the other.
‘I have to confess I was hungry,’ he said later, as he wiped his plate with a piece of bread, but I had not the slightest expectation of anyone giving me such a nice lunch, or indeed any lunch at all. Thank you so much. I do hope there is something I might be able to do in return.’
She laughed and pointed to his notebook. ‘I haven’t got anything written down, but I do have a list in my head,’ she said. ‘Could I share your practice of plain speaking and tell you what is on my list?’
‘I should be delighted,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ve only got two more days here and then I’m due to go to Armagh.’ His voice dropped markedly. ‘I’ll probably get back in the autumn, but you can always write to me, care of my home address if there’s something else I can do. My housekeeper will always know where I am. Now, tell me more.’
*
After lunch a heavy shower of sleet came sweeping down the valley. It cleared as quickly as it had come, but one look at the sky and Hannah knew she’d better warn her visitor that he stood to get thoroughly soaked if he didn’t get off the mountain before rain settled in for the rest of the day.
‘The children might just get home dry from school but with them I can at least change their clothes by the fire,’ she said, looking him up and down as he stood up, put his notebook in his pocket, and nodded.
‘I’d like to have met them, Hannah, but I might manage that another time. This area of Donegal and the area round the city of Armagh is my personal research territory because I have family connections there. I’ve been to both places often enough, but I haven’t yet any contacts for this work in Armagh. Do you know Armagh at all?’
‘No’, she said, sadly. ‘I came straight to Donegal on the Derry boat, so I’ve seen nothing of the rest of Ulster. I’d love to travel, but I haven’t even travelled in Scotland, just from Dundrennan to Gretna Green and then along the coast north and west to a little place called Cairnryan. One of my brothers, Matthew, married into a boat-building family nearby. He gave us a bed for the night and wished us joy on our marriage. It was very good of him for I hadn’t seen him for years. He’s the youngest of the brothers, but still much older than I am,’ she said, as she walked to the door with him and looked up again at the threatening sky.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ve learnt more from you in one morning than I’ve learnt in most of my reading and all my efforts to study reports from the Central Committee. I shall write and tell you what I’ve been able to arrange. Please,’ he said solemnly, ‘will you keep me informed of anything you think I might be able to do. I do hope we’ll meet again.’ He held out his hand as a few large drops of melted sleet dripped from the thatch.
‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything I possibly can to help.’
He raised a hand in salute and moved swiftly down the rocky track, which now glistened with moisture.
*
She moved around the kitchen, clearing the table, bringing out mugs for the children’s expected tea. What an extraordinary thing to happen. Even before she had worked out exactly what needed to be done to resolve the problems of the school and Daniel’s threatened income, help had appeared in the most unlikely guise.
He’d given her the name of an elderly Quaker who had been a solicitor and was still entirely capable of advising her what to say and what to write in order to see if there might be hope for restoring Daniel’s pension. He’d also assured her that reading books, pencils and paper could be provided quite quickly for the school and that she would receive at the same time a list of educational aids, like maps and copybooks, from a Quaker-run organisation in Dublin who would provide them free of charge.
As she refilled the kettle and took up her sewing, she wondered what Patrick and her father would say when they heard her news. Patrick would probably say: ‘Sure, haven’t you the lucky touch an’ always have had,’ while her father would laugh and say: ‘Sure, didn’t you always get what you wanted but never let it spoil you.’ As for Daniel, he might not say very much at all, but she would look forward to seeing the anxiety melt away when she shared with him all that had happened since a smartly dressed stranger had knocked at the door in the middle of the morning.
The children were unlucky. They were almost home when the next heavy shower caught them as they turned off the main track along the lakeside and hurried up the steep, rocky track towards the open door where their mother stood waiting.
‘Come in. Come in,’ she said, looking at their rain-spattered clothes, ‘and take off your wet things.’ She handed each of them a warm towel to dry their faces and hair. ‘Are your shirts wet through?’
‘No, that’s why we ran,’ said Rose, breathlessly, as Hannah looked them over.
‘We have a message for you from Daniel,’ Sam mumbled, his head now enveloped in his towel. ‘He said we were to give it to you right away,’ he added urgently, as he emerged, his damp red hair sticking out in tufts, his face even paler than usual from the final race up the track.
‘Well, you can give it to me as soon as you’ve dried yourselves. Are your shoes wet?’
They agreed that they were, and took them off, placing them to dry well back from the fire so that the leather would not be damaged. The other children at school didn’t have shoes, but Rose and Sam had shoes for wintertime. When the weather got warmer they would be put away and they would pick their steps gingerly down the track until their feet hardened again and they could run without having to look out for every piece of projecting stone.
‘Well then, what about this message?’ she asked, as they took it in turns to comb their damp hair.
She tried not to smile as Sam drew himself up to his full height and repeated exactly what Daniel had asked him to say. Rose then made her equally well-rehearsed addition.
‘Well, then,’ Hannah said, ‘if you have some tea, I’ll go and ask Sophie if you can stay with her till I come back. Could you take a book and read to her? You know she likes that.’ She brought bread and butter to the table and poured their tea, her mind already fully occupied with what they had just said.
Sophie O’Donovan, her elderly neighbour, lived with her son a very short distance away. Jamsey was one of the younger men who had gone to Scotland with Patrick, and Hannah had assured him before he went that she would ‘keep an eye’ on the older woman. As she expected, Sophie was glad to have the prospect of company, though Hannah knew she’d have been even happier if instead of their storybooks, the children had been able to read the newspapers, which came to Sophie by various means. She loved reading the news and the fact that the newspapers were usually weeks, if not months old, troubled her not at all; it was only the smallness of the print that defeated her elderly eyes but had not dimmed her fascination with the doings in the wider world.
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