Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse. Anne Doughty

raising an eyebrow.

      ‘Jessie told her you were arriving tomorrow. Slip of the tongue, of course, but we can’t just have you arriving when she’s not expecting you.’

      ‘Of course not,’ she agreed vigorously. ‘I’ll just have to come home to Drumsollen with you.’

      ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ he said, as they turned on to the main road and headed for Armagh.

      The sun had dipped further now, and with the light evening breeze that had sprung up, its golden light rippled through the trees that overhung the road. The first autumn leaves caught its glow and small heaps lying by the roadside swirled upwards in the wind of their passing.

      ‘Let me, Andrew,’ she said, as they drew up at the newly-painted gates of Drumsollen.

      She paused as she waited for him to drive through, looking across the empty road, grateful for the fresh air after a day of sitting in cars and planes. This was where it had all begun, so many years ago. She and Jessie had left their bicycles parked against the wall by the gates while they went down to their secret sitting-place by the little stream on the opposite side of the road. They’d come back up to find Andrew bending over her bicycle. Jessie thought he was letting her tyres down, but Clare had taken one look at him and known that could not possibly be. In fact, he’d been blowing them up again after some boys from the nearby Mill Row had indeed let them down. She closed the gates firmly and got back into the car.

      ‘I can hardly believe it, Andrew. Drumsollen is ours.’

      ‘God bless our mortgaged home,’ he said, grinning, as they rounded the final bend in the drive. Ahead of them stood the faded façade of the handsome house where generations of Richardsons had lived, its windows shuttered, its front door gleaming with fresh paint.

      ‘Andrew! My goodness, what have you done?’ she demanded as he stopped by a large, newly-planted space in front of the house.

      ‘Parterre, I think is the word,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘But we could only manage half. John Wiley found the plan inside one of the old gardening books Grandfather left him, so we poked around to see if we could find the outline. We knew where it ought to be, because June remembered it from before the war. It showed up quite clearly when we started mowing the grass. What d’you think?’

      ‘I think it’s quite lovely,’ she said, running her eye over the dark earth with its rows of bushes. ‘Did you choose the roses?’

      ‘No, not my department,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Given I hadn’t got my favourite gardener at hand, I thought Grandfather’s choice would be more reliable. There was a list with the plan. We got the bushes half-price at the end of August, so I’m afraid there’s not much bloom.’

      ‘There’s more than enough for what I need,’ she said happily, as they parked by the front door and got out together. ‘Have we time to go up to the summerhouse before the light goes, or are you starving?’

      ‘There’s plenty of time if you want to,’ he said easily, drawing her into his arms again. ‘June left me a casserole to heat up. I think by the size of it she guessed you were coming, but she didn’t say a word,’ he added, as he took her hand.

      They crossed the gravel to the steps that led up the low green hill which hid Drumsollen from the main road and climbed in silence. This was where they had come in April after their unexpected meeting. This was where they had agreed their future was to be together after all.

      ‘Little bit of honeysuckle still blooming,’ she said, as they came to the highest point and stood in front of the old summerhouse, which Andrew had restored over a year ago, his first effort to redeem the loss of the home he thought he must sell. They stood together looking out to the far horizon. The sun appeared to be sitting on the furthest of the many ridges of land between here and the distant Atlantic.

      ‘Clare, do you remember once saying to me that you loved this place, that you wanted to be here, but you’d be sad if you never saw anything beyond these little green hills?’ he asked quietly.

      ‘No, I don’t remember saying it, but I’m sure I did,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s true, of course. And you always did pay attention to the really important things I said.’

      ‘Makes up for my other unfortunate characteristics,’ he added promptly.

      She turned towards him and glared at him until he laughed.

      ‘Sorry. I’m not allowed to refer to my less admirable qualities.’

      ‘Oh yes, you can refer to them if you want, but you are not allowed to behave as if they were real.’

      ‘But they feel real,’ he protested. ‘I’m no use with money. I can’t stand sectarianism, or arrogance, or injustice. What use is that in the world we’ve got to live in?’

      ‘Andrew dear, it only needs one of us to be able to do sums. I’ve had a holiday from the things you’ve been living with. I’m not ignorant of them, just out of touch. Does it matter?’

      ‘No, nothing matters except that we are together. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said to spoil your homecoming. Here of all places, where we were so happy last April.’

      Clare looked at him and saw the distress and anxiety in his face. She thought of the little boy who’d been told on his very first day at prep school that he had lost his parents. ‘Andrew, my darling. We both have weaknesses. Look at the way we both got anxious when I was flying. With any luck our weaknesses won’t attack both of us at the same time,’ she began gently, taking his hands in hers. ‘Let’s just say that between us we’ll make one good one.’

      He nodded vigorously and looked away.

      She knew he was near to tears but said nothing. He’d been taught for most of his life to hide his feelings; it would take many a long day for him to be easy even with her.

      They stood for some time holding each other and kissing gently. As the sun finally went down, they stirred in the now chill breeze and noticed that the sky behind them had filled with cloud. A few spots of rain fell and sat on the shoulders of Andrew’s suit until she brushed them off.

      Clare laughed. ‘We’re going to get wet,’ she said cheerfully, as they turned back down the steps to the empty house below.

      ‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s been doing this all day. We’ll be fine. And what does it matter anyway,’ he added, beaming, as he put his arm round her. ‘We’ll be all right, come rain, come shine.’

       Two

      The little grey parish church built by the Molyneux family in the early 1770s for the workers on their estate at Castledillon, and their many tenants in the surrounding farmlands, sits at the highest point of the townland of Salters Grange. Not a particularly high point in effect, for the hills of this part of County Armagh are drumlins, low rounded mounds, their smooth green slopes contoured by moving tongues of ice that reshaped the land long ago, leaving a pattern of well-drained hillsides and damp valley bottoms with streams liable to flooding at any season after the sudden showers carried by the prevailing, moisture-laden west wind from the Atlantic, a mere hundred miles away.

      Despite its modest elevation, the church tower and the thin grey spire above has an outlook that includes most of the six counties of Ulster. From the vantage point of the tower’s battlements, you could scan the surrounding lowlands, take in the shimmering, silver waters of Lough Neagh and, on a clear day, penetrate the misty blue layers of the rugged hills of Tyrone to glimpse the far distant mountains of Donegal.

      From the heavy iron gates that give entrance to the churchyard, the view is more limited, a prospect of fields and orchards, sturdy farmhouses with corrugated iron hay sheds and narrow lanes leading downhill to the Rectory, the forge or the crossroads. Through gaps in the hedgerow, a glint of sun