On a Clear Day (37 page)

With shaking fingers, she unfolded the sheets of an old, handwritten document enclosed with various typewritten sheets. It was a copy of the original lease. She couldn’t quite focus on the long sentences, but here and there the words jumped up at her. ‘Made this eight day of October, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirty between,
(undecipherable), and Robert Thomas Scott, formerly of Drumsollen, one house and forge with (blank) … and three perches of land and rights of commonage as shown.

She burst into tears. One hundred and twenty four years exactly before the day she was born, her great-great grandfather had signed his name on both the lease and on this copy made by the same hand. It was there, perfectly clear to see, at the bottom of the beautifully written document.

‘Ah, Clarey dear, I’m sorry. Is it from the solicitors?’

She looked up and saw Charlie peering round the door.

‘Come and look, Charlie,’ she sniffed, knowing he’d have heard what Maisie had told Mrs Rowentree.

‘The bugger,’ he exclaimed, as he took up the letter and scanned it quickly.

‘There’s nothing I can do, is there, Charlie? He knows I can’t fight back. Even if I could afford a solicitor, he’s probably sure he’s in the right.’

Charlie nodded his head sadly.

‘He’s been clever forby. He’s waived the rent. He’s behaved as if he’s being reasonable. An’ he’s puttin’ in a family,’ he said, his lips tightening.

‘What’s clever about that?’ asked Clare, looking puzzled.

‘Ach, Clare, there’ll be desperate bad feelin’ at
what he’s doin’ and he knows it, but he’ll be able to say, “What does a wee lassie want wi’ a house an’ her away in Belfast. Aren’t there families cryin’ out wi’ the shortage?” Oh, the same man has no flies on him, he’s up to every trick in the book. You can be sure he knows his ground.’

‘And there really is
nothing
I can do?’ she said, sadly.

He shook his head and pressed his lips together tightly.

‘When I heerd about it last night I away in to Armagh and knocked up young Emerson of Munro and Anderson,’ he began. ‘I used to have a lot of business with him when I was on the Council. He said there’s dozens of these old leases still around with a week’s notice either way. Even if they seem way out of date to us, they are still perfectly legal. I’m afraid, Clare, till such time as you’re so well off you can buy out yer man an’ keep the wee place for yer holidays, you’ll have to put up with it.’

To her own surprise, she smiled.

‘I used to dream what I’d do if I had a lot of money,’ she began. ‘I’d have the whole place painted inside and out, a new floor in the sitting room where there’s a bit of dry rot, new windows at the back, the same style and shape, of course, but a bit bigger to give more light …’

She broke off as she saw the desolate look on Charlie’s face.

‘Ach, ye remind me of Kate. She was the one for makin’ things nice, but like you, she loved the old bits and pieces, the brass lamps and the china dogs and the baskets made of glass with that pink twisted edging round them, that ye put yer cake in fer Sunday tea.’

He paused, shuffling the papers of the inventory through his large, worn fingers.

‘Well, they’re together now, Kate and Robert. An’ maybe that’s the way it should’ve been, but Kate said I’d niver be any good by myself. If I hadn’t her to keep me straight I’d have got myself shot or finished up on the end of a rope. That’s what she used to say.’

‘But what on earth did she mean?’

‘Ach, the Scotts an’ the Runnings were a rebelly lot,’ he said, smiling. ‘Sure yer man Thomas there made pikes for the United Irishmen,’ he said, running his finger under Robert Thomas’s name on the lease. ‘An’ his landlord, Sir Arthur Richardson, put a pile o’ money inta the cause, though he kept his name out of it an’ no one split on him when it all failed. Some of us has kept up hope. There’s been men to follow Tone and Emmett. Myself one of them.’

‘But not Granda, surely?’

‘No, not Robert, more’s the pity, for a more reliable man you’d never find. I reasoned long and hard with him, but he said he could never bring
himself to kill a man no matter what the cause might be. But he did say he’d never turn his back on a friend in trouble, whatever he’d done, an’ I’d cause enough to be grateful for that.’

Charlie laid out the papers on the table as if he were dealing a hand of cards, his eyes moving restlessly across the lines of text.

‘He an’ Kate took an awful risk when I’d made a couple o’ bad mistakes an’ was informed on. The pair of them saved my life. That’s when I met Kate first an’ fell for her. Aye, an’ she for me, tho’ she fought it hard, for she loved Robert right enough. She said there was different kinds of love and a man wouldn’t understan’. I don’t know. Was she right?’

Clare didn’t know either. She was just so aware Charlie had now lost them both. She wasn’t the only one who was bereft.

‘Mine yerself, Dan. Drop yer side a bit. Watch the jamb.’

The house clearance men took all the good furniture from Robert’s room, the corner cupboard and the best chairs from the sitting room and the mahogany table from the kitchen. They’d risked the odd nail and bit of sharp metal and driven their van right up to the house. Parked outside the kitchen window, it blocked out what light there was on the dim and misty afternoon.

Clare and Jack stood leaning against the table by the window, unable to get on while the bulky furniture was being manoeuvred through the low doorways. The boss man tramped back into the kitchen.

‘That’s it, miss. I’ll be in touch with Mr Scott when we hear from the sale room.’

Clare cast her eyes hurriedly round the kitchen and peered into the sitting room beyond.

‘But what about the rest?’ she asked, anxiously.

It was getting late in the day for them to come back and collect a second load but she couldn’t begin to clear up until all the furniture was gone. She dreaded to think how much would need doing.

‘Ah no, miss. The rest’s not worth our liftin’. It’s only fit for a bonfire,’ he said, shortly. ‘Except maybe that oul’ chair,’ he added, casting a practised eye over Robert’s well-worn wooden armchair.

He strode across the kitchen, tipped the battered cushion onto the floor and turned it over one-handed, shaking it vigorously. The legs were steady as a rock.

‘I’ll take this ’un outa yer way,’ he said, tucking it under his arm.

‘No, thank you,’ said Clare, with a firmness that surprised her. ‘I’m keeping that chair.’

‘Oh aye,’ he said, indifferently, as he put it down. ‘Well then, we’ll be off. Good day t’ ye.’

He turned on his heel without a backward glance and left. They heard the van start. The exhaust smoke poured through the open door as it shunted back and forth, turning itself round in the confined space before the cottage, so as not to have to back all the way down to the road. Uncle Jack put his arm round her.

‘Ach, don’t let them upset you, Clare. It’s only a job to them, sticks of furniture that maybe have a price tag and maybe not. Will we have a drop of tea?’

She shook her head.

‘There’s so much to do, Uncle Jack. I’ve got to finish by Sunday night and they’ve not taken half the stuff I expected. I know how dirty it’s bound to be when we take out the beds.’

She looked around the kitchen and shook her head.

‘I doubt if the settle or that corner cupboard has been moved in years.’

He nodded, tightened his lips and looked her straight in the eye.

‘I’m afraid the man’s right. It’ll have to be a bonfire.’

On the space beyond the house, to the left of the shortcut, where the sodden remains of summer-cut nettles made a damp slime, they piled up the kitchen chairs, the salt box, the old hanging bookcase and some tattered curtains. Jack brought a metal tea pot full of paraffin from its place in the forge and sprinkled it liberally around, lit the end of a newspaper, poked it between the legs of a chair and moved back hastily.

Flames roared into the chill air, a shower of sparks rose high, dispersing like a spent firework before they reached the branches of the pear tree, as the wood, tinder dry, flared and glowed and collapsed into hot embers.

Clare stood rooted to the spot, hypnotised by the flames that leapt up and fell again so quickly. Uncle Jack had to call her twice before she heard him.

‘Come on, love, we must keep it going.’

They carried out what they could, broke up what was too big or too awkward to manage between them, kept the hungry flames going all
afternoon. Clare thought of Viking funeral pyres, fed with the dead man’s possessions, but all she could think off was poor Uncle Bob, in tears over Robert’s lack of means.

These few poor sticks of furniture were all a lifetime’s work had left behind. The cheap and nasty three-piece suite, whose rexine covers split with time, so that its stuffing leaked blobs of fluff onto the cracked lino of the sitting-room floor since ever she’d known it. The carved hallstand full of woodworm where she’d set her jars of lilac and branches of blossom. That’s what it amounted to. Hardly a Viking’s hoard. Her tears dried on her face in the fierce heat of the flames as they consumed each new offering.

Whether it was pure chance or Uncle Jack’s practicality in leaving them somewhere to sit when they took a rest, she never knew, but the very last item to go from the kitchen was the settle. Six feet long, with wooden arms at each end and a high back, it had always seemed so solid she’d assumed it would be too heavy for them to move in one piece. Jack would have to use the axe to break off one end and then lever away the well-scrubbed boards that made the seat. But when they tried it, it wasn’t heavy at all. Not for two. They drew it out into the empty room and lined it up, so they could carry it out into the dark night where the bonfire still glowed orange and blue.

‘Hold on a minute, Clare,’ said Jack.

She lowered her end to the floor and watched Jack bring the Tilley lamp from the deep embrasure of the back window and set it down carefully by the fender.

From the accumulation of dust and fluff underneath the settle, he handed her the broken stem of a clay pipe, a bent spoon and a blunt knife. She came and joined him, kneeling on the dirty floor and watched him pick out from the dust and dirt which lay directly below where the gap between the two planks of the wooden seat had been, a florin, a penny whistle, a folded leaflet advertising De Witts Little Liver Pills, a garter and a dip pen with a rusty nib. They had all fallen through as the gap widened with years of warm fires and the vigorous scrubbing of the Scott women.

‘Goodness, Jack, what’s this?’ she said, startled.

From a pile of undisturbed dust and fluff, she picked up a loose end of fine cord. Attached to it were two gold rings, the smaller one narrow, the larger one broad. They had been tied together; one within the other, fitting so well they’d not separated as she caught them up and blew away the dust. They lay in the palm of her hand now, gleaming in the light of the lamp, as if they’d never lain anywhere except in their own velvet-lined jeweller’s box.

‘Wedding rings, I suppose,’ said Jack, peering at them closely.

‘A man’s and a woman’s,’ she said slowly, her eyes drawn by the gleam of gold, by the perfect fit of one ring inside the other.

The image that came to her was irresistible, a pair of lovers, the woman enfolded by the man, their love holding them together over the years.

‘They look fairly old to me,’ said Jack, matter-of-factly. ‘Maybe they’ll have an inscription. But we’ll hardly see it in this light. Have you a pocket or will I put them in my wallet for you?’

‘I’ve a pocket, thanks,’ said Clare, hastily, grateful there were no holes in the pockets of her oldest trousers, the very first pair Auntie Polly had sent her from Canada.

‘We mustn’t let that fire down too far,’ he warned her, as he cast his eyes over the piles of dust and dirt and satisfied himself there was nothing more to be found.

‘Right,’ said Clare firmly, as she got to her feet and took up the arm of the settle, worn so smooth over the years by the sleeves of those who had sat enjoying the warmth of the fire, the company and the crack.

Jack manoeuvred his end till it pointed through the kitchen door, then together they carried it out into the darkness where the fire glowed, a bright orange circle still with eager blue tongues of flame at its heart.

The next morning, Sunday, was fine and dry. The pale sunlight cast long fingers of shadow from the hedgerows across the silent fields as she and Jack drove back to the house by the forge after an early breakfast at Liskeyborough.

‘My very last day,’ she heard herself say, as Jack unloaded cardboard boxes, a basket with a bottle of milk for their tea, sandwiches she’d cut while Jack made their breakfast, and an extra stiff brush from the farmyard, so he could help her sweep out the empty rooms before she started to clean.

As she lit the fire, topped up the water tank and filled the kettles, she heard the swish of his brush echoing from Robert’s bedroom where they’d dislodged wreaths of cobweb from the walls behind the pieces of furniture the clearance men had been willing to take.

‘Are you sure there’s no more I can do?’ he asked, some hours later, as he perched in the back window of the kitchen, a mug of tea in his hands, so that Clare could sit in the one remaining chair.

‘No, you’ve been great, Uncle Jack,’ she said warmly. ‘But the rest is my job. I need a few hours yet, but I’ll be ready by dark if that’s all right with you.’

‘Aye that suits me fine. About five, we’ll say. Will that be in time for your tea in Belfast?’

‘Oh don’t worry about that. Mrs McGregor will have gone to church so she’ll leave something
on a tray. It’ll be there whatever time I get back.’

‘Ye haven’t forgotten the dogs, have ye?’ he asked, nodding up at the mantelpiece as he drained his mug.

‘Oh no,’ she said, smiling. ‘They’ll be keeping an eye on me till we’re ready to go. That’s why I asked you for a couple of cardboard boxes. I’ll be taking them with me. And Granda’s chair. Do you think we can get it into the car all right?’ she asked, suddenly anxious.

‘We’ll manage,’ he reassured her. ‘I think it’ll go across the back seat. But I’ll have to leave your big photograph till another time. The glass might get broken with the legs of the chair. I’ll keep it in my bedroom for you till you’re next up.’

He looked around the empty room as if there was something else he was trying to remember and then, finding there wasn’t, he straightened up and put his mug down on the window sill behind him.

‘I’d better be off or I’ll have them late for meeting.’

She walked to the door with him, waved as he got into his car and watched as he reversed cautiously onto the road. There were more cars about these days and sometimes on a Sunday a neighbour would go into Armagh for the papers. But no car appeared. As she stood looking down the path to the forge, not a sound disturbed the quiet of the morning. She put her hand out to
touch the arch over the door and made no move to start her work.

Suddenly the church bell rang out from the hill. It startled her, reminded her time was passing. She hurried inside and got to work. Jack had not wanted to leave her in the empty house, but she’d insisted. She was so grateful for his help, but she knew she needed to be by herself. However painful it might be, there was a goodbye to be said and she could only say it if she were alone, free to move among all the memories of the years she had spent here.

She worked steadily, methodically, as she had taught herself to do long ago. However hard the work, it left her mind free to plan the weekly essay or to have practise conversations with herself in French or German. Today, however, she wasn’t very clear what was going on in her mind. At times, she thought that getting the job done was taking her total attention. When she finally paused at two o’clock to make tea and eat her sandwich, her back and arms ached, yet there was still so much left to do.

She sat by the stove in Robert’s chair and looked up at the china dogs in their solitary splendour on what had once been a crowded mantelpiece. In his honour, she had christened them with both the Scott names, the ones she had found on the lease that went back to 1830.

‘Well then, Robert and Thomas,’ she began. ‘How do I do it? How do I say goodbye?’

Her tears caught her unexpectedly, a mug of tea in one hand, a corned beef sandwich in the other. She parked her tea on the stove and fumbled for her handkerchief. As her fingers closed round it, she touched the solid shape of the two rings she’d kept with her, because she’d found that morning she could not bear to be parted from them.

‘I’d say those were a brave age, wouldn’t you, Jack?’ Granda Hamilton had commented the previous evening when she’d brought them out to show to him. Sitting by the fire, both William and her grandmother already in bed, he looked at them with great interest. He fetched a magnifying glass from his workshop and held them up to the new electric light.

‘There’s somethin’ there, Clare, but I can’t make it out. Look yerself,’ he said, showing her how to angle the glass. ‘Your eyes are far sharper than mine.’

‘Initials,’ she said. ‘I think it’s E. C. B. on the small ring.’

‘What about the broader one?’ asked Jack. ‘That might be easier to read.’

Clare undid the fine twine but when it fell away she found they were still tied together.

‘I’ll tell you what that is, Clare,’ said her grandfather, as she looked up at him, puzzled by
what she’d found. ‘It’s human hair. It was often used for binding in the old days. It’s very strong if you use a fair sized piece and wrap it well.’

She was reluctant to unbind the hair, but she so wanted to see what the broader ring might reveal. She released it with a light touch of a sharp razor blade and patiently unwound it, a single long, pale hair with just a hint of red in it. The rings slipped apart and she took up her glass again.

‘It’s the same, I think’, she said, quickly. ‘E. C. B.’

‘So they belonged to the same person,’ said Jack thoughtfully.

But Clare said nothing. She was still quite sure the rings had belonged to a man and a woman, that one of them had tied them together so that they would stay together. She had no idea what happened after that, whether they’d been lost, or hidden, but before she got into bed that night she replaced the hair and tied it in place before covering it up again with the fine twine, exactly as it had been when she’d first found them.

She finished her sandwich, drained her mug of tea and was about to refill her bucket with fresh water when a thought struck her.

‘There was something under Granda’s chair yesterday,’ she muttered to herself, remembering the way the clearance man had turned it up to slide off the cushion.

She stood up and tilted the chair.

‘Yes, there is,’ she said, excitedly, as she carried it out into the daylight. ‘R. T. S.,’ she read, ‘Robert Thomas Scott.’

Pleased as she was that the chair had been marked, or made, by her great-grandfather, it was what was carved below the first set of initials that truly delighted her.