The Woman from Kerry (10 page)

‘Ach Rose dear, I’m so glad to see you,’ she said, throwing out her arms and embracing her. ‘Sure you’ve had a long, long journey and you’ll be thinkin’ strange. Come away in an’ have a bite to eat an’ rest yourself.’

‘Hullo, Ma,’ said John quizzically, as he watched the two women embrace.

‘Hullo, yourself,’ Sarah Hamilton said, laughing up at him, as he bent down to kiss her. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one. Didn’t I always say you were the one that would land on yer feet whether you were rich or poor?’

It took Rose only a few minutes to grasp that her new mother-in-law was simply an older, female version of her son. She had the same openness of manner, the same humour, and the same unwillingness to be bound by solemnity. Despite her obvious physical difficulties, she swept them into the house, despatched them with their bags to the largest bedroom and had a pot of tea waiting for them when they came down.

‘Goodness knows when you last got a bite,’ she said, waving them to their seats at a laden table.

On an embroidered linen cloth she’d laid out
plates of fresh baked bread, soda and wheaten, tiny scones, and slices of fruit cake. She put the heavy teapot beside John and bade him keep the teacups filled while she plied them both with questions about their wedding and their journey north.

‘Sure it’ll take me days to hear all I want to hear and the both of you tired out. I just wish I could’ve seen the pair of you in all your glory. I knew you must be the right woman, Rose, when he went out and bought a coat. I’ve been tryin’ for years to get him to buy somethin’ decent for a Sunday but I might as well have talked to the wall,’ she ended cheerfully.

‘Well, you
will
see us. But it’ll be a wee while,’ said Rose warmly. ‘One of the guests, Mr Blennerhassett, had a photographic camera. He’d been practising on the family and he insisted on taking pictures outside the church. He promised us that our pictures would be his wedding present to us when he’d developed them.’

‘Isn’t that great. I was nearly goin’ to ask you to go to Loudan’s in Armagh and get them to do a picture for me, but isn’t this far better? An’ I’ll see your mother and brother as well, will I?’

‘Oh yes, he did us, then us with my family, us with Sir Capel and Lady Caroline, us and Lady Anne and Lord Harrington. In fact, I think he managed to get the whole staff in one picture. I don’t know what he’ll send, of course, but he’s a very nice man and
he said it was the first time he’d ever experimented with a wedding, so we may get more than just the one of us.’

‘Oh, I hope so,’ said Sarah, clapping her hands together in delight. ‘Wouldn’t I just love to see all the people John wrote to me about! You know, Rose, they did teach him to write at Grange School, but you’d never have guessed it,’ she declared. ‘I’ve never known him lay pen to paper till he met you. Even the postman came in to ask me was everything all right with my son when the letters started comin’. And now, of course, tell the postman and the whole world knows what a happy man he is,’ she said, turning to Rose, and patting her hand.

Sarah, Rose and John sat over their meal and talked till it was so dark they could hardly see each other’s faces. When John lit the lamp they sat on by the fire until finally Sarah stood up and said she’d talked far too long, and wasn’t there all of tomorrow to talk, a long day and it not even started yet.

‘I’ll show you the parlour in the mornin’, Rose dear. It’s a nice enough wee room, but sure we never used it, so I’ve had my bed moved down. That’ll give ye more room upstairs. Now away till yer beds children dear. Aren’t ye worn out wi’ all my talk.’

There was no need for the candle they’d lit to take them to bed for the room was full of bright moonlight. It cast the shadow of the window frame on the pale quilt. Even by its light, Rose could
see that it had been made by hand, the fine white material sprayed with flowers and then quilted onto some firmer backing.

‘Look John, look,’ she cried softly, pointing to the centre of the spread, as she moved across to her side of the bed.

‘Ach indeed,’ he said quietly. ‘She must have been at that from when I first told her.’

In the midst of a heart-shaped garland of tiny roses, the two initials J and R were lovingly entwined.

On Rose’s first morning in the little house at Annacramp, with John already gone to work, the breakfast dishes cleared away and the floor swept, Sarah made good on her promise of the previous evening. She led Rose out of the big kitchen across the narrow entrance hall and into the parlour. A room with some fine furniture, now cramped and crowded by the addition of Sarah’s bed, it was immaculately tidy. From a great china jug full of roses and smaller vases filled to overflowing with sweet peas, verbena and mimulus came a heady mix of perfume that almost overlaid the musty smell of old floorboards and elderly rugs.

While Rose sat on the bed, Sarah moved awkwardly among the familiar well-polished pieces, picking up strangely assorted objects from the sideboard and mantelpiece. A picture of Niagara in a heart-shaped frame decorated with minute sea shells, a white mug in fine china sprigged with bunches of shamrock, a pink glass cake-basket, its
handle made of clear twisted glass, a sea-green jug in the shape of a fish, a string of coloured beads, a crinoline lady embroidered in cross stitch, a crooked iron candlestick. Each object had its history and she learnt where it had come from, or who had given it to her.

Sitting watching this bright-eyed woman, so full of a vitality not completely taken away as yet by her difficulty in moving, Rose suddenly remembered a morning long ago, the last morning of her first life, when her father had brought out the tin box from under the earth floor of the bedroom and revealed the families few treasures.

‘
That’s your grandfather’s silver watch, you can hold it for a moment
.’

She could hear her mother’s voice, cool and calm, against a background of noise and shouting, the crash of gable walls, the crying of women, the rush of dust from each collapsing home. She shivered as she recalled how cold she’d been until her mother had given her Sam to hold. Warmed by the pressure of his small body, she’d watched, fascinated, as her mother had taken each object from its resting place and hidden them in their clothing. For her, there was a brooch pinned under her shift. The cup and saucer once wrapped in a piece of unfinished white work was now wrapped in her own clothes. It would come back to her with rest of her possessions when Sir Capel returned from Dublin.

She collected her thoughts and took the picture of Niagara, studying the faded colours of the tinted engraving. Sarah’s sister had emigrated when she was only sixteen, married at twenty, raised six children on a farm in Indiana. She thought Niagara the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

‘And this was my grandmother’s,’ Sarah went on, putting the fish shaped jug in her hand. ‘When you fill it with water and pour it out, it gurgles,’ she explained, a broad smile on her face. ‘We used to love it as children. Indeed, I’ve never met a child that didn’t laugh at the funny noise it makes.’

She placed the jug carefully back on the sideboard and picked up the bent candlestick.

‘Can you guess who made me this?’

From the soft tone in her voice, Rose was sure it must be her husband or John. It was indeed her husband, Tom. As a young apprentice in his very first weeks in the forge, he’d asked if he could make a present for his sweetheart. The smith said he could, on condition he made it entirely by himself. But poor old Tom couldn’t get it straight. He tried and tried, but the smith just laughed and said a good smith spent his life straightening things out, so it was no harm at all to make a crooked piece when he’d have to earn his living putting straight what other people bent.

By the time Sarah had placed all the objects in Rose’s hand and told their stories, she was quite
sure she and Sarah would be friends. In everything she said Rose found both humour and compassion. She was so open about what gave her joy, what had brought her sorrow. Sarah had the gift of painting a picture, the colours still bright even when the people were far away or long dead. Rose found herself thinking once more of her first home, but this time what she remembered was the evening at Daniel McGee’s house. The material of their stories might be different, what was just the same was the vividness of the telling.

The morning hours passed, the sun now so high the south-facing room grew shadowy, but Sarah continued unhurriedly with her task. From the drawers in the sideboard, she brought out pieces of embroidery and lace, some of it made by her own mother. She unfolded lengths of fabric and a parcel of baby clothes wrapped in plain, white linen. She took the lid off the Singer sewing machine her mother had acquired in the 1850s when she worked as a seamstress for a clothing company. Proudly she demonstrated how perfectly it still worked.

The very last item to emerge from the lowest shelf of the tall cupboard in the alcove by the fireplace was a worn, brown leather handbag with no handle. It was full of papers which Sarah pulled out in a bundle and placed in a pile between them on the bed. One by one, she unfolded them and handed them to Rose to look over. There were copies of
her three sons’ birth entries from the register of Grange Church. A copy of her marriage entry and a death certificate for her husband. A battered rent book and the receipts for the rates. Finally, there was a small fold of large, papery banknotes and an impressive document with a red embossed seal from a Friendly Society. The only documents in the bag not yellowed with age were the letters John had written from Kerry.

‘There we are, Rose dear,’ she said, as she got to the bottom of the pile. ‘That money has to do me my day,’ she said cheerfully, as she refolded the banknotes. ‘And that’s the wherewithal to see me off when I go,’ she added, placing the bank notes on the battered cover of the Friendly Society pass book. ‘There’s a double plot in Grange Churchyard and room for me beside my Tom. There’s no paper for that and I’m sure there should be, but there’s a headstone up and ye can see plain where I’m to go.’

She took a deep breath and looked pleased with herself as she fitted the papers back into the handbag and snapped the catch.

‘It’s all yours now, my dear,’ she said, dropping the handbag gently into Rose’s lap. ‘You deal with that as you think fit. This is your place now. I’ll not be much good to you on the fetching and carrying work, more’s the pity, but I’ll not be idle,’ she promised. ‘Thank God my hands are all right and I have my sight. I can do any job that’s sittin’ down.
Aye, an’ I can even get down and plant wee cuttings in the garden just fine,’ she went on, laughing wryly. ‘It’s only the gettin’ back up again is the problem.’

She patted her hand. ‘You just tell me what I can do to help you about the house, an’ when ye get fed up with my chatter, just say: “Sarah, would ye think of dustin’ the parlour”,’ she added with a laugh.

Before many days had passed, it was clear Rose would probably never need to use Sarah’s device. While she might not be as wise, or as deeply thoughtful, as her own mother had always been, she had a knack of knowing just when to leave her by herself. When John came home from work, she was able to sense when he was very tired or just wanted he and Rose to be left alone together. She’d kiss them both and slip away without a trace of awkwardness. She would sit and read, or simply sit in the room where she had gathered together the things that meant most in her life.

On the last day of her first week, sitting over a cup of tea when they had just finished making some new curtains together, Rose asked her if she didn’t feel lonely or bored when she went off to her room, sometimes as early as seven in the evening. Sarah smiled and shook her head.

‘No, not a bit of it. The thing is, Rose dear, life goes by so quick. So many things happen, you haven’t time rightly to take them all in. Whenever
I sit in the parlour I go over things in my mind, walkin’ out with Tom when I was a girl, playin’ with the boys and cleanin’ them up when they got in a mess. Nursin’ them when they were sick. I even think of makin’ the garden from the bit of waste out at the front an’ savin’ a few pennies from the egg money each week to buy a plant from the nursery at the Dean’s Bridge. Sure, its like havin’ a dozen story books an’ I can read whatever I fancy as the mood takes me, happy or sad. Aye,’ she laughed, ‘an’ I don’t even need a candle to see by.’

It was the next day that Rose made her first visit to Armagh. One of Sarah’s neighbours had made sure they would have enough butter, tea and sugar to keep them going while she settled in. The bread cart called every two days. The herring man came each Friday, one of the children from the big farm up the road brought their milk before school and there were plenty of potatoes and vegetables in the garden for John to dig up each evening. But after a week, the tea-caddy was nearly empty.

Rose dressed herself with care, counted shillings and pennies into her purse, took up Sarah’s large wicker basket and set off, her sense of excitement growing as she made her way to Scott’s Corner, turned up the hill past Thomas Scott’s forge and the Robinson’s farm. From the moment she breasted the low rise just before the forge, she could see the city, its two cathedrals set so proudly facing each other
on adjacent hills just as John had described them to her, one old and dark with a solid, square tower rising above the surrounding trees, the other so newly completed its twin spires appeared a dazzling white in the morning sun.

It was a distance of nearly three miles to the level crossing on the outskirts of Armagh. With the morning warm but fresh, a light breeze taking the edge of the heat, she enjoyed every moment of it. As the sun climbed higher over the green countryside, her eye traced out the lines of the little rounded hills John had pointed out to her from the train before they’d even arrived in Ulster. Everywhere she looked, the patches of woodland cast heavy shadows on the rich grass, the apple trees raised their laden branches to the almost cloudless sky. The air was full of the mixed perfumes of cut hay and wayside flowers, ox-eye daisies, blue scabious and tall branching buttercups. Cattle grazed leisurely in the low-lying meadows below the gorse-covered banks of the railway that ran near to the road for much of her journey.

‘
My name is Rose Hamilton. I’m twenty two years old and my husband and I live at Annacramp with my mother-in-law, Sarah. My old home was in Kerry, but I like it here very much. Everyone has made me very welcome
.’

Over and over again, like a litany, she rehearsed the details of her new life, as if she must not forget a single detail.

She laughed at herself as she paused to look up at Drumcairn mill’s long rows of windows. The racket of the spinning machines vibrated on the warm air. From a tall brick chimney, a thick plume of dark smoke rose into the deep blue of the sky, laying a shimmering brown haze over the mill itself and the two rows of tiny houses that faced each other in its shadow. She waved to the children playing in the dust but they did not wave back, staring after her unfamiliar figure till she passed out of sight.

Hardly had the noise of the spinning machines receded when the roar of the power looms at Gillis enveloped her. Two hundred and twenty of them, John said. Now she’d heard them, she could understand why his brother couldn’t stand working there. Suddenly aware of the confinement of the factories and the tiny houses that went with them, she strode out more rapidly, grateful for the sun and wind and the freedom to move as she pleased.

‘
When I have my children they will have a garden to play in and flowers to enjoy
.’

Ahead of her, the white gates of the level crossing swung out into the road and clacked shut. She stopped among the ponies and traps and carts heading for the marketplace and listened to the huffs of sound as the train began to pull out of the station. Up in the signal box, a figure pulled on great levers. A few moments later, she was enveloped in clouds of steam. The train whistled as it moved across the
road in front of her, disappeared under a bridge and headed for Monaghan. The gates swung slowly back, clicked more gently into place. The crowd surged forward, carrying her with it.

Her excitement growing all the time, Rose walked past the pillars and great silvered gates of the station itself, along Railway Street and up into the busy streets of the city.

‘
I have my purse in my pocket and I’m shopping for my family, my husband and Sarah
.’

It wasn’t that she’d never shopped before. Often enough she’d been sent in the trap with Lady Anne to buy ribbon or embroidery silk for Lady Caroline. Sometimes, she’d shopped for Cook. And sometimes she and her mother shopped for their few personal needs. But never before had she been out to shop as a woman with a household of her own.

‘Good mornin’ ma’am, can I be of any assistance to you?’

She smiled at the young boy in the boot-makers. He wasn’t as old as Sam. And certainly not as good-looking.

‘No thank you,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m just looking at boots for my husband, but he’ll have to come himself.’

‘
Boots for my husband
.’

As she finished her inspection and turned to leave, the boot-maker himself came and opened the door for her. He nodded politely.

‘We’ll be pleased to see you again, ma’am.’

She smiled as she thanked him, hurrying on her way, a new excitement almost overwhelming her. She had never before been called ‘ma’am’. But then, never before had she been a married woman with her purse in her pocket and her basket over her arm.

‘Well, what did ye think of Armagh?’ asked John, as they strolled out, late that evening, through Ballybrannan and up the lane towards Cannon Hill.

‘I was amazed,’ said Rose honestly. ‘I knew it would be bigger than Waterville or Cahirciveen and you’d told me about the cathedrals, so I was prepared for that, but I just couldn’t believe it when I saw the shops. I’d no idea there’d be so many grocers and drapers,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If you had the money, you could buy all the things Sir Capel and Lady Caroline had to order from Dublin.’

John smiled and looked pleased.

‘I wondered what ye’d think, you bein’ used to nice things.’

‘I saw gowns and millinery as good as anything in Dublin,’ she said firmly. ‘I didn’t look at all the grocers, there were so many of them, but I saw one with an Italian Warehouse. That’s coffee and cheese and Parma ham and handmade chocolates,’ she added, when she saw him look puzzled. ‘Another one imported their own cigars and cigarettes,’ she went on quickly. ‘Oh yes, and another had their
own brand of whiskey. It was Magowan’s in English Street. I remember the name now. Eighteen shillings for a gallon of their own and twenty shillings for John Jameson. That was what Sir Capel used to drink.’