‘It’s a tower house, like a small castle, you know, belonging to one of the lesser chieftains. Probably fifteenth or sixteenth century. The fortified enclosure running round it is called the bawn. There are lots of them all over Ireland.’
‘What a lot you know.’
‘Extensive reading is a requirement of the job. I’m no scholar, just a store of scraps of information. I never do anything with it. Too lazy. I’m a dreamer.’
How different from Burgo, I thought but did not say. As the car swooped over miles of more or less empty road the sky changed from blue to dove grey to pewter and the green of the Irish landscape became livid, the colour of brass. We drove through a succession of hamlets, which were usually single streets of small, dilapidated dwellings. There were broken windows patched with cardboard, and sections of roof covered with tarpaulins. The southwest seemed prosperous by comparison.
‘What do people do here?’ I asked. ‘I mean, to earn a living.’
‘Oh, they farm mostly: smallholdings not quite big enough to sustain the inevitably large families. Galway’s coming up fast and there are good jobs there but the country people are reluctant to leave a way of life they’ve always known. You can understand it.’
‘Oh yes. But the fields look so stony. There are great lumps of rock sticking out of them. Surely it must be difficult to plough?’
‘Impossible in some places. The limestone pavements are famous for rare wild flowers – gentians, orchids, ferns – but of course you can’t eat those. People used to grow potatoes by making what are called “lazy beds”: scraping the earth into little heaps of a few square yards to get the required depth. In the good years when there was no frost or famine, the average Irish peasant ate fourteen pounds of potatoes a day.’
‘You’re making it up! No one could eat that many.’
‘Truthfully. Many families existed on an exclusive diet of potatoes and buttermilk. And poteen, of course. That’s home-brewed whiskey.’
‘But surely on such an unvaried diet they’d be ill?’
‘On the contrary, they were the healthiest people in Europe. Boiled potatoes and buttermilk provide all the nutritional needs of a full-grown labouring man. There were herrings and seaweed for those who lived near the coast.’
‘But think of the terrible boredom of eating the same thing day in and day out!’
‘Ah, but boredom is the luxury of affluence. You must remember that some of the country people were so poor their clothes were hardly more than rags. It’s all about expectations, isn’t it? They considered themselves as rich as kings if they could afford a pig or two, a cow and a few hens. All around them were living examples of what happened if you couldn’t pay your rent. You were evicted and the roof was pulled off your houses. So you were forced to live in what were called scalpeens: hovels pieced together from a bit of corrugated iron here, an old door there, without windows, without chimneys even. Then you were too hungry, too cold, too miserable to be bored. When the potato blight destroyed your crops you and your children lay down in your hovels and died of starvation or typhus and your bodies were picked clean by foxes and crows.’
‘And the landlords did nothing to help them?’
‘What you must understand is that the vast majority of landowners were of English or Scots origin. They’d got their Irish estates through the land confiscations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ireland was – still is, to some extent – two nations, divided not only by poverty and riches but also by religion, politics, language and culture. The bosses, the Protestant Anglo-Irish, saw the Catholic peasants as feckless, idle and dishonest. The old Irish naturally hated the usurpers, their masters.’
‘Were they all – the bosses, I mean – callous and greedy?’
‘There were some conscientious landlords. They waived rents and set up soup kitchens. But a lot of landowners had larger, more important estates in England. Some never set foot in Ireland. They didn’t give a damn about the peasants who worked and starved to provide the rent money on which the landowners – in the old days anyway, before the eighteen eighties – grew fat. After the Great Famine years of eighteen forty-seven to eighteen forty-nine some landlords chartered ships to take their tenants to America to start a new life.’
‘I suppose that was better than nothing?’
‘It was cheaper to send them abroad than to pay for their keep in the workhouse. But the conditions on the boats were so bad that they were called coffin ships. At least half of them died on the journey.’
I tried to imagine what it must have been like: the ravaging of the flesh by hunger and cold and disease. Watching one’s children suffer and being powerless to help them. Being uprooted from home and family, enduring appalling hardships to land in an alien place among alien people. Knowing that the prosperous world was indifferent to one’s pain and grief. It made my own unhappiness seem contemptible. I resolved to say not another word of complaint about my own misfortunes.
‘And now? What about British presence in Northern Ireland? Should we stay or go?’
‘Ah! That’s a hard one. And I’ve lectured you long enough.’ Despite my assurance that I wanted to hear more, he changed the subject. ‘See that ruin on the hill-top?’ I looked obediently to my left. A row of Gothic arches stood proud against a Constable sky, smudged with shades of grey and indigo as clouds gathered. ‘That’s all that remains of a once magnificent Palladian mansion and a substantial demesne. That’s just the folly, the eye-catcher, which no one could be bothered to blow up or burn down.’
‘Where’s the house?’
‘Among those trees. I went to look at it last time I drove up here. It’s nothing but walls and glassless windows now, and chimneys colonized by crows.’
‘Oh, what a pity! There’s a foul little bungalow slap-bang next to that exquisite stone gateway. And an electricity pylon on the other side. It should never have been allowed!’
‘You can’t expect the Irish to be exactly fond of the glory of the Ascendancy.’
‘No. But beauty, no matter how degenerate its creator, is still precious, isn’t it?’
‘If it’s a reminder of injustice and misery, it may no longer be beautiful.’
‘Surely the making and preservation of fine buildings is one of the great consolations for man’s sorrows?’
I must have allowed more indignation to appear in my tone than I had intended for Kit laughed and said, ‘You’re absolutely right. Don’t be cross. I’m only trying to see the other point of view. Playing devil’s advocate.’
‘I’m not at all cross with you. How could I be when you’ve been so kind? What happened to the house and the family?’
‘It was burned during the Troubles.’ Kit paused to negotiate with an oncoming lorry for the left-hand side of the road. ‘The family went to live in England. The people who live in that bungalow you so despise are the descendants of a long line of stewards who looked after them. They were very friendly and keen to show me round. Ironically, they were proud of the majestic ruins which they seemed to feel gave them a reflected status.’
‘What was the point of it then? What good did it do to burn the house and presumably destroy the livelihoods of all the people connected with a working estate?’
‘Good? No good at all, I should say. If you’re going to get on in Ireland you must be prepared to abandon notions of cause and effect. Other things are more important, like love and generosity and good fellowship. And drink, of course.’
‘It doesn’t seem to me particularly loving or generous to burn someone’s house down.’
‘Ah, you’ll understand in time. Logic’s of no possible use to you here. Forget all about it and you’ll be much happier.’
I wished I could be happy. I wished I could rid myself of a sense of loss that weighted my limbs with despair. But I reminded myself that my problems were trivial.
‘What’s up, Bobbie? Suddenly you look as though you’ve swallowed a bitter pill.’
I had taken it
for granted that Kit’s eyes would be on the road ahead. He might claim to be an idle dreamer, but in fact he was sharply observant.
‘Oh, nothing.’ I smiled. ‘Just … I was wondering if my new employers have been reading the newspapers. They may well recognize me as a woman steeped in sin and hurl me out on my ear.’
‘In that case you’ll ring me from the nearest telephone box and I’ll come and rescue you.’
This was reassuring. But I was conscious of getting deeper in Kit’s debt. We stopped at a hotel in the town of Williamsbridge for tea. It was called, inaccurately, the Bellavista. The sitting-room windows looked across the car-park to the public lavatories. They had run out of sandwiches but there was cake, a sort of spiced bread called barmbrack. It was stodgy but I did my best to get some down, knowing that a few calories can do a lot for one’s mood.
‘I like to see you eat,’ said Kit. ‘It’s depressing to see a girl squeeze the oil out of an olive before she downs it. My last girlfriend ate nothing but lettuce, poached fish and sorbet when I took her out to dinner but I’d find her standing by the open fridge at two o’clock in the morning guzzling a tub of chocolate ice cream. I fail to understand the rationale behind this peculiar eating pattern.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Fenella.’
‘How old-fashioned and pretty. Were you very much in love with her?’
‘I thought so at first. Then I discovered it was her face I was in love with, not her.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘She had marble-white skin, a hooked nose and bulging eyes. I know that doesn’t sound alluring but there was a symmetry about her face and a kind of sculpted quality that I found fascinating. Her eyes were pale green, like the inside of a cucumber. She was cold, too, like a cucumber, and almost as immobile. At first I yearned to lie in her arms, like reclining on the bed of a fast-flowing stream. But after a while, I got chilly. That was when I fell out of love with her.’
‘Was she dreadfully hurt?’
‘Annoyed more than anything. Her mother gave her a lot of stick for parting company with me.’
‘Her mother? How did she come into it?’
‘She was a mink-wrapped, ruby-hung adding machine, totting up my credits, setting them against my debits.’
‘The credits being? If that isn’t an impossibly rude question?’
‘An inheritance. A nice old house in Norfolk. An entrée into other nice old houses belonging to people she approved of.’
‘I had no idea you were such an eligible parti.’
‘I conceal it brilliantly, don’t I?’
‘Now don’t fish. And the debits? Those are well hidden.’
‘It’s a little late to truckle, Miss Bobbie. Debits minimal, from Fenella’s mother’s point of view. An inability to take life seriously, a shocking inconstancy in matters of love, a face like an amiable schoolboy’s and a strong dislike of scheming, snobbish mammas.’
‘You said Fenella was your last girlfriend. Describe your present girlfriend, if you’d be so kind.’
‘Situation vacant.’
‘So you’re looking for someone with a face like an El Greco saint, whose embrace is as cosy as thermal underwear and who loves fiercely but briefly. Preferably an orphan.’
‘Oh no. I said I was inconstant in love. Now I want a woman about five feet six or seven, slender but not bony, whose hair is the colour of unsalted butter, with large, glowing eyes that vary in hue between neat scotch and seawater, who has a tendency to weep when she thinks no one’s looking. She has a fascinating way of raising one eyebrow seductively and looking at you with a positively wicked gleam, while smiling as demurely as a postulant nun.’
‘I think she sounds extremely irritating. I’d have nothing to do with her if I were you.’
‘You aren’t me. I shall have as much to do with her as I can possibly arrange.’
‘But we know the fascination won’t last long.’
‘I have a feeling she’s the exception that proves the rule.’
‘You’re obviously a case-hardened flirt.’ I bit into the last piece of cake and smiled as I chewed to show I did not take him seriously.
‘You’re the girl of my dreams,’ replied Kit, not smiling back.
‘Oh, look! Rain!’ I directed his attention to the window where plummeting water formed a curtain, obliterating the view of the public lavatories. ‘What a mercy! Every single man who’s been in there has waited until emerging into full view of the hotel to tuck in his shirt and zip up his trousers. Is there a law in this country against doing oneself up privately indoors?’
‘But it’s provided you with a conversational diversion. You needn’t be afraid that I’m going to pounce, you know. I’m well aware you’re still besotted with Mr Latimer. But, unlike you, I don’t believe that you’ll never get over it. I bet you think that from now on your life will be a sad round of charitable works and knitting hideous cardigans for your nephews and nieces.’
‘I hope not. I hate it when the stitches get so tight you have to practically crowbar them off the needle.’
‘Don’t worry. Psychic wounds always heal eventually, even if there is some scar tissue left. People who pretend their hearts are broken really want an excuse not to have to risk themselves again on the merry-go-round of human relationships. Uncle Kit knows these things.’
He looked up as the waitress brought us the bill.
‘I insist.’ I snatched it up from the table.
‘You see,’ Kit explained to the waitress, ‘I’m a kept man. My companion is fabulously rich and she takes me everywhere with her like a sort of pug-dog.’
The girl, who must have been about seventeen but was made up to look forty-five, was at first nonplussed. Then she melted under his friendly gaze and giggled.
‘Is t’at her car t’en?’ she asked, pointing through the window at the little red Alfa. ‘I’d give anyt’ing to go for a drive in somet’ing like t’at. My boyfriend’s a fishmonger and when we go out in his van I stink of fish for days after.’
‘Like a mermaid,’ said Kit. ‘Your boyfriend’s a lucky man.’ His blue eyes seemed to dazzle as a ray of sunlight shot through the rain-glazed window.
She giggled again as she counted the money I had given her. ‘I wouldn’t go out wit’ him but the other boys here only have bikes and I hate riding on crossbars. Your clothes get all anyhow. I want to go and work in Dublin but me mum won’t let me.’
‘You’d be a smash hit there.’
She looked at Kit doubtfully. ‘Do ye t’ink so?’
‘One glimpse of those eyes and they’d be hiring limousines to take you out.’
‘Arrah, go on wit’ you!’ She twitched her shoulders and threw up her chin to show she could not be so easily taken in but her small, painted face was beaming. ‘T’ank you, miss,’ she added when I gave her a tip of fifty pence. ‘T’at’s very kind of ye. Enjoy yer ride now.’ She gave Kit a last slaying glance over her shoulder as she went away.
‘You’re pretty much a smash hit yourself,’ I said, getting up and putting on my mac.
‘The Irish expect a little badinage. Talking’s a national pastime. It’s only good manners.’
As I checked my reflection for crumbs in the mirror over the fireplace I saw Kit whisper something to the waitress which made her blush with pleasure. She almost curtseyed when he gave her what looked like a five-pound note.
‘Throat oiled and spirit soothed?’ he asked as we got into the car.
‘Thank you, yes. What a good Samaritan you are.’
‘Could we have less of the distance-making gratitude? I could swamp you with thanks for lunch and tea, but I know how to accept gracefully.’
Opposite the entrance of the car-park was a shop that sold television sets. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement to stare at the rows of flickering screens, a bright point of interest in the dull, rain-soaked street. As we swept by I saw a man’s face, striking in black and white, and was alm
ost certain that it was Burgo’s. I closed my eyes and swallowed down the sour taste that rose into my mouth, a combination of barmbrack and grief. For once Kit, who had been concentrating on the traffic, had noticed nothing.
‘Now, my fair friend and fellow voyager,’ he continued, ‘as we embark on the last part of our journey, I want you to tell me what happened after the dinner party. You needn’t look blank. You know perfectly well which dinner party I mean. The dinner party that ended in the China House with a general stand-off. I must find out what happened next.’
‘I can’t think why you’re so keen to hear about it.’
‘I told you. I’ve a passion for stories of any kind. And love stories are always the most enjoyable. Also I’m deeply interested in anything to do with you. Does that answer your question?’
I supposed it did. So, as we drove on through rain that fell in bathtubs rather than buckets and the road became narrow and winding and the land either side of it began to rear up into frowning black mountains capped with cloud, I went on with my tale.
NINE
‘So what are your plans, Roberta?’
Simon’s car was rushing through the darkness, the headlights making a silver tunnel of the overhanging branches. Burgo and I shared the capacious back seat, he lounging with his legs stretched out while I sat primly, knees together, clutching my evening bag.
‘I haven’t any. Not until my mother gets better.’ I explained about the broken hip.
‘It hardly seems fair to expect you to suspend your life indefinitely. Can’t you get a nurse in?’
‘Apparently there isn’t enough money. My father’s just had a line painted round the insides of the baths so we don’t take too much hot water. It’s just as though there’s a war on.’
‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized things were so tight. In that case it was extremely generous of your father to make such a substantial contribution to party funds.’
‘He hasn’t! Well! That’s the most ridiculous piece of swank—’
Moonshine Page 10
