afternoon, I suddenly put down my trowel, abandoned my bucket of weeds, scrubbed my fingernails at the kitchen sink and set off for the library in Armagh.
The magic of the week was still at work when I got there. I almost burst out laughing when the librarian looked up from her filing in the empty reading room. It was Maureen Purdy. Years ago, at primary school, when we came top of the class in reading, Maureen and I had had the job of going to the library and choosing the weekly box of books for our class.
‘Deirdre Henderson, how are you? When did I last see you?’
The reading room was unusually quiet that afternoon, so Maureen was free to talk to me. We spoke about our schooldays and she filled me in on the lives of school friends I hadn’t heard of for years. Then I told her I’d got interested in the fifth century. By the time I left, she’d made me a list of titles for the early Christian era and suggested I go round and meet the curator of the museum who had made a special study of that period.
When I did track him down in his minute, congested office, I discovered his wife had been at Queen’s with Sandy. I’d been working in London so long I’d almost forgotten what a close and intimate community I’d once been part of. As I watched him raiding his shelves and extracting material from his own files to photocopy for me, I felt quite overwhelmed by his generosity and his willingness to help. This responsiveness, this kindness, was once a familiar part of my experience. It was a part with which I had completely lost touch.
Back at Anacarrig I staggered into the house with my arms full and caught sight of myself in the hall mirror. I was wearing such a broad grin I reckoned I must look like the lucky winner of one of the ‘Biggest Ever Prize Draws’ that kept dropping through Mother’s letterbox despite all my efforts to turn them off.
I laid out all my stuff in the sitting room, books and photocopies and lists of forthcoming publications. I was tempted to sit down and begin reading there and then, but I remembered I’d just dropped my tools and gone off into town, so I went back out into the garden.
The mixed perfumes of the newly opened perennials and the very first rosebuds lay on the warm air. All was quiet. I went on where I’d left off and when I tired I fetched some of my new books and sat under the hawthorns in the last of the sunshine. Soon I was so absorbed, had the phone not rung I’d probably have been there till it was too dark to see the print.
It was Helen, safely back from Oxford and looking forward to our meeting the next evening. As I put the phone down I thought of the calls I’d been putting off. I’m happy enough to talk on the phone once I get started, but I’m often reluctant about actually making them. I brought a chair into the hall and settled down to make up for my delays.
I rang the rectory in Norfolk, spoke to John and passed on Matthew’s news from Maharajpur. Then a marvellous talk with my sister-in-law, Diana, which included her account of the latest episode in the long-running row among the flower ladies over the colour scheme for the patronal festival.
Still smiling, I rang Tanza Road and heard Joan’s familiar voice. She had some really exciting news. Her great-niece Sarah had just been accepted for the Purcell School; the scholarship would give her the best possible opportunity to become the clarinet player she wanted to be. Joan questioned me most carefully and sympathetically about the trials of clearing the house. I felt so grateful I had a friend of her wisdom and experience, one who would actually speak about mortality and its effects upon you instead of merely uttering the conventional platitudes and cliches which made her feel comfortable.
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