On a Clear Day (22 page)

Clare held the dress against herself, almost certain it would fit. And it did. When she’d slipped into Robert’s room to look in the big mirror inside his wardrobe door, she could hardly believe it.

She adjusted the white collar on the high, buttoned-up neck and pirouetted in her bare feet to see the swirl of the generously cut skirt that flared out from the neat waist. With the brightness of excitement in her dark eyes and her even darker curls setting off the creaminess of her skin, Clare hardly recognised the face that looked back at her in the dim light of the heavily-furnished room. She was wondering if she dare use lipstick for the big occasion when suddenly she remembered she’d no shoes she could possibly wear with such a smart dress.

‘I don’t think this rain’s goin’ to give over,’ announced Granny Hamilton firmly. ‘I think it’s settled in for the night.’

Startled, Clare came back to the present and looked out through the open door. Broad puddles were spreading across the uneven surface of the
yard. Huge falling drops of rain raised spikes of water in them like tiny, pale flowers.

‘What’ll they do about the banner, Granny?’ she asked quietly.

‘Nothin’ for it, they’ll have to use the hall. Sure, they’d all get soaked and the banner would be well christened. They can take a wee shower an’ be none the worse if they’re kept movin’, those banners, but not a downpour like this. Especially when they’re new and the paint not that well settled.’

She surveyed the table, the finished and wrapped sandwiches lined up in battle order ready to be packed in a big box.

‘Minnie, ye may make us a cup o’ tea. Goodness knows when you an’ Clare will get a bite to eat. Can you make up some of those thin crusts with a bit o’ jam. There’s new raspberry in the cupboard Mrs Loney brought me a present the other day.’

The rain didn’t stop, it got heavier. Minnie, Clare and two cardboard boxes of sandwiches were squashed unceremoniously into the back of Jack’s car for the short drive to the hall. In the front seat, the Master of the Lodge kept up a stream of anxious questions about what was going to happen. Jack tried to answer him while swerving between the worst of the flooding from the springs in the hedge banks of the deep-set lane above the farm. The
journey was uncomfortable but mercifully short.

They parked as near the hall as they could, but between the driving rain and the muddy path outside, Clare abandoned all further thoughts of her first glorious appearance on a dance floor. Clutching her half of the sandwiches, she splashed through the puddles, deposited her box in the minute kitchen and retired into the adjoining lavatory to dry her wet hair on her handkerchief.

As she stood in front of a small, starred and spotted mirror, drawing a comb through her wet curls, she thought ruefully of the time it had taken with the flat irons to get out the creases her new dress acquired crossing the Atlantic. They were nothing to the creases just made by her close confinement with Minnie and the two boxes of sandwiches in the small back seat of Jack’s Austen.

She peered at herself in the mirror and made up her mind. Holding her breath and with great care, she outlined her lips with Perfection Pink and rubbed them together as Jessie had instructed her. Having nothing else to hand, she blotted them and left a perfect print on her wet hanky.

‘At least I can tell Jessie I wore her lipstick,’ she said to the mirror as she turned her back on it and went out into the hall.

The hall was bleak and chilly. Two men were struggling to install the banner in an upright position on the narrow platform of the
low-ceilinged room, while others brought out stackable chairs, discovered there weren’t nearly enough of them to seat the expected company and went off in search of more. Clare shivered and wished she’d brought a cardigan. It was July and the afternoon had been hot and sunny, but she ought to know better by now. As Granda Scott always said, ‘There’s many weathers in an Ulster day!’

Tonight felt like winter as the rain pounded on the corrugated roof and the grey light filtered through the small sash windows. The empty, echoing hall was gloomy, the wooden floor, just like those she and Jessie had seen in countless barn dance scenes at the Ritz, became damper and dirtier as men with chairs, men with ladders, men with supports for the poles of the banner, all tramped back and forth by way of the muddy path to the main road where they had parked their assorted vehicles.

The men’s voices echoed as they called instructions to each other. The furled banner leant drunkenly on its poles, first one way and then the other, till someone decided it would have to be unfurled. If it wasn’t supported properly unfurled then the whole thing might fall over on the platform party when the lady with the silver scissors did her bit.

Clare wondered how the said lady was to have
risen the twelve feet off the ground to where the banner was lashed around it’s crossbar in order to unfurl it, but no one seemed to have considered this difficulty. More urgently, they now faced the immediate problem of getting a field full of people into the hall, in company with two pipe bands, the special guests and the members of the lodge itself.

As the evening wore on, however, it seemed to Clare the bad weather itself was helping out. Many guests stayed at home. But even then, the hall was packed. The press of perspiring bodies, mixed with the odour of damp clothing, rubber boots and Brylcreem, made Clare long for fresh air. But she could see that was a long way off.

Finally the proceedings began. There were prayers and exhortations from the ministers, followed by strong words about courage and loyalty. Clare was puzzled when the elder of the two clergyman made lengthy reference to the Battle of the Somme and the great sacrifices made by the Ulster Division in the cause of freedom. As she went on staring at King William on his shiny white horse, it suddenly came to her that the Battle of the Somme must be the image on the other side of the banner.

‘I hope and pray that this example may inspire you to live lives worthy in God’s sight and that the freedom that has been passed down to you will still be yours …’

His voice tailed off ominously as he looked down at the young men lined up below the platform, three of her cousins in their midst, wearing new suits and looking acutely uncomfortable.

He spoke as if he expected another war to break out at any moment. Surely he couldn’t really mean it, she thought. Didn’t everyone expect the last one to be the very last one of all? If enough people didn’t want another war, couldn’t they stop it happening?

To keep herself occupied, she studied the detail of exotic flowers all round the border of the banner and the vivid landscape of little hills, the background to William’s portrait. The horse, she thought, was very good. And horses were difficult to draw, so Jessie said. Especially in that rearing position. But William wasn’t very inspiring. Short and rather podgy, he looked as if he was cross-eyed. Or perhaps that was just the light of battle in his eye.

The clergyman was now speaking of religious freedom.

‘The Orange Order will not abide anyone interfering with the way in which we worship. All those who march behind this banner stand for freedom of worship,’ he pronounced firmly, shaking his finger at the assembled company.

Clare yawned discreetly behind her hand and looked around her. The rows of faces were
impassive. They gave no hint as to whether they thought he was inspired or talking a lot of nonsense. And they applauded every speaker with equal courtesy, including the whole list of votes of thanks Granny Hamilton had so accurately predicted.

A second clergyman was now getting to his feet. He smiled genially at the assembled company and said that the unfurling of a banner meant that a lodge was flourishing. This was a good sign. Long may it continue. He then pointed out the fact that Roman Catholics went to Mass before eight o’clock. They must admire them for that and be prepared to make the same effort.

‘Week after week you have the good example set by the Royal Family attending Divine Worship. They are fighting against Communism. But we here in Northern Ireland have another battle to fight as well as the fight against Communism. We have to fight the enemy that never sleeps, We must never forget Rome. The church of Rome is ever ready to exploit weakness. We must be vigilant. We must be ready,’ he warned, as he waved an emphatic finger and sat down.

Clare was confused. She couldn’t quite see how Northern Ireland was involved in the struggle against communism. She’d never heard of anyone she knew being a communist or even knowing anybody that was. Perhaps the lodge had inside
information about these mysterious people. As for the encroachment of the Church of Rome, the only conversion she had ever heard off was the joke about the elderly Protestant on his death-bed, who decided to be converted, because he thought it was better if one of them went than one of his own side.

She would have to ask Granda Hamilton what it all meant, she really would. He wasn’t a member of a lodge because of being a Quaker, but he always knew what was going on and would answer her questions as well as he could. Every one of his sons had joined the lodge and now his grandsons were just waiting to be seventeen to apply for their sash.

She’d so missed seeing him today. A cousin in Castlewellan had died and he’d gone to the funeral taking William with him. Whenever Granda went anywhere now he always took William and Granny breathed a sigh of relief. She was quite open about it. William was as difficult as ever, she said. If he hadn’t someone or something to keep him occupied he was a pain in the neck. His grandfather was the only one who had the patience to keep on at him and make him behave properly. He’d always worn her out from the first day he ever came, but now when she was so tired and often in pain she just couldn’t cope with him at all.

Clare sighed. She had done her best but nothing seemed to work with William. Sometimes
she imagined he would find something that really interested him, football, or chemistry, or bird-watching. But so far there was nothing that had engaged him in any way. She wondered if William would join the lodge when he was seventeen, like the rest of his cousins. But that wasn’t very likely to solve the problem.

The Chairman had finally got round to thanking the bands and the Ladies’ Committee. While he was expressing his deep appreciation of all the ladies did for the lodge, Clare slipped from her seat close to the kitchen door and moved silently inside. She lit the Calor gas under the copper. It had just come to the boil when the band launched into the National Anthem and the assembled company leapt to their feet and sang all three verses.

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time everyone had been fed and provided with innumerable cups of tea. There was an awkward pause when it seemed that neither of the bands present expected to play for dancing. Eventually, a few brave souls from each offered their services and the piano was retrieved from its hiding place in the cloakroom.

They struck up a quickstep that set Clare’s feet tapping, but no one moved. A thick knot of men at one end of the room kept their backs turned to the women and girls sitting round the walls at the other. Clare waved hopefully to her cousin Sam.
He blushed and looked the other way.

Finally, after three more numbers, the Chairman took the floor with his wife, a large lady with tightly permed hair, who nodded over his shoulder to the younger men and mouthed to them to ‘Go and dance’.

Clare waited patiently. Someone was walking towards her. A large man in a navy striped suit and brown leather shoes. He said nothing, just nodded at her and held out his hand. She stood up. He pressed two fingers to the small of her back. Holding her at arm’s length he walked her backways along the side of the room. At each corner, he twisted his body to accommodate the new angle and then continued as before.

‘Big crowd,’ he said after the first circuit.

‘Yes,’ agreed Clare, unable for the moment to think of any more promising response to this conversational effort.

‘Are you a member of the lodge?’ she enquired, thinking it a pretty poor attempt on her part.

‘Na,’ he said, dismissively. ‘No time for all this marching and so on. Encourages bad feelin’. I’m agin it.’

‘So how do you come to be here?’ she asked promptly, quite unable to contain her curiosity.

‘Wanted to see how the banner looked,’ he said, as the music stopped. ‘I painted it,’ he added, walking away as silently as he’d come.

After that, she did take the floor with Uncle Jack, who was a great dancer, though he tried to tell her he was past it. But they only managed two dances. Just as they were getting into their stride, someone came and proposed a vote of thanks to the musicians and they had the National Anthem all over again. It being Saturday night, the hall had to be empty and closed up before the Sabbath.

In no time at all, Clare was saying goodbye to Jack at the bottom of Granda Scott’s lane. The rain had stopped, but she still had a job picking her way through the familiar puddles in front of the cottage.

To her surprise, the front door was not closed and when she pushed open the kitchen door, she found the lamp still lit.

‘Did ye enjoy yerself?’ Robert asked, as his half-closed eyes flickered open.

‘I did indeed, Granda. I had a great time,’ she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could manage. ‘Granny says we’re both to come over for our tea next week, its far too long since she’s seen you.’

‘That’s very nice of her, very nice indeed,’ he replied, nodding to himself. ‘Did she like yer dress?’

‘She did. She said it suited me real well,’ she went on, glad to be able to tell the truth.

‘I had a young gentleman askin’ for you this afternoon,’ he said as he leant over to pull off his boots.

‘Who was that?’ she asked, amused by his habit of teasing her.

‘Oh, one that’s been here before,’ he said firmly. ‘I think you mind his name. The one on the chestnut mare.’

He winked at her as he headed for his bed.

‘Goodnight now. Sleep well after your first dance.’