For Many a Long Day (17 page)

To the right, Ellie saw a wide open farm gate. Beyond it, a long, low house, freshly whitewashed, a tall barn and a line of outbuildings standing opposite. As she looked, the small dark figure of a woman walked down the yard, a bucket in one hand.

‘Isn’t your mother coming to Belfast?’

‘No, no, she isn’t,’ said Sam shortly.

Ellie took a cautious look at him and decided to say nothing, but she felt suddenly sad. All his liveliness and good spirits seemed to have evaporated.

A moment later, she caught him looking at her.

‘My Ma doesn’t get on with Rose, never has. Can’t say a good word about her, though her an’ my grandfather were very good to us when times were hard and there were nine of us to rear,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘Maybe it’s jealousy. She’s always resented Rose having a bit of money, though from what I hear Granda worked hard for anything he got. But then, maybe, it’s that she and my Da don’t get on. She hasn’t a good word to say for him either. He just keeps on working, gives her money and says nothing. I don’t know what went wrong between them. He’ll never say a word against her.’

‘Oh Sam, I’m so sorry. And there was I envious
of you and your nice family,’ Ellie began. ‘We don’t know the half of it, do we?’

Sam laughed heartily and Ellie paused, taken aback.

‘I’m not laughin’ at you, Ellie,’ he said quickly, ‘it’s just that all their lives Granny and Granda had that saying goin’ back and forwards between them. She always said he never told her the whole story about anything. She’d have to question him to get it out bit by bit. But that was no hurt between them. They both knew he could never get things out. So they laughed about it.’

‘They were a great pair,’ he went on, ‘What one failed, the other managed, and the other way about,’ he added softly, a hint of sadness and longing in his voice.

‘That’s a good way to be,’ Ellie replied. ‘Two’s better than one. It can be awfully lonely if you haven’t someone to fall back on.’

‘Aye, I agree with you there. An’ when times are hard or you’re hurt about somethin’ that’s when you know the real value of someone bein’ there,’ he said firmly as they slowed down outside the Quaker Meeting House in Richhill.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit and well-polished shoes stood on the pavement looking round him and enjoying the morning sun. He walked over to them as soon as they stopped.

‘Hello Da, this is Ellie Scott’

‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Ellie,’ the older man said, shaking Ellie’s hand. ‘No, sit where you are, we can change over when we pick up Emily,’ he added, getting into the back.

Ellie could see now why Sam’s father had been such a help to his son. He had the loveliest smile. Slow and almost wistful, but full of a warmth and kindness she had seldom seen before.

Ellie quickly found out what good company Emily was and they talked away in the back seat leaving Sam and his father to discuss in minute detail the performance of the engine, the fuel consumption and what they considered to be the design weaknesses. A new Morris, not long out of the showroom, it belonged to one of the Lamb brothers, a kind man who regularly lent Sam’s father his vehicle for family visits.

‘What about your wee ones?’ Ellie asked, ‘did they not want to come?’

‘Oh they wanted to come all right,’ said Emily shaking her head vigorously, ‘but Rosie and I decided there’d be no great-grandchildren and James agreed with us. Rose is great as you know, but there’s a limit. Sure they have me worn out and me about fifty years younger than she is,’ she went on laughing. ‘I’m sure Kevin will be exhausted when I get back, but bless his heart, he never thought twice about tellin’ me to come on me own.’

‘That’s good of him. I wish my sister’s husband could do the same. It’s not that he wouldn’t, he’s not lazy or anything like that,’ she explained, ‘he’s just no use with children. I suppose some men are like that.’

‘You’re right there. Some men has no notion what to do with we’ans. But of course, there’s some takes advantage of having no notion. There’s maybe some things ye just have to learn if you’re goin’ to bring up a family. Sure I’m no hand at all at cookin’, but I have to make the effort. Mind you, Kevin helps me out. He’d make a good chef if he had the time.’

Ellie laughed, delighted by Emily’s ease of manner, her openness and good nature. They talked about Macy’s and why the pair of them had come home. About saving up and trying to make a living. About Emily’s knack with figures, just like her cousin, Daisy Hutchinson. Then they spoke of Daisy and Frank’s plan to marry in a year’s time before Frank’s transfer to another town was due to come up.

It seemed no time at all before they were parking under the trees outside the broad, double-fronted house in Cranmore Park. They walked in through open doors down the wide hall through into the high-ceilinged sitting-room.

Ellie couldn’t see Rose at first, which was hardly surprising. She’d never been very tall and she’d grown smaller with age though she had no stoop on
her shoulders like some old people she knew.

Suddenly there was a burst of laughter and a group of people over by the French windows moved apart and Rose was revealed in their midst. She caught sight of them and came over at once, holding out her hands to embrace each of them in turn. Ellie thought she looked quite lovely. She was wearing a lavender blouse with a brooch at the neck and a dark purple skirt. Her hair was pure white and caught up in a pleat at the back with a little beaded decoration round it that matched her earrings. She was not using her stick.

‘Poor Ellie,’ she said, as she kissed her, ‘you’ve managed James, two of my Sam’s and Emily, but you’ll have a whole roomful of people you don’t know. Except that you do in a way, don’t you? You’ve got their stories, so all you need to do is attach the right story to the right person. I’ll give you a start. That couple coming down the hall …’

‘Rosie and Richard,’ Ellie said promptly.

‘Oh, well done,’ Rose cried, ‘how did you manage that?’

‘Sam told me once that Rosie looked like you and she does.’

‘Well, I’m not sure it’s a compliment to Rosie, you’d better ask her,’ she said, as she put her arms round Rosie, then Richard, and introduced them both to Ellie.

James came and joined them, bringing with him
Helen Sinton and her husband David, a tall, elderly man called Billy Auld, and a darker man with a Canadian accent, called Alex, with his wife, whose name was also Emily.

The sitting room was beginning to get very full and very warm so James urged everyone to go outside. Ellie thought it had been done so cleverly. As you moved out through the French windows you stepped into a marquee. It had been put up
over
the garden and you could walk around among the flowerbeds and shrubs while still being under cover. Now there was plenty of space and it was cooler. Although the sun was beating down on the white canvas of the canopy, a small breeze flowed in where two of the sides of the marquee had been rolled up. It moved the heads of the flowers and made ripples in the tiny garden pool.

Suddenly, Ellie thought of the roses she was still carrying. This certainly wasn’t the time to give them to Rose, so she bent down, removed their wrapping and placed them in the pool. As she stood up, she found a slender, elegantly dressed woman with blonde hair streaked with grey looking down at her.

‘I’m sure you’re Ellie,’ the woman said easily. ‘Ma said you had a garden where we used to live as children and the briar rose might still be going. I’m Hannah,’ she went on, bending to touch the pink roses. ‘I remember playing weddings with a piece of
curtain for the bride and a bouquet of pink roses. Could it possibly be those?’

‘I don’t know, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ Ellie replied. ‘To think of something from childhood still going on. I’d love to think that something I planted would survive long after me.’

Hannah nodded, her eyes sparkling.

‘Yes, I often think the world I live in now is so far away from everything I ever knew as a child and a young woman. But then, when I married Teddy, all I wanted was Teddy. I never thought of having to leave Ireland or live in a big house with servants or going up to London … and certainly not of having to play the Lady,’ she added, laughing.

‘Would it have made any difference?’ asked Ellie.

‘No, I don’t think it would,’ Hannah replied promptly. ‘I think if I hadn’t been
sure
of Teddy I would have worried about all those other things, wondering if I could cope with the sort of people who lived in his world, though his mother, Lady Anne was lovely. She’d have worn Wellington boots at the Palace if she thought the lawn was going to be wet,’ she said laughing again, a lovely soft laugh that made you want to laugh with her, even if what she’d said hadn’t been funny in the first place.

‘Are you about to get married, Ellie?’

‘I was, but we had no money, so George went to Canada to save up. That was a year ago.’

‘How long did he think it would take?’

‘A year or two, he said.’

‘And would you like Canada?’

‘I’m not sure. I do have a sister there and I’d so love to see her. I miss her terribly.’

‘Yes, I miss my sister too, and I’m an awful lot older than you. And I have lovely daughters as well, so I’ve no excuse.’

‘Isn’t Sarah coming?’

‘No, I wish she was, but she’s in Berlin with Simon. Have you heard of a Mr Hitler, recently come to power?’

‘Oh yes. My friend Charlie Running says he’s a dangerous man. That he needs to be watched.’

‘Your friend is wiser than most of the British Cabinet,’ she said with a sharpness that surprised Ellie. ‘Indeed he does need to be watched. That’s why Simon is in Berlin. Officially, he’s part of a so-called Trade Mission, so it’s important his wife is with him. It makes it look innocuous. Anyway, Sarah is not keen to leave him. It’s a quite dangerous situation. I shall be so grateful to have them back in Britain even if she’s stuck in London and I’m in Gloucestershire. Poor you, with Polly so far away.’

‘But Rose has been very kind to me. She knows I don’t have anyone older to turn to. I’m going to ask her what to do about George.’

‘Is there someone else?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, quickly, ‘it’s just very hard to know what to do for the best. He’s not very good
at writing letters and he doesn’t always answer my questions.’

‘Doesn’t that tell you something important about him?’

‘Well, yes, but George has always been like that. He doesn’t think a lot about things. But he’s very good-natured and a hard worker.’

‘How long have you known him?’

‘All my life …’

Ellie might have said more but the vigorous banging of a gong and the movement of people back through the French windows prevented further conversation.

‘Ellie,’ said Hannah, taking her arm and walking with her, ‘sometimes if we are too close to people we cannot see them at all. Take your time and talk to Ma when you can. She knows you better than I do, she’ll be able to help.’

They parted as James directed traffic through to the dining room where he had somehow managed to seat some thirty people in a normal family-sized room.

Ellie had thought the sit-down supper at the Tennis Club Dance was beautifully presented, but when she saw the laden tables in the dining-room at Cranmore Park she was quite overcome. To begin with, it looked so decorative. The large platters with a variety of cold meats were decorated with sprigs of parsley and quarters of little tomatoes, lemon slices and miniature carrots. Set at intervals along the narrow tables in china bowls or dishes, themselves decorated with tiny flowers, were salads and side

dishes of rice or potato or crisp green leaves. Despite the narrowness of the tables, a line of posies ran the whole length of each one with buds and blooms from Rose’s own garden set off by white daisies and feathery green fern which must have come from a nursery or a florist. The whole effect was so colourful, she felt quite sad when everyone sat down and began helping themselves and their neighbours, passing dishes backwards and forwards.

‘I think you’d prefer this one, Ellie,’ said James,
as he leant over and filled the slim wine glass by her plate with a sparkling white wine. ‘If you don’t like it, give it to Richard here. He’ll drink anything, won’t you Richard?’

‘Everything in this house is worth drinking, James,’ he replied with a grin, as he nodded towards the bottle in James’s other hand.

James poured a glass of red for him and waited while Ellie took a cautious sip.

‘Well?’ he said, encouragingly.

Ellie nodded and thought for a moment. ‘It’s like spring water at first, but then it tastes like the smell of flowers.’

James nodded and looked pleased. ‘I’ll remember that,’ he said, holding up the white wine bottle so that Richard could see it. ‘Remember this is the one for Ellie when the next lot comes round,’ he said, as he moved on along the tables.

She had Richard Stewart on her right and a man whose little place marker card said Brendan McGinley on the other. He was a strongly-built man with dark hair and brown eyes that moved continuously, taking in everything around him. Beside him, across the end of one of the three long tables lined up parallel to each other was Ned Wylie. Directly opposite her sat Sam and Rosie.

Ned and Ellie looked at each other in amazement as they sat down.

‘I didn’t know you knew Rose,’ said Ellie.

‘I could say the same to you,’ replied Ned.

‘Now hold on here,’ said Brendan, who had a soft southern accent. ‘I don’t know either of you good people nor that handsome young man over there,’ he added, nodding at Sam. ‘I met Rosie and Richard in the hall, but who are you two for a start?’

‘That’s a good question, Brendan,’ said Rosie, laughing, ‘but might I suggest we fill up our plates first, before our friends and cousins further up the table start sending down for reinforcements.’

‘What a practical lady you are,’ said Brendan. ‘You are certainly a Hamilton. They’re a very practical lot.’

‘Now what makes you say that, Brendan?’ asked Richard eyeing him with interest.

‘I was just thinking back to one night in Dublin when I dropped in on your Aunt Sarah,’ Brendan began, ‘There was a wee bit of bother goin’ on at the time. Easter time, 1916, it was and I had the misfortune to be on the losing side, but Aunt Sarah took it all in her stride and fed me jam sandwiches. I hadn’t eaten for a while and I’ll never forget the taste of those sandwiches. Then, if memory serves me, while I was being escorted to the docks to be entertained by His Majesty in Wales, a whole battalion of Hamiltons drove down from the North, penetrated the barricades, and sprang Aunt Sarah with Helen and Hugh and returned them to the safety of Ballydown. I’m sure they’re here today but
I’m not sure I’d recognise either of them.’

‘So you must be one of the Donegal McGinleys,’ said Rosie, beaming at him. ‘Aunt Sarah used to play football with you in Creeslough.’

Brendan nodded.

‘And you went back to Ardtur with your Uncle Sam, who was Rose’s brother and he found the doorstep of the house from which they had all been evicted in 1861,’ said Ellie slowly, as she recalled the details of the story Rose had told her.

‘Right, young lady, right,’ said Brendan, bowing to Ellie. ‘Now will someone introduce me to this lovely young lady. Is she a Hamilton or is she just thinking about it?’

‘Brendan,’ said Richard, putting down his knife and fork, ‘let me introduce Ellie Scott, grand-daughter of Thomas Scott, with whom John Hamilton served his time …’

‘And with who’s help, my brother Sam, sitting here beside me, managed to win the Tennis Tournament at the RUC Tennis Club last year, the first sporting achievement by any known Hamilton,’ added Rosie, who was enjoying herself enormously.

‘Now, I’ve got you nearly all,’ said Brendan. ‘Two Hamiltons, one Stewart, one Scott, now how about the Wylie?’ he said, picking up Ned’s place marker and peering at it.

‘Well, you could say I got thrown in with the Hamiltons,’ said Ned.

‘Or thrown out,’ said Ellie soberly.

‘Or even threw another Hamilton in,’ said Sam laughing.

It was Ellie who explained the riddle to Brendan when they all stopped laughing.

‘Ned lives not far away from where I live at Salter’s Grange and when he was a wee boy he went on a Sunday School Excursion. His mother Mary and Rose were close friends. James and Sam and Hannah and Sarah were all there. They got out before the train ran away. Ned’s mother didn’t, but she had just enough time to throw him out. He was only small.’

‘And he landed in a briar bush,’ added Ned cheerfully.

‘Then,’ added Rosie, ‘when our cousin Alex arrived back from Canada looking for his family, Ned found him at Annacramp and brought him to Ballydown.’

‘So that’s what you mean about him throwing in another Hamilton?’

‘Yes,’ said Sam, who’d been watching Ellie and taking it all in. ‘That’s Alex over there with his wife Emily. His young son was born the week Granda died, so there’s another John Hamilton at Ballydown.’

‘Aye, and there’s a couple more Rose McGinleys around, come to think of it,’ said Brendan. ‘My Uncle Sam had six sons and there’s more than a few
Roses among their daughters in New York State and thereabouts.’

As the meal went on and Brendan asked his questions about people he could see but didn’t know, Ellie would have liked to have known more about the man himself. He was comfortably dressed, very relaxed in his manner but she’d noticed how quick he was to pick up anything that was said.

‘Rose told me her brother left you his little farm in Donegal, but you don’t look like a farmer to me,’ she said quietly.

‘Quite right you are, Ellie. Even when I did my best to cultivate the said acres I wasn’t much of a hand at it. I then made quite a good rebel in that I managed to survive, which was more than some of my friends did,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘but I fear I’m very respectable now,’ he continued, ‘I run a small bookshop in Dublin. After the excesses of my youth it appears I have inherited my uncle’s passion for text. I’m not a millionaire, but I own millions of words,’ he said, his eyes twinkling with pleasure.

She was just going to ask him how he’d come to run a bookshop, when two young girls in summer dresses and white aprons and two young men in shirts, ties and flannels with similar aprons came into the room and did a remarkable job of disappearing the central table while leaving its former occupants comfortably seated at one end of what had now become a hollow square.

With this new arrangement, Ellie could now see a short table running across the room. Rose was seated in the middle between her son Sam and her daughter Hannah. Next to Hannah was an empty chair into which James descended at intervals to speak to Hannah or to catch up on his own lunch. Beyond Sam’s father sat a very attractive, dark haired girl with a most lovely, lively smile and a rather serious looking young man.

‘Richard, do you know who the two people at the end of the little table are?’ Ellie whispered, in the growing silence which had descended at the end of the meal and continued through the rearranging of the room.

‘That’s Aunt Sarah’s daughter Helen Sinton, by her first marriage. And that’s Hugh, her brother. He’s an old friend of mine so I’m hoping to get a word with him later. You know there’s going to be an airport in Belfast very soon, don’t you?’

‘No, I didn’t. Where will it be?’

‘Not very far from the city. Up towards Antrim, place called Nutts Corner, so Hugh tells me. He designs aircraft but he has his pilot’s licence. He’s thinking of doing some flying to help them get started. Not many pilots around yet.’

Into the sudden hush, the four young people reappeared carrying a birthday cake with a single candle. It was not a huge affair, but they’d put it on a small table and now carried it, one at each corner, to place close against the short table exactly opposite
Rose. James leant forward and lit the candle.

‘Happy birthday, Mrs Hamilton,’ they said in chorus.

‘Thank you, my dears. You’ve been splendid. Please don’t go till I’ve sent you out some cake to take home.’

Rose paused and looked around the room, everyone now completely visible to everyone else.

‘Blow out the candle, Ma,’ said Sam quietly.

‘Oh yes, of course …’

The candle went out first time and as it did everyone stood up and sang Happy Birthday. They clapped and clapped and Ellie wondered why it was that tears should spring to her eyes when she looked at the small, composed figure. Then there were cries of Speech, Speech, Speech.

Ellie assumed that James might say a few well-chosen words. She rather gathered that he often had to address large audiences and sometimes audiences of very prominent people. But James kept his seat, his eye on his mother.

Rose got to her feet.

‘Well now,’ she said, ‘as you’ve all come because I asked you to come and many of you no doubt at some inconvenience,’ she went on, casting her eyes round the gathering, ‘you are entitled to whatever you might ask for. Even a speech,’ she said, shaking her head, as everyone laughed.

‘I am
indeed
unaccustomed to public speaking,’
she began, to further laughter, ‘but I have never failed to say what I thought to any member of my family … and I hope they’ll forgive me for that …’ she added, dropping her voice slightly.

Ellie was amazed. She had always enjoyed Rose’s capacity to laugh at herself, but she’d never imagined she’d be able to stand up in front of so many people and make them laugh and wait upon her every word.

‘But I’ve never had the chance to speak my mind with so many of my family all at once. It is an occasion too good to miss.’

There was another burst of laughter as Rose looked around her assembled guests.

‘Over forty years ago, too many over for my arithmetic to be more exact, my two sons, James and Sam, told me to jump out of a moving train. Often, it is only after one has acted that one knows it was the right thing to do. So it was on this occasion. I jumped and took Hannah and Sarah with me. The Sinton family from Armagh followed behind, together with two girls and their boyfriends, all young shop assistants.

‘Had we not jumped, not one of us would be in this room today,’ she went on matter-of-factly. ‘It is not simply that I would not be here, my children and grandchildren would not be here, and there wouldn’t be great-grandchildren waiting at home. Think also of the husbands and wives, the old 
friends and neighbours and the new friends I’ve made, who would not be here either. And those four lovely young people from the University who’ve been looking after us.

‘This is not simply ‘my birthday’ therefore. It is a moment to give thanks. However much we may have lost, and we have
all
lost someone or something dear to us, nevertheless, today we
must
celebrate. We are here, we are alive. The most precious thing in life is to have someone you can love and trust. I have been fortunate. I have had not just one very special person in my life, I have this whole room full of people I love and trust. Is it any wonder I don’t need birthday presents?’

There was a moment of stunned silence, then a huge round of applause as Rose reached out her hand for the knife, pulled the cake towards her and began to cut it up in a most business-like manner.

‘Ellie, there you are,’ said James, as he walked down the garden path. ‘Was my lovely niece able to cast any light on the origins of your rose?’

All around the garden, in the filtered sunlight of the marquee Rose’s guests sat or stood in twos or threes. Only her neighbours from the adjoining houses and her former housekeeper of many years had slipped away to leave her with her own immediate family.

‘Probably no,’ said Ellie, who was on her knees looking at a border plant she’d never seen before,
‘but we decided we wouldn’t let the facts get in the way,’ she added, smiling at James as she stood up. ‘Everyone remembers the pink rose, even Sam’s father, and Sam says his father is no good at flowers.
Wouldn’t know a daisy from a dandelion
, he said. So Rosie and I have decided
this is
the Hamilton Pink. She’s told me how to take cuttings in the autumn and how to bud, so by this time next year I hope to have lots to give away. Hamiltons first, of course.’

‘That’s a lovely idea,’ said James nodding. ‘Ma will be delighted. In fact, you’ve completely upstaged me,’ he went on, laughing wryly. ‘I was seriously thinking of asking McGredys or Dicksons to name a rose for her. It’s quite expensive, but that doesn’t matter. Knowing my Ma, she’ll be far happier with what you produce. You must tell her about it yourself, right away. She did go up for a little rest, but she sent me to fetch you. She wants to have a word with you before she comes down.’

‘Oh,’ said Ellie, taken aback, ‘are you sure she doesn’t just want to be quiet a bit longer?’

‘Quite sure. I had strict instructions. Ellie and only Ellie was what the lady said. She’s in her bedroom, but she’s not even lying down,’ he said as he turned and strode away.

‘Oh Ellie, what a pretty dress. Is that the material you and Ruth bought when you were up on holiday?’

‘Yes, it is, the one I was worried about because of
cutting on the bias,’ she admitted, smiling ruefully when she remembered sharing her anxiety with Rose.