The Hawthorns Bloom in May (14 page)

‘Good news for lovers, perhaps?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Sadly, not so,’ he replied. ‘Because if they attempt to leave they’ll get wet. And if they stay, they’ll be late for tea. Either ways, they’ll be discovered. I think it’s a rotten trick myself, but then it’s my job to try to understand how people’s minds work and the Czar’s little tricks tell me quite a lot about him.’

‘But how does the fountain work?’ she demanded. ‘Is the seat counterbalanced?’

‘No, nothing so advanced,’ he replied laughing. ‘A couple of ancient retainers hiding behind the bushes. The machinery is simple. Just pedals they move with their feet. So easy, they can keep it up for hours.’

Sarah shook her head.

‘It seems so strange to hear you talk about
Petersberg as I might talk about Banbridge or Rathfriland. Is it very beautiful?’ she asked, a hint of longing in her voice.

‘I find it so,’ he said, without a trace of lightness. ‘There’s something unusual about the quality of light from the northern sky. Have you been to Versailles?’ he asked suddenly.

‘No, but I’ve seen Teddy’s photographs,’ she said, surprised at the quiet intensity of his voice.

‘The formal fountains and canals at the Summer Palace are copied from those at Versailles, but they look entirely different in Petersburg. They’re much more dramatic, an extravagance of gold statues and cascades and long prospects. Yet somehow, it’s the light you’re aware of, not the man-made things. With the Gulf of Bothnia beyond, there’s just so much water and sky. I find it strangely moving,’ he ended softly, turning to look at her.

‘That’s what my father said when he went to Kerry,’ she said smiling. ‘He’d never been far from Armagh and he just couldn’t get used to vast prospects of lake and sea. He could never understand how my mother could bear to leave it.’

‘And how
did
she bear it?’

‘My mother is a wise lady. She says life is about choices. You can’t have everything, but you must make sure to appreciate what you
do
have. She’d
had
Kerry and all the good things it brought her, but in Kerry she didn’t have my father, any of us
children, her house, or her garden. I know she’s right. Life changes. You have to accept things you once loved move away.’

‘And other things come in their place, if you are willing to be open to them?’

She nodded slowly.

‘I always thought Ireland was my place and Ballydown my corner, but I’m not so sure about that now,’ she said, slowly, looking away down the long grass paths bordered by tall, flowering perennials. ‘I sometimes feel such a longing to travel and see the things I’ve only read about or heard other people describe. I sometimes wonder how I could have changed so much.’

‘Sometimes we surprise ourselves,’ he replied gently. ‘There was a time when I thought I would never trust a woman with any thought or any feeling I held dear. I decided that my best course was to teach myself to work in the world of men. In company, to play the jester when required.’

He looked at her directly and she met his gaze just as directly.

‘You do it very nicely. It’s such a pleasure to laugh again. But I’d still like to hear about what you do.’

‘Then you shall,’ he said firmly. ‘Providing only that you also laugh for me. I’ll need your laughter when I’m back in Petersberg.’

Simon was as good as his word. Whenever there was the least opportunity, on watch as the children boated on the lake, sitting together guarding the prize for the latest treasure hunt, during their walks after lunch and in the evening, Simon told her how he spent his time in the handsome building overlooking the Neva.

She listened, fascinated to hear of the strange and varied ways in which information was conveyed from one European country to another and how the very exchange itself could affect so intimately what might happen as a result.

‘Hannah and Teddy are right,’ he said, one afternoon when Mademoiselle had requested their presence in a remote corner of the garden. ‘I can’t tell you what’s going on at the moment, Sarah, but I can give you examples of previous situations that will let you see what has to happen if we are to maintain the peace. And I
can
say without giving any secrets away, that Europe is like a kettle on the boil. While the steam pours out it’s noisy and uncomfortable, but there’s still hope. But if someone, something, turns up the heat, the whole shoot will boil over. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes, perfect sense. I think I can apply that image somewhat nearer home,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘There’s no secret about the Ulster Volunteer’s arming and the Irish Volunteers doing the same. Three quarters of the population want
home rule and one quarter are so opposed to it, they say they’ll fight if it goes on the statute book. And what does that achieve? Does waving flags around feed starving families? Does it stop the exploitation of workers?’

She stopped abruptly, aware of the sharpness in her voice and the intentness with which he was looking at her.

‘Sometimes one feels so helpless against the enormity of need,’ she said more quietly. ‘I get angry I can do so little. And I have to admit I get discouraged.’

‘But how do you know what you achieve, Sarah? Can any of us judge properly? We only see part of what we do. You can always see failure if your hopes are high but what’s the point of aiming low?’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she admitted freely. ‘But don’t you ever get discouraged?’

‘Oh yes. That’s the hardest part of the job. Day after day nothing happens, then, when it does, it’s bad.’

‘So what do you do then?’

‘Clear up the mess as best one can. Then look for something to set over against it. I go to the ballet. I read Dickens and Chekov or practise my Russian on my housekeeper. And I write letters,’ he added, looking at her as if he might say more.

‘Here you are. Here you are. I’ve got them all.’

Two sharp, excited voices broke the stillness of the afternoon as Helen and John arrived breathless and put down at their feet the six flowers and six fragments of foliage, named and located on the maps they were both clutching.

‘Well done,’ said Simon, giving them his total attention. ‘Now, Helen first,’ he commanded, as he held out his hand for her crumpled piece of paper.

The items laid before them would have to be checked most carefully. Only if they were the right ones and only if they were all there, could either Helen or John lay claim to the treasure.

Sarah was not at all surprised to see Helen’s eyes close before she was halfway through the promised story. She glanced up at the top bunk where Hugh had settled himself and was amazed to find he was already fast asleep. To be on the safe side, she read on. It would not be the first time she’d stopped, only to meet a protest from one or other.

Tonight, there was no such protest. She stood up, slipped the book back in her travel bag and glanced through the porthole at the low evening sunlight, which still lay in bright patches on the adjoining deck. She was tired, but too restless to join the children in their bunks at this early hour. She opened the cabin door quietly and came face to face with the stewardess, an older woman she’d got to know on earlier journeys.

Without a single word spoken between them they agreed that Sarah would be on deck just a short walk away. If either child should wake, the stewardess would know exactly where to find her.

After the heat of the day, the slight breeze from the water was refreshing. She walked up and down the deck, grateful to be free of the confinement of the cabin and the airlessness ships always developed just before they sailed. As the last hawsers were cast off, she leant on the rail and looked down into the churning water.

So slow to begin, this departure business. Inches at first, then feet, opening between them and the dock wall. An infinity of time to accomplish such a tiny distance. She listened to the slow throb of the engines as the ship freed itself from the city where it had spent the day caged, tended by engineers and stewards, waiting for this moment. Now, only now, with the sun low on the far horizon did it come to life, surging out into the empty spaces of the Irish Sea. And once having freed itself from the confining concrete walls of the dock, there was no delay. The throb of the engines increased and the ripples ran back silently from the sharp bow as the ship turned towards the sunset, cleaving a path through the smooth, shining water.

‘I wonder when I’ll make this crossing again,’ she said to herself, looking round the almost empty deck.

Hannah hoped she might come for Christmas if the weather weren’t too hostile. Certainly she thought Sarah should come again next summer when Simon would have leave from Petersburg or might even have returned to London permanently to take up a place at the Foreign Office.

Sarah sighed. One didn’t have to be a mind reader to see what Hannah was thinking, but she’d said nothing directly about the affection that had flowered between her and Simon, wise sister that she was, and Sarah was grateful for that. It was too soon. Still too hard not to think of Hugh. Too easy to feel a kind of conflict between such a long, dear love, and the prospect of what might possibly be.

It had been such a pleasure to have a companion, someone at her side to whom she could talk and share her thoughts. Equally, it had been a relief to reach outwards and share Simon’s concerns and in doing so, reach beyond the small and troubled island to which she was returning.

Simon had said nothing either. He didn’t need to. All he’d come to feel was there in his eyes. In the way he walked beside her.

‘Would you like me to come with you to Liverpool, Sarah?’ he asked, as they stepped out after dinner into the gathering dusk. ‘I could make myself useful with porters and entertaining the children.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she began.

‘No, it’s not,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s an entirely selfish ploy to avoid parting with you tomorrow morning.’

‘It is still a kind offer, Simon,’ she said gently. ‘But I would find it even harder to say goodbye in Liverpool.’

‘Ships and seas always seem to separate more than marshes and steppe, don’t you think?’ he responded quietly.

He had looked at her directly then, his simple words seemed to imply so much more than they said.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly. ‘I’ve lived my life in such a small compass. I cannot imagine the journey from Harwich to Berlin, or from Berlin to Moscow, or Moscow to Petersburg. It is such a very long way compared to my brief night journey.’

He fell silent as they walked on through the rose garden to sit where he had once told her about the trick fountains in the Peterhof gardens.

‘I shall adopt this fountain as my sitting place when I arrive back,’ he said unexpectedly.

‘And risk a wetting?’ she said, laughing.

‘There is no danger at all to a solitary male,’ he said soberly, ‘only to those who are accompanied.’

Suddenly she heard a tone in his voice she’d never heard before. It seemed as if a cloak of loneliness had wrapped itself around him. He sounded so sad, she wondered if there was anything whatever she could say to comfort him.

‘I shall think of you going to the ballet and reading Dickens and Chekov, and practising Russian on your housekeeper, and writing letters,’ she said gently.

‘Will you really?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘And if I were to write and tell you of my unexciting life …’

He broke off, uneasy.

‘Then I could tell you of my infinitely more unexciting life,’ she replied immediately, smiling up at him.

The look of relief and joy that passed over his face erased completely the sadness that had grown upon him. It was only later, sitting by her open window, thinking over the events of the day, she realised how sad she herself would have been if no link had been made between them to span the time and distance which would separate them from any further meeting.

Bathed in chill sunlight, the little grey, Molyneux church was full to overflowing for the funeral of Thomas Scott. He had been poorly since late summer, struggled through the autumn, but still tramped down to the forge on the brightest of the winter mornings. Even if he could no longer hammer a piece of metal, there were small tasks he could still do, the fire to light, old friends to greet, while his son Robert, carried on the work.

On a short February day, overcast but not cold, they stopped work with the failing light, raked out the fire on the hearth and pulled closed the door behind them. As he sat smoking by the fire, an hour later, Thomas’s pipe slid from his fingers. With Selina there to support him before he fell from his chair, his youngest daughter, Isobel, ran to fetch Robert. It was as peaceful a departure as one might hope for. But it left a family and a community bereft.

Rose and Sarah sat close beside each other in the pew behind Selina. Her daughters, Annie and Isobel, sat on each side of her, then came her daughter-in-law, Ellen, sitting beside Selina’s youngest son, Ned. The eldest of Thomas’s grandchildren filled the remainder of the long pew. Beside Rose and Sarah, Sam and Alex sat shoulder to shoulder, their pale, immobile faces as unfamiliar as their seldom-worn dark suits.

As they all watched, the coffin was lifted from the trestles in front of the altar and placed on the shoulders of the bearers. At the leading edge, John Hamilton, once Thomas’s apprentice, and Robert, his remaining son from his first marriage, clasped each other’s shoulders under the heavy oak casket. Behind them, James George, Annie’s husband, and William Robinson, the eldest son of George Robinson, Thomas’s neighbour for more than fifty years, steadied themselves and then moved slowly over the uneven stone floor leading to the west door.

Sarah glanced at her mother cautiously. She’d sat with her that whole afternoon after the news came, seen her weep inconsolably at first, then listened as she’d spoken of Thomas, moving backwards and forwards over her life in Salter’s Grange, telling stories Sarah had heard many times before, laughing and weeping by turns. But now, Rose seemed quite steady as Selina stepped
out into the aisle to follow the coffin, concerned to do what was needed at this solemn time and unwilling to allow her own feelings to break through.

Together they walked behind Selina’s immediate family, those they knew from the front pew, and two older men who might be brothers, and a woman, most certainly her sister, who’d been seated across the narrow aisle. They passed between the packed rows of the congregation, standing unnaturally still, their dark suits and best dresses brought from the wardrobe on an ordinary working day.

The children from the slate-roofed schoolroom in the corner of the churchyard were lined up with their teacher in the pews at the very back, wide-eyed and silent. There was not one child among them who hadn’t stood in the doorway of the forge and looked into the dark, absorbed and fascinated by the two men who laboured there. They’d watched the sparks fly, the water seeth and steam when hot metal was plunged into its oily surface and the horses that twitched and trembled till they felt the comfort of a familiar soot-streaked hand, a known body smell of sweat and smoke. Through every day of their short lives, the ring of hammer on anvil had been as much a part of their life as the song of birds, or the movement of sunshine and cloud, or the walk
up and down the hill between the schoolroom and their home.

The low sunlight dazzled everyone as they emerged from the dimness and followed the coffin to the Scott burial plot, the newly-dug grave like a narrow trench in the frosted, tangled grass. They waited till all those who wished to see Thomas laid in his last resting place had found somewhere to stand. Some of the younger mourners made their way perilously through the uneven ground between neighbouring graves. Others congregated on the path that ran beside the vault where the Molyneux’s themselves rested in the shelter of the church they’d built on the highest point in the townland, some four generations earlier.

‘This,’ thought Sarah to herself, as she looked about her, ‘is why I cannot turn my back on this island. It is these people, their kindness and generosity, their willingness to help a neighbour.’

But even as the thought formed, she had to admit she had felt no such kindly feeling towards her countrymen for some time now. It was certainly not how she felt when she went to the mills and Tom, or one of the other managers had to report yet another fight between the men kicking a ball around in the lunch hour. There was the name calling, the waving of flags, the singing of party songs.

She was sick of it all, but especially of the
endless marching columns. Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers. With their belts and bandoliers, backpacks and wooden rifles, tramping across green fields or setting up targets for practise with real rifles.

Thomas would have none of it. Nor would her father. Long ago, they had said no to those who tried to intimidate them and they had both paid for it. Their partnership in the forge had to be ended when the master of the local lodge gave the word they were to be boycotted and their work fell away. Her father had been forced to take a job in Drumcairn Mill, while Thomas struggled on, on his own, making barely enough to keep going until, once again, a home rule bill failed. Then, confident the world would always remain the way they wanted it, the drilling faded away. No, she thought bitterly, no one would ever change in the slightest, minds so firmly made up.

Sarah looked across at Selina as she stood by the graveside, a tall, thin woman, her face lined. Sad, but not bitter. She had said often enough to Rose that what she and Thomas had shared all these years was a unexpected gift. She had not hoped for happiness again after her first husband died. Married to Mary-Anne, Thomas had given up all prospect of joy. But life had been kind. They had found each other.

Like everyone they knew, they’d suffered loss.
Little Sophie, bitten by a rabid dog. Thomas’s elder son gone to Canada, a few brief letters, then silence. Selina’s beloved younger sister. But they had had such joy in each other and in their other two children, Isobel and Ned, in Annie’s family and more recently in Robert and Ellen’s.

Sarah felt her shoulders tighten as the chill of the fading afternoon began to eat into her. Aware of a small movement at her side, she glanced up at Alex and saw a strange, pained look on his face. As the rector began the committal, she saw him stand even straighter, as rigidly to attention as if he were on parade.

She’d been surprised when he’d asked for time off to come to the funeral and even more surprised when he asked if he might drive her motor and go via Liskeyborough to collect Sam.

‘I didn’t know you’d even met Thomas,’ she said, when he appeared in her dining room the morning after the news had come.

‘Only once,’ he said, his eyes sparkling with sudden moisture.

She waited, her pen still poised over the papers she’d been working on when she’d heard his gentle tap at the door.

‘When I first arrived in Annacramp, Ned Wylie took me up to Thomas to see if he could give me a job,’ he began. ‘He couldn’t give me a job, but he did what you did,’ he blurted out unexpectedly. ‘He
accepted me. He looked at me and would’ve taken me, even if I’d had no name at all,’ he went on, his voice unsteady. ‘As it was, he sent me to your Da. I wish there were more like Thomas and your Da,’ he said, his eyes now glittering with tears.

She stood up and put a hand on his arm.

‘Have you time for a cup of tea, or is Da expecting you back down at Ballievy?’ she asked quietly.

‘No, we’d finished there,’ he said, collecting himself. ‘He said to come up and see what you’d like to do on Friday. Go with them and let me collect Sam or come with me to pick him up. Whatever
you
want.’

They’d gone into the sitting room, where the morning fire was just beginning to blaze up. She sat down opposite him, studying the familiar face, the unknown young man who had walked into their lives and now was so much a part of the family and her own trusted friend. How long was it now since they’d made their pact?

‘Alex, have you ever regretted leaving Canada?’

‘No, not for one moment,’ he replied firmly.

‘But aren’t there things you miss? People you were fond of or places you liked?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said cheerfully, as Mrs Beatty elbowed the half-open door and put a tray of tea on a low table between them.

He waited till Sarah thanked the older woman
and she’d closed the door firmly behind her.

‘The things I miss most are all things that gave me heart,’ he began, ‘like the great countryside and the colours in autumn and walking out on a summer evening. There were working people like myself I used to talk to and we put the world to rights, as the saying is here, but nothing in Canada ever seemed to be my own. I was only a worker, a piece of human machinery. I’d been imported like a bale of linen. I was useful, but of no relevance to anyone,’ he said calmly, without a hint of bitterness.

‘But if you’d stayed, Alex,’ she began. ‘If you’d married and raised a family …’ she broke off, suddenly wondering why Alex hadn’t found a girlfriend among the spinners and doffers or the various young relatives of the Jackson’s and their niece, Emily.

Alex laughed, so easily reading her thoughts.

‘I have my eye on someone, Sarah,’ he said slowly, ‘but I’m in no hurry. I’ll wait till you say yes to
your
man.’

‘And what if I don’t?’ she came back at him, without considering very closely what she was revealing.

‘You’d be a fool if you didn’t,’ he said promptly. ‘You were a different woman when you came back from Ashleigh Park. Before you’d even come down the gangplank, I looked up at you and thought
That’s it, that’s why that letter to Rose was so different. She’s met someone
.’

Sarah smiled ruefully. She’d said very little about Simon Hadleigh to anyone, even her mother, but she had not made it a secret either. Besides, the regular arrival of his letters with their exotic stamps, so prized by her son, was not something she could easily conceal, even if she’d wanted to do.

She suspected that Alex had guessed months ago, when she’d made a plan to go and visit Hannah at Christmas, but this was the first time he’d spoken directly. Yet once again, Alex had sensed what she was thinking before she’d even recognised it for herself.

A handful of small stones fell into the open grave, rattling on the shiny surface of the lowered coffin. She came back abruptly to the present, bowing her head as the rector prayed, the light breeze now flapping the wide sleeves of his vestments.

The mound of earth piled neatly beside the long, raw trench diminished rapidly as two men with gleaming spades refilled the grave, their sleeves rolled up as if it were a summer day. Flowers were spread across the disturbed earth and the tramped grass as the rector walked away and one by one the watchers moved forward to shake Selina by the hand and say the familiar words of comfort.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’

Sarah heard the phrase a dozen times before she was blinded by tears, the memory of her own loss suddenly as fresh as it had been that warm August day in the small Quaker burial ground at Moyallen.

She was grateful for the warmth of the house by the forge. In the big kitchen the doors of the stove stood wide open. In the sitting room beyond, tall flames rose from a log fire and reflected in the small panes of a corner cupboard where Selina kept her best china and in the heavily framed portraits of American relatives. In both rooms, extra chairs were set against the walls and a laden table in the kitchen carried refreshments for those, like the Hamiltons, who had come a distance.

‘Ach, d’ye mind the time …’

‘George, how are ye? Sure I haven’t laid eyes on you in years. What way are ye, man?’

‘Ach, she’s rightly considerin’. She always said she’d niver want to see m’father sittin’ in a chair.’

Sarah listened to the voices around her, touched her warm teacup to her ice cold cheeks and then drank slowly, grateful for the conversations that meant she didn’t have to make an effort herself. Her mother was talking to Selina, their heads close together. Sam was shaking hands with Robert’s
wife, Ellen, an awkward looking girl whose eyes never settled on the person she was speaking to. She said ‘Pleased to meet you,’ then went on to complain about the cold and how long the rector had kept them standing at the graveside.

‘Have a drop of this, Sarah, it’ll warm you up. You’re lookin’ desperit pale.’

Sarah smiled up at her father. She’d never much liked whiskey but she wouldn’t say no when he was doing his best to do his part, weaving his way through the crowded rooms, a bottle of Bushmills in his hand.

‘Your Ma just told me you used to live opposite the forge,’ Alex said, squeezing past Sam and Ellen Scott to come and stand beside her.

‘Didn’t you know that?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head.

Sarah looked at him in surprise. He seemed both agitated and anxious, as if this piece of information was of the greatest importance.

‘Come and I’ll show you,’ she said suddenly, finishing her whiskey. ‘It’ll only take a moment.’

She turned to Sam, spoke a word to him and slipped out of the crowded kitchen into the fading afternoon, Alex close behind her.

‘This way,’ she said, as he paused at the front door, looking down the path to the forge and the lane running on down to the main road.

With the shadows gathering, the long-abandoned
house over to their left looked like an overgrown wall, weighed down with ivy and screened by flourishing bushes. As she walked towards it, Sarah saw the thatch had finally fallen in at the far end. The roof of the main room sagged perilously but had not yet given way. She picked up her skirts, strode up to the door, turned the handle and stepped inside.

After the warmth and bright lamplight in the house, the air struck chill, but the smell of damp was off set by the fragrance of a stack of fresh logs piled against the door to the bedroom. She made her way across a pile of iron bars and between a few pieces of old furniture until she stood in front of the empty hearth.