This seemed reasonable, particularly since I had never asked Cousin Francis for a penny before, but somehow the idea of writing to him was not attractive and I found myself putting off the task for a day or two.
“Let’s clear the land first,” I suggested to Derry, so I summoned MacGowan, explained the forestry scheme and asked him to issue the necessary eviction notices.
“There’ll be trouble, my lord,” said MacGowan at once in his gloomiest voice.
I repeated Derry’s suggestion that the tenants should resettle themselves on the south side of the lough.
“That land’s no better than a bog now, my lord,” said MacGowan. “It was different in the old days, but the river changed its course and there was no alternative but to abandon the fields there. That’s why the land has never been resettled.”
“Well … send the tenants to America or something,” I said on inspiration. “They live in such squalor that they’d probably jump at the chance to go.”
“If you want them to go they’ll want to stay,” said MacGowan, and having produced this depressing insight into the perverse nature of the Irish peasant, he added in what can only be described as a voice of doom, “They’re all O’Malleys, you know.”
“I don’t care who they are,” I said, much irritated by this time, and then remembered with a sinking feeling that the O’Malleys’ champion was none other than my old enemy Maxwell Drummond. “Oh Lord!” I muttered. “What a bother! Well, perhaps we’d better pay them compensation.”
“That would prove very expensive, my lord, and set a dangerous precedent. Every evicted tenant afterward would demand compensation from you and you’d soon find yourself in all kinds of trouble.”
“Oh. Well …” I was utterly nonplussed by this time. “I’ll talk to Mr. Stranahan about it,” I said at last, knowing Derry would find a way out of the difficulty somehow. “He’ll deal with the matter for me, I dare say.”
But Derry saw no way out except to stand firm when the O’Malleys protested. “They can fend for themselves!” he exclaimed. “And as for MacGowan saying the land on the south shore is useless, I don’t believe a word of it. All they need to grow are potatoes! They don’t need the best acreage in the valley for that.”
“But what if Drummond makes a fuss?”
“I can deal with Maxwell Drummond,” said Derry, and I knew that like a true Irishman he was already thirsting for a fight. “Leave him to me.”
Well, I did, but I didn’t like it, and as the weeks passed I liked it less and less. I did manage to extract the money from Cousin Francis, although he wrote me the devil of an uppish note about it, but I had no chance to put my forestry scheme into operation because it proved impossible to clear the land. Derry handed out the eviction notices, MacGowan retreated into glum neutrality and all the O’Malleys banded together, marched to the very front door of Cashelmara and demanded to see me. When I refused, thinking it would be a loss of face on my part to negotiate with such a rabble, two windows were smashed and Sarah was in such a state that I felt I had no choice but to send for Maxwell Drummond. But Drummond, damn his insolence, now refused to see me. In a carefully written letter he told me there could be no negotiations while Derry remained at Cashelmara.
“Don’t listen to him!” said Derry, incensed. “What right has he to talk of negotiations and lay down the law to you! You’ve signed the eviction orders, Patrick. Stand by them! If you retreat now you’ll never hear the end of it.”
That was all very well, but trying to suppress Irish discontent is like trying to stop an old bucket from leaking water—if you block one hole the water bursts out somewhere else. We did finally manage to evict the tenants but not before the sub-inspector at Letterturk had ordered all the police at his command into the valley and not before the eviction machines had wrecked the mud cabins almost over the inhabitants’ heads. I thought after that the worst trouble would be over, but never was I more mistaken. The troubles had barely begun. My cattle, which grazed docilely in the meadows by the Fooey River, were mutilated. One of my favorite setters, Polonius, disappeared and was discovered a week later sitting bolt upright on the altar of the chapel; he had been decapitated and his head was resting neatly beside him. Worse still, the chapel had been desecrated. The altar reeked of urine and all the pews had been slashed with knives.
By this time I was thoroughly enraged and very deeply upset. I would never have embarked on the forestry scheme if I had known it was going to result in such unpleasantness. I hadn’t wanted to offend anyone, and how was I to know the O’Malleys would take a few evictions so hard? I only wished I could abandon the idea without delay, but of course that would have been the crowning ignominy, and Derry rightly refused to hear it.
So I tried to stand firm, but life became so deuced uneasy that I was soon seriously worried that I was exposing Sarah to real danger instead of mere unpleasant discomfort. The last straw occurred in early March when Sarah’s carriage was pelted with rotten eggs as she drove home from Clonareen after calling on Madeleine.
I was so distressed that I promised to take her at once to London.
“But the money!” wept Sarah, mindful at last of our need to be thrifty.
“We’ll use some of the money your father sent us,” I said promptly, “and we’ll stay at St. James’s Square with Marguerite.”
I felt relieved once the decision had been made. “You and Clara had better come too,” I said to Derry. “It’s no good staying here.”
“I’ve got to stay,” he said. I’d never seen him so determined. “You leave, by all means, and take both the women to London—it would be a relief for me not to have to worry about Clara—but I must see this thing through to the end. It’s really a personal matter between Drummond and myself, you see, and I’ll not give in until I have him in jail for conspiracy, trespass, breach of the peace and a dozen other outrages. Let me once nail Drummond for you, Patrick, and I swear the valley will be as safe again as the Garden of Eden before the Fall.”
I didn’t like leaving him alone at Cashelmara. I wanted to recall the police so that a constant watch would be kept on the house, but Derry refused to consider it.
“That would make it look as though I’m scared,” he said, “and why should I be scared of a bunch of smelly peasants? I’ve got a gun, and if they drive me to prove my marksmanship I’ll show them I’m man enough to look after myself. Don’t you worry about me, Patrick. I’ll write and tell you as soon as Drummond’s behind bars.”
I said I would return as soon as the women were safely in London, but he shook his head. “This is my chance to do something for you, Patrick,” he said. “I put you into this damnable corner. Now it’s up to me to get you out of it.”
No man could have been fairer or more honest than that; no man in adversity could have had a better friend. I left him reluctantly, but I no longer felt guilty about leaving him because I was convinced that this was what he wanted. Accordingly I wrote to the sub-inspector at Letterturk to request an armed escort, and when he responded a day later I left the valley with Sarah and Clara.
I had never in my life felt more glad to leave.
IV
It was amazing how much Sarah changed once we had turned our backs on Ireland, and the closer we drew to London the more I noticed the difference in her. Sulkiness and boredom had made her plain at Cashelmara, but now she was beautiful again, brimming with that brilliant sparkle I remembered so well, and it was impossible for me to remain unaffected by her recovery. I no longer felt it needed an act of courage to go to bed with her again. All it needed was a successful visit to the theater and a late supper alone together at the house in St. James’s Square; all it needed was for me to see her in a new gown with amethysts at her throat, her thick hair coiled elegantly upon her head and her eyes tawny above her high cheekbones. And later when we were alone and she kissed me to show her willingness, all our unhappiness dissolved, my failures might never have existed and I had a tantalizing glimpse of what
our marriage might have been—and could still be if we could only give it half a chance.
“I do love you, Sarah,” I said. “I really do. I’m going to turn over a new leaf in the future and everything will be quite different, I swear it.”
We talked of the future, and when Sarah said in despair, “If only we didn’t have to live at Cashelmara!” I promised I would take her to New York for a visit. I thought perhaps Cousin Francis would invest some money for me on the New York Stock Exchange, and once he had made enough money to enable me to repay his loan and wipe out the second mortgage I could afford to live at Woodhammer again and visit London during the Season. After all, Cousin Francis had made his own fortune a dozen times over; why shouldn’t he make a little fortune for me, especially as his daughter’s happiness was at stake? It all seemed very logical to me, and when Sarah proved thrilled at the prospect of a visit home, Marguerite said approvingly that the long voyage across the Atlantic would be like going on a second honeymoon. So we set a date in May, and while Sarah wrote dozens of excited letters to her family to warn them of our plans I booked our passages and paid for them with more of the money Cousin Francis had loaned me for the forestry plantation.
Three days before we were due to leave I received a letter from Derry.
I had been receiving letters from him every week, and when this final letter arrived I thought it would be no different from the others, a catalogue of new “agrarian outrages,” examples of Drummond’s slipperiness in avoiding prosecution and a determination to quell the O’Malleys at all costs. But this letter was a plea for help. He had changed his mind about having the police keep watch on Cashelmara (I knew then that the situation must have become very serious), but the sub-inspector, who was hand in glove with Cousin George, had spitefully refused his request for aid.
“I’d go to Letterturk myself,” Derry wrote, “and shake that nincompoop till his teeth rattled, but matters have come to such a pass here that I daren’t leave the house alone and there’s no one I trust enough to take with me as a bodyguard. I’m giving this letter to MacGowan and have promised him a reward if it reaches you, so no doubt his avarice will encourage him to take it to Leenane for recollection by the mail car. Can you come as soon as possible to wake up the sub-inspector? You know I would never have asked you unless I really felt it was necessary, but that devil Drummond will see me in hell yet unless I do something desperate, although God knows if I go I’ll be damned if I don’t take him with me.”
I had no choice. He was looking after my affairs for me; he was doing everything a loyal friend could do. What sort of a friend would I have been if I had ignored his appeal for help and steamed off on a jolly voyage to New York? A man does have certain responsibilities, and although I wanted to fulfill my promise to Sarah I saw no way it could be done without betraying Derry’s trust. I had a moral obligation to help him.
“Let Derry fight his own battles!” blazed Sarah.
“Well, he’s tried but he’s obviously in a deuced dangerous situation.”
“He chose it!”
“Yes—to help me! To enable us to be in London together! How can I refuse now to help him in return?”
“I don’t believe he needs help!” cried Sarah, in such a towering rage that she became irrational. “He just wants to get you back! He’s jealous thinking of us alone together and he’s determined to get your attention!”
I tried to be patient. “Darling, just because you’d feel jealous if you were at Cashelmara and Derry and I were in London there’s no need to assume Derry would feel the same way. You can’t assign your own feminine jealousies to a man like Derry.”
“Oh, can’t I! Why not? He’s always been jealous of me, always, from the very beginning!”
“Absolute nonsense. Look, Sarah—”
“Patrick, if you cancel our voyage to New York now and go to Ireland, I’ll never forgive you. Never. It’ll be the end of our marriage.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic and ridiculous! Just because there’s a serious crisis at Cashelmara—”
“It’s got nothing to do with Cashelmara!” she shouted at me. “It’s all to do with Derry! You’ve had to choose between us and you’ve chosen him!”
Well, what can one do with a woman who twists the truth in such a demented fashion and compounds her madness by making such hysterical statements? I decided I must keep my dignity and allow her time for her anger to cool, so I shrugged my shoulders and headed in resignation for the door.
I never reached it. My refusal to argue maddened her still further, and she grabbed me by the wrist. I turned to protest. She tried to hit me, and in an effort to smother her flailing hands I made a half-hearted attempt at an embrace. It was only when she recoiled from me in disgust that I finally lost my temper.
“Damn you!” I blazed. “You spoiled, selfish bitch!” I said other words too, words she had never heard before, and suddenly the anger had faded from her eyes and I knew she was frightened.
Now it was my turn to recoil. I couldn’t stand to see her quivering like a jelly. There was sweat on her forehead and she smelled of fear, and I was nauseated by her. I looked at her round breasts and they were ugly to me. I looked at her long neck and it was grotesque.
“What a miserable creature you are!” I said bitterly. “What use are you to any man?” The rage was flowing through me like a stream of molten lead. I felt overpowered by it, pressed by its weight into a different, darker mold. I no longer had any control over what I said, and it was as if a stranger were talking in my voice. “You think you’re so beautiful and desirable,” I said, “but you’re not. You’re sexless, a failure, no better than a unicorn, the biggest swindle ever made on a man who walked down the aisle to the altar.”
She began to cry. I had a blurred impression of watery eyes and straggly hair and was again so nauseated that this time I had to leave the room. But she came after me. She was sobbing noisily by this time, and she went down on her knees and clung to the hem of my jacket as she begged me to stay.
I pushed her away, ran upstairs and vomited. I expected to feel better after that, but I didn’t. My brain was numb; I couldn’t think clearly. All I could tell myself was: It wasn’t me. I didn’t say those things. It was someone else.
Someone I didn’t want to know.
I summoned my man, told him to pack my bags. Marguerite tapped on my door later, but I refused to see her.
I took the afternoon train to Holyhead, and the next morning I crossed the sea to Kingstown. It was evening when the Dublin train drew into Galway, and I felt so exhausted that I had no choice but to go to bed at once at the hotel on Eyre Square.
The headache was gone when I awoke next morning, but it soon came back. I couldn’t eat any breakfast and hadn’t the heart to make the effort to hire a private carriage, so I took the outside car which left daily for Clifden. I was alone. Not wanting company, I had left my man in London, and so there was no one to look down their nose in disapproval as I sat down between a priest and a farmer’s wife. The car grated along through the pastoral country to Oughterard, and then after that the trees died, the meadows gave way to bog and in the distance rose the huge naked mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country.
I left the car at Maam’s Cross where the roads to Clifden and Leenane diverge and managed to hire a horse from one of Derry’s distant relatives who lived there. The wretched animal refused to hurry no matter how much I urged him, so it was well over an hour before I left the Leenane road and headed uphill through the gulley to the pass between Knocknafaughey and Bunnacunneen.
It was unseasonably hot, and I had seldom seen the valley look more tranquil. Even the lough’s ragged edges seemed smooth, and on the hillside across the valley stood Cashelmara, shimmering mysteriously in that unnatural brilliant light.
He must have seen me coming from a long way off, for when I had passed the tip of the lough and my horse had begun to climb again I saw him running down the dark drive to the gates.
&
nbsp; He raised his hand, waved joyfully. I knew that if I had been within earshot he would have said, laughing, “Ain’t life grand?” and suddenly I knew who I was again and none of my troubles mattered any more.
He began to unlock the gates with the giant key. I was still some way off, but when the gates swung open I stood up in my stirrups to call a greeting.
He never heard it. He came rushing out toward me, and before I could speak I saw the dazzling flash of sunlight on naked metal and heard the clatter of his gun as it fell unused from his hand.
He had stopped. For one long moment I saw him standing there very straight and proud, his eyes sparkling, his hair blowing lightly in the soft wind, and then he keeled forward, slipping from his knees to the mud road at his feet.
The knife shone in his back as obscene as an inverted cross.
When my horse refused to gallop I slid from his back and started to run. I ran and ran, the sharp stones rough beneath my city shoes, and the sun streamed down upon the valley from that hot and steamy sky.
I reached him. He was conscious. We looked at each other, but neither of us spoke, and the stranger inside me mocked us, saying we had never really talked to each other at all. As if to deny it, Derry made a great effort to speak, but it was too late. He was beyond all speech, and as I pressed him closer to me his face stiffened, his eyes grew darker and the blood ran from his mouth as he died.
V
I never saw the man who killed him. He must have been hiding among the large boulders above the road, and afterward it would have been easy for him to slip away out of sight around the corner of the walled grounds. I saw no one but Derry.
But I went after Maxwell Drummond. I summoned all the magistrates. I summoned the sub-inspector. I wrote letters to everyone concerned with law enforcement in County Galway. I even wrote to the Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Secretary of State and the Lord Lieutenant at Dublin Castle. And when people shrugged and said outrages were all too common nowadays I wrote to Gladstone at Westminster and said that what was needed in Ireland was not the secret ballot or land reform but law and order.
Cashelmara Page 36
