The Hamiltons of Ballydown (27 page)

She took two pictures of the engine house, now a smouldering ruin after the conflagration. As she was selecting the best angle to photograph the still
burning remains of the west end of the mill, she felt something brush her cheek. For most of the afternoon flakes of ash had filled the air with flying fragments, fine as early snow, catching in her hair and clothes and sticking to her damp skin, but she was surprised there should be any left. The sudden stiffening of the breeze and its change of direction had swept all the floating debris away, wafting them across the river and into the surrounding pastures, leaving the air cleaner and cooler.

She took one picture. Then another. As she lined up a third, to show the west end of the mill in relation to the burnt out engine shed, she felt the same tickling sensation. She managed to ignore it until she’d pressed the shutter. Then she put her hand up to her cheek. To her great surprise she found that it was damp.

Only then did she look up at the sky. The drop in the light level was not due to the smoke, as she’d thought, but to a great mass of dark, threatening clouds. They’d crept up the sky and now entirely shut out the sun. They had just released the first large drops of rain.

She hurried back to the main entrance and arrived just in time to avoid getting soaked. The conference with the Fire Brigade was coming to an end. The Fire Chief, his polished helmet splashed with huge drops, went to view the damage, his firemen standing around their shiny new pump from
which the hoses had not even been unrolled.

The heavy rain saturated the blackened brick work round the empty, gaping windows, poured down through the burnt out floors and filled up the temporary reservoir created by damming the stream. By splicing two hoses together and running it back to the river, the Millbrook firefighters had created one powerful jet. Now their colleagues from the other mills, created another in the same manner. The short hoses brought by the volunteers from Ballievy were quite adequate to tap the overflowing reservoir, their hand pump manned in turn by many willing men from Millbrook. They worked on, soaked to the skin by the pouring rain, until the last pockets of flame were doused and only great columns of steam rose from the damaged building.

The Fire Brigade left without a mark on their new uniforms or a speck of ash on their well-polished pump, the Fire Chief’s report promised for Monday morning. As the rain eased, a group of women came down from the nearby cottages carrying kettles of tea and jugs of milk and took over the sodden table where earlier that afternoon they’d queued up for their wages.

A young lad brought Sarah a steaming mugful as she stood patiently in the shelter of the main entrance, knowing well she would only add to Hugh’s worries if she got wet. From her vantage point, she watched the women quietly serve the
small groups of men who came up in turn from the pumps and hoses. Some men exchanged a word or two with a wife, or a sister, but most remained silent. Not so much exhaustion, as apprehension, she thought, as she studied the faces.

She had no idea how long it might take to restore the buildings, refit them and get back into production. They knew no better than she did. But for them every week’s delay raised the question of survival. No wages, no food. It was a brutally simple equation. For families whose only breadwinners worked in the mill, today had been a disaster.

However sodden the blackened remains might look, pumps and hoses would be kept in readiness all through the night for everyone knew the danger of hot spots surviving even after such a soaking under the burnt wreckage of floor girders and scorched machinery. The exhausted Millbrook firefighters were sent home, while the fresher team from Ballievy and the recently arrived men from the other two mills volunteered to be on hand till morning.

Suddenly, there was nothing more to be done, except remove the tarpaulins Tom had hastily thrown over both Hugh’s motor and the brougham.

‘Da, I’ll keep Hugh company. Is that all right?’ Sarah whispered to her father, as a young man brought Bess back from the nearby meadow where all the mill’s working horses had been led.

‘Aye, do that,’ he said, as the young man
manoeuvred Bess between the shafts. ‘Ye might raise his spirits a bit, more than I can,’ he said wearily, his face streaked with soot and ash.

‘Tell Ma, I’ll be a wee while yet,’ he said, as he prepared to leave. ‘I have to call in at Ballievy on the way home to see if we’ve solved our other problem. We had the beetles jammed this morning.’

‘Right, I’ll tell her. I’ll see you later,’ she said, kissing his cheek, as Hugh came up to them, grey with exhaustion.

‘If we wrap Peter’s bicycle in the tarpaulin and put it in the back seat, I wouldn’t have to cycle home,’ she said thoughtfully, looking him straight in the eye.

‘Peter’s bicycle?’ he repeated, baffled.

‘I met him at the station and borrowed it when I heard about the fire. How did you think I got here?’ she asked, teasing him gently.

‘I never quite thought,’ he said honestly. ‘Not when I heard you’d gone into the mill,’ he added, shaking his head, as the memory came back to him. ‘Where is it?’

‘Where is what?’ she echoed, confused by his obvious distress.

‘The bicycle.’

‘Oh yes. I’ll fetch it,’ she said quickly. ‘I parked it up by the Night Watchman’s hut.’

‘No, you won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘Get in and sit down. I’ll see to it.’

They said little to each other as he drove up the slope and turned right onto the main road. The sky had cleared and the air was fresh again after the rain. Huge spinning globes of water fell from the trees, showering them as the breeze freshened again. A stream of carts and wagons came towards them as they drove into Banbridge. The Post Office clock said it was ten to six.

‘It’s been a long afternoon,’ she said quietly.

She found herself almost unable to think back to the moment when she’d met Billy outside the station and learnt of the fire.

‘Are you exhausted?’ he asked, after a moment.

‘No, I’m not as tired as you are,’ she replied, turning to register the grim set of his face. ‘But I haven’t the burden of responsibility that you have. What happens next?’

‘Fire Chief’s report. Insurance assessor’s valuation. A greater or lesser degree of haggling which they like to call
negotiating
. Meantime, we must start the rebuilding just as soon as we can. If I wait till the claim is settled we could lose months of production. And I’ll have to find a new source of spun thread, otherwise the weavers go out of production, followed by the hemstitchers and the finishers,’ he said calmly.

‘What will you do in your spare time?’ she asked, as he stopped on the road just beyond Ballievy Mill to let a herd of cattle make their leisurely way across the road ahead of them.

He looked at her in surprise. Seeing her smile, he managed a little laugh.

‘If you were at home, I’d ask you to let me come and carry your camera,’ he replied, picking up her light tone. ‘Perhaps we might manage an hour on Sunday and go and feed the swans.’

‘That would be lovely, Hugh,’ she said, beaming at him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime?’

‘I think you’ve already done it,’ he confessed smiling, as they drew to a halt outside Jackson’s farm. ‘I shall think of the swans all day tomorrow when I’m tramping round the debris with your father, thinking of empty pockets and purses,’ he added, as he raised a hand in greeting to Peter Jackson and his father who’d come out to greet them and now stood staring at their smirched faces and dishevelled dress.

‘Thank you so much, Peter,’ Sarah said politely, as they moved to extract the bicycle from the back seat.

‘She won’t tell you if I don’t,’ said Hugh, looking from father to son. ‘Thanks to your bicycle, Peter, she got to Millbrook twenty minutes before I did. She spotted a child way up on the fourth floor. God knows how she got into the mill, or how she got up to the fourth floor, but she owes her life to Sarah,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Sarah went and got her out,’ he ended matter-of-factly.

‘Much damage?’ Tommy Jackson asked abruptly

‘About a third of the main building and the entire engine house. Bad enough,’ Hugh nodded, as he got back into the driver’s seat. ‘But no one hurt, thank God,’ he added, as he reversed back down the yard to give him more momentum for the hill.

The Jacksons watched till they were out of sight and went back indoors to tell the story to Mrs Jackson and a former neighbour from Lenaderg who had come to visit them. By the next day, everyone in the district would know all the details of the fire at Millbrook, probably somewhat enlarged in the telling.

Hugh stopped outside Ballydown, but kept the engine running.

‘I’d be poor company tonight, Sarah,’ he said wearily. ‘Tell your mother I’ll see her tomorrow and I’ll expect Sam up later,’ he went on, as she picked up her camera.

‘Sam?’ she repeated, puzzled.

‘Yes, he’s home this weekend and he needs a bed for the night,’ he replied, all the life gone out of his voice.

‘Goodnight, Hugh,’ she said quickly, baffled by the reference to Sam, but concerned by the exhaustion she saw written all over his face. ‘Thank you for bringing me home. Please try not to worry. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Rose glanced up from her chair by the fire when she heard the engine. She recognised the familiar footstep on the garden path.

‘Sarah!’ she exclaimed, completely taken aback by the apparition who appeared in the doorway.

Her dark hair was threaded with grey, her working dress streaked with dust, her white blouse creased and crumpled and smudged with soot, but she herself seemed entirely composed, unaware of the slightest disarrangement of her dress.

Rose got to her feet and checked her impulse to go and put her arms round her.

‘Sarah love, Peter Jackson told us you’d gone to Millbrook. Are you all right?’ she asked, as coolly as she could manage.

Sarah made no answer. She moved over the threshold and stood looking absently from Sam to the other figure who sat by the fire.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ she replied after a pause, her eyes fixed on an unknown young woman.

‘Come and meet your new sister-in-law,’ Rose said, slipping an arm round her waist and drawing her forward. ‘Martha, this is Sarah, Sam’s younger sister. Sarah, Sam and Martha are going to be married in October, on Sam’s twenty-first birthday. October the 24th. Isn’t that a lovely idea?’

She offered her hand to the red-headed girl and registered at last the uneasy, puzzled glances she and Sam were giving her.

‘Martha, I’m sorry. I’ve just realised how dirty I am,’ she said easily. ‘Ma, do I smell of smoke?’

‘Yes, you do. Very strongly. And machine oil. And you have dark circles under your eyes. I can’t tell whether its soot or tiredness.’

Sam came forward to give her a hug. As she felt his soft, warm arms close around her, she suddenly felt tears spring to her eyes. She had no idea why she should cry. Perhaps it was tears of joy, because he looked so happy. Perhaps tears of sorrow for all the poor people who’d been made jobless by today’s fire. Or perhaps she was just tired out. Tired beyond politeness. Quite beyond saying friendly things to this unknown and rather unprepossessing girl.

‘Martha, if you’ll excuse me. I think perhaps Sarah could do with a hand to get washed and changed.’

Rose picked up a kettle of water from the stove and gently propelled her towards the stairs.

‘Sam dear, would you like to take Martha out to see Dolly,’ she suggested, over her shoulder. ‘Maybe you’d have a wee walk perhaps, till your father gets back. I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he can.’

Neither Rose nor Sarah quite knew what to make of Martha Loney. A plain girl with rather sharp features and small bright eyes, she laughed a great deal and like many plain girls managed to look appealing enough. She appeared to have no strong likes or dislikes, accepted the preoccupations of the household and said little about herself.

The questions Rose put to her, designed to show interest rather than curiosity, she answered politely enough. But beyond the bare facts that her father farmed near Richhill Station, she had an uncle a grocer in the village itself and two other uncles and an older brother in America, they were left to guess what so appealed to Sam he wanted to marry the moment he reached twenty-one.

Late on Saturday afternoon, Sam explained they had to go back to Richhill to share their news with some friends and to visit an old aunt of Martha’s on the following day. Rose was relieved to see them go. She had found Martha’s presence curiously
depressing and she was concerned she’d had no chance to talk to Sarah about the fire.

‘Now, love, I want to hear about yesterday,’ she said, as she pulled forward the kettle on the stove. ‘I hadn’t the heart to ask you when you were so tired and there hasn’t been much chance since,’ she went on, sitting down gratefully in her own chair to wait for the kettle to boil.

‘It’s a long time since you’ve had to wash my face for me,’ Sarah said, grinning broadly.

Sarah too breathed a sigh of relief. Apart from the small murmurings of the kettle the only other sound to be heard in the big kitchen was the soothing tick of the American wall clock.

As Rose made tea, she glanced up at the small and much quieter clock on the mantelpiece and thought of John. Hugh had collected him at eight o’clock and now it was nearly five. She wished she’d made sandwiches for the pair of them. But then they might have had lunch in Banbridge. Much of the morning would be spent there, talking to the Bank Manager and the local representative of the insurance company.

‘Ma,’ began Sarah thoughtfully, her mind still full of the recently departed couple rather than her own adventures. ‘Did you notice that Martha never looks at Sam, except in the ordinary way?’

‘Yes, I did notice,’ said replied, nodding, as she fetched mugs from the dresser. ‘But I thought maybe
she was avoiding being too affectionate. Someone may have told her mothers are always jealous.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Sarah retorted, her brow furrowed in a familiar frown. ‘I can’t imagine Martha listening to
anything
anyone told her. She seems to shake everything off. Nothing reaches her.’

‘“
Like water off a duck’s back
”, my mother used to say,’ she offered promptly, Sarah’s words bringing into focus something she’d been puzzling over since Martha’s arrival.

They sat in silence for a little while, Rose wondering if perhaps the events at Millbrook were too distressing, or too recent for Sarah to want to speak of them yet, while Sarah was actually asking herself if Martha Loney really loved Sam or was just pleased to have such a good-natured and successful young man to show off to her relations.

‘Ma, how did you know Da was the man for you?’

The question was so unexpected, Rose hardly knew what to say.

‘Oh dear, now you’ve got me. It
was
rather a long time ago,’ she said, pausing. ‘I suppose there’s no use telling you I just knew?’

‘No,’ said Sarah, shaking her head. ‘I need to know
how
you knew.’

‘All right. I promise I’ll give my mind to it and give you a proper answer as soon as I can.’

Walking up the slope to the motor, parked by the roadside at Corbet Lough that Sunday afternoon, Sarah looked back over her shoulder and saw the two adult swans moving slowly away across the calm water.

‘I wish I could be here to help you, Hugh,’ she began. ‘Not shut up in the studio all week.’

He smiled and followed her gaze out across the blue-grey, shimmering expanse.

‘You’ve been a great help already,’ he said, as they climbed into the motor and sat watching the family of grubby looking cygnets following behind their elegant parents.

‘Your idea of relocating the engine house at the other end of the building and starting with half a mill is well worth looking into,’ he continued. ‘Your father says the machines have taken no harm at all. Every door was properly closed, so the smoke didn’t get across the stairwell. That’s something to be pleased about.’

She’d left her departure to the last possible moment, utterly reluctant to go back to the city and now sat in the slow-moving train, moodily watching the dusk gather over the countryside. She asked herself why she’d found it so very hard to leave this particular time. She kept coming up with the same answer.

All afternoon, she’d been so aware of the lines of strain in his face. She smiled ruefully to herself.
It wasn’t surprising she knew all the telltale signs of weariness and anxiety, was it? After all, she’d known him since she was six years old.

‘That’s the problem,’ she exclaimed, alone in the rattling carriage, the lights of scattered farms now blossoming like starflowers in the folds of dark fields and on the sides of the little hills. ‘He’s been my best friend for so long now I can’t tell whether I love him or not.’

With her mind so preoccupied by Millbrook, Rathdrum and Ballydown, Monday’s work at the studio was a real burden. She had to force herself to concentrate. Anything less than her total attention would produce the sort of error that would bring Mrs Cheesman down on her like a ton of bricks. She ended the day exhausted, too weary even to ask for permission to print the roll of film she’d developed at the weekend.

Even when one paid for the printing paper and used chemicals about to be thrown away, Mrs Cheesman managed to make her permission into a grand concession. On this occasion, Sarah felt she couldn’t trust her temper. Had she not wanted to study the pictures as soon as possible, she’d have sent them away to be done.

When the lady in question failed to turn up for work on Tuesday morning, she was relieved and delighted. Not only was the atmosphere more relaxed, but when she had a word with Harry
Carroll, the senior darkroom assistant, he offered to print her pictures and give her a lesson in enlarging using her own negatives.

A kindly man, with no great love for Mrs Cheesman, Harry watched as the images came up in the developer and listened to her story of the fire. He nodded gravely when she spoke of the number of people who might be put out of work. They printed all the pictures on Tuesday morning, leaving them to wash and dry while they processed the previous day’s work. Then, late in the day, when they’d studied the prints in good light, Harry made a second set of enlargements himself showing her how to pull out detail by
shading in and dodging out
as he called it. She went home from work delighted with what she’d learnt and well-pleased with the folder of carefully selected enlargements under her arm. She spent the evening writing to Hannah and Teddy about the fire and ended up feeling much easier in her mind, once she’d set it all down on paper.

But her good spirits did not last. Coming down to breakfast next morning, she found a letter from her mother. Unable to bear the thought of a whole week without news, she’d asked her mother to write if there was any significant progress on the insurance claim, or if the Belfast firm responsible for replacing the engines had given any delivery date.

She tore open the letter and read, her heart sinking with each paragraph.

It was all Sarah could do to stop herself packing a bag, collecting up her pictures and getting the first train home. The thought was so tempting, she knew it must be wrong, so she put a few things together with her pictures, went in to work early, waited for Mr Abernethy and asked if she could have the day off, unpaid, or even the half day, to attend to a family matter.

Mr Abernethy was his usual avuncular self. Full of sympathy, he went immediately to consult Mrs Cheesman. He returned in a matter of moments full of apologies. It was simply not possible given the high level of booking for the day. He was sure she would understand.

Knowing perfectly well what the bookings were
for the day and that it would’ve been perfectly possible to let her go, she was hardly able to contain her fury. As there was no where else to go, she went and sat in the lavatory adjoining the stuffy cubicle laughingly called the Staff Cloakroom. It was still only ten to eight and in there even Mrs Cheesman couldn’t follow her. She tried to think clearly. She
could
just walk out, here and now, but how would that look if she applied for another job?

As she heard footsteps on the stairs and her colleagues’ voices, she made up her mind. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it was better than nothing. She’d get the first possible train to Banbridge after six o’clock and the last one back. She’d have nearly an hour at Ballydown.

Rose sprang to her feet, dropping her book, as she walked into the kitchen.

‘Sarah love, how did
you
get here? Is anything wrong?’

‘No. Nothing more than we know, that is,’ she replied, swinging off her cape gratefully, for she’d walked quickly from the station on a damp, humid evening and was now thoroughly hot and bothered.

‘Hullo, Sarah,’ said John, getting up to kiss her. ‘What brings you?’ he said, puzzled, his face traced with weary lines.

‘Photographs, Da,’ she said, still out of breath. ‘Ma wrote and told me about the insurance. I think
you and Hugh need to see these pictures,’ she went on, taking a bright yellow envelope from her bag, laying it on the table and dropping gratefully unto one of the kitchen chairs beside it.

‘Have you had any supper?’ Rose asked, looking at her pale face.

‘No, I hadn’t time. I only just made the train. But I’m more thirsty than hungry.’

‘Ach, sit down and let your mother get you a bite,’ said her father briskly, as he picked up his cap. ‘I’ll away and fetch Hugh down here. Sure the poor man’s only sittin’ up there with his papers on his own. We asked him for supper, but he said he was no company for anyone,’ he explained as he paused in the doorway before striding off.

‘Would you like bacon and eggs, Sarah?’

Sarah shook her head.

‘What I’d really like is bread and jam,’ she said honestly. ‘And a whole pot of tea,’ she added, laughing.

‘You’ve brought good news?’ Rose declared, studying her closely, as she followed her into the dairy and stood watching her cutting bread. ‘Damson?’ she asked, as she reached up into the cupboard.

‘You must have known I was coming if there’s damson,’ she replied happily. ‘It’s been an awful day, Ma,’ she confessed, as Rose boiled water on the gas. ‘I asked for the day off without pay, or a
half day, but that old so-and-so Cheesman said no. She could have spared me perfectly well. I nearly walked out.’

‘I couldn’t have blamed you for that. Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I need a little longer.’

She was about to ask what she needed a little longer for when they heard the sound of Hugh’s motor outside.