on open doors and the prospect of a mug of tea while they relayed the day’s news.
‘Oh, Ma, I’m hungry,’ said Sam, rolling his eyes and rubbing his stomach, the moment she had kissed him.
‘You’re always hungry,’ protested his sister, as she turned from hanging up her schoolbag on the lowest of a row of hooks by the door. ‘You had your piece at lunchtime,’ she said practically, looking at him severely. ‘I’m not hungry. At least not very,’ she added honestly, when Hannah in turn looked at her.
‘Well,’ said Hannah, unable to resist Sam’s expressive twists and turns. ‘You could have a piece of the new soda bread. There’s still some jam, but there’s no butter till I go up to Aunt Mary tomorrow,’ she added, as he dropped his schoolbag on the floor.
Sam nodded vigorously. Then, when Rose looked at him meaningfully, he picked it up again, went and hung it on the hook beside Rose’s and sat down at the kitchen table looking hopeful.
‘So what did you learn today?’ Hannah asked, as she poured mugs of tea and brought milk from the cold windowsill at the back of the house. She knew from long experience that Rose would tell her in detail all that had happened at school while Sam would devote himself entirely to the piece of soda bread she was now carving from the circular cake she had made in the morning’s baking.
‘Can I get the jam for you, Ma?’ he asked, as he eyed the sweet-smelling soda bread she put in front of him.
‘Can you reach?’ she asked gently.
‘Oh yes, Ma. Da says I’m growing like a bad weed,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Look,’ he went on, jumping up from the table and standing on tiptoe to open the upper doors of the cupboard. He stretched up, clutched a jam jar firmly in his hand and studied the contents. Hannah saw his look of disappointment and was about to speak, but then he smiled.
He’d seen the jar contained only a small helping of the rich-tasting jam she’d made from the bowls of berries they’d helped her to pick the previous year but now, as he looked at it hungrily, Sam was already reckoning there would be more next season. By September, he would be bigger; he could reach places he’d had to miss last year. He would also be able to get at places where the big boys had got to before him.
He sat down in his place, unscrewed the lid and scraped out every last vestige of the sweet, rich, dark jam and then spread it carefully over his piece of soda bread.
He heard nothing of what Rose had learnt at school that day and didn’t even notice the small envelope she fetched from her schoolbag and handed to his mother.
The April evening was well lengthened from the shorter days of March, but it was still growing dark when Hannah heard Patrick greet a neighbour, as he walked up the last steep slope of his journey home from Tullygobegley, where he’d been helping to reroof a farmhouse that had fared badly in the winter storms.
The children were already asleep. Hannah moved quickly to the open door and held out her arms. She’d only to watch him for those last few yards to know that he was tired out, his shoulders drooping, his arms hanging limp by his sides. He’d admitted to her earlier in the week that it was heavy work, humping slates up a steep roof, exposed to the wind and rain. Now, as he put his arms round her, kissed her and held her close she could see he was quite exhausted.
‘Bad news, astore,’ he began, speaking Irish as he always did when they were alone. ‘The job will finish the end of the week. No money then till yer father sends the passage money for me an’ the other boys,’ he said anxiously.
‘That’s not bad news, my love,’ she said warmly, drawing him over to the fire and closing the door behind them. ‘I’m pleased to hear it. Have you forgotten I’ve four weeks’ pay due to me sometime next week when your man from Creeslough comes for the napkins?’
‘Aye, I had forgot,’ he said, looking up at her, his face pale with fatigue. ‘Sure, what wou’d we do if ye hadn’t hans for anythin’ an’ you never brought up to a rough place like this?’
She saw the anxiety in his face, the dark shadows under his eyes and suddenly became sharply aware that sometime in the next few weeks the letter would come with the passage money. Her heart sank. When the letter came, they would be separated for months.
Parting never got easier. No matter how hard she worked on the piles of napkins, the cooking over the hearth, keeping the floor swept, the clothes clean and mended, when he was here, she knew at the end of the day there would be the warmth and tenderness of the night. It never ceased to amaze her how despite their exhaustion they could still turn to each other’s arms for comfort, an enfolding that quickly turned to passion.
When the letter with the postal order came from her father, her days would be the same as they were now, but there would be neither comfort, nor passion, nor shared laughter, just notepaper in the drawer so she could write a little every day, as he did, for all the long months till the first chill of autumn stripped the yellow leaves from the hawthorns and the birds feasted on the red berries.
‘You must be hungry, love,’ she said quickly, as he released her and sank down heavily in his armchair by the hearth. ‘It’s all ready over a saucepan. Do you want to wash?’
‘Oh yes, indeed I do, for I’ll not bring the dust of that roof to our bed,’ he said firmly.
He stood up again with an effort and went out by the back door to the adjoining outhouse, where he’d set up a wash place for them all with a tin basin on a stand, a jug for water and hooks on a board attached to the wall for the towels.
She heard the splash of the water she’d left ready for him as she poured a glass of buttermilk to go with his meal. She checked that his food was properly hot, carefully lifting the saucepan lid that covered the large dinner plate set over the simmering water below.
She thought then of her sisters who had used this same method of ensuring their father’s meal was hot. He always intended to be in at a certain time, but in this one thing that most reliable of men was unreliable. It was almost a joke between Duncan and his daughters, the way he would assure them he’d be in by such and such a time, and then, invariably, he would find yet one more job he must do before he could possibly think of coming in for his meal.
Hannah picked up her sewing and watched quietly as Patrick ate in silence. He had never spoken much at the table in their time together, but these days, she knew it was not the long shadow of his own father’s strict rule about not talking with food on the table; it was simply tiredness. At least when he went to Dundrennan he would be doing work he enjoyed, and her father, though he expected a lot, would not expect any man to work harder for him than he would expect to work himself.
Patrick cleared his plate, pushed it away from him and crossed himself. ‘That was great,’ he said. ‘It would put heart in ye. Did they have a good day at school the day?’ he asked, as he moved his armchair nearer to hers.
She put her sewing back in its bag and took his hand.
‘They did indeed,’ she replied smiling. ‘Rose got all her spellings right and Sam managed to give out the slates this time without dropping any,’ she said laughing. ‘But there’s more news than that,’ she went on more slowly, suddenly concerned that he was so tired he might be anxious about what she was going to say
