Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse. Anne Doughty

Four

      The small, pebble-dashed bungalow overlooking the road from Armagh to Loughgall and the local landmark of Riley’s Rocks had been part of Clare’s life for as long as she could remember. As a child, hand in hand with her mother or father, she’d walked past often on a Sunday afternoon to visit Granda and Granny Scott at the forge. She could still remember how she had gazed up the steep slope and said proudly, ‘That’s where Kate and Charlie Running live, isn’t it?’ She had known the names of all the people who lived in the scattered houses beyond the Mill Row and even the names of those who lived out of sight at the ends of lanes that dipped down under the railway bridge or curved round the low hill on which the Runnings’ bungalow was perched.

      Later, after she had lost both her parents and had come to live with her grandfather, she’d cycled the road each day on her way to school in Armagh. Sometimes, on days as hot as today, she would stop at the rusting iron pump opposite the bungalow, to drink the cold water that came gushing up from deep underground. It certainly gushed up when Jessie was with her. Jessie did nothing if not whole-heartedly and when she put her hand to the pump, Clare was sure to end up with a wet gymslip or splashed shoes.

      Today, on the loveliest of June days, the sky a perfect blue, the heat tempered by a hint of a breeze, Clare parked Andrew’s ancient bicycle on the hedge bank beside the gate her grandfather had made for his old friend, took a cake tin from her front basket and prepared to climb the two flights of steps to his front door.

      All morning she’d looked forward to visiting Charlie, a pleasant walk of about a mile if one counted in the long driveway of Drumsollen, but by the time she’d dealt with checking out their overnight guests, sorted the paperwork from the morning’s deliveries and answered a scatter of telephone enquiries, she knew she was going to be late. While Charlie had such a relaxed attitude to time he often forgot what day it was, nevertheless, she felt sad that events had cut into her time with him.

      Charlie did not suffer from the absent-mindedness that was sometimes a feature of age, nor did he have the habit of looking the other way from what he would prefer not to see. Charlie saw so much he was perpetually preoccupied, thinking through some item he had read or teasing out some puzzle he’d encountered in his formidable reading programme. Given how often his mind was elsewhere, Clare took it as a great compliment that he never forgot when she was coming. Not only did he have the kettle boiling, but he always cleared away enough of his books, papers, maps and sketches to leave them a seat each in his small front room.

      ‘Well now, tell me all your news, Clare. How is that good man of yours? I hear he’s been down in Fermanagh again. Did he prosper, as the saying is?’

      Clare laughed. Not only did Charlie know everyone for miles around, but he knew everything going on in the entire area as well. When she’d last seen him a couple of weeks earlier, the complicated land dispute in Fermanagh involving one of Charles and Andrew’s biggest clients had not yet arisen.

      ‘Well, Charlie, as you well know, Andrew hasn’t much time for litigation or the criminal side, but he’s in his element when it’s land. As long as he has a good dispute, preferably with boundaries, so he can get his feet on the ground, he’s happy. I wish there was more work of that kind,’ she ended sadly.

      ‘Too soon for him to give up being a solicitor and take to farming?’

      ‘’Fraid so. I can’t give him much hope till we’ve a year behind us, or more likely two. It has gone well though, so far, as I’m sure you’ve heard. But we can’t think of buying land till we’ve repaid all the loans for the structural work,’ she admitted honestly. ‘The trouble is, the more we do, the more we find to do. We had to have the gutters cleared and the bad bits replaced and one of the men who’d been up on the roof told us the west chimney is in a bad way. How bad it is we don’t know yet. We’re just keeping our fingers crossed.’

      ‘Aye, I can see that would be a worry. But I did hear you were fully booked in May.’

      ‘Yes indeed,’ she laughed, as he filled the teapot from his electric kettle and took the lid off the cake tin. ‘Full up in May and bookings coming in all the time. The local papers did us proud with that piece about Armagh in apple blossom time. That was your idea. But there’s more good news. Besides visitors, we’ve a couple of surveyors booked for the whole of June. I don’t know how they got to hear of us but more long stays like that would be just great. Steady income and less laundry,’ she added, making a face.

      ‘Surveyors now?’ he nodded, as he laid out the cups and saucers methodically. ‘Would that be a new factory or suchlike?’

      ‘Yes, it’s an American company. Textiles. I think it’s probably synthetics. Steve and Tom aren’t American, they’re English, so they’re not really much interested in the end product. In fact, to be honest, though they’re very friendly, I think they’re only interested in doing the job, watching TV in the evening and getting back home to their wives.’

      ‘So you got the TV then?’ he demanded, raising his shaggy eyebrows.

      ‘I got two actually,’ she confessed, only too aware of Charlie’s thesis that television prevented conversation and was undermining the quality of local visiting. ‘The sixteen inch is in the old smoking room for the use of guests. I told you we’d have to have that. But I was in luck. Apparently fourteen inch ones are out of date already, so I got one cheap and we have that in our sitting-room. Mind you it’s much bulkier than the sixteen inch and it’s a tight squeeze with my desk and the typewriter and the office stuff we need in there as well, but we’ve been so busy we were beginning to think we’d no idea what was going on in the world at all. Not even what’s going on here in Northern Ireland.’

      ‘Not a lot, Clare, not a lot. I can tell you you’re not missing much, though I have to say the unemployment has dropped a bit and there’s a few more houses going up,’ he said, between mouthfuls of cake. ‘There’ll not be much happening unless your man Brookeborough exerts himself. And that’s not very likely. Sure, it’s time he was retiring. The man’s a few years younger than I am but I can’t say the same for his ideas. We need someone with a new perspective and some notion of how to create jobs and a whole different attitude to people forby. Sure, the ship building’s going down the plughole and the linen industry isn’t far behind. Emigration is way up again and there’s desperate poverty, and not just in Belfast and Derry. Even the small farmers are laying off men and bringing in tractors . . .’

      She nodded silently and drank her tea, listening hard as she always did when he started to talk like this, running on from one topic to another. She could never guess what he might bring to her attention next. The progress of the Erne hydroelectric scheme, the fate of Georgian terraces in Central Dublin, the development of an industrial park adjacent to Shannon Airport. Charlie was as committed to the whole island of Ireland as he was to their shared interest in their own small corner.

      Today, he moved quickly away from matters social and economic and began musing on matters political. The manoeuvrings of political parties and the protests of activists was not something Clare had ever found easy to follow. She relied on Andrew to keep her informed and recently there’d been so little time to talk at all. When they did have the opportunity there were far more personal matters to concern them.

      ‘Ach, I think the IRA has just about had it if the truth be told,’ he said suddenly.

      Clare was quite amazed at this unexpected comment. Long years ago, when she was still at school, her grandfather had let slip that Charlie was an old IRA man. It had taken her aback completely, for she could not see how even an ex-IRA man could be so good a friend to a stout Orangeman who never missed marching behind Grange band every Twelfth of July, despite his limp.

      ‘One of these days, they’ll lay down their arms and that’ll be that,’ Charlie went on, as he drained his teacup. ‘They did their best, but circumstances change. It’s economics will change the future of this place, not revolution,’ he said firmly. ‘Though mind you, that doesn’t mean there won’t be trouble. When people