The Hamiltons of Ballydown (21 page)

‘Well, John, that’s got that sorted out,’ Hugh said, putting down the oil can and wiping his hands on a piece of cotton waste. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Why don’t we go and sit in comfort in the conservatory and I’ll ask Mrs Lappin to bring us a mug of tea. The ladies are at your house this morning, I’m told.’

‘Aye, so I hear,’ replied John, as he turned off the lights over the work bench and parked a hammer on the drawings he’d been working from, so they wouldn’t blow away in the draught. ‘I think there’s a bit of talk to be caught up on after the summer, so Rose says.’

‘They’re not the only ones has some catching up to do,’ Hugh replied, as he picked up his stick, pulled back his shoulders and took a deep breath before he strode out and headed for the back door.

‘I can’t get over how well y’are walkin’ Hugh,’ said John, catching up with him. ‘I still have to remind m’self what ye’ve went through, because it looks so easy now.’

‘Even better when I get rid of the stick,’ he replied grinning, as Mrs Lappin appeared and they sat themselves down to wait for their tea.

‘How long does Doctor Stewart think that’ll be?’

‘Depends on me. If I do all the exercises regularly to build up the muscles and keep walking every day, it could be as little as a year.’

‘Man that’s great,’ said John warmly. ‘And so’s this,’ he added, nodding his thanks to the older woman as she put a mug of tea in his hand and set down a plate of homemade biscuits between them.

‘John, my friend, I had a lot of time to think when I was away in Manchester. After the operation, I was quite helpless for a week or more. I couldn’t do anything at all for myself. Real disability concentrates the mind,’ he said soberly. ‘I’m truly sorry you had such a hard time of it here all those weeks, but something good will come out of it.’

John looked across at him, a slightly puzzled look on his face.

‘If I’d asked you to go and do all the things you did in those five weeks I was away you’d have said, quite rightly, that it was
my
job. You committed yourself to working on machinery, not sorting out disputes and management problems and dealing with a fire. You might also have told me you couldn’t do them, mightn’t you?’ he added, with a slight grin, a note of question in his voice.

‘You’re right there,’ John responded vigorously. ‘It wasn’t my line of country at all, but sure there was nothin’ else for it, was there?’

Hugh laughed heartily.

‘John, you know they did tell me two to three weeks. I had no idea of landing you with five. But an ill wind sometimes blows in something good,’ he went on, pausing to drink from his mug. ‘What your five weeks showed me was something I’d not have seen otherwise. I couldn’t have managed as well these last years if you hadn’t been here to help me. Oh yes,’ he said, raising a hand to stop John’s protest. ‘I know what you’re going to say. You were only doing your job. Nonsense man. You were making it possible for me to do mine as well. If I hadn’t had you backing me up and listening to me when I was at my wits’ end what to do for the best, the Sinton mills wouldn’t be as well off now as they are.’

He paused and John fidgeted awkwardly.

‘Now John, plain speaking is the Quaker rule as you well know, so let me be plain. I want you to come into partnership with me. Now, don’t start objecting till you’ve heard me out,’ he went on quickly. ‘When I was lying in bandages, I saw clearly that you
already
were my partner. You just weren’t getting the credit for it. Nor were you getting paid for it. I want that put right immediately,’ he said coolly, naming a figure that left John speechless.

‘I’ve been remiss, John. I’ve never paid much attention to money beyond looking at the balance sheet each year. I’ve never actually drawn a salary
from the business myself, just taken enough from the profits to cover our expenses living here. I talked to a textile finance expert in Manchester and when I told him that, he just laughed at me. He pointed out that the money I didn’t take simply increased the company’s tax bill. He then went on to tell me how firms went broke.’

John sat wide-eyed, listening carefully. He’d always left the running of the household money to Rose, assuming he wouldn’t be any good at something she did so well. It had never struck him that, for years now, he and Hugh had been discussing expenditure of all kinds. Whether to repair looms or change them. Whether to extend the weaving sheds to cope with big orders that might only be temporary. Which contractor to employ for repairs after a storm, or a flood. Which insurance company offered the best rates for the critical fire policies.

‘Did he now?’ he said, putting his empty mug down without taking his eyes from Hugh’s face.

‘Yes, he did,’ he replied, nodding cheerfully. ‘It might surprise you to know, John, we’ve been on the right track for all we didn’t know it? Apparently, the main cause of mills going down is that they don’t keep up with changing technology. And when they do see they’re being left behind, they panic and bring in a whole lot of new machinery, all in one go. They clean forget they have to train up staff to
use it, so their production drops and the quality too. Consequently they lose orders just when they’ve big bank borrowings. Then it only needs one more thing to go wrong, a change in fashion, a lift in the exchange rate, higher shipping costs, or a rise in the price of steam coal, and that’s it. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. Receivership. As easy as that, John,’ he said, spreading his hands out in a sweeping gesture.

‘If I hadn’t had your reports in Manchester about what you’d done and what you thought needed doing, I might not have started thinking, and I certainly wouldn’t have asked around and found a specialist in textile finance. We’ve done very well despite our ignorance, John. I think we must make changes to secure the future, but I can’t do it on my own.’

He paused and looked steadily at his friend.

‘Now say you’ll be my partner and give me your hand on it.’

‘But Hugh dear, I’m not an educated man,’ said John awkwardly.

‘You can read and write can’t you? You can draw plans. You can invent useful things. What more do you need?’ retorted Hugh crisply.

‘But sure don’t partners have to put a pile of money into a company?’ he replied uneasily, his eyes focused entirely upon one of Elizabeth’s flourishing fuchsias.

‘Not unless it’s going public. And even if it was, it’s been known for a partner to put in a pound note.’

John stared at him and could think of nothing whatever to say.

‘I do intend to find us some more partners,’ Hugh went on conversationally, giving his friend time to recover himself, ‘but they’ll not be working partners. They’ll be advisors. They’ll get a fee for attending Board Meetings, but not a salary. Richard Stewart might be one, if you agree. Sprott of Dromore, the J.P. might be another. You don’t know him yet but he’s a good man. Very shrewd, and very successful in the hemstitching business,’ he explained. ‘I also have in mind a certain young woman, when she reaches the age of twenty-one,’ he went on with a half smile.

‘Who would that be?’

‘Your younger daughter. Miss Sarah Hamilton,’ said Hugh grinning.

‘Sarah? Why Sarah?’ John exclaimed, entirely confused by this new line of thinking.

‘Because John, with her on the Board, we need never have the slightest worry about Factory Inspectors. Sarah will give us a far worse time on behalf of the staff than
any
of them will ever do.’

He grinned more broadly as John shook his head and laughed. He knew his own daughter well enough to see that Hugh was perfectly right.

‘Come on, John,’ Hugh said encouragingly as he stretched out his hand. ‘It’s a family business. Yours as well as mine. Or do I have to go to Rose and get her to make you see sense? All I’m asking is that you do what you’ve done for years, but accept a proper appreciation and recompense for it. You wouldn’t say no to me, would you?’

‘Ach, no. I couldn’t do that.’

Smiling sheepishly, as he put out his hand and shook Hugh’s firmly.

On a mild, late September morning, a hint of mist still lying in the valley bottoms, Sam Hamilton got off the train at Richhill Station. He made his way up a long lane, crossed the broad track used by the road vehicles delivering to the furniture and jam manufactories, and walked on to the village itself. Much to his mother’s apparent delight and amusement, his father had explained that Richhill Station was about a mile from Richhill. He’d then added that though Pearson’s Haulage was Pearson’s of Portadown, their premises were about a mile on the Portadown side of Richhill in a townland called Ballyleny.

The distance was immaterial to Sam. Since Doctor Stewart had taken his plaster off two weeks earlier, he’d been walking miles every day for the sheer joy of it. Dressed in his second best coat and trousers, carefully shaved, with his boots polished till they gleamed, he strode out, noting as he went the wheel marks of the various engines that had
passed earlier in the day. He found Pearson’s with no difficulty whatever, the smell of hot engine oil borne on the breeze alerting him before he was anywhere near the wide space with its large,
newly-built
engine sheds.

‘And what age are you Mr Hamilton?’ said the overseer, a man in his fifties, wearing working clothes and a hard hat.

‘I’ll be seventeen in October,’ said Sam steadily.

‘And you say you’ve been drivin’ for three years?’ he asked doubtfully, his eyes narrowing.

‘That’s right,’ said Sam, pricking up his ears and casting a quick glance out of the window.

‘Have you ever driven a Fowler?’

‘Like the one that’s comin’ into the yard, or the newer one?’ Sam asked promptly.

To Sam’s surprise, the overseer hurried to the window and stood there for several minutes looking out. Only when a cloud of smoke and steam blew through the open door as the engine crossed the yard did he turn round and face Sam again.

‘How did you know it was the Fowler was comin’?’ he demanded.

‘Sure, I heard her out on the road,’ Sam said easily. ‘She’s the only engine makes that sound. She tends to run a wee bit high in damp weather and there was mist about this mornin’.’

The overseer looked at him more closely, asked him where he’d look for a cross head and what he’d
do if there was steam coming out of the fusible plug.

Sam answered him cheerfully, taking the odd glance out the window where the well-maintained machine was now at rest steaming gently.

‘Would ye like to drive her into Portadown and back with Sammy?’ the older man asked, a slight easing in his somewhat hostile manner.

‘Aye, I’d like that fine,’ he replied, beaming.

An hour later Sam met Harry Pearson who asked courteously about Hugh Sinton and his sister and then enquired if Sam would like him to find lodgings for him. He hoped he could start the following Monday.

Sam tramped back to the station, a grin on his face and a cheery greeting for every one he met. Not only had he got a new job, but Harry Pearson had told him he was hoping to expand his business and move into road vehicles of all kinds. He’d ordered a Siddley for himself and he wanted a lad who’d be interested in all the new motor vehicles, not just the haulage engines that made up their present business.

As he passed the last farm before the station, a low, thatched dwelling with blue painted window frames, he suddenly remembered something Thomas Scott had said to him when he was a wee boy. ‘One of these days Sam, you’ll be comin’ to see me in yer motor car.’ Well, indeed, it might not be long before he had a chance to prove him right.

By the end of the first week in October, Sam was comfortably lodged in Richhill. On his weekly visits home it was clear he was thoroughly enjoying his job and was already making friends. Hannah too, was writing lively letters from the enormous castle-like building that had been converted to create her finishing school. The best news of all was that Elizabeth had yielded to considerable pressure from Rose and Hugh and agreed to a wedding date in early April.

As the weather grew colder and the first autumnal storms began to strip both trees and hedgerows, Sarah cycled to and from school with less and less enthusiasm each day.

‘But why do I have to stay on at school?’ she demanded one Thursday evening, as she banged her books shut and pushed them back into her satchel.

Rose put her library book down, but John went on reading.

‘Sarah, it’s very important to have a good education. You know that,’ she said soothingly.

‘But Sam left school at fourteen. Look how well he’s doing. He loves his work,’ she retorted sharply.

As John shuffled his newspaper and folded it up, he caught Rose’s warning look.

‘Sarah, if we were all the same, it wouldn’t be good, would it?’ he said agreeably.

He noticed the dark shadows under her eyes and remembered what her mother had said about
how tired she got towards the end of the week. Every afternoon after school there was something on. Choir or Dramatic Society, hockey or Debating Society. Like all young women there were times when she got very short-tempered. He knew that well enough by now. Take her the wrong way when she was tired as well and you’d get the kind of storm they used to have when she was a child.

‘Sam’s a great practical man, God bless him,’ said John as calmly as he could manage, ‘but you’re a clever girl, Sarah. You could do things, Sam or Hannah, could never do. That’s not just what your Ma and I think, it’s what better educated people like James Sinton and Hugh and Elizabeth think too. They say you could go to college, now that there’s places for women. Would that not be a great thing?’

‘No, it wouldn’t. It would be just awful,’ she spat out fiercely. ‘It’s bad enough being stuck at school, but then, to get out of that and go into Queen’s College for three or four more years. I’d go mad. I’d do something desperate,’ she said he voice rising ominously. ‘I can’t stand being cooped up day after day with the same boring old teachers and the same boring old lessons and not even Hannah to share it with,’ she said, bursting into tears and sobbing as if her heart would break.

John looked at Rose helplessly as she stood up and put her arms round Sarah. She held her close, feeling the narrow shoulders shaking, the warm
tears soaking through the light fabric of her own blouse.

Over the dark, ruffled curls, they exchanged glances. Rose knew he would back her up as best he could, but she would have to find a way. He’d never had much idea what to do when any of his children were in distress, but Sarah always defeated him completely.

‘Things always look grim when you’re tired, Sarah,’ her mother said softly, stroking her curls. ‘How would it be if we had a talk about it after school tomorrow or on Saturday afternoon, when we’re all fresher? If you’re not happy, we’ll find some way to make it better. Didn’t we find a way for Sam when he was so upset losing his job?’

‘Yes, but we didn’t find a way for Jamie,’ she sobbed.

‘Sarah dear, Jamie didn’t let us try, did he? You’d give us a chance, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she mumbled, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles.

‘How about some cocoa and a nice hot water bottle?’

Sarah shivered, suddenly cold with tiredness and tears. She nodded. She was sure they’d try to help her, but she couldn’t see what they could do. She was fourteen. She was a girl. No going off like Sam at fourteen to find a real job in the real world. Three or four more years of Banbridge Academy lay
in front of her before she could have any life of her own.

At this moment, the enormity of the acres of boredom to be endured was so appalling she thought she’d rather be dead.

Rose did her best. She talked to Elizabeth and went to see the only one of her teachers Sarah seemed to like. They both said wise things about the adjustments Sarah was making in her life. In the course of the summer she’d grown up, she’d lost a beloved sister, whose constant companionship she’d never questioned. Her favourite brother no longer lived at home. Sarah’s teacher didn’t know about Jamie, so it was Elizabeth who suggested she might be blaming herself for his absence.

‘Why can’t I just leave and get a job in the mill, Ma? That’s what other girls have to do. Why do I have to be coddled up at school?’ she demanded one wet October afternoon when she arrived home soaking.

‘Sarah dear, if you just went into the mill, how would you ever do the things you want to do?’

‘What things? What things do I want to do?’ she shouted.

‘Well, you want to take pictures, don’t you?’

‘Yes. And I don’t need to go to school for that. What use is school to me?’ she demanded.

‘It’s a good way of using time till you’re older,
Sarah. You can’t just go off like Sam, you know that. After all, he had to do the equivalent of
another
three years at school when he went to Tullyconnaught as an apprentice.’

‘Yes, but that’s what he wanted. I don’t want any of what they’re teaching me. Nor all those boys being silly and the girls giggling in corners. I can’t stand it, Ma, I can’t stand it.’

She searched vainly for words of comfort, but nothing she said seemed to touch Sarah’s distress. She was forced to watch her dragging herself from day to day, weighed down by a burden of frustration, her discontent floating round her like a cloud.

It had been agreed there’d be no question of her going to Queen’s College. They’d also gone as far as saying she could leave at seventeen, but for Sarah, the gap between these last months of 1897 and the longed-for freedom the summer of 1900 would bring was still an eternity of time almost impossible to visualise and equally impossible to survive.

Rose tried everything she could think of to cheer and encourage her, but her intuitions told her so much depends upon how we see things for ourselves. Searching back through her own early years, she remembered times when she too had been dogged by the same weariness. She too had blamed the slow passage of the days and weeks for her frustrations.

‘But is it really time, or is it circumstance?’ she asked aloud, one dim, December morning as she
looked around the tidy, well-swept kitchen and thought how she’d spend her own solitary day.

John would not be coming in to lunch and Sarah had a rehearsal after school. Nothing to prevent her doing whatever she chose.

‘Is today a wonderful opportunity to do what I want to do?’ she asked herself, ‘or a miserable piece of time to be filled as best I can?’

She made up the fire and settled in her chair to watch the leaping flames. She smiled to herself. She felt well, there was no immediate problem or weight of sadness to press upon her. She had books from the library. Sewing and embroidery under way. Letters to write to family and friends. If it stayed dry, she could dig up some of her perennials that needed splitting.

She sat on quietly, thinking of Sarah, and suddenly, she saw herself sitting on a hillside, her sleeves rolled up, the top buttons of her blouse undone, a soft breeze stirring the tassels on the fuchsia and cooling her warm skin. She was in Kerry, on her one afternoon off, the only time in her busy life as a servant at Currane Lodge that was really hers. Time was only your friend when you were free to act as you wished.

She thought of the early months of the year and shivered slightly, thinking of the weeks after her illness when time was a blur, the days slipping into weeks as she slept and rested. Then came the
months when she was well enough to know what she wanted to do, but not well enough to do any of it.

Perhaps that was Sarah’s real problem. She could see so clearly what she wanted to do, but present circumstances would not let her do it. She was simply not old enough and the waiting was intolerable.

Even with all the reassurances she’d had from Elizabeth and Doctor Stewart, it hadn’t been easy to believe health and strength would be returned to her, if only she waited patiently. How much worse it must be for Sarah. There was no way of reassuring her what she knew she wanted would come to her if only she could be patient.

Of course the months and years
would
pass. This long century of dramatic change
would
end, and with it her schooldays. But what comfort was that when the burden of the time ahead lay so heavy upon her?

So far, she’d discovered it was not school work in itself which bored her, but the fact that school stood between her and making her own life. Twice recently, she’d seen the old sparkle return and both times it was school work had done the trick. A history project on The Great Famine set her reading every book and paper she could lay her hands on. She’d talked about it at great length to anyone who would listen. An essay on the Industrial Revolution had the same effect. She’d filled notebook after
notebook with the plight of the rural unemployed as they flocked to the towns to be herded into miserable little houses in the shadow of mills.

‘But what do I do for her
now
?’ Rose asked herself, gazing out at the damp, uninviting day.

She thought of her Quaker friends waiting patiently on guidance. She’d tried that, but nothing had come to help her. She sat on, her mind moving to the affairs of her friends and family. Elizabeth’s marriage plans. Hugh and John working yet more closely in their partnership. Hannah and Sam, each happy with the future they’d chosen. And Jamie?

To her great surprise, it was thinking of him that finally gave her an answer to her question. Obvious, once you saw it. There was nothing she could
do
for Sarah, any more than there was anything she could
do
for Jamie. She could love them, cherish them, think of them, but what was ultimately important to them, that they had to find out for themselves.

It was only as spring came with flickers of dazzling light and lengthening days that unexpected hope and possibilities began to diminish Sarah’s sadness and frustration and restore Rose to her happier self.

Elizabeth had been granted permission to marry by their local Monthly Meeting, but, there couldn’t be a Quaker marriage as Richard Stewart was a Presbyterian. As a Quaker, Elizabeth couldn’t be married by an ordained minister of any other
church. The only solution was for Elizabeth and Richard to be married in a Registry Office. To make up for this loss of a ceremony they decided to have a small celebration afterwards in Richard’s house in Dromore where they were to live after their marriage. Elizabeth came down from Rathdrum especially to ask Sarah if she would take some pictures for them.