She smiled her thanks, unable to trust her voice. There were still good people in the world, even in these bitter times.
*
The journey back to Ballymor passed in silence – an awkward one after Kitty explained that she had not sold her brooch and therefore had no money with which to pay Jimmy Maguire for the lift.
‘Aye, well, I suppose I’ll have to take ye anyways,’ he said, grumpily, and for this at least Kitty was grateful.
She spent the journey home sitting atop empty sacks, for there had been no corn for Jimmy Maguire to bring back to Ballymor, clutching the package of bread and cheese which she resolved to give to Michael who would have had a hard day’s work. As the cart clattered along the rutted road, she mulled over her options. There weren’t many left. Whatever happened, she was still determined that Michael should have a place on the Columbus when it sailed. As the rain began to fall and she huddled shivering into her shawl, she realised there was only one course of action she could take now. Only one chance left. For herself she would not have taken it, but for Michael she would do anything. Even this. She would go to Waterman that same evening, before she lost her nerve.
CHAPTER 15
Maria
We left the church and had a cup of tea and a sandwich at the café across the square. The waitress, a woman in her forties with a frilly white pinny tied around her ample midriff, flirted a little with Declan, patting his shoulder and fluttering her eyelashes at him. I guessed that women felt safe doing this around Declan, as he was a priest and would therefore never take it too seriously.
After we’d finished the sandwiches, Declan checked his watch. ‘So, if we leave now we can walk to the sports ground, or if you’d like a cake or another cup of tea I could drive us there. It’s about a mile away, so.’
‘Let’s walk,’ I replied, and he smiled and stood to leave.
The route took us through town and past a row of single-storey cottages which Declan said dated from the early 1800s. They looked tiny but well maintained, their roofs tiled although I guessed they might originally have been thatched. They were all whitewashed, with brightly painted front doors that opened directly onto the street. I felt an almost irresistible urge to peep in at the windows, but didn’t dare in case someone was inside. But I did take a photo – I imagined the cottages up at Kildoolin would have looked something like this if they’d been kept up and inhabited over the years.
From there we went through a modern housing estate, across a children’s play area where kids from six to sixteen were hanging out, doing their own thing – the younger ones on the climbing frames and roundabouts; the older ones on the swings with their mobiles in their hands. There were no adults in sight. I wondered who was looking after the little ones – perhaps the teenagers were their siblings. If so, they weren’t keeping a very close eye on them – they all seemed to be focused entirely on their phones. I resolved to make sure my child was always watched carefully at parks. I’d give him or her freedom to run around, of course, but supervised and with a parent on hand to ensure safety.
There I went again – planning how it would be when I was a mother. Different to Jackie – she’d never taken me to the park, not once. That had always been Dad’s job. He’d push me higher than anyone else on the swings, spin the roundabout so fast I’d be squealing for him to stop, and was always there to catch me at the bottom of the slide.
After what Jackie had said on the phone, it was a fair bet that she wouldn’t be the kind of grandparent who took her grandchild to the park either. Dan would love to, I was certain. And I – well who knew, but I’d definitely try to be the kind of parent Dad had been, rather than Jackie. Kids deserved to have fun.
‘Good to see the kids playing, isn’t it?’ Declan commented, as if he could read my thoughts.
I nodded and smiled.
At the far end of the playground was the town’s sports centre and a pitch, with what looked like a cross between rugby posts and football goals at the end – a tall H with a net at the bottom. A large noticeboard welcomed visitors to Ballymor GAA Ground.
‘GAA is Gaelic Athletic Association. In other words, hurling and Gaelic football, which are both played on the same pitch,’ Declan explained.
There was a small crowd already gathered, and excitement was building. We bought our tickets and took up places in the small stand that lined one side of the pitch. I noticed whole families who’d turned out to watch the match, from aged grannies sitting on deckchairs to toddlers in their fathers’ arms. The local team’s colours were apparently maroon and yellow, judging by the garish scarves and shirts many were wearing. The visitors – a team from Kerry – were in blue.
The match began and I watched in awe as men in helmets with faceguards ran at full pelt along the pitch with the ball balanced on the end of what looked like a fat hockey stick, then flicked the ball up in the air, took hold of their stick (‘hurley’ – Declan corrected me) and whacked the ball half the length of the pitch over the top of the goal, between the uprights. The crowd roared – obviously that meant a point had been scored.
‘You get one point for hitting it between the posts, and three for scoring a goal in the net,’ Declan yelled in my ear, over the cheers.
I’d been in the hockey team at school, but Jackie had never watched me play. It had always been Dad dropping me off for Saturday morning practices, or cheering my team from the sidelines. I couldn’t get the phone call with Jackie out of my mind. Why couldn’t she at least have said congratulations to me? Why had she brought up that whole thing about her having not wanted me, and how I was more like her than I realised? I didn’t want to be like her. I wanted to be the kind of parent who took their kid to the park, and who cheered them on at their chosen sport. There was a middle-aged woman wearing a maroon sweatshirt and with a yellow scarf tied in her badly dyed hair sitting a couple of rows in front of me. She was holding a home-made banner which read Up Ballymor! No tea for Dermot unless he scores! I picked out the player I guessed was Dermot, the one for whom she cheered loudest whenever he had a touch of the ball. Her son, I supposed. I loved her for her loud, unembarrassed support of him. If I was going to be a parent, I wanted to be that kind of mum. If I had it in me.
Soon I was cheering as loudly as everyone else whenever the Ballymor players scored. I had no idea of the rules, but the game was fast and furious and very watchable. At one point there seemed to be some kind of penalty awarded, and all the visiting team players lined up to block their goal along with their goalkeeper while a Ballymor player – it was Dermot! – took a shot. The crowd fell completely silent as he lined up his shot.
‘It’ll hurt if he hits one of the players,’ I whispered.
‘He won’t aim directly at them – he wouldn’t score if he did,’ Declan replied, and sure enough the player aimed high and managed to put the ball into the top corner of the net, to his mother’s and the crowd’s absolute delight.
Ballymor won, two goals and fifteen points to the visitors’ zero goals and ten points. Everyone was in good spirits leaving the ground – even the visiting fans.
‘So, what did you think?’ Declan asked, as we walked back across the park.
‘Great fun! How long has it been played in Ireland? I have never heard of it before.’
‘Ah, sure it’s an ancient game, been played for thousands of years. The GAA standardised the rules in the late nineteenth century.’
‘Michael McCarthy might have played it, perhaps?’
‘He might have, indeed.’
I loved the idea of Michael, perhaps pre-famine, before the death of his father Patrick (if indeed Patrick was his father) playing hurling at the local school or with his younger siblings. I fervently hoped there had been happy times for the family before the disasters struck.
Declan had to leave me back in town – he had an evening service to prepare for and other parish business. ‘Thanks for your company today,’ he said, giving me a brief farewell hug.
‘
Thank you. I’ve had a great day and learned so much.’ Not least that you’re a priest, I thought, and that I would rather be like the player Dermot’s mum than my own.
*
I had an early dinner at O’Sullivan’s then, as it was a beautiful evening, I decided to go for an evening stroll. It’d be better for me than sitting in the bar sipping sweet drinks for hours and brooding on the phone call with Jackie. My first thought was to head up to Kildoolin and watch the sunset from the top of the hill, and indeed I headed out of town that way, but after the long walk earlier to the hurling match I couldn’t face the hill. Instead of taking the track left to the abandoned village, I turned right, along a lane which was signposted ‘Clear View Camping’. I remembered that Sharon, Dave and their kids were camping here and wondered if they might be around – they hadn’t been in the pub today. Dave had said something about there being ruins of an old stately home at the campsite, which I assumed would be Ballymor House. It’d be interesting to take a look at it.
The lane wound its way between hedges sloping gently downhill, then through a pair of ancient stone gateposts into the campsite, which occupied the old landscaped parkland. Huge beech trees were dotted around, spreading their branches wide, with tents and caravans pitched in the spaces between them. I walked through the site, keeping an eye out for Sharon and Dave, following the signs to Reception. At the top of a little rise there was a line of poplars and beyond that I could see some buildings. The ruins of the main house were on the right, and the old stable block was on the left, now converted into various campsite utilities including the reception, shower blocks and a communal kitchen.
I stood in the middle of the courtyard and looked around, trying to imagine it as it would have appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. Maybe there’d be some pictures of it – paintings or early photographs – which I might find online. I walked over to the old house for a closer look. Its roof had fallen in, and saplings grew in abundance inside. All the doorways and glassless windows were secured with sturdy iron bars and hung with signs saying ‘Dangerous structure: keep out’. It certainly didn’t look like the kind of place you’d want your children climbing all over, although I was sure kids would love to explore it. Peeking through the grilles, I could see an internal wall leaning at a very nasty angle. It had clearly been left to rot a very long time ago. I wondered about its history. Perhaps it was like so many country houses in the UK – the First World War had left families unable to afford the upkeep of large estates, often with no male heir to take over, so the houses had fallen into disrepair and been abandoned. But at some point, while it was still habitable, someone must have made the decision to move out and leave it to be gradually reclaimed by nature – at least until some enterprising person had the idea of building a campsite.
I was supposed to be researching the McCarthys, and as far as I knew they had no connection with Ballymor House. Then it struck me – the owners of the house would also have been the landowners around here, and therefore Patrick McCarthy and perhaps Michael too, before he became an artist, might have worked for them. I remembered too that unnerving Michael McCarthy sketch of a man on a horse at the museum in Cork, which had apparently hung in this house for many years. Perhaps there was more of a link than simply that of landowner to farm-worker.
‘Maria, hello!’
I turned, to see Dave and his younger son Sammy walking up the path from the camping field. The boy was filthy dirty as though he’d been rolling around in mud, and Dave was half dragging him towards the shower block, a towel slung over his shoulder.
‘Hey! Wondered if I might bump into you. Looks like you’ve got your work cut out with that one.’
Dave grimaced. ‘Yeah, think I’ll just chuck him in the shower with his clothes still on. There’s an overgrown duck pond at the far end of the campsite. Little tyke thought he’d try to make a boat out of a plastic food container, using a tea towel tied to a wooden spoon as a sail. He waded in through the mud at the edge of the pond to launch it and fell in.’
‘Oh dear! And what happened to the boat?’
‘It’s out in the middle of the pond, unreachable. Except for the tea towel, which was last seen sinking without trace. Sharon’ll go spare.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. Dave was grinning too. Well, wasn’t this the sort of thing kids were supposed to do while on holiday? I had a sudden memory of a family holiday we’d taken when I was about eight or nine years old. Dad and I had spent hours mucking around in a rock pool – trying to entice a small crab out from under its stone, catching minnows, trying to identify species of seaweed. I’d kept everything I found in a bucket to show Jackie, desperate to impress her and include her in our fun. At some point I had leaned over too far, fallen in and grazed my knee on the sharp rock. Jackie had given us both hell when he’d brought me, dripping wet and oozing blood, back into the rented holiday cottage, but Dad had dried me and patched up my knee. ‘What is childhood for, Jackie,’ he’d said, ‘if not to make discoveries and push boundaries? There are bound to be some accidents along the way, but no real harm done.’ He’d then mopped the floor and put my clothes in the wash, while Jackie had sat on the sofa with a cup of tea and a sour expression until he’d finished his chores and could sit beside her. She’d snuggled up to him then, happy to be once more the focus of his attention, and I’d retreated to my bedroom. All I’d needed was a get-well kiss from her.
‘Sounds like a fun thing to do,’ I said to Sammy, and he grinned at me, his teeth shining white against his muddy face.
‘So what brings you here?’ Dave asked me.
‘Just fancied an evening stroll, and I also wanted to see the remains of Ballymor House.’ I fell into step alongside them, walking in the direction of the old stables.
‘There’s a brief history of the house written up in the campsite leaflet,’ Dave said. ‘You can get one from Reception. If they’re closed, we’ve got one in our van you can have.’
‘Thanks, that’d be great,’ I said. There was some connection between the great house and the McCarthys, back in the mid-nineteenth century, I was sure of it.
*
I read the leaflet, given to me by Dave, later that evening when I was back in my room at O’Sullivan’s. There were only a couple of paragraphs about the history, and a single photo of the house from around 1900. It had been owned for many years by an English family named Waterman – the same family, I recalled, who’d owned the copper mines in the hills. Around the time of the Irish famine one Thomas Waterman lived here, splitting his time between Ireland and England. He’d left no heirs and on his death the Irish estate had passed to a cousin who had sold most of the land and rarely visited Ireland. The house had been emptied of its furnishings and abandoned in 1922 after the Irish War of Independence, and the remaining land bought and turned into a campsite just ten years ago.
I searched online for Thomas Waterman to see if I could discover anything more about him. There was a portrait of him on the National Gallery’s website which I was very excited to find, but sadly it was not by Michael McCarthy. It had been painted around 1865 and showed a grey-haired man, sitting in a high-backed armchair, his hands folded on top of a walking cane. His eyes looked rheumy, his face lined, and his overall expression was one of deep disappointment with life.
Nothing online linked Waterman with Michael McCarthy. I was no nearer working out why a rough McCarthy sketch would have been framed and hung in pride of place in Waterman’s house.
CHAPTER 16
Kitty
Kitty jumped down from the cart as soon as Jimmy Maguire had brought it to a stop, back in his yard in Ballymor. She thanked him, and hurried off as fast as she could, through the town centre, and out along the road that led towards Ballymor House. Her legs felt weak, and she realised she had not eaten all day. The hunk of bread and cheese was still wrapped up and tucked in her skirt pockets, but that was for Michael, whose need was greater than hers. She would have to manage without. She debated makin
g a detour via the road-building site so she could pass the package to him, but it was the wrong direction and besides he would insist on sharing it with her and she wanted him to have it all.
She needed to go ahead with her plan, now, before she stopped to think too hard about what she was doing, before she lost her nerve. She’d seen desire in Waterman’s eyes. If things worked out, much as it made her shudder to think of it, she might have money enough to buy food for the next few days as well as money for his ticket. And if she did, what did it matter where it had come from? What she was prepared to do for the money was a sin, but it would save a life and give a deserving young man a chance in life. God would forgive her.
She pinched her lips together resolutely, and marched as fast as her jelly-like legs would take her, along the well-surfaced lane that led to the big house. It was lined with majestic poplar trees, and lush green lawns studded with wide-spreading beeches sloped away on both sides. So different to the rough track through the heather that led to Kildoolin. She felt as though she was stepping into another world. Which, in a way, she was – his world. Thomas Waterman’s privileged, easy, selfish world.
As she neared the imposing house, her resolve began to fail her. Memories of her previous visit here surfaced – Waterman’s cruel abuse of her when she was not much more than a child. The abuse that had resulted in Michael. It seemed fitting in a twisted way that she was returning here only as a last resort, in a bid to save him. She reminded herself of what James O’Dowell had said about Waterman being changed, more sympathetic, perhaps more willing to help. She still could not believe that of him. It did not fit with the man she had known.
Should she go to the front door? It would be opened by a maid, or a butler, she supposed. Or should she look for him in the stables? What if he was not at home? Or was entertaining guests?
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