The Teacher at Donegal Bay
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There were two ways down to McTaggart’s farm. You could climb upwards on a rough track till you struck the metalled road and then follow it along for a mile or more, till it dipped into the head of the glen and then rose up out of it again to strike across the plateau to Ballymena, or you could drop down the hillside and pick your way along a narrow path which followed the valleyside just where the overlying basalt met the underlying chalk and the rough, hungry land of the dark rock became suddenly gentler and greener.
George chose the low path and set off downhill between the gorse bushes, the rush of water in his ears. Their own stream from which he carried the buckets for washing and cleaning was in full spate and the broad flat stepping stones his father had placed there were well covered. He stepped gingerly across, the cold water tugging at his ankles, concerned for neither his much-mended clothes nor his bare feet but for the book tucked inside his battered satchel. Once safely across, he took to the straggling grass, still wet from the rain and scattered with wildflowers. Soon the walking became easy. With chalk beneath, the turf was short and springy, dry already after the rain and sprinkled with the yellow stars of tormentil and the blue bell flowers of milkwort.
He stopped on a small, grassy lawn and listened to the muffled roar of a stream in its subterranean course. He tipped back his head and looked up. Over the black, frost-shattered basalt flowed one of the many streams that coursed down the rock-strewn beds they had carved out for themselves. Where he stood, it had already dived deep, seeking out the cracks and fissures in the porous rock. Only in the wettest of winters did these streams overflow their underground routes and flood across the patches of springy turf like this one where he stood wriggling his toes luxuriously in the softness.
Below him the valley lay green and shining in the sunlight, the two grey trackways weaving their way along either side of the river until they met the Coast Road. Beyond the straggling village on the southern side of the glen, an arc of sand dazzled in the sunlight. Blue and barely rippled by the breeze, the sea lay so calm, so tranquil. It was hard to imagine the winter storms churning the waves into great crashing breakers, brown with sand and broken shell, boiling up the beach and snatching hungrily at the concrete base of the new road that took the visitors in their jaunting cars to see the sights of the rocky coast, from The Glens to Ballycastle and beyond.
Across the calm water lay the coast of Scotland, so sharp and clear he felt he could reach out and touch it. He smiled, remembered his father and what he used to say on all the fine summer days like today when he came back into the cottage, calling out for Ellen. ‘Boys it’s a powerful day, Ellen. Iss tha’ clear I ken see them tossin’ ther hay o’er in Scotlan’.’
Reluctantly he walked on, his eyes still moving over the valley below. The hawthorn had flowered late, right at the end of May, but it had blossomed so richly the branches looked as if they were laden with snow. The scent lay heavy on the air and he drank it in, savouring it like the smell of delectable food, bread fresh from the griddle or bacon frying over the fire.
As he strode up a small rise where the path opened into a broad track leading to the farm, he must have closed his eyes for a moment to taste its richness, for suddenly he found his way blocked. He was looking up at Andy McTaggart, the eldest of the McTaggart sons, astride one of the big plough horses. Andy stared down at him, the reins in one hand, an elegant-looking whip in the other.
‘’Tis a gae fine mornin’,’ Georgie said agreeably as he waited for the horse to get used to his presence and allow him to pass by. But the rider made no motion to let him through.
‘Is ther nae shorter way fer ye tae gae doun an’ o’er tae the school?’ he asked unpleasantly.
‘Ther is, aye. But I hae a message for yer mather.’
‘Oh, an’ what’s that?’
Georgie felt the blood rush to his face as he remembered the two eggs in his satchel. For a moment he thought he might make up some message, a greeting, or a bit of news. But it was no good, he knew he wasn’t quick enough for the likes of Andy McTaggart.
‘’Tis for hersel’,’ he said, flustered.
‘Oh aye, it is. We all nae tha’. Come to beg yer piece tae tak tae school. Ye’re a beggar, Georgie Erwin.’
The horse shuffled, suddenly uneasy, and McTaggart struck him with the whip. It was not a hard blow but it made a crack that sounded loud in the stillness of the morning. Georgie knew that he was showing off, copying some horseman he had seen when his father took him to the Antrim Races. But the knowledge helped him not at all. He felt his face stiffen and the pleasure of the June day fall away as if a thunderstorm had rolled down the valley and shut off the sun.
‘I am nae,’ he said fiercely, ‘I hae me piece in me bag, so I hae. Ye can tell yer mather I’ll be late the day. I hae an errand to the shop.’
So saying, Georgie darted past, his eye level with McTaggart’s boot in the short stirrup of the saddle. It was well-polished and so new it had not even been mended. He didn’t make for the path down into the valley but struck out between the bushes and the outcrops of rock, indifferent to the sharp stones and brambles he encountered that bruised his feet and tore at his bare legs.
‘I’m nae a beggar. I’m nae a beggar,’ he said, over and over again as he reached the road and strode out along it as fast as his legs would carry him. And all the while, high above his head, he could hear the crack of the whip and the noise of hoofs on the track that led back to McTaggart’s farm.
Chapter 3
When the grandfather clock in the hall chimed four, George opened his eyes again and breathed a sigh of relief. The pain had gone. No sign of it at all. He did feel very drowsy and a bit confused, but he managed to make up the fire without bending over and without setting off the pain again. As the fresh logs sparked and crackled, he sat back gratefully and looked at the clock.
‘That’s another week over, dear,’ he said aloud, thinking of Jenny.
He’d been to her school on its Open Day last year and he could imagine her coming down those stairs with her pile of exercise books and the briefcase he’d bought her when she got her scholarship. He wondered when she would arrive. With her shopping to do and no car to help, it would hardly be much before six. He’d asked Edna at supper time last night but clearly he shouldn’t have. She’d snapped his head off. How was she expected to know, she’d said, for didn’t Jennifer always suit herself?
It was a sad thing that Edna got so little pleasure from her daughter, but it seemed as if nothing Jenny did ever pleased her. No matter what, her mother still complained. He couldn’t understand it himself. But then, he’d long ago stopped trying to understand Edna. He, too, had tried to please her once, but he hadn’t managed it. Not for very much of their life anyway.
He sighed, picked up his book and read a few lines. He put it down again. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept wandering. One minute he was thinking about Jenny and listening for her key in the door, and the next he was puzzling over why Edna had been so very sharp last night when he had only asked a simple question.
He leaned back and fell asleep almost immediately.
He was back in the schoolroom in Ballydrennan. He could smell the turf from the fire which swirled round them when the wind blew down the chimney and hear the squeak of chalk on slate. Above the blackboard was a Union Jack and a map of the world patterned with the brightly coloured red patches of British territory. Morning and afternoon Master McQuillan said prayers. He prayed for the King and the Empire, for rain to plump up the potatoes if it went dry in May, or sunshine for the hay in July, or dry weather for the grain harvest in August and safe journeys for the men going to Scotland to look for work, and God’s blessing on the sick children and widowed women the glen so seldom lacked.
The three Hughes sisters came to school together. He used to see them as he came across the river and stopped to dry his feet on the soft grass by its side. Edna was some years older than himself and already a monitor with duties teaching the younger children. She walked straight-backed, unswerving to the door marked Girls, with Mary and Annie by the hand. They always sat as far away from the boys’ side as she could get them. Boys were dirty and rough, she said when she scolded them for playing Hide and Seek and Tig with them in the lunch break.
He had never taken any notice of girls when he was at school. There were books on a shelf by the master’s desk that could be borrowed during the breaks and he read in every free minute he had. Up at McTaggart’s, clearing out stables and byres, he would go over in his mind the things he had read during the day. It was a long time before he began to notice girls and the first time he saw Edna after he’d left school, she completely ignored him.
Working at the farm, George was often sent down to the forge with some item to be repaired. He and Robert got on well together and sometimes George would suggest a mend that was quicker and more effective than the way Robert had been using for years. When he left school, the smith told him there was work enough for two. He could serve his apprenticeship in the usual way, receiving as payment only his daily food, but if he concentrated on the farm machinery and left Robert free to do the work he most enjoyed, the shoeing of horses and the making of gates, then he would pay him a small weekly wage as well.
The first day at the forge came as a blow to George. Well used to hard work, he set off cheerfully enough only to discover he could barely lift the heavier hammers. When he pulled on the bellows to blow up the fire, nothing much happened and he laboured till the sweat ran down his face before he could even move them. Reluctant to admit such weakness, he exhausted himself. By evening he was so weary he could hardly stand. And that was when Edna appeared. Still wearing the long black skirt and high-necked white blouse she wore for her work, she came to bring them tea and thick buttered slices of bread for their evening meal.
It was a summer evening. He looked up from the dark corner behind the hearth and saw her standing in the doorway, the sunlight pouring round her, catching her fair hair and touching her pale skin. She seemed to glow in the warm radiance of the sunlight and yet remain cool and fresh. He was sure that angels must look just like she did. He gazed across at her and saw her give a sudden sweet smile to her father. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, she shot a glance around the workshop, turned on her heel and went walking up the path to the house, her skirt brushing the daisies in the grass, her back as straight and unswerving as always.
She never spoke to George or acknowledged his presence beyond the barest minimum in the five years he worked with her father. Indeed, if three events had not occurred within the space of as many weeks in the spring of 1930 it is unlikely she would ever have spoken to him again.
The first of those three events George created himself, though he did not know that he had. He had been working in Ballymena as a mechanic with a firm producing traction engines. In April, he finally completed work on the motor car he had bought after it had collided with one of the twisted pine trees on the bog road between Ballymena and Ballymoney. The owner was a wealthy young man who had been happy enough to get rid of it, having barely escaped with his life when the steering column sheared. It had taken George six months to rebuild. On his first free weekend he drove the car home to show to his mother. When she had admired every detail of its construction, stroked the leather of the seats and been driven a few miles up the road and back, George left her to rest and drove down the new road into the valley to visit Robert at the forge.
Robert was delighted to see him. He was well enough, he said, but Lizzie wasn’t so good. The doctor had told Edna that it was only a matter of time before her mother was a complete invalid. On the other hand he’d had great news from Toronto. Annie was engaged to be married and was saving up for her trousseau, whatever that was. It seemed her future husband had a big job with a motor company called Ford and she was going to be well looked after. Her intended had promised to bring her home on a visit, as soon as they were married.
When Edna came down the path to call her father to his supper, she didn’t recognise George at first. But when she did she smiled at him, ran her hand across the leather seat and said how well he was looking. Within a few weeks it was common knowledge that Edna Hughes and George Erwin were walking out. They were married within the year.
George woke twice more in the course of the afternoon. The first time he got slowly to his feet and went to the window hoping that Jennifer might suddenly appear in the Drive or coming up the garden path. The second time he knew he could no longer avoid going upstairs to the bathroom. As he passed his bedroom, he remembered the little pile of new catalogues. Edna always complained about them if she found them in the dining room but she was still in town and besides, Jennifer would take them back up for him when she came.
Halfway down the stairs he realised he’d made a mistake. They were too heavy for him to carry one-handed and he felt so unsteady he had to keep his other hand firmly on the banister. Reluctantly, he let go of all but one, and watched them bounce and slither their way down the stairs ahead of him.
When he got to the bottom, he manoeuvred them one at a time with his toe through the dining-room door and across to his chair by the fire. He looked at them wryly. Today was one of those days when he knew better than to bend over, but only a contortionist could make them into a neat pile with one foot. He sat down gratefully, opened the volume he was carrying and fell asleep again almost immediately. He did not wake when Combine Harvesters thudded softly into the dense pile of the new hearthrug, nor when his wife banged the front door behind her, tramped down the hall and peered round the open door at him on her way to the kitchen.
‘A grate help he is,’ she said as she dropped her carrier bags on the work surface by the sink. ‘He can run off all right to that office of his when the notion takes ’im, but not a hand’s turn does he do at home.’
She pushed off the elegant high-heeled shoes that had punished her corns all day and jerked open the larder door for her pull-ons. They weren’t there. Without her high heels she looked small and stooped. At sixty-six, with a look of sour discontent on her face, she could have been taken for more. The social graces she considered necessary for her public appearances and particularly for her meetings with Maisie McKinstry she habitually cast off with her shoes. Now, in her own kitchen, she made no attempt to check the catalogue of her discontents.
‘Never so much as “Can I help you”. Not that he’s any use anyway and him so slow. All day to peel a potato. What good is that when you’re in a hurry?’
She squinted up at the clock, her eyes narrowing, the lines of her mouth slack. Jennifer would be arriving at half past five. Expecting her supper no doubt, just like her father. He’d sit there till she came and then it would be a different story. Jennifer this and Jennifer that, and would you like a wee sherry, dear. He never asked her if she’d like a wee sherry. Not that she ever drank sherry but it was manners to ask.
She pulled a paper bag full of soda farls out of her carrier so fiercely one of them escaped and bounced to the floor. She picked it up, saw its pale floury surface was unmarked by the fall and put it in the bread bin with the others. These cleaning women were all the same. Everything bright as a new pin the first few times, then you’d only to look to find what they hadn’t done.
She put away the rest of her shopping, collected a colander full of potatoes from the sack in the larder, and filled the basin with hot water. As the warmth released the smell of earth, unbidden and unwelcome the voice of her old grandmother came to her from the long past.
‘Ed-na, Ed-na,’ it called, high-pitched, peremptory.
‘I’m busy,’ she called back, knowing it would not have the slightest effect.
‘I’ve slipped down the bed.’
‘Not far enough, ye haven’t,’ she muttered as she dried her hands and went into the small, dark bedroom.
Mary Anne lay barely visible, her bright eyes peering over the mound of disordered bedclothes, her small head overhung by the pillows. She watched the girl’s every move. Critical. Malevolent.
‘Where’s Lizzie? Where’s yer mather? It’s her place to cum up and see ta me.’
‘She’s nae well hersel’. Ye know that.’
‘An’ what’s wrong wi’ her, a young thing like her? She’s no right to be takin’ to her bed at her age. Lift me up. How canna ate me supper lyin’ doon? Is it not near ready yit?’
Edna tried to lift her up but the old woman grabbed at her arms and almost pulled her over. Edna breathed in the odour of her unwashed body. It smelt of age, of decay. Like the cottage itself with its rotting thatch and damp walls. She hated coming here. And she hated this old woman who bossed her around just like her mother did. Always wanting something. Edna this and Edna that. Fetch and carry. Well, she’d show them. She’d show them all. She’d get out of this place if it was the last thing she did. And they could rot together for all she cared.
She rinsed the potatoes and dropped them noisily into a copper-bottomed saucepan. Every time she washed those filthy potatoes George had brought home from some farm or other, it reminded her of the old days. Well, she wasn’t going to put up with that. The past was over and gone. And good riddance. She’d give the rest of those dirty old potatoes away. The women on the garden produce stall at the Autumn Fayre would think they were just great. More fool them. Then she could go back to buying clean ones at the supermarket. George would never notice the difference.
‘Hello, Edna. Can I do anything to help?’
She turned, startled by the quiet voice. ‘Oh, so you’re awake,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Can I lay the table?’ he continued mildly.
‘Well, you know where the cloth is.’
He nodded to himself and turned to go. Something had upset her. But what was anybody’s guess. Sometimes she didn’t even seem to know herself.
‘And you might just redd up those catalogues lying round the place,’ she shouted as he closed the door gently behind him.
She bent down to the fridge and pulled out the casserole she had cooked the previous day. She caught the handle of a small china jug. It fell over and spilled milk down into the crisper drawer, showering a limp cabbage, a handful of carrots and a couple of mouldy tomatoes.
That was just typical of what she had to put up with, wasn’t it? Maisie McKinstry didn’t have to wear herself out bending down and poking around in her fridge. All her stuff was eye-level. But then her husband had money. William John McKinstry could buy and sell George Erwin and not even notice it. The man might have no education and no manners, but he did have a bit of go about him. And that was one thing you could never say about George. If he’d ever listened to her he might have made something of himself. He could have done just as well as any McKinstry if he hadn’t been so pig-headed.
She turned the oven full on, pushed the casserole in and banged the door. If it hadn’t been for her they’d still be stuck in that wee house in Ballymena. He said they couldn’t move till he had some capital behind him, but that was just an excuse. What capital did William John have? And now Maisie could have anything she wanted.
‘Shure why don’t you and George buy a nice wee bungalow down at Cultra, Edna? Surely George doesn’t haff to go on working,’ she said aloud, exaggerating the sweet-as-pie tone Maisie had used over lunch.
She’d passed it off, said George didn’t feel quite up to a move. She wasn’t going to let Maisie McKinstry think they couldn’t afford it. But George wouldn’t move for her or anyone else. He had always done exactly what he wanted with never a thought for her. And Jennifer was every bit as bad. Like father like daughter. If it weren’t for Harvey, her life would hardly be worth living.
The phone rang with a peremptory note. She hurried into the hall. Out of habit she composed her face muscles in just the same manner as she did when it was the doorbell. She picked up the receiver.
‘I’d have phoned you earlier, Edna, but Karen said she saw you in Brand’s and you and Mrs McKinstry were having a day out, so I didn’t want to bother George. How is he, Edna?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Working away as usual,’ she replied automatically. It was only Mary Pearson from the other side of the Drive about the church flower rota and as usual she was looking for information. Well, she wasn’t going to get any. ‘I’m just getting a meal, Mary, can we have a chat another time?’
‘Oh, yes, how thoughtless of me. I forgot. Karen did say Jenny was coming this evening. In fact, Edna, I think a car has just stopped at your house. I’ll see you at the P.W.A. meeting on Monday and we can arrange things then. ‘Bye.’
Edna dropped the receiver as if it had suddenly become hot and hurried in her stocking feet into the sitting room. The curtains on the large window that overlooked the front garden and the road beyond were still undrawn. The room which ran the full depth of the house was empty and dark, except for patches of light where the street lamp outside had begun to flicker in the low light of the overcast evening. Cautiously, she edged herself into the one place where she had a good view of the garden gate but could not herself be seen.
A car had stopped, but it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with her. It was an awful old thing with white patches here and there as if someone had been trying to mend it. Probably some workman coming to collect his money on a Friday night from some of the better neighbours who were having improvements made.
She was just about to draw the curtains to shut out prying eyes when she saw a movement and drew back. Someone was getting out of the car. She’d just wait and see who it was.
‘My God,’ she breathed as she recognised the familiar figure. ‘Has that girl no sense at all?’
She peered forward as a second figure, equally familiar, unwound itself from the driver’s seat and stood leaning against the car door looking down at her daughter.
‘Keith McKinstry,’ she said to herself, her voice thick with fury. She was sure Mary Pearson would be looking out of her upstairs window to see who it was. Of all people, it was that beggar. She’d never liked him but she’d thought if he was clever enough to study law at Queen’s he’d have more wit than to go running around with a crowd of Catholics and troublemakers. Young Socialists, was what they called themselves. So Maisie said. Though to her credit she and William John had told him where to go. Letting them down like that after all they’d done for him.
He was getting something out of the back seat of the car now. What was it? Only her basket and her briefcase. And there she was standing there looking up at him, all big eyes and smiles. As she watched, Edna saw Keith McKinstry bend down and kiss her on the cheek.
‘Oh, that’s very nice, isn’t it, in front of all my neighbours,’ she began furiously.
She would have said more but Jennifer had turned away and now had her hand on the garden gate. She scurried down the hall, shut the kitchen door firmly behind her and pushed her feet back into the high heels which she had kicked under the kitchen table. Then she took out the scouring powder and began to clean the sink vigorously.
Chapter 4
I looked back over my shoulder as I put my key in the lock. Beyond the shrubs and trees that screened one side of the Drive from the other, the black and white shape of Keith’s Volkswagen headed for the main road. I waved, but he didn’t see me.