“You must repair the damage. You must stop your drinking, then go down and be reconciled with him,” O’Toole had told him. But though Garret had nodded his head, he had not done it. The next year, he was in no better shape, his courage had failed him, and he had not gone at all. By the following spring, he wasn’t fit to go anywhere.
And all this time, Deirdre had wondered: what was to become of her? While Conall was away in Dublin, she was growing into a young woman. Some of the young O’Byrnes and Brennans were already wanting to court her, but she hadn’t the least interest in them. Should she look for work in Wicklow, as a servant, probably? Or in Dublin? She’d see him, she supposed, if she went to Dublin. She spoke to her grandfather to ask his advice.
“You wouldn’t be happy in Dublin,” he told her. “You’d miss the mountains. Every day you’d be standing in the broad streets, looking up at the hills—they seem so close, you know, it’s as if you can touch them. Yet they, and all that you love, would be out of reach.”
“Perhaps,” she ventured, “I shouldn’t be too lonely. Conall would be a friend to me.”
“You should not think of Conall.” He had sighed. “He was your childhood companion, Deirdre. But that was long ago, and people change. You should forget him now.”
But a year later, when Garret, after a terrible three-week drinking bout, was obviously dying, it was her grandfather who had written the letter summoning Conall to come.
He’d arrived half a day too late. She had seen him in the distance, coming up from the Wicklow road, a slim, handsome young man, striding up the mountain track with confident ease; and as soon as she saw him, her heart had missed a beat. She waited until he reached her.
“I’m sorry, Conall. Your father’s gone.”
He’d nodded, as if he’d expected it. Then they had walked into Rathconan together.
It was strange, after so many years, that it should have felt so natural, walking side by side with Conall, as though they had never been parted. Did he feel the same? she wondered.
The wake was a subdued affair. She and her grandfather helped Conall make the arrangements. Everyone at Rathconan came. Even Budge and his wife appeared for a little while, as a courtesy to the dead, and greeted the priest civilly enough. Before leaving, Budge had taken Conall to one side, but Deirdre had been near enough to hear what passed between them.
“Your father died a Catholic, of course,” the landlord said quietly, “but may I ask what Church you belong to yourself nowadays?”
“Well, Sir,” Conall answered politely, “in Dublin, as you well know, I was in the Church of Ireland school, and so I went to that Church; and many of my Dublin friends are Protestant. Here at Rathconan, all these good people, my cousins many of them, are Catholic. And to tell you the truth, I have no very strong feelings in the matter.”
“I see.” There was no church at Rathconan itself, though from time to time Budge and his family would go to the church a few miles away, to show solidarity. His support for the Church of Ireland was absolute, but no one would have called him pious. Judging by the careful look he gave Conall now, it seemed that Budge found this answer acceptable.
Deirdre had been studying Conall ever since he got back. It was already clear to her that the years in Dublin had left their mark. The Conall she had known and loved was still there, she was sure of it. But this young man had a quiet self-assurance about him, a dignified reserve far more like her grandfather than his own father Garret. Yet, as was now apparent, he had learned to combine this confidence with a respectful manner that was clearly pleasing to a man like Budge.
“You mean to return to Dublin shortly?” the landlord asked.
“I am told that I could do well as a cabinetmaker in Dublin, Sir,” Conall replied. “But I miss the mountains of my childhood. I am wondering if I could make a living as a carpenter here.” He gave Budge an inquiring glance. “If I can prove that I am sober and reliable.”
Budge looked at him searchingly for several moments, then gave a brief nod and suggested he come to see him after his father was buried. He left soon afterwards.
“You would stay up here, Conall,” she asked, “after being in Dublin?”
“I think of it,” he answered. “I think of marrying and settling down.”
“Oh.” She fought to control herself. “And who is this lucky girl that you’re thinking of marrying?” she asked lightly.
“Yourself,” he said.
If Budge had entertained misgivings about having another troublesome Smith as a tenant, it had to be said that he had behaved well enough. The day after Conall had moved in, he had come to the cottage in person and informed him:
“I had a front door made some years ago, but it is not satisfactory. Would you make me a new one?” And when the work was done, in best oak, and Conall had fitted it, Budge and his wife had admired it, and he’d exclaimed: “That is beautiful work, Conall, I have to say. Beautiful.” And Conall had been well paid.
Further commissions had followed, from the landlord and from his friends. Some time later, armed with a letter from Budge, Conall had gone down into Wicklow to see a cabinetmaker there, and from this had developed a long relationship. The Wicklow man would send out work to him, and every few weeks would see Conall going down into Wicklow in a cart with a table, or some chairs, or a well-made cabinet. To give the lie to his father’s reputation, the work was always perfectly produced and never late. After a few years, the Wicklow man had wanted to take him into partnership, but though he could certainly have made a better living, Conall and Deirdre had always preferred to stay up at Rathconan in the mountains.
Conall drank a little ale, but always in moderation. He never said or did anything to offend Budge or his like. And as the years went by, the landowner would often at dinner cite Conall as proof that, with a little persuasion and a lot of firm treatment, “your Irishman can frequently be turned into a hardworking and respectable craftsman.”
As for herself, Deirdre had found happiness, peace, her destiny. A few days before she and Conall had married, her grandfather had taken her to one side and asked: “Are you sure, Deirdre, that this is what you want?” She had been so surprised that he would ask such a thing, but she had assured him that it was, so he had said no more. And the early months of her marriage had entirely confirmed her choice.
If years ago Conall had been the little boy she had protected and made whole, in the young man he had become, she had found a prince. In their lovemaking, it seemed to her as if they were made from the same mould; in their life together, they were in tune like two strings upon the same instrument.
Yet there was always something mysterious about Conall. Occasionally, he would still sit alone in a state of abstraction from which she would have to wait for him to return. One day, they had gone over to Glendalough; and as they stood together in the mountain silence by the upper lake, she had suddenly had the strangest experience, as if they were floating together, like mist over the water. And she had thought to herself: I am married not only to a man but to a spirit. They had been married almost a year before he told her the truth about his time at school in Dublin.
“That was a terrible place, Deirdre. There were only a few of us Catholic boys, and we’d been brought there to be converted. As far as the masters were concerned, we were wild animals to be broken. And they treated us as animals, too. Kicked out of bed at dawn, to scrub the floors, before the Protestant boys had to wake. We were like slaves the rest of the day, too, whenever we weren’t in the lessons. And a savage beating if you even thought of arguing about it. As for the teaching . . .” He shook his head in disgust.
“Was it so hard?”
“Hard? Not at all. It was laughable. Those Protestant boys were so far behind us: I knew far more from your grandfather’s hedge school before I arrived than any of them knew by the time they left.”
“Are all the Protestants so ignorant, then?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Trinity College turns out schola
rs of the highest repute: no question. But the charity schools like mine are sinks of iniquity. That’s why I left as soon as I could and became a carpenter.”
“Did you tell your father?”
“No.” He fell silent for a moment. “What was the point? The poor devil had troubles enough, I dare say.”
He never spoke of the quarrel between his father and himself, and she never asked. But she thought she could guess his sadness and his shame at what his father had become, just as it was obvious that he was determined to prove that he suffered from none of the same weaknesses himself. “I remember him as he was when I was a boy,” he once told her. “I wish,” he added wistfully, “that he could have stayed as he used to be, and lived to see his grandchildren.”
There was no shortage of those. Down the years, Deirdre had given birth to a dozen children, and though many had been lost to sickness or accident, seven had lived to be strong and healthy adults.
She and Conall had never regretted their decision to raise their family up at Rathconan. It was their childhood home; her grandfather, whom they both loved, was there; and above all, they and their children were surrounded by the huge, open spaces of the mountains. And if the Brennans, as her grandfather assured them, were neither more nor less stupid than in generations before, and the O’Byrnes still foolishly believed that Rathconan and all that was in it should rightfully be theirs, Deirdre and Conall had been used to them since they were born and, along with the other local families, they came with the landscape.
If her grandfather had had doubts about Conall as a husband, he had soon buried them. It had been only a few months before a routine had developed that was to last down the years. Once a week, the two men would spend the evening together. A little drink would be taken, of course; but mostly they would recite poetry or read books together—so that Conall laughingly told Deirdre: “The best thing about marrying you is that I can complete my education.” Meanwhile, the old man, somewhat gaunt but with a mind as sharp as ever, had continued to act as schoolmaster to the village, and to tell his stories and recite his poetry at a ceili from time to time. He had lived into his eighties, and continued to teach the school until a week before his death.
His wake had been memorable. People had come from five counties to honour the old man. Yet it had also been the occasion of one small unpleasantness.
It had come from Finn O’Byrne. He had never been a person of any great account. About the same age as Conall, he was considered a fairly good cattleman and he had a brood of children to his credit; but although he would spend time with the Brennans, he and Conall never had a lot to say to each other. Nonetheless, Conall had once made him a good oak chair, with which he had declared himself well satisfied. So Conall had not expected any trouble when he saw the figure of Finn—small, dark, a great untidy mop of shaggy black hair lying in matted coils about his shoulders, and clearly a little the worse for drink—come lurching towards him during the long evening of the wake.
“I suppose that you’ll be the new schoolmaster now,” Finn remarked, “with all your learning.”
There was something vaguely offensive in his manner, though Conall couldn’t see why there should be.
“I don’t think so, Finn,” he replied. “I’ve too much else to do.” In fact, he and O’Toole had discussed the possibility a few times down the years, but he hadn’t felt the desire to take it on, and he had quite enough work on hand anyway.
“He’d have wanted it, Conall, to keep it in the family—with Deirdre being his granddaughter and you spending so much time in his company. All those hours, reading together, every week.” The words were harmless enough, but there could be no doubt from the way he spoke them, the way that he drew out the word “reading” as if there was something wrong with it, that Finn was trying to insult him. “No, Conall, it was only yourself that was good enough to be in his company like that.”
It had not occurred to Conall that his sessions with the old man would have given offence to Finn O’Byrne, yet clearly they had.
“I’m sure you’d have been very welcome to join us,” he said. A lie, of course, but it seemed polite.
“Ha! Finn O’Byrne with the old man and his favourite. The boy apart. The prince, we used to call you in the hedge school. Until you were sent away, of course.” He grinned viciously. “On account of your father. Another great reader, they say.”
It was hard to know which shocked him more—the discovery that this man, of whom he had no high opinion, but towards whom he’d never held any malice, should hate him so much, or the fact that, in all these years, he’d never guessed it. Conall remembered him perfectly well in the hedge school. Finn hadn’t been much of a pupil, but perhaps a bit above the Brennans. And now the passing of old O’Toole, and no doubt a little drink, had suddenly resealed these childhood resentments. He didn’t know how much Finn had been drinking, but this was hardly the time to enter into a quarrel. He must, unwittingly, have looked at him with disgust, however, for O’Byrne burst out bitterly: “Ah, look at his face. He thinks himself so much better than the rest of us.”
“Can you not respect the dead, Finn?” he said as calmly as he could, and made to move away. But this turned out to be another mistake.
“Move away.” Finn made a mock bow. “The great Conall Smith doesn’t talk to any but his own kind.” He spat. “Respect the dead. Respect your father, do you mean?”
This was too much.
“You were a fool then, Finn O’Byrne, and you’re a fool now,” Conall said angrily. “But you’ve no need to prove it, for I knew it already.” Then he did walk away.
He had told Deirdre all about it a few days later, but Finn had never mentioned the incident again, and they assumed he had probably been so drunk he had forgotten about it.
For a few months after that, Conall had helped by taking the hedge school, on an occasional basis, while they looked for someone else. But he had sent for the priest down the valley to come to catechise the children, not wishing to do it himself; and in due course an elderly man from Wicklow was found to take the job on, and he returned to his furniture making. He had no doubt that Budge had been aware of his activities, but the landowner had never said anything.
That had been twenty years ago. Since then, there had been peace at Rathconan, where, whatever else might be passing in the world below, little seemed to change.
There was one change, however. It was gradual, but her grandfather had occasionally remarked on it as he grew older, and in the two decades since his death, Deirdre had noticed it increasingly.
There were more people at Rathconan.
Of course, families had produced children. Apart from her own seven, Budge and his wife had had three girls and two sons; the O’Byrnes, Brennans, and the other local families had all added to the numbers. But as in times past, once the children had grown they had often moved away. The landowner’s three daughters were all married to other landowners; the younger son, Jonah Budge, had married a merchant’s daughter and bought a small estate a few miles away, while the elder son, Arthur, spent most of his time in Dublin. Of her own children, only two were at home, the rest in Wicklow or Dublin.
In the last generation, however, other families, especially the Brennans, had followed a different pattern. Instead of the eldest son taking over the holding, several of the children had decided to remain at Rathconan and split the holding into smaller parts between them. By doing so, they were increasing the population of the hamlet. And there were signs that in a few years’ time, one of the Brennans might subdivide his holding yet again. In times past, such small holdings could not have sustained a family, yet now it seemed they could. And the reason for this change was easy enough to see.
“For the increase in the number of my Brennan cousins,” Conall remarked drily, “we must thank the potato.”
Everyone in Rathconan grew potatoes nowadays. Budge had two large fields. But while they still grew other crops, and raised their sheep and modest herd of cattl
e on the mountainside, the Brennans had given over the greater part of their subdivided holdings to the potato crop. It was a logical decision. The New World vegetable was so nutritious that, if you desired, you would remain perfectly healthy if you ate nothing else. Not only that, the potato was intensely productive: a family could subsist on the crop from a single small field. There were twice as many Brennans living in Rathconan now than there had been when Deirdre was a child, and they could have subdivided their holdings several times more without going hungry. Moreover, with the population increasing, they could usually sell their produce at good prices. So although their turf-roofed cottages might have looked poor enough, the numerous Brennans and their neighbours were actually living better than they had done before. Even the O’Byrnes were paying their rent.
All over Ireland, the pattern was similar. The towns were growing—Dublin’s population had trebled in three generations—and the country peasants were living more densely upon the land.
Deirdre and Conall had little to complain of materially. Two of their daughters had gone to Wicklow. Both were now married, one to a butcher, the other to a brewer, both quite prosperous men. Her two eldest sons had both gone to Dublin. One was a printer who did well; the other, a tobacconist, seemed to have less success and was living poorly in the Liberties on the west side of the old city. The two youngest children remained at Rathconan: the boy, Peter, was following his father as a carpenter; his sister was working in the Budges’ house.
And then there was Brigid. And that devil Patrick Walsh.
She hadn’t even known that Brigid had run off with him until a month after the event, when she had received a letter from the housekeeper at Mount Walsh which made reference to the fact. The letter didn’t say so, but she had to assume that they’d gone to Dublin.