“Is it Phil Byrne?” she asked. “Is he sick? I didn’t know there was anything wrong with him. Are you sure it’s him you’re looking for?”
Father Rossiter was not sure.
“Are there any other Byrnes in the area?”
“There’s Liz Byrne. Is it Liz Byrne you’re looking for?” the woman asked, squinting her eyes as she looked at him.
“I know that there’s a brother and sister living together,” Father Rossiter said.
“Oh, that’s Phil Byrne and Mai,” the woman said. “And have you never been up there before, Father?”
“Which turn do I take?”
“Oh, you’ll have to turn back now, it’s the turn on the left after the crossroads. Will you be around long?”
“No, we’re just making this one visit,” Father Rossiter said as he got back into the car.
After the crossroads there was a lane to the left but they did not know if this was the correct turning. They tried the lane, which became increasingly rutted and overgrown, seeming to lead nowhere, and becoming even narrower as they came to a brightly painted gate. His father got out and opened it, held it as the car went through, then closed it and got back into the car. Suddenly the lane began to widen again; they reached a clearing and saw a small farmhouse with a galvanized roof.
“It’s hard to imagine,” Father Rossiter said, “people living so far from the road.”
A sheepdog ran from the house and started to bark at the front wheels of the car. Two old people were now standing at the door; they were both watchful, almost furtive. The woman was wearing a cardigan and had her arms folded.
He waited in the car with his father while Father Rossiter went to speak to the couple at the door. They were still unsure whether they were in the right house.
“Do they have old things?” he asked his father.
“They have pikes from ’Ninety-eight,” his father said. “That’s what they said in the letter anyway.”
“Did they find them?”
“Stop asking questions now,” his father said.
Father Rossiter returned to the car and motioned for them to come into the house. The dog had now stopped barking and wagged his tail as they passed.
“We thought that there was something wrong when we saw the priest,” the woman said when they got inside the small kitchen which had a huge blackened fireplace and a table up against the window.
“We have no tea, you can’t get any tea around here at the moment,” she went on. “Milk is the only thing I can offer you. We have plenty of that, thank God.”
Eamon sat down beside the table, running his finger along the plastic oilcloth with its pattern of flowers. The woman put a mug of milk in front of him. There were strange web-shaped cracks in the mug, which he inspected first before tasting the warm milk.
“They came down by here,” he heard the man saying to his father and Father Rossiter. “No wonder they left whatever they were carrying, sure weren’t they bet? Didn’t the English have muskets?”
The sheepdog came stealthily into the kitchen and lay in front of the fire with its eyes fixed on the man as he spoke, and its head resting on its paws. Suddenly, the man shouted at it and the dog slithered off back to the yard.
“They were hard times all right,” the woman said. The man went into a room at the side and came back with a wooden pole with two curled metal hooks at the top of it. Father Rossiter and Eamon’s father stood up and examined it eagerly. The hooks looked sharp and dangerous.
“The wood’s new. I did it myself,” the man said, “but I didn’t have to touch the metal.”
“Do you have more of them?” Father Rossiter asked.
“Aye, I’ve twenty or thirty of them in there,” the man said.
“Our grandmother now on our mother’s side, she was brought up here. It was the time of the evictions. Sure, they used to own from here out to the road, the whole way, including the two big barley fields. She knew about the men of ’Ninety-eight,” the woman looked into the fire and then back at the two visitors. “She would have been too young to remember it, but they told her about it, or she heard about it, and it was she who always said that they came down this way and that was the end of them then. That’s all I remember now. There was a man used to come here and they used to talk about it.”
The room was filling up with smoke from the fire; Eamon watched a small piece of soot falling slowly through the air and landing on the surface of his warm milk. It had a shape of its own, a curly, black shape. He did not want to swallow it. He studied it for a while, as the others talked and then put his finger into the milk and fished it out. He dried his finger on his trousers, having checked that no one was looking at him.
“Sure, they’re no use to us at all,” the man said. “We’ll be gone soon.”
His father told him to help them collect the metal pike tops and put them in the boot and the back seat of the car. The wall of the room where they were kept was all damp, the plaster had fallen off in places, leaving the bare clay visible. When they had taken all the pieces, they shook hands with the brother and sister who stood at the door watching them as they got into the car. It was darkening now, and the sky had clouded over. Father Rossiter had to switch on his lights as he drove along the lane back towards the main road.
The following day they brought the pikes down to the Castle, where a few workmen were plastering the entrance hall. They had rigged up a bare bulb in the ceiling so the low room did not appear as dark as it did on his first visit. This time Eamon noticed a small stairway in the corner. He was afraid in the building, its vastness and the extent of its disrepair frightened him, as though each step could lead to a terrible accident. The idea that he would ever be left alone in this building filled him with terror.
The stone stairs were part of the old building, his father said. It led right to the roof, and soon when a few lights were put in they would be able to go up there and view the whole town. In the meantime, the men were starting work on the dungeon. He heard about it first from Mick Byrne at school, but he didn’t believe it. They used to lock fellows down there, he said. Who used to lock them? The English, Mick Byrne said.
The smell in the small dungeon, a cavern which had been eked out of the rock under the entrance hall, was even more damp and bitter than the smell upstairs. It smelt of clay, but staler. The workmen brought the electric bulbs down so that it was all bright. Eamon kept close to his father.
The workman in charge was called Eamonn Breen. He said that there were two “n”s in Eamonn.
“I’m called after Eamon de Valera,” Eamon said. “And he’s the Taoiseach.”
“Yes, and he’s wrong,” Eamonn Breen said.
“You’re not Fianna Fail,” he said. Eamonn Breen later told his father what had happened and they both laughed.
They no longer went home after school, they went to the Castle to watch the builders. Eamonn Breen had built steps into the dungeon and fixed a light into the ceiling and put distemper on the walls. There was still a terrible smell, a cold, bitter smell. When Marion Stokes brought him down the cold air filled his lungs. She showed him the place where a prisoner had cut a drawing of himself into the stone, but it was faint and could only be made out if you looked carefully: just a head, a body, two legs and two arms with a sword hanging from the waist. The man had to draw it in the dark, Marion Stokes said. He had nothing else to do all day. She showed him the floor.
“It’d be cold here in the winter,” she said. “You’d die of the cold.”
Eamonn Breen drew a map of 1798 with red arrows showing the way the armies came. The map was to go on the wall of the 1798 Room with all the pikes around it. Eamonn Breen was going to make wooden handles for the pikes. Father Rossiter carried down all of the old vestments from the Manse and old pictures of bishops and souvenirs he had brought home from Salamanca and he said that they could fill another room of the Castle.
His father met a man who said that he had the figure from a ship
which went aground near Blackwater Head. It would have to be treated for woodworm, he said. Later, his father explained to him about the figure on a ship, how they always had the carved figure of a woman on the prow; he pretended that he understood by looking at his father and nodding. His father said it would be a great thing to have in the Museum.
The summer came; it was almost time to go to Cush. His father travelled to Dublin on the train to get exam papers he was going to mark and he brought them home in a black box.
“We might have to go to Cush in an ass and cart,” he said, “or on bicycles, because there’s no petrol.”
“Why can’t Father Rossiter drive us? He can get petrol.”
“He’s too busy. I couldn’t ask him,” his father said.
His father arranged that Jimmy Power, who delivered vegetables, would drive them in his old van.
“Tell no one,” his father said. “He’s only meant to use his van for business.”
In Blackwater, they stopped at Mrs. Davis’s pub and the two men had bottles of stout; Eamon had a lemonade. “Isn’t the little fellow great?” Mrs. Davis said and grinned at his father and Jimmy Power. She was old and walked slowly, pulling herself along as though it caused her pain.
“The Cullens will be delighted to see you. There was talk that you weren’t coming, what with the war and the shortages.” There was silence for a second, and then she continued as though on the same topic: “Do you think they’ll invade, sir?” she asked his father. His father said he didn’t think so. Jimmy Power nodded in agreement.
“There’s men is ready for them around this way,” she said.
“We’ve had enough troubles of our own. Let the English and the Germans fight it out among themselves. Aren’t they well able for each other?” Jimmy Power said.
“It’s going to be a long war,” his father said. Eamon felt the rim of the long-stemmed glass hitting against his teeth. He looked at each of them in the half-light of the bar.
“It was a fierce cold winter,” Mrs. Davis said. “It was fierce cold down here.”
CHAPTER THREE
He woke to the sound of rain being blown against the window. He could hear the strident advertizing jingles on the radio in the living room. Carmel must have slipped out of bed while he was still sleeping. He felt tired as he moved over to her side of the bed in an attempt to get back to sleep. He wished it was an ordinary day with fixed routines. He lay there until he knew that he would get no further sleep.
He drew the curtains and looked out at the dark sky over the sea. He put on his dressing-gown and slippers and walked out into the living room. She was sitting at the deal table facing the window, holding a large coffee in her two hands. He suddenly felt relieved to see her.
“You were groaning in your sleep. Are you all right?” she asked.
“Did I keep you awake?”
“No, I was already awake, but you were very disturbed.”
“Is the water on?” he asked her.
“Yes, it is. You go and have a bath and I’ll make your breakfast. You look tired.”
“Do I not always look like this?”
“No,” she smiled. “No, you don’t.”
In the bathroom he turned on the hot and cold taps and let the water run full-steam into the bath before going to the toilet. He was still trying to remember the dream he had, whatever it was, something which still weighed him down. He could not grasp it. He tested the water until it was right and then, having dropped his night clothes on the floor, he lowered himself into the bath. He lay back and began to breathe evenly, more and more heavily until he had forgotten completely the fleeting source of his discontent. He did not move.
He felt better now when he closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping still, not stirring, not letting anything into his mind: no memories, no judgments, no facts. When a thought came he kept it at bay by thinking about his heart beating and trying to get as close as he could to the source of its beat and its pulse. That was all. He heard nothing: he concentrated on the shapes which appeared in the darkness when he closed his eyes, and tried to make them into everything that there was.
As he dried himself he found that he could smile without any strain. He brushed his teeth and put on his dressing-gown and slippers. In the living room Carmel had turned off the radio and put on the record player. The music was quiet, and the sound was low, but he could hear it clearly as he stood there looking out at the sky. She did not turn around when he came in, but stayed exactly where she had been earlier, looking out towards the sea. For a second he wanted to touch her, to put his arms around her, but he held back, and went instead into the bedroom and dressed himself.
It was raining harder when he came out and sat at the table; the room was dark and becoming cold. Carmel brought him toast and a poached egg and left the teapot on the table for the tea to draw. She moved quietly as though not to interrupt something. Neither of them spoke until she poured his tea.
“Will we go into the village?” she asked.
“If you want,” he said and looked at her. He hoped she would not misconstrue what he said. He did not know what to say.
“Thank you for the breakfast,” he said.
“I like doing things when there’s a long day like this,” she said.
“I was looking forward to a hot day.”
“I know.”
The music played in the background and they both sat at the table listening as the wind whistled around the house. Again, he felt like touching her, reaching across the table to her, taking her hand, but instead he drank his tea and finished his toast and then cleared the breakfast things away.
“Will we go?” he asked.
“It’ll take me a while to get ready,” she said.
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
The road into the village was narrow, with many twists and turns. He had walked it, and driven along it many times, and yet still, after all the years, he could come to a short stretch which he did not recognize, could not remember having looked at before. The gradual hills were good for nothing, being too sandy, but the fields nearest the road were useful for pasture and corn. Nothing grew high; there were no tall trees or hedges, everything was flattened by the wind coming in from the sea. There were no big houses, just small farms and small livings made from cattle, milk, wheat and illegal poaching for salmon and trout in the river which flowed into the sea at the strand in Ballyconnigar.
Everybody stopped to talk; that was the rule in Cush, even when there was little to talk about. They loved news, and the word about his daughter having a baby would spread among the smallholdings, would be carefully savoured and gone over and would also be withheld from certain people. Yet they would talk about it only among themselves; such items were kept for their own community. In all the years he had never heard them speak ill of each other or of the visitors who came in the summer, or had come in the years gone by and were remembered. He was still an outsider who came only in the summer; and he was a judge, and they were careful what they said in his presence. He did not know how they spoke when they were among themselves.
In the village he was known as the Judge, and if Carmel went into a shop alone they asked after him. They watched his coming and going with interest and curiosity.
He parked the car at Jim Bolger’s and waited while Carmel went in to order The Irish Times for the rest of their stay and some Sunday newspapers. The rain had stopped now but the sky was still dark and threatening. When Carmel returned to the car he started up the engine again and drove down towards the bridge and parked at Etchingham’s. They got out of the car and walked into the pub and grocery shop. He sat on the high stool while Carmel looked at the shopping list she had taken from her bag. There was no one behind the counter, and they waited in silence.
“I think I’ll pour my own drink,” he said.
“You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry around here,” a voice behind them said. There was a man sitting against the wall in the shadows. They had
not noticed him.
“Ah, we have all day,” Eamon said to him.
* * *
When they returned home they sat in the living room listening to the one o’clock news. The weather forecast predicted more rain. Carmel carried out a box from the spare bedroom with the books she had brought for them to read. Every year she read the literary pages and listened to the books programme on the radio so she could find books for them to read on their holidays. He took no part in this, insisting, jokingly, that he trusted her judgment and would read anything she gave him, except books about Irish history and books about the Kennedys.
She took the books out and placed them on a shelf near the window.
“It’s extraordinary about Mike, isn’t it?” she said.
“What?” he asked. “What’s extraordinary?”
“Did you not hear what Mrs. Etchingham told me. I thought you were listening.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Jim Bolger told me as well. He couldn’t believe I didn’t know. The front of his house is gone. It fell in after we were here at Easter. He’s staying in one of the caravans in Blackwater.”
“I thought that it would last a bit longer.”
“Mrs. Etchingham said that he was nearly killed.”
Mike was his cousin who had retired to a house further down the lane nearer the cliff. He was still in his fifties. Over the years as the soft marl of the cliff gave way to the wind and the sea the house had become dangerously close to the cliff. Now, it had fallen in. Mike was gruff, distant, independent. He hated being offered a lift into the village, as though it was a comment on his not having a car, but he was popular in the area. His living the winter in Cush gave him a status not enjoyed by those who merely came for the summer.
“Our house is next,” he said, and went over to the shelf of books.
“It’ll be years before it happens,” she said.
“I remember when there was as much land in front of Mike’s house as there is now in front of ours,” he said. “I remember a big field that sloped down to the cliff.”