He found himself telling genial lies in two continents. Standing on the bridge with Fergus Slattery: Was he disappointed at the length of time things took? No, no, this was the pace, this was the way it had to be done. He would not have the town typecast him as a rushing, bustling Yank. And then back in the other home, in his New York headquarters talking to Gerry Power: Sure, sure, things didn’t get done at the same speed. They hadn’t the technology; no, of course he didn’t have second thoughts. No, he wasn’t mad with them.
And to Rachel Fine, sipping a brandy in her red-gold apartment, which always looked so soft and restful compared with the rest of New York, he told more truth than to anyone. He told her that at times he thought he would blow up into a million pieces with frustration over it all. He could see now why his countrymen back home had achieved nothing, nothing. No wonder their economy was so pathetic, so shabby. He knew now why they stood toothless and laughing with their hats on back to front, because they had never bloody learned to work. They knew nothing of the actual ache that work brings, and they didn’t want to know it. No goal was high enough to force them to do more than the very minimum. He could rail like this to Rachel because he knew she would never agree with him. She would smooth his forehead and tell him that Irish people rose in every walk of life . . . they had their own country . . . well almost . . . Look at her people, the Latvians . . . they had let the Soviets take over and Latvia would never rise again. All the Latvian Jews who could escape had come to America, but there would be no going back and building castles there nowadays.
Rachel would encourage him softly, remind him of all he had achieved so far, tell him that no other grandson of a cottage-dweller had gone back to buy the big house and make it into a great business that would employ his own far and wide. He liked to hear that, it gave some reason to all the work and the endless delays and complications. One evening he asked Rachel why she encouraged him. She had been against it at the start, and wanted him to make his life in New York.
‘Only a very foolish woman wouldn’t encourage a dream. What would you be if your dream were to be taken away, or people talked you out of it? You would lose your fire and enthusiasm. You would only be a shell.’
He held her closely to him. She was a wonderful woman. What a shame, what a bloody great shame that she was who she was, a divorced Jewess. Even if everyone else would let him, he could never marry her. It just wasn’t possible.
But the day came, and the machinery moved in, huge cranes and a great ball that swung backwards and forwards, and the stone walls of Fernscourt came down. Rachel Fine had advised at long distance that the stones should be kept to form any walls or rockeries. There must be a place to store them and surely big stones dating from the days when America was still a fledgling must be attractive and beautiful in themselves. Brian Doyle had said it was a cracked idea, but then he had been hoping to use the stones himself in other building work if they had been thrown out, so he secretly admired the cop-on of the Yank with the big notions and the belief that everything could be done in five minutes.
Grace linked Kerry happily as they walked in the Irish countryside. This was the first real holiday they had taken together. She chattered on about the convent in Mountfern and told him tales of the girls and the tricks they played on the nuns. She begged him for stories of his school. Did he like being away at boarding school? Was he lonely? Was he glad it was holidays now? Grace wanted Kerry to be glad about everything. Like she was.
‘It’s a shame we can’t be there,’ Grace said for the tenth time, as the O’Neills walked along a cliff path in Donegal. ‘I’d love to see it.’
‘Yes.’ Patrick was absent-minded. He looked out at the ocean. Had his father seen these hills when he was leaving Ireland, or were they too far north? He could never discover whether it had been from Galway or way down in Cork from the harbour at Cobh that those earlier O’Neills had taken a ship for the United States. None of the family knew or ever wanted to find out. John Ryan said it might have been Galway. It would have been a likelier place to have started from rather than all the way down in Cobh. Ships used to go from Galway all the time in those long-ago days.
‘It wouldn’t take us all that long to go back. Why didn’t we leave last night?’ Grace was insistent.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Gracie. We’ll see it in a few days when we get back there. Aren’t you having a good time?’
‘Oh yes, but . . .’ It was such a big thing, why were they missing it? She wished he would explain.
‘Father doesn’t want us to be there for the demolition, it would be better not to associate ourselves with destroying . . . with knocking down what’s there.’ Kerry spoke without blame or praise, just as if he were giving directions from a map.
Patrick looked at him sharply. ‘Hey, what makes you say that?’ He half laughed.
‘Well it’s true, isn’t it? That’s the way I’d feel.’
‘Yes, it is true in a way.’ Patrick was very surprised.
‘We’re the good guys, the ones who ride into town when all the shooting’s over. Right?’
‘Right in a sort of a way.’
‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ Grace argued. ‘Everyone’s delighted we’re building a new hotel; they love us for being there. Why all this running away and hiding for the best bit, the big machine going boom boom? I’d love to see that.’
‘So would I,’ Patrick said simply.
He was going to call Brian Doyle and find out how it all went. He wished that Brian had the gift of explaining things in style, with some description, a little colour. Doyle would be likely to tell him about the overtime, the breakages, the need to revise this figure and that, and leave out completely any of the symbolism about the old order changing.
‘I wonder what they’re doing at this very moment?’ he said as he led his son and daughter down a sandy path on to a magnificent beach and they ran along beside the waves like any ordinary family.
Not like a man who watched his son nervously, wondering what could have made the boy step so out of character and remain so adamant about not discussing it again. Not like a man who had arranged the demolition of a huge house and planned to build his own monument on the spot where his father and grandfather had been turned out on to the roads.
Half the town came by and watched the demolition machinery getting into action. The best view was from Ryan’s pub on River Road and many of them watched with a glass in their hands.
Jack Coyne stood with a look of false cheer. He cursed that day long back when he had short-changed Patrick O’Neill. The man had always been perfectly courteous to him since, but not one bit of business had he thrown his way. Jack Coyne’s small pointed face glanced from one to another. Everyone else had benefited from the Yank. Look at the trade that John Ryan had, and it was the same in the town, there wasn’t a business that hadn’t been promised or already received some profit. Why on that day of all bloody days in the world had he taken the quiet American for a fool who didn’t understand the rate he would get for a dollar? Why had he not seen that those blue eyes were the sharp eyes of a businessman?
Jack Coyne stood, hands in pockets, looking across the river at all the machinery which could all have been hired through him. Coyne’s could have got the demolition people in and taken a legitimate ten per cent. He shook his head and told himself that in this life you never knew. You never bloody knew.
‘Big day this,’ Jack Leonard said to no one in particular.
‘Nearly as big as the day we burned it down,’ said Tom Daly, and there was an uneasy laugh. Nobody talked much about those times now, the days and nights when big houses all over the country were burned as a symbol of all they represented.
It was forty-one years since Tom Daly, Jack Leonard and a dozen more had joined hastily organised groups from the big town to go out on their mission. Old Mr Leonard and old Mr Daly were so respectable now, such pillars of Mountfern with their dairy and their newsagent businesses, it was quite impossible to im
agine them as twenty-year-old firebrands. It was a different time, a different culture. Neither Tom Daly nor Jack Leonard had a good word to say for those young fellows who had been going up north on the border campaign blowing up electrical installations, taking pot shots at sentry posts and considering themselves national heroes. No, the 1920s had been a proper war.
John and Kate pulled pints, filled small glasses of whiskey, and even dragged a few chairs out into the sunshine. Leopold stood shivering with terror at the noise across the river and recoiled from every attempt to stroke or reassure him.
‘You’re such a kind woman, Kate, why don’t you have that animal put to sleep?’ Fergus asked as Leopold turned two anguished eyes on him and bayed at the skies.
‘That animal is healthier than most people here, and much better looked after,’ snapped Kate. ‘I can’t bear people who make superficial judgements about things they know nothing about.’
‘Don’t bite the nose off the man,’ John laughed. ‘Leopold’s a great actor, Fergus, he plays to the gallery. He goes and lies outside Reidy’s the butchers every day after he’s had a good meal here and they give him a bone, every single day. And he howls at Loretto Quinn until she gives him half a pound of biscuits. Wherever the unfortunate cat sits he goes and wails at it, until Jaffa has to get up and let him sit there.’
‘He’s just making up for having had a desperate childhood,’ Dara said. She was nearly thirteen now, tall and strong. Her thick dark hair went in slightly underneath as a result of heavy hair-grip work at night. She would have loved a perm in the Rosemarie salon, and Mrs Walsh said she would do a light natural perm, but Dara’s mother wouldn’t hear of it. A perm at twelve? Who would permit such extravagance? It was all very well for her mother, who had curly hair anyway, to speak like that. Dara was full of resentment. To make matters worse Michael, who didn’t need curls, had a great sort of wavy bit in his hair. And he had longer eyelashes. Much. It was so unfair, like almost everything.
‘Tell me about Leopold’s childhood.’ Fergus liked the leggy girl who was so like her mother in looks, and in that independent streak.
‘He was found in one of Jack Coyne’s trucks.’
‘That’s a poor start,’ agreed Fergus.
‘And someone had squeezed his throat, and hurt his hind leg,’ Michael finished for her.
Fergus often thought they could make a good double act on stage.
‘And for ages after we got his poor back leg mended, he used to hold it out to people to shake hands with them,’ Dara said.
‘Oh all right, you’ve convinced me, he had a rotten childhood, puppydom wasn’t the best time of his life. Let him live, let him grow older and madder like the rest of us.’
The twins giggled.
‘I thought you two would be very upset to see it all come down.’ He indicated across the river.
‘No, one time maybe . . .’ Michael said.
‘But not now, not now . . .’
‘Not now that we’re more grown up . . .’
‘And have our own life. It used to be a bit of pretend life there, you see.’
‘Oh well, it’s different now that you’ve grown up, I see what you mean.’ He could have been laughing at them, but they didn’t think so. ‘And have you found somewhere else to live when you grow old, really old like me? Now that you won’t be living across there?’
‘We have our plans . . .’ said Dara.
‘Nothing definite of course . . .’
‘That could be spelled out . . .’
Fergus hastened to agree. ‘No, no, much better not. Spell out as little as possible, I always say.’
‘There is one thing, Mr Slattery . . .’ Dara said.
‘Yes . . .’
‘It’s sort of advice we might need . . .’
Michael flashed her a warning look.
‘No, it’s all right, I’m only going to speak sort of generally.’
‘Best way to start,’ Fergus agreed encouragingly.
‘Yes, well, it’s like this. Does every bit of land have to be owned by someone?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ They had never taught him how to answer questions like this when he was up in Dublin at the Incorporated Law Society.
‘I mean, is the whole of Ireland all divided up and parcelled up? You own your house, we own this place, Mr O’Neill owns Fernscourt now. Are there bits nobody owns?’
‘That’s a bit difficult to answer in general terms. There are bits, I suppose, that nobody really owns, like say the Curragh. You know, in Kildare. If you have land near it you can graze your sheep there, and it’s the same with some bogs. A lot of people can cut turf there without actually owning it. Is that what you mean?’
‘Not quite. You know, would all fields and ditches and boreens be owned by some one person? You couldn’t say suddenly, I own this ditch because I found it?’
Fergus scratched his head.
‘But you couldn’t really find a ditch, could you? It would be there all the time. You couldn’t look at it one day and claim it?’
‘But suppose you couldn’t see it?’ Dara persisted.
Michael didn’t want her to say any more.
‘God, Dara, you have me foxed,’ Fergus said. ‘But as your mother will tell you, I’m no good at all as a solicitor. I ask stupid questions like how in the name of the Lord could you try to own something you can’t see? I only irritate clients, I’ll be struck off the rolls any day and be left wandering round with straw in my hair.’
Dara looked alarmed. ‘No, please, it’s our fault. You see, it’s that we have to ask these questions so that you won’t actually know what we’re talking about . . . No, shut up, Michael. It’s all right. Mr Slattery’s not going to tell anyone, he’s like Canon Moran.’
‘The image of him,’ Fergus said ruefully.
‘No, you can’t tell people’s business, like he can’t tell their sins,’ Dara insisted.
‘That’s a fact. They’d strike me off the rolls.’
‘Would they hit you?’ Michael asked, interested.
‘I think it might mean rolls, like the rolls at school. You know, for roll call,’ Dara said helpfully. ‘But anyway, it won’t happen, because you won’t tell anybody what we’ve been discussing.’
‘I most certainly will not,’ he said solemnly, not that he had any idea of what they had been discussing.
‘Wouldn’t you think Patrick would have been here to see his day of triumph?’ John Ryan said as a great cheer went up when the last bit of wall fell down.
Kate neatly scooped the froth off the top of five pints of stout with a wooden spatula.
‘He knows all about it, you can be sure. He’ll be on the phone to Brian Doyle in ten minutes’ time.’
‘I was sure he’d have been here. He hates that house and all it stood for. He doesn’t want me to say a good word about the Ferns, he hates the bit about them being fairly decent in the Famine. He would be delighted to see the stones going down.’
‘No, Patrick O’Neill is more interested in what’s going up there instead,’ Kate said, putting the pints on a tray and coming round the counter to take them outside. ‘He’s forward-looking like all the Americans.’
‘Would we have been better if we had gone to America, do you think?’ John asked, half seriously.
‘I don’t know, maybe now isn’t the time to debate it.’ Kate laughed good-naturedly as she swept out with the tray of pints to the people outside.
Rita Walsh wondered if the arrival of the hotel might mean that there would be a proper living out of hairdressing after all. It would make a nice change. She had heard a great deal about the plans for Fernscourt from Marian Johnson who now had her hair done regularly and had even sought advice about skin creams and manicures. Rita thought it unlikely that a man like Patrick O’Neill would think seriously about Marian Johnson, whose dry scalp and flyaway hair were getting so much attention these days. Yet it was hard to know. A man like that might be keen to ally himself with old mon
ey, and the quality. The Johnsons knew everyone in the hunting set.
Rita surveyed her little salon without much pleasure. American women or rich Dublin women might not find it to their liking, but it would be madness to spend good money on new equipment. Rita had a fair bit saved for the days when she would no longer be able to stand on her feet and give perms. And indeed earn money from a position that didn’t at all involve standing on her feet. Both of these sources would end eventually. She kept all her savings in Sheila Whelan’s discreet post office. There was no bank in Mountfern and Sheila often acted as an unofficial adviser on people’s finances.
Rita decided to be swayed by the advice of the postmistress. Sheila was not one to enquire why the earnings were large sometimes, and irregular. She would answer only the questions that were asked, never raising any others.
Sheila Whelan said that her advice would be to hold on a while until the building of the hotel got under way, then when it really did look as if Fernscourt were rising from the ground and about to bring new life into the town, that was the time to buy new hairdressing equipment. And chairs and anything else that would make the Rosemarie hair salon attractive to visitors. There was no sense of irony in any of this, no hint of what might be the present attractions of the establishment. Just wait until the hotel got under way, then everyone could make their plans.
In Rachel Fine’s New York apartment the small travelling clock on the table beside her bed said that it was six-thirty in the morning. In Mountfern it would be lunchtime and the ruins might well be down by now. Rachel had not slept well. All night she had dreamed that there had been some terrible incident at this demolition ceremony.
That a body had risen from the ruins calling out, ‘I am the spirit who will not be mocked . . . you shall not build here in peace.’
She had got up twice in the night and sat beside the window, looking out on the moonlit city to reassure herself that everything was normal. She wished this part was all over. Perhaps when this part was finished, then things might go well. He might send for her and she would come to Ireland and make herself part of the place, so that he would never send her away.