Beyond the Green Hills Page 5

  ‘Come on, eat up, there’s plenty more.’

  Jessie waved a hand at the dish of crisp roast potatoes, the fresh vegetables and the Yorkshire puddings, which had turned out lopsided but tasted so good.

  ‘What about yourself?’ said Harry slyly. ‘Should you not be eating for two?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she said, giggling, as she dished out second helpings.

  Clare exchanged glances with Andrew. Harry had been ecstatic when Jessie told him she was pregnant, but Jessie herself hadn’t yet got used to the idea. She’d confessed she wasn’t entirely enthusiastic.

  ‘Ah don’t fancy lookin’ like a watermelon,’ she’d confided to Clare, over a mug of tea in the stock room. ‘I’ll maybe have to give up work if I get too big. There’s not much room behind thon counter. An’ shure Harry’s always buyin’ in more stuff. Ah don’t know how we fit in the half of it.’

  Tonight, Clare could only think how lovely she looked. How easily she’d stepped into the new life Harry had given her, a country girl like herself. She’d always had good skin and soft, wavy brown hair, but tonight there was a radiance about her she’d never seen before.

  ‘And here’s to you two,’ said Andrew, raising his glass. ‘Or should I say three? “May all your troubles be little ones”, as the saying is.’

  Clare lifted her glass and toasted them, intensely aware of their bright, happy faces glowing with reflected light and the effects of food and wine. Her eyes moved round the table. Like a magic circle. So full of love and laughter. Suddenly, she had an image of another circle, a scrubbed wooden table, Ginny and Edward in the kitchen at Caledon, sharing out the sausage and chips Edward had cooked for them after a day by Lough Neagh, and a long summer evening amid the little green hills nearby. Within one of these magic circles, no harm could ever reach her. Exposed to the light and the laughter, the anxieties that crept up on her when she was alone would just dissolve.

  ‘Have you got a date yet, Jessie?’ Clare asked, as she put down her empty glass.

  ‘I’ll tell you mine when you tell me yours,’ said Jessie crisply.

  Clare laughed and shook her head.

  ‘There’s no use keeping on at me, Jessie. We can’t get married till Andrew knows when he can have his holiday. And he can’t have his holiday till the partners say so. And the partners are not exactly being helpful, are they, love?’ she added, turning to him, as Harry began to collect up the empty plates.

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake, hurry up,’ replied Jessie impatiently. ‘Or I’ll have nothing to wear. If I go on at this rate, I’ll have to hire a tent.’

  ‘Never worry, Jessie. You’d look good in anything,’ said Andrew reassuringly. ‘Now come on, tell us when Junior is due.’

  ‘October. So they say. But I can’t for the life o’ me see how they figure it out …’

  Jessie went on talking as she cut deftly into a crisp circle of meringue filled with tinned fruit and topped with whipped cream. As well as her talent for watercolour and the eye-catching displays she produced in the gallery, Jessie was proving to be a good cook. Like her skill with a pencil, or brush, cooking just seemed to have come to her without any effort at all the moment she had her own cooker. Clare wondered if it would be the same with motherhood.

  It seemed strange to think of her bringing up her children in this lovely house full of the fine old furniture and pictures that Harry had stored away for the rooms still to be decorated. They would play in the garden that ran down to the thick shrubbery and the steep retaining wall, beyond which the buses and cars moved in and out of the city. They would go to school in the city itself, a far cry from the lanes where she and Jessie had cycled on summer evenings, the quiet road they’d travelled together going into and out of Armagh, year after year, to school, church, doing the shopping, fetching the papers.

  ‘Well then, what d’ye say?’

  She’d heard Jessie’s question all right, but it took her so much by surprise, she didn’t know what to say. It was Andrew who spoke first.

  ‘I should be extremely honoured, Mrs Burrows, to be the godfather of your child,’ he said, without the slightest hesitation.

  The tone was light, and the little bow he made to her was very Andrew, but the look on his face said much more than his words. Perhaps he felt something of the security and well-being she felt herself. Two couples bound by all they’d shared of each other’s lives.

  Clare felt his eyes upon her, waiting, as she looked from Jessie to Harry and then back again to Jessie.

  ‘Well, I might not be much good on the God bit,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Ach, never worry about that, Clare. Shure they can make up their own minds about that sort of thing. But wou’d ye stan’ by them? Him or her, or whatever?’

  Clare nodded quickly, her eyes filling with tears so unexpectedly she couldn’t disguise them.

  ‘That’s just great, Clare,’ said Harry warmly, jumping to his feet and pouring white wine into fresh glasses. ‘And one of these days we hope we can do the same for you. Shall we drink to that? The Burrows and the Richardsons. May their dynasties reign for ever!’

  Spring sunshine cast long shadows on the pavements below, as Clare drew back her curtains and gazed down into Linenhall Street. Now that term had ended, she’d moved into the empty flat above the gallery. Sadly, she’d made the move by herself. Andrew had been despatched by the partners for three days of executor work on one of the big estates in Fermanagh. It would be Friday night before he could come and join her.

  Each day, she began work on her own, for Jessie had begun to have morning sickness and the effort of getting into the city centre for nine o’clock was more than she could manage. Dressed in her smartest clothes, Clare unlocked the silent rooms, dusted the gold frames, the porcelain figurines and the antique furniture. As she polished the plate glass showcases, she’d make herself familiar with each piece of antique jewellery, and all the small, beautiful objects in silver, china and glass, too fragile, or too valuable, to be put on open view, and hope that no one would ring with a complicated query before Jessie and Harry arrived.

  She loved the gallery’s large, airy spaces, the tall windows and carefully concealed lighting. She enjoyed observing the customers as they looked round, answering their questions, dealing with the details of their purchases, a wonderful change from the unbroken solitude of her room. Sometimes, she enjoyed her days so much, she imagined herself doing a job like this permanently. Something that would let her out into the real world.

  At the end of the day, she was usually the last to leave. Suddenly, Harry would notice that Jessie looked pale and tired. He’d ask Clare if she’d mind locking up. It never ceased to amaze her how quickly the relaxed and leisurely Harry could move, once she’d said she didn’t mind at all.

  Tired herself by then, she’d put the day’s takings in the safe, check that the showcases were locked and make her way round the empty rooms doing whatever had had to wait till the customers were gone. As the rest of the building grew silent, she’d run a dust mop over the stained and polished floors and think of Andrew. Back upstairs in the flat, she’d listen for the sound of his feet running up the bare staircase. He’d throw open the door, breathless, loaded briefcase in one hand, something for supper in a paper bag in the other. She seldom saw him before seven, but it didn’t trouble her. He didn’t have to go back to his digs. There was a whole night ahead of them and breakfast together in the morning.

  At first, they were very happy. Andrew had found the work in Fermanagh interesting. He’d made time to go and see an elderly cousin of his grandfather who he hadn’t visited since his teens. Being made welcome in Uncle Hector’s rambling old house by the lake shore reminded him of happy summer holidays with his parents before the war; before the blitz had killed them and broken his links with Drumsollen. He’d loved the lakes, he said. Especially when one of his three aunts had trusted him with the tiller lines while she rowed them out to a small, uninhabited island in the midst
of the tranquil waters. Uncle Hector had been delighted to see him, wanted him to bring Clare down to Inishbane as soon as her exams were over. Love to have some young people about the place, he’d said.

  That first Saturday, Clare worked all day in the gallery. Andrew did the shopping and had a meal ready in the evening. On Sunday, they cooked bacon and egg long after the church bells had stopped pealing. They were just so excited to be together in their own place, with time to talk, to make love, they didn’t even manage to go for the walk they’d planned.

  Monday morning was difficult. They fell over each other, because neither of them had noticed the bedroom was so small they couldn’t possibly get dressed at the same time. Fitting in breakfast before leaving at eight-thirty turned out to be a real challenge. There was no longer a fridge, so the milk bottle stood in a bucket of water. Wherever they put it, it managed to trip them up. The teapot too had gone to the new house, so Clare had to make tea in an old kettle. The cornflakes almost defeated them. Jessie had left cups, saucers and plates, but she had forgotten about bowls. They ended up taking it in turns to eat them from the sugar bowl.

  Half way through their first whole week together, Andrew arrived home later than usual. He looked worn and tired and carried a box of papers as well as his heavy briefcase. The senior partner had named him as his junior for a dispute involving the Fermanagh estate where he’d just completed the executor work.

  Although she asked all sorts of questions, Andrew seemed reluctant to talk about the case or what it would involve, though it was clear, it would be a lengthy affair, probably tedious. As the days passed, Andrew became more and more withdrawn. Something more than mere tedium had to be involved.

  ‘Now don’t jump to confusions, Clare,’ she said to herself one evening, as she moved quietly around the empty rooms of the gallery. ‘Maybe he’s just tired out. Think how exhausted you were by the end of term. It’s still his first job. It’s with a new firm. And he’s told you Belfast does things differently from Winchester. It’ll take him far longer to adjust than if he’d done his articles here.’

  But she wasn’t convinced. And the days that followed did nothing to reassure her. Andrew spent more and more time in court and in the Law Library. When he did get back to the flat, he was weighed down with papers for the following day. She had never known him so silent or so humourless. When they finally reached the comfort of their bed, he made love to her with a kind of desperation, then promptly fell fast asleep.

  She was sure there was nothing to be done till the case ended. It dragged on and on, as he had warned her it might, until the very last Friday of her holiday, leaving them only the Sunday to spend together before she went back to Elmwood Avenue to begin the last hard pull up the slope to Finals.

  When Andrew came back that evening, as tired and dispirited as usual, even though the judgement had been given and the case really was ended, she had a quiet smile on her face. As she put the kettle on to make coffee, she turned and said: ‘Come on, my love, it’s over at last. Let’s celebrate. Let’s have a day out tomorrow.’

  ‘But it’s Saturday. You’re working, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not. I’ve got time off for good behaviour. I told Harry we’d not had a single day out for a month and he said he’d do Saturday himself. Jessie’s mother’s coming up for the weekend. He said it’d give them a chance to talk, with him out of the way.’

  ‘Good old Harry,’ said Andrew, wearily. ‘We’re very lucky to have such good friends.’

  Clare waited hopefully for him to say something more, but he stayed silent, even after she’d made the coffee and they’d carried it into the sitting room.

  ‘I have a little present for Granny Hamilton’s birthday,’ she began at last, as lightly as she could. ‘I’d like to drop it off at Liskeyborough. We could have lunch in Armagh. I think I’ve found somewhere nice to take you. My treat. We can do the poisson and pommes frites on the way home, so we don’t have to go shopping tomorrow morning. How about it?’

  He finished his coffee, took her empty cup away and put his arms round her.

  ‘Clare, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I’ve been rotten company for the last couple of weeks. I don’t know how you put up with me,’ he said, grinning weakly.

  ‘Simple,’ she said. ‘I have a lover in while I’m waiting for you to come home from work.’

  For a moment, he looked quite startled. Then he laughed. It was the first time he’d laughed since the wretched Fermanagh case had begun. She held him tight and kissed him.

  ‘If we’re going up to Armagh tomorrow, don’t you think we’d better get a very early night?’

  6

  As they drove up Lisburn Road, Clare realised with a shock it would soon be a whole year since they’d taken the road to Armagh together, the evening Ginny and Edward had collected her from Elmwood Avenue. She’d been up on her own, of course, to visit the farm at Liskeyborough. She’d been to her cousin Sam’s wedding in Richhill. But she could hardly believe they had not visited Armagh, or driven over to Caledon since last June.

  ‘Aren’t the trees glorious?’ she said, looking out at the burgeoning canopies, the branches almost fully clothed but the individual leaves still soft and translucent in the bright light.

  The very last time she’d seen these familiar trees was early March. Sam was the first of her cousins to get married. She smiled to herself as she remembered how he’d been too shy to cross the floor to her, at her very first dance, the night Uncle Jack’s lodge unfurled its new banner.

  According to Granny Hamilton, there were a whole set of weddings coming up among the cousins. At least now we’re engaged, she thought, we can go together. On your own, weddings could be very lonely affairs.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Andrew, lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘I said the trees are glorious. I love them like this, when the leaves are still young, before they mature and darken.’

  ‘I hope we don’t lose too many of them when they start on the motorway.’

  ‘What motorway?’

  He smiled and put aside whatever he’d been thinking about.

  ‘Don’t tell me it hasn’t reached Le Monde?’ he said, grinning. ‘Ulster’s very own motorway, Belfast to Dungannon. It’s actually been started. Some of the bridges and flyovers are underway, but the first bit won’t be open for ages. There’ll be plenty of fun and games up ahead with the compulsory purchase of the land they need, especially beyond Portadown. We’ll have a real spot of “No surrender, not an inch”. Not unless you pay me a small fortune, that is.’

  She looked at him quickly, alarmed by the bitter sharpness in his voice. She was hearing it more and more often and it worried her for she’d heard that tone before. That was how Ronnie talked, just before he gave up trying to find a job as a journalist in Belfast and went to Canada.

  Her friend, Keith Harvey, had a sister who worked in Toronto. She said Ronnie was building up quite a reputation for himself as a political commentator through his columns for Canadian newspapers with large Scottish or Ulster readerships. Andrew himself said how very well informed he was.

  ‘Could we go round by Loughgall?’ she said quickly, as they crossed the Bann and began to negotiate the Saturday morning traffic in the centre of Portadown. ‘I haven’t been that way since Jessie’s wedding.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, signalling right as they came out of the town.

  ‘I’m so sorry I missed Jessie and Harry’s wedding,’ he went on, as they took the minor road. ‘I’d love to go to a real country wedding, and that little church up on the hill would be just the place for it.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you think, maybe, we could be married there?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she responded promptly, delighted by his sudden enthusiasm. ‘I think there’s a residence qualification or something, but I could leave a suitcase with Jessie’s mother. I think that’s what you do. Anyway, I’ve a whole family grave full of residents. That must qualify me for som
ething. The Rector’s still the one that buried Granda Scott.’

  ‘We could go and see him, couldn’t we? I think the Richardsons once paid for a new roof in the days when they had money,’ he added cheerfully.

  There was no traffic on the road, so he was able to slow right down as they reached Scott’s Corner. They continued up the hill towards the point where the lane from the forge met the road.

  ‘I can’t stop opposite the lane,’ he said, knowing she’d want a good look at the house beyond the forge, ‘but I’ll park in the field entrance a bit further on, so we can take as long as we want.’

  He put out his indicator as they came over the brow of the hill, but before he could pull in, a mere fifty yards beyond the lane end, Clare had seen enough to make her gasp.

  ‘Oh no, Andrew. It’s gone. The forge has gone.’

  She fumbled with the handle of the door, and was still trying to remember which way it turned when he came round and opened it for her. They stood together in the field entrance in front of one of Robert’s gates and looked across the road at the old house, now entirely visible, its enfolding shelter of trees and shrubs all gone. Where once the forge had stood, a young pear tree at its south gable, all they could see was an open space of roughly levelled rubble. A battered van and an enormous pile of empty apple crates were parked on it. Of the gable wall of the old ruined house opposite, and the enclosed garden in its shadow, there was not the slightest remnant. The forge house itself sat empty and dilapidated, its uncurtained windows staring blankly over an open space entirely devoid of grass, or wildflowers, and liberally scattered with rubbish.

  ‘The arch over the door has gone,’ she burst out. ‘They’ve even stripped off the rose and taken away the flowerbeds. Oh, why did they have to do that?’