The Woman from Kerry (18 page)

‘So you think they’ll take work away,’ she said steadily.

‘I know they will,’ he replied flatly. ‘Yer man from Cabragh is a regular, four horses and the machines to go with them, forby a pony and trap. But it’s not just that, it’s what he’ll put about the place and take after him. It’s not good, Rose,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘I don’t know why all this bad luck has come upon us. I don’t know at all.’

In Salter’s Grange the winter of 1885 was damp and dreary, but there was little cold and almost no frost right up to Christmas. The falls of snow in January melted quickly as the weather turned wild and stormy. By the end of the month the mild dampness that had characterised the late autumn had returned. Then, suddenly and silently, on the very last night of March, to the enormous delight of the children, snow fell again. Waking to sunshine and blue skies, they could hardly wait to get outside.

Rose laughed as she watched them set off for school, Hannah absorbed in making footprints wherever she found pieces of undisturbed snow, James and Sam gathering it up in handfuls, circling around, watching for the best moment to pelt each other.

As she set about her morning tasks, Rose gave thanks for the quiet, uneventful months that had passed. Today was the first of April. Whatever hard weather early spring might bring, nevertheless it
was
spring.

‘Winter is over and all’s well,’ she said aloud as she made up the fire, and began her preparations for baking a cake of wheaten bread and some soda farls. ‘At least it’s well for us,’ she added, more soberly.

In the world beyond Salter’s Grange all was far from well. The newspapers were full of turbulence and unrest they’d hoped the new Land Act would have put an end to, but it hadn’t. Throughout Ulster, the situation was getting worse, if anything, as rumours about a Home Rule Bill were confirmed. There had been incidents and outrages, protest meetings, demonstrations and counter demonstrations. Happily, none of these events had touched them directly, but the uncertainties of the times were an ever present threat.

They’d come through the winter months without hurt. There’d been no unexpected expenses when least money was coming in. There’d been no illness in the family beyond the normal winter coughs and colds. However wearying life when dim, misty days darkened to night so early in the afternoon and mornings were bleak and cold, they’d suffered no real hardship.

She had no quarrel with the day’s routine, for many small pleasures could be set against it. Except for little Sarah, all of the children were now reading and writing for themselves and even Sarah could manage her ABC and her numbers, though still too young for school. She spent much of her day
‘reading’ to Ganny, from whatever book she took from the shelf and when her brothers and sister arrived from school she’d insist they read to her.

Hannah loved reading aloud and was always willing, but James, who preferred railway engines to fairy stories, and even Sam, who was still on the first reading book, would take their turn. There was something about Sarah’s directness and quiet determination that intrigued Rose. But what she particularly enjoyed was Sarah’s sudden sharp delight in what she heard or saw. The laughter her pleasure provoked was a constant delight to her.

She fetched her baking board from the wash house, shivering as she came back into the warm kitchen. The board was so cold it felt as if it was damp. She set it a little way back from the hearth to get the chill off and picked up her sewing while she waited.

She’d had to work hard at it over the last five months, more than doubling her best efforts of previous winters, for the lean winter weeks at the forge were leaner than usual. John had been right. Some of their best customers had left them, taking their work to Drumsill or Ballyleny. Either meant a few extra miles, but that was nothing to men who’d made up their minds John and Thomas did not deserve their business, because they were not ‘loyal.’

For such a mild man, Thomas’s determination not to be intimidated by their threats had surprised
them. He’d let it be known he had neither Protestant nor Catholic neighbours, simply neighbours. So far, there’d been no further visits from the Orangemen, but the drilling continued and they knew some of their neighbours had joined the ranks. It was not said openly in the forge, but it was well known many younger men allowed themselves to be roped in more to avoid bad feeling in their homes than from any commitment to the cause.

Rose finished her seam, put the sewing back in its clean cloth and took up her baking board.

‘That’s better,’ she said, touching its surface, before she sprinkled it with flour.

Having been prepared for difficult times, things had turned out much better than she’d expected. Her very hard work of the summer months had made the house workable. Whitewashed for the third time, the wash house had finally lost its smell. John had made a deep shelf all the way round its walls and a wooden plinth, so that the sack of flour wouldn’t take up dampness from the earth floor. She could now keep both milk and butter against the north facing wall, cool even in summer, and there was space underneath for the water pails, the sack of potatoes, the crock of oats. She’d made a rag rug to spare the cold feet of the children when they washed themselves in the space nearest to the back door.

The handsome new crane with its chain and
hooks, installed before Christmas and much admired by all who visited, meant she no longer had to bend over the fire to cook on the hearth itself. The backache that had plagued her during the summer disappeared completely and some of the anxiety as to what would happen if she were ever to fall ill went with it.

As the morning passed and she alternated sewing with making the bread and tending it, she glanced through the window and saw the snow was melting. From the high pitched roof of the forge, small avalanches slithered down and fell wetly among the long bars of iron that leant against its low walls.

John and Thomas had made her life easier as well. Whenever either of them went into town to buy supplies for the forge, they offered to pay the rent. As her own grocer had begun a new weekly delivery round, she had only to go to Armagh when she needed to buy fabric or change the library books. It was a relief to know that she didn’t have to tramp wet or icy roads simply to fetch her groceries.

To her great surprise, she’d found she had a little more time for herself, even with all the extra hours she needed for her sewing, Some of it she spent reading to Sarah, but Sarah was often happy to play by herself. That was when she settled herself at the kitchen table and wrote letters to her mother, or Lady Anne, or Sam. For the first time too, she wrote
to her sister Mary in Donegal, and brothers Michael in Scotland and Patrick in Nova Scotia.

Neither Mary nor her brothers had ever been correspondents, though they did write an occasional letter to their mother. They left it to Hannah to pass on their news to Rose, rather than write to her themselves. Now in these winter months, she was surprised and grateful to have letters in reply to hers. She enjoyed writing and found a strange comfort in setting down on paper all that had happened in the preceding months.

Her sister Mary had never left Donegal. After her father’s death, she’d gone into service with the Stewarts of Ards, married a shopkeeper in Creeslough and had seven children, the eldest boy and girl now working in the shop themselves, thus giving their father more time to see to the out workers who supplied his drapery business. Mary’s letters were mostly about her children, but in each of them she’d referred to their life together in Ardtur.

Do you ever remember Owen Friel?
she’d written in one of them.

Rose remembered Owen perfectly well. He’d carried her when she could walk no further and he’d never
told anyone where he’d found her or that she’d set off by herself to go up the mountain and look at the castle their landlord was supposed to be building.

Rose suddenly saw herself back in the schoolhouse trembling at the harsh sound of the Master’s voice. She could never forget Danny Lawn, after all he’d suffered at the hands of the Master.

Her older brother Michael had no children, but he and his wife had three nephews living with them since the death of his wife’s sister. Their small farm on the Galloway coast was enough to keep them fed and clothed, but Michael was looking forward to the eldest boy being apprenticed to a boat builder near Port William.

It’s always good to have some money coming in that doesn’t depend on the weather and the price of cattle
, he’d said, in a letter that gave her an unexpectedly sharp picture of his family and the rich hilly landscape that backed the sweeping curves and sandy beaches of the Solway coast.

Rose gathered her thoughts, swung the crane away from the fire and held her hand an inch or two above the griddle. It was hot, but not too hot. She sprinkled it sparingly with flour, took the circle of wheaten bread from the baking board, lowered it gently on to the dark surface of the griddle, marked it into four sections with a sharp knife and swung it back over the fire. Dusting the flour from her hands, she took up her sewing again till the wheaten cooked and the griddle had reheated for the soda.

Her eldest brother, Patrick, three years older than herself, really surprised her by telling her he often made the bread for the family when he was at home. He’d married a girl whose family, the Rosses, had emigrated from Skye to Nova Scotia with the Earl of Selkirk in 1801. He had nine children, five
boys and four girls. They farmed a portion of land that had come down to his wife from the original division made after their ship arrived. Most of the time, it was his wife and family who ran the farm while Patrick travelled back and forth, earning a very good living as a trader, just as his uncle had done before him.

‘Kerry, Dublin, Donegal, Salter’s Grange, Galloway and Nova Scotia,’ she said to herself, as she drew the threads to shire the front of the small dress. She thought of the children who had once recited ‘
Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connaught
,’ in the brand new school house so close to Ardtur, scattered now far beyond the four provinces of Ireland, and of Danny Lawn, who couldn’t recite the counties of Ulster, buried in some unmarked grave outside a prison compound for his part in an attempted murder.

The wheaten had risen nicely, opening along the cuts she’d made. She took a clean cloth and transferred it to cool on a harning stand John’s father had made for Sarah sometime after the bent candlestick. She swept the griddle with a goose’s wing, dusted it with fresh flour and set the soda farls to bake. She wiped her fingers on her apron and took up her sewing again.

The best news of the whole winter had come from Lady Anne just before Christmas. Initially, she’d had a very difficult time. She’d sold most of the jewellery she’d inherited from her grandmother
to keep the estate going, then visited the members of the Ladies Land League who were active in the area. She wasn’t sure she’d had much effect on them, but shortly afterwards rents were paid once more, though somewhat reduced. A month later, she’d written to say that Harrington had made a complete recovery, was able to ride again, and although he knew exactly who was responsible for his near miss, he’d decided not to proceed against them.

Rose smiled to herself. Lady Anne’s next letter had so delighted her she almost knew it by heart.

She and John had read the letter over and over, Rose beaming with delight at the thought of Lady Anne setting up her targets and practising with her new pistols.

‘Aye, she’d not let her man down, the same one. No wonder the pair of ye got on so well in the end.’

‘I wonder, John,’ she said, as she put Lady Anne’s letter in the window, ‘if Sam
was
able to do anything. He did say he’d try.’

The day after she’d bumped into Lady Ishbel and heard the news from Sligo, she’d sat down and written to Sam.