houses and the trees that lined the main road, the steep slopes of Antrim Hills rose clear of all human habitation, only fields and bushes breaking the sweep as they reached higher, and higher, until at last their crests were free of any sign men could put upon them and the rock faces
stood sharp against the sky, shaped only by the frost, by the wind, and by the sun.

Clare looked up at them dry-eyed and silent, leaving Uncle Jack free to concentrate on the road, busy enough at this midday hour.