3 November 1861
Earth hard as Iron
Men framing
One wants a Name for this mighty effort-it is ever gnawing at me to find the pleasing name-Inistiorc perhaps-Irish for Island of the Boar.
When Keegan came to us we rowed to the Island & found a wild Sow and her sucklings-where the Boar had gone, we couldn’t know, perhaps to a table hereabout-Keegan wanted a suckling for his own board, but I couldn’t stomach the killing of it-he didn’t disguise the sour look he had for me nor his disdain for the fact that once dressed & properly cooked I would agreeably eat the innocent Creature.
The People along the water are calling it Cathair Mohr or Big Fort-Caitlin declares it a good name, easily disguised in English as Catharmore-we must not appear to think too highly of ourselves with a ‘Big Fort.’
Clar House, meaning Plain House-that will do it for Balfour no doubt-but tis disagreeable in the extreme on the page & on the Tongue. We consider Cluainaigh or Cloonee, for it is mostly pasture land. Then there is Caiseal Mor, or large stone fort, which anglicizes to Cashelmore. I am fond of Tullagh Mor or Tullachmore, for great hill-but perhaps after all, Catharmore, letting the People be the judge-a pesky business to tag the work of one’s heart & hands.
As wether permits, we labor on the large building sited near the Lough in a grove of ancient Beeches. Six bay two-storey Limestone on the rectangular plan with projecting end bays to the East elevation-hipped slate Roofs, clay ridge tiles, mitred hips, roughly-dressed stone Voussoirs to arches, stone sills, square-headed door openings to North and South, square-headed central threshing room & Loft.
Keegan has made a fine temporary stall for Adam off the Surgery which confers a secondary benefit-though but a mite of equine heat escapes through the wallboards, it is welcomed by all-Caitlin wished our good mount to be blanketed at night with one of Uncle’s Turkey rugs but Keegan ascribes to the Country way of warming a horse from the inside which he accomplishes with a daily feed in Winter of heat-producing corn-Adam is the sleekest Steed in these Wild Regions.
Tis a most humble satisfaction to be the source of economic improvement to families of this Region. Near twenty men take home wages from Cathair Mohr & many learning trades to which they would not otherwise be exposed.
We pray toward the completion of the house by Spring & thank God Who is the one true Source of all our Blessings.
After praying the Morning Office at five-thirty, he had opened the window to the patter of rain among beech leaves, then sat with the journal, reading pages at random.
20 November
A virulent Maladie has lately run amok though the Countryside, especially infecting the young-we can find nothing like it in the many journals on these shelves.
Twill run its course, says old Rose McFee when we despair of our helplessness-Rose is believed to be of great Age, perhaps beyond the century mark-she has but snags in her head, alarmingly revealed in a roguish Grin used to frighten unruly Children.
Balfour noses about overmuch, walking among the men, playing the Cock, suggesting improved ways to do the work at hand-he also sends a steady stream of servants from his household presenting every offense from Bunion & Sty to Gout & Goiter, all to be treated gratis-we often see angry welts & bruises on the skin but they decline to comment. If anything should aile the family we are called to come at once & minister as best we can in a small, foul Compartment without windows or good light. We have twice rid his stout wife of Hemoroids using the homeliest of methods-a procedure requiring the Hemoroids to be opened externally with the subsequent application of a poultice of boiled Onion-this was not learned in Philadelphia but from my dear Mother, a natural Physician who swore by it-I have not seen it fail. As for Balfour-the old Proverb, He who marries for money earns it, reminds us that he who receives Land without charge pays for it-til the Lord comes with His trumpets.
C & I are swamped beyond our Mortal Energies yet she vows she has never been happier nor have I. May God have Mercy on us in this impossible Calling.
In turning the November pages, he found a scrap of paper folded in half. He liked finding the odd scrap in old books; he recently came upon a list of his mother’s in the devotional she wore to tatters. Qt milk 5 lbs potatoes cake flour 1 coconut Ovaltine
The few words had startling power-he had tasted her coconut cake, smelled the Ovaltine in her cup.
The ink on the scrap was more faded than that of the journal entries, and the handwriting distinctively different. He put the flashlight to the task.
My dearest F, I found this in my reading last evening of Mr. Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Uncle’s last book purchase before his passing. It reminds me of you.
12 December
By dint of unstinting Sacrifice amongst the People, Caitlin has been obliged to take to her bed-She has forged her own Lenten season through an exhaustion both utter and complete-I have not watched over her properly-am sick at heart for the frightful turn in her Health-She hardly sips Tea. She gives until there is nothing left in her store-I now know that it is I who must mind her store. The eldest child of O’Leary the Shoemaker, a scantling of a Girl just turned fourteen, comes to address C’s needs while I’m about the business of Doctoring-as well as minding the labors of twenty men as Wether permits. To have the fine Surgery in the basement of the new house will be a Blessing beyond telling to us & to the People.
The shocking lore about Dr. Wilde reaches even to these Remote Quarters-if a man is paying his due portion of service under God he should have no time nor even spunk to sire an Infant in every cabin as all say of him-Tis the heartless and self-serving fool who would add to the world more mouths to be fed in these desperate times.
Father Dominic has delivered the Host today on his mare Fiddler, finding ice still moored in patches along the bleak Road-ice on the Lough thinning somewhat-have brought our seven Red Hens inside lest their few Eggs be frozen-am thankful that C finds the hens an amusement though young Aoife is not amused in the least. As A has no shoes to equip her in this wether-(I am reminded of the proverb)-we have paid her father to fashion a pair with great haste.
Prior to Tuesday’s mild Thaw I had broken a slab of ice in Adam’s watering Trough on nine consecutive mornings.
A grinding hard Winter.
He laid the journal on the table and got up and cranked the window shut, petitioning God for the grace to adopt a more agreeable attitude toward the day at hand. With Fintan and Caitlin O’Donnell making themselves useful, who was he to carp about a card game?
He eyed in the far corner of the room the carton of books they’d schlepped across the Pond. They were both fearful of being stuck without a decent book, and who knew they would find everything from Virgil to Synge on the shelves of a fishing lodge?
Returning to his chair, he opened his notebook, uncapped his pen.
‘… longest.’
You and Peggy are faithfully in our prayers. Will write again soon, reporting the outcome of said ruckus.
God be with you, my brother.
Timothy
He folded the letter with the watercolor, licked the envelope he’d rounded up, laid on more Irish stamps than were probably needed, checked his watch.
Six-thirty; the sun had been up for a half hour. He wanted coffee.
He also wanted soda bread with local butter, and rhubarb compote cooked to perfection on an Aga the color of a fire engine.
That was the trouble with vacations. At home, he was perfectly content with cereal and a banana, or the occasional poached egg. Here, he was ravenous from first light onward and eating like a field hand-while his sole exercise consisted of tossing around a shoe, no pun intended.
He glanced at his wife, burrowed like a vole into the bedclothes and as dead to the world as any teenager. ‘A clean conscience,’ she said when he made envious remarks.
He dressed in waterproof running gear and stepped out to the hall, greeted by a zephyr of cooking smells from downstairs.
While Cynthia read last night, he’d used the kitchen phone to call the erstwhile secretary who served during his years as Mitford’s working priest. Then, when he retired, she didn’t. Known by some as the Genghis Khan of church secretaries, she was Velcro that wouldn’t unstick.
No, he couldn’t remember his cell phone number, because he never called it. And no, he couldn’t remember his PIN number or even if he had one.
But yes, she would try to reach Dooley and get the phone number from him, and yes, she would take care of calling the phone company ASAP, but keep in mind that she’d be put on hold ’til she was old and gray, as if she had time to waste, thank you, didn’t he know she’d been rooked into organizing the Bane and Blessing at Lord’s Chapel this year, and if it was all the same to him, would he bring her a really nice souvenir, her preference being a vase from Waterford?
If anyone could get the account unplugged, it was Emma Newland, who would go after Sprint like Turks taking Cairo.
No Pud in the wing chair; he was disappointed.
He placed the outgoing envelope in the box on the sofa table, and took a minute to examine the sepia prints of the fishermen. Boats in the background, no houses yet built on the opposite shore, a black Lab seated in front of the lineup of men in boots and tweed, their catch on display at their feet-all looked particularly happy, he thought. Perhaps one day even he would cast a line, send it singing over the water…
In another photograph, two boys in shorts and sweaters and buckled shoes, the taller one sober, the other smiling and shy, each with a large fish in one hand and a net in the other, most likely Liam and Paddy. He wondered which of the men was their father.
‘Rev’rend.’
He started.
‘I heard back last night from Corrigan.’
He saw that Liam hadn’t slept well.
‘No matches to Slade’s prints. No evidence to warrant a search of his place.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Somehow, it felt too easy.’
‘But they’re sending a Gard to question his whereabouts the other night.’
‘Thanks for the update.’
‘You’re going out?’
‘Need to get the heart pumping.’ As if recent events hadn’t done the job. ‘Back in half an hour, maybe less, it’s still raining.’
‘Take care,’ said Liam.
‘Don’t worry about this,’ he said. A useless comment in the world’s view, but thoroughly scriptural and all he had just then.
In the entrance hall he pulled the hood over his head, tied the drawstring, and stepped out into the misting rain. The path to Catharmore was almost completely engulfed in fog. He jogged across the gravel and around to the garden bench, where he warmed up before beginning his measured lope down the path to the lake.
Someone had said that in Ireland there’s no such thing as bad weather-only the wrong clothes. He was prepared. In his hood and jacket, he was as hidden as a turtle in its shell, yet he felt more at one with the rain than if he were naked to it. Halfway along the path, he stopped running and lifted his face to its quenching sweetness, opened his mouth to it like a child.
He had known for a long time in his head, and knew now in his marrowbones-his spirit was dry as dust. He hadn’t completely realized that ’til this moment. Dry from giving out for months and even years, and failing to take in.
Create in me a clean heart, oh, God, renew a right spirit within me.
It was a prayer borrowed from the psalmist, but too long to sum his great need. It was a breath prayer he was after.
Clean me out, fill me up, please.
Running again. The woods on either side fell away; the lake opened itself to him-gray water devouring gray clouds, immense.
He could see the absurdity, even the comedy of his feeling about the bridge afternoon, see that it didn’t matter enough to be resisted.
Clean me out, fill me up, clean me out…
He drew the smell of water on water into his lungs, felt the fulsome air enter the tissues in a way he’d never experienced, heard his living breath suck in, pump out…
He reached the shore, heart hammering, and stood looking over the great swell of the lough, palms lifted to the rain.
He saw something, then, moving in the heavy mist beyond the reedbeds, someone walking his way and nearly upon him. Probably one of their gung-ho fishing guys. Without his glasses, which would be no better than windshields without wipers, he was clueless. He threw up his hand, didn’t look to see if there was a response, and headed toward the path.
‘Reverend.’
He turned. Anna was wearing a raincoat, the hood pulled close about her face.
‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said. It’s my day off.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Well, then, let’s hope it clears up and gives you sunshine.’
‘Reverend…’
Why harp on this foolishness of having people call him Tim, let them call him what they bloody well pleased.
‘I can’t call you Tim,’ she said. ‘I did it the once to be brave and modern, but I’m not at all modern and certainly not brave.’
‘I’m sure one must be very brave to operate a fishing lodge!’ This was no place for a jocular chat; he wanted coffee.
‘Could we… could I possibly talk with you? I won’t keep you, I’m so sorry to ask. I’ve been wanting… but I didn’t know…’
He saw a kind of agony in her face. ‘Of course. Where shall we…’
‘Our fishing hut just there, in the beeches. God bless you. Thank you. I won’t keep you.’
‘You lead, I’ll follow.’
The hut was a small, parged building with a couple of stone steps to the door and a single room. A table with anglers’ magazines and an ashtray, a few books on a shelf, a candle in a bottle, chairs, a mantel clock stopped at twelve minutes past three. Rain streaked the windows.
‘We could sit,’ she said, anxious.
‘Good idea.’ He untied his hood, shook water from his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. She hung her raincoat on a hook by the door and sat across the table from him.
‘I didn’t know I would see you this morning, ’ she said, ‘but I was hoping… I’m so sorry to do it like this.’ Tears welled in her eyes.
‘Tell you what-no more apologies. Not for anything.’
She put her hands over her face and wept, silent.
As a curate, he’d tried using words against tears, yet something he thought wise often came out as banal. Later, he learned to be silent, praying.
Rain pecked the roof; she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and looked at him. She was brave after all, he thought.
‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Begin anywhere.’
‘Yes.’ She was silent again, looking at her hands on the table, palms down. ‘My mother died when I was born. That has always haunted me, I always felt I had to apologize to my father, somehow, and of course there can be no making up for such a loss. I think he loved her, but more than that, I think he needed her, yes, that’s what it was, he needed her. She was a kind and lovely woman, everyone said, very deep-and they say I look like her. There are long days when I miss her; ’t is a punishing want, and yet I never knew her at all.’ She looked at him, appealing.
‘I never saw what was needed to be a mother, I had no model for it. I bungled the job.’ She turned away. ‘But I love my child.’ She wept again, soundless.
He drew a bandanna from his pocket and handed it to her and she took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I’ll wash it,’ she said, earnest. ‘Bella is hurting and I can’t reach her-she won’t let me in. She was angry with me for leaving her Da, she was only four at the time, but a very bright and deep and sensitive four, she begged me to stay with him, but I could not. Niall was very loose with his affections those years we were married, and I couldn’t bear what it was doing to all of us. When Koife-Bella-and I left, we lived for a time in Dublin, but it wasn’t a good place for her to come up, and so we moved here to be with Da in what’s now the kitchen wing. He had bought the oul’ place long ago when Liam’s mother had to let it go. Da had invested his boxing money in a haulage business in Dublin. It did very well-seventeen lorries on the move; in good times, day and night together. When someone bought him out, he came back to Lough Arrow, just five kilometers from where he lived as a lad.
‘I hadn’t a car and couldn’t get about for work-I heard that Catharmore was looking for someone to cook and clean. Da said, don’t speak th’ name William Donavan in that house, and I didn’t, and I was taken on. Lough Arrow was the terrible opposite of Dublin, I suppose-Bella hated it here, there were no children about, and she was very lonely. Until she entered school, my da watched out for her during the day. I was working up th’ hill from early morning ’til late afternoon, and at Broughadoon at night. ’t was my dream to turn th’ wreck of it into a fishing lodge to make us a living, so I didn’t give Bella the attention she craved. She was but six when she took up the fiddle; ’t was her boon companion and she was brilliant at it, it came as natural as the waxing of the moon.
‘She left to live with her father when she was twelve. I couldn’t stop her, Reverend, it’s what she wanted, she was fierce to do it. She and Niall have the bond of music, which is her life-but I never forgave myself for letting her go.’
‘God gave me a boy to raise,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, I hope, but I tell you now that it’s not too late-no matter how deep the wound.’
She wiped her eyes with the bandanna. ‘I’ve lived for years thinking it’s too late. Too late for Bella and me, too late for Liam and his mother, too late for… too late.’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Please know that. When did you leave Catharmore?’
‘I continued working up the hill after Paddy and Seamus came. She wanted me to stay because I did very personal things for her-washed out her undies, altered her clothes to keep them in fashion, moved her jewelry around to various hiding places in the house-sometimes but a step ahead of Paddy, who was after selling it.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you everything, Reverend. I want to tell you, but it is so frightening to tell everything.’
‘I understand.’
‘Each morning at first light, I pray the Lord’s Prayer, and often the decade of Sorrowful Mysteries-but Liam and I stopped going to Mass long ago. He gave up so much that reminded him of his father, and when I moved here, I told myself it was the work that was on me seven days a week. Liam says we’re more than lapsed, Reverend, we’re fallen altogether. As a girl, I wished so terribly to satisfy God…’
‘A good Scot named George MacDonald said God is impossible to satisfy but easy to please.’
‘I think I’ve forgotten how to do pleasing things-except for our guests.’ She looked away from him. ‘All these years, there’s been no one to… to…’
‘Hear your confession?’
‘Yes. Confession was always important to me, I was schooled in a convent and took it seriously as a girl.’
‘Confession brings pardon and peace,’ he said. ‘We all need it. St. John says, If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
‘It’s all right then, to speak…’-she seemed dubious-‘my heart?’
‘God asks us to do it. But you know I can’t grant you absolution.’
‘I know. But you’ll hear me?’
‘I will.’
‘Liam’s mother was always after the gin, and sometimes she would be… out of her head with me. She never cared for me, though I worked very hard for her. By the time she learned who I was, she had come to depend on me, but despised me even more for what she called my wicked deception in not telling her I was William Donavan’s daughter.
‘Liam used to come home at the weekends, and I fell in love with him altogether-I couldn’t imagine how he turned out to be such a lovely man with such a deep spirit-he’s like his father, they say. She was always angry with Liam for his admiration and love for his father-she wanted her boys to love only her. And yet, she couldn’t feel love, Reverend, she couldn’t feel anything at all.
‘She hated me for loving him-Paddy says she could never get on with women who love her sons-but I wouldn’t let her hurt me, I shut myself from her so coldly that I hardly had any feelings left. I turned my own heart to stone.’
She rose from the table and walked to a window, her hands plunged into the pockets of her loose dress. ‘Sure, she had a terrible blow when she was young, a tragic accident in her family, but that’s no excuse, Reverend, for inflicting her outrage on others, it doesn’t give one license…’ She turned to him. ‘Not at all.
‘I held myself away from Liam for more than a year; it was a torment to us both. I held myself away because…
‘My da met Evelyn McGuiness in Collooney, when he was just a lad trying to earn his way as a boxing champion. It was a brutal sport, and he was very brave and hardworking and determined to make something of himself, a boy with hardly a shoe to his foot. At the time he met her, he was just beginning to get a leg up, as he says, and was soon traveling all over Ireland, then England, and up to Scotland. When they fell in love he promised her he would come home again and marry her. And he did come home again, but ’t was seven long years that had passed, and she had seen two sisters and her mother die a horrible death and no one to turn to in her grief. She had married Mr. Conor-Mr. Riley, we all call him-and they had a son, Paddy. She had been nursemaid at Catharmore to Mr. Riley’s first wife who died of cancer.
‘She was very bitter towards Da for not coming for her as he promised, and he was bitter towards her for not waiting, though heaven knows he had handled matters in a gormless way. So off again he went to Dublin, and then, some while before he married my mother, he came back and… there was something between them. Da would never say what, he refuses to talk about it, but Paddy thinks…’
She wrung the bandanna in her hands. ‘Nine months later, Liam was born.
‘And so I held myself from Liam. ’t was agony to find myself in love with my halfbrother-’t is against the church and against the law, a misbegotten thing. And yet I loved him so, I thought I couldn’t bear the pain.
‘To his mother, I was but a lowly servant girl, just as she’d been when she worked for Mr. Riley’s first wife. For Liam to love me was a deep sting to her, and because she couldn’t hurt me with her tormenting, she tried to hurt Liam, instead. One night when she was very drunk, she told me something that was-in its way-as…’
Her face colored with an old fury. ‘She told me Mr. Riley wasn’t Liam’s father.’
‘She confessed to you, then.’
‘But ’t was another heavy blade entirely. She said Liam’s real father was Mr. Riley’s business partner… someone who came here for fishing parties.’ She caught her breath sharply. ‘He’s in the pictures in our library, God help us.’
She came and sat at the table. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, there’s no way to know. She often said crazy, mindless things.’
‘Why do you think she told you this?’
‘I think she believed I would tell Liam in one of the dreadful fights he and I had in those days. But of course I would never tell him such a terrible thing.’ Her voice shook with the trembling in her. ‘The truth is of no importance in the end, Reverend, because Mr. Riley loved Liam very much. I’m sure he never knew he wasn’t Liam’s father.’
‘How did you feel about what she said?’
‘I felt suddenly free… that maybe it was all right for us to love, maybe it was God’s way of giving us permission.’ She drew in her breath. ‘I decided to take the risk.
‘I left Catharmore and Liam came with me, and we were wed in the library with the roof nearly gone above us. He began helping me resurrect Broughadoon. He worked so hard and is gifted in so many ways; ’t is all because of him that we have such a lovely place.’
‘He gives the credit to you.’
‘Aye, he would.’ He saw for a moment the light in her eyes. ‘I love my husband.’
‘Your husband loves you.’
‘I’ve lived all these years knowing the truth, and the hatred I feel for her is so cruel, it devours me even yet. Sometimes I feel as if my heart would break for Liam-knowing the truth doesn’t always set us free, Reverend.’
Not always, perhaps, but often. Learning he had a brother from his father’s intimacy with the dark-skinned woman who helped raise him had been, after the initial shock, liberating-scary, but liberating. He had a brother now, that was the important thing, and he and Henry had the rest of their lives to puzzle out the mystery of it, to give thanks for it.
‘Liam loves Bella as best he can, he wants to be a good da to her, but she shuts him out. And there’s a coldness in Liam towards Da, though he tries to hide it from me. I think he resents that Da was allowed to buy his birth-right. All around us, there’s a shutting out of love, so.’
‘I sense there’s hard feeling still between Evelyn Conor and your father.’
‘My da bought Broughadoon anonymously, after Mr. Riley died and she came up against it. Perhaps Da was trying to make up for his misguided ways and help her; perhaps he was only bitter, and bent on taking away something she loved-I don’t know. But when she found it was Da who owned what had been hers, things went to pieces altogether.
‘And then there’s Paddy, always after Liam to give a hand with the roof, the gardens, the guttering, to loan him money-and Bella with such a fierce and dangerous rage, and myself thinking she got it from me, after all, that it’s in the blood, this brutal fury, perhaps I’m the one who…’-she put her hands over her face and sobbed-‘infects others with it.’
He waited.
‘I confess, Reverend, my weakness of faith, my hurtful selfishness, the sin of this consuming hatred that withers my bones. I want to let it go.’ A long keening came out of her. ‘I want to let it all go.’
He looked at the grainy light slanting across the floor, and wondered where Ibiza might be, that place for which the Irish yearn when it rains.