On a Clear Day (17 page)

She stood looking down at the exotic bloom resting against her fingers so softly.

‘Something beautiful,’ she said quietly, as she wondered what its name might be. ‘Until I find out, I shall call you Clare’s Delight.’

She spent a few minutes removing faded blooms and yellowed leaves from the rain-battered plants in the flower bed below the window and then, remembering she was supposed to be getting tea ready, she dropped her gatherings in the old bucket hidden behind the aquilegia and headed for the kitchen.

As she reached the open front door, she was greeted by ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, being played with a needle that should certainly have been thrown away long ago. Her heart sank and weariness swept over her. She would be pleased enough to see Jamsey most afternoons, but today
it was late, her back ached, and her mind was so preoccupied with her talk with Jessie that the effort of talking to him intimidated her.

She paused, her hand on the latch. It was a bad sign that he was still here this late in the afternoon. Usually, he was gone long before this. He came often to play one or other of the two ancient gramophones which had filled the house with lively noise when Polly and Mary, Ellie and Florence, and Bob and Johnny were still at home. When he was having a bad day, he would come over from the farm to escape whatever had upset him and play records, often going on playing the same record over and over again. Sometimes she managed to cheer him up, but sometimes it was not till Robert came up from the forge and found some message for him to take to the farm that he was prompted to go home.

The music died away, but Jamsey did not lift the playing head and the needle went on scratching in the groove.

‘Hello, Jamsey,’ she said, quietly slipping round towards the window so that he could see her.

‘Up yer cock.’

As bad as that, she thought, looking at his face, pasty, white and immobile. His eyes regarded her, but did not see her.

‘No, Jamsey, don’t say that. Robert doesn’t like you to say that,’ she said firmly.

He stared at her and seemed to be about to repeat the forbidden words.

She put her finger to her mouth.

‘Shh. Lemonade and sasparilla, Jamsey. Say “lemonade and sasparilla” for me.’

‘All the same price, take your choice, lemonade and sasparilla,’ he said, tears springing to his eyes.

‘There now, don’t cry, Jamsey. What’ll we sing?’

He looked at her blankly as if he hadn’t even heard, but she saw him straighten himself as he always did when he sang. It was the only time he ever lost the sad droop to his shoulders.

Clare began, her light voice a thin thread in the large room where the last of the afternoon sun had retreated and shadows gathered in all the corners.

Half way through the first verse, a strange, halfstrangulated noise began to accompany her. Jamsey knew the words well enough but couldn’t sing them, though he was able to mime their cadence.

Clare turned towards him and conducted him with both her hands. She was so delighted when
suddenly he broke into a broad grin. Conducting him while they sang had never yet failed to make him smile.

‘One for the road, Ellie,’ he said the moment they stopped.

‘Name your pleasure,’ she replied promptly.

‘“Once in Royal David’s City”,’ he said, without hesitation.

For a moment, she wondered if she could manage it, but there was something about the way he looked at her, the way he leant slightly towards her, the way he called her ‘Ellie’, that gave her courage. She sat down opposite him and conducted him through all the verses. They were still singing when Robert came in for his tea.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t even started yet,’ she said apologetically, after Jamsey had raised a hand and suddenly departed. ‘He was in a bad way.’

‘Poor man, it’s hard to know what goes on in his head. Sometimes I don’t think it’s anythin’ anyone says or does, it’s just inside him.’

She put the kettle back on the stove and poked it up while he unfolded the newspapers she’d left by his chair. He never read the papers before his meal, but he liked to look them over, squinting down through the tiny round glasses with their springy earpieces that gave him such trouble when he went to hook them round his ears.

She cut slices of bread from the grey-brown
loaf and brought out the small cheese ration from the corner cupboard. There were two sorts of jam, gooseberry from Liskeyborough, and damson from the orchard behind the house. ‘Not worth picking this year,’ the Robinsons had said. ‘Take what you like.’ And Margaret had told her you could get extra sugar coupons for making jam if you asked for them. So she’d dug in the rubbish dump for jars, scrubbed them and boiled them, picked the fruit and made her own jam for the first time. She felt so proud of the full jars standing in The Room to cool. Even if it was a bit runny, it tasted wonderful.

After their meal, Robert took half an hour on the bed and Clare settled to read at the table because the light was better there than by the fireside. But she found it hard to concentrate, though the library book, a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
, was one of her favourites.

She stared out through the tiny orchard window. Then she ran her eye over all the assorted objects in the thick embrasure, the salt and pepper for the table, a bottle of ink for the accounts for the forge, a few old penholders with a paper bag containing threepence worth of shiny gold and silver nibs from Woolworths. The Tilley lamp lived there too, when not in use and a packet of candles for when they ran out of paraffin. There were matches and shoelaces, a pair of scissors and an airmail writing pad with envelopes.

‘Are ye studying again?’ he asked as he padded over to his chair where he’d left his boots.

‘No, this is for fun,’ she said, moving back to the settle on the far side of the stove. From there, he could hear her better, because he could see her face.

Just as Robert stretched up from putting on his own boots, they heard the scrape of someone approaching on the path outside. Usually they could guess who the visitor might be, but tonight they looked at each other in surprise. It was early yet. Not many men finished their work before dark and women usually visited during the day.

Clare jumped up, pulled open the kitchen door and saw Margaret’s husband, the eldest of the Robinson boys, standing there, a look on his face that had to mean bad news.

‘What’s wrong, Eddie? Is Margaret all right?’

‘She’s all right in herself.’

Eddie raised a hand in salute to Robert, pulled off his cap and sank down on the settle.

They waited for Eddie to collect himself. She felt a sick nausea sweep over her as the seconds dragged by like minutes.

‘I’m the bringer of bad news to yez both, an’ I’m sorry for it. Jack Rowentree is dead,’ he said, his voice as firm as he could manage. ‘Yer wee friend Jessie found him a while ago when she got back from town,’ he added, as he turned towards
Clare, his voice breaking down as he spoke.

‘Oh no!’

‘Ach, man dear, that’s desperate news. Was it the heart after all?’ asked Robert, his eyes staring, his face a stiff mask in the fading light.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Eddie, collecting himself and sweeping his hand back over his shock of brown hair. ‘That’s the worst of it, Robert. I have to tell ye, Jack had bad news from the doctor. He came home and shot hisself.’

Robert Scott wished he’d a drop of whiskey in the house for Eddie Robinson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. But the last time there’d been a bottle in the house was the previous Christmas when Bob had brought him some. Whiskey was hard to come by these days, even if you had the money to pay for it, as Bob did.

‘Margaret said I was to ask your opinion, Robert,’ Eddie began, taking a deep breath and looking up at the older man.

‘Aye,’ said Robert encouragingly.

Clare stood watching them in amazement. Eddie Robinson was such a brusque, lively character, never at a loss for a quick word or a witty remark. The transformation was startling.

‘By right we should go an’ pay our respects,’ he said, beginning firmly enough. ‘If the man had died natural I’d ’ave put the mare in the trap meself an’ sent Jamsey over to see if yez wanted a lift. But I
don’ know rightly what to do the way things are.’

Robert nodded and looked at Clare.

‘I’ll have to go and see Jessie, Granda, whatever you decide,’ she said hastily, aware that tears might suddenly stream down her face.

‘We must go as usual, Eddie,’ said Robert quietly. ‘We coulden leave that wumman in her grief to think her neighbours had turned their backs on her.’

‘I can go on my bike, Granda, that’ll leave more room in the trap,’ Clare began, ‘will Margaret face it, Eddie, she’s not got long to go, has she?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No, she hasn’t. She said she’d maybe not go to town tomorrow after all, but she’s for going over to Rowentrees, if Robert here thinks it’s the right thing.’

‘Aye, Eddie, ye can’t turn yer back on need. Woud ye give me a minit to see if I’ve a clean collar.’

‘There are some in the top drawer,’ said Clare in a whisper as he passed her on his way to his bedroom and left her alone with Eddie.

‘It’s not even that I know the man well, Clare. Sure he’s been away for years, all through the war. An’ even when it was over he was a long time gettin’ back. Torpedoed twice an’ then a prisoner of war,’ he went on, his hands outstretched, ‘An’ he comes back safe from all that and then this. Sure there’s no sense in it. No rightness at all.’

Clare stared at him. For the first time in the five years she’d known him, she saw a face unsmiling, shoulders hunched in despair, hands that struggled in the air to express a hurt he couldn’t put into words.

What could she say, what words of comfort were there?

She remembered that day, so long ago now, when the minister of the church her parents had attended, came to visit her at the hospital before Auntie Polly took her away. William had been excused the minister’s visit which made it slightly easier because she didn’t have to worry about him fidgeting or walking off. She’d sat on a high backed chair in a waiting room with heavy furniture and a highly polished table covered with years old magazines.

The minister had talked and then he had prayed. There wasn’t much difference between the two. What he said when he arrived, he said again in the prayer before he left. She’d wondered then if he thought God wasn’t listening because he said everything at least three times and it couldn’t be for her benefit for she was paying attention to every word.

‘God gives and God takes away. Blessed is the Lord. We cannot see what is best for us, but He sees. In His wisdom he binds and looses. Mummy and Daddy are in a far better place. A place
with no pain and no distress. They will be in the company of angels singing and praising the Lord. She wouldn’t want to call then back to this vale of tears when they could be united in fellowship with the Lord, now would she?’

He’d gone on for a long time and then read the twenty-third psalm which was nice because she liked it and knew it by heart. And then he’d told her that the Lord would comfort her and he had to be going.

She couldn’t really tell whether the Lord had comforted her or not. She couldn’t imagine how He would do it. She did wonder if He knew how to comfort little girls who had lost their parents. When she went on feeling so unhappy through all those long weeks in Belfast she’d wondered if perhaps the Lord was too busy. She hadn’t blamed Him because it probably wasn’t His fault, but she felt afterwards that it was always better not to expect too much help from anywhere and then you wouldn’t be too disappointed.

‘It’s an awful shock, Eddie,’ she began, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to Jessie. I can’t think of a single word of comfort, can you?’

He shook his head sadly.

‘Whin me father died I diden shed a tear. He’d had a good life and he’d started to ail, so in a kind of a way I was glad he diden linger and fail. An’ it was the same wi’ the mother, though she did go
kinda unexpected. But Jack Rowentree is a man in his prime. That’s not right, Clare. I can’t figure roun’ that atall,’ he said, standing up as Robert emerged from The Room looking uncomfortable in the fiercely-starched collar from the laundry which he felt obliged to wear on any occasion that called for an expression of formality.

‘I’ll see you both there,’ said Clare, glad to be able to escape before her tears let her down.

She set off back up the road to the turn where she and Jessie had parted not three hours earlier and skimmed down the slope where Jessie had disappeared from view when their roads diverged. She pedalled hard, indifferent to the fine, warm evening and the golden light that spread across the lush meadows and made them glow. She overtook a couple of ponies and traps and didn’t even glance up to see who else was travelling in the same direction and on the same sad errand. On the final slope up to the two storey house where Jessie had been born, a car passed her. It pulled into the farmyard ahead of her and found a place to stop among the crowd of traps and vans and bicycles already there.

The front door stood wide open and voices reached her as she leant her bicycle against the wall of an outhouse. The thought of going in to those crowded rooms appalled her. But she must. She had to find Jessie and her mother and say that
she was sorry and ask if there was anything she could do. That much, at least, she knew she had to do.

But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Pressed against the wall of the barn, she stood staring across at the house, its windows all thrown wide to let the spirit go, its blinds all drawn, so that it looked as if the dwelling itself had closed its own eyes and was trying to shut out the memory of what had happened.

It was then that Clare thought she heard someone crying. She listened and was sure. The sound seemed to be coming from the outhouse behind her so she pushed open the worn half door. She saw Jessie lying on the straw, her arms over her head, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed.