Shadow on the Land (2 page)

‘There’s a great warren just across the road from that big house,’ he went on. ‘The Nut Bank, it used to be called when I was a wee boy. They’ve a pontoon bridge across the river and it’s a rifle range now. Bad luck on the rabbits,’ he added sharply.

Alex laughed.

‘Bad luck on us all, Sam. One man’s wicked ambition that leaves poor people frightened out of their wits and half-starved and even kills the rabbits.’

‘Aye, given how bad things are we’ve a lot to be grateful for and only the one loss so far in our family. I can’t remember if I wrote to you about it,’ he said cautiously. ‘Sure it’s well over a year since I got the chance to come over,’ he said, breaking off, as he saw the anxious concern creep over Alex’s face.

Alex shook his head slowly and waited.

‘Ach dear. Well it was the Belfast Blitz. The big one on Easter Tuesday. A desperit business altogether. Young Sam’s wife, wee Ellie, had her cousin Tommy Magowan killed. It seems he was fire-watching in place of a friend of his when his parents thought he was away in Bangor with his girlfriend. It was only when he didn’t come home they began to worry. His father found him in St
George’s Market the next morning, laid out with all the rest of the unidentified casualties. Not a mark on him. They said it was blast that killed him.’

Alex dropped his eyes from Sam’s candid gaze, the images of that night now springing up as brightly as the flaming, onion-shaped incendiaries that had rained down on the city.

‘Do you remember, Sam, when the last war came and the two of us sat in your workshop trying to decide what we’d do if there was conscription?’ Alex asked, as the silence lengthened between them.

‘Aye. I think we decided we could maybe get into an Ambulance Corps together, neither of us having any wish to kill our fellow men.’

Alex nodded slowly and stared into the red embers of the wood fire.

‘Sam, I was in Belfast that night and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it,’ he confessed quietly.

‘Man dear, how did that come about?’ Sam asked, his eyes dilating with the shock of Alex’s words. ‘Were you there when it started, or what happened at all?’

For weeks after that night, Alex had thought of writing to tell Sam of his night in the burning city, but he’d not been able to face it. They’d been friends for so long and had always told each other the truth, even when it was not to their credit, but the thought of words on the page had been too much for him. So he’d said how busy he was and let Emily write the
short notes they’d always used to keep in touch, two or three times a year and a longer one at Christmas. But now he’d have to make up for his evasion.

‘Emily and I had just gone to bed when I heard a noise,’ he began, easily enough. ‘Couldn’t place it at all. A vibration. Not thunder, but getting louder. I got up and went outside. It was full moonlight but I couldn’t see anything to the south with the way our trees have grown up. What I
could
feel was the air moving. And there was a smell. I can’t describe that smell, but suddenly I knew it was bombers and there must be hundreds of them to make the air move like that. So I went in and phoned the mill managers. By the time I got down to Ballievy, Harry Creswell who lives on a hill beyond Seapatrick had seen the incendiaries falling. He said they were coming down so fast it was like one of those pictures of Hell you’d see in these evangelical tracts people put through doors.’

Alex paused for breath and finished his mug of tea.

‘We’re well organised for fire in the mills. We have to be, as you know,’ he began again, his voice still steady, ‘but the turn out that night was a credit, though I say it myself. The four engines, fully-manned were on their way in no time.’

He stopped, shook his head and dropped his face in his hands. When he looked up again his eyes were full of tears.

‘Sam, you might as well have taken a child’s bucket and spade as our four engines. The place was an inferno, the fires beyond anything any of us had ever seen, and when we did get into the city there was no water pressure. They’d bombed the reservoir and the water mains were gone. Even where there was a fire point still standing our hoses didn’t fit.’

‘Ach man dear, I’d no idea you were in Belfast,’ Sam said, his face suddenly looking old and lined as he recalled that night himself. ‘Sure we heard what was happening from the guard on the last train up. He told the Stationmaster at Richhill and he walked over to the farm and told us. Apparently the train was leaving Belfast just as it started. Our Jack went up to Cannon Hill to tell the Home Guard patrol up there, but he didn’t have to tell them for you could see it from up there, the whole city on fire, the sky for miles around lit up with the flames. He said when he came back about all we could do was pray for the poor souls.’

Sam looked down at his hands. They were broad, thick-fingered hands, not the kind you would think best-suited to make the fine adjustments that were such a part of his everyday work.

‘So what did you do when you couldn’t fight the fires?’

‘We got out the spades and the tackle and started digging people out of wrecked houses. And we brought a few out alive from under the stairs. But
most were dead. Some of those poor wee houses wouldn’t give shelter to a mouse. Those people in the government up at Stormont have a lot to answer for,’ he went on bitterly. ‘I’d heard it said they spent more time in Cabinet discussing how to protect that statue of Carson they’re so proud off than protecting the people of Belfast. I saw for myself that night. It was absolutely true.’

‘Aye, I’m afeerd yer right about the Government. I’ve seen m’brother James a few times recently. He’s still in Economic Development, but he says there’s no go in them at all, bar one or two labour or socialists like Tommy Henderson and Harry Midgley. Sure, they only meet now and again for a couple of hours when there’s so much they could be doin’ to help people. I think James would resign, but then he knows that wou’d only make it worse. At least in his Department he can do somethin’… Maybe, Alex, all we can ever do is
somethin
’. Who knows what value any action of any one of us, however small, might be. It could be far more important than we could ever imagine. We must live in hope, man, and with God’s help we’ll come through,’ he said strongly.

Alex had never found any reason to expect God to help him or anyone else, even if He did exist, but then he had always recognised that Sam’s God was a different matter. Now in his late fifties, Sam had become a Quaker many years earlier. He’d practised his religion quietly and firmly and now had a
steadiness and assuredness about him that Alex found quite enviable.

‘You’re right, Sam. We can only do our best. I only hope that best will be good enough,’ he said honestly, looking up at his friend as he watched him get to his feet.

The bright April evening was paling towards dusk and shadows were lengthening in the fire-lit sitting-room. Although the journey was only some fifteen miles, Alex knew well the possibility of a delay if a convoy was moving somewhere between Banbridge and Richhill.

They walked down the avenue together, the fresh foliage above their heads now fluttering in a small, evening breeze, long fingers of light spilling across their path as the sun dropped to the horizon.

‘I mind Sarah and Hugh planting these two trees here after a big storm,’ Sam said suddenly, looking up into the interlacing branches as they tramped along together. ‘That must have been a couple of years before Hugh died and you arrived back from Canada. And I mind too, you and young Hugh down there on the hill planting out wee oaks he grew from acorns,’ he added, as they came through the gates and gazed down the hill at the mature trees which stood in the hedgerow opposite the single house on the right-hand side of the road, the well-loved home they had both known, Sam as a child, Alex as a young married man.

‘
Great oaks from little acorns grow
. Isn’t that one of the saying in these parts?’ Alex asked.

‘Aye, and your wee friend Hugh Sinton is doing great work down on Lough Erne I’m told. James had to go to Enniskillen on business and went to see him. He’s moved there to test out some new plane he’d been working on at Shorts in Belfast. Sarah could only drop me hints in her last letter, but James told me it’s to do with spotter planes.
Give the same man a while longer
, he said,
and we’ll not be losing all this shipping to the U-boats
.’

They stopped by Sam’s lorry and Alex asked the question that had been in his mind since the moment he’d seen it.

‘Are you short-staffed at Fruitfield?’

‘No, thank goodness, we’re not. Most of us are too old to join up. It’s mainly the girls from the office that have gone, so our Jack tells me. Why d’ye ask?’

‘Well, I was wondering why the senior man who keeps the whole place running was out delivering jam.’

‘Ach, now I see what yer gettin’ at,’ replied Sam, laughing. ‘Sure I don’t mind the odd wee run out. It’s Security. If you deliver to the forces, you have to be cleared. They wouldn’t let a couple of young fellas anywhere near Chinauley House or the Gough Barracks in Armagh or anywhere else where there’s troops for that matter. It’s the same with delivering war materials. Shell-Mex in Armagh have only the
one man allowed to deliver petrol. They have to be certain they’re trustworthy. Sure there’s a black market in everything.’

‘Well, they couldn’t pick a straighter man than you, that’s for sure,’ said Alex, now laughing himself, as Sam swung himself up into the cab.

‘Except perhaps yourself,’ Sam came back at him promptly. ‘Let me know how things go with the girls and young Johnny and I’ll maybe get another chance to come over in another month or two when they’ve eaten what I brought today. God Bless,’ he added, as he raised a hand in farewell.

Alex watched him move down the longer, gentler slope towards the main road, the noise of the batcher at the quarry now loud on the evening air. Breeze blocks for building. Crushed rock for hard standing. Gravel for mending overburdened roads. The quarry was working all the daylight hours, the dust from the crushers throwing a white mist over the nearby hedgerows until the next heavy shower came to rinse the foliage and leave it shining again.

He turned away as the lorry became a small moving object in the green landscape and walked back up towards his own gates, his stomach rumbling vigorously, reminding him of his supper in the oven.

The sun had gone now, down behind the low hill at Lisnaree, but there was still quite enough light to
see two figures walking up towards him. One was clearly Emily. Beside her, carrying her shopping bag from which came the small chink of milk bottles, there was a man he did not recognise. From this distance, he could not even guess whether he was a friend or a stranger.

There was no doubt there was something familiar about the figure that moved easily up the hill, matching his pace to Emily’s shorter stride. A man about his own height, but carrying more weight, comfortably dressed in a tweed overcoat and a soft cap. He was talking so animatedly that it was only when Emily interrupted him by the gates of Rathdrum he realized Alex was standing there waiting to greet him.

‘Isn’t it lovely to see Brendan again,’ said Emily helpfully, assuming that Alex would never remember his name after so many years and so few previous meetings.

But Alex surprised her.

‘Brendan Doherty, you’re welcome,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘We haven’t seen you for many a long day. I’m afraid it was your Aunt Rose’s funeral when we last met and that must be seven years ago. What brings you up to the North?’

‘Well I haven’t come to spy, though there’s those looked distinctly dubious when they heard my Southern accent,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Believe it or not, there are still books to be bought and sold, especially where the owners are handing over their houses to the military. Though on this occasion it was maps. Sixteenth century, I hasten to add, as I was just explaining to Emily. I didn’t dare mention the word “map” in the hotel in case I ended up in jail, so I told a lie and said “books” instead.’

‘Is it as bad as that?’ asked Alex as they rounded the house and came in through the kitchen door.

‘Oh dear, yes. The North can’t forgive de Valera for remaining neutral. Churchill goes on at length about the loss of the Treaty ports and some of the Northern papers are saying there’s a thousand or more German spies in the South and they’ve brought dozens more into the Legation in Dublin.’

‘And have they?’ asked Emily solemnly, as she took her shopping bag from him and put the milk bottles in their bowls of water in the larder.

‘At the last count, six staff, three typists and an old fellow to look after the boiler,’ he replied, his dark eyes twinkling.

Alex laughed and led their guest through the kitchen and into the hall.

‘Now Alex,’ said Emily firmly, as she hung up her coat and reached out her hand for Brendan’s, ‘have you had your supper?’

‘No, not yet,’ he said quietly. ‘But what about Brendan’s supper?

Brendan laughed.

‘The hospitality of the Hamilton’s is legendary, as I have no doubt told you on one of our rare meetings, but I have indeed been fed. Your local hostelry couldn’t give me a bed, they being full of officers having a conference about gas, the poisonous sort, not the domestic variety. But good Ulster folk as they were, they wouldn’t turn me away hungry. I had a rather good chicken casserole with plenty of vegetables and more milk to drink than I’ve seen in months. At least, I think it was chicken. It’s a long time since I met chicken on my plate.’

Emily wondered why Alex smiled suddenly, but the moment passed as she led them into the sitting room, added another log to the fire and told Alex why Brendan had not been able to go straight back to Dublin as he usually did after one of his buying trips across the border.

‘An Army lorry clipped his car,’ she explained. ‘Wasn’t he lucky they didn’t run him off the road?’

‘They were pretty decent about it,’ Brendan added quickly. ‘At least they stopped and sent two squaddies to help me get the car to the garage. And by further good luck the garage was only down the road so I just watched the pair of them push. But I’ve lost a headlamp and the wing mirror and have a big dent in the offside. There’s a leak too by the smell of
it. Couldn’t risk driving her till she’s checked out.’

‘I didn’t fancy sleeping in a ditch,’ he went on cheerfully, ‘though I’ve done it in my time. So I set out for Ballydown. The Cooks were just telling me you’d moved up in the world when Emily herself appeared. I said a blanket on the sofa would have done but your good lady says I have a choice of rooms with all the girls gone,’ Brendan continued, addressing himself to Alex, as he stretched out comfortably, his legs directed towards the leaping flames.

At that moment the telephone rang in the hall.

Alex was on his feet and out of the room before Emily or Brendan had registered the first strident ring.

‘Oh dear,’ said Emily, her face dropping. ‘If that’s what I think it is, it’s bad news and Alex will have to go off right away.’

‘Are ye expecting bad news?’ Brendan asked soberly.

‘It’s nearly the full moon,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s when we had the awful blitz in Belfast last year. There’s been rumours going round that they’ll have another go because the aircraft factory and the shipyard are more or less back to normal working. I don’t know whether Lord Haw Haw said something on the wireless, for I refuse to listen to him, or where the idea came from, but Alex is responsible for the four fire engines and he was told to stand by.’

‘Aye, that was a bad go ye had last year,’ said Brendan, his lively, mobile face subsiding into a solemn mask. ‘At least de Valera had the decency to send the fire engines up to help. We heard some grim stories in Dublin when they got back …’

He broke off as they heard the door open behind them. Alex moved quickly across to the fireplace, his face transformed, relief and joy bringing a sparkle to his dark eyes and softening a face that had always had a sombreness built in to it.

‘It’s all right,’ he said quickly, a slight catch in his voice. ‘We’ve been told to stand down. No details and we don’t even know who sent the message, only that the code was right. If they’d been coming this far, they’d have taken off from France by now and been picked up on the south coast of England.’

‘Maybe
now
you’ll eat your supper,’ Emily said, standing up. ‘You’ll drink a cup of tea, Brendan, won’t you and we’ll keep him company with a piece of cake.’

‘That would be most welcome, Emily. I’m just sorry I’m not provided with the traditional bottle. I fear I’ve come with one hand as long as the other.’

Alex laughed delightedly. It was an expression he’d hadn’t heard for ages, one he’d never forget. Emily had had to explain it to him, long years ago, when she was no more than a schoolgirl and he still the lodger, only recently returned from Canada.

‘Sure we’re all empty-handed these days,
Brendan,’ she said, pausing by the door, ‘as far as
bottles
go anyhow. We try to keep up a bit of hospitality for these young lads billeted all round the place, but I’m afraid tea and cake is the best we can do. You could count the raisins in my cakes these days. Few and far between, as they say.’

Alex was grateful for the covered plate Emily brought him from the oven. She was a good cook and he always enjoyed what she gave him, but tonight even bread and margarine would taste wonderful. However little meat in the pie, the rich gravy was appetising and he dug into the mound of creamy potato with vigour. Brendan watched him with pleasure and a certain twinkle of amusement.

‘As I said earlier, Emily,’ he began, as she handed him a cup of tea and a generous slice of cake, ‘the Hamilton hospitality is legendary. Did Alex ever tell you about my visit to his friend Sarah Sinton when she was unavoidably detained in Dublin during The Rising.’

‘No, I don’t think I ever heard that one,’ said Emily cautiously.

Alex grinned broadly as he finished his meal and wiped his plate clean with a fresh crust of bread.

‘I’m afraid Brendan, Emily and I had a slight difficulty at that time over my relationship with Sarah.’

‘Oh,’ said their visitor, ‘is that so?’

His eyes sparkled as they moved rapidly from husband to wife.

Alex grinned and glanced across at Emily who was now smiling too.

‘You see, Brendan,’ Alex began, ‘when I first came to Ballydown, Sarah was a very handsome young widow. Not that I noticed what she looked like. The fact was, she was kind to me. She understood how I felt about not knowing who I was or where I’d come from. And she was sad and lonely herself. She said that without Hugh she didn’t think she could go on running the mills. She couldn’t stand the bitterness between Catholics and Protestants and the labour troubles and people never willing to listen to the other side of the story. So,
to cut a long story short
, as they say around here, Sarah and I made a pact to help each other and I made up my mind I’d not marry till Sarah herself married or went away.’

‘And what happened?’ said Brendan slowly.

‘Well, you probably know that Sarah met Simon Hadleigh when she was over in Gloucestershire visiting Hannah and Teddy. She’d actually met him years earlier at their wedding when Hannah asked her to take the wedding pictures, but as she told me once, she was so busy photographing her sister and new brother-in-law that she’d not even noticed
him
. However, as soon as Sarah and Simon were engaged, I made up my mind about Emily. But I didn’t say anything to her. Then, that Easter of 1916 when Sarah was in Dublin, Simon goes missing. He’d been in St Petersburg, in the diplomatic service,’ he added
quickly, when he saw Brendan looking puzzled.

‘Anyhow, he was coming home from Russia on a Swedish packet and it hit a mine near the Dogger Bank. Luckily, he was picked up by a destroyer but because it
was
a destroyer he couldn’t send her a message. There wasn’t a word from him for weeks until finally the destroyer was able to land him in Scotland. Sarah was beside herself. I was with her when the telegram came to say he was safe. I knew then she’d go over and marry him as soon as she could, so I came and proposed to Emily.’

‘And Emily was furious,’ said the lady herself, laughing. ‘I thought Sarah was the woman he wanted and now she was going away to marry Simon, I was second best. So I told him to go and jump in Corbet Lough.’

‘Ah, women,’ said Brendan raising his eyes to the delicate mouldings on the ceiling, ‘Is it any wonder I never took the plunge.’

Working away at the sink next morning, her fingers already rippled with the continuous immersion and the scrubbing of Alex’s dungarees, Emily thought what a splendid evening they’d had. It had been so lively and so completely unexpected. She hadn’t seen Alex laugh as much for months. But then there was very little to laugh at these days. Just bad news and more bad news.

There was no doubt Brendan was a talker,
but if he was, everything he said was interesting, whether he was commenting sharply on the political situation in the North or in the South and the tensions between their respective populations, or simply recalling stories from family history. Emily could see from his detailed accounts that he missed nothing in his observation of people. She also felt she’d learnt a great deal more from him about what they called
The Emergency
in the South than she’d gained from her perusal of all the newspapers she could lay hands on here in the North.

Now the house was silent again, as it was so often these days. Alex had taken Brendan to the garage on his own way to work, Johnny had come in, eaten his breakfast and gone to bed, exhausted from his night’s work, fire-watching at a local factory. Apart from the tick of the kitchen clock, the only sound she could hear was the song of a blackbird, perched on the roof of the workshop across the yard where he sang every morning regardless of weather or the affairs of men.

A pleasant-faced woman, now almost fifty, her dark curly hair already streaked with grey, Emily had worked hard all her life. Physically strong and always active, she had kept her figure and still dressed as well as she could. There was enough to depress everybody these days without her going round looking colourless and unkempt.

She had, ‘hands for anything’ as the Ulster saying
has it. She was never without an item of knitting, for Alex, or Johnny, or her Red Cross collection. There was usually sewing as well, a dress or a blouse for one of the girls, the pinned pattern, or the work in progress, laid out in pieces on the bed in one of the now silent bedrooms.

But beyond her family, her beloved garden and her considerable domestic skills, Emily’s great passion was reading. Though Alex scolded her for not sitting down until her back actually ached, she did spend time every day with her library book. No print of any kind that entered the house escaped her eye, be it newspaper, magazine or church newsletter. In the days when her four children were at Banbridge Academy Emily would be been found reading not only the set books for English Literature but all their text books as well.

Given this passion, it was hardly surprising that a friendship should have developed between Emily and Brendan Doherty. It had begun on the lovely summer Sunday of Rose Hamilton’s eightieth birthday party. Arriving early and walking round the garden of James Hamilton’s house in Belfast, while Alex gave a hand with some extra seating, she’d found Brendan sitting in a quiet corner reading while waiting for the other guests to arrive. They had talked about books and bookselling, taken to each other immediately and made a point of finding each other again after lunch to sit in a corner of
the huge marquee erected over the back garden and continue their conversation.

She had met Brendan briefly on previous occasions when he’d visited his Aunt Rose at Rathdrum, but she’d never talked to him at any length and certainly not about books. To tell the truth, she’d been rather shy of him. Not only was he rather handsome, but she knew quite a bit about his history from Rose. She wasn’t sure what you could say to a young man who’d been a rebel, had fought against the British Army and spent years in English jails mixing with other rebels even better known than himself.

Rose had always been fond of the young man, the youngest son of her eldest sister Mary, who’d found a job with the Stewart family of Ards when the McGinley family had been evicted from their home in Donegal back in the 1860s. She’d married a local man and raised a large family on the outskirts of Creeslough where he had a flourishing drapery business, while her little sister Rose had been taken to Kerry with baby Sam when their father died and her mother found work there as a housekeeper with the Molyneux’s of Currane Lodge.

Emily still missed Rose. For the years of Emily’s girlhood, Mrs Hamilton, as she then called her, had been their neighbour and her friend. She’d seen her nearly every day, taking up eggs or milk, or making tea when she came down to visit the Jacksons at the
bottom of the hill. Rose had always been good to her, lent her books and knitting patterns and was always willing to listen to her troubles. When she and Alex married, it was Rose who suggested they should move into her house at Ballydown now that she and John were going to live at Rathdrum.