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The Teacher at Donegal Bay
Anne Doughty
‘An engaging story of opportunities lost and refound’ Express Can love help her through the most difficult decisions? When Jenny McKinstry is offered a new post as the Head of English at her Belfast school she’s elated! Yet she can’t help but feel conflicted about the position. With all those around her mounting the pressure to start a family and her husband’s career about to take off, Jenny feels bound by an overwhelming sense of duty. Will she be able to support her husband’s ambitions and land her dream job… Prepare to be spirited away to rural Ireland in this stunning new saga from Anne Doughty. Previously published as A Few Late Roses. Readers LOVE Anne Doughty: ‘I love all the books from this author’ ‘Beautifully written’ ‘Would recommend to everyone’ ‘Fabulous story, couldn't put it down!’ ‘Looking forward to the next one. ’
ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_4475a192-5252-5c05-b8d1-a80558251b12)
The Girl from Galloway
The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay
Last Summer in Ireland
Copyright (#ulink_9bc9880d-1221-5db4-8db0-b3fd8625daa4)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published as A Few Late Roses in 1997
This edition published in Great Britain by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019
Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008328818
Praise for Anne Doughty (#ulink_3cf17bf1-abe8-5c7b-9aaf-daafda0c7e91)
‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’
‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’
‘I have read all of Anne’s books - I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’
‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’
‘A true Irish classic’
‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’
For Peter
Contents
Cover (#u8614ab86-aaf4-5aac-8206-221784888078)
About the Author (#ub2ab347c-daa6-5817-9b3e-87bedb7e8d97)
Also by Anne Doughty (#ulink_2ecf714d-c2ff-5d39-8257-2f13f955f32d)
Title Page (#u02bd8bc7-b02d-577a-9cfa-feffee732328)
Copyright (#u3a5e4a39-4c72-5a5e-8b96-6bd91bc34cb1)
Praise (#ulink_ff746a8c-2acc-592f-b247-8085ae45c434)
Dedication (#u2b6fb094-a659-5608-8f7b-7387307630dd)
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ud7bf8e47-ac43-5dd6-bb30-a024f7697fec)
OCTOBER, 1995
My mother never talked about the past. What happened long ago was over and done with, water under the bridge, as far as she was concerned. She was wrong, of course. You can’t ignore the past. It always remains part of you. It shapes your present and your future and if you do try to ignore it, you could well end up as she did, bitter and disappointed and so out of love with herself and the whole world that she cast a dark shadow all around her.
That was how she nearly ruined my life.
Even in her dying my mother managed one final, bitter act. The morning after she died, my brother remembered the sealed envelope she had deposited with him some years earlier. He assumed it was a copy of her will, the provisions of which she’d quoted so many times we already knew them off by heart. It was indeed her will. But with it was a document he had not expected, a letter of instruction, handwritten in her own firm and well-formed copperplate.
‘Jenny dear, what in the name o’ goodness are we gonna do? Shure I had it all arranged with her own man and the undertaker down the road from the home. Hasn’t she upset the whole applecart?’
I knew he was badly shaken the moment I snatched up the phone in the bedroom where I was already packing. The steady, well-rounded tones that made him such a success with the patients in his Belfast consulting rooms had disappeared. I hadn’t heard Harvey sound like this since we were both children.
‘What d’ye think, Sis?’
I wasn’t surprised he’d had arrangements already made. For two years she’d been bedridden and almost immobile. She’d been at death’s door so many times that the kind-hearted staff at the nursing home became embarrassed about calling us yet once more to the bedside.
‘What exactly does it say, Harvey?’ I asked.
‘“I wish to be interred with my own family in the Hughes apportionment situated in Ballydrennan Churchyard, County Antrim, and not with my deceased husband George Erwin in the churchyard adjacent to Balmoral Presbyterian Church on the Lisburn Road.”’
He read it slowly and precisely, so that I could imagine her penning it, her lips tight, her shoulders squared. The more angry and bitter she was about something, the more formal the language she would use. In a really bad mood, she’d end up sounding like a legal document as she piled up words of sufficient weight and moment to serve her purposes. Consistent to the very end, I thought, as I listened.
‘And there’s a bit about the flowers,’ he added dismissively.
‘Oh, what does she say about flowers?’
‘She wants flowers. She says this idea of asking people to send money to some charity or other is a lot o’ nonsense and quite inappropriate.’
‘She would, wouldn’t she?’ I laughed wryly. ‘Shall we send a pillow of red roses, Harvey? Or one of those big square wreaths that say “Mum”, like the Kray brothers’, when they were let out of prison for their mother’s funeral?’
I heard him expostulate and made an effort to collect myself.
‘Sorry, Harvey, I’m not quite myself at the moment. I just can’t believe she’s gone. I’m all throughother, as she might say. In fact, when you rang I was standing here with one arm as long as the other when I’m supposed to be packing.’
He laughed shortly, but seemed comforted.
‘You’re the boss, Harvey. You backed me when Daddy died,’ I said gently. ‘If you want to go ahead with the Lisburn Road as planned, I’ll not object. We’re the only ones concerned, let’s face it.’
‘You’re shure, Jenny?’ he went on, a trace of relief already audible in his voice.
I stared round the disordered bedroom where two cases sat open and small piles of panties, Y-fronts, shirts and blouses were already lined up. I sat down abruptly, sweat breaking on my forehead.
‘No, no, I’m not sure, Harvey,’ I said weakly. ‘The minute I spoke, I knew it wouldn’t be right. Isn’t it silly? Can’t we even get free of her when she’s dead?’
In different circumstances, a countrywoman wanting to be buried with her family in the place where she was born could be a matter of sentiment. But there was no question of that with our mother. She’d never gone back to Ballydrennan after her father died, not even to visit her sister Mary who lived with her family only a few miles away. What was more, she’d never had a good word to say about the place. No, there was no question of sentiment. Only of spite.
Daddy had done all he could to give her what she wanted while he lived. When he died, he’d left her with a house, a car and a decent income. Now, one last time, she was rejecting him in the most public way possible. But something at the back of my mind told me we had to go through with it.
‘Harvey, I’m sorry, but I think we’ve got to do it. I can’t give you a single good reason why we should, but I have to be honest,’ I confessed. ‘I’m not being much help to you,’ I ended up lamely.
‘Yes, you are, Jenny. Being honest’s the only way. Took me a long time to see you’n Mavis were right about that. But you were. I’m much beholden to you, as they say,’ he added, with a slight, awkward laugh.
‘Maybe there has to be one last time, Harvey,’ I said quickly. ‘But it’ll make a lot of extra work for you.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Jenny,’ he replied easily. ‘Ring me when you’ve got your flight time and I’ll pick you up at Aldergrove.’
Two days later, in the crowded farm kitchen of our only remaining Antrim relatives, I took a large glass of whisky from the roughened hand of one of the McBride cousins and wondered how I could add a good measure of water without attracting attention. Before I could move, a huge figure embraced me.
‘Ach, my wee cousin.’
Jamsey McBride had always seemed large to me. When he’d carried me about on his shoulders as a little girl, he’d been like a great friendly bear, his remarkable physical strength offset by a surprising gentleness of manner.
‘Jamsey!’ I replied as the whisky sloshed in my glass.
‘Ach, shure Jenny, how are ye? Begod, shure I haven’t laid eyes on ye since your poor fader went. God rest his sowl, he was the best atall, the best atall. That mus’ be neer twenty year ago now. Dear aye, ye’ll see some changes in this place since last ye wor here. Aye, changes an’ heartbreak too.’
His eyes misted and I looked down into my glass to give him time to recover. Jamsey’s eldest son had been killed by paramilitaries early in the eighties and he still couldn’t speak of it without distress.
‘Now drink up, woman dear,’ he urged me after a moment. ‘Shure ye’ll be skinned down at the groun’. Yer fader usta say that wee hill the church stan’s on was the caulest place in the nine glens.’
So I drank my whisky as obediently as a child and listened to the ring of his Ulster Scots and tried to keep the tears from springing to my own eyes. No, it was not sorrow. Not tears for my mother or her passing, or even for Jamsey’s son, whom I had barely known, but tears of regret for the world I once knew, the people and places of my childhood.
Standing there in the large modern house that had replaced the low thatched cottage where my aunt and uncle began their married life, I mourned my links with the land and that part of my family who still lived closest to it. For these were people my mother had no time for, people whose hard-working lives she despised, whose successes and failures she treated with indifference or contempt.
A red-faced figure appeared at my elbow, the neck of a bottle of Bushmills aimed at my glass.
