A Girl Called Rosie (19 page)

‘I’m afraid we’ll need X-rays, Mrs Hamilton. That means Armagh Infirmary. Do you have transport?’

‘What kind of transport?’

‘A motor car would be ideal,’ he replied, with an unpleasant smile, clearly indicating that he felt he was dealing with one of the less able-minded of his patients.

Martha shook her head.

‘Then I’m afraid it’s a matter of waiting for the ambulance. I’ll telephone the hospital when I get back to my surgery this afternoon. They might be able to come today. If not, sometime tomorrow.’

Rosie didn’t have to look at her mother or Uncle Joe to know how they’d react to this. It was still only mid morning and Joe was clearly in considerable pain. Richard P. would be horrified. In this situation he’d take Uncle Joe to hospital himself, cow shit or no cow shit.

She took a deep breath, picked up the old jotter in which she made lists of things needed in the house and smiled at him sweetly.

‘Perhaps I could make the telephone call and save you the trouble, doctor. We don’t have a motor, but we do have a kind neighbour with a telephone. If you would just tell me who to ask for at the hospital, I can find the number myself in the telephone book. I expect they will need your authorisation,’ she added, her pencil poised. ‘Just tell me what I’m to say.’

He did as he was asked without further ado, collected his fee and disappeared while Rosie ran up the hill and made the call. The ambulance arrived less than an hour later driven by a large man with an even larger young lad as his helper. They picked up Uncle Joe as if he were an overgrown child.

‘Ye spoke up rightly to yer man,’ Joe said, eyeing Rosie as she and Martha went out to the ambulance with him. ‘Maybe a bit of education comes in handy after all. I’m beholden to you, as the sayin’ is.’

They banged shut the heavy doors of the ambulance and drove off. Rosie thought how out of place it looked, still painted camouflage green, for it was one of those paid for by the people of Armagh in 1914 and given to their local regiment.

Two weeks later, Joe died in Armagh Infirmary. Not from the leg injury which had taken him to hospital, but from a cancer, probably long established, they said, which became suddenly active, turning his face
to a sickly yellow and dropping off what little flesh remained on his gaunt frame.

On a damp and misty December afternoon, Rosie saw him carried up the hill on the shoulders of her father and brothers to the quiet Quaker graveyard, where, years earlier, some more devout member of his family had ensured burial rights, even for those, like Joe, who had not set foot in a Meeting House since his boyhood and who had never to the best of her knowledge managed to say a good word for the Quakers who now provided his resting place.

Joe’s departure inevitably meant there would have to be changes in the routine of the household, but at this low point of the year, with the cattle stalled for the winter months, there was little obvious change to the farm routine for Martha and Bobby. Recently, Joe had avoided the milking and he’d left all the heavy work to Bobby.

Rosie did sometimes feel there was an easier atmosphere in the house. For a start, her father came over from the barn in the late evening more often to sit by the fireside in the chair Uncle Joe had habitually occupied. She herself was glad enough not to have to wash his smelly underclothes, when he could be persuaded to change them, and even happier to escape having to clean his room. While he would not spit in the kitchen under Martha’s eye, he had observed no such limitation in
his
room.

No, she could not be sorry he was gone and yet she found herself puzzling over his life, fitting together the few fragments she’d picked up about his adventures as a young man prospecting in Alaska and working on the Canadian railways with his brothers.

Why he had come home no one knew. Some said there was a woman in it, as so often in these stories. Others said he was homesick. But nothing anyone said about Joe suggested he’d ever made any contribution to the happiness of another human being.

If the details of Uncle Joe’s life puzzled Rosie, her mother’s reaction to his death puzzled her even more.

From the moment the news of his death arrived, she’d been in the best of good spirits. Naturally, she’d gone through the appropriate rituals with her neighbours. Poor Joe was lamented as a man who hadn’t made much of his life. God Bless the crater. Thus the pieties were observed, but with moderation. Martha did not try to soften the picture of a waspish and egocentric man. Rather, she took the line that we all have it in us to make a poor job of life and, but for the grace of God, we any of us might end our days like Joe.

More relevant to Rosie than merely the lift in spirits which Joe’s death had produced in her
mother, however, was the change in her behaviour towards herself. It came as a shock the first time Martha was polite to her. Where once she’d replied to any enquiry about a meal or a job with a sharp, ‘Suit yerself’, she would now say, ‘Whatever suits you best’.

She was baffled and for once Lizzie could think of no possible reason, even though she did manage to forget about Hugh for long enough to give the matter her full attention.

The respite was invaluable to Rosie. There was no objection now to her spending a weekend with her grandmother when she finally arrived home just after Christmas, to escape the predictable January storms.

Back at the farm again, much encouraged by her grandmother’s obvious pleasure in her return to Rathdrum and her modest plans for occupying herself during the worst winter months, she was able to redecorate Uncle Joe’s bedroom. She suggested to Bobby and Jack that they share the room. There would then be space in the barn for a long workbench where Charlie and Sammy would have a much better place for their new wireless receiving set. Already, the previous September, they’d managed to pick up the first Northern Ireland broadcast.

After a little good-natured teasing Charlie and Sammy, delighted by this plan, agreed that a small
area of the new work bench, just under one of the two small, north-facing windows would be kept free of wires, aerials, soldering irons and valves, so that Rosie had a space were she could work.

Even with the paraffin heater lit and a rug round her knees, it was very hard to keep warm in January, but having a place of her own with a piece of bench where she could paint, or write letters, was such a pleasure that she used it every afternoon until the point at which her hands got too cold to hold either brush or pen. A hundred times better than writing by candlelight sitting up in bed with a coat round her shoulders, she thought, every time she started out on another letter to Patrick.

Writing to Patrick was not as easy as she’d imagined it would be. At first, she thought it was because the shadow of her grandfather’s death had come so soon after the happiness of her time in Kerry. As time passed, however, and Patrick’s letters grew less frequent, she realised how anxious she was as she took them up.

Always they were lengthy, as much as a dozen small, closely written sheets, but each time, as she read, she felt a strange disappointment creep over her.

It wasn’t that what he wrote wasn’t interesting in itself and quite new to her. Yeats and Joyce and Synge he’d studied closely. He had so much to say
about them, but they were simply names to her and when she asked questions so that she might understand better, he never answered them. He just went on about the literary scene in Dublin and his own observations on it, as if she knew the people he mentioned and was as involved in their disagreements as he seemed to be.

She wondered why he never took up any of the things she said about her own life, never asked what she was doing, or even what she was reading. More than once, it came into her mind that it was so different from the way Richard P. related to her. But then, she told herself, she had to accept her talk with Richard had always been face to face. Letters couldn’t be expected to have that kind of immediacy.

Then there were passages where Patrick rode off, as she put it to herself, saying such extravagant things about Ireland and its past, or about love and its transforming power. Scattered with phrases in Irish, she wondered if she should find such passages romantic, but sadly, she had to admit to herself, they just made her feel uneasy, even a little cross as she’d said she couldn’t read Irish. Sometimes it felt as if he were addressing someone she simply didn’t recognise.

She encouraged herself by considering that he might have problems with being direct, just like Emily. Meantime, she did her best. Writing letters
was one of her pleasures and she continued to write in the hope that she might begin to understand better someone who was so different from anyone she had ever met.

It was a bitterly cold morning in February when the happy state of affairs that had existed since Uncle Joe’s death came to an end. Walking cautiously back from the ash pit, her eyes scanning the yard for any telltale gleam of ice, Rosie saw the postman leave his bicycle by the gate.

‘Hallo, Rosie. You’re outa luck today,’ the young man greeted her.

He’d asked her to go out with him so often that she’d finally let it drop she had a boyfriend in Dublin in the hope it might discourage him. Clearly a mistake, she decided, as she came up to him. All he’d done was to identify Patrick’s letters, measure the gap between them, and wait hopefully for them to stop. His face was always downcast when there was a fat envelope with a Dublin postmark and Patrick’s unmistakable scrawl.

‘One for yer ma … ah hello, Mrs Hamilton,’ he said quickly as Martha suddenly appeared from her bedroom and almost snatched a long, stiff envelope from his hand.

‘What about the dance in the Orange Hall, Rosie?’

‘On Saturday?’

His face lit up.

‘Sorry, I’m going to see my granny in Banbridge.’

‘Ah well, maybe the next one then,’ he said, grinning hopefully.

Going back into the kitchen, she found her mother searching for her spectacles. She found them for her in the spare sugar bowl on the dresser, a place she used regularly when a neighbour surprised her and she didn’t want to be seen wearing them.

‘The ould bugger. The ould bugger,’ Martha screeched. ‘Damn his soul for a liar. May he rot in Hell,’ she shouted, as she threw the heavy sheets of paper on the floor and rushed out of the house.

Crossing to the door, Rosie saw her stride up the yard and turn out of the gate, heading down the lane towards the station. It looked as if Aggie Hutchinson, her nearest neighbour and cousin, was the most likely destination.

For a moment she hesitated. Then she picked up the sheets of paper. A single glance told her it was from the solicitor in Portadown with whom Uncle Joe had always done business. The main letter was quite short, the second page was a typed copy of an earlier document. She scanned them both quickly.

‘My goodness,’ she said to herself, as she read the letter through again and began to make sense of the information revealed by the formal language.

Her mother’s anger was at least understandable. For years Uncle Joe had said he was leaving the farm to her. Family and neighbours had heard him say so many, many times. She herself was quite used to hearing her mother say, ‘one day when I own this place’. In fact, the phrase was something of a warning. Her mother used it whenever she was in a really bad mood, particularly if she wanted to annoy their father.

The letter revealed that the farm was not Uncle Joe’s to leave to anyone. It had been left to him for his lifetime and was then to pass to his surviving brothers in America, or to their male offspring in the event of their prior decease. The second sheet of paper was a transcript from the original will made by Joe’s father.

She put the sheets down on the table and picked up the envelope as if it might have something more to tell her, and indeed it had. The letter was addressed to
both
her parents. Probably her mother had never even noticed. The size, shape and weight of the envelope told her where it had come from and she’d simply ripped it open, expecting to read she was now the new owner of the farm, left to her by the will of her late uncle, Mr Joe Loney, deceased.

She had not for one moment expected to find that the solicitors were already engaged in tracing the new owners in Pennsylvania and hoped shortly
to be in direct contact with them. Nor would she have appreciated the courteously worded warning that in the circumstances it would be provident to assume the new owners might prefer to sell the property rather than to receive a weekly rent.

Rosie took a deep breath, folded the letter in its original creases, replaced it in its envelope and put it behind the clock where her father would be sure to see it when he came in from work.

The news completely changed the situation. It was possible they would have to give up the farm and find somewhere else to live. That would mean her father having no workshop, her mother having no animals to care for and poor Bobby having no work at all.

However much she thought about the family and the effects a move might have on each of them, what was clear to her was much more personal. The improved atmosphere since Uncle Joe’s death had come to a sudden, dramatic end. The person most likely to suffer from Martha’s bitterness and disappointment would be herself.

After a wild and blustery March, with Martha’s violent outbursts as turbulent as the gale force winds and her comments as sharp as the continuing frosts, April brought no change in her bitter mood. In complete contrast, a sudden settling of the weather blessed them with blue skies and sunshine and the first real warmth of the year.

The coming of spring had always been marked for Rosie, not by the budding of trees, nor even the visible growth of new grass, but by the flowering of a particular patch of lesser celandine on the steep bank of the lane exactly opposite the drive leading up to Lizzie’s house.

‘Hallo,’ she said out loud to herself, smiling broadly. ‘Good to see you again.’

She stopped to stare into the hundreds of small bright faces which had not been there even the previous day when she’d walked past on her Thursday visit to Miss Wilson.

As she stood looking down, the sun warm on her
shoulders, the ecstatic song of small birds all around her, she wondered what else the sun might have coaxed into leaf or flower. Glancing across the lane, she caught her breath in pure delight. A south-facing branch of Mackay’s ancient magnolia was outlined against the pure blue of the sky, its exotic pink and white buds unfolding almost as she watched.

‘I shall have to take one of you home with me,’ she announced in the deserted lane, as she collected her thoughts, for once almost reluctant to move on, to pass beneath it and make her way up the drive and round to the back kitchen where Lizzie would be waiting for her.

Lizzie and her mother were there together, wiping the day’s eggs, a large bowl on the table between them. ‘Hallo, Rosie, any news?’

To her surprise, it was Mrs Mackay who addressed her.

Standing in a patch of sunshine that fell through the kitchen window and lit up the table where they worked, she was smiling broadly. Grey and drawn even on one of her infrequent ‘good days’, her face now looked quite different, softer and with a hint of colour. What really surprised Rosie were her eyes. She’d never before noticed that they were so vivid a green.

She shook her head.

‘Maybe, Rosie, these American relations will
turn out to be
sooo
rich they won’t be interested in a wee place in Ireland,’ she went on.

‘Well, that would be one solution.’

The suggestion had been put with such lightheartedness, Mrs Mackay’s way of referring to ‘a wee place in Ireland’ had so distinct an ironic edge to it, that she could not help but laugh.

‘Now away on the pair of you and enjoy your walk,’ she said briskly, beaming at them both. ‘Sure it’s beautiful out. I’ll finish the eggs, Lizzie. And then I’m going to sit in the garden and
do
nothing,’ she announced with a wink and a vigorous nod of her head.

‘Lizzie, what’s happened to your ma? I can’t believe it,’ Rosie demanded, the moment they were out of earshot.

‘You’ll not believe me if I tell you,’ said Lizzie, staring at her wide-eyed.

‘Of course, I’ll believe you.’

Lizzie viewed this comment with scepticism, but nevertheless she pressed her lips together, stared up at the sky and launched forth.

‘She has this friend she used to go to school with that comes and visits her. She’s quite nice really, but a bit religious, always quoting the Bible and saying she’ll pray for me,’ Lizzie began, shrugging her shoulders impatiently. ‘Anyway, this friend had this idea about Ma going to some kind of a healer
over Loughgall way. Ma wasn’t keen. She’s been to so many doctors and specialists she says they only make her worse, because she gets depressed, as well as feeling awful when they’ve finished with her. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, she must have given in to Faith, or Mercy, I can never remember which, an’ gone to see yer man. She never told me, but I noticed she was gettin’ up more and eatin’ better. An’ Da and I couldn’t believe it when she started to laugh and pull our legs again. Do you remember, she always used to laugh an’ pull our legs when we were at Richhill School?’

Rosie nodded and waited for her to go on.

‘This man, it seems, waved his hands around a bit over her, told her something she wasn’t to repeat to anyone and gave her a list of things she’s not to eat. Eggs and milk and butter, I think it was. And she’s near back to normal. But it might wear off, Rosie,’ Lizzie ended, suddenly bursting into tears.

‘Oh there, love, don’t cry. Don’t cry. It’s wonderful news.’

She put her arms round her and found them a place to sit on a grassy bank nearby.

‘Do you not think it will?’ Lizzie sniffed. ‘Sure, we’re always hearin’ about miracles from these Tent Missions, but sure they never last.’

‘But this wasn’t a Tent Mission, Lizzie. This was different,’ she said firmly. ‘There was something
about your mother today that isn’t going to go away. I don’t understand it any more than you, but I think she’s back to stay. And I’m so happy for you,’ she added, hugging her again, her own eyes filling with tears.

Rosie thought of Richard P. as she stroked Lizzie’s hair and heard the sniffs grow less frequent. In these last months, she had to admit to herself it wasn’t just things with a medical connection that made her think of him. She’d come to accept how much she wished she could talk to him the way they’d talked in the kitchen or the garden at Rathdrum during that long, long week of her grandfather’s dying.

Often enough, she’d asked herself how such a sad time could have brought her such moments of happiness, gaiety even. When she thought of Richard himself, of the hours she’d spent with Aunt Sarah and with Helen she wished so much she could see them all again.

Even Frances Harrington and Hugh Sinton, her cousins, very mature young men now down from university, she’d been able to be easy with, though at first she’d not been sure what to make of their formal manners and their English accents. Once she’d got over the unfamiliarity, she’d discovered just how friendly and approachable they both were. She’d only to say there was a job needing an extra pair of hands, or a trip into Banbridge to be
made, and they were there, ready and willing to do whatever she asked.

Lizzie had wiped her eyes and was now looking much more like herself.

‘I’ve got some news for you, Rosie.’

Although Lizzie was smiling now, a wave of anxiety swept over her. News, these days, always seemed to make life yet more difficult.

‘Hugh and I are going to get married.’

‘What!’

Rosie was completely taken aback. Apart from the fact that Lizzie was a month younger than she was and wouldn’t be seventeen until August, she’d made no secret of the fact that Hugh had been trying to get a better job and had been completely unsuccessful. She couldn’t possibly think they might live on the pittance he earned from doing odd jobs and running messages for Mr Lamb of Fruitfield.

‘Ach, keep yer hair on Rosie, I don’t mean now this minit,’ Lizzie replied sharply. ‘It’ll be a year or two yet, but we’ve made up our minds. We’re engaged. But it’s a secret, except for you.’

‘Oh Lizzie, that’s lovely. I’m so pleased for you both and I’m very honoured. I won’t tell a soul. I promise.’

‘We’ve worked out a plan. Do you want to hear?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Well, it does depend on Ma staying the way
she is. I couldn’t leave her if she was poorly, but if she stays well, I’m goin’ to Belfast to do a course in typing and bookkeeping. Hugh’s never going to get anywhere where he is, but if I had the money to start a shop or a wee business, he’d be fine. He’s grand talkin’ to people an’ helpin’ them, so long as I was there to keep an eye on him and do the paperwork.’

Rosie nodded and listened. There was no doubt Lizzie had got the measure of her Hugh. She was quite unperturbed by the fact that his only apparent capacity was a very appealing good-naturedness. Apart from that, she knew that he’d always be willing to try and he would listen to her and do what she asked.

‘But where would you get the money to start a shop, Lizzie? Would your father be able to help you?’

‘He might, but I’d rather get started first, so he sees what a good job we can make of it. I’ve had a bit of a surprise,’ she went on, her face lighting up, her tears totally forgotten. ‘We worked out what we were going to do an’ it was all fine, but for the money. Guess what?’ she demanded. ‘Ma had this letter from Toronto,’ she went on without waiting for a reply. ‘I’ve a godmother I’ve never met. She was Ma’s bridesmaid and she went to Canada. She’s just died an’ left me a hundred pounds. We only heard yesterday.’

‘Oh Lizzie, that’s just great,’ Rosie said, clutching her hand. ‘What did Hugh say when you told him?’

‘He said, would you believe it, that whatever we did we’d always be all right. That we’d never want for money.’

She raised her eyes heavenwards and shook her dark curls.

‘If I didn’t love him, I’d think he wasn’t quite right in the head.’

‘But you
do
love him. I think loving someone makes everything different.’

‘How d’you mean?’

Rosie frowned and pressed her lips together.

‘I know Hugh’s right, but I can’t explain why. Not properly. I think it has something to do with having someone to help, having a friend, a partner, someone who’ll tell you things you don’t know for yourself and listening when you do the same for them …’

She stopped in mid-sentence, a familiar voice saying to her, ‘Two heads are better than one, Rosie.’

It was her grandfather’s voice and the phrase was one of his favourites. Whether it was a problem at the mills or difficulties with the people who worked the machines, he always assumed there was something he might not have thought of, something crucial that someone else would see immediately.

Time and time again, and especially when they
were all together in Kerry, she’d heard him ask Granny what she thought. Yes, they sometimes disagreed, but they always talked things over and they always listened to each other. Yet she felt it was something more than talking and listening. It was what was between them. Maybe it was love itself. She really didn’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise her at all if Hugh and Lizzie ended up making a most successful team, just like Granny and Granda.

‘When had you thought of starting the course, Lizzie?’ she asked, aware she’d fallen silent. ‘Would you travel by train every day or go into digs and come home at the weekends?’

‘I’d go into digs. I’ve an auntie who takes people. Then, you see, I could do my studyin’ in the evenings and not have anythin’ to do but see Hugh when I came home at weekends.’

Rosie laughed. She never thought she’d see the day when Lizzie would make plans to study. But here she was setting aside four evenings a week and looking happy about it.

With so many new ideas to explore, they walked and talked all afternoon. When they parted finally on the lane beside the lesser celandines, Rosie was so full of thoughts of her own she forgot all about the spray of magnolia blossom she’d wanted to take home and paint.

Days passed and still there was no news from the solicitors. Martha came hurrying up the yard every time she saw the postman, or sat down and wrote to them herself every few days. On one occasion, she took the train to Portadown only to find the person she needed to speak to was out all day at the Petty Sessions in Armagh. She continued to bite everyone’s head off until the middle of April when at last the expected letter arrived.

The Loney relatives had been traced. Clearly they had not made a fortune in Pennsylvania, as Lizzie’s mother had hoped. They were delighted to have acquired a farm in Ireland and assumed it was worth a great deal of money, despite having been given a description of the house and the acreage of the land. They wanted it sold as quickly as possible.

As her mother stumped off to regale her neighbour with this latest piece of news, Rosie knew there was nothing she could do but accept there’d be another furious row the moment her father came home. At least the stew she’d just made for the evening meal could sit waiting on the back of the stove without spoiling until the worst was over.

‘An’ what are you goin’ to do about that, may I ask?’ Martha demanded, as she thrust the letter into his hand the moment he came through the door.

Before her father even had time to scan the contents she was at him.

‘Are we goin’ to be put out on the street before you lift a finger?’

He made no response, re-read the short letter a second time and placed it gently on the table.

‘What would you like me to do, Martha?’

‘Well, you could do somethin’ an’ not leave it all to me,’ she spat out, quite indifferent to the presence of Dolly and Jack who now disappeared as quickly as they could.

‘And what purpose have your letters served? Or your visit? There was nothing to be done till we had more information,’ he went on in the same even tone.

Rosie saw that he was very tired. He had a way of sitting in his chair and rubbing his forehead when the day had been heavier or more demanding than usual.

‘Ye can’t just let them sell this place over our heads.’

‘Have I proposed that they should?’

‘You’ve
proposed
nothin’,’ she came back at him, her voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You’ve done nothin’. You’ve just sat there and let me worry about what’s to happen to us all.’

‘Well, if that is what you think, Martha, then you’ll be pleased at the news I have for you tonight,’ he began, speaking even more slowly. ‘I’ll not be here to annoy you for the next couple of months.
We’ve got the contract for the transverse engine job and I’ve accepted the charge of getting it to the mill. I’ll be home for a few hours from time to time and possibly an occasional Sunday, but meantime you can send me the solicitor’s letters with Bobby or Rosie. Now there is something that might be done, I shall give them my full attention.’

Not waiting for a reply, he stood up stiffly and made his way out of the house and across to the barn.

Undeterred, her mother’s voice continued to hurl abuse after him, her parting shots quite predictable and equally unreasonable.

Rosie watched him go. Hungry and tired after a day’s work this was what he had to come home to. Night after night, she greeted him with hostile silence or an ill-tempered nag. The thought of what he’d suffered through all the years she’d been old enough to observe and understand came near to overwhelming her. At that moment, all she could think off was escaping herself to some safe place where her mother’s anger could not reach her, but she knew she had nowhere to go.