Harney and I stayed for some hours; then we went to Jammet's, and over potato soup and excellent beef I told him about Oscar Wilde, and the first April Burke.
After watching the troops withdraw, Harney went back to Tipperary with Charles just as the pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions were beginning to square off. The country still reeled from the sheer ferocity of Collins's campaign, and there were many wounds to lick, many bereavements to heal.
By this stage in his text, Charles has more or less abandoned the idea of keeping a rigorous historical chronicle. He was, of course, preoccupied with the castle, and that was the main focus of his attention; in his record of his life as it had now become, he kept detailed accounts of cattle prices, how much he was paying workmen, and so on, and he wrote less and less about contemporary events. Therefore, the first time I read the end of Charles's “History,” I felt slightly cheated, especially now that I knew I had more than a passing interest in it.
For example, he completely omitted Noonan, who became a major figure in the politics ahead. How I wish that Charles had had the courage to tell us what he felt when all that was going on. I wanted to know his feelings as he saw the love affair burgeoning, and when he heard of the miscarriage—was that the first time he knew of the pregnancy?
Above all, what went through his mind when he saw her drive off, as he—and she—believed, to her wedding? And what did he think when she came home, jilted? Now, with my own identity at stake, and so late in my life, I knew I needed—vitally so—to learn more.
And my thought was: Two such luminous people as Charles O'Brien and April Burke must have left behind more of a trace than Charles's selective account. After all, Harney left behind what amounts to an oral history.
For starters, though, I already had a database nearer home. I hadn't touched my mother's photographs since she and I sorted them when I was a schoolboy. From time to time, I had promised myself that I would catalog every one and donate the collection to the National Library.
She had taken so many—before she married my father. Also, she had done quite an amount of sorting without my help. Perceiving her work as a matter of national interest, she had divided each category according to county. “Dublin” had the thickest files, but I went straight to “Tipperary.”
In the file marked “People” I found nothing to help me—but I did in “Places.” She'd taken about thirty photographs on the day they opened the restored castle to thank the locals for their help.
At the back of the file I found a newspaper—from The Nationalist, folded open to a page with the headline “Grand Time at Tipperary.”
“It was a day long awaited,” writes “Our Social Secretary,”
and hundreds of local people who had worked on the rebuilding were happy guests. Mrs. Somerville, radiant in a green frock, welcomed many local dignitaries on her lawns. Dinner tables inside the castle groaned under the weight of food, and John Ryan & Son, Vintners, Main Street, Cashel provided beverages. Mrs. John Ryan was among the guests, looking radiant in black.
At eight o'clock in the evening, with the sunlight still broad upon the fields and terraces, Mrs. Somerville ushered her guests along the southern walls, to some platforms and benches. The castle is equipped with a theater, but with one hundred seats it was deemed too small for the large crowd.
Mary Cody, aged six, danced jigs and reels, and a fiddler, Joseph Harney, played for her; the audience delighted in them. Her brother, James Cody, recited a poem, “Dark Rosaleen,” and also received loud applause. Two ten-year-old girls, the Cody sisters, played concertinas dexterously; the concertina is a difficult instrument—but not in their hands. Mr. and Mrs. Cody (of Cody's Boots & Shoes, West Gate, Clonmel) were proud parents in the audience. Mr. John Coffey (of Coffey the Butcher), who is also a renowned local tenor, sang “Danny Boy.” He was accompanied by his cousin Josie Cleary, on the violin, and were there extra sobs to be wrung from the song's mourning, she would have found them. The sun's dying rays fell aslant across the audience and bathed the people in shades of red.
Mrs. Somerville made what she called “a historic announcement.” She declared that she was forming a troupe of actors, a permanent company, to put on plays at the theater. She said that local people whom she hired would be paid for their work, and would also get the benefit of being taught by famous actors, whom she intended to invite from time to time. Her words received many energetic murmurs of comment.
The Nationalist report includes many more names, notably of business people who advertised in the newspaper. Charles receives no mention; nor did the Social Secretary make any observations on the renovations or the gardens or the food.
In his “History,” Charles also reported the day. Though briefly, and with some reflection, he—as ever—added substance. Here, with some abridgments—he included lists of names—is an excerpt from his account.
My country in its adventures and tensions had been, in my lifetime, advancing toward the convulsion of rebellion, as I had been struggling with unrequited love. Ireland has now achieved the aftermath of independence, which, as I write this, has not yet reached tranquillity—but I believe it will. I myself have not yet reached out and grasped the inner peace that I seek—but I hope to do so one day.
Both my country and my spirit have been in need of ritual. First, the departure of the troops gave us a national reason to celebrate—our green island is now ours to throw open, to welcome in the world. And second, without, I hope, self-aggrandizement, here is my parallel with it: on the day in August 1922—let me give it full title, Sunday, the 20th—when April opened the castle to friends and neighbors, we marked a great joy at the completion of our massive work.
The Gardens had approached, in my view, perfection; already we received questions as to our inspirational planting, and requests from people who, having heard the rumors, wished to visit. Our restoration of Major and Minor (the two pavilions) made my heart sing at the sheer beauty of Mr. Mulberry's fretted carpentry. The swards of the terraces, when newly mown, looked like starched green linen.
On the morning of the celebration, I rode the land. Out across the fields, I gazed at our herds and our horses. We had developed excellent systems of paddocking and grazing in rotation, with the dairy cows and the beef cattle (mostly yearlings) fenced away from each other. Not so with the horses; I'd deliberately asked the ostlers and the stewards to achieve a good mixture according to age; as with humans, young horses need to learn sense from their elders.
When I came back, I walked from the stables into the kitchens—all restored, all staffed, and working as though there had never been a hiatus of nearly seven decades. As to the building, when Mr. Higgins had concluded his stonework on the exterior of the castle—several years had passed since then—he had come indoors and attended to the great fireplaces, all of which had been restored. I requested his caution to make them not so much to look like new—they still kept their patina of ancient fires from long-past winter evenings. Of these, his greatest task had been in the kitchens, where two gigantic fireplaces at either end had been in dire want of repair, right up to chimney level. Now the fires roared with the cooking of the food, and the fireplaces looked magnificent.
Before that reparation, however, I had asked our Master Stonemason to restore the bridge; it may well be judged the sweetest thing he ever did for us. I believe that he thought so too, because when it was completed, Mr. Higgins went out of his way every morning coming to work, and every evening going home, to stand on the bridge and stroke its cut-stone parapets.
Now, as I stood in the main doorway, waiting for the first guests to arrive, I looked not only at the bridge but at the restless willows above the water, the great placid beeches and oaks beneath the castle walls, the line of plane trees, and I admired—again—how they had been trimmed, and how their new growths gave forth the most pleasant feeling of safety.
Nothing, however, compared with the castle itself. From the slates, blue-black as crows and now shiny in the su
n, and along the parapets and battlements, to the turrets, and then down along the great facades with their long, big walls—oh, what a place we had here! Privately I had said to myself: I will see to it that this woman has the finest house in Europe. And not only will it be so judged in the strength of its fabric—it will be hailed for the steady perfection of its exterior, and the daring beauty of its interior.
All around the Great Hall we had re-created what it must have looked like. Ancient drawings of the castle had helped us, and it took little imagination to see a king or a knight stride across here, and climb the angelic white marble of the Grand Staircase. The hangings, the tapestries with their great scenes of hunting—how they asserted their rights to be here.
I began a last walk through the great rooms. How had the polishers achieved such a gleam on the furniture? All the doors between the dining-rooms had been opened, the tables connected, and now we had one great banqueting spread; I guessed the connected tables reached more than eighty feet.
Every outer door on the southern side of the castle had also been opened to the paved terraces and rows of tables bearing the drink to be served. We had kegs and casks, beer, sherries, port wines; at least the paving-stones were now level, and people might not fall down, because here we meant that they would dance!
I walked along to the open doors of the Ballroom and went back inside the house. Four months earlier, Serge and Claudette Lemm had unveiled “my” mural—the saffron yellows, the coral reds, the green soft as our fields. I loved the scale: the house of Odysseus was mighty, yet intimate; by the tree in her bedroom, Penelope sat at her loom, weaving the celebrated garment.
At the unveiling I told April the story: With Odysseus away from home, suitors persisted in trying to win his wife's affections. He's dead, said some—the Trojan War killed him; he's no good, said others—he's not coming back. Penelope promised each suitor that she would marry him when she had finished weaving the robe on her loom, and each day she wove so that they could see her, and each night she unraveled what she had woven, so that she never finished.
In the mural, Odysseus has returned and strides his bedroom floor like a great-thighed hero; through the door behind him we see the bodies on the floors of his house—the suitors he has slain lie in their own gore. Penelope sits nearby, and she holds across her knees the robe that she has at last finished weaving; it is as blue as air, and the loom beside her is empty of yarn.
April looked at the picture for a long time, but she said not a word. Now I stood in front of it and feasted across its wide range: the horses, the dogs, a kitten playing with a leaf, a hand-maiden in an orange gown pouring shining water into a cauldron, a tray of food—Vien had painted a scene of a conquering hero standing in his own house, about to claim his woman. If I never do anything notable in my life, I shall at least say that I have had this picture released to the world's eyes once again.
No day had more sun as that great, celebratory Sunday. My mother stood with me—still as straight as a stick—at the door to the opened dining-rooms and watched the seated banquet begin.
“So this is to be the shape of the world,” she said. Mother wore a black-and-white silk dress that day, and a great black hat with a white ribbon. People thronged to her, and she had a smile for everybody and an interested inquiry.
My dear Lady Mollie arrived—whom I had not seen in months, a fact for which she chided me.
I defended myself well; I know all her sallies—and then asked her, “But why did you not bring Mr. Ross? I should like to have met him again.”
To which she replied with an answer that I had heard about others all too frequently in the last eight years: “He died, dear.”
I said, “But I did not know? Was it Vimy? The Somme? Or—in Ireland?”
“Neither, dear. He never went to war; he didn't need to—he was able to die with no reason.”
To which I said, “I'm afraid I have been so absorbed that I have missed much.”
This somber news made a brief black plume in the air—but it was the only such darkness.
Weeks earlier, as we'd prepared for this day, I'd asked Harney the address to which I might send Mr. Collins an invitation. He'd looked alarmed and shaken his head.
“We won't do that,” he said.
I asked why and he told me that, given the bitterness now mounting between those who supported the Treaty with London and those who believed that it gave Ireland too little, Mr. Collins might not be safe here. Tipperary had become rife with anti-Treaty forces—the “Irregulars.”
“But we have no politics here,” I said.
“No, Charles, but the people you invite—they'll have enough politics for everybody. That's not a subject to mention that day.”
There came a moment when I walked away from the dancing and climbed up the highest of the terraces, from where, a few hundred yards distant, I turned and looked back. It looked like a gala from history. The dancers had not confined themselves to the Ballroom; they had, as we intended, whirled out onto the paving-stones outside the Ballroom doors, and as they flew and spun to the music, the bystanders applauded them. Everywhere seemed full of good humor. By the liquor tables, people stood three and four deep, and people of all stripes talked to one another; this was a day of the greatest gaiety.
In the midst of the dancers, I saw April. She danced with Harney and they danced excellently together, and I saw her throw her head back and laugh, and then reach in and embrace Harney, and then laugh again and then dance on, and I remembered Mr. Yeats's wonderful poem, that he conceived here—“And he saw young men and young girls / Who danced on a level place.”
I shall write and tell him, I reflected, of April's “sad and gay face.”
At three o'clock in the morning we still kept torches burning on the avenue. The Paglalonis, the Marchettis, the Lemms—they had stayed together at dinner, and as darkness fell, they came to me almost as a group, and each one said that they wept to think that the work had ended, and each one told me that never would they work on such a rewarding enterprise again, and each one brought me gifts, and I had not the words to thank them.
The Marchettis gave me a marble carving—and rendered me speechless when they told me its provenance: “The Signora's hands.”
“The Signora?”
“Yes,” they said, “the Signora Somaaar-veel.”
Had they asked April to sit for them while they took casts of her hands? It appeared so, and the carving was a perfect replica. Gianfranco Paglaloni gave me a little stucco medallion of a horse—a replica that the brothers had constructed of the first piece of decorative plaster ever placed on the castle walls. Serge and Claudette Lemm gave me a charcoal drawing they had made of the mural's Odysseus: “For Monsieur Charles O'Brien—who knows of these things.”
When everybody had left, and the last of our workers had gone to bed, and no sound could be heard anywhere, the first lemon stripes of dawn began to spear the eastern sky toward Cashel. I leaned against the door and looked out into the gloaming—full darkness seems never to fall on an Irish summer night. Another line by Mr. Yeats came to mind: “ ‘What then?’ sang Plato's ghost. ‘What then?’ ”
MONDAY, THE 21ST OF AUGUST 1922.
Why must Life so mix us up? I have great joy in my heart today at my dear son's triumph, and great sorrow—that I can never speak—at my beloved Bernard's despondency. Dare I say it to him? No. Then we shall have to address it between ourselves, and we are too old. Bernard sits by the fire all day. I know that he broods on the great wrong he has done.
Now it hurts him so. He could not share his son's triumph yesterday. He could not witness how our neighbors hail his son. He knows that some people who went to the castle banquet are aware of his dreadful truth.
Many times, I feel he wishes to tell me what he has done. I fervently hope he does not. For if he does, I shall have to cease speaking to him forever.
And does he not worry that Charles knows? And if Charles does not know, why does he not know?
Oh, I wish I had not written these words here. They despoil the memory of the great day that we had yesterday. Charles tells me that he and he alone chose the yellow that is painted on the walls of the Great Hall—and the raspberry on the Gallery's ceiling. He knows colors better than I do. I am so proud of him.
From Joe Harney's oral reminiscences:
It was three days, I remember, three days after the banquet in Tipperary Castle when I heard the news. What's that machine they ride at carnivals, what do they call it—a roller-coaster? Yes, that's it. There were still people cleaning up and putting the dining-rooms back together after that great party. In the village they were saying that there'll never be another as good—there couldn't be.
I was sitting in the sunshine outside the Ballroom when I heard it. What could I do but weep? I put my hands over my face and I just wept. In floods. That awful feeling we get in our chests—I can still feel it now, all these years afterward. Oh, God! When I thought of the times I had been with him, and how I looked up to him.
It was Charles who told me. A workman rode up from the village in a bad state. Charles didn't believe him—and then he did believe him. Just as Charles told me, April arrived and found the two of us in tears.
“Mr. Collins is dead,” said Charles, and she sat straight down.
None of us said much to each other. She asked one question: “Does that mean our protection has gone?”
Who could answer her? I know that she wanted me to reassure her, but I was out of it by then; I was never going to make war on my fellow-Irishmen.
April nodded as if she understood why we didn't answer, and then she left us alone. When our grief thawed a little, Charles and I talked. We talked for ages—about the first time Charles met Mick Collins, about the clarity of his vision, about how tough he was, about the mistakes he had been making by killing too many of his own countrymen in this new conflagration.
Tipperary Page 45
