The Teacher at Donegal Bay. Anne Doughty
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in his life he was his own boss. You couldn’t have that and peace of mind as well.
In this last month things had begun to move. The war years had been profitable for farmers with every bite of food sure of its market and a good price guaranteed, and the three years since had been good too, though labour had to be a problem with wages so low. The farmers were beginning to spend what they had accumulated, confident now that the old hard times were past. First they bought a motor car for themselves, then they put in a bathroom for the family and then they looked at their old-fashioned and worn-out farm machinery. Having a tractor was the first step. He’d be sad himself to see the plough horses go, but the change had begun during the war on the big farms and now he was sure the smaller farmers were beginning to follow on. A tractor could do the work of a couple of men.
Well, it would take a lot of tractors to put Harvey through his seven years. He’d set his heart on being a doctor and the sixth form master at the new school said he had every chance of passing his exams. That had really pleased Edna. In fact, since the move from Ballymena, things had been easier there. She had joined the Church ladies and went out more. Sometimes on a Saturday when he was decorating or fitting up shelves she would bring him a mug of tea. At times she seemed almost content.
‘Did you always come this way when you went to school?’
George glanced down at the small figure skipping along at his side. She never walked unless she was thinking about something and then you would see her move one foot at a time, with a dogged deliberation, her brow deeply furrowed. On her first day at her new primary school down the road she had walked solemnly off with her mother and then come skipping home with a friend. That was typical of Jenny. The surprise in his life, the daughter he never expected, closer to him from her earliest years than the son of whom he had had such hopes.
‘No, usually I went down beside the stream till I got to the road. I only came this way to see Granny McTaggart.’
‘Didn’t you get your shoes wet going down by the stream?’
‘I didn’t wear shoes.’
‘But you can’t wear Wellies for going to school,’ she protested. ‘Did you take your shoes in a shoe bag?’
‘I didn’t have any shoes or Wellies. Lots of children didn’t in those days.’ He looked down again and saw the familiar furrow as she considered this piece of information. She was walking now with her eyes focused on the toes of her boots and the rough surface of the almost overgrown path.
‘Didn’t the stones hurt when you tramped on them?’
‘Sometimes, but your feet got hard and you didn’t notice, mostly.’
At that moment they reached the first of the two streams that crossed their path.
‘How did the stream know where to go under the ground?’
‘It didn’t. It just felt around and wherever it found a hole or a crack, in it went.’
‘Do you think it likes being under there?’
George smiled to himself. She could go on like this for hours. And he would be happy to let her for the workings of her mind never ceased to intrigue him. But it made Edna angry. Always asking questions, and such silly nonsense too. She blamed him for encouraging her.
‘Look, Jenny, you can see Scotland now.’
‘Where?’
He saw her bend down and peer out to sea between two gorse bushes. He laughed at himself, picked her up and felt the soft touch of one arm as she wound it round his neck. She waved the other towards the sea, greeny-blue and flecked with white caps after the passing shower.
‘Is that Scotland?’
‘Yes, love. That’s the Mull of Kintyre.’
‘Mull of Kintyre,’ she repeated solemnly as if she were learning it by heart.
He stood and pointed out the landmarks of his childhood world, and then, still carrying her, strode up and across the stepping stones to the abandoned house where the thatch had fallen in at one end and been overwhelmed by a tangle of roses, a few of which were still in bloom.
‘The door’s not locked, Daddy, but Lottie wouldn’t let me go in. She says there might be a ghost.’
The door had never had a lock. What was there to steal and who was there to steal it? Andy McTaggart had said it would make a storehouse for potatoes, but young Harry, always more practical, said it was too far away and not worth the carrying. So, after his mother died it had stood empty. He had removed her few possessions, put away the few pieces of delph as keepsakes for his brothers and sisters and planted fuchsias in the couple of three-legged pots which had survived.
He pushed open the door. He was surprised that there was no smell of damp, but then the back windows were broken and it was summer, the flagged stone floor was dry and only slightly dusty. Jenny walked in under his arm and stood regarding the empty hearth.
‘What’s that, Daddy?’ she asked, pointing her finger at the metal crane which still stood over the hearth, the chain dangling, untenanted over the absent fire. He saw flames spring up and shadows move and smelt the soda farls fresh from the griddle. It wasn’t all hard. There had been happiness in this place too. He knew now why his mother would not leave when he married in ’31. All the things she had loved were here. She had insisted firmly that she would stay and Mary McTaggart, ten years younger and now widowed herself had backed her up. Edna had said these old people can’t move with the times. It was better to let them alone.
‘Mmm, what’s that, love?’ he said, collecting himself and looking down again at the two bright eyes that regarded him unblinkingly.
‘Have you seen a ghost, Daddy?’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps I have, Jenny. It depends what you think a ghost is. Some people think ghosts are just what we remember inside our heads. I was remembering your Granny Erwin and your aunties and uncles in Scotland, and England, and America. I’ll tell you about them on the way home in the car if you’re a good girl. But we must go now. All right?’
‘All right, Daddy, but can I walk across the stepping stones all by myself?’
He hesitated. There was only a little water over the stones, hardly enough to wet his own shoes, but they were always slippery. She might fall and the boulders were rough in the stream bed. She could hit her head. How could he bear to lose this child, never to see those eyes again watching him, trusting, questioning. He felt tears mist his vision. What you love most you fear to lose. But you must face that fear or you destroy something of what you love. That was what his mother always said.
He nodded shortly and saw her run out of the cottage and across the rough grass. Before he had pulled the door behind him and opened his mouth to say a word of warning she was away and across. Standing on the far bank, a small, self-contained figure, she was waving to him.
‘Come on, Daddy, hurry up, you said it was time to go.’
He followed her cautiously and reached for her hand as she skipped along beside him.
Remember that, George. Let it be a lesson to you, he said silently to himself. Don’t ever try to put her in a cage to keep her safe, he added, as they moved together along the valleyside where the heather murmured and shook with the passionate harvesting of the bees . . .
George woke abruptly, the buzzing still in his ears. Pain oscillated in his chest. Suddenly the room seemed very warm. He leaned back in his chair, wiped beads of perspiration from his brow and thought longingly of the cool air of the glenside in the early morning, of the path he had walked with Jenny in his arms only moments ago in his dream.
The pain began to subside and his breathing became easier. He settled more comfortably in his chair. Lulled by the quiet, the warmth of the fire and the powerful drugs that dilated the arteries of his chest, he dozed off again. As the minutes of the long afternoon clicked past on the broad face of the clock on the mantelpiece, he moved far away in time and place.