The Woman from Kerry (28 page)

‘No, he woren’t. He said he was far too old for such capers, but he let the three children go with some neighbour, for half the street was goin’. When he heard the news, he away out with the cart to look for them an’ give a hand. It seems he took one look at the train and the carriages an’ dropped down dead. An’ the worst of it is the three childer were away up at the front beyond where they divid the train an’ they were all safe and sound.’

‘That’s another one,’ said John sadly. ‘That’s seventy-three now.’

‘Yer none the worse, Rose?’ George asked, awkwardly, looking down at her. ‘What about the wee ones?’

‘I’m all right thank you, George. And the children are as right as any of us are. I’m a bit concerned about Sarah, but sure she’s alive and not hurt. I hope the boys aren’t in your way?’ she said apologetically.

‘Not a bit, not a bit. They’re always ready to tackle things. T’ tell you the truth they’re company for my boys, for they’re all through themselves, them an’ their wives. Sure they’re like childer themselves today they’re that upset. Maggie said to tell you the boys are welcome any day till the school starts, she’s glad of them for a bit of distraction. She says she can’t face any of the funerals, so she’ll be at home, if you want to send the wee girls over to her when you go.’

Rose smiled her thanks, touched by the sudden thoughtfulness of a woman not normally very aware of the concerns of others.

‘I’m very grateful, George. We must go to the Wylies and the Rountrees and …’

‘Rose, have ye forgot that letter ye were to write?’ John said quietly.

Rose gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

‘I keep forgetting things,’ she said.

‘Sure we’re all distracted,’ said Thomas, ‘but if ye want to catch the post, John wou’d need to be on his way soon.’

Hastily, she sat down at the table and wrote three short notes, to Lady Anne, her sister Mary and her brother in Scotland. It still seemed so strange they might have heard of what had happened already and them so far away, but she knew John was right. The world had changed since the coming of
the telegraph, and even the post from America now only took eight or nine days.

‘I’m sorry to give you the walk, love,’ she said as she handed him the envelopes.

‘Ach it’s no bother. I’m better kept busy. Is there anything ye need from town?’

‘No, we’re all right for groceries, I went in on Tuesday, so I could buy a few wee treats for Wednesday,’ she said wryly.

‘I’ll not be long. I’ll maybe get the evenin’ paper,’ he said casually as he looked up at the threatening sky and put the letters under his jacket.

John was soaked when he got back a couple of hours later. He had an ashen look about him as he opened the door that brought the old anxiety leaping into Rose’s chest.

‘The rain caught me just past the pump,’ he said, peeling off his saturated jacket. ‘I coud a’ stood in, but I knew it was near supper time. An’ a wanted to get home,’ he said, his voice strong, his liveliness somewhat forced.

She relaxed as she saw him dry his hair on the towel Hannah brought him.

‘Wou’d I need to change the trousers?’ he said, tentatively. ‘There’s no cold in that rain, but it was right heavy.’

Rose nodded, relieved that he sounded so much better than he looked. She saw him slip the folded
newspaper from under his jacket into the embrasure of the window as he passed into the bedroom. She went on peeling potatoes and watched him as he came back into the kitchen, sat down by the fire and asked the girls did they have a good sleep.

‘I had a dream,’ said Sarah, whose dreams were famous for their complexity and the zest with which she told them.

John just nodded. She wasn’t surprised that he didn’t encourage her to tell her dream just at the moment.

‘What about you, Hannah?’

‘I’ve nearly finished my first whole dress,’ she said, her face beaming. ‘Ma’s says I can cut out the next one by myself,’ she went on proudly.

‘Ach that’s great, just great,’ he said with as much enthusiasm as he could manage.

He was about to say more when the door opened and the boys arrived, gasping for breath, each holding a potato sack over their heads.

‘Did you get caught too?’ he asked, as Rose inspected them.

‘No,’ said James. ‘We were waitin’ for it to stop, but it showed no signs of it, so George got us the sacks. We knew it was near teatime,’ he said, ‘and Ma’d be lookin’ for us.’

‘I was indeed,’ she said. ‘Did you have a busy day?’

‘Aye. Young George was mendin’ a harness
an’ we helped him,’ said Sam, enthusiastically. ‘An’ he explained the way it all worked. An’ then we explained to him about engines and vacuum brakes. He’d no idea there was only one brake at the front and one on the guard’s van an’ that once the vacuum was broke, there was only the guard’s brake left.’

Rose cast a quick glance at Sarah, saw she was listening and looked across at John.

‘What kinda harness does George use?’ he asked, picking up her hint. ‘There’s a new lighter harness these days a lot of farmers have. Some say it’s not so good. What does young George think?’

Rose put the potatoes to boil, began chopping vegetables and wondered how she could manage to get through the remaining hours of this endless day. Despite her rest, she felt exhausted, every task a huge effort, even peeling potatoes. It felt as if she were cutting out a new pattern for the first time.

After the meal, John read the children the story in the weekly magazine and she was able to look discreetly at the paper he’d brought. There were long lists of the dead but fortunately there were no new names since the morning. What was strange, however, was that the list was much shorter than the numbers everyone in Armagh knew about. But what did upset her was the way the paper indicated that many of the seriously injured were unlikely to live. As if the poor relatives haven’t enough heartache
without the newspapers adding to it, she thought as she turned the pages quietly.

Some eye-witness observers were saying there’d been twelve hundred or more on the train and that the engine was a poor choice, even for the nine hundred that had been expected. It also seemed there were numbers of people travelling illegally, eight soldiers and two civilians in the front brake van and fifteen people in the luggage compartment and rear guard’s van.

There was also speculation as to what would happen to the officials who had been arrested by the constabulary the previous afternoon, growing concern the hospital wasn’t big enough to cope with even the seriously injured and a report that a party of Red Cross nurses had arrived from Dublin to assist Dr Palmer and his staff.

There were also enormous lists of family notices for funerals on Friday and Saturday.

Rose refolded the paper carefully. It made very unhappy reading, but it brought no new shocks. That was about as much good news as they could hope for till the next week had passed.

Rose sent the boys to bed as early as she could, expecting that she and John would not be far behind. They sat gazing into the fire, the quiet and the warmth a comfort on the bleak, grey evening.

‘Have you looked at the paper?’ she said as she
got up and made them their usual late cup of tea.

‘Aye, I had a look in Armagh. I stood in out of the rain in McCann’s doorway,’ he said, a catch in his voice that made her turn quickly, the tea caddy in her hand.

‘Ye wouden know Armagh, Rose,’ he said cautiously. ‘Ivery house has the blinds drawn. Ivery shop is shut with a notice on the door as to who they’ve lost. Sure, I saw three coffins comin’ down Banbrook Hill while I was standin’ at McCann’s and the whole street out behind them walkin’ up to the new cathedral. An’ at the same time one comin’ along Railway Street headin’ for St Marks. Sure, it woud a broke yer heart to see it.’

‘John, I’m sorry,’ she said sadly. ‘The letters could have waited. I shouldn’t have let you go into town.’

‘Ach, no. It wasn’t the letters. To tell you the truth, I wanted to go up to the hospital and ask for news.’

‘Did you, love?’ she asked quietly, wondering what it was he hadn’t told her.

‘Aye. That wee lassie, Elizabeth Kane. Sure she’s as like our Sarah as if they were sisters. The wee dark, bright eyes of her,’ he said, looking into the fire. ‘I was at school with her father an’ we were great pals at one time. I hadn’t seen him for months. But I saw him yesterday. An’ I couden get him out o’ me mind, standin’ there with a nurse that was binding up the shoulder where her wee arm shoulda been.’

‘And did you get any news?’

‘Aye. She’s no worse. There’s still hope,’ he said quickly. ‘It was one of those Red Cross nurses I spoke to,’ he explained. ‘They take it in turns to come and talk to the people waiting outside. There’s a whole crowd of them for they’ve no room to let them in, there’s that many. And she said she’d tell us a wee story to give us heart,’ he said, with a flicker of a smile on his face.

‘She says they have a wee child that’s doing well, but they were concerned it had something wrong with its hand. It was all screwed up,’ he said, tightening his own hand into a fist. ‘They tried and tried to get her to open her hand, but finally she tells one of them she has three pennies in her hand. “It’s for excursion,” says she, ‘an’ I mustn’t let it go.’ And the wee thing had them held in her hand since yesterday mornin.’ But the nurse says she’ll be all right, thank God,’ he said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

She gave him his tea and they sat together on the settle drinking it.

‘I think today has been worse for me than yesterday,’ she said honestly, ‘but you’ve had two bad days. And it’ll not get better for a while.’

‘No, it won’t, but we’re maybe through the worst,’ he said, taking her free hand. ‘We’ll maybe have to remember the copy book.’

‘What copy book?’ she asked, completely baffled.

‘The one our mother’s used to quote, about time passing. I’m that tired, I can’t mind it now.’

‘All things pass, both pleasant and unpleasant,’ she said, her voice thin with exhaustion.

‘Aye, that’s it. All things pass,’ he said. ‘Even this,’ he added, putting down his empty mug and drawing her to her feet. ‘Come on now, you should be in your bed,’ he said gently, his arm close round her, as if he were coaxing a weary child.

The days did pass, more quickly indeed than Rose and John had expected. It was true they left behind them images that would never be forgotten, but these too they shared, walking home in the rain from the funerals on Friday at Grange Church, on Saturday at St Marks, where thirty-seven graves stood open at the beginning of the day and thirty-seven mounds of rain-soaked flowers marked its close.

Through the drifts of grey rain, the first small pieces of good news glinted like longed for sunshine. No more seriously injured people died. Little Elizabeth Kane made progress. A fund had been set up to help the victims and Queen Victoria herself had sent fifty pounds.

The sun at last broke through on Sunday afternoon and on Monday morning the day was already fine and warm when John set off for work. When the children had gone too and Rose went into the garden to pin up the clothes, she found the pink rose that sprawled over the wall covered in a mass of bloom.

She sat down beside it, touching the close-petalled blossoms and listening to the birds, still active at this early hour. All around her, the luxuriant growth of summer was pushing leaves and flowers up into the sunlight, so warm on her shoulders, she felt her tight muscles relax and some sense of well-being return.

For the first time since she jumped from the moving carriages, she was alone, free from the need to think of others. She felt as if she’d been tramping for days through a long, grey tunnel, washed by rain and tears and had emerged at last into the light and life-giving warmth of the sun.

‘You’re alive, Rose, you’re alive,’ she whispered to herself, though there was no one to overhear. ‘Your children have been spared.’ She thought of John striding off to work, knowing he left behind him a family safe and whole, unbroken by the tragedy, unlike so many men setting out this morning to the work that must go on, however heavy their hearts might be.

She watched the washing swaying in the slight breeze that had sprung up, the sheets from the girls’ bed flapping and billowing, white against the blue sky like the sails of a brave vessel heading out to sea.

‘America,’ she said, as if testing the word, a word she’d all but forgotten in the pain and distress of the last days. ‘America?’ she repeated, wondering if their plans would be changed by what had happened. After all, why not. The world had changed in an
instant for hundreds of other people. Though she’d escaped unscathed she knew she’d certainly not escaped untouched.

No, nothing would ever be the same again. And yet … She looked around the familiar garden, as if seeking an answer to an unasked question. The potato plants were just beginning to flower, the breeze gently fluttering the leaves of the old damson tree that overhung the common. Wherever she looked she could see only the continuity of life, and feel only the comfort of things that didn’t change.

She went on sitting, treasuring the quiet, reluctant to break the spell that the warmth and loveliness of the morning had cast round her like a comforting arm around her shoulders. Perhaps what she most craved after the long days of heartbreak was the solace and security of known, continuing things.

She smiled as she heard Thomas’s hammer in the forge. When he fixed machinery there were long periods of silence while he measured and cut. Then, his hammer rang yet more vigorously, as if to make up for his silence, the long, slow notes interspersed with the rhythmic tap dance on the anvil.

She listened to the familiar sound, thoughts moving in her mind that still would not form into words. Not until she stepped back into the kitchen, took up the routine of the day and fetched her baking board from the wash house, did she realise that she felt that life had begun again. She paused for a
moment and sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that it had, then set about baking the bread with a cheerfulness she thought she’d never know again.

On Tuesday, Thomas had to go into Armagh to order iron and supplies for the forge. As soon as he got back he came over to bring her the morning newspaper.

‘You could hardly believe it was the same place, Rose. The shops are open and the market was held as usual,’ he began, leaning against the doorpost, to indicate his visit would have to be short. ‘Sure there was plenty of talk of how many was hurted and who was still away from their work, but it was amazin’. It wouda put heart in ye,’ he said, smiling unexpectedly.

‘It said over four hundred injured in last night’s paper, Thomas. They’d an awful job counting those who just went home. Did you see that?’ she said, picking up the evening paper John had brought.

‘No, I must a missed it,’ he said wrinkling his brow. ‘George Robinson brought me the paper, but it was that late by the time I got to read it I was maybe asleep,’ he said laughing wryly. ‘Are ye goin’ inta town yerself, Rose?’

‘Yes. I need groceries. I thought I’d go tomorrow.’

‘You’ll see it well improved. It’s hard to believe what a week can bring, I’ve niver known one like it. But you’ll not be set back if ye go the morra,’ he
said, as he strode back across to the forge, took his jacket off and put his leather apron back on.

Thomas was quite right. Although there was only one topic of conversation in all the shops, still the whole place felt different. People were anxious to pass on what encouraging news there was to be found. The story of the little girl with the three pennies had been passed around the whole town. By the time she left hospital, well wishers had added a good deal more than three pennies to her store.

Rose did her shopping, looked in the dress shops, changed their library books and bought the local weekly paper. She knew it would have little new to add to all the columns of newsprint they’d read in the last week, but she’d discovered John’s way of coping with the disaster was to read every word he could lay hands on, as if the more detail he absorbed, the easier it was to bear the facts. Whether it was the progress of the Board of Trade enquiry, or the experiments done with similar engines to see what might be learnt from the results, or the condition of the seriously injured people still in hospital, John skipped none of it. As each day passed he became steadier.

‘You were right, Thomas,’ she said, coming up the lane, and dropping down on the low bank by the shoeing shed. ‘Everybody is trying to move on, I think.’

He lowered the horse’s hoof he’d been examining
and leant against the animal’s rump, stroking its back with one hand.

‘Aye. I thought ye might say that. A queer a difference, isn’t there?’ he said nodding.

She took out the newspaper and handed it to him.

‘Have a look when you go up for your tea,’ she said getting to her feet again. ‘John said he’d be a bit later this evening.’

‘You’ve a letter, Rose,’ he called after her. ‘I told the postman to leave it on the table for you.’

‘Thanks, Thomas, thanks.’

She opened the door, pushed the door stone into place with her toe and caught up the letter.

‘London,’ she said, taken aback, as she recognised Lady Anne’s handwriting. ‘But I thought she was in Ballysadare,’ she cried, as she tore open the envelope.

My dearest Rose
, she read, as she subsided into the nearest chair.

Rose put down the letter, because she couldn’t see to read any more, her own tears tripping down her face and dripping unregarded on her second best blouse.

‘Oh, you dear girl,’ she said aloud. ‘You are so incapable of pretending. And you care about us so much.’

She wiped her eyes and pushed aside a piece of blank paper that had fallen out of the envelope.

Rose stared at the pages, read them again, and picked up the blank piece of paper she’d pushed aside, turned it over and found it wasn’t blank. It was a cheque drawn on Coutts. She looked at the figure three times before she worked out that it was twice the amount John had earned since he started work in the mill almost a year ago.

She put her head down on the table and wept.

The remaining two weeks of June were marked by fine weather and the hectic activity generated by the
hay harvest when each hour without rain is precious. The boys spent every possible moment at Robinson’s. When school closed on the last day of the month, George asked them to help through the summer holidays, if that was all right with Ma and Da.

The boys were so pleased with themselves and the small weekly sum he’d offered them, Rose wouldn’t have had the heart to refuse them. Besides, the money apart, she agreed with John that it was a very good idea.

‘Sure it’s all experience for them, Rose. By the end of it, they’ll know more about farm work and more about themselves forby,’ he said, one fine evening when they sat beneath the gable of the forge looking down at the empty road and the cut stubble of Robinson’s fields beyond.

‘I mind I worked at Lydney’s in Annacramp before I left school an’ sure it made up my mind,’ he said wryly. ‘I couldn’t wait to get back to school at the end of August before there was any more diggin’ and plantin’.’

‘You never told me that,’ she said, surprised. ‘I thought you liked working in the garden.’

‘Ach yes, a bit of a garden. It’s one thing plantin’ a few rows of potatoes, or beans, or cabbage, it’s another thing altogether if ye’ve a whole field t’ plant.’

It was the way he said it which made her laugh. He turned to look at her.

‘I haven’t heard ye laugh like that for a long time,’ he said happily. ‘I think it must be that wee fortune you’ve come into,’ he added, his tone light and teasing.

‘It’s not mine, John, it’s ours.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ he said firmly. ‘At least you’re not going to upset the poor girl by refusing it.’

‘Did you think I would?’

‘Well, I had m’dou’ts, as they say. But there’s no doubt at all the same Lady Anne has you well figured out,’ he went on. ‘She knew the poorer you were, the less chance she’d have you’d take anythin’. You’re very proud, Rose,’ he said, not looking in the least displeased.

‘Is that a bad thing, then?’

‘Aye, it can be, when there’s those that want to show how much they appreciate you. Like she does. Sure, if it weren’t for you she’d never have known how to go about a man like Harrington, he was that shy. He’d never have plucked up his courage even to speak t’her, if she hadn’t helped him out.’

She beamed and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

‘I remembered one night I was getting her dressed and she suddenly said, “He’s very shy”, and I nearly put my foot in it. I thought she was still talking about his horse.’

John grinned and stretched out his legs more comfortably.

‘We’ve had no drummin’ this evenin’. Had ye noticed?’

‘Yes, I had. This time last year, they were at it every night. And drilling as well. Maybe what’s happened will change things,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘D’you think it might?’

‘Maybe, for a wee while. Certainly there’ll be no bother this year. But then, there’s no talk of another Home Rule Bill. That’ll be the test of it, if we’re here to see it?’

‘What do you mean, John, “if we’re here to see it”?’