Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  The squire looked at him and presumed the man meant the family carriage to take the squire and his wife and children to the Protestant church the following Sunday, and he walked away, shaking his head. John Philbin—

  The tape began to spool off the reel, and Daniel P. Kelly jumped to his feet.

  “This bastardin’ thing,” said Daniel P. Kelly. “I thought I fixed it.”

  Some of the tape had snarled; painstakingly he wound it back on its reel and finger-spooled the tape forward until the wrinkled, damaged part had been passed—and he pressed PLAY.

  —lOOKED AT EACH OTHER, WONDERING what he was doing. The avenue had two long straights in it, one from the gate to a sharp bend, and the other from the bend straight up to the house. As they watched, John Philbin walked to the bend, turned and looked at the house, and began to walk back, his eyes fixed on the front door. When he came abreast of the two workmen, he seemed very strange in himself, and he had a mutter going on, the words of which they couldn’t properly hear.

  They stepped back, partly because they didn’t yet know whether he bore them a grudge for holding him down during the horsewhipping, but mostly because he was giving off an air that frightened the life outta them. He walked right up to the house, stood looking at it for long seconds, turned on his heel, and went past them. As he did so they heard him say, “It’ll be in tonight. It’ll be in tonight.”

  The men went home, and they told their wives how worried they were, but none of them, husbands or wives, could figure out what John Philbin was talking about. They found out soon enough.

  That night at midnight, the squire and his wife were fast asleep in their beds when one of the maids came knocking on their door so hard they thought the end of the world had come. It had—for one of them—but they didn’t know that yet. The girl shouted, “Look out the window, look out the window!”

  It was a fine moonlit night, and they rushed to the window in their nightgowns and nightcaps. Coming down the avenue, straight toward the house, picking up speed, was a long black carriage, like a hearse. It had two carriage lamps lighting either side on the front, and on the box sat a coachman, his hands held out as though he held the reins on a team of horses. Except—there weren’t any horses. The coachman wore a black hat and black greatcoat, but he didn’t seem to have a face. On and on came the black carriage; it had glass sides to it, and the squire and his wife and the maid could see that there was no one and nothing inside.

  As they watched, the coach came faster and faster toward the house, the wheels rumbling and rattling and flashing in the moonlight. The closer it came to the house, the faster it seemed to travel, and it reached the point where no force on earth could stop it from crashing through the great front doors.

  At the window, the three people watching stiffened themselves for the crash—but it never happened. Not a sound, not a budge. All they felt was a kind of cold air that swept through the entire house.

  Well! They were amazed. Their shoulders sagged back down, and they looked at each other, trying to figure it.

  “Go down,” said the lady to her squire, “and see what all that’s about.”

  She and the maid were whimpering with fear, and the squire didn’t seem in great condition himself. But he went downstairs—it’s a man’s duty to look after his household in times of danger—and he opened the front door. Outside there was nothing to be seen only the trees against the sky under a half-moon the color of a lemon.

  Back upstairs goes the squire, and into his room, where the lady and the maid are still trembling.

  “Go,” he said to the maid, “and bring us brandy.”

  “Sir,” said she, “I don’t mean to disobey you, but if ’tis all the same to you, I won’t. Because—look!”

  She pointed out through the window, and there, same as before, round the bend in the avenue, came the black carriage again. There was the coachman with his black hat and his black greatcoat and his no face, holding his hands out, driving invisible horses. Faster and faster it came; this time the moon shone straight in through the glass sides of the carriage, and the squire and his wife and the maid saw for definite that it was empty.

  Up it came, right to the forecourt of the house, until they thought it was going to crash into the doors. But not a sound was heard, not a shock was felt, only a kind of dank air that swept through the room like a sour fog you’d get over marshy ground.

  “I’ll get the brandy myself,” said the squire, and down the staircase he went. In the hallway, he opened the front door an inch or so and peeped out. Once again he saw nothing only the trees against the sky under a half-moon the color of a lemon.

  The squire climbed the stairs slowly, the brandy on a tray out in front of him, and next thing he heard the servant girl shouting.

  “Sir, come on quick, here ’tis again.”

  In he goes to the room, over to the window, and there’s the coach rolling up the drive toward the house. Only this time it didn’t gallop at the doors; it slowed down and turned in a circle and stopped. The coachman with no face got down offa the box and opened the carriage door. Now this was a vehicle that was oblong like a hearse, but there were seats in it too, for mourners. The coachman saluted toward the house, and someone walked across the forecourt, as if from the front doors, and got into the carriage.

  In the bedroom above, the people looking down couldn’t first make out whether ’twas a man or a woman, and then they thought it was someone the spit and image of the squire himself. But how could that be, since he was there in front of their eyes? The coachman closed the door, and the carriage drove away.

  All three of them had a drop of brandy—including the maid, and that was rare for a servant to be given a drink by those people in that house, they kept everybody in their places.

  The following day, as you can imagine, the ghost carriage was the talk of the place. Nobody else had seen it but everybody heard about it, and—

  The tape broke this time, and the take-up spool spun round madly while the left-hand reel stopped with a grunt. Daniel P. Kelly dove on it, shouting, “Scutter!”

  For many feverish minutes he tried to fix it; he used little pieces of adhesive tape, but each flew away when he started the machine again. Finally he gave up.

  “But what happened?” said Ronan in some dismay.

  “The machine broke the tape.”

  “No—in the story?”

  “Oh. The person who got into the coach was the squire himself, and a week later, at midnight, he fell down the stairs and died.”

  “And that’s the story of the Ballycarron Carriage?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know if I have the end of it right, I might be wrong about it.”

  “Does it still happen?”

  “It does. I think the tape gets wound too tight.”

  “The coach, I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah. Whenever one of that family is going to die, no matter where they are in the world, they see the coach a week ahead of the death, and they see themselves getting into it. John Philbin’s curse.”

  “Have there been any reports of it?”

  “There was a case of it over in Manorhamilton, last year—the coach galloped up the road, several people saw it, and the following week a woman of that blood was killed in a car crash coming home after a game of cards.”

  Ronan furrowed a brow. “But—don’t people get alarmed?”

  “I suppose they do. The drink they had on them when they saw it—that was a bit of a cushion, I suppose.”

  Ronan fought off a feeling of dissatisfaction—not just at Daniel P. Kelly and his up-to-the minute tape recorders, but at his own scheme of “last sightings.” Clearly his system was not working. Would he have to settle for the compensation of merely visiting the locations of the tales he had heard in person? Hoping somehow the Storyteller would return there at that moment? Yet meeting the MacKennas, walking the Yellow Ford site, even the distressing near-miss at the Boyne—these had already buoyed him up, and he felt cer
tain that if he traveled in hope, he would somehow arrive at the man himself.

  As a bonus, his mood had improved beyond recognition; since he started on his walk, he felt lighter and less aggrieved, though still without a wish to return to any base.

  With his spirits climbing, he decided that, for the next few months—at least through the spring and summer—he would behave as much as possible like the Storyteller. He would visit places he knew the old man had seen—the story locations and the clues would guide him; night by night, he would ask for bed and board in return for tales told; and day by day he would intensify his inquiries for any sightings.

  This plan cheered him greatly—but a cloud came down; what if he was too late? Twice, now, he had been told that the Storyteller’s health was poor; a bronchial condition (or, as Mrs. MacKenna called it, “bronickle”) would hardly improve on the road; damp nights and cold dawns chilled weak chests. Could he set himself to imagine never reaching the old man? What if Death got there first? No: too awful an idea—but its fire forged in him a stronger, if still inexplicable, link.

  Next day, Ronan stood on a hillside outside Ballyjamesduff and looked down on a lake. On the far shore, the windows of a white house sparkled; this would be his first attempt at the new way of traveling. He descended the hill, skirted the lake by the tall reeds, then climbed a slope to the front door. A wooden plaque read “Two Horse House.”

  “Hallo,” he rehearsed to himself, “I’m a student—I’m traveling, learning the history of Ireland. I wonder—could you give me a bed for the night?”

  The young man who answered the knock seemed not much older than Ronan. He disappeared and returned, followed by an unusually tall woman wearing a bandanna round her hair.

  “Yes?”

  Ronan spoke the phrase that he hoped would become his ticket: “I can tell you some stories of Ireland in return for accommodation.” The woman surveyed him and opened the door wide.

  “Come in. We’re too trying to learn the history of Ireland.”

  The farmhouse had been bought by a Dutch family two years previously, and the interior had been restored to its original feeling—the hearthstone, the open fire, the ropeseated chairs.

  “We called it ‘Two Horse House,’” said the tall woman, “because of what happened here. You are familiar with the Penile Laws?” Ronan wanted to correct the pronunciation but dared not. “It was owned by a man called John Joe Brady, and he came from a generally strong family. But a man called Cruickshank made Mr. John Joe Brady from this house sell him his two best horses for ten pounds, as you had to do under the law, ya? So Mr. John Joe Brady went to the Protestant bishop in Cavan town and said he wanted to become the Protestant. He was made into the Protestant on the spot, and then he went back to Mr. Cruickshank and said he wanted his two horses back—but once he recovered his two horses, the same Mr. John Joe Brady was never in his life seen in the Protestant church. Is that not good? We are very interested, because like so many Dutch we are Protestants.”

  Ronan asked permission to write it down.

  In Two Horse House, Ronan made his first true stab at storytelling. He retold the Architect of Newgrange; the next night, he did the Book of Kells; the third night brought Strongbow and Eva. In the telling he tried no more than to repeat the Storyteller’s versions, which he had memorized like an actor. More than once he felt an urge brimming to tell more “history”—facts he had learned in school or from Professor Ryle. Uncertainty kept him to the versions he knew, and the Dutch family loved every moment.

  The tall woman had an even taller husband and a tall daughter; together they listened rapt by the fire, and Ronan felt a return of that first power he had known in school when telling of Brian Boru. He also quaked a little at his daring at emulating the old man. To get over that fear, he told them about the Storyteller and his props and his techniques and his walking feats. And so the days he spent in the white house enriched and enlarged him; the family took to him, showed considerable respect, and called him friend.

  “Now,” they said to him, “you have become a man in a story that we will tell. That is a good thing?”

  Reluctantly they all said good-bye. The tall daughter gave him a card with their name and address; the tall mother kissed and embraced him. Father and son drove Ronan to what he considered a good point on the road, and after many handshakes he continued his journey south. He felt rewarded and brave and strong.

  Over the next weeks, no house refused him. People welcomed him, told him local stories, listened to his renditions. None thought it strange that a man so young should have such an interest, especially a history student. Some had heard of the Storyteller—and those who hadn’t immediately wanted to know more. Everyone encouraged him in his search; nobody thought him ludicrous, and all responded eagerly to his writing down such tales as they themselves had to tell.

  Gradually, his journey grew into something richer and more worthwhile than he had foreseen, and he felt himself calmer, almost as though he could sense himself maturing. The only surprise he registered was a pleasant one: how willingly people listened to a tale—and told one in return.

  By early March, he had come down-country as far as the lakes in the county of Westmeath. At four o’clock one day, having sat by the waters for an hour in the sun, which was unusually warm for the time of year, he stopped at a house with ivy on the walls to ask directions across the fields.

  “You’re the second traveler today,” said the woman.

  Ronan instantly knew what she meant—he simply knew in his bones. With his patience on edge, he waited for her to tell him.

  “We had a man staying here last night, and you never heard such stories. Of course he’s very well known by now, you must have come across him.”

  “Not only have I come across him—I’m looking for him.”

  He asked all the questions: the hat, the pipe, the coat—and the health. All her replies confirmed his hopes, except the last.

  “Not that good, I thought. My husband drove him to Athlone, he said something about wanting to be in the very center of Ireland, that it might be the last time he’d be there.”

  Urgent as pain, Ronan said, “Is he staying in Athlone?”

  “I don’t know. And if he is, I don’t know where he’s staying at. My husband dropped him outside the post office.”

  Ronan sped from the house, and any time he heard a car, he tried to flag it down. On other days every car and truck seemed to stop; today, none did. South of Ballymahon he asked a garage owner to drive him into Athlone and offered to pay. They agreed a fare, but the man took another hour to reappear, and every time Ronan went to the door, he heard the driver say to his wife, “Tell him I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  By the time he got there, the post office had closed, and the neat streets of Athlone held few people. Ronan asked everyone he saw. Some did him the honor of thinking carefully before saying no; some just shook their heads. To ease the frustration and disappointment, he granted himself a night in a hotel, but the wedding party downstairs went on until four in the morning, and sleep kept itself distant until the music died.

  Next day lifted his spirits again. He struck out for the river Shannon and stayed on the western bank, fully aware from his map of the treat that lay ahead. When the sun shone its highest, he reached the monastery of Clonmacnoise.

  The photographs he had seen underplayed the place. Its towers looked so peaceful, with the buildings gray as doves and the land from the river to the abbey walls as green as water meadows. In air gentle as this, monks such as Annan and Senan had made beautiful books. Ronan approached almost on tiptoe, as though afraid he might tread on something timeless. Not a hostile stone did he see, nothing but ancient welcome and stately quiet among the ruins.

  He walked alone; no one else came by, except the birds skimming low over the reeds. Above his head he viewed the corbels and carvings of a civilization long past, built in the love of their God eight centuries earlier. Some of those walls, no matter
how ruined now, had never been touched by hands other than those that had built them. The stone varied—some had been cut smooth as silk, some rough as tweed.

  The monastery, where a great saint called Kieran had lived, consisted of not one great dominant central church but many smaller chapels, all clustered together like friends. Ronan imagined that a scriptorium might have stood over there, where the morning light would have come in brilliantly; and over there a refectory, say. Where might a ford have been, which a lady could ride across to elect a new abbot? Were all the past abbots shrewd? What old monks had been buried out here in the cemetery? He found gravestones, flat decorated slabs with images that could have come from distant, peaceful planets, all whorls, tendrils, and sweeps. And didn’t his father have a poem that began, “In a quiet watered land, a land of roses, stands Saint Kieran’s city fair,” and something about the warriors of Ireland who “slumber there”?

  Deep within the ruins he turned and looked at the river below. He leaned against a wall and let the atmosphere of the place wash over him; the back of his head touched cold stone, and he allowed himself to feel it. As though an onlooker, he tried to imagine what he looked like—the dark red hair, the glasses, the dark green windproof jacket, the khaki pants, the boots, the lumpy backpack on the ground, the large, white hands. He thought he looked both individual and lonely—a traveler with an intense love of all he saw, yet a lonesome young man with no one to talk to.

  Now the grieving truly struck for the first time. When he went home, he would have no father to whom he would describe all this: no eyebrows raised in delight, no eager questions, no incline of the head, no benign listening. Ronan’s breath tightened in something close to a gasp; he exhaled and leaned his head back against the cold wall, closed his eyes.

  “Jesus God!”

  He thought he stood there for as long as an hour; but his mourning reverie lasted no more than a few minutes. To bring himself back to the world, he reached down and placed the palms of his hands on the limestone walls behind him. Nobody had told him about that kind of pain—nobody had ever told him about any kind of pain. All childhood attention had blanketed him; all “difficulty” was smothered before it blossomed, especially since the time of the Storyteller’s departure; following that event, the three adults in the house clothed every situation in calm.