I came down rather fast, bringing plenty of soot with me and banging my elbow. While Finn, with the advantage of extra inches, rescued Dervla easily, I stood wiping my hands and dusting my clothes, feeling vaguely foolish.
‘Ungrateful animal,’ he said as Dervla hissed and sprang away from him to disappear through the open window.
‘What happened to you? Did Danny catch the ferry? We thought you’d be back earlier.’
‘It was delayed by several hours. So I took a room in a pub and the three of us spent the time trying to sleep on a double bed with me in the middle as chaperon. Yes, he’s gone. Poor boy. Half excited and half terrified. Such is the general condition of youth, though, I seem to remember.’
‘And how is Liddy?’
‘She stopped crying after about five hours.’
‘You look tired.’
‘You look sooty.’
‘Where’s Flavia?’
‘Gone to console her big sister. I told them both to go to bed.’
He was standing with his hands on his hips. Through a hole in his dark blue jersey I could see a smaller hole in his pale blue shirt. His chin was shadowed with a day’s growth of dark beard. He was standing close enough for me to put out my hand and touch him. Oh, how I wanted to! I clasped both hands together to prevent myself doing anything so foolish.
‘Have you recovered from last night’s adventure?’ he asked.
‘Oh. Yes. I was terrified at the time but I’m all right now. Are you going to say anything to anyone about Terry?’
‘No one was hurt. I prefer to let sleeping dogs lie.’ When I did not say anything he added, ‘I expect it seems strange to you that I allowed three men, one of them armed, to break into my house, threaten its inhabitants, and then get away without recourse to the law.’
‘It does seem odd, yes. But I long ago stopped expecting to understand Irish ways by looking at them from an English point of view.’
‘The difference is that England hasn’t had a civil war since the seventeenth century. Our last was in living memory. During the Troubles people went crazy with the thrill of violence, father against son, brother against brother. They forgot what they were fighting for. And there’s been an aftermath of hatred and mistrust that’s continued to this day and kept us from moving forward. There was talk of civil war again four years ago. We can’t let it happen again. I don’t want to do anything to inflame the situation. Accusations bring arrests, imprisonment. There are reprisals, then counter-reprisals; whole families are caught up in misery. I don’t believe Terry intended to shoot any of us. His mouth is bigger than his courage and he frightened himself badly. As for the other two, I’ll have a word with Sean Donoghue myself.’
‘I wish I could understand why there’s so much hatred in a country that’s so beautiful and where the people are so warm and generous. But I can see that if you’ve been colonized and treated unfairly by another nation, then you might think it your duty to resist. And the IRA, who seem like monsters to the English, are your own people. Your next-door neighbour, your cousin, your parish priest even.’
He nodded. ‘You must always put politics into its historical context. Central to the issue is a widespread feeling of ancestral grievance. Two classes, one with hundreds of thousands of acres, the other with scrapes among rocks.’
‘Yet we have the same unfair social divisions in England. Since I’ve been here I’ve sometimes asked myself why English people from slum dwellings haven’t got together to burn down mansions and castles.’
‘Perhaps they have more sense.’ Finn laughed. ‘Three hundred big houses burned in Ireland during the civil war. But probably twice as many farmsteads, cottages and hovels belonging to members of the IRA were burned in reprisal by the Black-and-Tans. Sometimes when I sit in my library here looking out on to the woods and fields that are mine and think of Timsy, who by the merest accident of birth has inherited nothing but a place by my fire and a right to clean my shoes, I feel ashamed.’
‘You could give him a patch of ground perhaps?’ I suggested hesitantly.
Finn looked amused. ‘As a matter of fact, I gave him the lodge, which wasn’t derelict then, and half an acre round it as a twenty-first birthday present. He was very grateful, I remember. He did live there for a few months but when the winter came he moved back into this house without a word. So you see, an easy conscience isn’t to be had for the asking.’
I could not help laughing at this. For a moment we shared the joke, more relaxed together than we had ever been. Then a look came into his eye that was alarming and I have no doubt that it was also in mine. My heart leaped into my throat and beat there, until I could hardly breathe. I dropped my eyes and he turned away.
‘So this is your room. I haven’t been up here for years.’ He looked about him. ‘It’s rather primitive, isn’t it? What possessed Constance? You ought to have had somewhere more comfortable to sleep.’ He pointed to the canopy, as usual sagging with the weight of its dozing occupants. ‘What on earth’s that?’
‘Cats. It’s a lovely room.’ My voice sounded odd, I thought, unnatural, the result of tension, probably. ‘The view. The mountains.’
‘But you can see mountains from every room in the house.’ He went to stare out of one of the windows though it was completely dark outside. ‘You ought to have had better treatment from us. We’ve made use of you. Taken you for granted.’
‘Have you?’ I said idiotically.
He shook his head. ‘No. Not a bit, really. I’m just … making conversation.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s going to be a cold night. The stars are bright. There’s a full moon.’
‘Is there?’ I tried to pull myself together. ‘That’s another good thing about this room. Having four windows means you always get a good view of the moon whatever the time of year. And it seems much brighter in Ireland. I suppose that’s the lack of pollution.’ I remembered how often in the last few months I had looked up at the great silver globe and imagined it shining down on Dublin.
‘It’s easy to forget that the moon itself doesn’t emit light. Moonshine is merely a reflection of sunlight. The moon’s a lifeless, lightless rock but every culture in the world as far as I know has invested it with mythology and symbolism. The Egyptians believed the moon was the left eye of a great celestial hawk, whose right eye was the sun. Strange, isn’t it, that we try to interpret the world by making up elaborate fables? I used to wonder about that during Mass, as a boy. And yet’ – he put his hands in his pockets and looked down – ‘there are times when truth and logic can be cold, comfortless things.’
‘The beauty is real. One can always be comforted by that.’ I heard something too heartfelt in my tone. I tried to laugh. ‘And, at least if you can see it, it means it isn’t raining.’
He turned from the window.
‘Ah, yes, you’ve had the full Celtic baptism by immersion. You’ll never be able to forget the drumming of water against the window, the squelch beneath your feet, the damp that gets into your clothes, almost under your skin.’
‘I shan’t forget it.’
‘You’re going then,’ he said, after a pause.
‘I must.’
‘I’ll be leaving for Dublin tomorrow morning. Early. I won’t come back until you’ve gone.’
I felt a sick dread steal over my body. He walked away from the window and came to stand in front of me. I was afraid I might be going to cry. I gritted my teeth and dug my nails into the palms of my hands. It did not seem to help much.
‘So it’s goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to try and thank you for what you’ve done. If I began …’ He bit his lip. ‘I’m no good at this sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Oh, I’m not very polite, you know.’ He looked angry, suddenly. It was an expression familiar to me. I felt reassured. I had been disconcerted by this polite conversation-making stranger. ‘I ought to say how good you’ve been.’ His voice became sarcast
ic. ‘Saving my family from ruin, single-handedly restoring my house and fortunes, all that sort of thing. Instead I want to curse you for being a tiresome, interfering English girl, who’s cut up my peace, turned my life upside down, obsessed my thoughts night and day, killed sleep, tortured me every waking moment … Bobbie, God help me! You’ve practically destroyed me!’
He seized my shoulders and shook me until my teeth rattled then pulled me into his arms. We held each other as tightly as though demon hordes were coming to wrench us apart; as indeed they were, in a sense. ‘Bobbie,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t make myself do this. I can’t make myself walk away as though you were not more important to me than life itself.’ He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. The stubble on his chin grazed my face painfully but I would willingly have endured the pain for eternity just to have that moment.
‘Don’t walk – away then,’ I said with what breath remained from the violence of his embrace. ‘At least not yet.’
We kissed again. I put everything I had into that kiss, in case it was all that was left to me of happiness.
After a while he drew back. ‘You know what I want.’
‘I want it too.’
Finn went to the door and turned the key in the lock. ‘You’re quite sure?’
For answer I pulled off my jersey.
He smiled. ‘You English. So intrepid, so direct, so certain. We shall never be free from the Old Enemy. At least I never shall be now.’
We kissed again long and wonderingly.
‘Darling!’ He drew away to look at me. ‘Even now I can’t believe … I’ve tried so hard not to think of this, and ended up thinking of it all the time.’
‘I know … I know. Seeing you, hearing your voice, telling myself it mustn’t be … like shutting out light and air and warmth … everything I need to live.’
Suddenly we were tearing off our clothes as if we had finally convinced ourselves that what we had both wanted so much and for so long was within the bounds of possibility. Before I could pull off my jeans he picked me up and carried me over to the bed. That made me think of Violet but I pushed the idea of her away. For a little while he was mine alone.
Whatever priests say, there is perfect happiness on earth. I experienced it then as we told each other over and over again how much we loved each other, as he joined his body to mine and we climbed to paradise.
Afterwards, as I lay with my head on his arm, I asked him when he had first begun to dislike me less.
‘That came as a great shock. Of course the minute I saw you I wanted to do this’ – he laid his hand on my breast – ‘and this’ – he moved it to my thigh. ‘But that made me dislike you even more because, you know, I felt you had power over me. I disliked you particularly because I was so sure you’d never dream of letting me do it. So cool, so superior, so unfriendly, so – English, in a word.’
‘You, of course, were full of warmth and humanity.’
‘Ah, I was a bastard, wasn’t I? You made me aware of how unhappy I was. Your beauty, your grace, your style and what I knew of you from the newspaper reports: you seemed to represent a world in which people enjoyed themselves, took what they wanted and didn’t have to pay the price. There was I, bitter, full of self-pity, with an unmanageable house in a rundown demesne, three children about whom I felt constantly guilty, a mistress I no longer desired, a wife … whom I thought would be better dead. You know, I actually wished sometimes that Violet would die. Does that shock you?’
He moved himself a little down the bed so he could look directly into my eyes. I stroked the black whiskers on his chin. ‘No. Not at all. It must have been terrible to have her there but … not there.’
‘I felt guilty. Guilty because I was able to see and feel and walk and talk, while she …’
‘I understand. Even though it wasn’t your fault.’
He shifted again to stare up at the canopy. ‘Do those cats ever take it into their heads to jump down unannounced? I feel a little vulnerable imagining their claws … No, it certainly wasn’t my fault. Until I went to see Violet in the hospital, after they carried her off the ferry more dead than alive, I hadn’t set eyes on her for six months. And for the six months before that there’d been only the briefest of meetings when she came to Curraghcourt to see the children.’
‘What?’ I sat up on my elbow to look at him. Black shadows lay across his throat. As he moved his head to return my look the right-hand side of his face fell into darkness.
‘I’m surprised Constance didn’t tell you. I suppose she thought it would be disloyal. Violet ran off with Anthony Molesworth, the colonel’s brother, six years ago.’
‘She left you?’
‘I’m flattered that you sound so flabbergasted. Yes. She left me with three young children. Liddy was eleven, Flavia and Flurry were three and five respectively.’
‘But why? Why?’ That Violet had willingly given up what I would have sacrificed everything for seemed a mystery beyond all understanding.
Finn laughed. ‘Violet gets bored easily. She hates bogs and mountains and rain. Like all women.’
‘Not all.’
‘You’ve been here less than a year. If you had to spend the rest of your life at Curraghcourt—’
I put my finger on his lips. ‘If I had to live on a tiny island with one tree and eat bananas three times a day and drink rainwater from my shoe I’d do it gladly as long as you were there.’
Finn looked at me with softened eyes. ‘Thank you for that, my darling. Well, Violet isn’t made of such stern stuff as you. Life is to be pleasure, that’s all, no matter what the consequences. Of course, I’m prejudiced. Take no notice of that. I stopped hating Violet long ago. A part of me was only too glad when she went. The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. I was just as much to blame. I didn’t want to marry her but she was pregnant with Liddy and I was pretty sure it was my baby. We had no ideas in common. Violet’s never read a book in her life and can’t see why anyone might want to. Once I knew she had slept with other men I no longer desired even her body. Violet likes sex. It doesn’t matter with whom.’
I remembered Violet and Kit. ‘You mean she’s a nymphomaniac?’
Finn shrugged a naked shoulder which I bent my head to kiss. ‘Is a nymphomaniac someone who wants sex more often than you do?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. It was as hard for her as it was for me. Perhaps harder. She tried, poor girl, to be faithful and I tried to love her. Flavia and Flurry represent our attempts to repair the marriage. But she couldn’t keep away from other men. I learned not to care.’
I wanted to weep when I heard that, imagining a younger Finn, hurt, unhappy, but I restrained myself. A man doesn’t want to be cried over when he has just made love to you.
‘So she left you. Why isn’t she with Anthony Molesworth now?’
‘What would he have done with a comatose girlfriend? He likes racing and hunting and parties. In the circumstances Violet would have been something of a drag. And, to be fair, Anthony hasn’t any money. He lives in a small flat in Dublin. Basil, being the eldest son, has the estate and what little money the family has left. When the convent that had been looking after Violet closed Basil offered to pay for a nursing home but it would have bankrupted him if she’d lived more than a couple of years. The obvious place for Violet was here. She was – is – the children’s mother.’
‘I don’t think it was obvious. I think it was … noble. It’s why I love you. One of the reasons. If there are reasons. Constance is right, you are good.’
‘Constance said that?’ Finn laughed again. ‘No, my fierce little cailin, not good but weak. When faced with an insoluble problem I take no action. I let things take their own course. It’s the Irish way.’
‘You didn’t have to take in Maud as well. Or Eugene.’
‘I’ve always been fond of my mother-in-law. As one is fond of a buffeting wind on a north shore. We understand each other. And she was adrift. No money, no husband, effectively no child. If she coul
d stand the draughts, the damp and the appalling food – that was before you came, my brave girl – I could put up with her. As for Eugene, well, he’s not a man I love but I don’t hate him either and my sister seems to think he’s an angel briefly visiting earth.’
‘They’ll probably marry.’
‘Will they? Well, I needn’t fear the abrupt removal of my chatelaine, that’s one thing. Eugene knows where he’s well off.’
‘I think he’ll make her happy.’
‘Good.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. When did you begin to like me – a little?’
‘When I saw how much effort you were putting into things my idea of you began to change. You worked so hard, looking after the children and the animals as well as the house and the garden. I could see how strange, how intractable, sometimes plain awful the circumstances were, so different from what you were used to, but you struggled on. That made it difficult for me to go on thinking of you as – forgive me – an arrogant, spoilt beauty. I’ve never known a woman like you. So determined, so anxious to do the right thing, so … admirable. I was compelled to respect you. I fought against it, naturally. And then, there was that moment … Yes, that was it. You remember Lughnasa? You came into Violet’s room. I was sitting on the window seat. You didn’t know I was there. You were so kind to her, talking to her, feeding her. So beautiful, so generous, so loving. It was that moment when I felt your power steal over me.’ He kissed me. ‘Yes, I fell in love with you then, though I wouldn’t admit it to myself.’ He kissed my eyebrows, my nose, my chin and finally my lips. ‘I fear I’m always going to love you.’
‘I wish I deserved it. The truth is that I’m horribly bossy and I adore the feeling of power that comes from imprinting myself on things. Curraghcourt has been the answer to a dream. It wasn’t saintliness that motivated me but the satisfaction of putting things right. Sheer egotism. It’s actually a character defect.’
‘Then we’re both in love with an illusion, a coinage of the brain. Is that why I feel as though I would happily go mad and be carried raving from the room if only I could remember making love to you for ever and have everything else blotted out?’
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