Sisterly Love - Pauline Cowan

Sisterly Love - Daddy’s Girl, Pauline Cowan

(Image credit: Kerry Buchanan)

I have been writing down stories of my childhood, growing up on a fairly isolated farm, one of eight children, so there was competition for any attention! My father died two weeks before my sixteenth birthday, so these stories have a special place in my heart. Mostly, I am writing them for my grandchildren, so these far off days won’t be forgotten. The farm we lived in was called Altevaddy, and it sits on a hill a mile and a half above Carrickfergus. The landscape was ever changing, but the view of the Lough was a constant that I have missed for the rest of my life, after the farm was sold. This story is about an early morning, when Daddy and I had some rare time with just the two of us.

Carol, my year younger sister, and I were great rivals when we were children. I could always sort of tell that she was Daddy’s favourite over me, although that could well have been due to the fact that she had been very ill as a baby, and had to spend time in hospital. She was born with a hole in her diaphragm, which meant that sometimes, part of her stomach wold slip through, and she would return whatever she had been fed in a very speedy fashion. It’s called projectile vomiting now, but no one had heard of that term, back in the late 1950s.

There’s a photo of her in the old family album, lying on her tummy, looking at the camera. Even in black and white you can tell that her skin is very brown, and she is holding one leg up in the air. We used to point at teh leg and say “Ha-ha Carol’s doing a poo,” and she would go clean daft! you could hardly blame her! Apparently, when she was in hospital, she had spent time under special lamps, which gave her the lovely skin she has had all her life. Look in the album when you have time, it’s so worth it - Carol with one of Mummy’s trademark short fringe bowl cuts, holding the prom that’s got our new baby brother in it, Hugh, I think, Mummy’s favourite. Our family, you see, was split in two halves - John, Lily, Marion and Jim came first, then the parents had a bit of a Mexican standoff until the house at the Red Brae was bought, and Mummy got a home of her own, at last, and four more children - Pauline (that’s me), Carol, Hugh, and Gary. But I’m getting off the point....

The two of us had to sleep in the same bed, a giant construction of a thing you would have needed a ladder to climb into, with a horse hair mattress, and a ton of scratchy blankets. Its awesome height was necessary to accommodate the large size chamberpot, which slept on the lino under the bed, awaiting its rude awakening. You were only supposed to pee in the poe , anything of a brown colour was frowned upon, especially when you were the one who had to perform the emptying ceremony, armed with the slop bucket, and a can of rinsing water. that was one of our Jim’s specialities - to leave a large and very smelly man turd, known as a ‘job’ in the poe under his bed, safe in the knowledge that he would never, ever have to empty it, or to try to get the brown stains off the sides without actually touching - ah the joys of my childhood!

When I got a bit older, I would rather make a late night pre-bedtime trip round the corner to the outside toilet than suffer the indignity of the poe!!

So, Carol and me in our big double bed, sleeping together all through the years of childhood, me annoying Carol by constantly reading in bed, she annoying me with her retained childhood habit of sucking her two middle fingers. When Mummy saw my daughter Aisling doing exactly the same thing she gave me a redding out - there was to be no sucker of fingers in the next generation!

One evening in early summer, Daddy ws going through the rituals of getting read to cut a field of hay. The long blade of the reaper was put across his knees as he sat in the chopping block in the store. I was with him on my own, for some reason, I don’t remember why, but I was happy to have just the three of us - Daddy, me, and a five foot blade. His file followed the line of the inverted V shape of each section as he filed one side, and then the other, each stroke a one way street of exactly the same force and angle. I couldn’t tell you how many sections there were to the blade, I’m guessing around twenty, but his concentration and his stroke never wavered, despite all my childish questions. And the questions revolved around one thing - could I go with him in the morning when he went out to cut the field? I had a special reason for asking - we had no tractor in those days - Daddy was old fashioned, behind the times people thought, the last man to give up the oul horse, and get mechanical. So I knew the special reaping straddle would be up on Billy’s back, not the heaven wide one we used for the cart, but a smaller, narrower one, with a wide space behind, and a large spike that stuck up from its centre. I did not know the purpose of the spike, but I knew what I’d be doing with it! My hands would cling tightly to that spike as I balanced my small body and shorty wee legs on Billy’s broad back, all the way out to the Spring Field, which was the one Daddy planned to cut. “Can I come with you? I promise I’ll be up early, I will, I can help you harness Billy and Bob, Daddy please will you let me come, I’ll be a good helper I will!”

Eventually, he gave in. “If you are up at half past five, ready to go, you can come with me, but I’ll not be wakening you.”

My joy knew no bounds. You know the way you suddenly wake up when you have a special reason to do so? Or maybe I was just uncomfortable in bed, fully clothed, ready for the early start, determined not to miss my chance, or wake my sleeping sister! Today I was going to be Daddy’s girl - because that was how it worked, I had realised. Dadd’s girl was the one who was there, helping him out, pure and simple.

It was a beautiful dawn, dew on the grass, birds singing. Billy and Bob were ready and waiting. Winkers, collars and hems went on as usual, reaping saddle and britchen, right number of links dropped on the chains each side, belly band tied, but not too tight. Ten minutes, and two stood ready, one on either side of the reaper shaft, raring to go. I knew better than to look for my treat at this stage. Billy, the grey was a grand old timer, solid as a rock, but Bob, the bay, a young more showy spirited beast wasn’t the easiest to handle when fresh. My job was to fly ahead, open the gates and stand well clear, for this was man, and those horses, were on a mission!

I don’t ever remember the Spring field being cut any year after that one - it was, literally, a spring field - a watercourse ran right across the top of it, full of frogspawn in the springtime. A particularly wet patch was fenced off, overgrown with years of matted grass. Apparently, I was told, if a horse was ever to set foot on it, they would sink to their belly, and never get out again!

Years later, and a long time after Daddy had died, and Altevaddy was sold, a pipeline was laid right across the country from Islandmagee on the coast, to God knows where, heading north. And guess what - its path actually took I tight across the Spring field, strange items were found, pointing to a much earlier occupation, and do know what they did? The contractors came at an early hour, even earlier than Daddy and me on our reaping trip, and under cover of darkness dug the trench, laid the pipeline, closed it over and moved on, before the archaeologists got wind of it.

But on that beautiful July morning, all those years ago, we knew nothing of all that. The grass was cut for hay without too much trouble, the horses were fresh, I was on the reaper beside my dad, jumping off and on to clear the blade when needed in places where the crop was heavy. Some parts of the field lived up to its name, and were just soggy underfoot, and we cut around them, the awards running in strange patterns around the little hills. And by the time the job was done, the milking cows were gathering at the gate, and the rest of the day’s work was yawning, stretching, and about to begin.

We unhitched the reaper, and left it handy for the next field, and at last it was my turn, my moment had come! A leg up that was more like a throw, and oh joy, I was high up on Billy’s back, 17 hands above the ground!

I felt the sweat of his work against my bare legs, and I loved it! I grabbed the spike, and held on tight. I can tell ou now, I was in seventh heaven! Daddy led the tired team down the sloping path from the Spring field, up along the rough lane at the edge of the Dam Field, through the gate, and back towards the farmyard. Even Bob was well settled, all the steam had gone out of him! And me? Up there on Billy’s wide back, I was the Queen trooping the colour, I was the Lone Ranger on Silver, Tonto on Scout. I was Lester Piggot, and Harvey Smith, why I was even Alexander the Great, my mount the loyal Bucephalus!

I was a small girl on a very big, tired, old, grey cart horse, and I had everything in life I ever wanted that day while my sister Carol slept soundly in her bed, and I was, for that time at least, my Daddy’s girl.