by Tyler, Anne
In the Rosemarie hair salon, Rita Walsh, who sometimes had an overnight guest leaving in the morning, didn’t like the regular appearance of the Ryan girl with that awful dog racing up to her doorstep and turning around again every morning.
“Why don’t you take him down toward the bridge?”
“I’m too ashamed to be seen with him, Mrs. Walsh,” Dara said truthfully. “Up this way I don’t ever meet anyone except you, or maybe Mr. Coyne, so I don’t have to explain.”
The child probably never noticed anyone leaving at an early hour. That was a relief.
Eddie and Declan had to stack boxes neatly for the distributors and collectors who picked them up when they brought new supplies. All four young Ryans had to bring in vegetables from the back field: potatoes that had to be washed at the yard sink, cabbages or cauliflowers, carrots or turnips. Then they were free for the day, lunch at one sharp.
Patrick wanted a history of Fernscourt written, and who better to ask, he had said, than the local scribe literally on the very doorstep. Of course there were people in Dublin who would do it, and do a professional job on it. Later indeed some aspects of their expertise might be used in editing and layout and even some of their hints in how to express parts of it. But there could be nobody who would do the job with such local knowledge and in such personal terms as John Ryan.
“You’re never going to do it for him?” Kate was astounded.
“Why on earth not? It’s a job, a writing job, there’ll be something at the end of it, not just a few pages of a child’s notebook scribbled on. That’s what you’ve always looked for, something to show for it.”
“But not this. Not glorifying him and what he’s doing.”
“It’s not glorifying, and he’s doing it whether I write the history of Fernscourt or some Ph.D. up in Dublin writes it. It’s a professional job, there’s a fee, whoever does it.”
“I don’t know.” Kate was troubled.
“Well I do. My only problem is, will I do it right? Maybe he has too much faith in me; I could have sold myself too well.”
Kate changed immediately.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Won’t you do it as well as anyone? Better, because you’re from these parts. You’re the obvious one to do it.”
John smiled quietly. The battle had been won. First it meant he had to do a lot of reading and research. His head was ever now in books about Georgian houses, antiquarian journals and the records of archaeological and historical societies. He became a familiar figure in the library in the big town where he went once a week, and they bent the rules in order to let him take some of the reference books back to his pub. It was different when a man was writing a book. He wasn’t an ordinary borrower.
He discovered that Fernscourt was only one of many houses built at the time and all over the country. That year 1780 seemed to have been a great year altogether. He told that to Brian Doyle one day, and Brian said that it was always a feast or a famine in the building trade. You either sat on your backside for three years eating crusts or you had them screaming at you to dig the foundations for almighty jobs in three counties. It was interesting to know that the lads in 1780 had the same kind of aggravation.
Of course it was the time when Grattan’s Parliament was sitting; it was the eighteen years when there was an Irish Parliament in College Green in Dublin, before it was snuffed out and the Act of Union was passed. Those parliamentarians needed big houses all over the place. But the Ferns didn’t sit in Parliament, they were farmers with estates in the north of England. They had bought the land here in the 1770s for one of their sons. The house itself had been built in the same style as many others.
John Ryan was affronted to read in one journal that Fernscourt was considered a minor and rather inferior example of the art. He had shown it to Kate in disbelief.
“The wise man would forget that piece of information,” Kate advised. “Patrick O’Neill is not paying for any reference to minor and inferior houses: you should pretend you didn’t uncover that particular bit of lore.”
“I’m meant to be doing serious research.” John’s face was very red.
“Of course, and you are, but that’s only one person’s opinion. You don’t have to give some crackpot’s view, do you? I mean if I met someone up in Bridge Street who said that you were no good to man or beast would I believe them?”
“What?”
“Of course I wouldn’t anymore than you have to believe that fellow. Just get on to the facts, the things that can’t be challenged, how many windows there were, what kind of people worked on it. Oh, Fergus said to tell you that he’ll help you get documents from the land registry if you want; he says that once you translate legal documents into English instead of fusty old law you get great information out of them. I don’t agree with him myself, typing them as I do all day. But Fergus would understand anything you put in front of him. He could make sense of the Dead Sea Scrolls at a glance.”
“He’s got a very quick mind, Fergus,” said John admiringly. “You must find it a great change working with him.” He smiled quietly.
Kate thought for a moment.
“Yes, he is great to work for. He’s a real schoolboy though, a tall thin overgrown schoolboy, he’s not a fellow you’d fall in love with like you are.”
“Okay, that’s all right, then,” John Ryan said in mock relief.
It was a great relief to get rid of Eddie. The twins knew they were harsh to him, but Eddie wasn’t like other people. He didn’t understand hints. You had to be fairly brutal. They didn’t have any money for ice cream, so there was no point in going to Daly’s. It would only embarrass Maggie and make Mrs. Daly cast her eyes up to heaven and mouth silent prayers. Mrs. Daly’s mouth was moving the whole time. Maggie said she got through dozens of memorares that she was saying for special intentions, while she was serving in the shop.
The twins knew that they mustn’t be seen in Leonard’s unless they were buying the paper or getting a writing pad. Grown-ups were allowed to leaf through the magazines, but there was no similar facility for children with the comics. And Tommy would hate them there.
There weren’t many people on the bridge. Those who were there had organized a jumping competition. Usually you jumped from the big rock at the side. But today they were raising it and making it higher in stages. First by an old box, then by a stone on top of the box. Then by a plank on top of the stone. Dara and Michael watched for a bit. It was mainly boys that were jumping, shivering in their underpants. But there were a few girls too. Teresa Meagher in a black bathing costume much admired by all, and laughing overexcitedly as she jumped with the best.
The twins tired of it after a while. They walked across the bridge away from the town and back down the river bank on the other side. This was the road which would soon change. Instead of being a path with reeds on one side and a hedge on the other, it would be a road to the huge hotel. They didn’t talk about things like that; it had been long accepted. The hedge was full of fuchsia growing wild as anything. Mam had told them that in city places this was a very rare flower, and people paid big sums of money to buy little bushes of it to put in their gardens; sometimes it didn’t even grow properly. Dara stopped beside a huge tree of it.
“Isn’t it like something in the South Sea Island picture book?” she said.
“Here, I’ll climb it and be like a native,” Michael said, leaving their picnic bag on the path.
As he went to the back of the tree to find a good starting-off place, he gave a great shout.
“Dara, look, careful, careful you don’t fall.”
In front of them, totally hidden by the trees and bushes, was an opening. A cave, or better still, a tunnel. They couldn’t believe it. They had found their new home at last. They hardly dared go in beyond the entrance in case it was already somebody else’s home. Those colorful tinkers who came by once a year and annoyed everyone old, by stealing chickens and leaving all their mess and rubbish behind them. They
might be in there. Mad Marty who disappeared for months on end and then turned up again, wilder than ever. It could be his home. It was too good a place to be nobody’s.
“Helloo …” they called as they went around the corner. It was pitch dark.
They paused and shouted again.
“Do you mind if we come in?” Dara called.
“Just for a moment,” Michael added.
There was no reply. Surely if anyone was there they would have said something.
The twins looked at each other in delight and pealed with laughter at their over-caution and politeness.
“There’s nobody here at all,” Dara said.
Michael ran to Mrs. Quinn’s for candles; he was back in no time and they went in together. They each held two of the half dozen candles that Loretto Quinn had parted with so willingly, as well as a box of matches. It wasn’t like a cave or a tunnel in books or comics. There were no dripping rocks, just earth and stone, and it was quite high. Even grown-ups could have walked without bending.
The twins stepped forward, each with a tight feeling of anxiety about what might be ahead.
“It doesn’t smell like coffins or anything,” Michael said.
“We don’t know what coffins smell like.”
“No,” Michael agreed. “But it doesn’t smell frightening.”
Dara wanted to show she hadn’t been superior. “It doesn’t look as if it’s going to fall and block our way back, either,” she said, more to reassure herself than her brother.
“No indeed, it’s very sound.”
“And it might be coming out somewhere soon?” Dara’s voice was thin.
“Bound to, we must be up at the house now.”
And then, around the next turn, they saw the urns and the long shallow steps at the back of Fernscourt. They saw them through the branches of thorns and brambles. Beyond those were huge big beds of nettles. That’s why they had never seen the opening. Who would want to wade through feet of nettles, big high stinging ones, when there were so many other things to explore?
They realized it couldn’t belong to them if they told anybody. So they told nobody at all.
But they thought about it all the time, and they brought back their belongings, slowly and little by little, so as not to create any suspicion. The old orange box, the tableware, the so-called curtains and rugs, the broken cutlery. Once more it was home. This time by candlelight. When they were older and could do what they liked they would ask Brian Doyle, if he wasn’t dead, if they could make a skylight in the tunnel, because sometimes it was a bit hot and dark, and they would have liked the sunlight.
The roof looked sound enough. Surely Brian Doyle and his workers would be able to put in a window for them. There was a scaffolding: a very rough and ready kind of arrangement of wooden poles and boards keeping the ceiling up. It looked very firm and steady. The twins tested it gingerly, and then more firmly. It was rock solid. They wondered who had built it and why it was there. But they were afraid to ask anyone about it now in case it might all be taken away.
At home they tried to find out what an underground tunnel might be doing in these parts.
“Would there have been other ways into big houses in the old days?” Michael asked one suppertime. Dara frowned. It was too obvious.
Their mother had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
“Like back doors, do you mean?” she asked absently. “Carrie, don’t leave the saucepan on the table, there’s a good girl. It just means it harder for you washing the cloth.” Mammy was very good at scolding to Carrie; it didn’t seem like scolding at all.
“I don’t know. I suppose there were, and in those kinds of places people probably didn’t bring in a ton and a half of mud with them. Eddie, do you have to bring half of Coyne’s wood home with you every day?”
Mam obviously didn’t have any idea of a tunnel. But then she hadn’t been brought up here. Maybe Dad knew. Dad had been here forever.
But they’d have to be even more careful approaching him.
“You’re very interested in old houses, aren’t you, Dad?” Dara had a prissy kind of face on, not her normal look at all.
“Well, I suppose I am a bit,” John Ryan agreed.
“Would you remember what Fernscourt looked like before it was burned down?”
“No, child, I wouldn’t. I was only two when it was burned. Tommy Leonard’s father would remember, and Maggie Daly’s dad, but don’t go asking them too much about it. They were there at the burning of it. In those days it seemed the right way to go. My own father stood looking at the flames from our front doorstep. He said to me often. But there’s pictures of it of course, you’d be able to see what it was like in those.”
“Yes well, but …” Dara didn’t want to be sidetracked by old pictures and the possibility of a history lesson.
“Would they have had secret rooms in it do you think? You wouldn’t be able to see those in photographs.”
“I don’t think so. Why, did you think they might?”
Michael came in hastily. “We were just wondering, you know, taking an interest in everything around us, like you’re always saying to do.”
“Oh that’s great,” John said approvingly. “Yes, I love to see you doing that.”
“So we take an interest in all kinds of things you see,” Dara added. “Like, would they have had tunnels out of a house like Fernscourt, you know, underground tunnels?”
“All tunnels are underground,” Michael said quickly, not to put her down, but to warn her not to be too explicit.
If John saw the way the wind was blowing he gave no sign.
“I never heard of any underground tunnels around here,” he said absently, brushing the earth and dust off the thin shoulders of his son. “But as I say, the place was well gone by the time I was old enough to play in it, so there could have been. I’m sure it would be quite possible to find one if you looked hard enough.”
He caught the look of alarm, and went on. “But it would be so well covered over, that sort of thing, that I don’t think anyone would ever find the entrance.”
There was a hint of relief in their faces.
“What would they have been for, if there were tunnels? That is from houses like Fernscourt, say?”
“Do you mean, say, possibly going from the house to the river? That is if there was a river?”
They nodded eagerly.
John Ryan paused; they waited for an explanation. He seemed to know the kind of thing they were talking about, but then his face became puzzled again.
“It’s very hard to say. It would have been exciting, whatever the reason was. Of course if you found one of those things you’d have to be very careful. I mean a person would have to take great care that the roof wouldn’t fall in, or that it wasn’t all crumbling before they went and explored it.”
“Oh there’s no danger, it’s quite safe,” said Michael. “I mean I’d say they’d be quite safe.”
“No parts where it’s supported with props or anything?”
The twins looked at each other. How could he know?
“Like scaffolding,” their father said helpfully.
“Well …”
“Um …”
“That’d be the bit to stay well away from if you ever found one,” John Ryan said firmly. “It’s like in old mines; those would be the parts where it would all cave in.”
“I suppose you could test it by pushing and pulling at bits near the entrance if you ever found one,” he went on.
They went away in case they let anything slip.
“He said it would have to be an exciting reason for it,” Michael said.
“We knew that,” Dara said. “But what could it have been?”
It provided hours of happy speculation for them.
Dara decided it was built by a young Miss Fern to meet her lover in a boat.
Michael decided it was built by a cousin of the Ferns who had an intent of storming Fernscourt one night and claiming it as
his own. But they told no one. Without actual lies they managed to suggest they spent the time hanging around the bridge in the town. Kate was glad to think that they were making other friends.
“Am I beautiful, Carrie?” Dara asked. She was sitting on Carrie’s bed, watching the preparations for the day off.
“I don’t know.” Carrie giggled at the question, but mainly concentrated on her own appearance in the speckled mirror over the dressing table. The table was covered with powder and hairpins and nearly finished pots of make-up that had been cast-offs of other people.
“I think I might be beautiful, if only I had curly hair,” Dara persisted.
“You might be.” Carrie was doubtful. “Isn’t it sickening that we don’t have curly hair. Your Mam has a rake of it, and she doesn’t need it at all.”
“Why doesn’t she need it?”
“Well she’s old and she’s got her fellow. It’s the likes of yourself and myself that need curls.” Carrie looked at her reflection without pleasure.
“Why do you want to get all dressed up just for going home?” Dara asked with interest.
Carrie looked at her suspiciously. “Well, why do you want to be beautiful?” she countered.
“I want to be beautiful so that Kerry O’Neill will admire me,” Dara said simply.
Carrie looked at her and softened. “You’re grand as you are,” she said. “And listen, I’ll tell you a secret; I’m not going home to my people at all today, I’m going on an outing, with a fellow. With Jimbo Doyle.”
“Not Jimbo Doyle,” Dara screeched.
“Why not? He’s very nice, Jimbo is, and he said he’d take me for a walk up to Coyne’s wood on my day off.” Carrie looked annoyed now, and a little uncertain.
Dara bit her lip. She had offended Carrie greatly, she must make it up somehow.
“I know he’s nice, and he’s a great singer. I heard him singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” when he was building the rock garden. You could ask him to sing to you up in Coyne’s wood.”
“Yes, I suppose I could.” Carrie was doubtful. She felt that Jimbo Doyle hadn’t planned on an afternoon of singing among the quiet trees and on the springy moss of Coyne’s wood.
