Shadow on the Land (14 page)

It seemed the City fathers had given much thought to the redevelopment of the older parts of the city and particularly to the areas which had suffered during the bombing raids. As Alex listened to the enthusiasm of the younger man, he couldn’t help but consider the contrast with the plans for Belfast. Or more precisely, the complete lack of them.

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like a tour of the city?’ Roy asked, as they parted on the steps of the hotel. ‘Or a short drive out into the countryside?’

Alex did wonder how the Chairman of Bollin Valley had managed to supply petrol for the car Roy had used. One of the perks of running your own transport company, perhaps. He thought then what a pity it was Cathy and Brian were no longer living just south of Alderley Edge. It would have been such a pleasant end to a successful trip to spend a few hours with his daughter before he was driven to the boat.

‘No, thank you,’ he said warmly. ‘That’s very kind, but I have some work to do and I may do just a little shopping for my wife. I don’t often have such a good opportunity.’

‘Well, then, if you are quite sure, I’ll come back at six and drive you to Liverpool. Enjoy your afternoon.’

Alex turned back into the hotel and went up to reception.

‘I wonder if you could help me,’ he began, remembering to smile.

‘Well, I’ll certainly try,’ said the smartly-dressed older woman behind the desk, her smile in return totally devoid of warmth.

‘I’ve been wondering if there is somewhere nearby called Cheatam … or something like that,’ he said tentatively.

‘Well, yes, of course. There’s Cheetham Hill and Chetham’s School. Do you know the city at all?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, wondering what fragment of memory might float back next.

‘I have a map here,’ she offered, producing one from below the desk. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather out of date and not the one we used to provide for guests, but it
does
show you how to get there,’ she continued, turning it round towards him and pencilling a path from the door of the hotel to a large building at the end of a street called Long Millgate.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ he said promptly, making up his mind that perhaps shopping could wait. ‘That’s just what I want.’

The streets were crowded with men and women from all three services, their smart uniforms in marked contrast with the shabbiness of the other pedestrians. When the sun came out again, he took off his jacket, carried it over his shoulder and felt less uncomfortable and less conspicuous than before.

The bright light showed up the peeling
paintwork and soot-stained facades of the buildings, but here at least there was no bomb damage and he studied the tall, red-brick buildings carefully, remembering the comments he’d heard about the similarities between Manchester and Belfast. He noted the Corn Exchange and smiled as he turned into Long Millgate itself. One didn’t have to guess what activity had gone on beyond the high walls.

To his great delight, he found the cathedral on his left appeared to be completely undamaged. In the small area of green in front of it a number of old men and old women were sitting on seats enjoying the sunshine. They looked as if they had always been there and that neither bombs, nor inclement weather would prevent them from sitting outdoors at all seasons.

He decided to walk all the way round the cathedral and thus found himself standing on Hanging Bridge.

‘Why’s it called Hanging Bridge?’

‘Because that’s where bad people were hanged.’

This time he was not startled. He just knew that once, long ago, he’d asked the same question and received the same answer, but he didn’t know who had answered him.

He continued his walk and came back round to the point in Fennel Street from which he’d set out. There, across the road was Chetham’s School of Music. If this was by any chance the school Jane had remembered, then somewhere nearby there
would be a row of houses, probably ordinary little mill houses. Had they lived in anything grander, the two of them might have fared better than being sent to the Workhouse. Always assuming that it was the Workhouse they’d been sent to.

He consulted his map and decided to walk towards Cheetham Hill Road. Chetham and Cheetham. Was it the same word differently spelt, or two different words? He smiled to himself and thought that he should have Emily here. While he felt frustrated that he appeared to be doing a crossword puzzle without clues, she would actually enjoy the challenge. Besides, she had far more imagination than he had.

He found several small rows of houses, but all of them had suffered in the bombing. Here and there, a house was boarded up because the roof had fallen in and the whole structure was dangerous. In some places, a house was missing, like a tooth extracted from an otherwise perfectly functional set. In one place, two rows of houses set at an angle to each other had lost their join. Where one street should have changed its name to another, there was nothing but a heap of rubble, already crossed by well-tramped paths and colonised by grass and weeds.

He stood staring at the place, wondering how such prolific growth could possibly spring from such apparent barrenness, so engrossed that he did not notice the slow and painful approach of an elderly woman with a stick.

‘Did you have family here?’ she asked, without any preamble as she turned aside to stare at the rubble in front of him.

‘I might have done, but it was a long time ago. Maybe fifty years or more,’ he replied.

She laughed shortly.

‘I was thinkin’ maybe you knew the Cunninghams or the O’Sheas or the Grimleys,’ she said sharply.

She waved her stick to one side of the heap of rubble where a small bush poked out between the edge of the rubble and the wall of the surviving house beside it.

‘That was my mine there. Next that buddleia.’

Her tone softened a little, as she walked over to a piece of remaining wall and slowly lowered herself down, her legs splayed awkwardly, her stick clutched in both hands before she continued. ‘I was visitin’ m’ daughter five doors up, or I’d not be talkin’ to you now. Where’re ye from?’

Alex laughed.

‘Depends what you mean,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I could say, Banbridge, County Down. Or I could say Canada. But I might even be from here.
Somewhere
around here,’ he ended, waving a hand around.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well, something lovely happened a few weeks back,’ he began, deciding she must be tired and needed an excuse to go on sitting down. ‘We discovered that I have a sister in Canada. We
were sent out as orphans and separated. I didn’t remember her, but she remembered me and by pure chance her son came to our part of the world with an American regiment of engineers and we found out who he was. Lovely young man. They called him Hank the Tank.’

To his amazement, her wrinkled face creased with laughter.

‘I was in America once,’ she admitted, still grinning. ‘Not for long, for I didn’t like it an’ came home. And I knew a man was called Hank the Tank, but he was a drinker. You couldn’t fill him. An’ he never got drunk. Was your fella like that?’ she asked, with a sideways look at him.

‘No, he was just a good engineer, great with tanks.’

‘Aye, I thought that was more like it,’ she nodded. ‘Could you drink a cup o’ tea?’

For a moment, Alex was so taken back by the abrupt tone, more of a challenge than an invitation, that he didn’t reply.

‘It’ll only be tea, most likely, but my Jeannie is only five doors up an’ she’s expecting me. Sure there’s always another cup in the pot.’

‘Thank you, that’s most kind of you. Can I give you a hand up?’

Without waiting for an answer, he bent down and lifted her gently to her feet.

The house was small, even smaller than some of the old mill cottages he’d known round Ballievey, Tullyconnaught and Ballydown and seen demolished back in the late twenties. Jeannie, an untidy-looking woman with straggly hair, made him welcome without the slightest introduction having been made. She simply took another mug from the cupboard, said she was sorry there was no sugar, and offered him milk.

‘So, Missus Campbell, where did you find this young man?’ she said, laughing, as her mother sat herself down and hooked her stick over the back of her chair.

‘He was standin’ lookin’ at the rubble as if he’d lost all belongin’ to him. But he hasn’t. He’s found a sister in Canada an’ he thinks he might even have been reared roun’ here. Isn’t that right?’

‘Right indeed,’ he agreed as he sipped his tea and glanced surreptitiously round the dim, stuffy room.

He noted the small coal-burning stove, alight even today which must mean it was the only source of heat for cooking. The armchairs had worn woollen rugs thrown over the original upholstery, there was broken linoleum on the floor and flaking brown paint on the wooden staircase to the upper floor.

‘I seem to have no memory worth talking about, but my sister mentioned Manchester and living near a school. And then I had a funny dream about
‘cheating ’em.’ It kept going on in my head all day when I was working, so I finally thought, I’d ask someone.’

‘An’ did ye not know about Chethams or Cheetham Hill?’ demanded Jeannie.

‘No, any time I’ve been in Manchester it’s been to visit mills. That’s my job,’ he added easily. ‘I’ve never been in this part of the city before.’

‘So what’s your name then?’ asked Mrs Campbell, leaning towards him.

‘Hamilton,’ he said. ‘Alex Hamilton.’

Mother and daughter looked at each other and shook their heads.

‘No, there’s been no Hamiltons here that we know off and we’ve been here nearly sixty year now. An’ Ma knew everyone, didn’t you Ma?’

‘Aye, when you’re a midwife, you know people right from the start,’ she said with her usual short laugh. ‘An’ I’ll tell ye somethin’ else. If I’d knowed your father or mother, I could see them in your face.’

Alex nodded and tried to think of something to say. He was quite shocked by his unreasonable sense of disappointment.

‘Does your sister look like you, Alex?’ asked the younger woman, as she refilled the teapot from the kettle on the stove.

Alex smiled.

‘No, she’s better looking,’ he said, with a brave attempt at a joke. ‘She’s blonde with blue eyes and
looks just like my own youngest daughter.’

‘An’ what did you say her name was?’ demanded the older woman sharply.

‘My sister? She’s called Jane.’

‘An’ what age would she be, younger than you?’

‘A year or two. We don’t really know. Neither of us ever had birth certificates. Or if we had, they didn’t go with us.’

‘He means to Canada,’ said Mrs Campbell as Jeannie refilled her cup. ‘The pair of them went to Canada, as
orphans
.’

‘God forgive them,’ said Jeannie, sitting down abruptly, her face pale.

‘Alex Hamilton, I don’t know who your father was,’ began the older woman, ‘but your mother was the sweetest woman I ever knew. She lived at the far end of this terrace and her name was Mary Jane. She musta been a widow, because she had a wee boy only just walkin’ when she came here newly-married to Charley Williams. An’ a year or so later, she had Jane. And I know it was Jane because I was with Mary Jane the night she was born and that child was lovely even then. Can you remember her at all, Jeannie, for you’d a been near ten when Mary Jane took ill?’

‘Aye, I remember her,’ Jeannie said firmly. ‘Sure, she came running down to our house to tell us her mother wasn’t well and she and Lekky didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t say your name when she
was small, so you never got anything but Lekky,’ she added, turning towards him.

‘They took your mother to hospital and we were told the two of you would be looked after at the orphanage until she was well again. But she was ill for a couple o’ months and when she came back home, the pair o’ you were gone.’

They both looked at him, their faces blank, their eyes wide. He saw now the resemblance between mother and daughter. It was there in the face, particularly in the eyes. The same wide grey eyes.

‘And then …’

He could not bring himself to ask, but he knew that the end of this tale was a sad one. He waited as patiently as he could till the older woman took up the story.

‘Yer mother was out of her mind with worry. She couldn’t find out at first what had happened, then when she did find out, they said there was nothin’ she could do about it. It seemed that no one could help her though she wrote a letter to someone in Parliament and went to see a whole lot of people.

‘She was a clever girl, she’d been a teacher, but no matter what she did, they said they didn’t know where the children had been placed or that they didn’t know where they now were. There was letters back and forth to Canada and when Charley came home he was for goin’ out there to look for them. He was a merchant seaman and away on
the Australia run, so he didn’t know what he was comin’ home to. He gave up the sea to stay with her, for he was as bad as she was about the pair of them. He was on the dole a long time before he got a job and things were very hard for them. Then she took ill again. An’ she died.

‘Charley sold up their few bits and pieces and went away. He talked about going to Australia, but the poor man didn’t know what end of him was up. He might have gone there and he might not. He went away and he never came back.’

‘And we never knew till today what happened to Jane and Lekky,’ Jeannie added, as her mother stopped speaking and leant back wearily in her chair.

Emily was up even earlier than usual on Friday morning. After a calm crossing from Liverpool, the ship sometimes docked as early as six o’clock and Alex would ring her as soon as he arrived back at Millbrook. He had offered to drive home for breakfast, but she knew there would be a pile up of work waiting for him and after three days away goodness knows what emergency into the bargain. When he’d phoned briefly from Manchester after lunch on Thursday, she’d told him she’d rather he had breakfast on the boat and arrived home at a respectable hour on Friday evening, so his dinner wouldn’t be spoilt.

There had been rain in the night, but as Emily filled the kettle and began to make her solitary breakfast, she saw the clouds roll back and patches of blue appear. By the time she’d eaten her toast, sunlight was falling on the kitchen floor and the drips hanging from the crossbar of the window were
making tiny rainbows before they shimmered and fell.

She was feeling remarkably happy. Quite why she was so happy after a busy week with more than its quota of problems and no Alex to share them with, she didn’t know, but as she moved around the kitchen tidying up and wiping crumbs from the breakfast table, she felt something was different, some anxiety had moved away, though she could put no name to it.

In the past, when Alex had to go to Manchester she’d worried about U-boats or bombing raids, but this time she was less anxious. Fairly, there was much less chance of a raid and everyone knew that the U-boats no longer risked operating in the Irish Sea, but she wondered if there was some change in herself that had made this absence easier to bear than she had expected.

Of course, it was possible that her good spirits were nothing more than the fact it was a lovely morning and Alex was coming home. He’d probably arrived in Belfast by now and would already be out of the city and driving the familiar roads in the freshness of a lovely May morning.

She was sure he’d be pleased that the much talked of change of government had finally come about while he was away. Basil Brooke, who’d been so successful with the farmers and then in reinvigorating war production, a practical man with
a gift for getting on with people, was now the new Prime Minister. If he were to address the problems of keeping up the morale of a workforce stretched to the limits, it would certainly improve life for Alex and his fellow directors.

Although Emily had read everything she could lay hands on about the new government and its ministers, she didn’t think anything so public as government policy could have made her feel so sure things were really going to be better. No, it had to be much more personal than that.

She listened to the seven o’clock news as she washed her breakfast things and tidied the china cupboard while she had the time. There was no doubt that, despite the predictable grim news of battles fought and casualties sustained, there was now a rising tide of hope that the worst of the war might be over. The huge bombing attacks on German cities, including Berlin, and the landings in Italy had cost many allied lives, but each days brought news of German armies in retreat, U-boats being sunk and industrial areas devastated. Now everyone was talking about the Second Front, the battle to restore freedom to Europe and to rid Germany of the Nazis.

When the phone rang she dropped her damp dishcloth and ran into the hall.

‘Alex?’

‘Who were you expecting?’

She laughed, knowing from the tone of his voice that all was well.

‘Did you have a good crossing?’

‘Must have done. Don’t remember a thing about it.’

‘And you got what you wanted?’

‘Oh yes, I got what I wanted,’ he said quickly. ‘But there’s something I’d like tonight, if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked warily, as she picked up the tense edge in his voice.

‘A bowl of champ.’

‘Oh Alex,’ she said laughing again, ‘what
did
they give you in the restaurant?’ she demanded, remembering his hotel had been famous for its French cuisine before the war.

‘Carre d’angneau, beurre noisettes.’

‘Alex,’ she expostulated. ‘What is that when it’s at home?’

‘Stringy lamb chops with the bones cut out, tied in a circle, in thin gravy. And new potatoes.’

‘And were they?’ she asked dubiously, thinking of the progress of her own crop.

‘Well as they were all circular, exactly the same size and tasted of nothing very much, I rather doubt it.’

‘But apart from being half-starved, you’re all right?’

‘I’m fine. I’m so glad to be home.’

The day seemed long to Emily, though she enjoyed the sunshine and having such an uninterrupted stretch of time to herself. There was always a great deal to do in the garden in May and there were jobs in the house that had been neglected so she could get on with the sowing and planting out. She made a list of the most urgent and tried not to exhaust herself.

‘If they’ve waited this long they can wait a bit longer,’ she said to herself, late in the afternoon, as she looked at what was left on her list, took off her apron and sat down with her book.

By the time she heard the car in the drive, however, she had reached the stage of walking round the house looking for something to do, a restless agitation threatening to take away the sense of ease and pleasure she’d had in the day.

‘Hello, love,’ she said, as he came through the back door clutching a small suitcase, his overcoat draped over his arm.

He dropped them both on the kitchen chair and hugged her.

‘I was planning to bring you a present,’ he began sheepishly, ‘but I didn’t get to the shops after all.’

‘Don’t worry about that, it’s just lovely to have you home.’

‘I have actually brought you a present, but its not the kind you put in a bag. I’ve found my mother.’

‘Alex!’

Emily clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes
wide, a sudden reassuring sense that this was it, this was the source of the happiness and the agitation that had come upon her at intervals through the day.

‘She died many years ago,’ he said steadily, ‘but now I know who she was and something about her and I know what happened, I feel so different. It wasn’t her fault.’

To her absolute amazement, he burst into tears and wept.

As she put her arms round him, she tried to remember the last time she’d seen him cry apart from that night when they had both wept for Ritchie. It was such a rare event, it came to her almost immediately. It was the night they’d had the news that John Hamilton had died. A warm August evening, the evening of the very day on which Alex had gone up to Rathdrum to tell him that little Johnny had arrived at last and mother and baby were doing well.

Later that evening, the sky cleared and the temperature dropped like a stone. Alex insisted there was even a hint of frost in the air as he lit the sitting-room fire. As it crackled and sprang to life, casting reflections on well-polished furniture, she sat, neither knitting or sewing, simply listening as he told his story.

For a man who was normally so sparing with words, she was surprised at how detailed an account
he gave her. How carefully he must have observed Mrs Campbell and her daughter and what a clear picture he’d been able to put together of their small corner of the city as it had been some fifty years ago.

‘And Mrs Campbell just asked you in for a cup of tea?’ she asked, when he paused to drink his coffee.

Alex smiled and shook his head.

‘I didn’t spot the accent at first,’ he confessed, ‘but when she told her daughter that
I was standin’ there as if all belongin’ to me were dead
I realised she was an Ulsterwoman and you know very well that your countrywomen can be very direct along with their being very kind.’

‘Yes, that’s true. If I saw a stranger looking a bit

lost I’d speak,’ she replied, nodding thoughtfully.

‘She said her family were from Portadown, but she met Campbell at a dance in Belfast. He was on the cargo boats so he had a girl on both sides. So she said,’ he added, raising his eyebrows. ‘When they married, he got a job on the railway down at Victoria Station and he walked back and forth to work for over thirty years. But he had a weak heart and died in his sixties.’

It was clear to Emily that Mrs Campbell had taken a liking to Alex and that she’d appreciated the way he listened to her story rather than question her about his own. She waited now as patiently as she could while he told her about Maggie Campbell’s
life as a midwife and her daughter Jeannie’s unhappy marriage to a man who drank and abused her before finally going off with another woman.

‘She only realised who I was when I described my sister Jane,’ he began again, after a pause. ‘She was the midwife who delivered her and she lived nearby, but she said at first she didn’t remember me at all. Then she said that when our mother became ill, Jane ran down to her and said that she and Lekky didn’t know what to do. Jane called me Lekky, because she couldn’t say Alex. And once the name Lekky was mentioned she began to remember a whole lot of other things.

‘She’d said she thought my mother was a widow, newly remarried when she came to the street, because she had a wee boy barely walking. My mother was Mary Jane Williams, she’d been a teacher and she taught us both to write before we were old enough to go to school. My step-father, Charley, was a merchant seaman, so he was away for long periods of time which is probably why neither Jane nor I remember him. But, then suddenly, when she was talking about Charley, she said that he’d been Lofty’s best friend.’

‘Lofty? So who was Lofty?’

‘Lofty was my father,’ he said simply. ‘He died in an accident at sea and his best mate Charley came to tell my mother. What Mrs Campbell actually said was,
In those days a woman was in a bad way if
she was a widow. Charley might well have fallen for her, but even if he hadn’t and was a good man, he might have married her, so she’d get the separation allowance.

‘Apparently,’ Alex went on, ‘the merchant service sends a monthly allowance direct to the wives,’ he added, ‘so she’d have had something to live on. I doubt if there was even such a thing as a widow’s pension in those days.’

By the time Alex had told her how Mary and Charley had searched for their lost children the fire was burning low and the room had grown dark. Emily sat looking thoughtfully into the last embers of the fire while he stood up and turned on the smallest of the table lamps in the large room.

‘So you’ve found your father too,’ she said, now able to see his face again in the pale glow.

‘Well, you could say that,’ he agreed, ‘At least I know I had one, if you see what I mean.’

‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ she replied. ‘You were no unwanted child from a passing fancy. You had a mother who loved you and a step-father who treated you as his own. You even know a little now about your own father.’

‘That he was tall and a sailor. That’s about the height of it.’

‘Height indeed,’ she said, laughing. ‘But he must have given you your broad shoulders. Your mother didn’t, did she?’

‘I never thought of that,’ he said, his face lighting up with the smile that always delighted her. ‘You’re a very clever girl,’ he said, putting his arms round her.

Emily took one look at her youngest daughter as she stepped into the kitchen, reached out her hand for her overnight bag and pulled a chair from under the kitchen table.

‘Oh Jane dear, you look exhausted. Did you have to walk from the station?’

‘No, I’m fine, Ma. Been on nights and need to sleep a bit, but I got a lift with the bread man. He’d have brought me up the hill, but he’s short of petrol and hills eat it up, so he says,’ she reported, with a big smile, as she collapsed gratefully onto the chair and leant her elbows on the table.

‘What’s happened to his horse?’

‘Cast a shoe and needs to go to the forge tonight, so he had to use the van and the emergency can of petrol,’ she explained, yawning. ‘Any chance of a piece of toast, Ma?’ she went on, as she watched her mother fill the kettle.

‘Yes, of course. Are you just hungry or did you skip breakfast?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Both,’ Jane replied laughing. ‘I got a lift to the Great Northern, but it meant going straight from the ward. Gave me an extra two hours at home though.’

‘You
could
have scrambled eggs with a small piece of bacon on top,’ Emily offered, with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Oh Ma, and real eggs too I’ll bet.’

‘Of course, nothing but the best in this restaurant,’ Emily replied. ‘Even your father came home from a top hotel and asked for champ.’

‘He sounded so happy when I phoned,’ Jane said, as she watched Emily move around the kitchen preparing to make breakfast for her. ‘And excited,’ she went on, ‘as if something wonderful had happened.’

‘I think it has,’ agreed Emily. ‘He’s different and it’s lovely. I’ve never known him in such good spirits.’

‘What about you, Ma?’

‘Better than I’ve been for a long time,’ she said honestly. ‘I hadn’t realised just how much I worried about everything, especially my family. I still do it, probably always will, but it’s seemed easier since the Manchester trip. I know there’s no point in worrying about things, but do you have anything in
your
textbooks that tells you how to stop someone worrying?’

‘No. There’s plenty of stuff about the importance of reassurance,’ she said, yawning again, ‘That works quite well in the short term, but tell someone with a brand new leg, just out of the sterile wrapping, that it’s all going to be fine, just fine, and you’re simply
being silly. Sometimes it’s far better to make a joke and that reminds them they’re still here and not in bits somewhere … I’m sorry, I can’t stop yawning. I’m not
that
tired.’

‘Maybe it’s the fresh air. When did you last see any?’

‘Last week. I had a walk on The Mall in Armagh with my fiancé.’

Emily laughed as she set Jane’s scrambled eggs in front of her, dropped two extra slices of bread in the toaster and poured tea for them both.