Beyond the Green Hills E-Book

Anne Doughty

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Hamiltons Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 522

Beschreibung

The sequel to On a Clear Day, which continues the enchanting story of Clare Richardson; Clare, now aged 20 and blossoming into a beautiful young woman, is looking forward to her final year at university, and to the return of her childhood sweetheart Andrew to Ulster. After a happy summer together they become engaged, and the future looks bright. But when Clare and Andrew's romance ends in disappointment and shattered dreams, she determines to make a new life on her own. Following in the footsteps of so many of her fellow countrymen, she takes the Liverpool boat and from there goes to Paris. Life 'beyond the green hills' is exciting and stimulating, but it brings with it the realization that she will only ever be at home in her beloved Ireland.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR ANNE DOUGHTY’S BESTSELLING NOVELS

‘An ability to capture between the pages the tender beauty of the Armagh countryside … Ms Doughty writes with insight and humour.’

IrishTimes

‘Anne Doughty brings the Armagh hills to life with her descriptive narrative which draws you deep into a fascinating world.’

NewsLetter

Beyond the Green Hills

Anne Doughty

ForRosemary,whohasalwayssharedherexperience

Contents

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgementsPrologue12345678910111213141516171819202122232425About the AuthorAlso by Anne DoughtyCopyright

Acknowledgements

I am grateful, as always, to my agent Judith Murdoch for help and encouragement. It was she who suggested I continue Clare’s story from On A Clear Day before I set out on the historical journey which took me back to 1861 and The Woman from Kerry, the story of Clare’s great-grandmother which leads on into the twentieth century and returns to Clare and Andrew in the 1960s.

My friends at the Irish Studies Centre, Armagh, have helped me once again and my husband, sister and closest friends have done some of the research I would have done myself had I been able to use my own legs.

Those who wrote to me and commented so generously on my earlier novels encouraged me greatly when writing proved to be very difficult, but my greatest debt, this time, must certainly be to the lovely people at Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, who gave me a second new hip so that I can once again walk my beloved green hills.

ANNE DOUGHTY

Prologue

They stood in the shadow of the great stone pillar and studied every detail of the fields and orchards that covered the little humpy hills all around them. The old cottages, long and low, white painted, were tucked into their hollows on the south-facing slopes, sheltered from the north and west by plantings of trees. There was the odd new farm building, and a few two-storey houses, edging the little lanes that turned and twisted, dipped into valleys and climbed over their smooth, well-rounded shapes.

The blue tractor finished its work. The driver unhitched the plough and drove off down the lane below them. Gleaming in the sunlight, the newly ploughed field was left to the gulls, which hunted up and down the straight, newly turned furrows.

‘You love this place, Clare, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d be heartbroken if I thought I’d never stand here again.’

She paused, remembering a summer Sunday long ago when she’d climbed up to the obelisk for the first time. Uncle Jack had been there and various aunts and uncles she couldn’t quite sort out. She was nine years old. She’d looked all around her and made up her mind that she was going to stay with Granda Scott, even if Auntie Polly wanted to take her with them to Canada.

‘I think I do belong here, Andrew, like you do. But I’d be sad all my life if I never saw anything of the world out there, beyond the green hills.’

1

‘Do you ever wish you could make time stand still?’ Clare asked, as she rolled over and sat up on the short, springy turf of the sunny hollow where they’d lain down to rest.

They’d been so lucky. Day after day, all through this miraculous week, the sun had poured down on them out of a flawless blue sky. Beyond their sitting place, the flower-studded grass gave way to powder-fine sand. The tide was far out, the brilliant blue-green mass of the Atlantic a good half mile away. So soft and distant the ripple of minute waves, it was entirely overlain by the whisper of a tiny breeze and the devoted murmurings of the insects which swung in the globes of sea campion and nuzzled the pink heads of thrift that bloomed all around them.

A mile of shimmering white sand away, the fishermen’s cottages in Port Bradon stood around their small harbour. The only inhabitants of the beach were cows, a dozen of them, settled happily on the warm sand, a short distance from the grassy slopes that ran down to the shore.

‘Hm?’ he said sleepily, an arm thrown across his eyes as he turned towards her, the sunlight catching a hint of red in his fair hair.

She pulled his hair, laughing as a trickle of sand slid down his face.

‘Deaf ears! I asked if you ever wished you could make time stand still.’

He smiled up at her.

‘If, perhaps, this fortnight could go on for ever?’

She nodded.

‘But think what we might miss. What joys might be stored up in the weeks which would come after.’

His voice was light and teasing, his blue eyes full of a tenderness that still amazed her.

‘I keep thinking I’ll wake up and find it’s all a dream,’ she said, half seriously.

‘Why should it be?’ he asked easily. ‘We knew we wanted to be together. We knew we wanted to be lovers. Why shouldn’t it be wonderful now we’ve finally managed it?’

His smile faded as he watched her face grow thoughtful and rather sad.

‘Perhaps I think it’s too good to be true. All this and you too,’ she said, with an attempt at lightness.

She threw out a hand to embrace the sky and the sea, the dazzling white gulls gliding overhead, the golden splashes of tormentil dotting the hollow where they sat.

Suddenly Clare shivered, as if the warmth and light of the June day had been switched off.

It was November, and she was looking down through the leafless tree beyond her window to the pavements of Elmwood Avenue below. The last of the leaves lay saturated and brown, tramped into the wet surface below the dark, dripping branches. Although it was midday, the room behind her was dark but for a single point of light, the glow of her gas fire.

In her hand, she held a letter from Andrew. He was trying to comfort her. She had lost her grandfather and her home. She had friends, she had her grant to live on, she had her work, but it seemed to her then that she had lost all that she loved. Except Andrew. He was the only one who grasped what it meant not to be able to go back to the place where you grew up, where you knew every stone and tree, every detail of a house and garden. However tedious and hard her life had so often been in the house by the forge, in those first awful months she had felt sure that she would never heal the loss of all that had been so familiar.

‘Perhaps this all seems unreal,’ she said slowly.

‘But why should what is beautiful and happy be any less real than what is sad, or dark, or painful?’ He sat up and reached out for her hand, his eyes moving over her face, usually so mobile, now so still, sombre and downcast. He had never seen her look like this before. Her shoulders drooped as if she were burdened by cares, her eyes focused on a tiny fragment of golden flower she had picked and now held between finger and thumb. She rubbed its short stem so that it twirled round and round, the tiny red speckles on the base of its petals now invisible in the blur of gold.

‘Was last night unreal?’ he asked urgently.

To her own surprise, Clare blushed.

‘No, my love, it wasn’t,’ she said softly.

She glanced up at him and caught his look of anxious concern just as it softened.

‘There’s nothing of the phantom lover about you,’ she added, smiling weakly.

Making love to Andrew for the first time had been no more difficult than kissing him for the first time, all those years ago on their first outing to Cannon Hill.

A week ago, they’d arrived at the old fisherman’s cottage, tucked in under the cliffs beyond the harbour at Ballintoy, a bag of food in the boot of their borrowed car. They’d found a bottle of wine waiting for them and a note from Clare’s old friend Jessie, explaining the peculiarities of the cottage. Andrew had pushed open the door into the tiny bedroom. The high bed was so large it filled almost all the space. They looked at each other and laughed.

‘We’d better have supper first or we won’t get any,’ Andrew said as he turned her round and propelled her back into the other room.

They’d eaten the food in the bag, drunk the wine, and made love in the moonlight, eagerly and joyously. They drifted into a blissful doze; woke up and made love again, the roar of the incoming tide loud in their ears. And again, as fingers of light reached across the patchwork quilt and a blackbird tuned up for its morning song. Exhausted at last, they’d fallen asleep and not opened their eyes till the middle of the morning.

‘No wonder football teams are locked up when they’re in training,’ Andrew said, as he peered into the kitchen cupboard, in search of bowls for their cornflakes.

She looked at him blankly as she turned from the larder, a jug of milk in her hand.

‘Passion can be quite debilitating, don’t you think?’ he asked, with a perfectly straight face.

She laughed till the contents of the milk jug rocked like a stormy sea.

They’d just managed to eat breakfast before going back to their crumpled bed.

It had all been so easy. Easy to make love, easy to cope with the primitive arrangements at the cottage, where water came from the spring under a bush near the back door and the loo was a rickety wooden plank over a hole in the ground. Easy to be together hour after hour.

That first week, they’d worked their way all along the north coast. They’d tramped the length of the Giant’s Causeway, taken it in turns to sit in the Wishing Chair, promised not to tell each other their wish. They’d looked down into the chill waters below the Minstrel’s Window at Dunluce Castle and imagined the sheer rage of the storm that had brought it crashing into the sea, one fearful winter’s night, long ago. They drove to Ballycastle, walked along the beach to Marconi’s cottage. Staring out across the wide ocean he’d been the first to span with radio waves, they wondered if they’d ever visit America themselves.

They had talked, hour upon hour, as if to make up for all the years of silent letters and frustrating phone calls. At night, they made love with the same urgency, trying to satisfy their deep longing in the sheer passion of the moment, only to discover that such longing grew by what it fed on.

‘You’re quite right, you know,’ she said, coming back to the present. She squeezed his hand. ‘Sometimes the dark things, the sad things, seem more real than the good things. I wonder why. Is black more real than white?’

‘Perhaps we’ve been encouraged to see the dark as more real. Sin-soaked religion with hellfire at the end of it is supposed to concentrate the mind on our follies and failures rather than our joys and successes.’

‘But I don’t even go to church now,’ she protested.

‘You don’t have to. It gets into the bloodstream. You pick it up from other people, from how they behave, what they say. Ach,shureyeneverknowtheday.Justwhenhewasonthepig’sback,shuredidn’tthegood Lordcallhiminandhefelloffthemuckspreader.Deadandburiedan’himthatpleasedhe’djustgothispension.’

Clare laughed. She’d forgotten just how well Andrew could still mimic the local Grange accent. And he’d got the uncompromising tone so right. So often in the days when she’d sat on the settle by the stove listening to the men who visited her grandfather of an evening she’d heard them speak in such a way that even the mildest disagreement seemed impossible. She’d even felt there was real enjoyment in telling the tale of a well-known figure suddenly struck down, someone seen or talked to only a day or two previously. It wasn’t that they weren’t sorry at the loss of a neighbour, but their enthusiasm for telling a story of death and disaster had always puzzled her.

‘It could be good old Calvinism, Clare. Never let yourself be happy or you’ll be struck down. Happiness is not for the likes of us mortals.’

She nodded thoughtfully and then smiled.

‘Are you happy, Andrew?’

‘Yes. I am. Happier than I’ve ever been in all my life,’ he said firmly. ‘And what about you?’ he added more hesitantly.

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘I’m happy too. So happy I get the wobbles,’ she added, laughing, as she moved into his arms.

They lay entwined until they grew too hot in the strong sun.

‘How would it be, my best beloved, if I drove us into the nearest metropolis and bought us an ice cream?’

She laughed as he extended his tongue and licked a large, imaginary cone. What a silly she’d been, having such dark thoughts when life was all they’d ever hoped for. The years of separation were over. The summer lay ahead. Andrew would be in Belfast and so would she. For the next three months, while she was working with Jessie and her husband, Harry, they’d actually be in the very same street. They’d see each other every day. And this time next year, with Finals behind her, they’d be married. They’d be properly together at last, never to part, free to shape their future the way they wanted it to be.

‘Where is the nearest metropolis?’

‘I really don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘But there’s an Antrim map in the car. Fairly ancient, judging by the colour of the cover. But things don’t change that much around here. If we can find somewhere with a church, a chapel and at least three pubs, it’ll be big enough to have a shop with a fridge and Walls choc ices.’

He paused, looked at her very seriously, and then continued.

‘On the other hand, Your Honour, I have to say, on the evidence accumulated over the years, it is an established fact that watering places such as Portrush support a superfluity of establishments wherein the delicacy in question may be consumed, suitably seated, from a silver receptacle.’ He paused for effect. ‘Furthermore, in such establishments, I have it on good report, it is the custom to offer a wide choice of this particular consumable – and you don’t get your fingers sticky either.’

He stood up, pulled her to her feet and into his arms. After a short delay, they set off through the dunes, back to the car.

2

Clare opened her eyes and gazed round the broad terrace of The Lodge. Beside her, Andrew lay in a sun-bleached deckchair, his eyes closed, minute specks of cream emulsion paint dotting the bridge of his nose and the pale triangle of skin revealed by one of his cousin Edward’s oldest shirts.

At that moment, Teddy opened his eyes. He sat up, glanced at his watch, considered Andrew’s recumbent figure and looked down at the stretched-out figure of his sister, Ginny, her cotton shirt tucked up, her long legs already a gleaming, honey gold.

‘Five minutes more and then back to work,’ he announced firmly.

Ginny’s eyes flicked open.

‘Edward,’ she began, a look of outrage on her face. ‘Not only do you waylay us into participating in your grandsummermanoeuvre when we are all supposed to be onholiday, but now you treat us like minions. Well, it won’t do. This minion is on strike.’

Clare laughed aloud as Ginny spread herself out more comfortably, folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes again.

‘I didn’t waylay you,’ he protested. ‘I explained my difficulties to Clare and Andrew when they got back from Ballintoy, and they offered of their own free will.’

‘I’m not here, I’ve gone away,’ Ginny murmured. ‘I’m on holiday on a tropical island, lying on a pure white beach, with blue water lapping the palm trees. Goodness, what’s that?’

A shot shattered the stillness. A cloud of rooks rose flapping and protesting from a clump of trees beyond the paddock. The detonation was rapidly followed by others of diminishing magnitude.

‘It’s only the breadman, Ginny,’ Edward said patiently. ‘His exhaust is exhausted,’ he explained. ‘Mum said to tell you she’d left a list on the kitchen table. And we owe him for the Armagh papers.’

Clare watched Ginny get to her feet, pull his ear and head for the kitchen. How lovely it would be to have a brother you could tease, she thought sadly, someone you could be really fond of, make jokes with, not like her own brother. Since their parents died, she’d tried so hard to be a proper sister, visited him whenever she could, brought him what small presents she could afford, but the older he got the more surly and unsmiling he became.

‘Sure, yer Granda’s done his best, I’ll say that fer him, since the day yer Auntie Polly brought him here,’ Granny Hamilton had said on her last visit to the farm. ‘An’ he admits there’s no improvement at all. William’s just one of those people with no time for anyone but himself.’

The contrast with Edward was almost too painful to bear. Although he was only just nineteen, Edward had already shouldered many of the responsibilities his father’s death had landed on him, but he hadn’t lost his capacity to make them laugh. There was an openness about Edward, a warmth and a good-naturedness she found totally appealing.

‘Well then, Boss, shall we get back to it?’ said Andrew, soberly.

As he got to his feet, he put a hand down to Clare’s cheek and touched it gently.

‘It really is awfully good of you and Clare to help me out like this,’ said Edward sheepishly. ‘It was a far bigger job than I thought. It didn’t look so bad till I got started.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Edward,’ said Clare warmly. ‘I’ll add it to my curriculum vitae. Picture rail painted by the yard, to professional standards. Besides, I like my outfit,’ she added.

She flapped the long sleeves of the smock he’d found for her, the one his mother wore when she painted in oils. Daubed with patches of brilliant colour, it looked like a work of art itself.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind being up that ladder, Clare?’

‘No, truly, Edward. Heights don’t seem to bother me.’

The breadman’s van started up again. Edward paused, listening.

‘Back in a tick,’ he said over his shoulder, as he ran down the steps from the terrace. ‘Must give Ginny a hand. There’s enough bread on Mum’s list to feed the five thousand.’

Andrew dropped his arm lightly round Clare’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No, not a bit,’ she said honestly. ‘I’ve discovered I like painting. I’d never done any before,’ she added, as they walked slowly along the terrace.

The french windows of the large, airy sitting room stood open wide, the stacked furniture beyond looming up like silent, white-clad watchers.

‘It’ll look lovely when it’s finished,’ she said, as they took their brushes from the jar of white spirit and dried them off.

‘Yes, it’s a super room. I’ve always loved it,’ Andrew replied. ‘Aunt Helen knows just where to put things for the best effect and how to make it welcoming. The furniture isn’t nearly as good as the stuff at Drumsollen, but it always looks much better.’

Clare laughed wryly. There was a time she’d known the furniture at Drumsollen only too well. As the housekeeper’s Saturday girl, she’d polished it regularly. She’d cursed the assorted objects that had to be moved from every surface before she could begin, but the smooth, mellow wood was lovely to touch. Even dusting the carving and the delicate inlay work had been a pleasure.

As she went to place her ladder below the next unpainted section of picture rail, she caught sight of Andrew’s face, sad and anxious, his lips pressed together, a sure sign he was uneasy.

‘Will you be going over to Drumsollen this week?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I suppose I should.’

Without looking at her, he prised the lid off a new tin of paint and stirred the contents. She waited patiently, knowing there was more to come.

‘Edward says he got a cool reception when he went to make sure the roof repairs had been done properly,’ he began. ‘If she couldn’t be nice to her caring landlord, she’ll hardly be very keen to see me. Now Grandfather’s gone she doesn’t even have to be civil.’

‘Maybe she’s lonely, Andrew.’

‘Hard to imagine her missing anyone. She must have loved him once, I suppose. But then, showing your feelings wasn’t the done thing in their day, was it? Could we ever get like that, Clare?’

He looked so utterly miserable Clare abandoned her ladder, took the tin of paint out of his hands and put her arms round him.

‘Maybe age takes love away,’ she said, sadly. ‘I don’t know any old, married people who even seem to like each other any more. Granny Hamilton only speaks to Granda now when there’s some bit of everyday business she has to mention, yet she gave up going to America to marry him.’

‘Will you come with me?’ he asked suddenly, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe.

‘Where to?’

‘Drumsollen.’

‘Oh, Andrew, don’t you think that might make it worse? I’m not sure she’s ever forgiven me for tackling her at your Uncle Edward’s funeral.’

To her complete amazement, Andrew threw back his head and laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘That cap you wore,’ he said, still laughing. ‘I’ll never forget it I can still see you standing there, telling her what you thought of her. It must be the only rime in human history the Missus has apologised to anyone. It ought to be recorded in the Annals of the Richardsons,’ he said, pausing and kissing her. ‘Please, Clare. Come with me. She’s going to have to know sooner or later. Let’s get it over with.’

‘All right, I’ll come,’ she said quickly, as she caught sight of Edward and Ginny walking along the terrace towards them.

‘Thank you, love. That’ll help,’ he said, a look of profound relief on his face.

When they emerged from the shadow of the long line of trees beyond the mental hospital, they saw the gates of Drumsollen standing open. As Andrew swung the bonnet of Aunt Helen’s car between the stone pillars, Clare glanced across at the low wall beyond them. In another life, she and Jessie used to park their bicycles there while they nipped across the road, down to their secret sitting place by the small, deeply entrenched stream.

‘Well, here we are,’ said Andrew flatly, as he stopped the car and glanced up at the worn stone frontage of the three-storeyed mansion.

Clare squeezed his arm encouragingly.

‘We’re a right pair, aren’t we? You’d think we were going for an interview.’

To her surprise, he didn’t smile. He didn’t even seem to hear her. She watched him straighten his tie in the driving mirror and brush non-existent hairs from his shoulders before he got out. He was wearing his best trousers, a clean shirt, his college tie and blazer. Apart from Uncle Edward’s funeral, she’d never seen him dressed so formally before.

‘Are my seams straight?’

He studied her legs minutely and nodded before he realised she was trying to make him laugh. He pressed his lips together again and smiled bleakly.

‘She can’t eat us, Andrew. Why are you so bothered?’

‘I don’t know. Honestly, Clare, I don’t know.’

He reached for her hand and they walked up the stone steps towards the heavy front door. It too stood open, the entrance hall in shadow beyond.

‘My goodness,’ Clare said, in a whisper, as they stepped across the threshold, leaving the afternoon sunlight behind.

‘What is it?’

‘Everything,’ she said, stopping dead before the polished table with its long out of date copies of CountryLife and ShootingTimes.

She looked up at the chandelier above her head, its cut-glass drops tinkling minutely in the movement of air from the open door. ‘I’d forgotten how big this hall is. And the way the ancestors stare down at you. I must have got used to it the year I worked here. Don’t you feel it pressing down on you?’

‘I don’t know what I feel,’ he replied, looking round him as if he was hoping to find some way of escape. ‘Let’s go down to the kitchen and tell June we’re here.’

‘Ach, there’s ye’s are, the pair of you.’

Before they’d time to move, they caught the echo of footsteps on the wooden stairs from the kitchen. Breathless from hurrying, June Wiley, once Andrew’s devoted nursemaid, then housekeeper, now the sole remaining pair of hands in this huge house, crossed the threadbare carpet and threw her arms around them both.

‘I was listenin’ fer the car. My, yer both doin’ powerful well,’ she said, looking them up and down. ‘Aren’t ye glad to be home, Andrew? An’ I’m sure Clarey’s glad to see ye back. Ach, Clare dear, I shoulden call you that these days.’

‘Call away, June,’ said Clare quickly, her eyes misting with tears. No one had called her Clarey since Granda Scott died.

‘It’s great to see you, June’ she said, returning the hug. ‘Can we come home with you and visit John and the girls when you finish?’

‘Deed aye. Sure they’re expectin’ ye both. We’ll want to hear all yer news. But I’d best not keep ye’s now. She’s waitin’ fer ye.’

She nodded significantly. Putting an arm round each of them, she walked them across the hall to the foot of the broad, carpeted stairway.

‘Ye’ll see her badly failed, Andrew, since the Senator went. She can hardly walk at all, but don’t let on I told you. I’ll see ye’s later.’

Their feet made no sound on the wide, and shallow stairs, the once-red carpet now faded by the sun that flooded through the tall windows and made patterns on the walls. The air in the broad first-floor corridor struck chill. Clare shivered and felt goose pimples rise on her bare arms. She squeezed Andrew’s hand as they approached the one room in Drumsollen she had never been permitted to enter.

‘It’ll be all right, love,’ she whispered, as they paused at the door.

‘Come in.’

The voice that responded to Andrew’s knock had lost nothing of its imperiousness. Madeline Richardson, The Missus to her one-time servants, her family, friends and acquaintances, sat in a high carved wooden chair that was well padded with cushions. She wore a silk blouse and pearls, a pleated tweed skirt and matching cardigan, heavy stockings and stout walking shoes – just what she would have worn in the long past days when she would go out to instruct the gardeners, or to pick the flowers she always arranged herself for the guest bedrooms.

Now the garments hung on her emaciated body. Her face was gaunt, her cheeks hollow, her rouge an unconvincing area of colour on skin the colour of parchment. Her hands, bony and blue-veined, gripped the arms of her chair. Remaining upright was clearly an effort of will.

‘Andrew, bring that low chair for Clare, over here beside me, if you will,’ she said, before there was any question of kiss, or handshake. ‘What a splendid day for your visit. I’m sure you had a pleasant drive from Caledon,’ she went on, without looking at either of them.

Clare seated herself on the low chair, her eyes almost level with the small undulations in the pleated skirt that marked the position of The Missus’s knees. Not having been invited to sit down, Andrew stood waiting awkwardly.

‘I’ve ordered tea for four thirty. Perhaps, Andrew, you would help Mrs Wiley with the trays. I know you always like to chat to her. And I shall have a word with Clare.’

It was not yet four o’clock. Andrew departed without a word. Whether he felt relieved at having been dismissed, or angry that his grandmother had managed to avoid greeting him, in any way, Clare would have to find out later.

‘Eh bien, Clare, I hear you have been in Paris. Did your studies go well?’

The voice was quite firm, its intentions clear. Perhaps it was to be an interview after all. Clare looked up at the haggard face. There were creases of pale eye shadow on the drooping lids and carefully pencilled eyebrows above the large, over-bright eyes. They watched her closely, waiting.

‘I didn’t go to study. Not directly. But I did learn a great deal. My professor found me a family in Paris who wanted an au pair. Actually, I spent more time in Deauville than in Paris.’

A smile of pleasure, of longing almost, lit up the old woman’s face, filling it with an animation Clare had never seen before.

‘Deauville! Oh, que j’aime Deauville.’

Clare was more taken aback by the softness of her tone than by the sudden move to French. She’d heard her speak the language before, but this was not how it sounded when she’d reprimanded Andrew for speaking to a servant.

Madeline Richardson asked a stream of questions without pausing for any reply: questions about places, particular buildings, a hotel where she’d once stayed, a small café where they’d had second breakfast after swimming. At last, she paused and looked at Clare expectantly.

‘Bien sur, Deauville est très agréable,’ she began. ‘My friend, Marie-Claude, used to go there as a child. She still visits the old woman who looked after her in those days. She says Deauville has changed remarkably little. Many of the places you’ve mentioned, I recognise at once. Some of the hotels have changed their names, but Marie-Claude says they haven’t changed their style. And people still promenade.’

The old woman pressed her hands together and cast her eyes towards the ceiling.

‘Oh, so. We had such fun in Deauville. Of course, we were chaperoned, but there were ways of communicating with young men that everyone knew. If a young man wished to meet you, he would find out where you were staying and send you a bouquet. There were always two cards with a bouquet, one that you handed to your chaperone with some suitable message and another concealed in the flowers. That one you read later.’

She paused and looked at Clare meaningfully, as if to make sure she understood. When Clare smiled broadly, she continued.

‘My cousin and I were taken to the Royal Hotel by my great-aunt. She was a very strict lady, but even she was charmed when we came back from a morning walk and found the room full of flowers.’

She paused, considered, and then went on.

‘My cousin was very beautiful, you see. She also had the advantage of being rich.’

She smiled at Clare, confident she would appreciate the point.

‘I was never beautiful, but I was thought handsome by some. We both had our little adventures in Deauville.’

She paused once more, longer this time, as if she were still absorbed in the world she had known in another century, when she was young and her life opened before her, full of possibility and promise.

‘And will you go again this year, to Deauville, with your French family?’

‘No, I’m staying in Belfast this summer. I have a holiday job working at the gallery with my friend Jessie and her husband. His father has retired now and he’s expanding into new areas. It’s really very interesting.’

‘Ah, I see.’

Clare was not sure what it was she saw, but her next question made it clear.

‘I suppose you’re going to marry Andrew when you get your degree?’

‘Yes, I am.’

Clare was rather pleased at the coolness, the steadiness of her reply, but she was taken completely by surprise by the old woman’s next words.

‘What a pity. You really could do so much better for yourself. I’m sure he loves you, he always was such a loving child, but he’s got no money and no ambition. Love isn’t everything, you know. It wears badly with the rub of the years, especially when there’s no money. It’s women who pay the price for lack of means.’

Clare could hardly believe her ears. The irony was just too much for her. Four years ago, she’d first come to this house simply to earn twelve and sixpence extra a week, because her grandfather’s new landlord had doubled the rent of their house and forge. Now, she was being told by the lady of the house herself that her nephew wasn’t good enough for her.

Something in her words brought Clare up short, however. She wouldn’t listen to any criticism of Andrew, certainly not from this woman who had excluded him from her life as far as possible, but her final words echoed and re-echoed round the elegant room.

It’s women who pay the price for lack of means.

Clare saw herself, a little girl of nine, sitting at Granny Hamilton’s kitchen table. Auntie Polly was going back to Canada and wanted her to go with them, but she wanted to stay behind and live with Granda Scott at the forge.

She couldn’t recall Granny Hamilton’s exact words, but she’d warned her what a hard life it was for a girl, living in the country. Things might improve when bread was off the ration and when the electric came, but, even then, she should think twice before saying no to Canada. She’d need to make up her mind on a clear day, Granny Hamilton had ended.

Clare glanced across the room to the four-poster bed with its draped velvet curtains, a matching velvet-covered couch at its foot. The rich colours might have faded, but the wallpaper and hangings, the curtains and carpets still had great elegance. The furniture was lighter in style and much more delicate than in the big rooms downstairs. Decorated in gold, it reminded her of what she’d seen in the salons of Versailles. Such a contrast with Granny’s stone-floored kitchen, its stove and scrubbed wood table.

Two lives, two women, so very different, yet they were saying the same things about the quality of life available to a woman, unless she marry a man of adequate means.

However much she might want to, Clare couldn’t dismiss the warning. After all, had she not had some experience of her own? Even when there was work available, Granda Scott had been too old to make much money at the forge, so they lived mainly on his pension, a struggle all the time to make ends meet. When her parents died, no one had provided an income for her, as Ginny’s grandfather had, for both Ginny and her mother, when her father died. Her life had been much harder than Jessie’s, for even after Jessie lost her father, there was an uncle who paid for her to go to secretarial college.

It’s women who pay the price for lack of means.

There was something more to it than that, but what it was she’d have to work out for herself.

‘And did you go to Châtelet, or the Opéra, when you were in Paris? What did you see?’

Clare realised she’d fallen silent. The older woman was deploying her well-practised skill in directing the conversation. The subject was being changed, firmly and positively.

‘SwanLake at Châtelet, Serge Lifar at the Opéra.’

As the question had been put to her in French, she replied in French. To Clare’s great surprise, she found herself overcome with compassion for this crippled, old woman who had tried to shape the world the way she wanted it and ended up alone and unloved.

Clare took a deep breath and told her exactly what it was like to see ballet for the first time. To step into a new world known only from books and music on the radio, to mingle with the crowds of Parisians in the theatre bar, watch the rich and famous and enjoy performances she had only dreamed of. She spared no detail, even when the Missus closed her eyes and sat so still Clare thought she must surely be asleep.

But she was not.

‘Remind me, Clare, to make a note before you go,’ she said abruptly, continuing to speak French as the door opened. ‘I have a gift for you. I do not have it here, but I am dispersing my remaining personal possessions. I need to make a note of my intentions, in case we do not meet again,’ she added firmly. ‘A souvenir from my days in Paris and Deauville,’ she ended, dropping her voice to a whisper.

‘Thank you, Mrs Wiley. I’m sure Andrew will appreciate your efforts on his behalf,’ she said, in a voice so far removed from her previous tone that Clare was almost startled.

As June and Andrew collected up small tables from other parts of the room to accommodate the plates of scones and cake for a most sumptuous tea, Clare felt herself go pale, drained by some emotional effort she could neither grasp nor understand. It was all she could do to take the cup June handed her without spilling it. Deciding which of the sandwiches and savouries to begin with was quite beyond her.

But Madeline Richardson was undaunted. She dismissed June Wiley courteously, placed Andrew in charge of the teapot, directed his attention to the brownies made especially for his coming and proceeded to enquire about the health and activities of his uncle and family, his surviving aunt, her husband and daughters, and his great-aunt in Norfolk.

Clare was relieved to find that Andrew seemed perfectly relaxed, able to do justice to June’s tea while giving a proper account of his relatives. On one occasion, he even managed to make his grandmother laugh.

‘Poor old Julia, she got very nervous when they arrived at the Palace and were being lined up to be presented. She was convinced her knickers were going to fall down. So she asked for the loo. They told her to be terribly quick and sent her off with a footman in attendance. She says she walked miles! When they arrive, he throws open the door and ushers her in and there’s the loo, on a raised dais with three steps up. She insists it was at least another fifty yards away.’

When the topic of Andrew’s relatives on his mother’s side had been exhausted, Mrs Richardson moved on to the family at Caledon, eliciting a detailed account of Aunt Helen’s new husband, the progress of Edward’s studies at Trinity and the latest developments in Virginia’s plan for setting up her own riding stables.

Of Andrew’s own activities, his plans, hopes and dreams, nothing whatever was asked. They said their goodbyes just after five and went down to the basement to help June Wiley with the washing up. Madeline Richardson remained in her large room, a sandwich and a glass of milk under a cloth on a side table. Until nine o’clock the next morning, she would be there alone, unable to walk further than her radio, or her commode. She had refused Edward’s offer of a telephone in her room. If she needed a phone, she declared, she would use the one in the study.

When at last they left the house, with June in the back seat, all Clare wanted was Andrew, the comfort of his arms and the relief of tears, but first there was the visit to the Wiley family. She’d been so looking forward to seeing John and the three girls. She couldn’t possibly let them down, but how she was going to get through the next few hours she had no idea whatever.

3

As they bumped their way along the narrow track, Clare noticed the grass growing up the middle became progressively much taller and more luxuriant. The potholes were much deeper too. Edward was trying to avoid the worst of them by swinging the car from side to side. Each time they swung to the left, she was able to look down into the clumps of yellow flag iris blooming on the bank of a deep, narrow river full of swift-flowing brown water. When they swung to the right, fresh green fronds of willow trailed the roof of the car and spilled through Ginny’s open window.

‘Do either of you two young gentlemen have the slightest idea where you’re going?’ Ginny demanded, as the car splashed across a broad wet area, a spring flowing from the steep hedge bank below the willows, a low green cliff, rich with the lush growth of high summer.

‘No, not the slightest,’ said Andrew cheerfully, as he folded up the one-inch map. ‘Terra Incognita, white on the map except for the drawings of sea beasts. You are now on a Richardson’s Mystery Tour. Right here by the oak tree, Edward.’

‘Clare, have you any idea where these idiots might be taking us?’ Ginny went on. ‘I thought we had agreed to a picnic, not a cross-country rally.’

Clare laughed. ‘I might,’ she said slowly, not wanting to spoil the surprise. ‘But I don’t think we came this way last time.’

‘Last time! You mean you survived?’

‘Clare and I almost came here for our first date,’ said Andrew, leaning round from the front passenger seat to enjoy Ginny’s amazement. ‘But there were some difficulties.’

Clare gigged.

‘Difficulties!’ exclaimed Ginny. ‘Putting it mildly, I’d have thought. So, tell me, dear cousin, about your difficulties,’ she went on.

‘Well, I plucked up courage and asked Clare to go for a ride,’ Andrew began agreeably, ‘but she said no, she was sorry, she hadn’t got a horse. Then, next day, she told Jessie she was going for a ride with me, so Jessie gave her directions for a nice, quiet place about ten miles from Drumsollen. But unfortunately I hadn’t got a car.’

Edward began to chuckle, then to shake with laughter. As the car wobbled and bounced even more fiercely than before, Clare lay back in her seat laughing. It wasn’t just the memory of that first date, it was the look on Ginny’s face.

‘Teddy,’ Ginny remonstrated, ‘the only mystery about this tour is that we are still in one piece. Why don’t you let me drive?’

‘I need the practice,’ he gasped, when he could manage to stop laughing.

‘You can say that again.’

‘I need the practice,’ he repeated obligingly.

Ginny groaned and looked at Clare for solidarity, but she was laughing helplessly.

At that precise moment the car ran smoothly forward on to a broad, sandy ridge, green with new grass and dotted with daisies and tufts of purple and white clover. Edward chose the highest point of the site and stopped the car.

‘Now say you’re sorry, sister dear,’ he said triumphantly, waving his hand at the gleaming mass of Lough Neagh, blue and sparkling in the afternoon sun, the minute wavelets at its edge lapping on the fine, white sand only twenty yards away from where the car had come to rest.

They climbed out and stood looking around them, the sun warm on their shoulders and bare arms. To the east, a small wooden jetty, its irregular structure bleached white by sun and rain, projected into the waters of the lake. A couple of rowing boats were moored to a large, orange buoy. At the landward end of the jetty, a curtain of fishing nets hung suspended from an arrangement of poles, the twisted fibres dividing the brilliant sky into small, interlocking squares. All was quiet but for the hum of bees in the clover. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

‘How lovely,’ said Clare, her eyes gleaming with pleasure as she scanned the prospect before her, from the hazy hills of Tyrone to the wooded inlets of the Antrim shore. She’d seen the lough many times from various low hills around the Hamiltons’ farm, as well as from Cannon Hill, but she had never before stood on its shore.

‘Look,’ she said urgently, pointing towards the reedy sandbanks where the river they’d followed fanned out and poured its brown water into the lake only a short distance away.

A heron was fishing in the shallow water. At the sound of their voices it had taken off. They followed its leisurely flight across the sandy beach, shading their eyes as it headed out over the still water, its reflection a perfect mirror image. It landed on the edge of a small, tree-covered outcrop not far from the shore, a dazzling white mark against the dark background, its long bill dipped towards the gleaming water at its feet.

‘In view of your success, I withdraw my comments on your driving skills unreservedly, Teddy,’ Ginny said. ‘But I’m not sure you ought to make a habit of driving Harry’s car cross country,’ she went on more seriously. ‘I don’t think the suspension’s up to it.’

‘Whose car?’ retorted Edward.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Your car, I mean. It was Harry’s for a very long time though, wasn’t it?’

‘I gather he didn’t want to sell it to you,’ said Andrew, turning to Edward as he opened the boot and began handing out the picnic things.

‘No, he said it was a liability. It would only cost me money.’

‘So how did you persuade him to let you have it?’ Clare asked, as she collected a basket and a rug.

She remembered Harry, a wiry, dungareed figure with a tool bag, usually engaged in fixing something. If there was no other transport available at The Lodge, Andrew would collect her from the forge in the battered, blue Austin. Harry’s car had been elderly then, and that was three years ago.

Edward shrugged his shoulders.

‘I said it was all I could afford. I needed to get to the Bishop’s Library in Armagh for some work I’m doing. So he gave it to me on condition I let his brother-in-law do the repairs for me on the cheap.’

Clare smiled to herself. She wasn’t surprised. Harry had known the Richardsons since Edward was old enough to want to carry his nails and stand watching him work.

‘Would you like me to get the Primus going, Edward?’ Clare asked, as he took the box from the boot and stood looking at it doubtfully.

‘Oh, yes please. It always pops at me and goes out.’

‘It’ll be easy today, there’s no wind,’ she said, taking it from him.

‘Clare, it’s not just wind. I can’t even get the wretched thing to work on the kitchen table when there’s a power cut!’

‘My goodness, these smell good. What are they?’ demanded Ginny, who was opening greaseproof packets and laying out sandwiches and cake on faded willow-pattern plates.

‘Brownies,’ said Andrew over his shoulder, as he brought the teapot to Clare. ‘June made them for tea at Drumsollen and slipped us the rest in a doggy bag. The chocolate cake in the tin is hers as well.’

‘Aren’t brownies American?’

‘Mm. Mother got the recipe from an American girl she was at school with in Switzerland. I’ve always loved them.’

‘I didn’t know your mother went to a finishing school,’ Clare said, as she poured boiling water into the teapot.

‘Oh yes, all nice gels went to finishing school. Ask Ginny about it.’

Ginny groaned.

‘You cannot possibly want to know anything about it, Clare.’

‘Yes, I do. Where did you go? What did they teach you?’ she asked, suddenly aware of a whole piece of Ginny’s life she knew nothing about.

‘Ghastly. Unspeakable. Boring. Mum couldn’t afford Switzerland so I went to this decaying mansion in the Wicklow Hills. The only good thing about it was the stables. That’s where I met Conker’s mother. Queen of Tara, by Pegasus, out of Pride of Kilkenny. She was lovely.’

‘But what did you do apart from ride, Ginny?’

‘We learnt to walk properly, how to pick up a handkerchief, how to arrange flowers for a dinner table. Really useful things like how to clean grease spots off silk and freshen your diamond necklace. How to talk to boring people who won’t say anything to help you.’

‘You’re pulling my leg, Ginny,’ said Clare, laughing, as she poured four cups of tea and handed one across to her.

‘No, I’m not. Truly.’

Ginny put down her half-eaten sandwich, sat up straight and folded her hands neatly in her lap. ‘Oh, you live in Scunthorpe, do you? How interesting. I haven’t managed to visit Scunthorpe myself. Do you find the weather pleasant there? I expect it’s just as irritating as it is here, invariably fine when one is at work and horribly wet when one wants to be outdoors …’

Edward helped himself to a sandwich and passed the plate to Ginny, who took it daintily and offered it coyly to Andrew.

‘And did you have a pleasant stay in Caledon, Mr Richardson?’ she continued, her total attention focused upon him. ‘I hope your cousins were entertaining company and showed you something of the neighbourhood. I understand the countryside is rather varied and, of course, Armagh is quite historic, isn’t it?’

She smiled sweetly at him and then scowled.

‘I’d never have stuck it if it hadn’t been for Conker,’ she said with a huge sigh.

‘But you said you met Conker’s mother,’ said Clare, puzzled.

‘Mm. She was in foal. Mum promised if I stuck it out, they’d buy me the foal, providing he or she was all right. But it was ghastly. A complete waste of time if it hadn’t been for her.’

‘But don’t you find it useful, knowing how to freshen up your diamonds?’

‘My dear Clare, I’m so glad you reminded me about that. I had quite forgotten, and mine do need doing. They get so dusty at all these balls I’m obliged to attend.’

Ginny threw out her hands in an elegant gesture. ‘I did also learn how to cut a chocolate cake. I take it you’ve brought the silver cake knife, Teddy.’

Edward dug his hand into his trouser pocket and offered her his penknife. She sighed dramatically and proceeded to cut four equally sized pieces without creating so much as a crumb.

Tea might not have been as sumptuous as June Wiley’s effort at Drumsollen, but there was plenty of it and they all ate heartily. There was much laughter and teasing. Afterwards, Ginny stretched out on the picnic rug while Edward brought his father’s binoculars from the car and trained them on Coney Island. Clare and Andrew took the chance to follow a thread of path that led them through a willow copse and into another small, sandy bay.

They found a tree trunk worn smooth by long immersion in the lake and sat side by side, their arms around each other.

‘I think I’ve fallen in love with your family as well,’ said Clare softly, as they disentangled themselves from a long, passionate kiss.

‘The feeling appears to be mutual,’ Andrew replied. ‘I’ve never known Ginny call Teddy ‘I’ve never known Ginny call Teddy “Teddybear”, or “Bear” in front of anyone except Uncle Edward and Aunty Helen, but she often does in front of you! She certainly doesn’t do it in front of Barney. Have you noticed?’

‘Yes, I have. I asked her about Barney one night when we sat up talking for ages. She said he’s all right, but she can’t get used to him being with her mother all the time. She admitted she’d been really annoyed when they first started going out together, but Edward told her she was being selfish. Anyone who made their mother happy again was a good idea, even if they couldn’t stand him, was what he’d said.’

‘Good old Edward, that’s just like him. You’re fond of him, Clare, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am. If I could choose a brother, I’d choose Edward.’

‘What about me?’

‘No, no use as a brother,’ she said shaking her head vigorously. ‘But there are other possibilities.’

He raised an eyebrow and she laughed. They were silent for a little, watching the sunlight on the water, the dipping and bobbing of wagtails along the shore.

‘What are you thinking, Clare? A penny for your thoughts.’

‘I was wondering if we’d remember today when we’re old, and say to each other, “D’you remember that day we went for a picnic with Ginny and Edward?” And I was thinking of where we might be and what might have happened in the meantime, whether Edward will become an eminent historian, and Ginny breed horses and …’

‘And Clare and Andrew? What about them?’

‘I hadn’t got that far,’ she admitted. ‘But I think I shall always remember today because it feels as if I have a family again. Do you understand, Andrew?’

‘Yes, my love, I do. It’s been a great week and we still have one more evening. Shall we take Ginny and Edward to Cannon Hill and plan our futures up by the obelisk as the light goes?’

‘Oh Andrew, what a lovely idea. It’s going to be such a beautiful clear evening. I’ve only been to Cannon Hill once since the day we went together. I’d so love to go again.’

4

‘Come on, Clare, stop dreaming. This isn’t going to get that essay written,’ she said aloud, as she turned away from her window.

She’d been standing by her table, her coat and scarf still on, her cheeks cold from the crispness of the air, watching the sunny afternoon fade to a pale yellow sunset streaked with wisps of red and purple cloud.

‘There’ll be frost tonight,’ she added, as she bent to light the gas fire.

This late in the year, she sorted her books, tidied her room and made a mug of tea before she even thought of taking her coat off. She stood drinking it as the room grew dimmer.

The summer had melted away so quickly. She could hardly believe how much of term had passed already. She wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry. Sometimes she worried that time moved so fast when she needed all the time there was to get through the work for Finals. At others, she was grateful. She’d become impatient. She’d spent so much of her life, preparing, waiting, hoping. Revision and exams, essays and class tests stretched back through the years to the time when she’d worked on the old washstand in the empty ‘boys’ room’ next to her own small bedroom. She often thought of how she’d come out to breathe the evening air under the canopy of roses at the front door, so reluctant to return to the stuffiness of the small room, the smell of damp and peeling wallpaper, the notes and the dictionaries.

Warming her hands round her mug of tea, her mind reached back again to the pleasures of the summer. It had been such a happy time, despite the fact that Andrew’s new job had been no great joy to him. He said he found it boring rather than demanding. The dreary lodgings the senior partner had thought suitable sounded even more genteel than those where Jessie had once been faced with a list of rules on the back of her bedroom door. But Andrew didn’t seem to mind at all. Nothing could be that bad, he said, when they could laugh about it together and make their plans for the future.

For her own part, the work in the gallery had been a real pleasure. She so enjoyed having beautiful things around her, oil paintings and watercolours, antique glass and silver, fine pieces of furniture, Victorian jewellery and carving. It was lovely to be with Jessie. She’d never lost her capacity to say the outrageous thing. Her only concession was to save her comments for Clare’s ear alone. Sometimes her mimicry of the more self-regarding of their customers was so sharp and so accurate, they had to retire to the stock room until they could manage to stop laughing.

As she checked out invoices or talked to customers, sharing their pleasure, wrapping precious objects in swathes of newspaper, the excitement that bubbled up whenever she thought of Andrew was her greatest joy of all. ‘He isn’t away any more – he’s here, I’ll see him at lunchtime, or this evening, or tomorrow.’ She’d go on with what she was doing, smiling quietly to herself, feeling a wonderful sense of ease and pleasure.

They’d spent every possible moment together until term began. They’d walked the deserted city streets on summer evenings, peering into shop windows, entertaining themselves with the highest of high fashion, cheerfully choosing the furniture, the crockery and the casseroles for their first home, even though they could afford none of it.

When Andrew found he was expected to have a car for the job, they made the best of it. A loan was provided by his bosses, but the rate of repayment left him nearly as short of money as he’d been while doing his articles. But together they could afford petrol and picnic suppers. On the best summer evenings, they drove up into the hills and watched the sky grow pale and the lights begin to flower in the shadowy city below them. When it rained, the elderly Austin provided shelter. ‘Our portable viewing station’, Andrew called it, when they parked at Shaw’s Bridge in drifting mizzle and sat watching the swans pass under the old stone arches that once carried the main road to Dublin.

Jessie and Harry had bought a large, handsome house on the Malone Road with a huge overgrown garden full of rhododendron. Though it had been badly neglected and now needed to be completely redecorated and modernised, Jessie and Harry were thrilled to have it. They had wonderful plans for restoring its elegant, high-ceilinged rooms and making it a family home.

As soon as the gallery closed on Saturday afternoon they’d go off, armed with wallpaper stripper and paintbrushes. They camped in one of the less awful bedrooms, where the only furniture was the huge new bed they’d bought with the first of their wedding present money. At night, they had to go and fetch fish and chips, or cook supper on a Primus stove, because the ancient electrical wiring was so doubtful they daren’t use any of the power points.

When Jessie and Harry slept at the new house, Clare and Andrew had the use of the flat over the gallery, the poky rooms reminding them of the fisherman’s cottage at Ballintoy. For a few brief hours they too could behave as if they were married, cooking a meal together, sharing the chores, planning what they would do if the flat were actually theirs.

‘Come on