She’d certainly have to agree; if that were the case, the prospects looked bleak. She was surprised now that he and Marie had asked her to come and even more surprised that given the overall situation they had both talked with such enthusiasm about all they had done.
She looked closely at his face, now in shadow as the sun sank beyond the ridge of the mountain behind them. The brilliant blue sky remained, but the temperature had dropped suddenly and she shivered.
He took a deep breath and went on.
‘You must be wondering why, in the circumstances, I asked you to come and kept you from your sewing and your work at home. I’ve been asking myself that too,’ he added, laughing wryly. ‘But I have thought long and hard and I still have this feeling that if anyone could see a way forward, it would be my friend Hannah. She’s the girl from Galloway who gave up her comfortable home and left Scotland, left all her family and friends to marry the man she loved and to make a home and a family for him on an Irish mountainside. That’s the kind of miracle that might save the school.’
‘Daniel, I’ll only be a moment or two,’ said Hannah quickly, as she stood up. ‘I’m just going to see what the children are up to now school’s over. I expect Marie will be leaving soon to go to her mother’s.’
She hurried across to the door of the cottage, preoccupied with what he had just said about needing a miracle. She was dazzled by the strong light reflecting off the whitewashed walls, her mind racing as she wondered what she could possibly say to him in reply.
She peered into the shadowy room. Marie was nowhere to be seen, but over by the back window where the light was best, Rose was sitting on a chair reading to her brother. Sam sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at his sister with a solemn face. He was listening to every word.
‘Well, are they reading?’ asked Daniel, as she came and sat down again on his right side – the best position for catching the gleams of light from the lough and an occasional sight of the swans.
‘Yes, they are,’ she replied. ‘And a very good advertisement for your school, they are too,’ she added firmly. ‘I’m quite amazed to see Sam listening so attentively and I did think Rose was reading rather well.’
‘Well, like their mother, they’re bright,’ he said. ‘A pity this country of ours can’t offer them somewhat more in the way of schooling,’ he went on, an unusual note of bitterness creeping into his voice.
‘I owe you some explanations, Hannah,’ he said directly, before she had time to reply. ‘When I told you of my plan to set up a school some years back, I said I had a pension from an estate where I once worked. That wasn’t strictly true. It was my mother who worked for the estate. She was a servant, lovely to look at by all accounts and foolish enough not to resist the advances of a very affluent young man. He was my father, of whom we will not speak,’ he said abruptly, pausing and staring away towards the far horizon.
‘It was his father, and not him, who made some attempt at reparations to my mother’s family when she died in childbirth and I lost what little sight I might ever have had. He provided for me in childhood, sending me first to school and later to live with my aunt, Marie’s grandmother. It was he who set up a pension for my lifetime.’
Hannah realised suddenly that she did know something of Daniel’s background but it had seemed such a long time since he’d told her that his mother had died at his birth and that he’d been brought up by her older sister. She cast her mind back, trying to remember details of what had not seemed all that important at the time.
‘It was that pension and your encouragement that let me set up this school in the first place,’ Daniel continued. ‘Without his provision and your good sense, the children you saw today would have no possibility of betterment. I do have hopes for them and whether my hopes succeed or fail, I’d still like to share them with you as I did in the first place.’
Hannah was about to say she had done very little to help him apart from listen and write a few letters on his behalf, but he did not even pause. Staring away across the rocky path that led down to the lake, he went on quickly, his voice softer.
‘Do you remember the story you told me one of those afternoons when I came to see you, when I first talked about starting the school? You told me of your father’s family being evicted from Strathnaver and the way your father and uncle travelled the length of Scotland on “burn water and the kindness of the poor”.’ He turned towards her and dropped his voice as he quoted her exact words.
For a moment, Hannah couldn’t speak, tears jumping unbidden to her eyes. How could she ever forget that story, one her father had told over and over again?
Daniel was repeating the words ‘burn water and the kindness of the poor’ to himself, as if they had some special significance for him. When he spoke to her again, his tone was firmer.
‘If I can somehow find the resources to go on with the school, I have a project in mind as ambitious as your father’s wanting to own a farm,’ he announced firmly. ‘I want to teach these children English. Or Scotch, as they call it in these parts,’ he added, laughing wryly, ‘so that, whether they go, or stay, they’ll have more possibilities open to them than they have at present.’
‘But how would you do that, Daniel?’ she asked, baffled at the very idea of it.
‘Very easily, my friend, if I still had a school to teach in.’ He hesitated and then went on: ‘If I’ve had the foolishness to deny all knowledge of English, and indeed of having been educated, because of the nationalistic fervour of my youth, then I think it’s time I found some way of reversing that limiting decision.’
Hannah was completely taken aback. He had switched to English, had spoken firmly, and fluently, when she’d never heard him speak anything other than a soft and eloquent Irish. To her amazement, he had moved completely away from the captivating, melodic voice so admired by all who gathered nightly to listen to his stories and poems. He was speaking just as fluently as he spoke in Irish, but his English was more formal in tone and had a much sharper edge than anything she had ever heard him say in Irish. But the real shock for Hannah was that she recognised an accent rarely to be heard in the hills of Donegal.
She thought how the villagers or even her own dear Patrick might react if he heard someone speak in this manner.
‘Sure, he’s gentry at the least and maybe some lord or other. I’ve only heard one man talk like that and he was a lord, some visitor or other from England to Stewart of Ards,’ she imagined her husband saying.
‘You can see there would be a problem for me,’ Daniel went on quickly, before she had recovered herself. ‘My change of approach to the language of our overlords could cause problems with people who have known me for a long time. They might find it hard to accommodate their view of me to my new way of speaking.’
‘But would you feel you had to speak English outside the classroom?’ she asked, now moving to English herself.
It would be a shock indeed for all the friends and neighbours who were just as unaware of this part of Daniel’s history as she had been herself.
To her surprise, he did not answer her question directly. Instead, he began to explain how this state of affairs had come about.
‘My pension comes from the estate of an English lord you’ll probably never have heard of. His family once had land in Donegal, but sold it off at the turn of the last century to concentrate on their English lands. Some of the family are well known for their interest in agriculture and the improvements and innovations they’ve made and written about.
‘Over the years of my life those estates have been divided up between a number of sons. Some flourished, some didn’t. Last week, I had a letter telling me that as the pension I received was discretionary and in the gift of the title