A Girl Called Rosie (21 page)

The lough was shining in the bright sunlight, the merest hint of a breeze flowing across its cool surface as they bumped over the broad grassy area between lough and road. The only other people in sight were a handful of fishermen parked at well-spaced intervals along the western shore.

‘I think there’s a path that runs part of the way round,’ Richard said as he helped Rosie out of the rather cramped back seat.

‘Yes, I think there is,’ agreed Rose, ‘where those fishermen are. But I shall sit in the sun. I’ve brought a book in case I get bored, which isn’t really likely.’

She cast her eyes round the small, man-made lake, created a century earlier to supply water to the River Bann should the level fall too low for the many mills dependant upon it. Lying between low, richly green hills, thickly grown with water-loving plants and small trees, it now looked as if it had always been there. Rose settled herself more comfortably in the passenger seat and looked away towards the fishermen.

‘Why don’t you see where it goes?’ she suggested.

‘Would you say that was a tactful way of getting rid of us?’ Richard asked, as soon as they were out of earshot.

Rosie smiled and nodded vigorously, delighted at the change in his tone of voice. This was the Richard she remembered, not the rather too bright young man who’d appeared at the dining-room door.

‘Yes, I think she wants to be on her own. We talked such a lot this morning, she probably needs a rest.’

‘How do you think she is?’

She was just about to reply when he interrupted her.

‘And that is both a Richard question and a doctor question.’

Rosie laughed and told him about her arrival, their supper by the fire and the hours they’d spent talking about the pictures in the albums. She paused only when they had to navigate one of the tiny streams that flowed across the path on its way into the lough, though a convenient stepping-stone was usually provided.

He listened carefully to her detailed report and looked at her as often as the narrow path permitted.

‘Good news, Rosie. Good news,’ he declared, as she finished her account. ‘It
was
very unfortunate her being ill in England. She’s quite right, she needed to be here. And I think what she’s doing now is trying to reconnect. Thank goodness she has you to talk to.’

‘And what about you?’ she came back at him. ‘She says you’ve been over nearly every week.’

‘Yes, I do what I can, but it’s not what you’re doing. Perhaps it’s only a woman can speak to another woman’s grief. It’s something I need to know much more about, at any rate. There are some good books being published in that area, but I get very little time to read. What about you, Rosie?’

‘You mean time to read?’

‘No, I mean how are things at home? With your mother? With the family? Auntie Rose told me about this big job of your father’s. Sounds extraordinary.’

‘Yes, it is quite extraordinary. You know they
still haven’t got to Richhill and they’ve been at it four weeks already. But Da seems to be enjoying it. The Boss’s son is with them. Work experience, I think they call it, and he’s rather nice. Apparently he’s a good cook. Da was amazed when he got stuck in the first night and produced something tasty. It means I don’t have to carry casseroles on the bar of the bike when Bobby and I go to see him.’

‘You mean the two of you go on one bicycle?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, amused by his look of horror. ‘Bobby is very strong and we walk up the lane and the steep bits. We’ve been doing it for years. We’re very clever at it now.’

‘Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

She was surprised to hear so clear a note of anxiety in his voice, so unlike him.

‘How long will the job take?’ he continued.

‘They’ve no idea. Last week they had to divert a stream so the load could cross a field instead of keeping to the road, because there was other traffic on the road and it’s so narrow at that point the load fills it from side to side. And they’ve had to knock down a garden wall. Da’s helping to rebuild it in the evenings when the load’s not moving.’

‘Does it move at night?’

‘Sometimes. Depends on the road engines. They keep over-heating and breaking down with the strain. It needs at least two of them to get it moving.
Going downhill is the worst. It’s so heavy, they have to get a fourth engine and use all four as a brake. Da says you never know what’s going to happen next. One of the lads had a very close call. A steel cable snapped and the whip just missed him. It only caught his hand, but he could have been killed. But the kind woman whose wall they’d knocked down used to be a nurse and bandaged him up. Poor Da, it’s a huge responsibility.’

‘I see what you mean. Though Auntie did say there were other problems as well …’

‘Well, we may be about to be made homeless,’ she said, surprised at how light her tone was and how easy with him she now felt as they walked along the far lough shore and talked, just as they’d always talked.

‘You did say something last August about doing a course in Belfast, Rosie. What happened about that?’

‘Overtaken by events, I think the phrase is. Da said he’d consider it, but then when Granda died there was the question of whether Granny could still afford it. Poor Granny was ill in England, so there was no question of asking her. Besides, Da was in a bad way after Granda, though he tried not to show it.’

‘So what are your plans now?’ he asked, his attention closely focused on a nearby fisherman who was reeling in.

‘I haven’t any,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Not till I see what’s happening over the farm. If we have to move, I’ll have to help Da. Goodness knows where we can go. I’m taking Da’s advice on the subject,’ she went on, turning to face him. ‘He says it’s vexatious to the spirit to dwell upon uncertainties. It undermines your ability to act when the time comes. I don’t know whether that is Da, or one of the Quaker writers. He does have a few books of essays and letters that he reads when he has time. Like you, that’s not often.’

‘But wise, whichever it is,’ he responded, suddenly thoughtful and rather sombre. ‘I would be inclined to fidget with a problem when it would be far better left to time to resolve it.’

The flatness in his voice had grown more marked. So different from his lively response to her stories. They walked in silence for some minutes until they found themselves exactly opposite the point where Richard’s Morris was parked by the water’s edge.

‘D’you think Granny can see us across the water?’

By way of answer, he took out a large white handkerchief and waved vigorously.

‘Yes. Look, she’s waving her scarf.’

‘Speaking of across the water,’ he began, ‘I have some news to share with you. I’ve been invited to do a year’s internship. Mother and Father think I
should go. It would be good experience,’ he went on, watching her expression to judge how she took the news.

Rosie’s heart sank. First Emily. Then her Da. Now Richard. Soon, there’d be no one to help her carry the burden of loneliness she felt, running the house unaided with nothing to look forward to but more months and years of the same wearying jobs.

‘Where, across the water?’ she managed to say at last.

‘London. Guy’s Hospital. One of the best teaching hospitals in the country.’

Rosie nodded, but could think of nothing more to say just at that moment. If Dr Stewart and Aunt Elizabeth thought it was a good idea, then it most certainly was, but what filled her mind was the knowledge that Helen was in London and she was sure Helen would make Richard very welcome.

‘When would you go?’

‘End of the month.’

‘So soon?’

From somewhere at the back of her mind, she heard herself saying the same words to someone. That was it. The night the solicitor’s letter had come and then, on top of it, her father told her the news about the big load.

‘Sometimes things happen so quickly. You go on day after day doing very boring things. Nothing
seems to change. Then suddenly, in a month, a week, a day even …’

She broke off. On the path ahead, between the luxuriant waterside vegetation, a swan stood staring at them. As they paused, it puffed up its chest, raised itself to its full height, flapped its great shining wings and emitted strange noises that oscillated between a hiss and a honk.

‘That hump of sticks must be the nest,’ he said quietly, taking her hand. ‘Let’s turn back. It’s not fair to frighten the poor thing. There may be eggs still hatching.

‘You were saying something about how quickly things can change,’ he prompted her as they hurried back along the path.

‘Yes. I was thinking about all the sudden changes in the last year,’ she replied, looking up at him and shaking her head. ‘Not a good idea. Vexatious to the spirit, as Da would say. Sometimes sudden changes are for the best. Like London. You really must go to London if you have the chance. It’s not just the hospital work. You could probably do that in several places. But London is special. It’s all those theatres and films and art galleries and the British Museum,’ she went on, ticking them off on her fingers. ‘I’m very envious,’ she added. ‘I’d so love to go there one day.’

‘I’m sure you will. Provided Emily doesn’t persuade you to go and join her in America.’

Again she was aware of an unfamiliar note in his voice she could not place.

‘She didn’t want to leave me behind when it came to parting,’ she admitted. ‘She knew I couldn’t leave just now, even if I had the fare and the obligatory fifty dollars, which I haven’t. But she reckons she can save what I need in a year. Faster, if I can get a job myself.’

‘Any hope of that?’ he asked, a little too casually.

‘No, none at the moment.’

They rounded the edge of the lough and saw the small, composed figure turned away from them, gazing out over the water to where a flotilla of swans were sailing leisurely past, a group of grubby-looking cygnets trying hard to keep up with them.

‘So, we can take Auntie Rose to the Mournes this time next year, all being well?’

‘We’ll have to ask her when the time comes, won’t we?’

After such an immensity of circumstance as would fill a whole year, she wondered where any of the three of them might be in twelve months’ time.

Rosie was grateful when the second half of May began to produce the cloudy skies and the rain so much needed on the land. After a week of rain every day, followed by chilly nights, she and Bobby agreed that they’d had quite enough for the time being. Unfortunately, the wet, cool weather continued.

Day by day the skies remained cloudy, the nights unusually cool. There were regular showers and they were heavy. Towards the end of the month the showers gave way to violent rainstorms and one afternoon of bouncing hailstones. The apple blossom had just been coming into bloom on the sunny weekend when Rosie had walked with Richard by Corbet Lough. Tossed by brisk winds, the blossom began to fall before it was fully open. After the hailstorm, the long grass in the orchard was white with the fallen petals. It remained to be seen whether or not there’d been adequate pollination in the very short period when the blossom was still intact, but the outlook for the Bramleys was certainly not good.

A few hundred yards beyond the point where Rosie and Bobby had visited their father in the middle of the month, the big load stuck, bogged down in a hollow. Not even a battalion of road engines could shift it from its position in a sea of mud. For two weeks, no progress could be made, so the four-man team turned to dismantling predictable obstacles along the route that had been agreed. The road engines were so well looked after even the working parts shone. Mrs Braithwaite’s garden wall was completed and pronounced much superior to its predecessor, one the team had been forced to demolish.

In those two weeks of standstill the lady herself, a kindly widow in her forties, became a neighbour and a good friend to the haulage team. A mere fifty yards away from the site caravan, she offered the use of her kitchen to young Mr Charles who’d developed his cooking skills and had now outgrown the paraffin stoves provided. Her small sitting room was available to Sam Hamilton and the visiting surveyor when they had to consult over maps and plans and her kitchen stove provided warmth and dry clothes for everyone.

Rosie and Bobby braved the weather to visit their father and took an instant liking to Mary Braithwaite. A small, bright-eyed woman, she hurried out of her front door as soon as they
appeared, carrying a batch of scones under a large umbrella. While tea was being made and the rain continued to pour down outside, she entertained the two of them with an account of the trials and tribulations of the team, who sat back and enjoyed the stories every bit as much as they did.

At the end of this turbulent month, between one day and the next, the weather changed. The barometer went up and fine dry weather settled in again. Rosie enjoyed the first fine days of sunshine, but, after the first full week without the smallest shower, the effects of May’s deluges had been completely erased. With long hours of hot sun and a small, warm breeze, the cart ruts grew dusty and the ground brick hard again. When Bobby dug the first spadefull of potatoes, it was obvious the crop would be poor.

For a week or two Rosie found the hot weather simply tiring, the nights hot enough to prevent the best of sleep, but the actual daily chores were easier. The freshly scrubbed kitchen floor was so quick to dry, she’d no need to fear someone would undo her work by tramping across its damp surface. The washing, hung out by mid morning, was ready to take in as soon as lunch was cleared away.

Only the milk going sour and the butter melting as soon as it was brought in from the dairy created extra work. The wet cloths hung over the milk jugs
to keep them cool dried out in such a short time. Even the pieces of slate on which they sat in bowls of water in the coolest part of the dairy began to feel less than chill to the touch. Whenever she finished a job and wondered what came next, she would remember the milk jugs, hurry across the yard and soak the cloths yet again.

Halfway through June, the water tank her father had installed on the roof of the barn ran empty. The rainwater barrels normally used for washing and cleaning had long since been exhausted. Now the only water supply was the well at the far end of the orchard. Even in the longest drought, it had never run dry, but it was a long walk from the house and the galvanised buckets were heavy even before they were filled.

‘Hallo, Bobby. Do you come here often?’

Rosie put her buckets down and waited while Bobby finished filling his. Even from a distance she’d guessed by the set of his body that he was weary and dispirited. His lack of response to her small attempt at lightness told her all she needed to know.

‘How many buckets do the cows need?’ she went on, as he straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

‘Twelve,’ he said shortly. ‘Morning and evening both.’

‘Goodness, Bobby, I’d no idea they drank so
much. I thought I was bad enough having to carry four buckets a day unless Ma’s in a good mood.’

‘And that means eight journeys for you,’ he replied, his tone softening slightly.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Saw you pouring one into the other up at the house. You’ve not got the Hamilton shoulders,’ he declared grinning. ‘Just as well, seeing you’re a girl.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Men don’t like strong women.’

Rosie burst out laughing and sat down on the trunk of an old apple tree fallen alongside the well a very long time ago. ‘What else don’t men like?’

Always the quietest of her brothers and not yet sixteen, Bobby had never yet asked a girl to go for a walk or to the dance in the Orange Hall on a Saturday night.

To her surprise, he came and sat down beside her, his overflowing buckets left sitting in the sun, the strong light reflecting from their oscillating surface.

‘They don’t like being told what to do all the time when they know rightly what to do.’

‘Does Ma tell you what to do?’

‘Oh aye.’

‘That
is
awful. I didn’t know that. She used to do it with me in the house, but she hardly ever even speaks to me now. But
you
don’t need to be told what to do, surely. You know just as much about
the job as she does. After all you’ve worked the farm for three years now.’

‘Three years too many,’ he retorted, his tone bitter and bleak.

She had never heard Bobby speak like this before. But then, their paths seldom crossed in the course of the working day and when the family were together, he seldom said anything. As soon as he’d eaten his supper, he’d go off to the barn with Charlie. Sometimes she heard hammering from the workshop, but mostly all was quiet and she knew they were listening in and exploring the new wireless stations on the equipment Granda had bought for them.

‘It’s all right for you Rosie. You’re good-lookin’. You could marry one of them men at Granda’s funeral, the posh ones from England, like our Aunt Hannah did. But I could be workin’ here the rest of my life. Even if there were any jobs goin’, Ma’d never let me go. The only thing she likes is babies and cows.’

Rosie smiled to herself and tried not to laugh. It was so unlike Bobby to comment, but he wasn’t far wrong. There’d been no trouble with her mother when they were very small. She herself could remember Jack and Dolly as toddlers. They were always well cared for, petted in fact. But she’d had enough of them by the time they were five, as Emily had once concluded.

‘But Bobby, if a job came up you’d
have
to go. It’s
your
life. She can’t keep you here like a hired man.’

‘And what about you?’

‘What do you mean?’

He shook his head and looked at her gravely.

‘I know Da’s been great an’ given us a bit of money, but you’re just the same as me, as far as Ma goes, a hired girl. How are you goin’ to get away unless you follow Emily when she’s saved up for your ticket?’

‘I don’t know, Bobby. To be honest I haven’t thought about it very much. There’s been so much else on my mind since Granda died. But you’re right. I couldn’t go on living at home, year after year, any more than you.’

She stood up and smiled encouragingly at him.

‘Why don’t we go and see Da again? Tomorrow say.’

‘Aye. That would be great. This weather is just the best for them. They’ll be halfway to Armagh,’ he said with a grin.

‘Yes. And if they’re doing that well you might find Da could let you try your hand on one of the road engines.’

A smile lit up his face Rosie felt she would never forget. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud and lighting up the whole landscape, so the
set of both his face and his body was transformed. He nodded as he picked up his buckets and set off through the orchard, a visible lightness in his step, as if the weight of the buckets was a matter of complete indifference to him.

Bobby was quite right about progress of the big load. After all the problems and setbacks, conditions were now ideal. By the fourth week in June they were cycling as far as Armagh itself. On a route that skirted the city, an old, broad track, rock hard in the dry heat, the whole encampment was moving steadily.

Sitting in the barn a few days later, painting a spray of wild rose in the small area of workbench which Bobby kept free for her, she found herself thinking back over the long, slow progress of the big load. The weather had been fine and dry in the first weeks, but every day something had happened to bring them to a halt. Sometimes they couldn’t even get started. It had been an anxious and dispiriting time, whereas now everything was going forward, the day’s journey almost predictable, the team so well used to each other’s ways of working that when she and Bobby had stood and watched them, it looked as if they’d been doing the job all their lives.

She ought to try and remember the big load whenever she found herself beset by problems,
struggling, or even completely bogged down as they’d been for those weeks almost outside Mary Braithwaite’s house.

‘No, that won’t do either,’ she said to herself, as she washed her brush and tried again to mix a shade of pink pale enough for the fully open bloom sitting in a jam pot in front of her.

She’d made her first attempts at watercolour when Miss Wilson insisted all her girls try either paint or pencil. She’d always loved colour, so she chose paint and had tried to work from the collection of picture postcards they’d been offered for inspiration, but nothing ever seemed to come out the way she’d imagined it. Only in Kerry had she first produced anything that began to please her, working directly from the flowers in the hotel garden.

She tried the pink on a spare sheet of paper. Still too dark, but better than it was.

She smiled to herself. If she were a writer, she could use the big load to write a fable. Like
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Or
The Tortoise and the Fox
. It would have something of the quality of those wonderful tales where the youngest son overcomes all obstacles and by hard work, patience and courage, rescues the princess and carries her off to live happily ever after.

Quite suddenly she thought of Patrick Walsh. That was probably what Patrick thought he wanted
to do. He’d virtually said so in more than one of his letters. Descend upon the farm, preferably on a white horse. No mode of transport as prosaic as the train from Portadown would serve
his
turn.

The thought of him arriving on the doorstep, every inch the Fenian of Uncle Joe’s warped imaginings, and her mother’s likely reaction made her laugh.

‘Poor dear, Patrick,’ she said aloud.

It had taken Rosie some time to realise that Patrick didn’t live in the same world as herself, at least as far as matters like relating to someone you said you really cared about. In his second letter, written in reply to her account of her grandfather’s death, he did manage to say how sorry he was and how grateful he’d always be for his help in escaping from Currane Lodge, but even on that occasion he’d gone on to speculate on the nature of mortality, quoting a couple of lines from St Augustine and Joyce and then some verses in Irish.

She’d reminded him that she didn’t read Irish each time she wrote, but he never remembered to send the translations she’d asked for. When he wrote about her, he always used the high-flown, decorative phrases, the quotations from Irish poetry he’d used in his very first letter.

It was weeks now since she’d heard from him. The young postman who’d been so interested in the
arrival of his letters had found himself a girlfriend and no longer looked out for the Dublin postmark and the elaborated swirls and curls of his script. Without quite meaning to, with a sudden shock, she realised she no longer looked out for the Dublin postmark either.

So was it no more than what Lizzie would call ‘a holiday romance’? Maybe she would have to accept that was all it was. Nevertheless, she had to admit every time she looked at small flowers blooming in rocky places, she would remember the drive from Waterville to Tralee with a boy who had kissed her twice.

Two days before the end of June, as her mother sat by the stove reading the Sunday paper and she herself was about to start peeling potatoes for the evening meal, Rosie heard a motor stop on the lane. There was a brief exchange between two men, the tramp of boots across the yard and a moment later her father stood in the doorway.

‘Da!’ she cried. ‘Have you got there?’

‘No, not quite. But we’re so near, the managers at Milford are providing the security tonight to give us a few hours off.’

He looked across at Martha, who remained hidden behind her newspaper and made no gesture of welcome.

‘Are any of your brothers here today?’

‘Yes, Sammy’s home. He’s with Bobby and Charlie in the barn. Jack and Dolly are down at Loneys.’

As she spoke, three figures crowded the doorway, one behind the other, as delighted to see their father as she’d been herself.

‘I read a bit about the big load in the Armagh papers. When’ll you be done, Da?’ asked Sammy, as all three shook hands with their father.

They pulled out chairs from under the table and sat down together. For some time, her father answered their questions in his customary precise and accurate manner, describing the present position and situation of the load. Before they had time to share their own successes with the wireless in the barn, Rosie saw him put his hand up to his jacket and take out an envelope from his inside pocket.