‘But I saw two men go in not five … Oh, well, as you say, my dear.’ He watched three youths scuttle along the wall and slide out of sight into the granary. ‘It must be expensive to maintain such a large work force,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Loyal family retainers, no doubt.’
‘The men you see walking about are visitors.’ I had embarked on this explanation without thinking it through. I stared at a rake propped against the coach-house door, seeking inspiration. ‘They are applicants for our new gardening school.’
‘A gardening school!’ Mr O’Brien’s tone was jubilant. ‘I must say, the resourcefulness of you ladies is seemingly limitless. Were you planning to make it residential?’
‘Yes,’ I said, just as Constance said ‘No.’
‘That is, not at first, perhaps,’ I added while Constance muttered something about being only too willing to reconsider.
‘Well, I’d advise it, if you think you could manage it,’ said Mr O’Brien. ‘Good hotels are rare in these parts. It’d be the most tremendous draw.’
After we had exhibited the Flying Irishman to his delighted gaze and explained our scheme for entertaining the public thereon, we put him into the Land-Rover and drove him down to the walled garden where we treated him to an exhaustive tour of the vegetables.
‘You may need to be selective about your students for the gardening school,’ Mr O’Brien murmured as two men wandered through, arm in arm, waving bottles and singing ‘That Old Irish Mother of Mine’. By the gate they broke into loud cursing and started to black each other’s eyes.
We gave Mr O’Brien a lavish tea of whiskey cake and brandy-snaps filled with cream before waving him goodbye.
‘My bladder!’ exclaimed Constance, breaking into a run. ‘What a darling!’ she said on her return as we repaired to the kitchen to wash up. ‘If only he’ll be good enough to give us some money! I think I’d better say a prayer. In fact in the spirit of Henry of Navarre I’ll go to Mass on Sunday.’
‘You might as well,’ said a voice behind us which made my face flame and my insides dissolve. ‘Though when he said Paris was worth a Mass he was being entirely cynical, whereas you, my dear Con, are a genuine votary.’
‘Finn!’ She went to kiss him. ‘We weren’t expecting you! How lovely!’
He looked a little tired, stern, formal in his town clothes. He bent his head to allow Constance to kiss his cheek. The light above him threw a beam on his dark head and cast the planes of his face into pale curves and his throat beneath the strong jaw into shadow.
‘I thought I’d come and see how you were getting on. Just for the weekend, you know. Hello, Bobbie.’
He looked at me briefly and then turned back to Constance. An observer might have thought his greeting cold.
‘How lovely!’ Constance patted his arm fondly. ‘Violet will be thrilled. And the children. You must be exhausted after the drive. Tea or a drink?’
‘A drink. I’ll change first.’ He smiled, the merest twitch of his mouth. ‘I never feel I’m truly home until I’ve swapped exhaust fumes for turf smoke.’
‘Well, that’s extraordinary!’ said Constance as soon as he’d gone. ‘He hasn’t been home just for the weekend since … for a very long time. I wonder …’ She was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘Perhaps this means he and Violet … it’s going to be like the old days. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’
‘Wonderful,’ I echoed.
FORTY-THREE
‘Hand me that spanner, would you?’
It was Saturday morning. Finn and I were standing in the bowl of the round pond below the canals. A couple of inches of black water lay in the deepest part but the rest was filled with rotting hornbeam leaves. Flavia had been sent up to the house to fetch a monkey-wrench.
‘This one?’
‘That’ll do. I’m not at all sure this is going to work.’ There was a minute’s silence while Finn fought to undo a stubborn nut that held the perished rubber hose in place. Then he said, ‘You and Constance seem to have transformed the house. The dining room, particularly.’
‘What do you think of the colour?’
‘I’d never have chosen it myself. But’ – his face flushed as he applied extra force – ‘it gives the illusion of warmth. Mm, yes, I like it. Oh, bugger!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘The thread’s gone.’ He clasped the hand he had grazed in the process. ‘Now what, I wonder. Perhaps I could saw it off.’
He kicked the old pump with his toe as it lay rusting and useless among the heaps of dead leaves. The new pump I had ordered from Galway sat in its cardboard box beside me at the stone edge.
‘We might ask Thady O’Kelly to look at it,’ I suggested tentatively.
Finn folded his arms and frowned. ‘You were just humouring me, weren’t you, when you accepted my offer of help? You have no faith in my abilities as a practical man.’
‘I dare say Thady O’Kelly doesn’t know the first thing about legislature or the Hundred Years’ War.’
‘Now you’re trying to salvage my pride. Will the coffers swollen by whatever nefarious activity you’re all engaged in support Thady’s prices?’
‘Oh, yes. Money seems to be flowing in.’
He looked at me with narrowed eyes. He was wearing his holiest jersey and his hair stood up slightly at the crown, like Flurry’s. ‘Whatever it is, it seems to involve an extraordinary amount of undercover activity. Every time I look up I meet the bloodshot gaze of someone skulking in the undergrowth. The minute they catch my eye, they shoot off, like a rabbit anxious to escape a stoat. I am the stoat, I take it.’
I smiled. ‘Honestly, you don’t want to know.’
He returned my smile and for a while we stood looking at each other. The song of a blackbird in a nearby tree grew loud and piercingly sweet. The trilled notes seemed to throb with ecstasy as he told his chosen mate what good things he had in store for her. The breeze whisked the dead leaves into a spectral frolic and the sun appeared briefly at the edge of a cloud like a diamond in the icebound heavens.
The harsh call of a crow circling above us broke the spell. Finn closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘No. No, I don’t want to know. Things are complicated enough. If you’ve a spark of decency, Roberta Pickford-Norton, you’ll take pity on a poor imbecile who not only can’t replace a simple electric pump but who’s powerless to keep himself from putting his hand into the flame. All the way home I told myself to turn round and go straight back to Dublin. Three times I drew off the road and called myself a fool for wanting a sip of the cup that fires the blood and intoxicates the senses. But here I am. Did you ever come across such a crack-brained idiot in your life before?’
He kicked the pump again, this time savagely, and the hose flew off, emitting a spout of water that drenched our knees. We looked at. each other again and the air around us seemed to shiver with words unspoken. Nothing could be gained by pretending not to understand him.
‘If it will help I’ll go away.’
‘No. You’re needed here. I’ll go. And make myself stay away.’
He put the back of his hand to his mouth and sucked a bleeding knuckle.
‘Should you do that? Stagnant water is host to some extremely unpleasant bacteria.’
‘Oh, you termagant!’ He pointed a filthy finger at me, his eyes fierce. ‘You’d nag a man to death! Why is it that I’d willingly—’
‘Daddy!’ Flavia was running along the path between the canals waving the monkey-wrench. ‘I’ve found it. It was in the Cockatoo’s stable.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ He took it from her. ‘I’ve done the tricky bit. Now watch your father give a dazzling display of technical wizardry.’
By lunchtime Thady O’Kelly had been summoned. It took him fifteen minutes to gather the component parts that had been hurled angrily to the ground and fit the new pump. We filled the pool, which took all afternoon. The sun, invisible all day except for that one brief shining, had gone down behind the clouds and all
about was dusky blue. We put on coats, scarves and gloves and brought out a bottle of champagne for the grown-ups and cocoa for the children to celebrate the restoration of the fountain. The pump had been wired to a switch in the dairy, which was the nearest source of electricity. Finn signalled with a torch to Flurry who was waiting there. There was a brief pause, the sound of spluttering and gurgling and then a rod of water shot into the sky.
‘Look, Mummy!’ Flavia cried, though her mother, seated in the window of the drawing room, was too far away to hear. Flavia flashed her torch beam to catch the plume of water, which had generated cries of wonder from the house party and quite a few encouraging shouts from concealed watchers around the demesne.
‘I want to cry,’ said Flavia.
‘Please, no,’ said Liddy.
‘It’s as though everything’s coming right,’ Flavia persisted. ‘The fountain’s like Mummy, isn’t it? Shooting up. When we thought it couldn’t be done. It’s a … What are those things that mean something else?’
‘A symbol,’ said Finn, putting his arm round his younger daughter as she pressed herself to his side.
‘Your coming home this weekend makes it perfect.’ Flavia rubbed her face against his sleeve. ‘Last night Mummy and Granny were having a row. Granny wants Mummy to learn to walk but Mummy said there wasn’t anywhere to walk to so she might just as well sit in a chair and stare at the wall and everything was beastly. When I told her you’d come she stopped crying and said, “I was praying he would. Give me that silly old stick then and I’ll try.” So now you see you’ve got to come home more often so Mummy will get better.’
This artless little speech pierced my heart as sharply as the breast of the nightingale was pierced by the rose thorn.
‘The tumbling water makes the most glorious sound,’ said Constance. ‘Flavia’s right. It is a symbol. Of life and vitality. The promise of spring.’
‘I was thinking the same,’ breathed Eugene. ‘Growth and renewal. Cuckoos, primroses, celandines, speckled eggs in feathered nests.’
‘I was thinking about my electricity bill,’ Finn said in the tone of one intending to repress excessive flights of fancy.
‘What are you thinking about, Bobbie?’ asked Flavia.
‘I was thinking how much I love it here,’ I said slowly, ‘and how sorry I’ll be to leave.’
‘But, Bobbie’ – Constance took my arm – ‘surely you’re not thinking of going away now?’
‘I’ll stay another couple of months until the opening. I can’t deny myself the pleasure of seeing our plans put into action. And of course I’ll wait until you’ve found a suitable replacement. But then I certainly must. It was only ever supposed to be a temporary thing, you know. I have to think about my career.’
‘Why can’t you have a career here?’ asked Liddy. ‘You could write a book about Irish houses or how to mend carpets or something, couldn’t you? And go on being our housekeeper. We could have holidays in London when you got bored. I mean, we’ll never find anyone we like half as much.’ Liddy was touchingly in earnest. ‘Dad, you’re always so hot on telling everybody what they ought to do. Why don’t you tell Bobbie she’s not to leave?’
Finn was silent. Then he said, ‘Where’s Sissy?’
‘Really, Finn!’ Constance sounded quite cross. ‘Do you mean to say this is the first time you’ve noticed Sissy isn’t here? How hurt she’d be if she knew! Men are so careless of anything not affecting their immediate comfort.’
‘That’s no doubt true, Con, but it doesn’t answer my question.’
‘She’s gone to live with Michael McOstrich,’ said Liddy. ‘And good riddance, I say. She was a pain in the arse, particularly recently when she got all moody and neglected. I think you ought to promise to consult the rest of us the next time you take a mistress. As soon as you were sick of her you buggered off to Dublin. But we’ve had to put up with her for ages.’
‘Oh, what a bad child you are,’ said Finn. ‘Feckless, idle and insolent, with the vocabulary of a sergeant major. None the less, there’s a particle of truth in what you say.’
‘What is Sissy mistress of, exactly?’ asked Flurry. ‘Don’t laugh at me, Liddy. I hate it when you do.’ Flurry turned his back on her and pulled his coat over his head to block out the sound.
Flavia put her arm round him. ‘It means a girlfriend. For old people. But Daddy doesn’t need one any more. I’m going back to the house to make sure Granny isn’t making Mummy cry.’
We followed her. As soon as Violet saw Finn she waved her good hand in his direction. ‘F-hinn. F-hinn. Lovely f-hountain!’ It was one of her new words for the day. ‘Remem-ber – you said – gar-den bad. Remember? I said – pretty.’ She struggled to bring the words to the surface of her mind. ‘When you brought – I – came here.’
‘You mean when Daddy brought you here to be married?’ Flavia was better than any of us at making sense of her mother’s speech.
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘I don’t remember.’ Finn took Violet a glass of champagne and sat beside her on the window seat. ‘But I’m sure you’re right. It just shows what a young ass I was.’
‘When I hear men admit to being in the wrong,’ said Maud, who was sitting beside a nearly empty bottle of usquebaugh, ‘I always suspect them of contemplating mischief.’
‘F-hinn is good as – good,’ Violet patted his arm. ‘Kiss me.’
Obediently Finn bent to kiss his wife’s brow.
I took my jealous heart away to see to the stewed haricot of mutton with onions.
Finn left for Dublin early on Monday morning. I had avoided being alone with him. He seemed to be doing the same and such was my confused state of mind, I both approved this discretion and was wounded by it. Again I had to accustom myself to wintry despair after he had gone. I hoped he would be able to resist coming back. When I found that he could, I was desolate.
As February flew past and then March, I told myself that I was beginning to conquer my unlucky Schwärmerei. I applied my much vaunted theories about passion and lust to my own case. The idea that I was in love with Finn was nothing more than over-heated imagination. It was up to me to check it and apply some common sense for all our goods, not least my own. I told myself this every day as I planned, supervised, improvised, shopped, cooked, milked Niamh – we had put Siobhan out to grass for a well-earned rest – sewed and washed up. Yet every night before I fell asleep I read the poetry of Yeats, that most ardent of romantics who knew what it was to love without reward, from the book he had given me, knowing that I was undoing all the good work of the daylight hours.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she’d not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
It was a relief to fill my mind with simple, straightforward things, such as the cheapest way to construct a basic kitchen in the granary that was to be the tea-room.
We had heard nothing from Mr O’Brien. He had warned us that the wheels of Hibernian Heritage ground slowly and that our application for funds was one of many. But, whatever the verdict, Constance and I were determined to go ahead and open Curraghcourt to the public. Timsy’s customers shifted their quarters to the loose boxes. We got Eamon Dooley to put plumbing and a sink in one corner of the granary. We bought a second-hand propane cooker and a small fridge. On the newly whitewashed walls we nailed up boards and covered them with photographs of the house and family, going as far back as the 1880s.
We found ten tables of assorted sizes in the attics and more than enough chairs left over from the poetry festival to go round them. At Sullivan’s, the draper’s, I drove a hard bargain for ten seersucker tablecloths, luridly checked in pinks, blues and greens. We gathered a miscellany of what Pegeen and Katty called ‘delph’: cups, saucers, plates, milk
jugs and sugar bowls. Their assorted sizes and patterns added interest to the naked rusticity of the granary. Jam-jars of wild spring flowers would ornament the tables.
Eugene drew a family tree and illustrated it with miniature portraits taken from the paintings about the house. He put together a guide book, covering the history of Curraghcourt and the locality. The life of an isolated demesne in the west of Connemara impinged little on national affairs so we included pages from the diaries of long-dead chatelaines of Curraghcourt; recipes for soap and pound cake; advice on the governing of servants; the order of household prayers; pastes, powders and tinctures to cure that most prevalent and dread disease, tuberculosis, all of which must have been sadly unavailing. How to prevent moss growing on leather-bound books. A suitable dinner menu for a hunt ball. What to do in cases of lice, fleas, ticks and worms.
Eugene illustrated these counsels with drawings that were as amusing as they were accomplished. I had never heard him make a joke or even a wry remark but his sketches of people lying drunk against a table leg at an important dinner or being dragged by one foot in a stirrup across the path of fanatically intent riders-to-hounds had a delightful humour about them. This hitherto unsuspected facet of Eugene’s personality reconciled me all the more to the idea of Constance being made one with him at some point in the future.
So far there was no sign of this scheme being brought to maturity. I had at last persuaded Constance to show Eugene several of her poems about love. He had read them carefully and kindly given her the benefit of his advice as to how she might improve them. He admitted that for a beginner she had a talent for expressing nuances of mood. He had handed them back to her with a bow and the recommendation to study the great ones of the past if she wished to improve.
‘Short of throwing myself naked into his arms I despair,’ Constance said afterwards.
‘I really thought the poetry might do it.’ We were painstakingly removing the black sediment of damp from the glazing bars of the dining-room windows with cotton wool dipped into a solution of bleach. ‘I suppose most men are pretty hopeless at picking up subtle hints.’
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