Beyond the Green Hills (20 page)

When she’d finished breakfast, she had to go to the downstairs cloakroom to have a pee. She waited half an hour for the bathroom while Jessie changed Fiona. Washed and dressed, she went downstairs to find them, but the kitchen was fully occupied by a large woman taking the gas cooker to pieces so she could scrub all the bits. The sitting room was immaculately tidy and stone cold, full of the chill of unused rooms. As she went back upstairs for a sweater, she heard a sound from one of the bedrooms. Through the open door, she saw Jessie sitting by Fiona’s bed reading a story to the sleeping child.

That set the pattern for the day. Everything revolved around Fiona. She herself was a good-natured child, given to sudden smiles and waving of small, podgy arms. Clare had no difficulty in entertaining her in the rare moments when Jessie left them together.

‘How is Aunt Sarah?’ Clare asked, as they settled in the window seat of the dining room with their coffee after a picnic lunch at the kitchen table.

‘She’s fine. Can’t walk much, but has all her marbles.’

‘Can she manage her shopping?’

‘Don’t know at all. Ye may ask me mother when you go up.’

‘I’ll be going to see her. What’ll I say when she asks for you?’

‘I’m grand.’

Clare tried the odd ‘Do you remember?’ but Jessie was dismissive, if not actually disparaging. Eventually, as one attempt after another came to nothing, she asked Jessie if she did any painting these days.

‘Sure there’s no more to do,’ she said with a short laugh. ‘Have ye not looked round yet? Harry has it all done. He got a man in to do the papering and he did the rest.’

‘I meant your own painting, watercolour and oils.’

‘Ach, for goodness’ sake, Clare, how would I have time for that now? Ye don’t know what it’s like at all.’

‘No, I don’t, Jessie, but I know most women try to keep up something they’re good at.’

‘Ach, I wasn’t much good. It was just a pastime.’ She broke off. ‘I think maybe I hear Fiona.’

Clare finished her coffee and listened. She couldn’t hear anything.

‘Well, what d’you think, Clare?’

‘I think it looks wonderful. Far more spacious. And I love the new lighting.’

Harry looked pleased, as Clare stood taking in every detail of the extended gallery. The storeroom had gone, the extra space integrated into the main room.

‘But what about storage?’

‘Come and see,’ he said, a grin on his face that told her how excited he was. ‘I’ll go first in case there’s a paint pot in the wrong place,’ he said, looking at her navy trousers and the light, reversible raincoat she was wearing.

She followed him up the steep stairs to the flat. The doors stood open. The kitchen now displayed newly fitted pine units, new cooker, fridge and breakfast bar. The sitting room was ringed with metal shelving, stacked with boxes and cartons; the bedroom was now Harry’s office.

‘How about this?’

‘What a lovely desk, Harry. Where on earth did you find it?’

‘In an outhouse once used as an estate office.’

He told her how he’d searched for someone skilled enough to restore the damaged veneer work and someone to match the worn leather. It had taken months to restore the polish where the back had been mouldy with damp, but he’d persevered.

She glanced at the walls of his room. She was not surprised to find a group of prints of well-known houses, mostly Georgian, some very old sepia-coloured prints of his grandparents, two studio portraits of Jessie and a large photograph of Jessie and himself with Fiona held between them.

‘Are you sure you won’t let me drive you up to Armagh? It’s no distance at all.’

‘Oh yes it is, Harry. I know the way the work piles up if you’re not in the gallery first thing on a Monday morning. But I’ve some business to do
before anyone comes along. I owe you a hundred pounds and an awful lot of favours. I suppose you wouldn’t accept interest?’

‘You suppose correctly. I would be offended,’ he said, trying to look severe.

He walked across to the safe and opened it while she wrote her cheque.

‘Are you sure you can afford it, Clare? There’s no hurry at all, you know. Things are going well, as you can see.’

‘Yes, I can, Harry. And I’m so delighted. You’ve worked so hard. But I might be broke again some day,’ she said laughing, as she handed him the cheque and he put a small red box in her hand.

She stood looking at the box quite unable to speak.

‘Oh Clare, I’m sorry. I’m an absolute fool.’

Harry snatched the box from her hand and replaced it with a larger box that now held the two gold rings she’d found under the settle in the house by the forge.

She took them out and touched them, quite overcome by the memories that had flowed back when Harry put the box containing her engagement ring into her hand. She hadn’t needed to open it to see the wink of the garnets surrounding the tiny fragment of diamond, nor put it on to feel its snug fit round her finger.

She took a deep breath and looked Harry straight in the eye.

‘How is Andrew?’

‘He’s all right now. But the estate’s in a bad way.
I’ve been able to help him a bit, selling stuff,’ he said carefully.

Harry had always been honest with her, but she could see he was having doubts about whether or not he ought to say more.

‘Go on, Harry, I want to know.’

‘I think he has a girlfriend. She’s been with him a couple of times when he’s brought stuff up here. Tallish, red hair. Didn’t catch her name.’

‘Ginny?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Nice girl. D’you know her?’

‘Yes, I do. She
is
nice. She taught me to ride.’

‘But isn’t she his cousin?’

‘Only by marriage. Edward was his cousin. Ginny was Edward’s half-sister,’ she explained, amazed she could feel so calm, when the sight of the little red box had thrown her completely.

‘Time I was going for that bus, Harry,’ she said briskly. ‘Will you keep these for me?’

‘Don’t you want to take them with you?’

‘No, they belong in Ireland. You can charge me rent.’

‘I shall,’ he said, putting the box with the gold rings back in the safe and standing up. ‘A big hug as often as you come home,’ he said, putting his arms around her and holding her close.

‘Come in, come in, Clarey dear. Sure I’m glad to see you. You’re lookin’ the best. I think the French capital is agreein’ with ye.’

‘It’s lovely to see you too, Charlie. How’s the work going?’

‘Not bad, not bad. I’ve become very pretentious in my old age. I no longer have a sitting room in which nobody sits, I have made it into a writing room. Come in, do. These old wing chairs are far more comfortable than those damned armchairs that go with the settee. I got rid of them. Sure once I sat down in them I couldn’t get back up again.’

‘I have the same problem at airports,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They must think all passengers have long legs. If I sit back in their armchairs, my feet don’t touch the floor. If I want my feet on the floor, I have to sit up straight, then my back aches,’ she went on. ‘These are great. Where did you get them?’

‘Sale room in Armagh. There’s great stuff about if you have the time to look. I go in regular, because they sometimes have books. Job lots. They buy them at auctions, a pound for a boxful and then sell them for a bob or two each. Makes a good profit and I’m happy to buy. But there’s some fine old libraries being sold off like that, more’s the pity.’

Clare looked round the tiny, cluttered room. Apart from Charlie’s desk and the pair of wing chairs that looked down over the uncut grass to where the pump still stood on the far side of the road, there was a settee, entirely covered with books and newspapers, and three lopsided bookcases leaning drunkenly against each other.

The faded wallpaper was covered with sections cut from the one-inch and two and a half inch maps of Salter’s Grange, sketches of roads, fields, the location of derelict houses and lists of books to be consulted, all stuck up with drawing pins. On a
calendar of Majestic Canada, hanging on a nail, she could see her own name written in large letters in the square allocated to the third Thursday in May.

‘I’m sure you see great changes since you’ve been away. New houses, roads and schools and suchlike.’

‘No, actually, I don’t think I’ve noticed anything like that. Perhaps I haven’t been in the right places. I did see a bridge for the new motorway from the bus.’

‘I’m afraid I was being sarcastic,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’m sure you know that Armagh Rural District has great plans. They have one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four houses unfit for habitation. Twenty-four per cent of all rural housing. They’re planning a programme to replace them. They expect it to take thirty years.’

‘Thirty years?’ she repeated. ‘You’re joking, Charlie.’

‘I wish I was. I don’t know what’s the matter at all, things are just not getting any better. Not round here anyway. Sure, the urban district needs five hundred and fifty houses just to clear the slums in the town, never mind start housing the young couples. Listen to this, Clarey.’

He scuffled down a pile of copies of the
Armagh
Guardian,
found the one he wanted. ‘“
The
building
of
houses
is,
as
you
know,
a
very
slow
process,
especially
in
Armagh
,”’ he read. ‘That’s the Chairman of the City Council. I’m sure it’s not like that in France.’

‘No, it’s not, Charlie. There’s an awful lot of new business and industry. But then there’s American money coming in.’

‘And sure what’s to hinder us getting American industry in here as well? This country is being run for the gentry and the landowners. They’re doing fine. Them and a few big people in linen and textile machinery. But they may watch out. When Japan and Germany get back on their feet, they’ll take the legs from under them.’

He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Ach dear, Robert would have thrown me out if I’d said that in front of him, God bless him and rest his soul. I think he thought I was a communist forby being in the
IRA
. Did you know they were active again?’

‘No, I’m afraid I only hear what gets as far as
Le
Monde
.’

‘An’ I’m not too surprised it didn’t make it. One meal lorry and one culvert down near the border in Fermanagh. Not exactly strategic targets. But de Valera condemned it anyway. Him and Brookeborough, six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as go-ahead governments are concerned. I think ye’re better off in France, Clarey.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Clare suddenly. ‘Matilda Wolfe Tone. That’s what she decided. She said she was French, not Irish. She sent her son to the cavalry school at St Germain and he went and fought with Napoleon. She even managed to get herself a French pension.’

Clare opened up the back of her handbag, took out folded sheets of handwritten text and gave it to him. He scanned the lines avidly.

‘This is great. I had a feeling the same lady was no
weeping widow. It was good of you to do all that work for me.’

‘I wish I had, Charlie, but I can take no credit. All I did was translate it from French. My friend Marie-Claude did the work. She’s gone back to do another degree in history. She says you’ve given her a good idea. She hasn’t decided yet, but she might take up the role of Irish émigrés in French political life.’

‘Well now, isn’t that very interesting. Will you give her my kindest regards? I am much in her debt,’ he said, as he laid the neatly written sheets on his desk.

Cycling back to Liskeyborough in the last of the evening light, the smell of hawthorn heavy on the evening air, Clare decided that her visit to Charlie was the best thing yet. Amidst all the disappointments, the hours she had just spent stood out like an island of pleasure in a sea of discomforts.

It had never occurred to her how hard it would be to be a visitor in the home of old and dear friends, seeing their, life at close quarters, picking up the tension and awkwardness between them. She’d been so miserable most of the time she’d been with Jessie and Harry, she was positively looking forward to going to see her grandparents. In the event, that had turned out even worse, from the first moment she’d stepped into the house.

‘Hallo, yer a stranger. Put yer case in the room outa the way. Mrs Loney is due anytime to do the turns.’

‘How are you, Granny?’

‘Ach, just the same. An’ yer Granda gets deafer. He
only hears when ye tell him to come to his tea.’

‘What about William?’

‘What about him?’ she said bitterly. ‘He’s had a dozen jobs since he left school and lost them all. He won’t be told anything. Not the same boyo. All he’s interested in is motorbikes and cars. If it weren’t for wantin’ the money to buy one or other, he’d likely not go to work at all.’

Clare sighed as she turned off the main road and took the narrow road through Annacramp, past the new Grange School that had replaced Aunt Sarah’s schoolroom in the 1930s. The south-facing hedge beyond where Alfie Nesbitt used to live was full of honeysuckle. She’d like to stop and pick some, but Granny Hamilton seemed not to care about flowers any more. It was Granda who filled the tub by the door with marigolds and nasturtiums and Granny who didn’t want them in the house because of the mess they made when they died.

Monday had been a difficult day, her attempts at conversation no better received by her grandmother than by Jessie. She’d retreated to the workshop and fared slightly better with her grandfather, despite his difficulty with his hearing aid, but in the end, she’d gone for a walk, tramping up the road to climb Cannon Hill.

She’d stayed there till tea time, hoping the presence of Auntie Dolly and William might make things easier.

‘Hello, Clare, how are you?’ said William, coming through the door and drawing up to the tea table in oil-stained dungarees.

Granda looked at him severely. He got up, ran his hands under the tap at the kitchen sink, wiped them roughly and sat down again.

‘How’s Paris?’