An Irish Country Love Story

by Patrick Taylor

  O’Reilly saw Kitty and Lars both lean forward. He’d heard bits and pieces of the story over the years but never from the family themselves.

  “Uncle Albert had what might have been called a chequered career. He was expelled from Eton, so grandfather got him into Portora Royal School in County Fermanagh. Then another year at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where he was sent down for embezzling undergraduate society funds, which of course Grampa had to repay. Albert then said he wanted to write, so he took over the townhouse in Belgravia and as far as we know produced nothing much—”

  “Except,” John said, “a massive gambling debt—”

  “And a standing order for Veuve Clicquot?” said Kitty with a wicked smile.

  “Kitty,” O’Reilly said.

  Myrna exploded into laughter and had to put her drink on the table before she spilled it. She nodded vigorously to Kitty. “And quite possibly a few illegitimate children.”

  “Myrna.” John MacNeill was shaking his head, but he was also smiling and looking at his sister with a fondness O’Reilly found touching. “Anyway, the family connection had given him membership at White’s gentlemen’s club. It always had that reputation. As for the champagne, I’m sure you’re right, Kitty. The house on Wilton Crescent became the site of some quite wild parties.”

  “So, to cut a very long story short,” Myrna said, “two town houses in London had to go on the auction block and father had to sell off everything we owned from the Black Swan north to the tide line to get Uncle Albert out of debt. There was some talk of making him a remittance man.”

  “I know what those were,” said Kitty, smiling. “I’ve read my Somerset Maugham. They were wastrel sons of wealthy families who were shipped off to the South Sea Islands or remote corners of the empire like Canada and sent money, a remittance, every month on the condition that they never returned to England. I have the feeling your uncle Albert would still have found a way to get into mischief.”

  Myrna took a sip from her glass. “I agree, Kitty. And by all accounts he was charming and very funny. Our aunt Dahlia always said her brother was just misunderstood. That he was actually a creative genius.”

  “A creative genius he might have been, but he was also a notorious gambler, and the only thing he ever created as far as I know were a few poems I could never understand.”

  “They were very … um … very modern,” said Myrna.

  “He did redeem himself,” John said. “He volunteered in 1914, was one of Kitchener’s New Army, won the Military Cross at Thiepval Wood in 1916, and was killed at Pilkem Ridge in 1917.”

  O’Reilly cocked his head and peered at Lars. “Well, big brother,” he said, “no skeletons in the O’Reilly closet?”

  Lars chuckled. “Not as far as I know.” He looked at Myrna. “I think your aunt Dahlia might have been right, though. Your uncle was a creative genius, but with his life. What a marvellous story of dissolution and ultimate heroic redemption. Someone should write it down.”

  “I think one of his writer friends might have at the time. But as if our uncle’s squandering a fortune wasn’t enough, between 1911 and his death in 1917, income taxes went from six to thirty percent, and estate duties increased.”

  “I don’t mean to sound callous, John, but it sounds like it’s a very good thing your father wasn’t killed in the Great War,” said O’Reilly. “I know he served.”

  “I seem to remember a case where a wealthy father and his two successors were all killed in sequence, and each time the taxes were levied. It ruined the family,” Lars said.

  “That’s iniquitous,” O’Reilly said.

  “I remember that family, Lars. It was iniquitous, Fingal, particularly when the last one to go had been awarded a posthumous VC. But that nasty little Welshman, Lloyd George, the PM, was determined to smash the upper class,” John said.

  “Just to set the record straight,” Lars said, “from the purely fiscal point of view, if John’s father had been killed in the war, John would have inherited the title but would have had to pay a lot less in death duties than he eventually did.”

  John MacNeill nodded. “Lars is right. They really started to bite in 1927 when the rate went up to forty percent. Great estates all over the United Kingdom were being broken up to raise the money to pay the taxes. When our father did die in ’54, the rate had risen to seventy-five percent on estates worth more than two million pounds. It was worth that then, and, for our sins, it currently still is. But lands in Ayrshire, a cotton mill in Belfast, and much of our property to the west of the big house, from the Duck south to the foot of the Ballybucklebo Hills, had to go to pay the death duties.”

  “And of course,” Kitty said, “that includes the land under Number One, Fingal. You pay your ground rent to the new owners. The holding company that bought all that property after the marquis’s father died got title to your parcel too.”

  O’Reilly said, “I pay the ground rent to a numbered account at the Bank of Ireland every year. I’ve no idea who the account holder is.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” Myrna said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” O’Reilly said. “Tell us more about John’s present problem. I didn’t realise how brutal the taxation was. I can understand why so much had to go.”

  “And as you know, Fingal,” Myrna said, “that’s why your clever brother is showing us a way to avoid having to break up more of the estate, aren’t you, Lars?”

  O’Reilly heard something in her voice—admiration? affection?—and noticed a smile flickering on Lars’s lips.

  “I’m trying.” Lars, true to form, had had little to say for several minutes. “With Myrna’s help.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” the marquis said, “but your glass is empty, Fingal. The drinks are on the sideboard. Please help yourself. Anyone else?”

  “Not for me, thanks,” Kitty said, holding up a half-full Waterford glass.

  “Please,” Myrna said, and as he rose handed O’Reilly her glass. He walked across a deep-pile Axminster carpet to a mahogany sideboard with fretwork legs, and Gothic arches above the flat top.

  As O’Reilly poured, he heard Kitty say, “I have to confess I tend to lean a bit to the left. I can see the fundamental injustice of inherited wealth—sorry, John, Myrna. Of some people living in great wealth and others living in terrible poverty. It’s not something that can be fixed in one generation or even two I suppose, and yet I find I can’t completely condemn the British Parliament for trying.” A log fell in the grate and a spray of embers crackled and hissed. John rose, picked up a fresh log from a large brass log holder, and placed it gently on the embers, which licked at it greedily and then burst into new flames.

  17

  Death and Taxes

  The silence stretched out and Fingal wondered if he and Kitty might be looking elsewhere for their evening meal. He inclined his head and looked at her. She made a tight O with her lips and closed her grey eyes. He hoped to God she’d not dropped a clanger.

  “You have a point, Kitty,” John said, staring into the flames, “and, philosophically, I have to agree with you about inherited money.”

  O’Reilly’s frown vanished. Kitty sighed and opened her eyes.

  “Our dear old uncle Albert was a pretty good example of abuse of privilege. Never did a hand’s turn of work in his life until he joined up.” The marquis waved an arm to encompass the room. “Myrna and I bounce around in this massive mansion like peas on a drum. It’s far too big for just the two of us—”

  “But we do work,” said Myrna quickly. “I’m at the university almost every day during the week and John is very hands-on with the estate and sits on half a dozen committees at least.”

  “Yes, but you need go no farther than the Falls Road or Sandy Row in Belfast to see the other end of the housing spectrum. That’s all at an intellectual level, though. There are feelings…” He tapped the left side of his chest. “In here.” The graciousness of John MacNeill, even when he had been ch
allenged, was something no one could take away, O’Reilly thought. The room fell still again and O’Reilly stared into the fire, watching it consume the new log.

  “I’m from Tallaght,” Kitty said, “which is not by any means Dublin 4 where the toffs live.”

  A polite way, O’Reilly thought, of saying her part of Dublin was predominately working class.

  “My grandfather was a cooper at Guinness’s. If Dad hadn’t been a scholarship boy funded by the taxpayer he’d have been a cooper too. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a cooper, but he wasn’t good with his hands, he was good with numbers. He understood them, and he wanted to move up in the world. And yet, even though he had, he loved his part of Dublin, refused to leave it, and I imagine, given the history surrounding this place, you and Myrna love your estate too.”

  “Exactly,” John said. “We do. As a reasonably wealthy man I don’t mind paying my fair share. Everybody should have a chance in life, like your father. Even though my dad was a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party, he supported Asquith’s Liberal old-age pension acts, free school meals, and other social reforms, all to be paid for by taxpayers.”

  “Which is fair,” said Myrna, “but seventy-five percent of everything we own when you go, John?”

  “And,” said Lars, “for Finn and Kitty’s benefit so you’ll understand, I’m afraid it does mean everything. All of the assets, and that includes land, houses, businesses, investments…” He pointed to the painting over the fireplace. “Art. I could go on…”

  “I get the drift,” Kitty said. “I’m all for reducing the gaps between the classes, but things have gone too far too fast. I really am sorry for you both, and I do hope Lars is going to be able to help.”

  “He is,” Myrna said, and bestowed a beaming smile on the older O’Reilly, “and a damn good thing too. For a start, I’m going to be able to live on here after…” she left the “John goes” to be understood, “and I’d hate to have to leave. I love this land. I love the things that the family finances let us have, like the hunting and shooting … and I know bloody well you don’t approve, Lars Porsena O’Reilly.” But she smiled at him, and O’Reilly wondered since when had she been privy to his middle name, something Lars rarely if ever told even his friends? He glanced at his brother. There was definitely fondness in the look he was giving Myrna.

  “And I love our history.” She smiled. “The family’s been in Ireland since just about after the Ark landed on Ararat. One of our early progenitors who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066 was granted a Welsh barony. One of his descendants came to Ireland in 1170 with Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke, and he came here because he’d fallen out with Henry II, who took back the Welsh lands.”

  “I’m no genealogy expert but ‘MacNeill’ is hardly an Anglo-Norman name,” Kitty said.

  “It’s not. We were originally de Blanchevilles,” John said. “But Myrna’s the family archivist. I’ll let her explain.”

  “By the fourteenth century, the Normans had settled and intermarried with the native Irish and were Hiberniores Ipsis Hibernis, more Irish than the Irish. They even spoke Irish. They controlled a great part of the island and the de Blanchvilles had settled in what is now North Down in the Province of Ullaidstir, Ulster. Henri de Blancheville married Aoife MacNeill, a direct descendant of Niall Noigiallach, Niall of the Nine Hostages, an ancient high king of Ireland. When a son was born, to keep the noble lineage alive, he took his mother’s surname and we’ve been MacNeills ever since.”

  “So,” said O’Reilly, “you must be one of the very last basically native peerages.”

  “We are,” said John. “One of our ancestors, right round the time Henry VIII was leaving the Catholic church, had the political wit to become an Anglican. As a reward he was made Lord Ballybucklebo and given a large chunk of North Down. And we were lucky to hang on to it, at least until Dad died.

  “Most of the other native Irish Catholic lords took what turned out to be the wrong sides in the rebellions of 1595 and 1641—and in the war between James and William in 1690. Their estates were broken up and given to Anglican English. The MacNeills were on William’s side.”

  Kitty blew out her lips. “‘God save Ireland, said the heroes,’” she said, quoting the chorus of a rebel song. “How much hurt has been caused here in this small island in the name of ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’?”

  O’Reilly looked around the room to see four heads nodding in agreement.

  “And still is being caused,” said Lars.

  And O’Reilly knew his brother was thinking of “Operation Harvest,” a campaign that remnants of the Irish Republican Army, who wanted Protestant Northern Ireland united with the Catholic Republic of Ireland, had run from 1956 until 1962. The IRA had taken aim primarily against the Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks and their occupants and lost eleven of their own men in the effort. The RUC had lost six officers with thirty-two wounded.

  Lars, perhaps to give everyone a breather from the Irish history lesson, pointed to his empty glass and said, “If I may, John?”

  “Please help yourself.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Kitty and O’Reilly both shook their heads. Myrna held out her glass, Lars rose and took it. He held her gaze for a while before crossing to the sideboard.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said O’Reilly, “but wasn’t it the giving of Irish properties to Anglicans that was the start of what came to be known as the Ascendancy? A wealthy Protestant minority owning the land with the Catholic majority cast as labourers or tenant farmers?”

  “Yes, the MacNeills were a part of the Ascendancy. With one difference. Many of the estates were run by managers while the owners were absentee landlords. This was a cause of great bitterness among the tenant farmers. Our family stayed, worked the estates, took care of our employees. My great-grandfather set up soup kitchens and forgave rents during An Gorta Mor, the great famine from 1845 to ’52. Not one of his tenants was evicted.”

  “Noblesse oblige used to mean something,” Myrna said, looking into her glass.

  “I believe,” Kitty said, “from what I’ve seen since I came north, it still does. Helen Hewitt wouldn’t be going to medical school but for the MacNeill bursary.”

  John MacNeill inclined his head. “It was set up before my time. But I do think my philanthropic forebears, at least locally, had earned the respect of their neighbours. Have you any idea how many stately homes were burned down during the 1919 to 1921 Anglo-Irish War?”

  “I was just eleven,” said O’Reilly, “and…” It was impolite to discuss a lady’s age, “Kitty was even younger.”

  He was rewarded with a smile.

  “More than three hundred.”

  “Holy O,” O’Reilly said.

  “Holy O’s right,” the marquis said, “but ours was left alone. I certainly don’t want to give up all our money, but I find the irony hard to take. The MacNeills have held on to most of what they fought for during all of Ireland’s many upheavals, but now we’re in danger of losing the lot by—”

  “Legal government robbery,” Kitty said, her face flushed. “I’m sorry to interrupt, John, but yes, I do see now that it simply isn’t fair.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “and Lars is being very helpful.”

  Lars nodded. “It’s all coming together rather well. “Myrna and I have worked with Simon O’Hally, the family’s solicitor, to sort out all the deeds and titles we need.” I’ve had some help from the legal department at Queen’s University. We all know about the concept of ‘gifts with reservations of benefit,’ where essentially you can give away your house, but reserve the benefit to go on living in an apartment, give away your estate and grouse moor, but keep some of the fishing rights on the Bucklebo River and the shooting rights.”

  “It’s what we’ve decided to do,” John said. “The physical estate must go to the National Trust after I’m gone.”

  “I’m sorry that it’s the best we can do,” said Lar
s. “At least it brings the value of the estate to just that of your stocks, shares, and cash. It’s a level at which we can make certain it’ll be able to hang on to a goodly chunk. We’ll be meeting with the trust in the next couple of weeks.”

  “I truly appreciate all that you have done, Lars, and you, Fingal, for suggesting your brother might be able to help,” John MacNeill said. “I’ve not been entirely idle while you’ve been beavering away. I’ve looked into the situation at Castleward on the Strangford Town side of Strangford Lough. When the sixth Viscount Bangor died in 1950 the house and estate, all eight hundred and twenty acres of it, were given to the Government of Northern Ireland in lieu of death duties and then passed on to the National Trust in 1952. It’s open to the public now. A Mister McCoubrey from Ballynahinch and his syndicate rent the shooting rights. Myrna and I know McCoubrey. We’ve had him at our grouse moor and he’s had us at Castleward. Typical upstanding country merchant. Straw on the soles of his boots, taciturn. Slow of speech. Looks a bit dim, but it’s all an act. Inside he’s sharp as a tack, not a man to underestimate, as some of his business competitors have come to rue. And he’s a bloody good shot. Do you know him, Fingal?”

  “I’m afraid not.” O’Reilly shook his head. “I shoot on the other side of the lough.”

  The marquis walked to the sideboard. “I’m greatly relieved to hear that Myrna and my son, Sean, are almost certainly going to be able to live here and farm here and, I believe, so will his descendants, if, of course, he has any, and at the moment he doesn’t seem to have any inclination.” He lifted the whiskey bottle. “My goodness. All this unburdening of the family skeletons has left me feeling like a celebratory tot. Anybody else?”

  Before his marriage to Kitty, O’Reilly would not have hesitated to have a third before dinner, but the city girl from Tallaght was working her influence on him in subtle ways—and he was looking forward to dinner. “I’ll pass,” he said, “but I trust, John, you’ll be having one of your fine clarets with our feast.”