Anne Doughty - Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse

They worked quietly together as the afternoon sun dropped lower and the light faded in the north aisle. June Wiley had always loved flowers and had learnt long ago how to make the best of whatever the gardener’s boy had brought into the big kitchen at Drumsollen. She’d started work there as a kitchen maid, progressed to the parlour and had been instructed in the art of flower arranging by Mrs Richardson herself, a formidable lady known to all the staff as The Missus. It was later that young Mrs Richardson had chosen June as nurse for her son. She was a very different woman from her mother-in-law, warm-hearted and kindly, devoted to her little boy. June herself had gone in fear of The Missus for most of her working life, but she ended up by caring for her right up until her death in the house only eighteen months earlier.

‘Have you seen her dress, Ma?’ Helen asked, as she knelt down and swept up small fragments of foliage and discarded thorns from the step of the font.

‘No, not yet. She said she’d bring it when she came to help me with the food this morning, but she had to leave it behind at Rowentrees. She said she hung it up for the creases to drop out for she didn’t want to risk the iron. I think it has wee beads sewn into it here and there.’

‘I wonder what she’s thinking about today,’ Helen said, half to herself. ‘She used to work at Drumsollen with you, didn’t she, washing dishes and making beds like me at the Charlemont, and now she’s the lady of the house.’

June gave her daughter a thoughtful look. A clever girl she was by all accounts, but she’d always made up stories in her head. That was not something June had much time for, her own life having been hard. She had tried to bring up her three girls so they wouldn’t get ideas that would let them down.

‘Oh, something sensible, I wouldn’t wonder,’ she replied crisply. ‘Oh, she loves him all right, she always has from ever they met, but she’ll not think of him and her till she’s seen to what has to be done. Them visitors ye have at the Charlemont, Mr Lafarge and the French lady and her daughter. She’ll make sure they’re all right before she thinks about her and Andrew. Can’t remember their name.’

‘The girl is Michelle.’

June shook her head. ‘No, I meant the mother, Madame Saint-something. Clare said she was awful good to her when she first went over to France, bought her a suit for her first interview and taught her how to dress like the French do.’

She stopped suddenly, straightened up and laughed, so unexpectedly that Helen nearly dropped her dustpan.

‘What’s the joke?’ she demanded.

‘You should’ve seen her this mornin’,’ her mother said, shaking her head. ‘A pair of jeans I wouldn’t let any of you girls be seen dead in and an old shirt. It must have been Andrew’s before it shrank in the wash. I wonder what the French lady would have thought of that.’

‘It’s Madame St Clair, Ma, and she’s very nice. Speaks beautiful English. And Mr Lafarge is very polite. But I though he was American. He has an American accent.’

‘Oh aye. That’s another story too,’ June replied, lifting the first of the arrangements into place. ‘Clare says he learnt English from the Americans at the end of the war and he has some awful accent. Not the right thing at all in his job. I suppose the French are just as fussy about that sort of thing as they are here. Sure old Mrs Richardson, God rest her, was furious when young Andrew came back from a visit to Brittany with some country accent he’d picked up. Clare told me once that when he wants to make her laugh he asks her would she like ‘fish and chips’.

‘Poisson et pommes frites’

‘Aye, maybe that’s the right way of it, but that’s not how Andrew says it. The Missus always used to talk French to him when he came visitin’ and when he landed back with this accent she was fit to be tied. A Richardson talkin’ like a servant.’

‘But it was only in French, Ma. What did that matter? It was how he spoke English that would matter here, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, I suppose you’re right, but these gentry families are full of things you wouldn’t believe. They’re always lookin’ to see whose watchin’ them. An’ the less money they have, the more they look,’ she added, nodding wisely. ‘Now the Senator was always the same to everyone, high or low, but The Missus, she was a different story. She was always on her high horse about somethin’ and yet she once told our Clare that Andrew wasn’t good enough for her, that she could do better for herself. An’ Clare a wee orphan with her granda a blacksmith.’

‘Even though Andrew was a Richardson and might some day have a title?’ Helen asked, her dark eyes wide and full of curiosity.

‘Yes. She hadn’t a good word for Andrew an’ I’ll never understand it, for you’d travel a long way to meet a nicer young man. She always said he had no go in him. He was clever enough, but he never made the best of himself, even with the posh boarding school in England and the uncle behind him sending him to Cambridge to do Law.’

‘Was Law what he wanted to do?’

June removed a dead leaf from the spread of colour which would grace the font itself and looked at her daughter thoughtfully.

‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ve often wondered about it, but I never had the heart to ask him,’ she went on. ‘When you got your scholarship to go up to Queens, it didn’t matter whether you did Geography, or History, or English. I know your teachers advised you, but it was you decided what you wanted to do. But then we’re only working people. If you’re a Richardson, it’s a different kettle of fish. The family will tell you what to do if you don’t already know what’s expected in the first place. As far as I can see there’s no two ways about it, you just have to do it.’

‘Well, there’s none of the family left, now The Missus is gone. There’s just Andrew and Clare. They can do what they like, can’t they?’ Helen responded cheerfully, her face lighting up with a great beaming smile.

‘Aye well, I suppose you’re right. But you needn’t think, Helen, that falling in love and getting married is all roses. You can’t know what’s up ahead and it may not turn out the way you hope.’

Helen nodded and said nothing. Her mother was always warning her against disappointment. There was no use arguing. She just didn’t seem to see how wonderful it was for Clare and Andrew to have found each other and to make such a marvellous plan for turning Drumsollen into a guest house. They were going to save up and buy back the land that had once made up the estate, then Andrew would give up his job and farm just as he had always wanted. Helen smiled to herself. It was exactly the sort of plan she’d make herself if she found someone she really loved.

‘Time we were gettin’ a move on, Helen,’ June said abruptly, as she turned round and saw her daughter gazing thoughtfully at a handful of rose leaves in the palm of her hand. ‘Yer Da’ll be home soon and no sign of his tea and we’ve both got to go back up to the house tonight to give them a hand.’

‘Right, Ma, what do you want me to carry?’ asked Helen quickly, as she dropped the petals in her pocket. One day, she thought, I’ll marry someone lovely and I’ll have a shower of rose petals as I come out of the church just like they have in films.

‘D’ye not think that neckline is a bit much for Salters Grange?’

Clare, who was dressed only in a low cut strapless bra and a slim petticoat, turned round from the dressing-table and laughed, as her friend Jessie pushed open the door of the bedroom, dropped down on the bed, and kicked off her elegant new shoes.