For Many a Long Day Read online

  ‘Away now and enjoy yerself,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve only one wee thing to finish, then I’m for soap an’ water an’ my pipe. I’ll see ye in the mornin’. Run on now, ye can’t keep your young man waitin’.’

  It was only moments after the rapid note of the bike died away in the direction of Loughgall that it was replaced by the throb of a much heavier engine. He shook his head. They must be getting a good crowd if there was a motor coming from Armagh direction, he thought to himself, as he began the last shoe of the day, for a child’s pony he was expecting to shoe in the morning.

  As he put his hammer down a few minutes later and turned to plunge the glowing metal into the water tank, he was surprised to see a tall figure standing in the doorway quietly watching him.

  ‘God Bless the work.’

  ‘Ach, Sam Hamilton,’ he exclaimed above the cloud of steam and the noise of bubbling brown water. ‘Man, how are ye? I haven’t seen ye since you brought your mother over to Selina’s funeral. That’s near three years now,’ he added, as he took the outstretched hand firmly without even wiping his own on the back of his trousers.

  ‘Aye an’ the time before that when we met it was my father’s funeral and you and Ellen and Selina came with Ned Wylie and Peggy over to Banbridge.’

  ‘Dear aye. Isn’t it a sad thing when we only see other at funerals?’

  ‘Or when misfortune brings me a beggar to your door,’ Sam Hamilton replied promptly.

  ‘Dear goodness, an’ what would make a good man like you a beggar?’ Robert replied, half amused, half curious.

  ‘Did you hear the motor?’

  ‘I did surely. Have you bought a motor?’

  ‘No, Robert I have not,’ he replied with a short laugh. ‘To tell you the truth, even if I had the money, I get enough of motors and lorries every day.’

  Sam Hamilton was a broad-shouldered man in his fifties, his face brown from exposure, his wispy hair combed back from a high broad forehead. He came in and settled himself easily on the visitor’s bench. Robert set the shoe aside, leant back against the shaft of the bellows and stretched his aching back.

  ‘One of these days maybe I’ll buy a pony and trap,’ Sam went on thoughtfully. ‘We had a wee mare called Dolly when I was a boy and I loved looking after her. I used to take Ma into Banbridge on a Saturday afternoon or maybe drive Sarah and Hannah out somewhere of a fine evening. We had some grand times with Dolly,’ he added, a hint of wistfulness in his tone.

  ‘Aye, we never know when we’re well off,’ Robert nodded. ‘As the saying is, you never miss the water till the well runs dry.’

  Sam Hamilton smiled his gentle, slow smile, collected himself and explained why he had his boss’s car for the night and why he hadn’t been able to finish the piece of work he was doing for him for want of oxygen in his acetylene welder.

  ‘Well sure that problem’s easy solved,’ said Robert nodding, pleased enough to help his old friend. ‘Work away there while I finish this wee shoe an’ then I’ll make us a pot of tea we can take outside till I hear all your news.’

  The dusk was fading in tones of pink and grey, the air still warm, as they sat down on the grass bank under the pear tree at the gable end of the forge, the county road visible at the end of the lane now deserted. Robert had fetched sweet milk from the silent house, for Ellen had gone to her bed, and the two men sat side-by-side, the two delph mugs filled full of a strong brew and watched the light go.

  ‘D’ye mind when the Hamiltons set off for Banbridge with their bits an’ pieces on Sinton’s dray?’ Sam asked suddenly, his mind travelling back to a day when he and his brother and sisters had sat on this same grassy bank beside the pear tree waiting for the dray to come and collect them.

  ‘Aye, that was the year of the terrible bad accident on the railway, wasn’t it?’

  Sam nodded, his mind still engaged with memories of the part of his childhood spent in the now ruined house across the lane. His family had lived there when his own father, John, had worked with Robert’s father Thomas in the darkened forge behind him.

  ‘There’s some of us lucky to be here to remember it,’ Sam said suddenly, realising he’d not said a word for quite a while.

  ‘I mind m’father comin’ back from the railway banks with blood dried on his clothes an’ didn’t even know it was there,’ said Robert abruptly.

  It had only just occurred to him that his mother must have been there in the house when her husband and John Hamilton had come back from collecting up the dead and carrying them to be laid out in Armagh. But he still couldn’t remember her. All he remembered of that night was his father asking Annie was there anything you could use to get the stains out.

  ‘Now then,’ said Sam, drinking deep, ‘tell us how all your ones are. Is Bob a Bank Manager yet?’

  He settled back to listen to his friend and to take the good of the evening. It was a rare moment of rest at the end of a long day for which he would give thanks like the good Quaker that he was when he said his prayers.

  No, Bob wasn’t yet a manager, but it wouldn’t be long till he was, for he was not only good with figures, he had a knack of sizing people up. Johnny, wasn’t as clever as his brother, Bob, but he’d served his time as a grocer and was up in Belfast now getting a bit more experience. Doing well. Polly was still in Toronto with Jimmy and the two boys and the wee one, though she was worried about Jimmy’s job. Sure wasn’t that the way it was everywhere these days. Mary had taken a chance and gone out to her two years back and had got started in Eatons. Florence was up and away to London and she knew not a soul there. She was working in the dress department of a big store. Right up her street and she loved it. Ellie had been walking out for two years now with George Robinson next door and they were expecting a wedding once the harvest was over.

  Sam had to concentrate hard, for in the years since he’d last been to the forge itself the children he’d seen playing in the orchard had grown into young men and women. He could just remember Mary handing round sandwiches after Selina’s funeral, but he couldn’t call to mind the youngest wee girl at all.

  ‘And all well and healthy, Thank God,’ he said soberly, as Robert finished his tally.

  To Robert’s surprise, Sam Hamilton said less than he’d expected about his own large family. The two older boys were well settled, both in the police force and Bobbie was now in Irish Road Motors. The eldest girl, Emily, had come home from New York with her husband, Kevin, and he was working with a man who’d started making body work for motors. They were just down the road in Richhill. Rosie and her husband, the doctor, had had a third child, the wee girl Richard had so wanted. Jack had got Emily’s old job at Fruitfield, in the office doing the books. Dolly was the only one at home now. She’d become a dressmaker and was very good at it.

  Robert threw the last dregs of his tea into the long grass and wondered if he’d missed something, for he was sure there were nine in Sam’s family. He puzzled over it for a minute or two as they sat in silence, then he remembered one of the wee girls had gone and lived with her aunt who had no family. He couldn’t remember her name and he thought it rude to ask about her without having her name.

  ‘Martha well?’ he asked shortly.

  ‘Grand. Working away. And how’s Ellen?’

  ‘About the same. Good days and bad.’

  There was a pause which began to lengthen as each man reflected on this ritual exchange about the well-being of their wives. Neither had made a happy marriage. Martha Hamilton was sharp and had little time for the father of her children. Ellen Scott had little time for anyone but herself. She was one of those people who never find anything in life to be pleased about. She complained continually about her health and anything else that displeased, her so that Robert and those who knew her best had long since ceased to pay the slightest attention to anything she said.

  ‘Sam, that’s it.’ He could not imagine how he could have forgotten his friend’s namesake, the good-natured young man he’d met a couple of t
imes now, most recently when he’d gone into Armagh to see about a more respectable bicycle for Ellie when she got her job in Freeburns.

  ‘An’ what about young Sam?’

  ‘Aye, I was coming to young Sam. Not good Robert, not good.’

  ‘Ach, dear, is he poorly? And him such a fine lad.’

  In the dim light, the whites of Robert’s startled eyes stood out in sharp contrast to his dark and grimy face as he waited anxiously for a reply.

  Sam Hamilton ran a hand over his thinning hair and shifted uneasily where he sat.

  ‘Young Sam was to be married in June. A girl from Portadown. They’ve been going together three, maybe four, years now. He’s been working all the hours there are to save up for furnishing a house when they find one. He’s even been cycling home of an evening to work with me for a few extra bob to add to his wages. It’s a good, steady job he has at the cycle shop, but not great pay. An’ you know yourself there’s not much hope of betterment these days, there’s so few jobs going,’ he said, shaking his head, and looking Robert in the eye.

  ‘Well, about March time, Sammy … Sam, I should say, for he doesn’t like to be called Sammy now he’s a man. Off he goes to Rountrees and buys a bedroom suite and a dining table and chairs with a sideboard to match and a dresser and kitchen table and chairs to go with that. He paid cash for the whole lot and goes off in great glee to tell her what he’s done. Well, she’s not one bit pleased. She says he should have asked her to choose the furniture. He says he’d asked her what she’d like and they’d looked at stuff in the shop windows together. He’d picked out just what she’d admired. But that was only the start of it. She kept finding fault with him and he begins to get very uneasy.

  ‘Well, at the heels of the hunt, it seems there was some other fellow had a fancy for her and the parents came in on his side and said what a good match it would be. The long and the short of it is, Robert, she jilted him, and I could hardly believe how badly he took it. Sure he cried like a child when he told me and I couldn’t think of a word of comfort I could offer him. All I could do was get him to go over to see Rosie, for she and him were always very close. But our wee Sammy … Sam, I should say, is a different man.’

  ‘Ach dear, that’s a hard thing, and him a soft-natured man. Sure there’s no badness in him. What did he do with the furniture?’

  ‘Well, fair play to them, they gave him every penny of his money back, for the stuff had never left the showroom and he went straight out and got drunk for the first time in his life. Then he bought a motorbike. A racing model, for he said he fancied entering the T.T. races. And I don’t know which I’m more afeard off, him killing himself off the bike or him taking to the drink. I know I must put my faith in God, but I’m heart sore every time I look at him.’

  ‘Aye you would be. Sure, it’s desperate to be young and feel that way about a woman,’ said Robert in a tone that any other time would have made his friend sit up and take notice, but Sam Hamilton was thinking only of his son as he turned to Robert and finished his story.

  ‘An’ the worst of it is, Robert, he told me the other night that he thought he’d never marry now. That indeed he’d be unlikely even to look at a woman for many a long day.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The burst of applause and the roar of voices when the band stopped playing made it clear to Ellie and George that the small, wooden hall with its galvanised roof and peeling green paintwork, built some ten years earlier to accommodate a newly-formed Orange Lodge, was packed to capacity. Through the open door and the thrown-up sash windows, the beat of dance music throbbed out again into the evening quiet of the surrounding fields and lanes.

  Close to the hall, against every convenient bush, tree and gatepost, bicycles were propped up. Released from the shafts of their traps, a few ponies tethered along the boundary hedge munched away quietly. At the entrance to the weed-grown and neglected field surrounding the hall itself, two motors were parked one behind the other almost blocking the narrow country lane.

  Ellie had never been on a motor-bike before and she’d caught her breath as the warm evening air raced past. It felt as chill as a winter gale, whipped her hair backwards and forwards across her face, gusted and swirled round her bare legs and plucked at the full skirt of her pretty, floral-patterned summer dress as George speeded along the twisty lanes through Ballybrannan, round the foot of Cannon Hill and on to Mullanisilla.

  She’d clung tightly to his tweed jacket for warmth as well as safety, but when they came to a standstill and she climbed stiffly off the pillion and stepped on to the stony path leading away from the field-gate, she found she was shivering uncontrollably. As soon as she got her feet on the ground George left her and strode off, pushing, not his brother’s borrowed bike, but his own new bike, his one thought the need to find a safe parking place.

  Well at least it will be warm inside, she thought to herself, as she watched him go. She dabbed her dripping nose, ran her fingers through her tangled hair and shivered fiercely. Well, you live and learn, she said to herself, hearing her father’s voice. She smiled ruefully, wrapped her arms round herself, covered up the expanse of goose-pimpled skin exposed by her scooped neckline and rubbed her arms vigorously to see if she could generate a little warmth in them while she waited.

  Minutes passed. When George still failed to appear, she moved a little further in the direction he’d taken and found him eyeing a drainpipe at the side of the building. She watched as he took a chain from his pocket, attached one end to the drainpipe and fed the other through the spokes of the motorcycle before attaching a small padlock. He turned a key in the lock, tested it several times, then put the key carefully back in his top pocket. He stared all around him to see if there was any hazard he might have overlooked. Satisfied at last that no harm could come to his new possession he glanced towards her.

  ‘That should be all right now,’ he said, a bright smile on his face. ‘Don’t want anyone pinching MY new bike.’

  He took a final look over his shoulder as she came up to him, dropped an arm round her, marched her up to the door of the hall and produced his two half crowns for the pair of men guarding it, so large they almost filled the entrance.

  When they moved marginally apart to allow them to pass between them, she followed him as he elbowed his way towards the crowded dance floor, an indeterminate area between a deep line of girls on one side and a less deep line of men on the other. Here couples were entwined, if not actually able to dance. He turned to her, put his arms round her and used his superior height and weight to propel them round the floor.

  The band stopped. The applause was enthusiastic.

  ‘Big crowd,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, fishing in her pocket for her hanky and dabbing her nose, now dripping even more vigorously than it had outside.

  She was warming up now, for the atmosphere was like a warm blanket, but was much less pleasant. From somewhere nearby, there was an overpowering smell of cheap perfume and sweat. All around her, men with shiny foreheads were mopping their brows and girls with light dresses had patches of damp under each arm.

  The floor was so packed, there was little opportunity for George to demonstrate his dancing skills. As the band grew more enthusiastic, encouraged no doubt by a crate of beer parked in the tiny kitchen behind their raised platform, Ellie gave up the attempt to make conversation and find out what George could possibly mean by talking about his new motorbike.

  She exchanged smiles with girls she’d known since working in Armagh. Others she’d known from childhood and the years they’d spent together in the school room just inside the gates of the greytowered parish church built on Church Hill. There was a new school now, down in Ballybrannan which had only been open a year. It had a separate entrance for Boys and Girls and even separate flush toilets.

  She smiled to herself. Very different from the old school-room, where she and George were taught by Master Ebbitt and Miss Taylor. The visiting Inspector complained every year
in his report that there was but one office, the earth privy used by both boys and girls. Probably it was the privy that had closed the school in the end. These days there were new regulations for shops and schools and places of work. Why, even her own boss, who paid as little attention as possible to such things, had had to provide seats for all his shop assistants even if they never had time to sit on them.

  ‘Will we go out for a wee breath of air?’ George asked, bending down to her ear to make himself heard.

  She nodded and followed his tweed jacket as he carved his way back through the somewhat narrower lines of girls and out into the grassy area surrounding the hall. All around them couples were entwining their arms and setting off in search of a grassy bank or a low wall to sit on.

  ‘There’s a bench outside the smithy over there,’ he said, pointing to a low, whitewashed building a couple of fields away. ‘It’s not far. I have something to tell you. It’ll be worth the extra wee walk on up the lane,’ he added, looking unusually pleased with himself.

  George smiled a lot. He always had. Even when they were wee things together at school, he was known for his good-nature. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. He was on good terms with everyone. He was two years older than she was and he’d had a notion of Ellie since she was twelve or thirteen. Given they lived next door to each other, it had always been assumed they’d make a match. As their teenage years passed neither of them had objected to this assumption. Their only problem was the one faced by all their contemporaries. Where were they to get the money to get married?

  To be able to get married you needed a job that paid enough to rent a house and support a wife and family. Jobs that paid well were few and far between and houses were scarce even if you could afford the rent. It made no difference that George was the second son of Tom Robinson, a fair-sized farmer for these parts of North Armagh. Still in his late forties, Tom had no though whatever of retiring and even when he did, he’d made it clear he had no intention at all of splitting up the farm his father and grandfather had managed to put together. The land would pass intact to the eldest son, young Tommy.