The Teacher at Donegal Bay. Anne Doughty
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head off. How was she expected to know, she’d said, for didn’t Jennifer always suit herself?
It was a sad thing that Edna got so little pleasure from her daughter, but it seemed as if nothing Jenny did ever pleased her. No matter what, her mother still complained. He couldn’t understand it himself. But then, he’d long ago stopped trying to understand Edna. He, too, had tried to please her once, but he hadn’t managed it. Not for very much of their life anyway.
He sighed, picked up his book and read a few lines. He put it down again. He couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept wandering. One minute he was thinking about Jenny and listening for her key in the door, and the next he was puzzling over why Edna had been so very sharp last night when he had only asked a simple question.
He leaned back and fell asleep almost immediately.
He was back in the schoolroom in Ballydrennan. He could smell the turf from the fire which swirled round them when the wind blew down the chimney and hear the squeak of chalk on slate. Above the blackboard was a Union Jack and a map of the world patterned with the brightly coloured red patches of British territory. Morning and afternoon Master McQuillan said prayers. He prayed for the King and the Empire, for rain to plump up the potatoes if it went dry in May, or sunshine for the hay in July, or dry weather for the grain harvest in August and safe journeys for the men going to Scotland to look for work, and God’s blessing on the sick children and widowed women the glen so seldom lacked.
The three Hughes sisters came to school together. He used to see them as he came across the river and stopped to dry his feet on the soft grass by its side. Edna was some years older than himself and already a monitor with duties teaching the younger children. She walked straight-backed, unswerving to the door marked Girls, with Mary and Annie by the hand. They always sat as far away from the boys’ side as she could get them. Boys were dirty and rough, she said when she scolded them for playing Hide and Seek and Tig with them in the lunch break.
He had never taken any notice of girls when he was at school. There were books on a shelf by the master’s desk that could be borrowed during the breaks and he read in every free minute he had. Up at McTaggart’s, clearing out stables and byres, he would go over in his mind the things he had read during the day. It was a long time before he began to notice girls and the first time he saw Edna after he’d left school, she completely ignored him.
Working at the farm, George was often sent down to the forge with some item to be repaired. He and Robert got on well together and sometimes George would suggest a mend that was quicker and more effective than the way Robert had been using for years. When he left school, the smith told him there was work enough for two. He could serve his apprenticeship in the usual way, receiving as payment only his daily food, but if he concentrated on the farm machinery and left Robert free to do the work he most enjoyed, the shoeing of horses and the making of gates, then he would pay him a small weekly wage as well.
The first day at the forge came as a blow to George. Well used to hard work, he set off cheerfully enough only to discover he could barely lift the heavier hammers. When he pulled on the bellows to blow up the fire, nothing much happened and he laboured till the sweat ran down his face before he could even move them. Reluctant to admit such weakness, he exhausted himself. By evening he was so weary he could hardly stand. And that was when Edna appeared. Still wearing the long black skirt and high-necked white blouse she wore for her work, she came to bring them tea and thick buttered slices of bread for their evening meal.
It was a summer evening. He looked up from the dark corner behind the hearth and saw her standing in the doorway, the sunlight pouring round her, catching her fair hair and touching her pale skin. She seemed to glow in the warm radiance of the sunlight and yet remain cool and fresh. He was sure that angels must look just like she did. He gazed across at her and saw her give a sudden sweet smile to her father. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, she shot a glance around the workshop, turned on her heel and went walking up the path to the house, her skirt brushing the daisies in the grass, her back as straight and unswerving as always.
She never spoke to George or acknowledged his presence beyond the barest minimum in the five years he worked with her father. Indeed, if three events had not occurred within the space of as many weeks in the spring of 1930 it is unlikely she would ever have spoken to him again.
The first of those three events George created himself, though he did not know that he had. He had been working in Ballymena as a mechanic with a firm producing traction engines. In April, he finally completed work on the motor car he had bought after it had collided with one of the twisted pine trees on the bog road between Ballymena and Ballymoney. The owner was a wealthy young man who had been happy enough to get rid of it, having barely escaped with his life when the steering column sheared. It had taken George six months to rebuild. On his first free weekend he drove the car home to show to his mother. When she had admired every detail of its construction, stroked the leather of the seats and been driven a few miles up the road and back, George left her to rest and drove down the new road into the valley to visit Robert at the forge.
Robert was delighted to see him. He was well enough, he said, but Lizzie wasn’t so good. The doctor had told Edna that it was only a matter of time before her mother was a complete invalid. On the other hand he’d had great news from Toronto. Annie was engaged to be married and was saving up for her trousseau, whatever that was. It seemed her future husband had a big job with a motor company called Ford and she was going to be well looked after. Her intended had promised to bring her home on a visit, as soon as they were married.
When Edna came down the path to call her father to his supper, she didn’t recognise George at first. But when she did she smiled at him, ran her hand across the leather seat and said how well he was looking. Within a few weeks it was common knowledge that Edna Hughes and George Erwin were walking out. They were married within the year.
George woke twice more in the course of the afternoon. The first time he got slowly to his feet and went to the window hoping that Jennifer might suddenly appear in the Drive or coming up the garden path. The second time he knew he could no longer avoid going upstairs to the bathroom. As he passed his bedroom, he remembered the little pile of new catalogues. Edna always complained about them if she found them in the dining room but she was still in town and besides, Jennifer would take them back up for him when she came.
Halfway down the stairs he realised he’d made a mistake. They were too heavy for him to carry one-handed and he felt so unsteady he had to keep his other hand firmly on the banister. Reluctantly, he let go of all but one, and watched them bounce and slither their way down the stairs ahead of him.
When he got to the bottom, he manoeuvred them one at a time with his toe through the dining-room door and across to his chair by the fire. He looked at them wryly. Today was one of those days when he knew better than to bend over, but only a contortionist could make them into a neat pile with one foot. He sat down gratefully, opened the volume he was carrying and fell asleep again almost immediately. He did not wake when Combine Harvesters thudded softly into the dense pile of the new hearthrug, nor when his wife banged the front door behind her, tramped down the hall and peered round the open door at him on her way to the kitchen.
‘A grate help he is,’ she said as she dropped her carrier bags on the work surface by the sink. ‘He can run off all right to that office of his when the notion takes ’im, but not a hand’s turn does he do at home.’
She pushed off the elegant high-heeled shoes that had punished her corns all day and jerked open the larder door for her pull-ons. They weren’t there. Without her high heels she looked small and stooped. At sixty-six, with a look of sour discontent on her face, she could have been taken for more. The social graces she considered necessary for her public appearances and particularly for her meetings with Maisie McKinstry she habitually cast off with her shoes. Now, in her own kitchen, she made no attempt to check the catalogue of her discontents.
‘Never so much as “Can I help you”. Not that he’s any use anyway and him so slow. All day to peel a potato. What good is that when you’re in a hurry?’
She squinted up at the clock, her eyes narrowing, the lines of her mouth slack. Jennifer would be arriving at half past five. Expecting