smiled, feeling easier, as she peeled the last of the potatoes for supper and went outside for the handful of scallions to chop up and mix in with them when they were cooked and mashed with Aunt Mary’s butter.
‘Come on, Hannah,’ she said to herself, as she waved to Patrick and the children at the far end of the garden. ‘Why don’t you just accept that you wish he didn’t have to go, so you could share your bed every night and have the comfort of his arms?’
*
Supper was later than usual that evening and both children were so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open while they ate. They’d done very well, Patrick insisted. Sure, they were nearly half the way down one side and now they had the whole weekend ahead of them. There was no school and he would have his two helpers for both days. Sure, wasn’t that just great?
Rose and Sam smiled at him wearily, looked pleased and made no protests whatever about going to bed.
‘I don’t think we’ll be far behind them,’ said Patrick, as she came back from tucking them in.
‘You’re right there, love. I don’t think I could thread a needle this evening, never mind hem another napkin.’
‘Aye, ye look tired. Did ye have a busy day?’ he said gently. ‘I wondered where ye were when the house was empty for ye said last night ye’d a batch to finish.’
She looked across at him. His face was still tanned even after the winter, his hair as dark as his eyes that looked straight at her, as they always did, with that gentleness she remembered from their very first meeting when she was only seventeen.
‘I’m going to miss you so much, my love,’ she said, suddenly, surprising herself.
‘An’ sure, d’ye not think I’m goin’ to miss you just as much?’ he replied briskly. ‘It wou’dn’t be much good, wou’d it, if it didn’t matter all that much one way or another?’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘You’re quite right, but I’d love to have you home all the year round.’
‘Aye, well. I’d need no persuadin’, but sure what is there by way of work here? An’ even if we were in Scotland an’ me not an educated man, I’d still have to travel about the place,’ he said, his voice dropping.
‘Being educated is not the be all and end all of a man. There are other things just as important,’ she said firmly.
He just looked at her as he bent down to the hearth to smoor the fire with turves, so it would stay alight all night.
She watched him placing the turves methodically with his habitual look of total concentration, then got to her feet and lit the small oil lamp to take them to bed.
*
In the end she told him the whole story of Daniel and the school and how he wanted to teach his pupils English. Sitting by the fire, on their few remaining evenings, she didn’t even put out her hand for her sewing bag, but sat enjoying a mug of tea with him as she waited to see if he had yet more questions to ask.
‘An’ if he could get his pension back, wou’d he be able to pay an assistant to take the place o’ Marie?’
‘Well, it would be a start, but then the income from the children is very variable,’ she said steadily. ‘You know Rose and Sam have their two pennies each, every week, and the turf’s not a problem, but there are other children who would be less regular and there must be some can only pay at certain times of the year when there’s less flour and meal to buy.’
‘Aye, it depends, doesn’t it?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘An’ if yer man were to put the rent up, sure that has to come first, or the family’s out on the street! Have ye any idea what to do to help him? Sure, you’re far better at these things than I am. I wou’dn’t have any idea what to do.’
His face was a picture of distress and she longed to be able to tell him it was all going to be all right. But she couldn’t do that. He’d been honest and she would try to do the same.
‘Well, I can certainly write letters for him. But I’d need to know who to write to and what to say,’ she began, laughing. ‘It’s not so much my command of Irish as having to use the right legal phrases and so on. I thought I’d ask our friends in Ramelton. Joseph and Catriona know all the professional people, the doctor, and the land steward, and the minister. I’m sure there must be a solicitor they know as well who would be able to tell me how to go about it.’
‘Ye might have to go under the bed for that,’ he said promptly, a small smile flickering across his face. ‘But it might be worth it. Wou’d ye like to go back to the teachin’ yerself, like ye did afore I stole ye away?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it before,’ she confessed. ‘But like I told you Daniel hoped I might be able to help him out.’
‘I know what yer father wou’d say,’ he went on quickly. ‘That money is meant for you, Hannah, to use in any way you want.’ He looked at her, his usually mobile face almost stiff with concentration, his eyes sharply focused on her. ‘Say the word and I’ll dig it out fer you in the morning.’
‘But, Patrick, we might need that money,’ she protested. ‘What would we do if one of the children needed a doctor? Or if you had an accident, heaven forbid, and couldn’t work …’
‘Hannah, you know I’m not a religious man an’ I only go to Mass now an’ again to keep Aunt Mary and the priest happy, but I think you always know what wou’d be the right thing. Just you send up a wee prayer and you’ll not go far wrong. An’ I’ll do all I can to help, for Daniel’s a good man and I know you’re a great teacher yerself … sure, didn’t you teach me an’ those other young fellas who were with me then long years ago at the farm? Some o’ them had never even held a pencil, or a pen, in their lives before.’
To her great distress, Hannah felt tears stream down her face. She wondered if perhaps, in the firelight, they might not show, but what Patrick did next was unambiguous. He came and put his arms round her, took out his large, crumpled handkerchief, wiped away her tears and held her close.
‘Not a word now,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll go and sleep on it and see what the light of day shows us in the mornin’. You do the lamp an’ I’ll see to the fire.’
*
The remaining days flew by. The potatoes were planted, the draper came and collected Hannah’s consignment of napkins and left her a bale of new ones. Before she’d even counted them, she mended the older pair of Patrick’s working trousers and reinforced the new pair he’d bought in Derry on his way home last autumn. She baked wheaten bread and oatcakes that would supplement what food the men could buy on the journey and threaded new shoelaces into well-polished boots.
Patrick himself went round the house looking for jobs that might need doing. He borrowed a ladder and replaced some worn straw rope on the thatch of the roof ridge just to be sure it would not suffer with summer storms, then he took the donkey and cart and collected turf from his piece of bog to replenish the stack by the gable and build it up as high as it would go in case of bad weather.
One morning he got up very early indeed. He needed to walk over to Churchill to look for the carrier he knew there and catch him before he set out on his day’s work. For some years now, Keiran Murphy had brought his wagon over to the
