Anne Doughty - Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse

In the September sunshine filtering through the windows on the south aisle, the two rings gleamed just as they had when Clare found them in the dust and fluff under the wooden couch by the stove in the forge house. As the smaller one, once bound with human hair inside the larger one, was slipped on her finger, Clare feared for her mascara once again. She had found the rings a mere fortnight after her grandfather’s death. Then, she had lost both her grandfather and her home and had only a student room to call her own. Now, so much had been given back. Someone to love who loved her as dearly. A home that was theirs, Andrew’s family home, the place he had longed to be for most of his life.

With hands joined and heads bowed for the blessing, they both felt the touch of gold. The rings that had lain in the dust for a hundred years or more had emerged untarnished. Engraved on each of them were the initials EGB. It was a message of hope: in Irish, Erin Go Bragh; in English, Ireland Forever. Or better, the words the minister had used earlier . . . for as long as you both shall live.

Three

The first day of January 1961 was dull and overcast in Armagh. Clare stood at the bedroom window and looked out across the lawn and over the curve of Drumsollen’s own low hill. Even under a grey sky the grass was a vibrant green and shaggy with growth. So far this winter there had been no severe weather and no snow at all, but spring was still a long time away.

After breakfast, Andrew stepped out into the early morning, left crumbs on the bird table and came back in again looking pleased. The wind was light and from the south-east. Echoing a phrase of her grandfather’s, he announced: ‘There’s no cold.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Clare laughed, as she carried their breakfast dishes to the draining board. ‘It’ll be draughty enough by the lake at Castledillon without a cold wind as well,’ she declared, as he shrugged his shoulders into his ancient waxed jacket and took his binoculars from a drawer under the work surface.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind me going, Clare? We were supposed to have a holiday today and you’re left with all the work,’ he added, a hint of anxiety creeping into his voice.

‘Oh Andrew, don’t be silly,’ she responded, giving him a hug, ‘We BOTH work so hard. You must take some time to do the things you want to do. You go and help with the count and get a look at the heronries. Another day when YOU are at work, I’ll go and see what Charlie’s added to his archive and talk local history with him. Fair shares for all, as your mother would say.’

They went upstairs and crossed the dim entrance hall where a small collection of ancestors still stared gloomily around them as if they had mislaid something they needed. A light breeze blew in their faces as Andrew opened the double glass doors into the porch, stepped through and swung the heavy outer door back into its daytime position. He put an arm round her shoulders as they walked across the stone terrace and down the broad sandstone steps to the driveway.

‘I’ll be back by twelve,’ he said, kissing her. ‘If you do start on Seven you can have my paintbrush ready. Don’t do too much while I’m gone.’

‘I promise. I’ll have your lunch ready. You’ll be starving. You always are. It’ll only be a toasted sandwich,’ she warned, as he opened the car door.

She went back indoors and ran upstairs to their bedroom. The kitchen had been warm from the Aga but the unheated bedroom was cold. Not as cold as her old bedroom at the forge house had been in winter but bad enough to make her grateful for the thick wool sweater she pulled out from a deep drawer below the handsome rosewood wardrobe.

She retrieved the hot water bottles from under the bedclothes, made the bed and took the bottles into the adjoining bathroom to empty them. The plasterwork was still drying out and the acres of white tile and gleaming taps made it feel even colder than the bedroom. She did a quick wipe of the hand basin and turned back gratefully into the room once used by The Missus.

Unlike the cold linoleum of the forge house, this room had always had the comfort and pleasure of a carpet but when they moved in they found it was so full of holes it would have to be replaced before they handed it over to the guests they hoped to welcome in April. Given the new bathroom, they had assumed this would be their best room until they realized the state of the carpet. She was still trying to decide what to do about it when their good friend Harry spotted a carpet when he was buying antique furniture in a house scheduled for demolition. He’d tipped the workmen to carry it to his van, brought it up to them and stayed to help them cut up old one up.

Harry said the ‘new’ carpet was probably older than the one they’d just carried to the compost heap. It was full of dust and dirty from the tramp of workmen’s feet but it showed very little signs of wear. They’d spent the best part of a warm, autumn weekend beating it, vacuuming it and sponging it. By the time they’d managed to lay it they were exhausted, but the carpet with its exotic birds and plants transformed the room. It even matched the faded curtains so well they decided they’d not replace them after all.

The bed made, the room tidied, Clare sat down at her dressing-table and began her make-up. For weeks after their brief honeymoon, she had applied only moisturizer, but as day followed day and she spent most of her time sorting, cleaning, or gloss painting, dressed in the oldest of old clothes, she began to feel something was wrong. The day before the surveyor came to estimate for the new central heating system she made up her mind. Cheap jeans from the cut-price shop in Portadown and well-worn shirts that could go in the machine would be fine for the job in hand, but she needed her go-to-work face to keep up spirits. To her surprise, that simple decision steadied her when she was presented with the enormity of the surveyor’s estimate next day.

She smiled to herself as she applied powder with a sable brush just as her dear friend Louise had taught her when they’d first shared an office in Paris. She missed Louise. She missed Paris. She missed that whole other world where she had been mostly happy and certainly successful. But now she and Andrew had each other and a life they could make together. You can’t have everything and she knew she had chosen what she really wanted.

She thought again of that sunlit October morning when the surveyor had presented his estimate. It brought back memories of all the meetings she’d sat through with Robert Lafarge, listening to companies putting forward plans, projects and requests for loans. She had smiled at him, given him coffee in the kitchen and negotiated the price. By suggesting the project be spread over the winter period when the company would be short of work, she’d secured a substantial discount. Andrew laughed when she told him. What delighted him was the thought of the unsuspecting surveyor coming face to face with a woman who had once been party to negotiating sums in seven figures.

By Christmas Eve, three of the five large bedrooms on the first floor had been freshened up or completely redecorated. Apart from the high ceilings and cornices, they’d done all the painting themselves. While Andrew was at work, Clare did as much of the brushwork as she could while supervising the installing of the two new bathrooms. When Andrew got home from work, he’d hang his suit over the bedroom chair, pull on his dungarees and take over her brush while she prepared a meal. Afterwards, they’d share the day’s news over coffee and then go back together to where he’d left off.

‘What do we tackle next?’ he asked, as they put up a holly wreath on the front door and looked forward to a few days holiday from paint.