Photograph
by Geraldine Anslow, May 2026
That’s us there on a five-bar gate. Kodachrome bright, sun in our eyes. It’s the 70s and there’s a war on, but not so’s you’d know up here. Perched on different bars: Sean, Trisha, Berna, Peter, Mary, Aine, Bridgeen, Niall. Taken by a very old brownie box camera. I have to go back to London soon and I’m trying to hold on to everything: time, summer, safety, infinite possibilities, who we all are.
It’s the Well Field gate. Can’t mention the Well Field now, the name cuts deep, stabs hearts. The Well Field spills down to a deep valley and then sharp up again to the cliff. The well itself is a small black mirror ringed by green mossy stones, fringed with rushes. We are sent here to pull hemlock before they let the cows in. We are sent here to ‘Look the Cows’. I am not sure what I am looking for but I am looking and I can count. There’s twin lambs; there’s a wee black lamb; the calves tramped the fence wires down on the far side.
The well spring also feeds a pump in McClement’s yard and everyone goes to their pump house for water. We walk through the trees, prime the pump with the milk bottle of water on the floor, fill our metal pails and splosh back to Craigfad. If the water tastes bad, Uncle Sean follows the stream up the mountain and pulls whatever dead thing it is out. We have the electric now; mains water will be a couple more years. The gas lamps are still at the top of the walls; there are mantels for them in the cupboard and Tilley lamps on the dresser and the old generator out in the barn because you never know.
We didn’t know that foot and mouth would steal the Well Field and leave Sean thinking he had let down the generations that turned a waste of rock and gorse into a tidy wee hill farm; we didn’t know it would nearly kill him.
We didn’t know that cancer would snare Mary, Berna and Bridgeen almost all at once. We didn’t know Mary would decide she was going to crush it and did; she looks younger all the time now. We didn’t know it would torture Berna cruelly before it let go. We didn’t know that Bridgeen would be left facing an uncertain, untreatable future and would turn that fate into the brave, beautiful life she always wanted.
No one knew Aine would be my teenage partner in crime and would be carrying those dark secrets to this day. Knowing looks and winks at weddings, funerals and family parties.
Berna already had that wicked, dry sense of humour and now she’s passed it down to her Daniel. We already could see Peter felt lost here on the wild headland. Although he loves to visit still, it wasn’t a soul home for him like it was for me. Trisha still has that same mass of red-bronze curls and I saw her up ahead in the front pews at Aunt Sheila’s funeral last week. We didn’t know Trisha would be carrying such heavy burdens in life. The world is ‘ill-divid’ says Bridgeen.
We gathered in the chapel at Ballycastle, the third family funeral in three months. Sean has become a spiritual seeker, a man of vision and compassion, a dear friend and confidante as well as a cousin. In the photo Niall stares up at us ‘big ones’ feeling left behind; I think he still feels left behind, born too late.
These are the cousins who became as close as siblings and an anchor in my life. Looking round at the funeral breakfast I feel proud I have a place in this room. Blessed beyond measure we share this rollercoaster life. Why are there always so many egg sandwiches at funerals?
I brought my son over here to grow up among them so he could know that this is how you treat people, this is how you are meant to show up, that this is what matters.
Featured image via Unsplash