ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published as Come Rain, Come Shine in 2012

This edition published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © Anne Doughty 2020

Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008328832

Praise for Anne Doughty

‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’

‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’

‘I have read all of Anne’s books - I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’

‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’

‘A true Irish classic’

‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’

Also by Anne Doughty

The Girl from Galloway

The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay

Last Summer in Ireland

The Teacher at Donegal Bay

For all those who have cherished

hope for peace in Ireland

‘Do what you can, do it in love and be sure that it

will be more than you ever imagined.’

Deara, fifth century healer from Emain

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Anne Doughty

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Acknowledgements

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Dear Reader...

Keep Reading...

About the Publisher

One

September 1960

The moment the Belfast flight was announced, Clare Hamilton put down her coffee cup and picked up the large, beribboned box parked neatly under the table. She walked quickly across the departure lounge, a small, slim figure in an elegant moss green suit and was among the very first passengers to enter the quiet, echoing corridor that led down to the roar and whine of engines, the oscillating turbulence of aircraft movements and the dazzling glare of acres of pale tarmac.

The waiting Vanguard shimmered in the strong evening sun as she paused to hand over her ticket. How long it might be before she flew again she could not guess, but if this was to be her last flight for some time, she hoped it would be like the one she’d made back in April. On just such a sunlit evening she’d flown into Aldergrove over the green landscape she so loved to the totally unexpected sequence of events which had changed her life.

‘May I put that in the hand luggage store for you, madam?’ the young steward asked politely, with a small bow towards her silver and white striped box.

He put out his hand for the box, large and rectangular, but clearly light in weight.

‘I’ll put it down by my side where it won’t get in the way,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s my wedding dress,’ she added, as he seemed about to protest.

‘Who’s the lucky man?’ he asked, his careful pronunciation replaced by a familiar Ulster accent.

She laughed, suddenly delighted by the sound of home and the broad grin that creased his face as he waved her past.

She made her way to the window seat she’d booked weeks ago from her office in the Place de l’Opéra, settled herself and tried to relax, but the excitement that had pursued her all day was not to be dispersed so easily. She was going home, home to Andrew and to her beloved little green hills. In three days they would be married, ahead of them a life together quite different from any they had once imagined.

She looked down through the dusty window at the familiar activities of the airport, the small vehicles scurrying to and fro bringing luggage and catering supplies, the large fuel tankers now uncoupling their hoses and returning to their depot. Luggage manifests were being exchanged. A Royal Mail van appeared at speed, its back doors sprang open, sacks of mail flew out on to waiting trolleys that quickly disappeared from view. She listened for the familiar sound of the hold doors being banged shut.

Whenever she watched the familiar scene, whether in London or Toulouse, Zurich or Athens, she always thought of the summer of 1957, shortly before graduation, when she’d arrived in London, wearing her best summer dress and carrying a single suitcase. She had tramped the dimly lit platform at Euston Station, struggled with the escalator to the Tube, spent a night in a student hostel, got herself to Victoria for the train to Paris and wept. Whenever no one was looking, and even sometimes when they were, tears had streamed down her face. She was quite alone, without home, or job, or future. She had taken the Liverpool boat, because she had broken off her engagement with Andrew. She had loved him for so long and been so happy, but their bright hopes had been shattered and she could see no way forward for them.

The engines roared and the aircraft rose into the clear sky. The wing dipped over the Hounslow reservoirs as they turned west and she studied the streams of traffic flowing in all directions, the veins and arteries feeding the great city at their heart. She tried to take in every detail of the moving pattern for she might never come this way again. Moments later, the course correction complete, she caught sight of the Chilterns, wisps of cloud blurring their outline.

She moved uneasily in her seat, adjusted the box propped between the window and her left foot. Everyone had said she’d got it wrong, that she and Andrew were made for each other, but after his cousin was killed in a road accident, he’d abandoned their plan to go to Canada and had taken over the running of the Richardson family estates. She’d seen him shoulder the responsibility for his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, his cousin Ginny. In fact, it seemed he’d accepted his obligations to everyone except herself, so that all they’d planned together appeared just a beautiful dream.

It was not the first time in her life the world had come crashing down around her. Long years earlier, on a hot June afternoon in 1946, she and her young brother William had been taken to the Fever Hospital outside Armagh by the Headmaster of their school. Days later, her mother and father, Ellie and Sam Hamilton, had both died in the typhoid epidemic of that year leaving them parentless and homeless.

She had found a new home with her grandfather, Robert Scott, and then, only weeks after a scholarship had taken her to university in Belfast, he’d walked down the lane to stand by the anvil in the forge where he’d worked all his life and died instantly of a heart attack.

Once again, she had found herself homeless. The landlord had given her two weeks’ notice to dispose of the contents. There’d been help with that sad task from Jack Hamilton, the youngest of her uncles, but dealing with the memories of a house lived in by Scott blacksmiths for over a century was a different matter. Harder still was the loss of what had been her second home, the one she’d lived in for half her eighteen years.

Suddenly the distant pattern of the English Midlands far below disappeared completely. The grey mizzle that swirled around the aircraft and streaked her window with tiny raindrops as they continued climbing into cloud enveloped her in the chill remembrance of that bleak time. After Granda Scott died the only comfort she knew came from Andrew’s letters and their occasional short phone calls in the dim hall of the house in Elmwood Avenue where she’d inherited her cousin Ronnie’s old student room after he packed up and headed for Canada.

She went on staring through the window, perfectly aware she was rigid with tension. She had never been afraid of flying, had enjoyed all but the most turbulent of flights, but what she could never bear was this grey blanket that removed all light and joy from a world where previously there had been sunshine and colour.

She took a deep breath, extracted her book from her handbag, tried to focus on the words on the page. Then, as suddenly as it had disappeared, the sunlight returned. It poured down from a blue sky, glancing off the moist, glistening wing, the view below now of dazzling white cloud caps. She shut the book gratefully. Yes, she had known the light would return, that above the murk the sun always shone. But no matter how many times it happened, she still feared the grey mist. It was not the mist in itself. It was the fear that, like some of the worst times in her life, the bleakness would go on for so long she would finally lose heart and give up.

The cloudscape below always made her think of the Rocky Mountains, though any postcards she’d ever seen of them made it perfectly clear they didn’t look like this at all. Probably her Rocky Mountains were pictures in her imagination, something she had called up when she and Andrew were planning to go to Canada.

The plan itself emerged quite unexpectedly one day when they’d had an outing with lunch as a special treat. Andrew had looked so miserable most of the time she’d forced him to tell her what was wrong. He’d finally admitted that being back in Belfast and near her didn’t make up for the misery of his job with the firm of solicitors his uncle had arranged for him.

He’d been so negative to begin with, had said there was no other way of earning a living, given all he had was a Law Degree from Cambridge. Gazing down at the towering mountains of cloud, silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, she remembered how she’d refused to go along with his negative view of himself and asked him what he’d do if he were rich and if money were no object. His answer had delighted her, for it was the same answer he’d given years earlier when the two of them were playing Monopoly with his cousins Ginny and Edward at Caledon that very first summer they’d been able to spend time together.

‘I’d buy cows,’ he said firmly. ‘But not here,’ he added, looking just as dejected as when they’d begun to talk.

She’d stopped smiling instantly, but she went on asking questions and by the time they’d left their sitting place, they’d made their decision. Canada it would be. The Palliser Triangle to be precise, because Andrew had a relative who had gone out there in the 1920s and now had a very large ranch with a substantial herd.

The plan to go to Canada had sustained her through the last year of her Honours course at Queens and Andrew’s year in Linen Hall Street, a junior solicitor at the beck and call of elderly partners. They were very experienced and quite meticulous over points of law, but they had a set of values and attitudes towards the people they encountered that he found almost impossible to stomach.

Then, on that wonderful day when Clare finished her last exam and they’d planned a picnic supper in the Castlereagh Hills to celebrate, it all began to go wrong. Ginny and Edward had had a head-on collision on a narrow country road with a vehicle that shouldn’t have been there. Edward never regained consciousness, Ginny was left with scars on her face and arms and Andrew found himself head of the family and responsible for both the house in Caledon and his grandmother’s home at Drumsollen. The vision of wide acres of prairie and glistening mountains crumbled at a touch, like a warm and comforting dream dissolving as one wakes to the chill of a winter morning.

Perhaps she had been wrong to break off their engagement. If she’d stayed with Andrew, not the most practical of men, she could have helped him cope with the tangle of financial affairs, mortgages and death duties that enmeshed him. She could have supported Ginny, who’d taken her half-brother’s death so very badly and whose scars would need more than plastic surgery if they were not to affect her for the rest of her life.

She felt the bite of tension in her shoulders as the images flowed back. From a point in the future, it’s always easy to see how things could have been different. Here and now, after more than two years in a demanding job, with a new life, new friends, renewed hope for the future and a wedding dress waiting to be worn, it was just possible to see that there might have been an alternative. But the person she was now was not the person she was then. The girl who set off on the Liverpool boat could not have shared Andrew with all the many and conflicting demands he had accepted without question.

She looked at her watch. The time had gone so quickly. Any minute now the familiar tape-recording would tell them to fasten their seat-belts. As they began to lose height, she took a last look at her Rocky Mountains and continued to argue with herself, as if it were a matter of great urgency that she decided what she really thought. Without their parting, there would have been no job in Paris, no new friends like Louise and Jean-Pierre. Especially, there would have been no Robert Lafarge, the eminent French banker who had given her a job and had now become a dear friend, one who treated her like the daughter he’d lost when his wife and children disappeared in the Fall of France.

Parting with Andrew had been heartbreaking, but she’d done her best to begin all over again. When they’d met up again by accident last April and spent a weekend together, they’d admitted they’d found out things about themselves they might never have learnt in any other way.

She prepared herself as they descended rapidly. What did it matter if she arrived home in a rainstorm? She smiled to herself as she remembered her leaving party, the laughter and the gaiety in her favourite restaurant. Her colleagues had teased her, wished her luck, drunk her health with rather a lot of very good champagne and promised to visit her in Ireland, even if it did rain all the time.

Moments later, they came out below the base of the cloud. To her absolute amazement, she saw the familiar outline of the Isle of Man lying in the midst of a deep blue Irish Sea. Beyond, to the west, as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a cloud in sight, the green and lovely land she called ‘home’ stretched into the far distance, radiant in the low evening sunshine. The Mourne Mountains threw long shadows towards the gentle hills of County Down as the aircraft moved northwards. As the wing dipped over the brick-covered acres of Belfast, she caught the first sight of the Antrim Hills. Dark, hard-edged basalt, as uncompromising as the six-storey mills that sprouted at their feet. Beyond lay the gleaming expanse of Lough Neagh, set amid green fields dotted with small, white farmhouses, placed like models on a playroom floor, a handful of trees alongside each one to shelter it from the prevailing wind.

She wished she could pause, however briefly, so that this moment would be fixed forever in her mind. She needed time to gaze at the far horizon, to separate out the Sperrins and the mountains of Donegal from the distant banks of cloud, beyond which the sun would descend into the Atlantic. But only seconds later they were low over the calm water of the lough. They bumped slightly on the new concrete runway at Aldergrove, disturbing, if only for a moment, the hares who were feeding on the rich grass alongside.

The engines roared in reverse, the whole cabin vibrating, then as the noise and vibration died away the plane taxied so slowly towards the new terminal building that she was able to look down into the yards of the nearest farms. The newly-milked cows moved back from byre to meadow, as indifferent to the noise of their new neighbours as the hares who grazed on the margins of the runways.

‘Andrew, I’m here,’ she said, catching the sleeve of the tall, fair-haired young man who was leaning over the balcony and peering down anxiously into the baggage hall.

‘Clare,’ he gasped, relief spreading across his face as he spun round and clasped her in his arms. ‘I thought you hadn’t made it. I was down at the gate to meet you.’

‘I thought you would be, but I couldn’t see you,’ she explained, shaking her head. ‘The plane was full of large men. All I could see was business suits.’

He laughed and clutched her more firmly. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to let you out of my sight for a very long time,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve been going mad for the last hour.’

He stopped and looked sheepish as he released her.

‘I know I’m silly, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you again,’ he began. ‘Now tell me, did you have a good flight?’ he went on, making an effort to collect himself.

‘Not entirely,’ she replied honestly, as she smiled up at him. ‘In the end, it was quite wonderful, but I had a bad time too. There was thick cloud and I kept thinking about what happened to us two years ago. And then, when I did get here I couldn’t find you either.’

‘Pots and kettles’ he said, his blue eyes shining, as he kissed her again. He dropped his arm round her shoulders and held her close as they made their way downstairs to the empty carousel.

She laughed, delighted by the familiar phrase. It was one she’d learnt from her grandfather. She could hear him now, see the wry look on his face; ‘Shure them two are always right, one’s as bad as the other, and when they give off about each other, it’s the pot callin’ the kettle black.’

All the pots and kettles at the forge house were black from the smoke from the stove. They’d have been even worse when they were hung on a chain over an open fire, as once they were in the days before there was a stove at all. Like everything else she had shared with Andrew from her life with her grandfather, he’d remembered it.

‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ she replied, offering him back the phrase his mother would have used.

For so many years, they’d exchanged words and phrases as they’d explored their very different life experiences. While Clare had never moved beyond ‘her teacup’, a small area round Armagh itself and her grandparents’ homes, Andrew had spent most of his time in England. He had been born at Drumsollen, the big house just over a mile from the forge, where his grandparents had lived, but after his parents had been killed in the London blitz, the very day they had taken him over to start prep school, Andrew was seldom invited back. Only when his grandfather, Senator Richardson, insisted on his coming, did his grandmother agree to a short visit.

‘Here, let me carry that,’ he said, reaching out his free hand for her cardboard box.

‘No, I’m fine. It’s not heavy.’

‘What is it?’

‘My wedding dress.’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘My dear Clare,’ he began with exaggerated patience, ‘it is only seeing you in it before the wedding that brings bad luck, not me carrying it.’

She laughed aloud, relief and joy finally catching up with her as he began to tease her.

‘Well, I’m taking no chances anyhow,’ she came back at him, as the first of the luggage appeared in front of them.

She had arrived and all was well. It wouldn’t even matter now if her luggage had gone to Manchester or Edinburgh. She had her dress. The rest could be managed.

‘So where are we spending the night?’ she asked, as they drove out of the airport.

‘Officially, you are staying with Jessie’s mother at Ballyards,’ he said, glancing across at her.

‘And unofficially?’ she replied, raising an eyebrow.

‘Jessie told her you were arriving tomorrow. Slip of the tongue, of course, but we can’t just have you arriving when she’s not expecting you.’

‘Of course not,’ she agreed vigorously. ‘I’ll just have to come home to Drumsollen with you.’

‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ he said, as they turned on to the main road and headed for Armagh.

The sun had dipped further now, and with the light evening breeze that had sprung up, its golden light rippled through the trees that overhung the road. The first autumn leaves caught its glow and small heaps lying by the roadside swirled upwards in the wind of their passing.

‘Let me, Andrew,’ she said, as they drew up at the newly-painted gates of Drumsollen.

She paused as she waited for him to drive through, looking across the empty road, grateful for the fresh air after a day of sitting in cars and planes. This was where it had all begun, so many years ago. She and Jessie had left their bicycles parked against the wall by the gates while they went down to their secret sitting-place by the little stream on the opposite side of the road. They’d come back up to find Andrew bending over her bicycle. Jessie thought he was letting her tyres down, but Clare had taken one look at him and known that could not possibly be. In fact, he’d been blowing them up again after some boys from the nearby Mill Row had indeed let them down. She closed the gates firmly and got back into the car.

‘I can hardly believe it, Andrew. Drumsollen is ours.’

‘God bless our mortgaged home,’ he said, grinning, as they rounded the final bend in the drive. Ahead of them stood the faded façade of the handsome house where generations of Richardsons had lived, its windows shuttered, its front door gleaming with fresh paint.

‘Andrew! My goodness, what have you done?’ she demanded as he stopped by a large, newly-planted space in front of the house.

‘Parterre, I think is the word,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘But we could only manage half. John Wiley found the plan inside one of the old gardening books Grandfather left him, so we poked around to see if we could find the outline. We knew where it ought to be, because June remembered it from before the war. It showed up quite clearly when we started mowing the grass. What d’you think?’

‘I think it’s quite lovely,’ she said, running her eye over the dark earth with its rows of bushes. ‘Did you choose the roses?’

‘No, not my department,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Given I hadn’t got my favourite gardener at hand, I thought Grandfather’s choice would be more reliable. There was a list with the plan. We got the bushes half-price at the end of August, so I’m afraid there’s not much bloom.’

‘There’s more than enough for what I need,’ she said happily, as they parked by the front door and got out together. ‘Have we time to go up to the summerhouse before the light goes, or are you starving?’

‘There’s plenty of time if you want to,’ he said easily, drawing her into his arms again. ‘June left me a casserole to heat up. I think by the size of it she guessed you were coming, but she didn’t say a word,’ he added, as he took her hand.

They crossed the gravel to the steps that led up the low green hill which hid Drumsollen from the main road and climbed in silence. This was where they had come in April after their unexpected meeting. This was where they had agreed their future was to be together after all.

‘Little bit of honeysuckle still blooming,’ she said, as they came to the highest point and stood in front of the old summerhouse, which Andrew had restored over a year ago, his first effort to redeem the loss of the home he thought he must sell. They stood together looking out to the far horizon. The sun appeared to be sitting on the furthest of the many ridges of land between here and the distant Atlantic.

‘Clare, do you remember once saying to me that you loved this place, that you wanted to be here, but you’d be sad if you never saw anything beyond these little green hills?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, I don’t remember saying it, but I’m sure I did,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s true, of course. And you always did pay attention to the really important things I said.’

‘Makes up for my other unfortunate characteristics,’ he added promptly.

She turned towards him and glared at him until he laughed.

‘Sorry. I’m not allowed to refer to my less admirable qualities.’

‘Oh yes, you can refer to them if you want, but you are not allowed to behave as if they were real.’

‘But they feel real,’ he protested. ‘I’m no use with money. I can’t stand sectarianism, or arrogance, or injustice. What use is that in the world we’ve got to live in?’

‘Andrew dear, it only needs one of us to be able to do sums. I’ve had a holiday from the things you’ve been living with. I’m not ignorant of them, just out of touch. Does it matter?’

‘No, nothing matters except that we are together. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said to spoil your homecoming. Here of all places, where we were so happy last April.’

Clare looked at him and saw the distress and anxiety in his face. She thought of the little boy who’d been told on his very first day at prep school that he had lost his parents. ‘Andrew, my darling. We both have weaknesses. Look at the way we both got anxious when I was flying. With any luck our weaknesses won’t attack both of us at the same time,’ she began gently, taking his hands in hers. ‘Let’s just say that between us we’ll make one good one.’

He nodded vigorously and looked away.

She knew he was near to tears but said nothing. He’d been taught for most of his life to hide his feelings; it would take many a long day for him to be easy even with her.

They stood for some time holding each other and kissing gently. As the sun finally went down, they stirred in the now chill breeze and noticed that the sky behind them had filled with cloud. A few spots of rain fell and sat on the shoulders of Andrew’s suit until she brushed them off.

Clare laughed. ‘We’re going to get wet,’ she said cheerfully, as they turned back down the steps to the empty house below.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s been doing this all day. We’ll be fine. And what does it matter anyway,’ he added, beaming, as he put his arm round her. ‘We’ll be all right, come rain, come shine.’

Two

The little grey parish church built by the Molyneux family in the early 1770s for the workers on their estate at Castledillon, and their many tenants in the surrounding farmlands, sits at the highest point of the townland of Salters Grange. Not a particularly high point in effect, for the hills of this part of County Armagh are drumlins, low rounded mounds, their smooth green slopes contoured by moving tongues of ice that reshaped the land long ago, leaving a pattern of well-drained hillsides and damp valley bottoms with streams liable to flooding at any season after the sudden showers carried by the prevailing, moisture-laden west wind from the Atlantic, a mere hundred miles away.

Despite its modest elevation, the church tower and the thin grey spire above has an outlook that includes most of the six counties of Ulster. From the vantage point of the tower’s battlements, you could scan the surrounding lowlands, take in the shimmering, silver waters of Lough Neagh and, on a clear day, penetrate the misty blue layers of the rugged hills of Tyrone to glimpse the far distant mountains of Donegal.

From the heavy iron gates that give entrance to the churchyard, the view is more limited, a prospect of fields and orchards, sturdy farmhouses with corrugated iron hay sheds and narrow lanes leading downhill to the Rectory, the forge or the crossroads. Through gaps in the hedgerow, a glint of sun on a passing windscreen marks the line of the main road linking the nearby villages with their market town, Armagh, dominated by the tall spires of the Catholic cathedral and the massive tower of the Protestant one, regarding each other from their respective hills.

On this bright September afternoon, the sun reflecting off the grey stone of the tower, the gates stand open, a small, battered car parked close by, as two women make their way up to the church door, their arms full of flowers and foliage.

‘You divide them up, Ma, and I’ll get out the vases,’ said the girl, as she lowered her burden gently on to the pedestal of the font. ‘Aren’t they lovely? Where did Clare get them?’

‘Sure, they’re from Drumsollen,’ June Wiley replied, watching her eldest daughter finger the bright blooms. ‘Hasn’t Andrew and your Da replanted one of the big beds at the front?’ she went on, as she began to strip green leaves briskly from the lower stems. ‘They’ve half of it back the way it was in the old days when the Richardsons had three or four gardeners,’ she added, with a little laugh. ‘You’ll see great improvements at Drumsollen. Mind you, that’s only the start. They’ve great plans, the pair of them. They’ll maybe take away some of your trade from the Charlemont.’

‘That’ll not worry me after next week,’ Helen replied cheerfully. ‘I’ll have my work cut out keeping up with all these Belfast students cleverer than I am.’

‘Now don’t be sayin’ that,’ June replied sharply, as Helen lined up a collection of tall vases. ‘Sure didn’t Clare go up to Queens just like you’re doin’ and look where she’s got to. Just because you come up from the country, ye needn’t think those ones from Belfast are any better than you are. Didn’t you get a County Scholarship? How many gets that?’

‘Clare was the first one from round here, wasn’t she?’

‘She was indeed, an’ I’ll never forget the day she got the news. Her grandfather was that pleased he could hardly tell me when I called at the forge to ask. I thought he was going to cry.’

‘Wish he was here for tomorrow, Ma. He’d be so proud,’ Helen replied, looking away, suddenly finding her own eyes full of tears, so sharp the memory of the old man in his soot-streaked clothes.

‘Aye, he would. But the other granda’s coming from over Richhill way with her Uncle Jack. So I hear. But she hasn’t mentioned her brother who lives with them. She talks about the uncle often enough, but the brother I’ve never met. They say he’s kind of funny. Very abrupt. Unsettled. Apparently the only one can manage him is Granda Hamilton. The granny pays no attention to him at all.’

‘Is she not coming to the wedding?’

‘Oh no. Not the same lady,’ the older woman replied, her tone darkening. ‘Apparently she won’t go to weddings or funerals. Says they’re a lot of fuss about nothing. But I hear she’s bad with her legs, so maybe it’s an excuse,’ she added, a frown creasing her pleasant face as she laid roses side by side and studied the length of their stems.

They worked quietly together as the afternoon sun dropped lower and the light faded in the north aisle. June Wiley had always loved flowers and had learnt long ago how to make the best of whatever the gardener’s boy had brought into the big kitchen at Drumsollen. She’d started work there as a kitchen maid, progressed to the parlour and had been instructed in the art of flower arranging by Mrs Richardson herself, a formidable lady known to all the staff as The Missus. It was later that young Mrs Richardson had chosen June as nurse for her son. She was a very different woman from her mother-in-law, warm-hearted and kindly, devoted to her little boy. June herself had gone in fear of The Missus for most of her working life, but she ended up by caring for her right up until her death in the house only eighteen months earlier.

‘Have you seen her dress, Ma?’ Helen asked, as she knelt down and swept up small fragments of foliage and discarded thorns from the step of the font.

‘No, not yet. She said she’d bring it when she came to help me with the food this morning, but she had to leave it behind at Rowentrees. She said she hung it up for the creases to drop out for she didn’t want to risk the iron. I think it has wee beads sewn into it here and there.’

‘I wonder what she’s thinking about today,’ Helen said, half to herself. ‘She used to work at Drumsollen with you, didn’t she, washing dishes and making beds like me at the Charlemont, and now she’s the lady of the house.’

June gave her daughter a thoughtful look. A clever girl she was by all accounts, but she’d always made up stories in her head. That was not something June had much time for, her own life having been hard. She had tried to bring up her three girls so they wouldn’t get ideas that would let them down.

‘Oh, something sensible, I wouldn’t wonder,’ she replied crisply. ‘Oh, she loves him all right, she always has from ever they met, but she’ll not think of him and her till she’s seen to what has to be done. Them visitors ye have at the Charlemont, Mr Lafarge and the French lady and her daughter. She’ll make sure they’re all right before she thinks about her and Andrew. Can’t remember their name.’

‘The girl is Michelle.’

June shook her head. ‘No, I meant the mother, Madame Saint-something. Clare said she was awful good to her when she first went over to France, bought her a suit for her first interview and taught her how to dress like the French do.’

She stopped suddenly, straightened up and laughed, so unexpectedly that Helen nearly dropped her dustpan.

‘What’s the joke?’ she demanded.

‘You should’ve seen her this mornin’,’ her mother said, shaking her head. ‘A pair of jeans I wouldn’t let any of you girls be seen dead in and an old shirt. It must have been Andrew’s before it shrank in the wash. I wonder what the French lady would have thought of that.’

‘It’s Madame St Clair, Ma, and she’s very nice. Speaks beautiful English. And Mr Lafarge is very polite. But I though he was American. He has an American accent.’

‘Oh aye. That’s another story too,’ June replied, lifting the first of the arrangements into place. ‘Clare says he learnt English from the Americans at the end of the war and he has some awful accent. Not the right thing at all in his job. I suppose the French are just as fussy about that sort of thing as they are here. Sure old Mrs Richardson, God rest her, was furious when young Andrew came back from a visit to Brittany with some country accent he’d picked up. Clare told me once that when he wants to make her laugh he asks her would she like ‘fish and chips’.

‘Poisson et pommes frites’

‘Aye, maybe that’s the right way of it, but that’s not how Andrew says it. The Missus always used to talk French to him when he came visitin’ and when he landed back with this accent she was fit to be tied. A Richardson talkin’ like a servant.’

‘But it was only in French, Ma. What did that matter? It was how he spoke English that would matter here, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, I suppose you’re right, but these gentry families are full of things you wouldn’t believe. They’re always lookin’ to see whose watchin’ them. An’ the less money they have, the more they look,’ she added, nodding wisely. ‘Now the Senator was always the same to everyone, high or low, but The Missus, she was a different story. She was always on her high horse about somethin’ and yet she once told our Clare that Andrew wasn’t good enough for her, that she could do better for herself. An’ Clare a wee orphan with her granda a blacksmith.’

‘Even though Andrew was a Richardson and might some day have a title?’ Helen asked, her dark eyes wide and full of curiosity.

‘Yes. She hadn’t a good word for Andrew an’ I’ll never understand it, for you’d travel a long way to meet a nicer young man. She always said he had no go in him. He was clever enough, but he never made the best of himself, even with the posh boarding school in England and the uncle behind him sending him to Cambridge to do Law.’

‘Was Law what he wanted to do?’

June removed a dead leaf from the spread of colour which would grace the font itself and looked at her daughter thoughtfully.

‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ve often wondered about it, but I never had the heart to ask him,’ she went on. ‘When you got your scholarship to go up to Queens, it didn’t matter whether you did Geography, or History, or English. I know your teachers advised you, but it was you decided what you wanted to do. But then we’re only working people. If you’re a Richardson, it’s a different kettle of fish. The family will tell you what to do if you don’t already know what’s expected in the first place. As far as I can see there’s no two ways about it, you just have to do it.’

‘Well, there’s none of the family left, now The Missus is gone. There’s just Andrew and Clare. They can do what they like, can’t they?’ Helen responded cheerfully, her face lighting up with a great beaming smile.

‘Aye well, I suppose you’re right. But you needn’t think, Helen, that falling in love and getting married is all roses. You can’t know what’s up ahead and it may not turn out the way you hope.’

Helen nodded and said nothing. Her mother was always warning her against disappointment. There was no use arguing. She just didn’t seem to see how wonderful it was for Clare and Andrew to have found each other and to make such a marvellous plan for turning Drumsollen into a guest house. They were going to save up and buy back the land that had once made up the estate, then Andrew would give up his job and farm just as he had always wanted. Helen smiled to herself. It was exactly the sort of plan she’d make herself if she found someone she really loved.

‘Time we were gettin’ a move on, Helen,’ June said abruptly, as she turned round and saw her daughter gazing thoughtfully at a handful of rose leaves in the palm of her hand. ‘Yer Da’ll be home soon and no sign of his tea and we’ve both got to go back up to the house tonight to give them a hand.’

‘Right, Ma, what do you want me to carry?’ asked Helen quickly, as she dropped the petals in her pocket. One day, she thought, I’ll marry someone lovely and I’ll have a shower of rose petals as I come out of the church just like they have in films.

‘D’ye not think that neckline is a bit much for Salters Grange?’

Clare, who was dressed only in a low cut strapless bra and a slim petticoat, turned round from the dressing-table and laughed, as her friend Jessie pushed open the door of the bedroom, dropped down on the bed, and kicked off her elegant new shoes.

‘I hope ye slept well in my bed,’ Jessie continued. ‘I left ye my teddy-bear to tide you over till tonight,’ she went on, looking around the room that still had her watercolours and photographs covering all the available wall space.

‘Oh, I slept all right,’ replied Clare, as she dusted powder over foundation with a large brush. ‘By the time June and I had got all the food organized and the tables laid I could have slept on the floor. But your bed was much nicer. Thank you for the loan of it.’

‘Or the lend of it as we always said at school and got told off for.’

Clare smiled, relieved and delighted that Jessie seemed to have fully recovered her old self after the hard time she’d had with her second child.

‘How’s Fiona?’ she asked, as she turned back to the mirror.

‘Oh, driving us mad,’ she said calmly. ‘I sent Harry to walk her up and down and tire her out a bit before Ma tries to get the dress on. She can talk about nothin’ but Auntie Clare and Uncle Andrew. Does it not make you feel old?’

‘No. Old is not what I feel today,’ she said lightly. ‘Blessed, I think is the word, as long as you don’t think I’ve gone pious,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s not just Andrew. It’s being home and having family. It’s you and Harry and wee Fiona and your mother and all the people who’ll come to the church. Even the ones that come to stand at the gate, because they go to all the weddings, or because they remember Granda Scott.’

‘Aye, there’ll be a brave few nosey ones around,’ Jessie added promptly. ‘Ma says she heard your dress was made by yer man Dior himself.’

Clare laughed, stood up and reached out for the hem of the gleaming, silk gown hanging from the picture rail.

‘Look Jessie, I only found it this morning.’

Jessie leaned over and looked closely at the inside hem. ‘Good luck, Bonne chance, Buenos . . . something or other . . . and there are names as well. Ach, isn’t that lovely? All the way round. Who did that?’ she demanded, her voice hoarse, her eyes sparkling with tears.

‘The girls in the work room. I knew them all, because I had to have so many suits and dresses, but when I had the last fitting there was nothing there. I’m sure I’d have noticed.’

‘So you’ll have luck all round ye and in whatever language takes your fancy . . .

Clare nodded, her own eyes moistening at the thought of all the little seamstresses taking it in turns to embroider their name and their message. She paused as she slipped the dress from its hanger and took a deep breath. The last thing she must do was shed a tear. Whatever it said on the packaging she had never found a mascara that didn’t run if provoked by tears. Tears of joy would be just as much of a disaster as any other kind.

The crowd of women and children gathered round the churchyard gates were not expecting very much. They knew it was to be a small affair with only close family. In fact, there were those who thought there couldn’t even be much in the way of close family if June Wiley, the housekeeper, her husband John and their girls were to be among the guests, even if June had once been Andrew Richardson’s nurse. They certainly did not expect any ‘great style’ from anyone except the bride. Even that was a matter of some doubt as rumour had it she’d bought her dress on the way home from Paris and arrived with it at the Rowentrees in a cardboard box.

The first guests to arrive did little to disperse their expectations. Jack Hamilton drove up in a well-polished, but elderly Hillman Minx. He was accompanied by his father, Sam, now in his eighties, who got out of the car with some difficulty, but once on his feet, smiled warmly at the waiting crowd, pushed back his once powerful shoulders and tramped steadily enough up to the church door.

Charlie Running, old friend of Robert Scott, walked briskly up the hill from his cousin’s house and said, ‘How are ye?’ to the gathered spectators, for Charlie knew everyone in the whole townland. Before going inside he tramped round the side of the church to pay his respects to Robert.

Next to arrive were the Wileys. June, John and all three girls, as expected. No style there. Not even a new hat or dress among them. Just their Sunday best. Charles Creaney, Andrew’s colleague and best man, parked his almost new A40 under the churchyard wall somewhat out of sight of the twin clusters of onlookers by the gates. Andrew and the two ushers got out and the four of them strode off, two by two, heading for the church door without a glance at the women in aprons or the children fidgeting at their sides.

Moments later, a small handful of husbands and wives, some of them clearly from ‘across the water’, arrived by taxi. But there was no one among them to excite more than a brief speculation as to who they might be. Only the need to view the bride and to have the relevant news to pass on in the week ahead kept some of the women from going back to their abandoned Saturday morning chores.

Then, to their surprise and amazement, one of Loudan’s smaller limousines, polished so you could see yourself in its black bodywork, and bedecked with satin ribbons, drove up and slid gently to a halt. The driver opened the passenger door, touched his cap, offered his hand and a woman stepped out into the morning sunshine, a pleasant smile on her face. In the total silence that followed her arrival, she walked slowly towards the church door.

Salters Grange had its own version of ‘great style’, but they had never seen anything to equal the poise and presentation of Marie-Claude St Clair. Her couturier would have been charmed.

‘I think she’s a film star,’ said the first woman to find her voice. ‘She’s like somethin’ ye’d see on the front of Vogue.’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen her on our new telly.’

‘Young Helen Wiley said there was a French woman and her daughter staying at the Charlemont in Armagh. Would that be her?’

‘Where’s the daughter then?’

It was then that Loudan’s largest limousine appeared, driven by none other than Loudan himself. It drew to a halt in front of the gates. From the front passenger seat, a small man in immaculate morning dress stepped out, drew himself to his full height and waited attentively until first one lovely young woman and then another was assisted by the bowler-hatted Loudan to alight from the back seat.

Robert Lafarge bowed to them both and then offered his arm to the older one. So it was that, Cinderella no more, Clare Hamilton entered Grange Church on the arm of an eminent French banker, attended by a smiling young woman, whom she had cared for in her student days as an au pair on the sands at Deauville.

As the quips and comments flew back and forth across the gravel driveway it was clear the wait had not been in vain.

‘Did ye ever see the like of it? Was that necklace emeralds?’

‘How would I know? But I can tell you somethin’. That dress was such a fit you’d not buy that in some shop. An’ her that slim. Shure it must have been made for her, and those wee pearl beads round the skirt with the green and gold threadwork in-between to match the necklace.’

‘Was it silk or brocade? It was white all right, but there was green in it somewhere when she moved.’

‘Who was the wee man giving her away?’

‘They say that’s Robert Scott’s younger brother, the one that went to America an’ niver came back.’

‘Well, he doesn’t look like a Scott to me, that’s for sure. Sure he’s only knee high to a daisy. Robert was a fair-sized man in his day . . .’

While the women of Church Hill speculated on the past and future of Clare Hamilton, granddaughter of their former blacksmith, and of Andrew Richardson, sole surviving member of the once wealthy family who had lived in the parish since the seventeenth century and served in the Government since it was first set up 1921, the two individuals themselves stood together on the newly-replaced red carpet of the chancel and exchanged rings.

In the September sunshine filtering through the windows on the south aisle, the two rings gleamed just as they had when Clare found them in the dust and fluff under the wooden couch by the stove in the forge house. As the smaller one, once bound with human hair inside the larger one, was slipped on her finger, Clare feared for her mascara once again. She had found the rings a mere fortnight after her grandfather’s death. Then, she had lost both her grandfather and her home and had only a student room to call her own. Now, so much had been given back. Someone to love who loved her as dearly. A home that was theirs, Andrew’s family home, the place he had longed to be for most of his life.

With hands joined and heads bowed for the blessing, they both felt the touch of gold. The rings that had lain in the dust for a hundred years or more had emerged untarnished. Engraved on each of them were the initials EGB. It was a message of hope: in Irish, Erin Go Bragh; in English, Ireland Forever. Or better, the words the minister had used earlier . . . for as long as you both shall live.

Three

The first day of January 1961 was dull and overcast in Armagh. Clare stood at the bedroom window and looked out across the lawn and over the curve of Drumsollen’s own low hill. Even under a grey sky the grass was a vibrant green and shaggy with growth. So far this winter there had been no severe weather and no snow at all, but spring was still a long time away.

After breakfast, Andrew stepped out into the early morning, left crumbs on the bird table and came back in again looking pleased. The wind was light and from the south-east. Echoing a phrase of her grandfather’s, he announced: ‘There’s no cold.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Clare laughed, as she carried their breakfast dishes to the draining board. ‘It’ll be draughty enough by the lake at Castledillon without a cold wind as well,’ she declared, as he shrugged his shoulders into his ancient waxed jacket and took his binoculars from a drawer under the work surface.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind me going, Clare? We were supposed to have a holiday today and you’re left with all the work,’ he added, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice.

‘Oh Andrew, don’t be silly,’ she responded, giving him a hug, ‘We BOTH work so hard. You must take some time to do the things you want to do. You go and help with the count and get a look at the heronries. Another day when YOU are at work, I’ll go and see what Charlie’s added to his archive and talk local history with him. Fair shares for all, as your mother would say.’

They went upstairs and crossed the dim entrance hall where a small collection of ancestors still stared gloomily around them as if they had mislaid something they needed. A light breeze blew in their faces as Andrew opened the double glass doors into the porch, stepped through and swung the heavy outer door back into its daytime position. He put an arm round her shoulders as they walked across the stone terrace and down the broad sandstone steps to the driveway.

‘I’ll be back by twelve,’ he said, kissing her. ‘If you do start on Seven you can have my paintbrush ready. Don’t do too much while I’m gone.’

‘I promise. I’ll have your lunch ready. You’ll be starving. You always are. It’ll only be a toasted sandwich,’ she warned, as he opened the car door.

She went back indoors and ran upstairs to their bedroom. The kitchen had been warm from the Aga but the unheated bedroom was cold. Not as cold as her old bedroom at the forge house had been in winter but bad enough to make her grateful for the thick wool sweater she pulled out from a deep drawer below the handsome rosewood wardrobe.

She retrieved the hot water bottles from under the bedclothes, made the bed and took the bottles into the adjoining bathroom to empty them. The plasterwork was still drying out and the acres of white tile and gleaming taps made it feel even colder than the bedroom. She did a quick wipe of the hand basin and turned back gratefully into the room once used by The Missus.

Unlike the cold linoleum of the forge house, this room had always had the comfort and pleasure of a carpet but when they moved in they found it was so full of holes it would have to be replaced before they handed it over to the guests they hoped to welcome in April. Given the new bathroom, they had assumed this would be their best room until they realized the state of the carpet. She was still trying to decide what to do about it when their good friend Harry spotted a carpet when he was buying antique furniture in a house scheduled for demolition. He’d tipped the workmen to carry it to his van, brought it up to them and stayed to help them cut up old one up.

Harry said the ‘new’ carpet was probably older than the one they’d just carried to the compost heap. It was full of dust and dirty from the tramp of workmen’s feet but it showed very little signs of wear. They’d spent the best part of a warm, autumn weekend beating it, vacuuming it and sponging it. By the time they’d managed to lay it they were exhausted, but the carpet with its exotic birds and plants transformed the room. It even matched the faded curtains so well they decided they’d not replace them after all.

The bed made, the room tidied, Clare sat down at her dressing-table and began her make-up. For weeks after their brief honeymoon, she had applied only moisturizer, but as day followed day and she spent most of her time sorting, cleaning, or gloss painting, dressed in the oldest of old clothes, she began to feel something was wrong. The day before the surveyor came to estimate for the new central heating system she made up her mind. Cheap jeans from the cut-price shop in Portadown and well-worn shirts that could go in the machine would be fine for the job in hand, but she needed her go-to-work face to keep up spirits. To her surprise, that simple decision steadied her when she was presented with the enormity of the surveyor’s estimate next day.

She smiled to herself as she applied powder with a sable brush just as her dear friend Louise had taught her when they’d first shared an office in Paris. She missed Louise. She missed Paris. She missed that whole other world where she had been mostly happy and certainly successful. But now she and Andrew had each other and a life they could make together. You can’t have everything and she knew she had chosen what she really wanted.

She thought again of that sunlit October morning when the surveyor had presented his estimate. It brought back memories of all the meetings she’d sat through with Robert Lafarge, listening to companies putting forward plans, projects and requests for loans. She had smiled at him, given him coffee in the kitchen and negotiated the price. By suggesting the project be spread over the winter period when the company would be short of work, she’d secured a substantial discount. Andrew laughed when she told him. What delighted him was the thought of the unsuspecting surveyor coming face to face with a woman who had once been party to negotiating sums in seven figures.

By Christmas Eve, three of the five large bedrooms on the first floor had been freshened up or completely redecorated. Apart from the high ceilings and cornices, they’d done all the painting themselves. While Andrew was at work, Clare did as much of the brushwork as she could while supervising the installing of the two new bathrooms. When Andrew got home from work, he’d hang his suit over the bedroom chair, pull on his dungarees and take over her brush while she prepared a meal. Afterwards, they’d share the day’s news over coffee and then go back together to where he’d left off.

‘What do we tackle next?’ he asked, as they put up a holly wreath on the front door and looked forward to a few days holiday from paint.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ she said honestly. ‘A double brings in double the money and there’s only one set of bed linen to launder, but the single rooms will be cheaper and might attract more business. The five singles on the top floor could be very important. It all depends on who we manage to attract.’

‘Some of each, then?’ he suggested. ‘Doing a single would take us half the time it’s taken for the doubles. And we could do our own ceilings up there. Or rather I could do them.’

Clare pulled the bedroom door shut behind her and headed for the top floor, turned along the narrow corridor and stopped at a door with a dim and worn brass number seven. This was the largest of the upper bedrooms with a view over the garden. She stepped into the almost empty room and smiled to herself. It was in a much better state than she’d remembered.

Back in October, she and June had cleaned all the rooms in the house, getting rid of anything that could not be restored or reused. The windows on both floors had stood open for long, sunny days till finally the odour of damp and neglect had been overwhelmed by the faint perfume of lavender polish, the fresh smell of emulsion paint and the strange odour of the new rose-coloured carpet in two of the double bedrooms. Tomorrow, when June came back to work she must ask her who had slept in number seven when she had arrived straight from Grange School to begin her service at Drumsollen.

‘Dust sheets,’ she said aloud, as she tried to remember where the nearest pile of clean ones might be.

She looked more closely at the window frame. ‘And sandpaper,’ she added, wearily. You could paint over fine cracks but loose flakes like these came off on the brush. It was more trouble than it was worth trying to take a short cut.

It was just as she was about to go in search of her materials that a movement caught her eye, a glint, or a gleam from a vehicle just coming into view. She looked down in amazement and watched as a large black taxi drew up at the foot of the steps.

Could it possibly be someone who had misread their opening date? She’d been advertising in a whole variety of newspapers and magazines but she’d stressed: Springtime in the countryside. Special offers for our first guests from April the First. Bookings now accepted.

She peered down. She could see the driver perfectly well as he opened his door, strode round to the boot and took out a large and heavy suitcase, but she couldn’t get a good look at the figure emerging from the front passenger seat.

She ran along the top corridor and hurried downstairs. As she strode across the entrance hall, she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure through the glass panels of the porch door. It can’t be, she’s supposed to be in America, she said to herself, as she pulled them open. But there was no mistaking that red hair. It was Ginny, whom she hadn’t seen since they’d met in a hotel in Park Lane just over a year ago.

‘Clare, I’m sorry, I haven’t any money,’ Ginny said bleakly, as she walked round the vehicle, her face pale, her eyes red rimmed.

Clare threw her arms round her and hugged her. She could feel Ginny’s shoulders trembling ominously. Something was dreadfully wrong.

‘How much is it?’ Clare asked as steadily as she could manage, stepping back and smiling rather too brightly at the taxi man.

She was completely taken aback by the sum he named. She wasn’t sure she had that amount of money in the house, even with the reserve she still kept in Granda Scott’s old Bible.

‘Hold on a moment, will you. My handbag is probably upstairs,’ she said quickly. ‘Perhaps you could bring in my friend’s suitcase.’

‘Right y’ar,’ he replied agreeably, eyeing the well-swept steps and the heavy, white-painted front door.

Clare ran upstairs, emptied her handbag on to the bed. There was a wallet and a purse and some loose silver she’d dropped in when she was in a hurry. Putting it all together, she was still well short of the taxi fare even if she added the pound notes from the Bible and the bread man’s money from the kitchen drawer.

‘Where on earth has Ginny come from?’ she asked herself. Not Armagh certainly. Not since the railway had been closed down. And hardly Portadown to chalk up a bill like that. She stood breathless, a handful of pound notes in her hand and looked around the room as if an answer might lie there somewhere if only she could think of it.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she gasped, as she remembered Andrew’s wallet in the top drawer of his bedside table.

It was empty, as usual, but all was not lost. Not yet. She unzipped an inner compartment. There sat the balance of the fare. She ran back downstairs triumphant, delighted by the irony that the reserve she insisted he carry for emergencies was what had saved the situation for her.

‘Thank you very much, ma’am,’ the taxi driver said, as he folded the notes away into his back pocket. ‘I think this young lady had a rough crossing last night,’ he added kindly, nodding at Ginny, as he took a battered card from his pocket. ‘If I can be of service, give us a ring. Distance no object,’ he added, raising a hand in salute to them both as he drove off.

‘That smells good,’ said Andrew as he tramped into the kitchen and struggled out of his jacket. ‘I thought you said a toasted sandwich,’ he went on cheerfully. He ran his eye across the large wooden table. The end nearest the Aga sported a red checked cloth, three place settings and a bottle of wine. ‘Has Harry found us another carpet?’

Clare pushed a covered dish into the bottom oven, closed the door, straightened up and shook her head. His eyes flickered away from her face as he caught her sober look.

‘Don’t tell me the bailiff has arrived before we’ve even started?’ he said, trying to sound light.

Clare knew the tone only too well. He was going to be upset, but there was nothing for it but to tell him the truth.

‘Ginny arrived a couple of hours ago, by taxi. She came over on the Ulster Queen from Liverpool. Mark’s gone off with an American heiress.’

‘But they were supposed to be getting married last year,’ Andrew protested, as he dropped down into the nearest chair. ‘In June, wasn’t it? But his father was ill, so they had to postpone it. And then they weren’t able to come to our wedding, because of something else. Some big job came up in America and he couldn’t say “No” to it. Wasn’t that what she told us?’

Clare nodded. ‘I though it sounded funny at the time, but I can see it all now. Ginny tried to cover up for him. He lost a lot of money on the Stock Market. She said they couldn’t even afford her fare to come to the wedding. There was something came up in America, so she gave him all she had in the bank for his airfare. But nothing came of it. At least, that’s what he said when he came back. Apparently he thought she’d got a lot more money somewhere and he kept on asking her to help him out.’

‘But what made him think Ginny had money? The bit she gets from Grandfather Barbour’s shares goes down all the time. It’s hardly more than pocket money. She had a job, didn’t she? Did it pay well?’

‘I really don’t know. But remember she was living with your aunt in Knightsbridge while she had her plastic surgery. You know what a splendid house that is and how much you had to raise for the Clinic. It must have looked as if there was a lot of money around.’

‘So, what happened?’

‘She found a letter from this American woman. She thinks he left it lying around deliberately. They had a terrible row. He was planning to fly out next week. Told her he wasn’t cut out for poverty. Sorry and all that. They’d had some good times. But it was over.’

‘God Almighty! Where is she now?’

‘Asleep on our bed under a couple of rugs. There isn’t a bed made up. Anyway, ours is the only room that gets any heat from below. That’s why you chose it. Remember?’

Andrew leaned his arms on the table and dropped his head in his hands. For one moment, she thought he might be crying. He’d always been fond of Ginny. At one time, while she was in Paris, she’d thought there was something between them. Harry had said he’d seen them together quite often, but it turned out it was simply Andrew trying to get her back on her feet after Edward was killed.

Ginny had been driving when they were hit by the speeding lorry and his death had left emotional scars as well as the obvious physical ones. She’d needed a psychiatrist as well as a plastic surgeon. Andrew had raised the money by mortgaging their family home at Caledon which he’d inherited, but that had left him in serious financial difficulties because he couldn’t pay the death duties owed by the estate.

‘So what do we do?’ he asked steadily, lifting his head, a hint of a smile on his face. ‘There’s two of us this time, isn’t there?’

She nodded reassuringly, bent down and kissed his cold cheek and put her arm round his shoulders.

‘There might be some brandy left from that bottle Harry and Jessie gave you for your birthday,’ she said softly, ‘I seem to remember Ginny doesn’t like whiskey.’

‘I’ll go up and see,’ he said briskly, as he got to his feet and headed for the morning room, now their own small sitting-room.

Clare took a deep breath and felt herself relax. She’d been dreading telling him what had happened because she was so anxious about how he would react. He was always so responsible. Far too responsible. For the moment she would keep to herself the fact that Ginny thought she might be pregnant.

‘So you’re quite sure, Ginny?

‘Yes,’ she replied, beaming, as she closed the door behind her and sat down by the sitting-room fire. ‘I feel awful and I’ve got through half that packet of Tampax you gave me yesterday, but I don’t feel sick any more. I think I was just sick with worry, Clare. What would I have done without you and Andrew?’

‘Unhelpful speculation,’ Clare replied easily, as she closed her account book, got up from her desk and came over to sit opposite her in front of the comforting blaze. ‘I can’t say I’m not relieved, though we’d have managed somehow.’

‘I feel I’ve been such a fool. I’ve made such a mess of things after all the hard work Andrew put in to help me,’ she began, throwing out her hands in a typical Ginny manner.

Clare looked at her pale face and listened, comforted by the fact that she seemed so much herself again only a week after her flight from London. Exhausted she had been and still was, but the gestures, the eye movements, the toss of her head, all said this was the Ginny she had known since that wonderful summer she and Andrew had stayed with his cousins at The Lodge.

Since she’d taken up decorating herself, Clare often found herself thinking of that happy summer when they’d all painted the big sitting-room at Caledon. Ginny’s mother had made sketches of all four of them and Edward designed extraordinary games of skill for them to play in their free time. She still found herself thinking of Teddy and the long conversations they had about Irish history, which was his great passion.

He’d told her it was high time Ireland sorted out what actually happened from all the myths that had been invented. Whether you looked at 1690, or 1847, or 1916, there were facts to be had. What he wanted to do was put the record straight, one way or another, so that this group or that could not select their version of events and use them to justify the unjustifiable, nor to prop up corrupt or idle governments, North or South.

‘But I can’t impose on you and Andrew any longer, you’ve been more than kind. Besides, it’s not fair . . .’

Clare had been listening, but only with part of her mind, knowing what Ginny was likely to say and having her answer ready.

‘Ginny dear, you’ve only been here a week and you’ve been helping with jobs every day. Now, come on,’ she continued. ‘You’ve not moaned, you’ve been good company. You just had a lot of sleep to catch up on.’

Ginny smiled ruefully. ‘I haven’t even got the price of a packet of Tampax, never mind the bus fare to go and see Mother and Barney in Rostrevor.’

‘Well then, let me make you an offer,’ said Clare lightly. ‘Like Robert Lafarge, when he offered me my job, I will hope to make it irresistible. Part-time work for three months, starting tomorrow. Artistic director to the Managing Director of Drumsollen House Limited. Full board and lodging, one long weekend per month in Rostrevor, transport provided and five pounds per week. First month’s salary paid in advance so you can repay your friend who lent you the money for the train and boat. I’m the Managing Director and the artistic bit means you’ll have a lot of painting to do! How about it?’

‘Oh Clare, you can’t pay me as well as giving me full board and lodging. I should be paying you for that!’

‘Well, if it’ll make you feel any better, I hope to make a profit on the deal,’ Clare said, looking as sober as she could manage.

‘But how can you possibly manage that?’

‘Well, if you say “Yes” I’ll tell you.’

‘You’re not just being kind?’

‘No. Can’t afford to be,’ Clare responded honestly. ‘I’m supposed to be good with money and I can help you with yours, but I can’t start being kind enough to help you manage your money rather better if you haven’t got any money to manage in the first place, now, can I?’

Ginny laughed and threw out her hands in a gesture of complete defeat. ‘All right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now tell me how you are going to make a profit on this outrageously generous offer.’

‘Well, I’ve managed to do some “sharp deals” as one of my American clients used to say, but buying sharp means a lot of research to find what we need at special prices. If I had someone here who could carry on with my painting efforts and keep an eye on workmen when we have them in, then I’d be free to hunt for all the stuff we need, like bed linen and towels, china, glass and so on. I’d like to check out these new Cash and Carry places for basics, but I can’t leave June on her own all the time, especially when there might be bookings coming in and we’ve still got to get the place up and running for April.’

‘Right. You’re on. If you can tackle something you’ve never done before, then why can’t I? Even if I have been an idiot, I can still do all sorts of useful things when I remember what they are,’ she added dryly.

‘That’s got that settled then.’

Clare paused, suddenly uncertain that what she wanted to say next was quite the right thing.

‘What is it, Clare? I know that look of yours. You’re thinking.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I am, but about something quite different,’ she began slowly. ‘I keep looking at your face. You’re still very pale, but that’s what makes it so wonderful. Even when you are so pale and have no make-up on at all, I can’t see any of your scars, even though I know exactly where they are.’

Four

The small, pebble-dashed bungalow overlooking the road from Armagh to Loughgall and the local landmark of Riley’s Rocks had been part of Clare’s life for as long as she could remember. As a child, hand in hand with her mother or father, she’d walked past often on a Sunday afternoon to visit Granda and Granny Scott at the forge. She could still remember how she had gazed up the steep slope and said proudly, ‘That’s where Kate and Charlie Running live, isn’t it?’ She had known the names of all the people who lived in the scattered houses beyond the Mill Row and even the names of those who lived out of sight at the ends of lanes that dipped down under the railway bridge or curved round the low hill on which the Runnings’ bungalow was perched.

Later, after she had lost both her parents and had come to live with her grandfather, she’d cycled the road each day on her way to school in Armagh. Sometimes, on days as hot as today, she would stop at the rusting iron pump opposite the bungalow, to drink the cold water that came gushing up from deep underground. It certainly gushed up when Jessie was with her. Jessie did nothing if not whole-heartedly and when she put her hand to the pump, Clare was sure to end up with a wet gymslip or splashed shoes.

Today, on the loveliest of June days, the sky a perfect blue, the heat tempered by a hint of a breeze, Clare parked Andrew’s ancient bicycle on the hedge bank beside the gate her grandfather had made for his old friend, took a cake tin from her front basket and prepared to climb the two flights of steps to his front door.

All morning she’d looked forward to visiting Charlie, a pleasant walk of about a mile if one counted in the long driveway of Drumsollen, but by the time she’d dealt with checking out their overnight guests, sorted the paperwork from the morning’s deliveries and answered a scatter of telephone enquiries, she knew she was going to be late. While Charlie had such a relaxed attitude to time he often forgot what day it was, nevertheless, she felt sad that events had cut into her time with him.

Charlie did not suffer from the absent-mindedness that was sometimes a feature of age, nor did he have the habit of looking the other way from what he would prefer not to see. Charlie saw so much he was perpetually preoccupied, thinking through some item he had read or teasing out some puzzle he’d encountered in his formidable reading programme. Given how often his mind was elsewhere, Clare took it as a great compliment that he never forgot when she was coming. Not only did he have the kettle boiling, but he always cleared away enough of his books, papers, maps and sketches to leave them a seat each in his small front room.

‘Well now, tell me all your news, Clare. How is that good man of yours? I hear he’s been down in Fermanagh again. Did he prosper, as the saying is?’

Clare laughed. Not only did Charlie know everyone for miles around, but he knew everything going on in the entire area as well. When she’d last seen him a couple of weeks earlier, the complicated land dispute in Fermanagh involving one of Charles and Andrew’s biggest clients had not yet arisen.

‘Well, Charlie, as you well know, Andrew hasn’t much time for litigation or the criminal side, but he’s in his element when it’s land. As long as he has a good dispute, preferably with boundaries, so he can get his feet on the ground, he’s happy. I wish there was more work of that kind,’ she ended sadly.

‘Too soon for him to give up being a solicitor and take to farming?’

‘’Fraid so. I can’t give him much hope till we’ve a year behind us, or more likely two. It has gone well though, so far, as I’m sure you’ve heard. But we can’t think of buying land till we’ve repaid all the loans for the structural work,’ she admitted honestly. ‘The trouble is, the more we do, the more we find to do. We had to have the gutters cleared and the bad bits replaced and one of the men who’d been up on the roof told us the west chimney is in a bad way. How bad it is we don’t know yet. We’re just keeping our fingers crossed.’

‘Aye, I can see that would be a worry. But I did hear you were fully booked in May.’

‘Yes indeed,’ she laughed, as he filled the teapot from his electric kettle and took the lid off the cake tin. ‘Full up in May and bookings coming in all the time. The local papers did us proud with that piece about Armagh in apple blossom time. That was your idea. But there’s more good news. Besides visitors, we’ve a couple of surveyors booked for the whole of June. I don’t know how they got to hear of us but more long stays like that would be just great. Steady income and less laundry,’ she added, making a face.

‘Surveyors now?’ he nodded, as he laid out the cups and saucers methodically. ‘Would that be a new factory or suchlike?’

‘Yes, it’s an American company. Textiles. I think it’s probably synthetics. Steve and Tom aren’t American, they’re English, so they’re not really much interested in the end product. In fact, to be honest, though they’re very friendly, I think they’re only interested in doing the job, watching TV in the evening and getting back home to their wives.’

‘So you got the TV then?’ he demanded, raising his shaggy eyebrows.

‘I got two actually,’ she confessed, only too aware of Charlie’s thesis that television prevented conversation and was undermining the quality of local visiting. ‘The sixteen inch is in the old smoking room for the use of guests. I told you we’d have to have that. But I was in luck. Apparently fourteen inch ones are out of date already, so I got one cheap and we have that in our sitting-room. Mind you it’s much bulkier than the sixteen inch and it’s a tight squeeze with my desk and the typewriter and the office stuff we need in there as well, but we’ve been so busy we were beginning to think we’d no idea what was going on in the world at all. Not even what’s going on here in Northern Ireland.’

‘Not a lot, Clare, not a lot. I can tell you you’re not missing much, though I have to say the unemployment has dropped a bit and there’s a few more houses going up,’ he said, between mouthfuls of cake. ‘There’ll not be much happening unless your man Brookeborough exerts himself. And that’s not very likely. Sure, it’s time he was retiring. The man’s a few years younger than I am but I can’t say the same for his ideas. We need someone with a new perspective and some notion of how to create jobs and a whole different attitude to people forby. Sure, the ship building’s going down the plughole and the linen industry isn’t far behind. Emigration is way up again and there’s desperate poverty, and not just in Belfast and Derry. Even the small farmers are laying off men and bringing in tractors . . .’

She nodded silently and drank her tea, listening hard as she always did when he started to talk like this, running on from one topic to another. She could never guess what he might bring to her attention next. The progress of the Erne hydroelectric scheme, the fate of Georgian terraces in Central Dublin, the development of an industrial park adjacent to Shannon Airport. Charlie was as committed to the whole island of Ireland as he was to their shared interest in their own small corner.

Today, he moved quickly away from matters social and economic and began musing on matters political. The manoeuvrings of political parties and the protests of activists was not something Clare had ever found easy to follow. She relied on Andrew to keep her informed and recently there’d been so little time to talk at all. When they did have the opportunity there were far more personal matters to concern them.

‘Ach, I think the IRA has just about had it if the truth be told,’ he said suddenly.

Clare was quite amazed at this unexpected comment. Long years ago, when she was still at school, her grandfather had let slip that Charlie was an old IRA man. It had taken her aback completely, for she could not see how even an ex-IRA man could be so good a friend to a stout Orangeman who never missed marching behind Grange band every Twelfth of July, despite his limp.

‘One of these days, they’ll lay down their arms and that’ll be that,’ Charlie went on, as he drained his teacup. ‘They did their best, but circumstances change. It’s economics will change the future of this place, not revolution,’ he said firmly. ‘Though mind you, that doesn’t mean there won’t be trouble. When people are convinced they’re right, however wrong they are, there’ll always be those that can manipulate them for their own purposes. But they have to find out for themselves. It’s like everything else, no one can tell you you’re wrong, you have to see it for yourself.’

‘Is that what happened you, Charlie?’ Clare asked quietly.

She had spoken before she had thought about it, which wasn’t like her at all, but something had prompted her to take her chance and try to resolve this old puzzle.

‘Did you know I was a member?’ he asked, his large grey eyes widening. ‘Your Granda told you?’

She nodded.

Charlie shook his head and looked around his small, overcrowded sitting room. ‘I’ll never understand that grandfather of yours,’ he said abruptly. ‘He was as traditional, conservative and Orange as any man I’ve ever met and yet, when I got into trouble, sure he took an awful chance hiding me, him and Kate, the pair of them.’

‘From the police, Charlie?’

‘No, not at all,’ he said laughing aloud. ‘The police wasn’t the problem. It was the fact I’d changed my mind. When you join the IRA, you’re in for life. If you want out you get out with a bullet in your back or maybe just a couple of shattered kneecaps on a day when the disciplinary squad are in a good mood,’ he explained easily.

‘So where did you hide?’

‘D’ye remember where your granny kept her hens?’

‘Yes, of course. The nearest bit of that old house across from the forge. Beside the white lilac.’

‘Aye. In my young days, there was still a bit of roof away at the opposite end, the forge end. I suppose it would have been the bedroom when it was still a home. But I spent weeks in there till they thought I’d left the country. I did a powerful lot of reading and writing and Kate brought me food. And that’s how she and I fell in love, if that’s what you’re thinking about now.’

‘Yes, I knew that bit,’ she admitted shyly. ‘He told me she’d been his sweetheart and she did love him, but she loved you too and she said if she didn’t marry you, you’d end up on the end of a rope.’

‘She was right, Clare. She was right enough,’ he said, nodding sadly. ‘I was headstrong. I thought I could put the world to rights, but all I did was nearly get myself shot as a traitor. Me? Me, a traitor to the country I love. Erin go Bragh! Ireland for ever!’ he shouted, as he jumped to his feet.

Clare laughed at his vehemence, remembering all those nights he had come to visit them, putting his head around the door and saluting them with the same Irish rallying cry. Her grandfather either pretended not to hear, or else he made a joke of it.

‘Your grandfather was the straightest man I ever knew. There was no badness in him anywhere, but he was unsure of himself. There was something about him, or something had happened to him, maybe when he was a child, and it seemed to stop him from making up his mind about things. But if he knew where he stood, like helping me, then he’d let nothing get in his way of doing what he thought was right, even at risk to himself. I owe him my life, Clare, and I’ll never forget him,’ he said, as he sat down again, took out his large striped handkerchief and wiped his eyes unashamedly.

Despite the loveliness of the late afternoon, the softness of full leaf not yet darkened by summer growth, the flowers in coloured profusion leaning over garden walls and the dancing flight of swallows hawking over the water meadows, Clare was so bound up in her own thoughts that she found herself cycling up her own driveway without having registered any of it. What preoccupied her was what Charlie had said about her grandfather not being able to make up his mind. He was right, of course. Outside the forge, where he was protected by his long-learnt routines, he was so hesitant. Time and again, she had to make up his mind for him. Just like Andrew, her beloved Andrew, who tried so hard and so often had not the slightest idea what to do for the best.

For all their difference in age and background, in education and context, she’d always sensed these two men shared something in common. It was not that they were unworldly or impractical, but so often, faced with a straightforward, everyday situation, they simply couldn’t decide what to do. She confessed to herself, it was a problem she had never had. Mostly because there’d never been many options. She’d always taken what seemed the most sensible course whether she liked it or not. But as Andrew had once pointed out, there was no one to get in her way.

Of course, she hadn’t always got it right, she reflected, as she pedalled along beside the new rose bed, but that wasn’t the problem. What mattered was being able to decide in the first place.

Drumsollen looked lovely in the sunshine, the sun lower now and throwing longer shadows. She freewheeled down the slope and parked the bicycle in the covered area by the steps that led down to the basement and the big kitchen, next to which was the room they now used as their bedroom. All was silent as she walked along the echoing corridor that ran the length of the house. The big kitchen was cool, clean and very empty. Except for two trays on the well-scrubbed table, carefully covered with white cloths, there was no sign of life. She saw the note penned in June’s schoolbook copperplate sitting between the trays. It read:

Supper for No. 6 and No.7 when they come in. Your Uncle Jack rang. Said to ring him back before 6 p.m. Andrew rang said he hoped to be back fiveish. Mr and Mrs Moore picked up Ginny. Said they’d see you Sunday afternoon. Sent their love. John will be back as soon as he drops me home. See you tomorrow. Best. June.

Clare glanced at her watch. Twenty-five past five. Judging by the lack of cars parked outside, it looked as if she was the only one at home. Unsurprising on such a lovely evening, when their guests would stay out as long as possible. Tom and Steve were seldom in before seven.

She smiled to herself as she ran along the corridor, hurried up the carpeted stairs and made for their sitting-room. Headquarters, as Ginny had christened it. She’d thought Andrew might not get away till late afternoon, but he was already on his way home which was lovely. Friday was their evening off. Though they seldom went anywhere, they were always pleased to have John keeping an eye on things which meant they could garden, or go for a walk, or have a proper dinner with a glass of wine in the bay window of the dining room.

She moved carefully through the narrow gap between their everyday dining-table and her large roll-topped desk, picked up the receiver and dialled Jack’s number. Jack had been so good at advertising Drumsollen House, she’d told him when he rang last week that he ought to be getting a fee.

‘Frootfield Prisserves, ken I help yew?’

‘Oh hallo, Josie. Can I speak to Jack please?’

‘Houl on a minit,’Josie replied, abandoning her telephone voice. ‘He said ye’d phone.’

Clare suddenly found herself feeling anxious. Unless he had a new guest for her, Jack usually phoned at the weekend. By this time on a Friday, he should have been on his way home.

‘Clare, how are you?’ he asked, in his usual relaxed manner.

‘I’m fine, Jack. Is something wrong?’

‘Well, we’ve had a wee problem,’ he said soothingly. ‘Da had a bit of a turn last night. He was fine this morning, but the Doctor said he should stay in bed a day or two and rest. But he was asking for you, so I told him I’d give you a ring. That was fine by him. Maybe you’d take a wee run over at the weekend if you can.’

Clare found her hand shaking and beads of moisture were making the receiver slippery. She would never forget it was Uncle Jack who had come up to Belfast to look for her at Queens so he could tell her that Granda Scott was dead.

For a moment, she could think of nothing to say. As she stared helplessly at the black mouthpiece, she heard the sound of an engine and a small, familiar toot-toot. It was Andrew. With a steadiness she certainly did not feel, she said quietly; ‘Thanks, Jack, we’ll be over shortly.’

Andrew insisted he wasn’t in the least tired. He’d be happy to drive her over if she wanted to go to Liskeyborough right now. They paused only long enough to drop his briefcase in Headquarters and lock its door behind them. They waved to John Wiley when they met him on the road but spoke little on the short journey. In the farmyard in front of the long, low house they found several other vehicles parked randomly in the wide space, but no sign of anyone about.

‘I think perhaps you should go in on your own, Clare. I’m here if you want me,’ Andrew said, as he switched off.

She nodded, not sure what she would find when she stepped into the big kitchen where her grandmother habitually sat by the fire complaining about her legs and commenting sharply on everything that came under her gaze. She didn’t even know where her grandfather would be. For all of the years she had visited this house, his bedroom and those of whichever of her uncles were ‘at home’ had been out in the large, upper storey of the big barn where he had his workshop.

‘Ach, hello, Clare. You’re a stranger.’

Her youngest aunt, Dolly, now in her early fifties, a dressmaker by trade and a spinster by choice, rose from the fireside and looked her up and down.

‘Granny’s lying down. She says her heart’s broke with people trippin’ in and out all day. She’s not had a minit’s peace.’

‘How is Granda?’ Clare asked cautiously, knowing Dolly’s view of her father would match in all respects the view held by her mother.

‘There’s not much wrong with him if he’d just content himself and not go poking at things in that workshop of his,’ she said sharply. ‘The doctor said he was to rest. He’s in Jack’s room to save us both running back and forth to the barn.’

Clare took a deep breath. She’d never liked Dolly, though she’d done her best over the years, especially when she’d had to share a tiny bedroom with her. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely her fault that her manner was so sharp. She’d been spoilt and petted by her mother and allowed no life of her own. On the other hand, as a grown woman, she could have tried harder.

‘Has he a visitor at the moment?’

‘No, not one,’ replied Dolly airily. ‘Some of the boys were in earlier and a couple of neighbours came a while ago, but they’re all over in the workshop now fiddling with something or other,’ she added, with the dismissive sniff that had become habitual, as if nothing in the world was ever likely to please her.

‘I’ll away and see him then,’ Clare said quickly before Dolly could offer any reason why she might not.

She stepped into the short passageway behind the fireplace, her feet echoing on the wooden floor. The bedroom she’d shared with Dolly on her visits from Belfast was small, but Jack’s room next door was even smaller. She opened the door quietly in case her grandfather was asleep. But he was not. He was sitting up and a slow smile spread across his face as his bright blue eyes met hers.

‘I thought I heerd yer voice,’ he said, as she squeezed down the side of the bed nearest to the window to give him a kiss. ‘How’re ye doin’?’

‘More to the point, how are you, Granda?’ she came back at him.

He laughed and put out his hand for hers. It was large and warm, broad fingered and deeply lined. She had to admit he looked well enough, his face and almost bald head suntanned and shiny. Were it not for the two bright spots of colour on his cheeks, a bit like badly applied rouge, she might have been reassured, but there was something about him that was different from the last time she’d seen him.

‘D’ye see that wee box?’ he asked, glancing to the other side of the bed, where a jug of water and a glass sat on a small chest of drawers beside his well-thumbed Bible. ‘Bring that roun’ to me like a good girl,’ he said, speaking in that soft tone she had always found so comforting and reassuring. The box, a few inches square, was made of battered white cardboard.

‘This is for you,’ he said, taking out a gold fob watch. ‘D’ye know what this is?’ he asked, handing it to her.

She pressed the raised catch and looked at the elegant numerals on the clock face. It must be his retirement present from Fruitfield. Jack had sent her the newspaper cutting from the Portadown Times.

‘D’ye see what it says?’ he asked softly.

The room was already becoming shadowy, so she turned it to the light and looked closely. ‘Sam Hamilton, a good and faithful servant. With gratitude from the Lamb Brothers and all their staff,’ she read slowly, looking up at him.

‘There’s some says it’s a lot o’ nonsense, Clare, givin’ a man a watch when he retires and has time to himself, but maybe they don’t understand that somethin’ in your hand helps somethin’ in your heart,’ he said slowly. ‘It reminds you of all the hard work, the good times, aye, and the bad times too. An’ all the friends ye had.’

She could see he was short of breath, but was quite untroubled by the fact. He simply took his time.

‘If yer father had been alive, Clare dear, I’d have given him this. I tried to make no favourites with my family, but he was my namesake and truth to tell, I always knew what he was thinkin’ as well as I knew m’self. He an’ Ellie were a joy to me. They worked in one with the other . . . ach . . . if only there were more like them. Like you an’ yer man, Andrew,’ he added with a short nod.

He paused again for breath and she could see how tired he was, his bright eyes drooping now as he looked at her. ‘You’re like your mother, Clare, for all you’re dark an’ she was fair,’ he said with an effort. ‘Keep that by you for them an’ me. Come rain, come shine, it’ll mind you of the best, like it has minded me these last lock of years.’

She stayed only a little longer, stroking his hand until his eyes closed and he dozed off. Then she slipped away, escaped Dolly as quickly as she could and let Andrew drive her home, tears streaming unheeded down her face, the small box clutched firmly in her hand, as if she feared someone might try to take it from her.

Five

Unlike the twenty-first of June 1961, two years ago to the very day, when Sam Hamilton was laid to rest in the green space surrounding the Friends Meeting House in Richhill, full of cloudy skies and sudden heavy showers, the twenty-first of June 1963 promised to be fine and dry, the sun already beaming down on Drumsollen long before the smell of cooked breakfasts wafted up from the basement.

Clare walked out to the garage with Andrew, wished him well for a court hearing in Belfast and turned back purposefully into the silent house. She collected a bucket and secateurs, caught the front door back on its chain and ran down the steps to begin her favourite Friday morning task, choosing roses for the tall, cut glass vase that sat all summer through on the polished oak table in the centre of the entrance hall.

As she moved slowly round the flourishing rosebed, Andrews parterre, she breathed the cool morning air and listened for the distant sounds vibrating in the stillness. There was a tractor on a neighbour’s farm, a milk float, its crates of bottles chinking as it passed their own gates, and then the heavy throb of an Ulster Transport bus making the first journey of the day with people going to work in Armagh.

As she leaned over and felt the warmth of the sun on her back she remembered the quiet September evening she’d had to search the small bushes for enough blooms to make a wedding bouquet for herself. All the ones with long stems were already in the church, but she had managed to find the few buds she needed. She’d mixed them with sprays from the honeysuckle up by the summerhouse and tied them with ribbon. After the wedding pictures had been taken, she’d walked round the side of the church and left the little bouquet on Granda’s Scott’s grave, the buds now open in the sunshine.

When the time came, as she knew it would, she had made a similar bouquet for Granda Hamilton. She’d picked white roses for him, but she chose only those with a touch of pink on the outer petals. White flowers were considered very suitable for a wreath and white lilies the most suitably sombre of all, but Granda Hamilton did not approve of such demonstrations. Death was part of life, he always said. He was not troubled by its coming, nor by his own going. That was why she’d not worn black at his funeral.

She wondered why she should miss him so very much when she’d not seen him all that often over the years. But, then, she’d always known he was there, going about his work in that steady, unhurried way of his. Often these days, when she got agitated herself, upset by the problems that descended upon her like falling leaves, she would sit at her desk and stare at the face of his gold watch. Its tiny rhythmic tick comforted her and reminded her that whatever the problem was, it would pass in time, as all things passed. It was she who must learn how to keep steady through the bad times and make sure she took the good of whatever pleasure and achievement the better times might bring.

She moved carefully between the flourishing bushes and found there were plenty of blooms to choose from. Despite the harsh winter that got going immediately after Christmas, the spring and early summer had been kind to the roses. There were more in bloom this year, at this time, than she’d ever seen before, the opening buds more vibrant than usual. ‘No, not yellow after all,’ she said quietly, as she looked down into her bucket, ‘more gold than yellow.’

As she came in through the front door and moved across the entrance hall, she thought of Ginny and smiled to herself. Ginny had covered herself with glory in the months she’d spent with them, working with a will and setting her hand to anything she saw in need of attention. She began by solving the problem of the bleak, bare spaces the missing ancestors had left on the walls when Andrew had been forced to sell them.

On her first day ‘at work’ she’d walked round the public rooms and proposed they move the remaining pictures out of the entrance hall, redeploying them to cover up the spaces in the dining-room and on the stairs. She then suggested that she use a colour wash on the pale bits in the entrance hall till she got a match with the remaining faded, but warm-toned wallpaper. She’d spent hours mixing paint and applying it, layer on layer, working in small patches so that the ancient, time-darkened paper didn’t bubble or peel off. Having greatly improved the light level, she then tackled the handsome flock material below the gold-painted dado with stale bread.

Clare would never forget the look on June’s face the first morning Ginny raided the bread bin, but June was the first to say what ‘a real good job’ she’d done. The total effect was splendid, so much so, that when Ginny went on to suggest having the chandelier professionally cleaned, Clare couldn’t bring herself to say No. She felt sure they couldn’t afford it, but at least they could go as far as asking for an estimate. It was as intimidating as she’d expected, but in the end she and Andrew agreed they would find the money. It would be an act of faith to make so grand a gesture, the one single, extravagant thing they’d done to set against all the hard work and careful budgeting.

When the chandelier was rehung after the cleaning, the effect was stunning. Not only did it sparkle as if it was made of cut diamonds, but freed of the grime of almost two centuries the glittering pieces of glass now rotated in the currents of air from the open door, making tiny, delightful tinkles. Every newly-arrived guest caught the sound, looked around them for its source and smiled with delight when they found it glittering above their heads.

The telephone was ringing as Clare strode across the hall towards the small room, once the estate office, where all the cleaning and gardening equipment was kept. She almost laughed aloud as the telephone stopped abruptly. What a relief it was not to have to stop whatever she was doing and dash for the receiver lest she missed a precious booking. Probably Helen had answered it. June hated the phone, but Helen, who was helping out for the summer while waiting for her exam results, had no such problem. Now there were phones down in the basement and on the landings of both the upper floors, as well as in Headquarters, it made life easier for everyone.

She wondered if the early caller might be Harry, ringing before he opened the gallery, following up on things they had spoken about last evening. Then, as she thought about his most recent visit, she realized her real concern was Jessie. Harry had taken to visiting them regularly, on his way back from buying trips. He was always so welcome, so full of good stories about the extraordinary things that turned up at auctions and house clearances, but although their meetings were always easy and lively, she’d grown increasingly anxious because he had so little to say about Jessie. Fine, just fine, was all she ever got now in answer to her questions about her and the children.

Last night, she’d asked him if he wanted to phone Jessie to tell her where he was and when he’d be home but he’d only laughed and said that she wasn’t expecting him till she saw him.

Remembering how distressed Harry was when Jessie had been seriously depressed before the birth of their son, Clare made a point of telling him how sorry she was she couldn’t get up to Belfast to see her at this high point in the holiday season. To her great surprise, he had nodded abruptly and said he’d thought about that. He’d offered to buy Jessie a small car for her birthday, but she’d refused, saying she’d no need of a car, for sure didn’t the bus run past their door.

Shortly after, he’d got up to go and they’d walked out with him into the warm, golden dusk. They stood on the steps and waved till he was out of sight. To her surprise, it was Andrew who spoke first.

‘D’you think Jessie’s all right?’

‘No, I don’t, but I can’t see what to do. I do phone her, but either she isn’t at home or she doesn’t answer,’ she said sadly. ‘When I do get her, she tells me nothing, makes some excuse about something she has to do, or says: Sure you know I don’t like the phone anyway.’

‘Perhaps I should just call when I’m next in court and see if I can get any idea,’ he suggested, as he put an arm round her. ‘If she wasn’t expecting me, I might find out more. If she knows you’re coming, she’ll be all prepared, won’t she?’

The morning was busy. Four couples and a commercial traveller came to pay their bills. The couples all said how much they had enjoyed their stay and three of them assured her they would be coming again. Two of the husbands said the local literature and notes on places of interest they’d found left out for them had been most useful. One of the wives commented on the tea tray with fresh scones brought to their room when they arrived, another asked for details of the formidable gentleman in ermine trimmed robes hanging on the bend on the staircase. As for the young man, he simply said: ‘See you again soon.’

She enjoyed talking to guests, but she was glad enough when they went and she could get back to the week’s accounts. She had just got started when a good-looking young man with dark hair and eyes and a pair of brown overalls tapped at her half-open door and handed her a crumpled invoice from the Fuel Oil Depot in Armagh. His colleague, he said, had just pumped their delivery into their tanks round the back. They were pretty low, like she’d said on the phone, but that was a good thing for she’d get the summer reduction on every gallon over the first hundred.

The postman arrived next, needing a signature on a book Louise Pirelli had sent her from Paris. She sorted the rest of the post quickly, set aside the brown envelopes, almost certainly bills, looked at the postmarks on the white ones with handwritten addresses, which might be friends, or family, or even a returning guest. One envelope was neither white nor brown. It was gold and she guessed immediately what it was. She was just about to open it when there was another tap at the half-open door.

‘Helen, come in. Did you give the two Matts a lemonade?’

‘We did indeed,’ Helen replied, parking herself comfortably against the door frame. ‘Aren’t they a right pair? One old, one young, one fat and bald, the other dark and good-looking. And both of them Matthew.’

‘And one Catholic and one Protestant. Did you know that?’

‘Yes, Ma told me. She said she wished there were more like them. But maybe things would be better now Brookeborough’s gone.’

‘Yes, that’s what Andrew says too. Any change has to be good news. I take it you haven’t had any news yet?’

‘No, I’d have come and told you first thing. The suspense continues. Ma sent me up to ask if you want me to go to the Ulster Bank.’

‘Oh goodness, I forgot,’ Clare gasped, catching a hand to her mouth. ‘And there is a lot of cash this week. But I haven’t made up the lodgement yet. If everyone that’s going has gone, I might get time to do it now,’ she said laughing, as she reached down into the deepest drawer of her desk for the cash box.

‘Will I bring your coffee up here then?’ asked Helen helpfully.

‘Good idea. But give me ten minutes’ start to get the lodgement sorted. Will you go on the bike or will you take your Da’s car?’

‘I’ll use the bike, if it’s all right with you. Car looks quicker, but it’s sometimes hard to get parked anywhere handy on a Friday morning.’

‘Bike’s fine by me. I was only going to remind you that if you use the family car you’re to make a note in the Petty Cash book for mileage. Only fair. Your petrol costs money.’

‘Fresh scone and butter?’ Helen asked, raising her eyebrows.

‘Yes, please. Breakfast feels as if it was a week ago,’ she replied, as she drew a lodgement slip from one of the pigeon holes in her desk and turned the cash box upside down in front of her.

As Clare stood on the steps saying a few friendly words to the delivery man who had brought a case of wine from Robert Lafarge and had carried it cheerfully all the way down to the basement, she saw Helen come round the side of the house and cycle off down the drive.

She smiled as Helen disappeared from view, remembering the outcome of just such a similar journey to the Ulster Bank made by Ginny while she was staying with them. She hurried back into Headquarters, took up the gold envelope, opened it carefully, took out the oblong of stiff card and beamed.

Mr and Mrs Moore of Sea View, Rostrevor request the pleasure of the company of Mr and Mrs Andrew Richardson at the marriage of their daughter, Virginia, to David Midhurst.

The story of how Ginny met her husband-to-be was one of her happiest memories of the time Ginny had worked with them at Drumsollen. It was the first Friday morning in 1961 when there was enough money in the cash box to merit a journey to the bank. On her return, Ginny had burst into Headquarters, radiant with excitement.

‘Clare, Clare, you’ll never guess what’s happened,’ she gasped, pushing wide the half-open door so fiercely that some small receipts on the desk fluttered to the floor in the breeze she’d created. ‘I’m going riding this afternoon . . . if you can spare me, that is,’ she added hastily.

‘But of course I can spare you, after all the work you’ve been doing,’ Clare expostulated. ‘That’s wonderful. How did this happen?’

‘Well, I was turning out of the gate and I heard hooves,’ Ginny began quickly. ‘I didn’t believe it at first. Then I looked over my shoulder and there was this lovely chestnut, just like Conker, my beloved Conker. You remember Conker, don’t you?’ she demanded, as if she had totally forgotten that it was on Conker she had taught Clare to ride. ‘I thought I was hallucinating. But I wasn’t. I rode on very slowly wondering what on earth I was going to do. I knew I just had to do something before the Mill Row and the Asylum Hill,’ she went on, collapsing breathless into one of the fireside chairs.

Clare abandoned her desk and came and sat down opposite her.

‘Well, finally, just before the end of the trees, I just stopped and put my bicycle against the hedge bank and waited,’ she went on. ‘And then as they came up to me I said quite politely: Do you think I could possibly say good morning to your horse.’

‘So there was a rider on the horse?’

‘Well, yes, of course there was, silly. She was being road trained. But he didn’t seem to mind stopping too much and I stood and talked to her and stroked her nose. Oh Clare, she is lovely, just lovely, and she seemed perfectly happy with me. He actually said: She seems to like you, so I thought I’d better explain that I’d had a chestnut very like her and at times I felt heartbroken at having had to part with her and he said he was sure it must have been difficult but why did I have to do that.’

‘And you told him?’

‘Well, yes, I did, sort of. And then I asked him if he was a Cope or a Cowdy and he laughed and said, How did I know that? and I said they were the only horsey people around these parts except for some farmers who kept horses for competing in ploughing matches. He said, Yes, my mother is a cousin of one of the Cowdys. I’ve forgotten which one. He’s over from England.’

‘And did this gentleman give you a name?’

‘Oh yes, he did,’ she said beaming happily. ‘She’s Princess Tara of Ardrea by Prince Connor out of Lady Grannia, but his cousin calls her Blaze. She has the loveliest little white bit on her nose. He said his cousin thought it looked like that mark on Superman’s vest.’

In the remaining two weeks of his visit to Loughgall, Ginny did manage to register David Midhurst’s name. In fact, as she transferred her attention from Princess Tara to her rider, she rather made up for her initial indifference by deciding she was in love with him.

‘Yes, Clare, I admit it, you’re right,’ she agreed, as the final days of his stay slipped away. ‘He’s the man for me, but I’m not going to marry him. At least not yet,’ she added, hesitating. ‘I made such a nonsense last time.’

‘Has he asked you to marry him?’ Clare asked, somewhat surprised at the speed with which events had moved.

‘Oh yes, he asked me last week and I said no. So he said that was fine, he’d ask me every week on Fridays until I said yes.’

Clare propped the wedding invitation on her desk and turned gratefully to the tray Helen had brought. She poured her coffee and munched her scone enthusiastically.

Some months after David went back to the Cotswold village where he was setting up a riding school, specializing in cross country trekking, Ginny admitted sheepishly she was pining for him even more than for Princess Tara. Would they mind if she went off to join him? She’d asked Ginny then when she had actually said yes to David, but Ginny couldn’t remember. She was already absorbed in the details of cross-country trekking and the prospect of a whole new life in England.

After the excitements and activity of the morning, the afternoon hours remained quiet and uninterrupted. Apart from Andrew ringing to tell her he’d be back by six, the phone was blissfully silent. At lunchtime she asked Helen to deal with any guests who might turn up in the course of the afternoon. It wasn’t very likely anyone would appear until much later on such a splendid day, but having alerted Helen meant she could shut her door and make a start on the end-of-year figures.

The thirtieth of June still felt the most unlikely of times to have a financial end of year, but the reason was simple. July the first, 1960, was the day she and Andrew had set up Drumsollen House as a limited company. Even though she was still in Paris, by doing so, Andrew could get his hands on the money he so badly needed for the most urgent repairs. Now, there were only nine days till the end of the month and the end of their third year of trading. Today’s crop of bills had been deducted in her ledger, the cheques already in their envelopes for the post. There was a predictable amount coming in from next week’s bookings, but even if the amount she’d pencilled in proved to be an overestimate, a few pounds either way wasn’t going to make any difference to what she had in mind.

The afternoon grew steadily hotter as she entered up the monthly figures and collated them with the Ulster Bank lodgement book. As she worked away steadily, she thought of the last time she’d met their accountant. He’d told her his senior clerks were experimenting with automated calculating machines. The sooner the better, Clare thought, as she totted up a huge column of figures. She looked at the result, then did the sum all over again, because the figure was so encouraging she had to be sure she’d not made a mistake.

She paused, got up and stuck her head out of the window. The sun had moved round, so the side of the house was now in shadow, but there was no coolness anywhere. Her face prickled with heat and she could feel her thin, cotton print blouse sticking between her shoulder blades.

She took a deep breath and went through the figures yet once more, sure there must be something she had missed, even though she knew her records were right up to date. She checked the Pass books again. It all tallied exactly. All the loan repayments had been made for the year and there was no bill for repair or maintenance work outstanding. Then she found what she was looking for. It was now some five months since they’d made the last transfer of funds from Andrew’s salary into the Drumsollen Trading Account to prevent it going into overdraft. The present healthy balance was all their own work.

‘Hello love, how’s things?’ Andrew asked, as he took his briefcase from the passenger seat.

‘Not bad,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Wedding invitation from Ginny and wine from Robert. John’s arrived and says he has jobs to do at the front, so I though we’d be posh and have dinner upstairs as its Friday night.’

‘Great, I’m starving. Had to use the lunch hour to consult. Someone went out for sandwiches. Cheese with some sort of salad cream,’ he said, making a face, as they walked side by side along the corridor to their bedroom. ‘They were horrible.’

‘Never mind, we’ve got something nice for dinner. And dessert.’

She picked up his black jacket and pinstriped trousers as he dropped them on the bed, shook them and hung them up to air beside the open window.

‘You won’t mind if I don’t dress for dinner,’ he said, teasing her with his best English accent, as he pulled on some flannels and an open-necked shirt.

‘Well . . .’

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, putting his arms round her. ‘A wretched day, I’m sorry to say. One more victory for the status quo. I want to forget it all as quickly as possible. Can I carry something?’ he added vigorously, as if only immediate action would erase the memory of the shabby show he’d been forced to witness in court.

‘Yes, it’s all in the bottom of the Aga. Except the dessert,’ she added, laughing, as they pushed open the kitchen door. ‘That’s upstairs already.’

She loaded up the tray for him to carry and wrapped two warm dinner plates in a tea cloth, leaving her a hand free to open the door of Headquarters.

‘I say, what are we celebrating?’ Andrew asked, as he caught sight of the small table under the window. After years of squeezing round the large and very solid piece of furniture thought appropriate when Headquarters had been the morning-room at Drumsollen, Harry had found them a customer who had offered them a remarkably good price. The new table they’d chosen together stood below the window and was laid this evening with a white damask cloth. On it were laid two place settings, a slim vase of golden roses, two silver candlesticks and a bottle of red wine in an ornate silver wine cooler.

‘Food first,’ she said, as he put the tray down on the sideboard and she took the lid off the casserole.

‘Anything you say, ma’am. But I can almost smell good news,’ he confessed, as he carried the vegetable dish to the table and poured two glasses of wine.

They were both hungry and ate devotedly, finishing off every scrap of the tasty casserole and all the vegetables as well. As they sat sipping their second glass of wine with the remaining fragments of crusty roll, Andrew suddenly spoke.

‘It’s not your birthday, nor is it our anniversary. I’m sure of that.’ He paused and asked sheepishly, ‘Is this the day we met?’

Clare laughed and looked at him more closely.

‘Oh, Andrew dear, don’t be anxious,’ she said gently. ‘I wasn’t setting you a test. Anybody can forget anything if they’ve been as busy as we’ve been. It might be the anniversary of the day we met, but I certainly can’t remember. Have you any idea when that was?’

Andrew claimed never to remember personal things, but to her amazement, he proceeded to give her a vivid picture of the day when he found her bicycle, parked against the low wall beside the gates of Drumsollen, the tyres having been let down.

‘Dear Jessie. She really thought I’d let them down and she was very, very cross. But you said you didn’t think I had,’ he continued thoughtfully, his blue eyes sparkling as he put his glass down. He paused and looked at her. ‘What made you say that?’ he asked abruptly.

‘I’m not sure now,’ she began hesitantly. ‘I’m amazed you can remember. I think I just looked and saw what you were like. Your basic honesty, perhaps. Robert used to ask me about clients he wasn’t sure about. He always said I could see if there was any badness in people.’

‘Like Charles Langley?’

‘Oh yes, dear Charles, your one-time slave at school. I couldn’t believe it when he told me about fagging for you,’ she said, laughing. ‘I wish we’d been able to go to his wedding,’ she added, a little wistfully. ‘But you’re quite right. Charles is a good example. Like you, my love, he was doing a job he had to do. The old obligation of a family business descending to the next in line. He certainly did the job to the best of his ability, but he never looked quite right doing it.’

‘Was that why you had to explain to Robert about Englishmen and duty?’

‘Stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing,’ she agreed. ‘Robert was very shrewd about people. He’d read about the English Public School style and manners, but he’d never seen it in action, so he couldn’t judge for himself if Charles was completely honest or not.’

‘Was he?’

‘Of course he was. As honest as you are. But he couldn’t get excited about buying and selling fruit and needing money to expand the import business.’

‘Any more than I can go along with some of what passes for normal legal practice in this province,’ he said sharply. ‘And now he and Lindy have a flying school in the South Downs.’

‘And are coming over to stay sometime during the winter when they can’t fly,’ she reminded him.

He smiled wryly and Clare guessed what he was thinking. Charles and Lindy had already managed to do what they so much wanted to do. When Charles’s father had died suddenly, he was free to sell up. Weekend flying had become a major leisure pursuit in the south-east and both he and Lindy were passionate about flying. Now they had more customers than they could cope with and the project was a great success.

She stood up and cleared away the empty plates and dishes and carried a domed silver dish ceremoniously to the table. Once part of the equipment for serving a cooked breakfast to be laid out on the long sideboard in the dining room, it had been redeployed for covering whatever might be a temptation to the summer flies. She removed the cover with a flourish.

‘Shall I carve, or will you?’ she asked soberly.

Andrew peered at the soft icing decorating one of June’s Victoria sponges and looked at her quizzically. ‘Did you put this icing on?’

‘I added the little sugar flowers, but June did the house and the fields. She said a cow was a bit much at short notice.’

‘So it is an anniversary, or nearly. Are you telling me we can think about buying a cow and a field?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said, as she picked up the cake knife and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps even two of each if we can do as well next year as we have this year. We can certainly open a new account. What shall we call it? Cows or fields? Or Drumsollen estate?’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.