On a Clear Day (4 page)

Clare read every single label, puzzling over names she had never heard of before, cousins of her parents from places that were quite unknown to her, both in Ulster and abroad. She had to guess at some words smudged by a light shower of rain the previous evening. All these people, known and unknown, must be very sad about Mummy and Daddy to write such lovely messages. The flowers blurred and she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her cardigan.

She heard Uncle Jack’s voice behind her. He was speaking very quietly but in the deep silence that lay under the tall trees it was impossible not to hear every word he said.

‘Polly dear, I wouldn’t for the world want to hurry the wee lassie but if ye want to get back to Belfast the night we’d need to be gettin’ a move on for that train ye wanted.’

‘Right enough, Jack, it’s after five. Sure I’d clean forgot what time it was. I’m all through meself. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’

‘Ah sure we’re all the same. But you’ve the hardest job with wee Clare. I don’t think it’s hit her yet. She seems as right as rain.’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. The matron says she cried a lot when she told her but she seemed to be more worried about William than about herself. D’ye think your mother and father have done the right thing taking him in? They’re not so young any more and he can be a wee handful at times.’

‘Aye, he’s a funny wee lad. I don’t know who he takes after but the father said it was up to the Hamiltons to have him. And Mammy agreed, though she did admit to be honest that she’d had her fill of we’eans. Of course, it’s part of what they believe in, the Friends that is, they’re supposed to help each other at times like this.’

‘Sure I’d forgot they were Quakers,’ said Polly quickly. ‘When Ellie and Sam were married they went to the Presbyterians. Why did Sam not stay with the Quakers? I’ve always thought they were very good people.’

‘They are Polly, indeed they are. I wish there was more like them, but Sam was very keen to join the Masons and the Lodge. Ye see ye can’t join any o’ these organisations if you’re a Friend. It’s against what they believe. There’s none of us boys has followed them to the Meeting House, it’s only some of the girls that still go.’

Clare unpacked the jam pot and filled it carefully with water. So that was why Uncle Jack had taken them all out to Granny Hamilton and
then left William there. Granda and Granny must have consulted their consciences about William. That was what Quakers did. They didn’t sing hymns or say prayers, they just sat quietly and waited for the Spirit to move them.

‘Granda, what happens if the Spirit doesn’t move you?’ she’d asked her grandfather one day, as he sat by the window, his finger marking his place in the large Bible he read every day.

‘Well, that’s a matter of faith, Clare,’ he said, looking at her very directly. ‘If you believe that there is help for you, then it is likely to come, but if you are weak in faith you may have to wait and try again.’

Perhaps now if she consulted her conscience God would tell her what to do with her flowers. They seemed such a tiny bunch compared with all these wonderful wreaths. And she hadn’t even got a card. She sat down on the kerb of the grave nearest to where her parents lay and closed her eyes.

‘Uncle Jack, can I borrow one of your pens?’ she said, getting up quickly and running towards where they stood, their backs slightly turned away from her. Uncle Jack was a book-keeper at the fruit factory in Richhill and he always carried a row of pens in his top pocket.

‘Ye can surely,’ he said, taking out a ball-point and handing it to her.

‘Have you a wee piece of paper in your bag, please, Auntie Polly?’

Polly scuffled in her bag and produced a brown envelope, the latest reminder from the Electricity Board. She removed the red notice from inside and put it in her outstretched hand.

Clare sat down again on the granite kerb and wrote leaning on her knee. It was difficult for without something flat underneath the flimsy paper it would tear if she pressed too hard. She wrote slowly:

She placed her message under the jam pot of flowers on the kerb where she had been sitting.

‘I’m ready now, thank you,’ she said as she walked back to where Jack and Polly stood and gave Uncle Jack his pen.

Neither Polly nor Jack felt it proper to go and look at what Clare had written but some days later one of Jack’s brothers, Billy, arrived back
from visiting the grave to tell the Hamiltons that the message Clare had written on the flimsy brown envelope was now mounted on some very nice, cream-coloured pasteboard and covered by a layer of clear plastic.

Billy had wondered who could have taken so much trouble, for the mounting and covering had been beautifully done. He’d turned the board over and found a message written in a very shaky hand. It read; ‘I have taken the liberty of protecting this message that others may read it and pray for this child, as I shall do in the time that remains to me.’

There was no signature, but for some months afterwards, the jam pot in which Clare had left her flowers was regularly refilled with sprigs of rosemary.

There were few passengers on the last train to Belfast that evening so Clare and Auntie Polly had a carriage all to themselves and didn’t have to bother putting all their bags and parcels up on the rack high above both their heads.

Clare dropped her things gratefully and studied the faded sepia pictures above the long, lumpy seats that ran the full width of the carriage.

‘The Glens of Antrim, The Great Northern Hotel, Rostrevor and The Ladies’ Bathing Place, Portrush,’ she read aloud.

She had seen them before, last year, when she and her mother had gone on the Mall Church Sunday School excursion. The train jerked violently and squealed, preparatory to moving off. On the platform side, the stationmaster strode past banging doors and trying handles to make sure they were really shut. As the guard blew his whistle, Clare hurried across to the other side of the train knowing that in a few minutes time when they got up steam she would be able to see all the places she knew on the Loughgall Road.

‘That’s Richardson’s, isn’t it, Auntie Polly, over there?’ she asked, as they gathered speed.

She pointed to a fragment of an eighteenth-century chimney pot just visible over a planting of mature beech trees and the curve of a low, rounded hill.

‘Yes, yes, it must be,’ Polly replied, getting up wearily from the seat where she had subsided just inside the carriage door. She came and joined Clare at her window. ‘And that’s the back of Wileys and Compstons. Look, there’s Charlie Running on his bicycle just going up the hill past Mosey Jackson’s. Maybe he’s going down to see your Granda at the forge,’ she went on, making an effort to be interested.

Clare peered down on the figure pedalling steadily up the slight incline. At this point, where the railway bridge crossed over the lane, the track ran right beside the road. For a moment, she was so close to the figure on the bicycle she could have called to him through the open window. Then, just as she was about to wave, a great cloud of steam blew back from the engine. By the time it had gone, the road had disappeared and the track had dropped into a shallow cutting where only the bright white clouds in the paling blue sky were visible above the shaggy line of the full-leafed hedgerows.

She waited patiently for the level crossing but there were no children to wave to anywhere in sight. Although it was a lovely summer evening and the sun was still shining brightly, she knew
by the long shadows cast by the trees and even by the cows that were grazing peacefully in the fields that it must be getting late. Perhaps it was past the children’s bedtime.

‘What time it is, Auntie Polly?’ she asked without turning away from the window.

When there was no reply, she turned round and found her aunt was asleep. Settled by the far window she had leant her head against the rough fabric of the seat and was now thoroughly out for the count.

Clare sighed and wriggled herself more comfortably into her own corner. It was no wonder Auntie Polly was so tired. She’d been busy trying to sort everything out since she’d fetched them from the hospital. Uncle Jack had taken a day of his holidays from work so that he could drive them round in his car but even with the car it had been a very busy day. He’d done everything he could to give a hand, he’d even come with them to Lennox’s to buy clothes and underwear because all their own things had had to be destroyed.

‘Jack, what would we have done without you?’ Auntie Polly said, as they drove out of the town at the end of the morning.

‘Sure it was the least I could do,’ he replied easily.

Granny Hamilton had made them a very nice
stew for their lunch and afterwards they said goodbye to William. Auntie Polly kept looking at William as they were getting ready to go and Clare wondered if he might cry, but William didn’t seem to mind staying behind at all. He hardly even bothered to say cheerio and Granny Hamilton had to tell him to wave goodbye to the car as it turned out of the farmyard and up the hill to the main road.

They drove back into Armagh again, this time to the solicitor’s office. They’d been there for ages. It was a big three-storey building in Russell Street opposite the Cosy Cinema and the RUC Barracks. With tall pillars outside, Clare thought the entrance looked more like the outside of a church than the way in to business premises. She’d had to sit for ages on a very hard chair in the outer office with the clerks.

Behind the counter where they worked there were files and folders everywhere, stacked on shelves and desks, piled up on the tops of cupboards and even heaped up on the floor. There were three typewriters all chattering away at once and going ‘ping’ at the end of every line as well as two big black telephones which rang every few minutes or so.

‘Roan Anersin,’ said the youngest clerk, who wore a black skirt and a rather crumpled white blouse.

‘Row Anderson’ said the middle aged lady with the spotted blouse and the grey cardigan.

‘Munro and Anderson’, said the Chief Clerk, the lady who sat nearest to the partner’s door. She had silver-grey hair and spoke very correctly. Clare wondered if she had been to elocution classes and whether she spoke like that when she was at home making her tea. She looked as if she might be a single lady. Perhaps she had no one to talk to except a pussy-cat. That must be very lonely and sad, to have no one to talk to.

‘Here you are, my dear, you’ve had such a long wait.’

Clare was amazed to find the silver-grey lady standing in front of her with a glass of orange squash and two biscuits on a little plate. One of the biscuits was a pink wafer one which she particularly liked.

‘I’m afraid this is very boring for you. Solicitor’s are very careful people so everything they do has to be just so.’

She had such a nice way of clicking her fingers together when she said ‘Just so’ and such a lively smile that Clare wondered if sometimes she got bored too, working in this dusty old office.

Then Auntie Polly and Uncle Jack reappeared. They said thank you and goodbye but then began to talk business all over again. The tall gentleman with spectacles said everything at least three
times but although she could pick out words like ‘intestacy’ and ‘deed of family arrangement’ and ‘residue’, she couldn’t understand any of it. But he did seem to be very helpful and they all smiled as they shook hands and he came and shook hands with her too and called her Miss Hamilton. No one had ever called her Miss Hamilton before, except as a joke.

She wondered if orphans were called ‘Miss’ if they were girls. She tried to remember what that man who ate the pudding called David Copperfield when he was an orphan. But that probably didn’t count because it was such a long time ago. She couldn’t imagine William being called Mr Hamilton.

She wondered what William was doing now. He was sure to get himself in a mess if he played in the yard which was always muddy after rain. It would be even worse if he went into the fields where the cattle had been. She hoped he would behave himself and not trail around at Granny’s skirt tail like Uncle Jack had done all those years ago. William always wanted attention. Maybe that was what Uncle Jack wanted as well. But he must have grown out of it for he was really a very nice uncle now. He’d been so helpful and kind. He’d even bought her a little handbag with a purse inside and given her a whole half-crown to put in the purse as a luck-penny.

She leant back in her seat and watched the hedgerows stream past the dust-streaked windows. In a few minutes, she too was asleep.

The Great Northern Station was full of smoke and steam. As she climbed down the steep steps of the train her eyes began to smart so badly that she almost missed seeing a trolley piled high with mailbags that rattled past only a few feet away from her. High above her head the great arches of the train shed shut out the sunlight and created a dark, noisy cavern full of hurrying figures. Clare felt very small and would have taken Aunt Polly’s hand if they hadn’t both had so much to carry.

‘Porter, porter. Carry yer bags, lady?’

Clare drew back as the burly figure blocked their path and shouted at them.

‘No, thank you,’ said Polly, nudging Clare in the back with the edge of her suitcase, to tell her to walk on.

It was difficult to keep up with Auntie Polly’s hasty trot. Clare lost her twice when she got stuck behind people with huge suitcases. Once, a porter walked straight in front of her and caught the edge of the shopping bag Granny Hamilton had lent her to put her things in. It wasn’t like this when they went on the excursion to Bangor.

Outside the station there was so much traffic they had to wait ages to get across the cobbled
forecourt and the street beyond. Then it seemed as if they walked for miles on broad, crowded pavements leading to a huge white building with green towers on top. Clare’s arms got sore from trying to keep her bags from catching in the legs of the people streaming backwards and forwards. Auntie Polly walked faster and faster and she was soon out of breath.

By the time they arrived at the bus stop she was longing to sit down and so exhausted that she couldn’t understand what Auntie Polly was telling her about double-deckers and trolley buses. It sounded as if the trolley buses were far handier and there were more of them but they didn’t go all the way. As they went on standing at the double-decker stop, Clare began to wonder what the point was waiting for a double-decker to take you all the way, if it didn’t come in the first place.

The bus was very full and there was no room to leave their luggage in the proper luggage space so they had to struggle upstairs with it while the bus lurched out from the stop into the traffic. Thankfully there were two seats right up at the front and when they both sat down Clare told herself that things were bound to be better now. She looked out at the shops and houses that lined the streets. Some of the streets had trees which brushed the roof and windows as they went past, but most of them didn’t. They all seemed very
dirty and empty, with newspapers blowing along the gutters in the little evening breeze that had sprung up. Here and there, where a house had fallen down, rubble was piled up high and bricks spilt out of the empty windows. There were open spaces with piles of rusted metal and patches of tall weeds and boys kicking tin cans between goal posts of old buckets or rusted through dustbins.

They went across a bridge and she looked down into a wide, grey river that swept in a big curve between broad, gleaming mud banks. The thought of the mud made Clare shudder. She thought of the little stream at the Dean’s Bridge where her mother sometimes took them for a walk. It was shallow and the sunlight glinted and sparkling as it tripped over the bigger stones in its bed. Pebbles were always so much nicer when you looked at them through the water. They weren’t the same at all when you took them out. She often thought how nice it would be if the pebbles you picked out could stay wet and keep their lovely colours for ever.

‘Not far now, Clare,’ said Auntie Polly brightly. ‘Look, there’s the school you’ll be going to next week. That’s where Ronnie went before he went to Inst. and he thought it was great. You’re sure to like it.’

At that moment Clare was equally certain that she wouldn’t like it, a red-brick building set in
among the shops and houses that lined the road, with no playground that she could see and not a tree in sight. But she said nothing about her new school and just thought how nice it would be to arrive home to Auntie Polly’s house and to see Ronnie again.

It was a long time since she had last been to Auntie Polly’s house. Last Christmas. Not Christmas itself when they always went to Granny and Granda Scott on Christmas Day and Granny and Granda Hamilton on Boxing Day. It must have been the Sunday after that because school still hadn’t started and it didn’t matter that they were so late back that both she and William were asleep in the back of the car.

‘Harold’s offered me the car for Sunday, Ellie. The weather’s so mild he thought we might take a day out. What d’you think?’

It was her mother’s idea that they would visit Auntie Polly for she’d said it was ages since she’d seen her. Daddy said that was fine by him. Would she drop her a line or would he give her a ring from work?

Auntie Polly had a telephone, a big black one that sat on a table in the hall at the foot of her stairs. She had to have it for her work. Polly had served her time to a dressmaker and she made lovely things. Once, when they visited she showed them a wedding dress all wrapped up in a sheet
with shiny decorations like silver pennies stitched to the skirt.

‘I copied the neckline from a dress of Princess Elizabeth’s I saw in a magazine’, she said proudly.

‘Well, all credit to you, Polly. It’s like something a film star would wear. You’ve hands for anything,’ said her sister warmly.

Later that year, Auntie Polly had brought Clare a Princess Elizabeth doll. It was actually one of her own old dolls her mother had been about to throw out, but Polly had said she knew a place where you could buy faces for dolls and the body was still all in one piece. She said she’d make it a dress out of scraps.

Clare was thrilled with her doll. It had a new face and ringlets and a long, white tulle wedding dress. And on the skirt there were three of the beautiful, shiny decorations she had so admired. They were made of tiny, tiny beads threaded on fine wire and then curved round and round and joined up till they made a gleaming circle about the size of a two shilling piece.

‘A shilling each, those were,’ said Mummy when the doll was unpacked and they had both said how marvellous it was and how kind it was of Auntie Polly when she was so busy. ‘The woman that had that dress made for her daughter had piles of money. Can you imagine what it cost, Clare? There were a hundred and fifty of those on the skirt?’

‘A hundred and forty-seven,’ Clare replied promptly.

Mummy had laughed.

‘Not a word about that, Clare’, she warned. ‘I dare say Polly reckoned she’d not bother to count them, so she kept you a few.’

Clare felt she was too old now to play with dolls but she sometimes made clothes for them with the coloured scraps of fabric Auntie Polly saved for her, the leftovers of dresses and jackets, frocks and wedding outfits. She still loved looking at her Princess Elizabeth doll.