On a Clear Day (3 page)

‘I want to sit in the front’, muttered William sulkily.

Clare didn’t even nudge him for being rude, she just followed him to where the principal’s Austin sat gleaming in the sun. It was so hot you could smell the petrol and when she got into the back seat the leather was so hot she thought it might burn her legs.

William marched round to the front seat and to her surprise the principal just opened the door from the inside and let him climb in.

They drove across the empty playground and down the hill to the Courthouse, but instead of driving up College Hill and going up Abbey Street to the County Infirmary, the principal turned along English Street.

‘This isn’t the way to the hospital,’ cried Clare, who was very near to tears.

‘No, Clare, it isn’t. We’re going to a different hospital from the one you know. It’s a hospital where you can stay till Mummy and Daddy are better.’

Clare watched him wipe his perspiring face again. She could see his face in the rear-view mirror and he seemed quite different from his usual self. Daddy knew him well because they were in the same lodge, which was a kind of club men went to one Friday night in the month. He said he was a good sort, always ready for a joke. But today he didn’t look as if he could even smile never mind make a joke.

The principal was indeed a good sort. It was because he knew Sam Hamilton so well that he was in such distress. It was not his job to tell his children how bad things were, that Ellie Hamilton had aborted the child she was carrying and was in a critical condition and that Sam himself, as fine a man in his prime as you might wish to see, had collapsed in the street outside the shop where he worked.

He drove quickly along the empty road and turned right about a mile out of Armagh. He slowed down on the wide sweep of gravel that swung away across empty acres of grassland towards a hard-faced, grey building set on a slight elevation in the low, undulating countryside.

He was expected. As the car drew up, a white
figure came down the steps to greet them, took a child by each hand and said the briefest of goodbyes to the man who stood towering over them, quite at a loss for anything to say.

As the principal of the Armagh Primary School made his way back from the Fever Hospital, one of his senior boys collected the bell from his office and walked up and down the corridors ringing it vigorously.

The clangour echoed round the empty corridors and escaped through the open windows. It was now half past three.

Two days after Ellie Hamilton lost her unborn child, the hot weather ended in thunderstorms and torrential rain. Rainwater streamed down the tall window of the bare, half-tiled room where her children played ludo and tiddley winks on the white surface of one of the two small beds that stood on the highly-polished floor. Whenever Clare raised her eyes from the game in which William was completely absorbed, the view over the surrounding countryside appeared only as a blurred wash of green and dark grey. For Ellie, her mother, the sun never stopped shining. As she moved in and out of consciousness responding sometimes to the nurses who bathed her face and hands or coaxed her to drink, she was aware only of the light, a warm golden light that spread all around her.

Late on the morning of her third day in hospital, she began to move towards the light. Suddenly, she found herself standing under the rose-covered arch that framed the front door of her parents’ home. On the fresh morning air she caught the hint of smoke from the newly-lit fire in the forge. Somewhere nearby a blackbird sang a joyous celebration of
the new day. For a moment she felt reluctant to step outside, to break the deep sense of peace and stillness all around her. Then, quite suddenly, she heard Sam’s voice from the orchard. There was a burst of laughter from the children. At the sound of their voices she stepped through the doorway without another thought and was gone, the light enfolding her. By her bedside a young nurse stared in amazement at the sweet smile on her pale face and the tiny indentation made by her lifeless body on the surface of the high white bed.

The children were not told of their mother’s death that day. After much discussion with her staff, the matron decided it would be better if their father told them when he himself had recovered enough to do so. In the meantime, the younger nurses were sent to play with them when they could be spared from other duties. They were brought books and toys. Each time a nurse appeared in the children’s room the little girl asked to see her parents and each time the nurse, as she had been instructed, told her gently that it would have to be a little longer before she could see either of her parents.

The little boy seemed indifferent to what was happening. His only wish was to go outside. As it was now clear that neither child had been infected, they were allowed out as soon as the lawn adjoining their ground floor room had dried
after the rain. As long as Clare would kick back the football which one of the male orderlies had brought for William, he seemed perfectly happy, paying not the slightest attention to where he was, or to the comings and goings of nurses and doctors, or the fate of either of his parents.

It was a shock even to the most experienced of the nursing staff when later that same day, before he had yet been told of his wife’s death, Sam Hamilton, who had been holding his own with the fever which had struck him, had a heart attack. The Fever Hospital was not equipped for such an event and though they acted promptly and did what they could, phoning the Infirmary in Armagh for immediate help, it was of no avail. While the doctor was driving between the city hospital, perched on its hill in the centre of Armagh and the isolated building only a mile or so away, Sam had a further attack and died.

Standing in Matron’s office as he wrote out the death certificate, Dr Adams from the Infirmary heard the unexpected sound of children’s voices. Puzzled, he went to the window and saw Clare and William playing on the lawn. He asked who they were and to his amazement received no answer. It was the first and only time in his long association with the Fever Hospital that he had seen its formidable Matron overcome by tears.

Both the Scotts and the Hamiltons were local families with large connections. Brothers and sisters of Ellie’s parents and of Sam’s had married both within the city itself and in the villages that had grown up in the last century within walking distance of the various Armagh markets. Sam was a respected member of the Masons and had recently been made Master of the Orange Lodge which he had joined when he moved to Armagh. The entire lodge paraded at his funeral, their sashes decorated with large black rosettes. And when colleagues, friends and family took up the formal method of expressing grief by making insertions in the newspaper, the Armagh Gazette had seldom had so many columns of text under any one name.

But the rituals of funeral and wake did little to mitigate the shock to the whole community that an illness, long-absent from the catalogue of everyday maladies, should strike so suddenly, so unpredictably and so tragically. Nor did those rituals do anything whatever to help the two children who had suffered such grievous loss. They remained in the care of the hospital, carefully excluded from all the public expressions of mourning.

Clare wept as if her heart would break when the matron herself took on the task of telling them what had happened. But almost before that kind lady had offered her clean handkerchief to the
child she began to ask questions. In the long hours of the night and in the small spaces when William did not insist on her total attention, she had feared the worst and had already begun to think what would have to be done.

‘I’ll have to look after William now,’ she said quite firmly, ‘but what shall I do about shopping for the groceries? I won’t have any money and I’m too young to get a job …’

She looked anxiously at William who had gone to the door and would have gone outside had Matron not called him back.

‘Clare, would you like me to send Trissey to play with William so that you and I can have a talk?’

Clare nodded and breathed a sigh of relief when the young nurse arrived to collect him. She had tried so hard to keep him amused because she knew her mother would want her to look after him, but the hours had been so long. Now she thought she’d have to do it forever because Mummy wasn’t there any more. And at the thought of Mummy not being there any more she broke down and wept again on the matron’s starched bosom, appalled by the world that was opening up in front of her, a world full of William and no Mummy, or Daddy, to make it seem worthwhile.

Matron let her cry, stroked her dark curls with one hand and surreptitiously wiped away her own
tears with the other. What was there to say to the child that wasn’t a pathetic platitude? She’d hear enough about the will of God and doing his bidding when the minister got to her after the funerals. What she needed right now was an aunt, or a grandmother, to step into the aching space the loss of her parents had created. So far, her own enquiries about the family had not been very productive. No one had contacted her about the children as yet, but then both families were busy making funeral arrangements and they knew the children were in good hands. Besides, it was unlikely that any of them had a telephone and it was a hard thing to have to use a call box at a time like this.

‘Will we be going home now, Matron?’ Clare asked, quite forgetting that she and William could hardly live in an empty house.

‘Well you are now free to leave here,’ Matron began slowly.

She wondered if Clare would understand if she explained about incubation periods and carriers. She liked the child but had had little time to spend with her, for Ellie and Sam were not the only victims to be brought to the hospital during the last week. There had been no other deaths as yet but if the rate of admission continued to increase as it had in the last week, then it was only a matter of time before there were.

‘Did you think William and I would get the fever too? Was that why we had to stay indoors?’ she persisted.

‘Yes, it was. But you’re both all right now,’ she said reassuringly.

The small forehead was wrinkled in thought. It was clear that her reassurance had been irrelevant. Whatever was shaping in the child’s mind it had clearly moved beyond the question of being ill.

‘Will William and I have to go to Dr Barnardo’s?’ she asked politely.

Matron smiled in spite of herself.

‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Dr Barnardo’s is for children who have no family, but you have lots of aunts and uncles, haven’t you?’

‘Oh yes, lots and lots, but we could only go for a week. When we go to Granny Hamilton or Auntie Polly for a holiday Mummy always says that a week is quite long enough. She said you can’t go imposing on people just because they are your own family. It’s just not fair.’

‘But I’m sure some of your aunts and uncles would like to have you, Clare. Has Mummy got any sisters?’

‘Oh yes, but they have their own troubles,’ she replied promptly.

‘What do you mean?’

Clare tried to remember which aunts were real aunts and which were just Mummy’s girlfriends.
Sometimes she got a bit mixed up and once at school she’d had a very embarrassing time when she said she had six grannies. One of the other girls in her class said you couldn’t possibly have more than two, so Clare had recited off the names of all six.

‘Oh you are silly,’ said the girl who had challenged her. ‘It’s only your mother’s mother and your father’s mother that are proper grannies.’

This time she would be more careful. Mummy had three sisters and two brothers, but Daddy had nine brothers and sisters altogether and she couldn’t even remember all their names.

She looked up at Matron and decided that she must be thinking one of her aunts would come and collect her with William and take them away to a new home. That was what usually happened with orphans in books unless they went into an orphanage like
Anne of Green Gables.
Then you got sent out as a servant to work on a farm when people like Marilla and Matthew needed a boy to help. Anne had been so lucky to get sent to them by mistake. She wouldn’t mind helping people like Marilla and Matthew.

She took a deep breath and began counting on her fingers; ‘Well, Auntie Polly has a heart of gold, but Uncle Jimmy has a bad back since he fell off the scaffolding at the aircraft factory. He’s on the Boru most of the time and Auntie Polly has to
work very hard to pay all the bills. She has three big sons but two of them only think about number one. That’s why she can’t get up to see us very often and we only see her when Daddy borrows Uncle Harold’s car. Auntie Mary is in Michigan and has four children of her own and Auntie Florence is a glamour girl. Auntie Polly says she’s great fun but she lives in London and she says she’s never going to marry.’

Matron listened, fascinated as Clare continued to list the various members of her family. She discovered that Clare’s Granda Scott was a real gentleman but he had no hands. This might have been alarming had not Clare immediately explained that it meant outside his forge he was no use at all and couldn’t even fry bread without it sticking to the pan. He did his best to help Granny with her jobs because she had bad legs and her chest had never been right after all those years at the Ring Spinners, but he wasn’t much good at it and Mummy worried about the bed linen and the curtains.

‘I could go and help to look after Granny Scott,’ she went on, ‘but William wouldn’t like it. There’d be no one to play with him while I was busy and he’d get himself so dirty in the forge. If there’s somewhere to get dirty then William’ll find it,’ she added sadly.

The strange thing about this child, thought Matron, is that although she’s repeating what she’s
heard her parents say, she has thought about it and she understands what she’s saying in her own way. If she makes the Unemployment Bureau sound like the High King of Ireland it’s hardly her fault. That’s what she’s heard so that’s what she calls it. A very sharp ear for what people say, Matron decided, as she listened to Clare’s account of her family.

The large black telephone on Matron’s desk rang so loudly it made Clare jump.

‘Yes, I’ll come immediately,’ Matron said, standing up as she put the receiver back. ‘I’m sorry Clare, I have to go, but as soon as I can we’ll go on with our talk. Why don’t you go and have a wee walk yourself while William’s busy. If you see the gardener he’ll give you some flowers if you ask him nicely.’

Clare had never seen so many flowers in her life. Formal wreaths in great circular mounds, crosses and emblems with words and mottoes picked out in individual blooms, sprays and posies from local gardens of every colour and hue. In the shady greenness of the Presbyterian burying ground, the spill of colour washed so far beyond the newly-cut graves that from the moment her father’s youngest brother parked his car and opened the heavy iron gates at the end of the long beech avenue to let her and Auntie Polly pass through, she could see quite clearly where her parents lay.

She walked quickly, her own flowers in one hand, a shopping bag with a jam pot and a tightly screwed up bottle of water in the other. She wondered where she was going to put her bunch of marigolds and asters with all these other beautiful flowers spread everywhere. She looked over her shoulder and found that Auntie Polly and Uncle Jack were now a long way behind.

Jack and Polly had met for the first time two days earlier, the morning of the funeral, when Jack had met Polly’s train at Armagh station and taken her to the church on the Mall. Now Clare observed that they were walking very slowly, talking quietly, nodding towards other graves they passed, people they both knew though their own lives had been separated by Polly’s fourteen years of absence and by Jack being sixteen years her junior. As they moved towards the double burial, Clare saw Uncle Jack point out to Auntie Polly how the grass for yards around had been tramped flat by the feet of hundreds of mourners.

The wreaths all had little cards with messages written in black ink in beautiful handwriting, except for some that said Interflora on the back and had messages in ball-point from London and Toronto, Michigan and Vancouver. ‘In loving memory of a valued and respected colleague – The Staff of Harold Mitchell Ltd, Scotch Street.’ ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus – a beloved sister and
brother-in-law, Robert and Sadie Scott and family, Ballymena.’ ‘We shall met again on the other side of Jordan – John and Sarah Scott and family, Enniskillen’, ‘With fond memories of Ellie and Sam – Armagh Lawn Tennis and Archery Club’.