in soft grey curtains, catching fragments of light from the half-obscured moon. At first, the fine droplets slid over the summer dry grass, then, as the few dark hours of the short night passed, the thin soils became sodden and tiny rivulets began to trickle into the dry stream beds. By the time the sun rose and the sky cleared, the air was full of the splash of brown, peaty water as a dozen streams dashed headlong to the valley floor.
It was not the sudden bustle in the deep-cut watercourses that woke young George Erwin from his dream-filled sleep. It was the steady drip from the thatch and the bright dappling on the ceiling, where the sunlight reflected from the pools of water shimmering in the morning breeze on the swept stone flags outside the cottage. He lay, warm and still, only his eyes moving round the familiar features of his small, bare room.
The tiny window that looked south across the great trench-like hollow of the glen was spattered with raindrops and shadowed by the climbing rose his father had planted for his mother long ago. When he brought his young bride away from the comfortable, slate-roofed house where she had lived with her parents, and taught in the village school, she had come without regret, and made no complaint at the hardness of her new life, but down there, near the sea, where the soil was deep and had been worked for centuries, she’d had a garden and an orchard and he knew that she missed them. To comfort her for the loss of which she never spoke, he sent all the way to Antrim for a pink rose like the ones she had left behind.
Exposed to the strong wind on the valley sides and the thin soils of the crumbling basalt, it had struggled to get its roots down. Seeing its need, his father had collected soil from the lowland stream banks and manure from the farm where he laboured. He’d carried it up on his back and tended the young root with the same warm affection he offered to her and his children. The rose had flourished as their life had flourished. Now, when he was gone, it was his mother’s greatest joy. Apart from her children, all grown and gone away except for himself, there was nothing she loved more dearly than her climbing rose.
He could tell by the strength of the light and the shadow of the window thrown on the whitewashed wall that it was late. Usually by this hour he had milked the cow and searched for the eggs laid in strange places by the hens who had gone broody. Sometimes he would light the fire before he set off for school, or dig potatoes for their supper, or tether the goat in some new place where it had not already eaten all the meagre grass. Today there would be no time to do any of those tasks and he wondered why she had not called him an hour ago.
Just at that moment, she did call. A light, soft voice unmarked by the hardship of her life and the loss of so many she had loved.
‘Georgie. Time ye were up. It’s a grate mornin’.’
He jumped out of bed, poured water from the delph jug into the basin on the washstand, gave his face and hands a perfunctory wipe and pulled on his shirt and trousers. As he opened the door into the big, dark kitchen, he saw his mother was sitting outside. She was already at work. While she sat on one kitchen chair, another close by held her workbox and a pile of napkins. She was turned towards the light, her needle flying, her movements so fast he could hardly follow them. She heard him come, let the damask drop in her lap and reached up to kiss him.
‘How mony more?’ he asked, returning her kiss.
‘Seven forby. But ’tis early yet. He’ll not likely be here a while yet,’ she said, reassuring him. ‘Are ye weary the morn?’ she went on, looking at the droop of his shoulders and eyes filmed with sleep. ‘Ye were way late last night,’ she added gently.
‘No, I’m nae tired at all,’ he said brightly.
She smiled at him and took up her work, knowing now that he was tired. And how would he not be tired with the jobs McTaggart gave him, and him not strong. She felt her eyes mist as she looked at him, twelve years old and trying to do a man’s work with a child’s body. ‘Away now an’ eat a bite, I left it ready for ye,’ she said quickly as she concealed the end of thread at the back of her work and trimmed it off neatly with her fine scissors.
‘Have ye had yourn?’ he asked, his eyes on her hands and the small practised movements she made as she picked up the next napkin and checked that the tracing was in the right place and on the proper side of the fabric.
‘Oh, long since,’ she laughed as she squinted into the light, moistened the white thread and manoeuvred it into the eye of the crewel needle.
He knew she hadn’t eaten, just as she had known that he was tired. But neither felt any shame in their deception. In the important things of their life, their love for the hard but beautiful place in which they lived, their joy in the creatures who shared their bare hillside, and the pleasure of the few books which had survived the struggle to make ends meet, they could be honest. There was between them both friendship and love.
The fire was not lit, though there was turf in the basket and kindling stacked in a corner by the wooden settle. No need of warmth on such a fine summer morning, but without fire there could be no cooking. The empty hearth told him that both the flour sack and the meal barrel were empty. Unless there were some dollars from Nellie in America or a postal order from Glasgow or London, they would remain so. The few shillings from the man who collected the white work would have to go on baker’s bread. And in June and July they had to buy potatoes till the new crop were ready to dig. In all the old stories they read on winter’s nights, July was the ‘hungry month’. As he bit into the dry crust of bread, Georgie wondered why it was only July, for June was just as bad.
Most mornings they had tea, made weak and brewed well over the fire, but he knew that there would be no more tea till after Friday’s cart. He looked at the glass of buttermilk set by his plate and winced. He hated its sour taste and the little globules of fat that settled on your upper lip as you swallowed it. But he knew she would be anxious if he left it untouched and drank instead a glass of spring water from the white enamelled pail in the cupboard.
‘Drink it, Georgie, ah do. ’Tis good for ye. Ye hav tae build yer strength.’
He imagined he heard her voice, even though she was outside, bent over her work, the sunlight catching the grey in her once dark hair. He knew what she was thinking when she said that, too, though the words were never mentioned between them.
Three years ago, for weeks of the summer he had lain side by side with his younger brother in the room now used only when some of his brothers and sisters came to visit. Between the two narrow beds his mother had sat, hour after hour, wringing bits of cloth in a pail of water cold from the stream to wipe their faces and bodies. He had felt sweat pour from his brow and found his limbs ached so much he could hardly manage to use the chamber pot. It had gone on for weeks, sleeping and dreaming and not knowing which was which. He had had nightmares, called out in his sleep and seen them move his brother to another room. Only at the end of it, when he could just manage to stand again, did they tell him that Jamsey had died from the same rheumatic fever from which he was beginning to recover.
It had taken his brother to the churchyard behind the grey stone church at the valley’s mouth. From his place in the schoolroom in the shadow of the church he could see the gleam of the marble stone. The names he could not see, but he had no need, he knew them by heart for they were the history of his family. Despite the rain and wind of these three years, the new letters were still sharp: ‘And Jamsey, aged 7, youngest son of Ellen and the above James Erwin.’
He drank the buttermilk as quickly as he could and wiped his lips on his sleeve. On the scrubbed wooden table next to his plate were two brown eggs in a paper bag. He took them up reluctantly, fetched his satchel and reading book, and went out into the sun.
‘Tell Mary I’m behind wi’ my allocation, I’ve not baked a bite yet. She’ll give ye a piece for school.’
Mary McTaggart was a kind neighbour and had been good to them in many ways. But her husband was a different matter. He had been amiable enough when James Erwin was his tenant and hired labourer, working long hours without overtime and paying his rent without fail. But young George could only manage half a man’s work, and even when the hours after school and at the weekends were enough to pay the rent, it no longer brought it in cash. If there was one thing Harry McTaggart liked,