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‘Raining again,’ Beth muttered grimly as she pulled back the bedroom curtains and saw the grey outlook.

Kathleen called such weather ‘a soft day’, as if she meant it was good for walking in.

Back in England it would’ve been called drizzle, so, thinking that if the Irish braved drizzle so should she, Beth put on walking shoes and raincoat and ventured out.

But down at the harbour she soon found the wind made the rain more like sleet, stinging her face, hands and legs.

There was no pleasure walking in it, so she went home to finish sewing the kitchen curtains.

Sometime ago she’d found a length of yellow gingham along with a Singer sewing machine in the cupboard in the spare room.

There was enough of it to make a curtain to go round the big sink, and hide the pipework and buckets there, along with curtains to replace the washed-out and frayed ones that hung at the two small windows. Today she would finish making them.

She had been in Dunmore now for almost seven months.

Back in November she’d got brave and walked through the rain to Waterford to open a bank account and to pay all that money and the cheque from Mr Boyle in.

She was given a warm welcome by the bank, and no one said anything worrying about her signature, which was a huge relief.

Waterford wasn’t very exciting, and it struck her as oddly ironic that for the first time in her life she had lots of money, but precious little to spend it on.

If it wasn’t for the Blitz raging in England she might very well have been tempted to go back right then, as she was lonely and very bored.

Christmas and New Year had passed uneventfully. She kept hoping someone would knock on her door, but no one came. She guessed that not one of the women she knew here and chatted to would attempt to invite her to their homes because they imagined she’d look down on them.

She could almost laugh at that idea. She was fairly certain their homes would look like a palace compared to her old home in Crimp Street.

She passed the time reading, three books in two days her record so far, and felt grateful that Miranda had kept such a well-stocked library.

It seemed to have rained constantly ever since.

She had worked every day since she was fourteen, and being idle seemed so unnatural.

War work in a factory had taken on a rosy image of camaraderie and fun.

She was even imagining renting a flat back in England, somewhere green and pleasant because there was only so much cleaning and rearranging she could do at Clancy’s Cottage, and time passed so slowly.

Aisling had come to see her a couple of times, but she was nervous and rather uncommunicative, as if thinking Beth was a cut above her, and she had no right to imagine they could be friends.

Beth had been like Aisling once. So she tried to bring Aisling out of her shell by asking about her children and her husband, Donal.

He was a fisherman and it was obvious by Aisling’s threadbare and much-mended clothes and shoes that they were very poor.

But she was proud, and as much as Beth wanted to help, she didn’t wish to offend her.

The miserable weather wasn’t helping. Spring seemed very slow to arrive, and she felt if she could just take some long walks to break up the day she would be happier and less lonely.

Yesterday she had asked Kathleen what Miranda had done with herself all day. Kathleen looked puzzled by the question. ‘She was a lady, they don’t do anything. To be sure, she’d paint or read. That’s all.’

When Beth thought back, Mrs Bradley did nothing much either.

At one time she’d had Mary, a cook and a housekeeper, plus a woman who came in to do the rough work, scrubbing floors and the like, and a gardener.

When Cook and Mrs Hamilton, the housekeeper, left, Beth took on their work too.

So often Beth had gone into the drawing room during the afternoon and found her mistress staring mindlessly out of the window.

At that time she’d wished that just for once she could sit in a comfortable chair and do nothing.

But now she had that endless time, day in, day out, she hated it.

Lying in bed at night, Beth often heard bombers overhead, and sometimes during the day she saw flashes in the sky which she thought were planes being shot down.

But it was nothing like the terrifying sounds she’d heard back in England.

From her bedroom window she could see ships through the murky weather, but she had no idea if they were German or British warships, or maybe cargo ships taking goods to Liverpool or Bristol.

She had been told Ireland was still supplying butter, cheese and meat to England, as it had for donkey’s years.

But there was talk of German submarines around the coast.

She would switch on the wireless sometimes, but it was very crackly and the news was always vague.

The only worthwhile thing she remembered hearing was that land was being offered to Irish people as allotments, with free seed and manure.

She wondered if anyone round here had one and would appreciate an offer of help with it.

The next day it finally stopped raining in the early afternoon, and the sun came out, making Beth seize the moment to go for a walk.

After being cooped up for so long it felt marvellous.

She could see tiny leaf buds on the trees and hedges and the thought that spring was finally on its way made her heart leap with joy.

She went down to the harbour. In the past months she’d spent hours at her bedroom window gazing at the sea, never tiring of its vastness, and the size of the waves breaking on the harbour wall when the wind got up.

Today the sunlight glinting on the white wave caps was beautiful.

She began to think of all the things that had happened in the last years.

In April, Denmark and Norway had fallen to the Germans.

Prime Minister Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill after Holland and Belgium were invaded.

There was the Battle of Britain, and at the end of May the evacuation of Dunkirk had begun.

Soon after that, in June, Paris was captured too.

All that had happened even before the Blitz began in early September, and of course the events which led her to Ireland.

Huge dramas which affected so many nations and people, yet her own life remained so dull.

Now, as she stood looking out to sea, she thought how vast it was, not just reaching the coast of England, but all those countries now taken by the Germans.

Heaven only knew what the people there were going through.

She thought that maybe she should be grateful her life was dull– at least it was safe and comfortable.

The sea had been ferocious sometimes during winter.

She would shiver just to look at it, and planned when it got warmer this year to go down to the beach and paddle.

She wished she could swim, and wondered if you could teach yourself.

While with the Bradleys she’d often walked to the swimming ponds on the heath and watched the people in the mixed pond.

It looked like a wonderful, exhilarating thing to do on a hot day.

‘But that’s for another day, later in the year,’ she murmured out loud.

‘Today you’ll walk as far as that road that leads to Cork.

’ She hadn’t been to Cork yet. Aisling told her there was a bus, but not the times and where to catch it.

Once she’d reached the road to Cork, she just kept on walking, looking at the little cottages.

Some were very neglected; one very bad one had two pigs wallowing in mud in the front garden, and the smell was awful.

But some of the cottages were whitewashed and pretty, their neat front gardens with a few early daffodils out.

She knew from Kathleen and Aisling most people living here had big families and few had modern amenities like bathrooms.

She was hoping to meet someone she could get into conversation with to ask about allotments, and who might like some help.

But the few people on this road flew past on bicycles, small horse-drawn gigs, and a couple of donkey carts.

She guessed she would have to telephone Mr Boyle to ask about the allotments; he seemed to know everything that went on in this part of Ireland.

He’d given her a list of people who were handy to have onside, whether that was for wood or peat for the fire, painting and decorating, electrical work or driving her somewhere.

Beth did not like the smell of burning peat, it clung to the curtains and her clothes, but fortunately, as well as the stack of peat bricks, there was a large supply of dry logs in the shed, along with a few sacks of coal.

Miranda, it seemed, had been a stockpiler.

There was enough sugar and flour in the pantry to last a couple of years, plus a great many tins of peaches, apricots and pineapple.

Kathleen said she’d started buying in extra things when it was first mentioned there might be a war, and this was apparently four years ago.

Kathleen shook her head as she related this to Beth.

‘Ach, she could be a strange woman at times. She counted the pennies, yet sometimes was a spendthrift. She was often mean, then just when you least expected it, she was generous. In all the years I worked for her I could never be sure how she’d react about anything. Most contrary.’

It said a great deal about Kathleen’s honesty that she hadn’t taken any of the hoarded items. Beth was impressed by that, so she gave some of the flour and sugar to her. She’d given some to Aisling too, plus a couple of tins of peaches.