The Woman from Kerry (27 page)

At five, Rose woke Sarah and gave the children their meal. She sent James over to Robinson’s to see if they’d heard any news. They hadn’t, so she read them a story. Then another. And another.

Shortly before eight o’clock, there was the sound of wheels on the road. Before she’d even spoken, James was out the door and into the lane.

‘It’s Da and Thomas,’ he called back. ‘The Robinson’s have dropped them on the road. They’ll be up in a minute.’

‘Good boy. Stay here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Rose ran down to the foot of the lane and stood watching the two men walk slowly up the hill, while the trap made its way up into the farmyard.

John put his arm round her, but said nothing, his face a mask of exhaustion, pale under a layer of dirt and grime. Thomas looked down at the road and then up at the sky. Both men’s trousers and forearms were streaked with blood.

‘What about Mary Wylie?’

They shook their heads.

‘And Jacob and William and Ned?’

‘Jacob and William were with their mother. Wee Ned’s all right. She threw him out into a bush,’ said John, his voice so tired it seemed an effort for him to speak the words.

‘And Davey?’

‘He was there helpin’ us, poor lad.’

They walked up the lane together and paused outside the forge.

Thomas looked in through the door at the silent anvil and the cold ash of the fire.

‘I took tools in case there was people trapped in wreckage,’ he said in a level tone, ‘but sure I didn’t need them. Those poor people might as well have been sitting in match boxes for all the difference it made. I’ve never seen the like of it,’ he said, his voice failing him.

Pressing his lips together, as if to choke a cry, he raised a hand in salute, turned his back on them, tramped up the path, pushed open the closed door of his house and disappeared inside.

‘Come and have your supper, John,’ she said quietly, as she took his arm. ‘You may not feel like it, but we must keep our strength up. We’ve an awful lot to give thanks for.’

The children waited silently while he went out to the washhouse with a kettle of hot water and the
clean shirt Rose fetched from the bedroom. They let him begin his supper, but when he began to ask his own questions, they could restrain themselves no longer and poured out their story just as they had experienced it. The boys told him about the size of the engine, the dividing of the train and the stones that gave way. Hannah described the long walk home, the boggy bits where she and Sarah had almost got stuck and said how glad Thomas had been to see them at the pump.

‘Are all the people killed now, Da?’ said Sarah, repeating the question she had asked at intervals all through the day.

‘Some were killed, Sarah, but most are all right,’ he said reassuringly.

‘Could we have been killed, Da?’ she went on, fixing him with a piercing gaze from her dark eyes.

‘No,’ he said, slowly. ‘Not with your Ma to look after you and your brothers to be so sensible. If you’d stayed in the train now, you might have got hurt.’

‘But we didn’t. We jumped out. And James caught me,’ she said, her eyes lighting up unexpectedly, as she came and climbed up onto his knee and threw her arms round him.

He held her until she released her limpet grip. Then he kissed her and looked wearily at Rose, who picked her up and took her off to bed.

‘You’d have been proud of them, John,’ she said,
when an hour later the other children had followed her.

She told him the parts of the story the children had left out or could only guess at, then rose to make them a pot of tea. It was when she came back to the table with the teapot, she saw how pale he’d gone.

She came and put an arm round him, felt his shoulders tight as a board. He was holding himself rigid.

‘John dear, you haven’t told me the half of it.’

A bleak smile flickered for a moment as he nodded his head.

‘I daren’t, Rose. It’s not fit for you to hear,’ he said wearily. ‘An’ I might disgrace m’self.’

‘Sure Thomas disgraced himself this morning when he saw us by the pump,’ she said quickly. ‘What’s the shame in that, John? Isn’t there a river of tears flowing tonight in houses all around us? Some that we know of and some that we don’t. Why should we spare ours?’

She poured the tea into two mugs, so that she could sit beside him on the settle and hold his free hand.

‘Come on, love. Tell me from the beginning.’

To her surprise, he set off quite steadily. Told her how he’d just finished work on the second loom when the foreman came up looking for him, the message from the station in his hand. They’d hurried down and out to the cart sheds without a
word, each knowing the other’s wife and children were on the train. John harnessed the horses with another man, some of the spinners brought cans of water and bales of the clean, spoilt cloth they used for wrapping full spindles. They had to go the long way through the town, for the dray was too wide for the lane over Drummond.

‘By the time we got there, they’d started to lay the bodies out under the hedges. Most of the dead was lying down at the bottom of the embankment, so we left the dray with the youngest man an’ went down there. I saw Captain Prescott from The Mall giving brandy to a man. I went over to ask him could I help an’ I heard the man say, “It’s no use, Captain.” An’ he died. So we carried him up an’ put him under the hedge. I’m sure we carried a dozen, men and women, an’ I managed rightly. I kept tellin’ m’self you’d a’ been away up at the front, for the boys wou’d want to be near the engine. That’s what kept me going. An’ then Prescott saw this young lad. “Give me a hand with this one,” says he to me. An’ I put my hands under his shoulders an’ Prescott took his feet, an’ the head came off in my hands and the feet came off in Prescott’s. So we put him under the hedge in three pieces.’

He put down his mug and dropped his head in his hands. She thought he was crying, but he wasn’t. He was just rubbing the skin of his face, for it was stiff with exhaustion. In a moment, he went on.

‘Yer man Prescott offered me a mouthful of brandy, but I said no. I wasn’t used to it, it might make my head light. So he told me to go and get a drink of water, or milk, and come back to him. An’ I did that. I climbed back up the embankment an’ I met Thomas an’ he told me he’d seen ye. An’ after that I was fit for anythin’,’ he said, his voice taking on an unexpected note of strength.

‘And did you and Thomas stay together?’

‘Not to begin with. I thought I ought to go back to Prescott, for I’d been helpin’ him. So I went back down. An’ when I come to him, he was talking to two wee childer. They were sitting on the grass making daisy chains as if there were nothing amiss. “Were you on the train?” says he to them. “Yes,” says one of the wee girls, a wee fair-haired child no older than our Sarah. “An’ so was she,” she says, pointing to another wee girl, her sister by the look of it, just lying there dead with not a mark on her an a wee smile on her face.’

‘Were there many children killed?’ Rose asked, amazed at how cool they both were managing to be.

‘Not that many that I saw, but there was nurses from the hospital lookin’ for them. Women threw childer out of the windows when they found the doors was locked. Like Mary did. Sure they found wee Ned crying in the middle of a briar bush because he couldn’t get out.’

They sat silent, Rose wondering if she had the
courage to ask about Mary, but he read her thoughts.

‘Prescott went to see what the arrangements were for taking the bodies to Armagh, so I went and found Thomas and the Robinsons. They were moving axles to get at the ones underneath. Though they were all dead,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘It was Thomas who found Mary. He was standin’ up on the embankment an’ he sees somethin’. He diden say a word to me, just went down and turned over this woman who’d been thrown out, down the embankment. He said he knew it was her before he turned her over because he’d seen her passin’ on their way to the station and she had on a blue blouse. An’ when he looked up at us, we went down to him an’ carried her over to the hedge. She wasn’t marked at all. Thomas said he thought her neck was broke. He said he minded waving to her as he came out of the forge to start in on the reaper.’

‘And the boys, Jacob and William?’

John shook his head and pressed his lips together.

‘There was an army doctor there,’ he said, slowly. ‘The Barracks sent down their ambulance corps forby military, an’ I heard him say to Prestcott he’d seldom seen such carnage, even on a battlefield.’

Rose knew the blue blouse only too well, made from the length of material Sam had brought from Kerry after her mother died. It was Mary’s colour, perfect with the lovely blue eyes so ready to glint
with humour, or with mischief. It was the thought of Mary’s eyes, wide with surprise and delight, the morning she’d given her that piece of cloth that finally breached all her defences.

She wept, as if she’d never have enough tears for all the pain and loss of the day. John put his arms round her and comforted her, his own tears falling unregarded in the mass of her soft, dark hair.

‘How many were there, laid out like you said?’

He shook his head.

‘We made two journeys to the Tontine rooms with ten each time. And I saw the Army wagons follow us on the way to the market house. Thomas said he and the Robinsons had seen the first carts leave for Armagh Station. It won’t be less than sixty and there’s hundreds injured.’

They sat silent. She wondered if she’d seen all that John had seen whether she would be able to grasp any better the sheer magnitude of what had happened, for the scale of it seemed outside her imagining.

‘I’ll tell you a funny thing, Rose,’ he began.

She stared at him, the idea of anything even remotely amusing coming out of the day quite unthinkable.

‘D’ye mind yer man from Cabragh, that did me out of my job?’

She nodded silently.

‘He was there with the father and son that has his
cart manufactory. I heard him askin’ the Reverend Jackson Smyth if there was a priest about the place, for he thought his neighbour wasn’t goin’ to live an’ he wanted to get him the Last Rites.’

‘And was there a priest?

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘Smyth pointed him out and yer man away and got him. Him that was so hot on Rome. Ach, sure maybe somethin’ good might come of it, Rose, but it’s not for us to see. We may just do our best an’ try to help our friends. An’ give thanks we were all spared.’

Rain came in the night. Waking from a restless sleep, Rose heard it drumming on the windows. Next morning when she knelt to stir the fire, the room was as dim as many a winter’s morn. The downpour eased as John left for work at the usual time and stopped altogether just before the children left for school. She looked out on the sodden garden and the deep puddle at the entrance to the forge. The heavy grey cloud hung overhead like a pall which the days news would do nothing to lift.

The children arrived back half an hour later. There was no school. The master had lost his sister-in-law with her two children and a little niece who’d come to stay especially for the excursion. His young assistant had been at the schoolroom to send the children home. She told them one of their classmates, little Edith Kane from Ballybrannan had lost an arm and was very poorly. They were to be sure to remember her in their prayers.

Rose listened with a sinking heart, knowing that
it would be days before the bad news could come to an end. Between the newspapers and the forge, there’d be no avoiding every scrap of information that each new day would bring.

She set about her immediate task of occupying the children so she’d be free to go down to Wylie’s to see Billy and Peggy and offer to look after little Ned and Peggy’s baby while they made arrangements for the funeral.

‘Sam and I could go and give a hand at Robinson’s,’ said James helpfully.

‘What would you do?’ she replied doubtfully.

‘There’s always work,’ James assured her. ‘They might be eyeing potatoes for the next plantin’, or cleanin’ out the byre or the stables. They do that on bad days,’ he explained.

She agreed gratefully, knowing that Hannah and Sarah would be quite happy to stay indoors and read. It was always the boys who got restless on wet days when there was no school.

She had just finished baking the day’s bread and was tidying herself for going down to Annacramp, when John himself arrived back home. So few spinners had reported for work, the mill had been forced to close and would not re-open until all the funerals were over. The morning newspaper put the death toll at sixty-seven, but the number of seriously injured was high. The hospital was full, it said, and some badly injured people were being cared for at
home. One Armagh doctor had 102 of his patients on the injured list. But what was emerging was that people had not only come from a radius of three or four miles around the city, but also from much further afield, as far away as Moy and Caledon and Clones.

‘When ye get as far as the mill, ye can hear the bells o’ the cathedral tolling. It’s a powerful mournful sound,’ John told her. ‘An’ I diden see a face since I left home that would know the remembrance of a smile.’

‘Will you come with me to Annacramp?’ she asked.

For a moment, he said nothing and looked out across at the forge, as if he’d just come over to speak to her and needed to get back to the job right away.

‘I will if ye ask me,’ he said honestly.

‘I won’t ask you, John,’ she said shaking her head. ‘There’s little enough I can do for Billy and Peggy. I doubt if your going would help all that much and I know it would be hard on you. There’s maybe things I’ll have to ask you to do later on.’

He nodded, his relief obvious.

‘I can get in the water and dig the spuds for the dinner,’ he said quickly. ‘Is there anything else I can do? I thought I might give Thomas a bit of a hand. It’s too wet for the garden.’

She nodded, touched by his willingness to help and his inability to face the grief he would meet at
Annacramp. Like the boys, he needed to occupy himself.

‘That’s a good idea. Thomas’ll not have had much comfort last night. I’d be glad to see you out there with him,’ she said quietly. ‘Sarah’s got her book and Hannah’s going to do some of my sewing for me,’ she said, dropping her voice even lower and nodding across to the settle where the two girls were already absorbed. ‘If I’m not back by twelve, make them a piece, but I should be and I may have Ned and the baby with me.’

‘Whatever ye think best, love. I’ll do what I can.’

He sat down abruptly in a chair at the kitchen table as if the effort of talk had exhausted him. She came and touched his cheek.

‘It’ll pass, love. However long it takes, it’ll pass.’

‘Aye, your mother used to say that, diden she?’ he said looking up at her. ‘Whenever things was bad?’

‘She did. And strange enough your mother use to say it too, though in a different way. ‘All things pass, Rose, both pleasant and unpleasant. Those were her words.’

‘D’ye know, I think I mind that from those old copy books we had at school. Maybe that’s where they both got it from,’ he said, looking pleased with himself.

She saw the hint of a smile touch his lips and was grateful. Maybe it was harder for men. They
couldn’t face the grief of others and they didn’t know what to do with their own.

‘Did ye tell Lady Anne ye were goin’ on the excursion?’ he said unexpectedly.

‘What made you think of that?’ she asked, startled.

‘Ach, mentioning yer mother I somehow thought of her. Did ye tell her?’

‘Yes, I’m sure I did. It’s a while since I wrote, but I’m sure I did.’

‘She’ll be desperate upset if she reads about what happened in the newspaper.’

‘I never thought of that. D’you think it would be in the Dublin papers?’

‘Och yes, and the English ones too. Sure all the newspaper offices has the telegraph.’

‘I could write her a note,’ she said distractedly, already wondering about her sister in Donegal and her brother in Scotland.

‘I think you should, love. Write it when you come back and I’ll go into the Post Office in Armagh. She’ll have it in the mornin’.’

Rose’s visit to Annacramp was not as hard as she’d expected. The farm house was full and little Ned had half a dozen women and girls fussing over him. Billy had gone up to the churchyard to show the gravediggers where the unmarked family grave was to be opened. Peggy was dry-eyed and steady.

‘I knew yesterday that Mary was gone,’ she said quietly, when they walked out into the damp lane behind the house to have a moment alone together. ‘You were very honest, Rose, an’ I’m grateful. If I hadn’t known to expect the worst, I couldn’t have coped as well when Billy came back.’

She turned to face her.

‘He and the Gibson’s had just found one of the Gibson girls when Thomas came up to him. He said last night he thought Thomas was going to collapse, he was that distraught, when he had to tell him he’d found Mary. That was before one of the nurses found wee Ned.’

‘Was he really in a briar bush?’

‘He was. Right in the middle. And not a scratch on his face, though his arms and legs are covered,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He’s not four yet, Rose, do you think he’ll remember?’

‘He might remember indeed, but if he has all the comfort he’s having now, it may take away the hurt,’ she said, thinking of Sarah and the length of her memory. ‘But it’s harder to do that for Billy,’ she said, looking at her friend with concern.

‘He surprised me last night, Rose. I thought he would be absolutely helpless, if he lost Mary, but when he came back with wee Ned and told me about her and the boys, he said “We’re both in the same boat now, Peggy. We’ll have to do what we can for these two wee’uns, Kevin’s son and Mary’s son.”
Oh, he cried. Sure we both did. We cried till our eyes were sore, but then he said to me. “Go to your bed, Peggy. We’ll need our strength for the morra.” An’ he’s away up to the churchyard, quite composed. Three o’clock tomorrow, Rose.’

She nodded, not trusting herself to say the simple words that she and John would be there. Billy might be acting bravely for his part, but she was not sure how she herself would feel seeing the one large and two small coffins going into a wide grave and one of them her dearest friend.

‘Is Davey all right?’ she asked suddenly, as she remembered his face at the carriage window when he came past locking the doors.

‘Yes, thank God. He was in the Guard’s van of the 10.35, but the driver managed to get the train stopped. Oh, it didn’t prevent the accident, but there were sixteen people stepped out safely and they were the first to help. Davey says there were a couple of very fashionable ladies with big hats and feathers in one of the coaches. They just took off their finery and left it in a pile and went up the track to help. There was a doctor and a minister too, he says. He came down this mornin’ before he went to work. He’s very bright, full of talk,’ she said, shaking her head dubiously. ‘But he’s not injured in any physical way.’

‘Did he tell you he was the one locked the doors?’ Rose asked quietly.

‘No, he never mentioned that. Was
all
the doors locked?’

‘Most of them,’ she said, nodding.

‘We heard last night the Constabulary had arrested the men from the G. N. R, the driver and the supervisor and two others. They wouldn’t come after Davey, would they?’ she asked, suddenly alarmed.

Rose shook her head firmly.

‘No, Peggy. Davey was only acting on orders. It wasn’t his fault. But it may suddenly come to him that it was. That’s why I’m telling you.’

‘Thank you, Rose. You’ve been such a good friend to me,’ she said, tears springing to her eyes. ‘An’ I used to think it was just because I was Mary’s sister.’

‘Not a bit of it, Peggy. Not a bit of it,’ she said, slipping her arm round her waist as they turned back to the house, gathering themselves for whatever awaited them.

‘Sit down an’ rest yerself,’ said John, as he followed her back into the house. ‘You’re lookin’ desperit pale. Sit there and Hannah an’ me’ll make us a bite,’ he said, putting the kettle down.

Hannah wrapped up her sewing and began fetching cups and plates from the dresser.

‘Is Ned all right?’ Sarah asked sharply.

‘Yes, he’s fine, Sarah. He’s got some scratches.’

‘Why did Auntie Mary throw him into a bush?’

‘Because she couldn’t jump out like we did. Their doors were locked.’

‘Why were they locked?’

‘In case children might fall out?’

‘Did Auntie Mary know they were going to crash?’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘Why didn’t she throw Jacob and William out as well?

‘They were too big to throw through the window?’

‘Why …’

‘Sarah, your Ma is tired out. That’s enough of questions,’ said John firmly, as he cut slices of wheaten bread and put them on a plate. ‘Now come to the table and have some bread and jam. Will I butter it for you?’

‘I can butter my own bread,’ she said abruptly.

‘Thank you,’ prompted Rose automatically.

The ‘thank you’ was dutifull but sulky.

‘I think maybe we’ll all have a little rest after our lunch,’ she added, looking from Hannah to Sarah.

‘I don’t need a rest,’ said Sarah, crossly.

‘But I do, Sarah. I’d like you both to keep me company.’

To her surprise she fell asleep as soon as she lay down on the bed, though she’d only intended a pretence
until Sarah was asleep. It was always a bad sign when she kept asking questions and was irritable. She was still over-tired after yesterday’s walk, never mind all that she’d seen and heard. Unlike Hannah who was happy to sit and sew and became totally absorbed in what she was doing, Sarah’s active mind never seemed to stop. She was always telling stories, asking questions, thinking things out and puzzling her head to make sense of whatever came within her experience.

Rose slipped quietly off the bed. She was fast asleep, clutching Ganny, Hannah asleep beside her. She moved quietly out into the kitchen. John had cleared up the remains of their meal. Everything was tidy, except for a small scatter of crumbs on the floor. She wondered why it was that men never seemed to notice such things.

She went to the window and saw that it had been raining again. The hollow at the door of the forge, swept dry when she came back from Annacramp, had a small, new puddle. John and Thomas were bending over a reaper, testing the raising and lowering mechanism. Suddenly lonely, she walked out to speak to them.

‘Ach Rose, how are ye?’ said Thomas kindly. ‘I hear you were down at Annacramp. I must go down m’self the night,’ he said, looking no easier at the prospect than John looked earlier in the day.

She told him what she could to reassure him and
was pleased when she saw relief dawn as she quoted Billy’s words to Peggy.

‘Sure maybe the pair o’ them’ll make a family of it in time,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen it afore. Sure haven’t they both been hurt an’ will understan’ one another.’

She nodded, surprised that Thomas had spoken with such insight, though the same thought had come to her when she walked with Peggy in the lane.

‘Well, what news this morning?’ she said, looking from one to another. ‘I didn’t ask John in front of the girls,’ she said, glancing up at Thomas, who was leaning against the seat of the reaper.

‘All bad, so far,’ said Thomas. ‘Five more has died overnight. An’ there’s two wee lassies among the dead you’ll know. Minnie and Elizabeth Rountree. They’ll be burying them tomorrow as well. An’ wee Mina Reilly. Do you know her? Works in the stationers in Scotch Street.’

‘Yes, I buy writing paper there,’ she replied, nodding sadly. ‘Minnie and Elizabeth are apprentices at the dressmakers in Thomas Street. I used to meet them walking home if I went in on their half day. We always talked fashion and dresses though we all had to make our own,’ she said shaking her head.

They stood silent for a moment, John crouched down, plucking a stray piece of grass from between the teeth of the newly reset reaper, Thomas staring at the lever mechanism. A soft footstep behind
them made them all turn round sharply. George Robinson, in large Wellington boots came striding towards them, carrying a crowbar. He tipped his cap to Rose and nodded to both men.

‘Jimmy forgot this one this mornin’ when he brought the rest back, Thomas,’ he said, leaning the heavy bar against the reaper. D’ye’s know John Hughes?’ he went on without a pause.

‘Aye, of course we do. Sure he delivers for Turners. Don’t tell me he was on the train?’ said Thomas, looking at George in disbelief.