On a Clear Day (7 page)

Sometimes Ellie rang her from the phone booth in the Post Office.

‘It’s me, your little sister,’ she would say, laughing. ‘How are you, Polly? I’ve only got four pence worth. Tell me quick.’

Ellie could only ever afford three minutes, but the sound of her laughter would brighten Polly’s life for days. Her laughter, like her sweet smile, made you feel the world was a wonderful place to live in.

Whether it was the hardship of the war, or the cheerlessness of the months that followed, Polly didn’t know, but it seemed that her customers too were all through themselves. Certainly they had never been so hard to please. However much work she put in, however quickly she had a garment ready for fitting, they were never satisfied. They complained about the prices she charged though they were unexceptional. They insisted they wanted their item ready tomorrow. Some of them came so early for fittings that she had to keep the sitting room permanently tidy. That way there was somewhere for them to wait while she dealt with
the client left standing in Ronnie’s room in front of the wardrobe with the full length mirror.

Some customers didn’t show up at all. Then they rang and wanted to come when she was already booked up. Some even arrived when she was out shopping and rang later to complain. Where was she, they had come and she was out. How did she expect to keep customers if she was never there?

There were days when the phone never stopped ringing and she was up and down stairs all day. She could come no speed with anything. Whatever she started to work on in the morning was still on the ironing board at the end of the day, ready to sew, when it should have been hanging up, ready to fit. Even when Jimmy was reading his newspaper with nothing else to do, she still had to come down to the phone because these days he felt too uneasy to answer it and take a message.

But all these distresses and frustrations were as nothing when three days after Clare’s arrival, Polly heard a small voice outside her door.

‘Please, Auntie Polly, I know you are very busy, but could I have a word with you? It’s most important.’

‘Of course you can, sweetheart,’ she said, jumping up so quickly she nearly tripped over the flex of her machine. ‘Are you fed up with that jigsaw? I’m sorry, I wanted to take ye to the park this afternoon but this big fat lady is coming
tomorra and I hafta finish her dress. Come inta Ronnie’s room, we can sit on his bed.’

She gave her a hug as they sat down together in the small, tidy room that seemed even smaller because of the huge wardrobe that had come from McGillvray’s after Jimmy’s mother died and his father went to live with his eldest daughter.

‘Auntie Polly,’ she began, taking a deep breath. ‘It’s very kind of you and Uncle Jimmy to have me to stay with you, but I don’t want to impose on your kindness. Mummy always says that families shouldn’t impose just because they are family. So I’ve come to tell you that I’d like to go to the orphanage as soon as you have time to take me. Perhaps, if you are very busy, Ronnie could take me, when he comes back from camp tomorrow.’

Polly looked at the small, pale face and felt as if her heart would break. What could she say? What could she do? She could see the child was unhappy and was doing her best not to show it. How could she be anything else, shut up in this unfamiliar house with these noisy young men and nowhere to play except the sitting room and only when there was no one waiting.

She’d had words with both Davy and Eddie about their behaviour towards their little cousin but beyond the odd hello neither of them could be bothered to talk to her and the idea that they might play card games or read stories with her had fallen
on deaf ears. She’d even pointed out to Davy that if he was going to get married maybe he should find out a bit about children and their needs. But he hadn’t paid a bit of heed to what she’d said. It was just water off the duck’s back.

‘Clare, lovey, I don’t think you’d like it very much in an orphanage. They do their best and they’re very kind, but you really need people of yer own who know all about ye and all about your dear Mummy and Daddy. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy and Uncle Jimmy had to go to see his father. Did you get lonely? Ronnie’ll be so glad to see you whin he comes home. Would ye not give it a wee bit longer?’

Clare looked up and found to her surprise that her aunt was near to tears. She was such a very kind aunt but that wasn’t the problem. She didn’t know what the problem was, but she felt as if she was shut up inside a box and couldn’t get out. If it wasn’t for Auntie Polly she’d just run away into the forest and live with the animals until someone came and found her and she could live happily ever after.

‘Clare dear, are you worried about goin’ to school on Monday? Is that it?’

Clare shook her head and looked down at her fingers. That was only a little bit of it.

‘Has anyone said anythin’ to upset you?’

‘Oh no,’ she replied promptly. ‘Davy’s always
out and Eddie never says anything at all. Uncle Jimmy has always been quiet, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, love, he has, but he’s even quieter since he lost his job.’

‘Mummy says pain is very wearing and Uncle Jimmy must get very tired.’

The thought of Ellie talking to her child and explaining Jimmy’s problem was too much for Polly. She could see Ellie’s fair head bent towards Clare’s dark one and Clare listening with that intent look she always wore when she was taking in every word. But Ellie was gone, her child was without a mother, and she, Polly, couldn’t even give her the time she needed, never mind a room, or a place to play, or even a few toys to replace all those she had lost.

Polly wept.

‘Don’t cry, Auntie Polly. I’ll stay if you want me to,’ said Clare quickly, as she threw her arms round the sobbing figure. ‘I could help you hem the dress for the fat lady and when Ronnie comes back he’ll show me where everything goes and we can both tidy up for you. And I can answer the phone if you tell me what to say.’

Polly hugged her tightly, lost for any words to speak and for any way to resolve the conflict in her mind. This dear child had brought her something she thought she had lost forever when Ellie died. While she was near, Ellie would not be gone from
her. But even as the thought came to her, she saw that she couldn’t begin to give the child what she needed to so she could begin to heal her own loss.

‘Don’t cry, Auntie Polly. Mummy would hate to see you cry.’

‘You’re quite right, Clare. I’m a silly old auntie,’ Polly replied, sniffing and wiping her eyes.

‘No, you’re not. You’ve been so kind. You’re a lovely auntie and Mummy always said I was lucky to have you. Would you like a cup of tea? I know how to put the kettle on, I saw Uncle Jimmy doing it.’

‘But that’s Polly’s job,’ her aunt replied, managing a weak smile.

Clare laughed and jumped up from the edge of the bed. She began to sing ‘Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, and let’s have tea.’

It was one of the first nursery rhymes Mummy had taught her and every time they read it or sang it she would remind her that her Auntie Polly was really called Margaret, but because when they were all little she was always putting the kettle on she’d got nicknamed Polly and now no one ever called her anything else.

They made tea together and sat drinking it in the quiet sitting room. For an hour or more no one called, the telephone didn’t ring and neither Uncle Jimmy, nor Davy, nor Eddy arrived back.
Polly and Clare talked about many things, Polly’s childhood, her sisters, especially Ellie, about going off to Canada with Uncle Jimmy in a big ship, so big you could go for a walk, or go shopping just as if you were on dry land.

Clare’s eyes rounded in delight as Polly described her first winter in Canada, driving in a sleigh with real jingling bells, just like the song, and rugs to wrap yourself in and the swish of the runners over the snow. She took it all in and asked question after question, wanting to know every little detail of Polly’s Christmas treats, the presents she had and the decorations she put up in their tiny apartment.

For a little space of time for both the child and the woman, the pain of loss and loneliness was comforted and eased. But it was not healed.

Clare tried, she really tried, to like the school that Ronnie had once attended. But actually, she hated it. It seemed such a noisy place with buses and lorries rushing past outside and crowds of children pushing and shoving in the corridors. Worst of all her, class teacher was a young man who waved his arms and shouted at them if they didn’t put up their hands the very moment he asked a question.

Some of the children made fun of the way she talked and called her ‘La-di-da.’ She’d never heard the expression before and didn’t know what it meant but she knew it wasn’t a very hopeful sign that she might make friends with these rowdy children. She wondered what Miss Slater would say if she saw them elbowing their way into the queue for the lavatory or the canteen. But Miss Slater was far away in Armagh and it looked as if she would never see her again.

Every time Clare thought about her home, her school and the places she knew, she felt tears trickling down her nose. Even when she was trying her hardest not to cry they just seemed to escape without her knowing and once they got going
there didn’t seem much she could do about them.

Once, a girl who sat near her, caught her wiping her eyes and called her a cry-baby and she thought how angry Mummy would be at someone being so unkind. But thinking about Mummy made her cry even more, so she ran away and hid in the lavatories until a teacher came calling her name and she had to come out.

Every day when Auntie Polly hugged her outside school, she made up her mind to do better, but every afternoon as she was swept downstairs and out to the broad pavement where she waited to take her home, she knew she hadn’t managed one little bit better than the previous day.

Apart from Auntie Polly, the only brightness in Clare’s life was her youngest cousin, Ronnie. The very first thing he did the Saturday after he came back from camp was to take her into Belfast and walk her round all the booksellers in Smithfield Market looking for any of the books she had lost and any others she might want to read.

He had only two shillings to spend but whenever he found something she wanted he’d tell the man in charge that there was a missing page and that no one else would want to buy it. That way they ended up with a whole bag of books. What did the odd missing page matter if you knew the story anyway, Clare said, as they came back on the bus. But Ronnie only smiled.

Every evening, just before her bedtime, he’d come down from his room and say; ‘How about tuning in?’

They worked their way up and down the dial, short wave, medium wave and long wave, laughing when all they got was a sudden ear-splitting blast of static. One night they picked up a radio cab in New York and another night an ambulance in Belfast.

Sometimes they listened to music, pop music from the Light Programme and Radio Luxembourg or classical music from the Third Programme. When they tuned in to the Third Programme, Ronnie liked to guess what the pieces of music were called, so often they had to wait quite a long time till the orchestra, or pianist, had finished playing so they could find out if he was right. Clare heard Schubert and Mozart and Strauss for the first time.

Classical music, as Ronnie called it, was very strange at first. To begin with, Clare found it very loud and often there were such sudden explosions of noise that she jumped violently. But as time passed she was less surprised at what the music did, she began to expect certain things to happen and then to feel very pleased with herself when they did. She always knew when the end of a piece was getting near because the musicians seemed to play faster and faster and get very agitated. Often they ended up with a huge noise and the moment
they stopped the audience would clap furiously. That, she enjoyed. It really did sound as if they were having a wonderful time.

But some music was sad. One night there was something playing that was full of violins and before she knew what was happening there were tears dripping down her nose again and Ronnie had to lend her his hanky.

‘What’s wrong, Clare? Why does the music make you so sad?’

But even to Ronnie she couldn’t explain that it was because of walking past the grey houses every day. The music just jumped over them and ran away, far, far away to somewhere wonderful. It was the thought of that somewhere wonderful and not being able to go there that made it more than she could bear.

The worst experience of all was the evening when they heard the announcer say that they were about to hear a piece by Shostakovich. Ronnie wanted to try it because he’d never heard the name before, so while the audience coughed and the orchestra made funny noises, they settled down to listen. In was only moments later that Clare clamped her hands over her ears.

‘Ronnie, Ronnie, turn it off. Please, turn it off,’ she begged.

‘Does it frighten you, Clare?’ he asked, as he turned it off quite cheerfully.

‘It’s so cross, so angry. It’s angry with everything. Even me,’ she said, shuddering.

‘You
are
a strange one, Clare Hamilton. When you’re a big girl I’ll take you to a symphony concert but I’ll make sure it’s not Shostakovich.’

‘Will we go to that funny building near your school?’ she asked, her distress forgotten, her eyes shining.

‘That “funny building” my dear little cousin, is The Royal Opera House. But I have to admit it is rather idiosyncratic in style.’

‘Idiosyncratic? What does that mean?’

Ronnie laughed and reached for his dictionary, found the place and gave it to her.

‘Idiosyncrasy. A peculiarity of temperament or mental constitution,’ she read out cautiously. ‘But you said “idiosyn-cratic”, didn’t you?’

‘I did. I did indeed. You have very sharp ears. Most little girls of your age couldn’t even manage to say a big word like that.’

‘I love big words,’ she replied giggling. ‘Daddy says the bigger the jawbreaker the better I like it.’

‘Right then, tomorrow night we’ll have the odd jawbreaker. It pays to improve your word power, you know,’ he said, as he put the dictionary carefully back in its place. ‘But it’s bedtime now. Pop down to Mum for your orange juice and I’ll see if I can find any pins in your bed. If I can’t find
any I’ll put some in myself,’ he said, teasingly, as he opened the door to the tiny sewing room where she now slept.

Much to Clare’s relief, school in Belfast ended the last week in June just as it did at home. July began with rainstorms and the thunder of Orange drums. Auntie Polly took her to Great-Aunt Annie’s house on the Lisburn Road on The Twelfth so she could watch the procession to the field at Finaghy.

Clare leant out of the upstairs window and wondered how even the biggest field in all the world could accommodate the endless marching figures. She liked the bands, especially the silver flute bands and the lively tunes they played. She loved the plumes and kilts the bandsmen wore and the brilliant colours in the banners, the very white horses crossing very blue streams against vivid green fields on their way to the Boyne.

Best of all were the tall figures who twirled great silver sticks, throwing them up in the air and catching them one handed as they fell. Her heart was in her mouth every time they sent them soaring above their heads. If they didn’t catch it as it fell the whole procession would tramp over them as they bent to pick it up. Clare decided they must have been practising for a long time, for not one of them ever showed the slightest anxiety.

What she didn’t like were the big drums. The
Lambegs. Daddy had once explained that there was music in drums if you listened, but Clare couldn’t bear to listen. When a group of perspiring men arrived below the window their arms bare, their faces red with effort, she put her hands over her ears. If Ronnie had been there she might have said the drums were angry like that Shostakovich man, but Ronnie was working in the newsagents for the summer months and today he would be very busy selling ice-creams from the freezer, for very few shops were open.

‘D’ye not like the drums, childdear?’ said Great-Aunt Annie kindly. ‘Sure ah niver liked them meself an’ me father usta make them, so I have no excuse. I growed up wi’ them, but the only bit about them I liked was the paintin’ o’ the pictures. Oh aye, I’da had a go at that if anywan had let me. Shure they’ll be past in a minit, niver worry yerself.’

Great Aunt Annie was Granda Scott’s eldest sister, a tiny bent-over lady with wispy, grey hair and a thin, high-pitched voice. She made them both very welcome and told Clare the story about Auntie Polly meeting Uncle Jimmy and asking him to come for his tea the very next day. Annie hadn’t minded, but her husband had been shocked. He insisted that when he had started ‘walking out’, it was a year or more before you thought of asking someone to come home to tea.

‘Shure yer Uncle Thomas was always very particular, God rest his soul. Ye know he useta swear that the only cocoa he could drink was Bournville and that anything else diden agree wi’ him. That was all very well, but wi’ the war on you was lucky to get what you coud lay yer hans on. So what I useta do was always keep an empty tin of Bournville and whatever cocoa I could get, I’d put in it.’ She paused. ‘An’ ye know, childdear, he niver knew to the difference.’

She laughed her thin little laugh and Clare wondered if when you were very old your voice wore out like your eyes and your hair and your teeth. Her great-aunt didn’t seem to mind that her voice was funny and her legs were stiff and her hands had funny-looking bumps on them, not like Granny Scott who seemed to mind everything. Mummy said it was a pity to be such a complainer but everyone’s temperament was different and her mother had always complained, even when she was a young woman and was no worse off than any of the other mill girls, who had been breathing tow for years and all had trouble with their chests.

‘Och it’s a thousand pities about your Mummy and Daddy, childdear. Your poor Granda is in a bad way about her,’ Annie began, when the three of them came downstairs to make a cup of tea.

Clare shivered and wished the kettle would hurry up and boil for the kitchen was chilly and
dim. Only a feeble north light penetrated the tall, dirty window that looked out over the jaw box into a yard bounded by a high brick wall with fragments of glass on top. The gas pressure was low, so the kettle was sulking, a few spilt drips of water hissed as they fell on the wavering blue flames. Clare perched on a kitchen chair out of the way, looked around her and wondered how Auntie Annie ever got anything down from the top of the huge cupboards that climbed up the walls, or how she managed with her thin arms to pull the rope for the clothes airer that hung suspended over the sink. Everything in the kitchen was either dark or greasy and there was a smell of drains mixed with the odour of unburnt gas. Clare longed to go back upstairs into the sunlight.

‘He actually wrote me a letter, Polly, and ye know yer father’s no scholar, saying how he missed his wee Ellie,’ she went on. ‘An’ now, of course, he has this other trouble. It’s looking very bad with yer mother. Have ye heard anything more recent-like than me?’

At that point Clare was despatched upstairs with the tray and cups while Polly made the tea, but the sound of Aunt Annie’s voice was surprisingly penetrating. As Clare put the tray down, her thin, piping tone echoed in the narrow, uncarpeted stairwell.

‘Am afraid, Polly, if she gets the pneumonia again with the state of her poor lungs, we can’t hope for much.’

Clare rattled the cups as she put them on their saucers for she knew she hadn’t been meant to hear what they said. But she had heard. Suddenly, as if a great dark cloud had rolled away, she knew she would be able to go home. When Granny Scott died she would go and look after Granda just like Heidi had done. She would pick flowers in the orchard and in the old overgrown garden that had once been her great-grandmothers, she would feed the hens and brush the old black spaniel and hold the reins of the big horses when they came to be shod. And she would cycle to school in Armagh and be back in Miss Slater’s class again. When she sat beside Margaret Beggs again she would tell her all about the awful school in Belfast.

When Polly and Annie came back upstairs they were surprised to see Clare leaning out of the window, smiling to herself, as if enjoying the lively music, when, in fact, the band that was passing on the road below was having a rest, with only one of its kilted and beribboned members playing a single note on a side drum to keep the brothers of their lodge in step.

If it hadn’t been for the thought that she would be going home again one day, July would have been
an even worse time for Clare. The weather broke again after the Twelfth and day after day was wet and sodden. Ronnie had found a holiday job at the Tudor Stores. It wasn’t far away and Auntie Polly let her go and do messages for her there, but the hours were long. Often Ronnie didn’t get home till almost bedtime. She would look forward all day to seeing him and then the time they had went so quickly.

Auntie Polly had two wedding dresses to finish for the second Saturday in August and they were not going well. The awkwardly-shaped sisters arrived for fittings at regular intervals, leaving Auntie Polly anxious and agitated. At night, the dresses hung from the picture rail over Clare’s bed. As the linings went in to support the heavy brocade of the crinoline skirts, they grew larger each day, taking up more and more the space in the small room. When she woke in the night, Clare had to remind herself not to be frightened of the ghostly shapes that loomed over her.

When the rain stopped and the sun came out, Clare had the idea of digging the garden and planting some seeds. As soon as Uncle Jimmy had finished helping his neighbour to rewire his house she’d ask his advice about where to start. She was sure that if she did the digging he would be happy to get some plants from his friend’s gardens like her
father used to do. But the lull in the wet weather was only temporary. Before the rewiring job was finished she could see water lying in all the hollows between what had once been Uncle Jimmy’s potato rigs. There was nothing else to do except go back to her reading, lying on the sitting-room floor, ready to jump up and answer the phone should it ring or slip her book neatly under the sofa if someone should arrive early for a fitting.