full of books, as well as those they each had in their satchels. There were proper wooden desks, and chairs, and maps, and pictures, hung around the walls. But in that Scottish school, where she herself had worked for three years as a monitor, the children were often too anxious to speak, even when asked a question during lessons.
‘Silence was golden’ indeed, in that school. If pupils were ever caught talking at any time except ‘playtime’ they would most certainly be caned.
But then the master, Mr McMurray, was a rigorous, older man who had no great love of children. In his youth he had wanted to be a minister but he had failed in his examinations to get enough marks in theology. The mistress was an elderly spinster whose favourite word was ‘discipline’.
The contrast between the two schools was stark indeed. While the parents of children in the small farms around Dundrennan were not particularly well off, their school was entirely free of charge and no child came to school hungry. Here on this mountain, where the meagre soil occurred only in patches, and parents struggled to feed their families, the pupils had little equipment to work with in this makeshift school, but Hannah was now absolutely clear in her mind they had something valuable that had been sadly lacking in Dundrennan.
She felt herself grow thoughtful, as memories of happy times with her sisters when she came home from school continued to flood back. She remembered how they had encouraged her to paint, and embroider, to read aloud to them and write poems. How fortunate she had been.
As they sat together in the warm sunshine enjoying the last of their tea, Hannah decided it would be much more fitting to celebrate all that Marie and Daniel had achieved in this unlikely situation, than regret what might be missing.
She had so many questions she wanted to ask in the remaining minutes of playtime, she hardly knew where to begin, but when Marie came and sat down again after picking up and comforting the littlest girl who had fallen and cut her knee, Hannah told Daniel she had one question, not of an educational nature, that just wouldn’t wait any longer, as she’d been puzzling about it all morning.
‘And what would that be?’ he demanded, turning towards her, his blue eyes twinkling in a way that seemed to suggest he ‘saw’ more than most sighted people.
‘Well, you did ask me to come when I could spare the time,’ she began, looking at him and smiling, ‘but you greeted me this morning before I’d even said a single word. How did you know I was there?’
‘Shall I tell her, Marie, or shall I keep it a secret?’ he asked, leaning towards his niece with a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I was wonderin’ about that myself?’ Marie replied promptly, her large, dark eyes opening wide.
‘Well then, if I have double my usual audience, my vanity will always get the better of my inherent modesty,’ he said, smiling and turning from one to the other and then seeming to rest his gaze on Hannah.
‘It is entirely a process of deduction,’ he began. ‘I heard footsteps and recognised Sam, and Rose, and Mary, as I would always do, when they walk towards me. But, I then observed that Sam was not talking to Rose in the way he usually does. Mary, however, had just finished making a comment that I did not hear properly, but I deduced from her tone that it had not been addressed to either Sam, or Rose, but probably to an older female companion. The most likely candidate was you, Hannah, my dear. You have a way of inspiring confidence in young people. And you are a very good listener. Don’t you agree, Marie?’
‘I do indeed, Uncle Daniel,’ she said warmly. ‘If I knew Hannah was going to come and help you here I could go off happy,’ she went on, turning to Hannah herself. ‘You see, Hannah, I think my Liam is really thinking of America when it comes to the bit, but he knows I don’t want to leave Uncle Daniel and the scholars if there’s no one to help him, so he’s not admitting it,’ she said, shaking her head.
Hannah looked away, touched by the real concern in her eyes. She knew, in that moment, that however much thought she should give to taking this new opportunity being offered to her, some part of her had already decided.
A handful of children in an out-of-the-way place in a remote westerly corner of Ireland, with few prospects of work, or betterment, and no one apart from their ill-provided parents concerned for them. How could she turn her back on them any more than Daniel had, if there was anything she could do to help?
At the end of playtime, when Marie rose to go back to work, Hannah decided she needed some time to herself. She had not intended to stay so long and had brought no piece to eat. If she went back home she could have a bite by the fireside, and come back in time for Daniel’s story, which always ended the school day.
She was concerned that neither Marie nor Daniel had had anything to eat themselves, but when she mentioned it to Daniel he explained that he preferred his piece after playtime, while Marie was at work with the children. Marie, he explained, would have a cooked meal waiting for her at her mother’s house as soon as school ended, so she only brought food when her mother was away staying with one of her sisters.
One thing was very clear to Hannah as she walked back home to Ardtur and stirred up the dying fire – and that was how well Daniel and Marie worked together. She tried to remember how long it was now since they had begun their work. She counted on her fingers. Rose had been six and Sam not quite five. Rose was now nine and Sam just eight, so it was three years ago.
Perhaps she had thought it was longer because the children going to school seemed such a permanent part of their life, like the visits of the draper from Creeslough who collected her needlework, or their walks up to see Patrick’s Aunt Mary, ‘over the hill’ in Drumnalifferny, or her own visits to the much older couple she had met in Ramelton. The wife had once lived in Dundrennan, though that was long before Hannah was born.
It was when Hannah stood up to go and wash her mug and plate that she noticed the two envelopes on the table. One had been delivered by hand and she recognised the familiar brown envelope without needing to open it. It was the quarterly request for rent. The other envelope had a Scottish postmark and was addressed to Mr Patrick McGinley. The writing was just as familiar as the style and shape of the brown envelope had been. She picked it up and looked at it closely, her eyes filling with tears, staring at it as if there was something the envelope itself could tell her. But she already knew what the letter would say. It always said exactly the same thing.
Her father was sending the money for the boat fares to Scotland, a sum that would be repaid in weekly instalments from the wages of the team of labourers through the next six or seven months. Patrick would organise their departure within the week. He would not return until the autumn. She felt lonely already.
She washed her mug and plate, cut some slices of soda bread and wrapped them up for Daniel, then wandered round the room as if she had forgotten something. But it was nothing she could put a name to, just a feeling that she was soon to be alone and would have to make up her own mind what to do next.
Marie was not getting married till Easter, still a few weeks away, but it would help both Marie and Daniel if she could decide what she was going to do before Patrick and his team had to make their way to Derry for the boat.
*
She walked slowly back along the familiar track, savouring the first truly spring-like day of the year. The birds were active, darting around in the bushes, taking off and landing in some random activity she could not explain. Somewhere a blackbird was singing. She was almost sure the hawthorns were greener than they’d been in the morning and the sun was now high in a completely blue sky. How often one could look back up at the mountain and see
