Acts of Allegiance

by Peter Cunningham

  4

  WATERFORD

  August 1981

  I returned for an unscheduled weekend, to visit my stepfather, Michael, who lived alone, and who now farmed my land. Waterloo had become just a holiday home for us, albeit a highly uncomfortable one. And yet I could still taste the magic of the place as I advanced along the hip of the mountain, the feeling that up here all would be well.

  The next afternoon I drove to Waterford and walked into Bobby’s Bar. The local tailor, a deaf mute with curling eyebrows, who drank there in the afternoons, was the only customer. Bobby and I had lost touch, and although five years had gone by since Iggy’s death, I had felt it safer to keep my distance. Even so, I had not been able to resist dropping by to test the temperature.

  ‘Hello, Bobby.’

  He was arranging bottles behind the counter and turned. For half a second—and that’s all it was—he saw me with open detestation, an expression of pure abhorrence. But Bobby was a pro, and quickly broke into a smile and bellowed my name. We drank whiskey and he settled into his prattle, which had not changed, nor did he waver in his affability for the next hour, despite my pushing him to the limits of his patience. It had only been for half a second, but half a second is all you need, as the Captain had said: half a second is all a sniper is given to reorder the world to his own liking, so why should you have more?

  Later that day, somewhat light-headed, I walked up to Fowler Street. So much had changed. Granny Kane had died at Sunday mass in the cathedral, an occurrence widely viewed as proof of divine involvement. Father O’Dea had just served her communion, in her pew, and she had expired, there and then, the intact host still in her mouth. (Apparently, this had caused consternation among those trying to revive her: whether or not to touch the body of Christ in order to revive the body of an elderly lady.) A decade later, the Gent and Aunt Angela had died within a month of each other and the terraced house that had been so central to my growing-up had been sold. The intricate internal details of 8 Fowler Street—its small rooms, dado rails, wallpaper, cutlery, coal scuttle, holy pictures, cotton sheets, night lights and the stair carpet that my aunts had made over three years—were engraved on the plate of my mind. As I turned into Fowler Street, I cocked my ear, for my imagination still expected the voices of the dead to welcome me.

  The door was ajar. In the once tidy hallway stood half a dozen bags of cement, piled one on the other. The staircase was missing. Stepping in, I looked up and saw that the little house had been entirely hollowed out. My first thought was: what will Iggy think of this?

  5

  PARIS

  February 1982

  We spent hours trying to work out why we were so happy.

  ‘I saw a poster for a piano bar somewhere near here,’ I said. ‘They specialise in the songs of Noël Coward.’

  ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ Sugar said.

  We were sitting in the window booth of a bistro we greatly approved of, just off the Rue Francois 1er. Sugar had come into town from Saint-Cloud and we’d gone to the pictures. She had to peer over the platter of fruits de mer in order to see me.

  ‘They should create the post of romantic attaché for you,’ she said. ‘The ambassador of the never-ending love affair.’

  ‘Over here, I can give them my version of an Irishman and nobody raises an eyebrow. I can love my country without being irritated by it. I’m without issues here. I could happily do this for ever, dropping back to Waterloo for holidays. This is me.’

  She used a tool like a knitting needle to extract the meat from a periwinkle.

  ‘Then that’s exactly what we should do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come and live here.’

  ‘I’ll be posted somewhere else,’ I said. ‘I’m only forty-one.’

  ‘But we should buy now so that we can come back here when you retire. I read an article in Le Monde that described how property in Paris is going to soar in value beyond what anyone can now imagine.’

  ‘What about the small question of money?’

  ‘We can use what my parents left me and raise a loan on Waterloo.’

  ‘Your parents left you that money, not me. They wanted you to be independent, or at least your mother did.’

  Sugar sat back. ‘I’m serious. We’ve got everything we want here. I don’t want to grow old in Ireland.’

  I never imagined her growing old anywhere, for to me she was still the beautiful girl I had met in Main and fallen in love with.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

  ‘We always end up talking about Waterloo—but the last twice we stayed there was when we buried our respective mothers. Do we need it, other than as a place to lodge when we attend a funeral?’

  ‘I said I’ll think about it.’

  She looked curiously at me. ‘It’s really got quite a hold on you, hasn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whole destiny thing, the idea that you’re just one in a line, that your mother’s family came there a hundred and fifty years ago or whatever and that it’s now your responsibility, blah, blah, blah. And I can understand that. I’m just the daughter of a country rector who never possessed more than his stipend. You’re different.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ I said. ‘To hell with Waterloo. If you want to live here, this is where we’ll live. We’ll go to Ireland for Easter and I’ll put things in motion.’

  6

  PARIS

  March 1982

  An intergovernmental meeting had been scheduled since the previous year. Our embassy was in full organisation mode, liaising with the Élysée Palace, and with Dublin, and arranging a luncheon for President Giscard d’Estaing. The evening before, our Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey, had been entertained to dinner by the president, and now it was our turn. We had been left in no doubt by Haughey’s office in Dublin that he expected the Connemara roast lamb to be accompanied by Château Lynch-Bages.

  I had only met and spoken to Haughey that one time in Saint-Cloud racecourse, but I often thought of the consequences that had flowed from that day. As Bill O’Neill had once predicted, Haughey was now popular across a wide political spectrum. His personal wealth and ostentatious lifestyle, funded by sources that were never explained, and his reputation as a bully and a womaniser, endeared him to those sections of the electorate in need of a certain kind of reflected glory. His was the overwhelming presence in Irish politics and would remain so for another ten years, until the extent of his dishonesty would eventually undo him, and he would leave politics in terminal disgrace.

  I was almost late. Georgie had awoken with a fever and, since Sugar didn’t want to leave her and it was Nurse Fleming’s day off, I hurried down to the local pharmacy in Saint-Cloud. By the time I’d waited, and was served, got home and set out for central Paris, an hour had gone by. I jumped from the Metro at Étoile and ran the last five hundred yards, just as the Taoiseach’s cavalcade was pulling in. A sizeable crowd, including television crews, had assembled. Our ambassador, waiting by the entrance, frowned in my direction as I hurried inside. I went up the stairs, two at a time, and took my place in the long, gloriously appointed room whose generous windows overlooked the 16th arrondissement. The atmosphere was almost skittish: all the embassy staff, especially the women, wanted to shake hands with Charlie Haughey.

  Would he remember our previous meeting, I wondered as the flashes from the cameras outside reflected upwards? I was sure he could not forget it, given all that had followed, but, equally, I decided, he would never take the risk of engaging with me. On the other hand, given his new position as Taoiseach, Haughey would now be the recipient of state secrets and sensitive information. Was there a file somewhere, marked ‘Top Secret’, which located me in south Armagh on St Stephen’s Day 1976? As I was speculating how far up the political tree that file might have climbed, the doors opened and our ambassador appeared with Charles J. Haughey beside him.

  He was smaller than I’d remembered, but just as fit, w
ith bounce and vitality, a Napoleonic-type force that instantly flew around the room. Because I had been late, I was on the end of the receiving line, beside Philippe, our concierge. The Taoiseach was in jocular form, making a point of engaging with every member of staff to whom he was introduced, in the cases of the women taking their hand in both of his and, in one instance, kissing the fingertips of a very attractive young secretary. Five paces from where I stood, I became aware that he had seen me. My size has always made me hard to miss. His eyes locked into their hooded blinkers and his smile dried up. All at once, from outside, came a polite round of applause, which meant that the President of France had arrived. Haughey turned in my direction. His expression was that of a bird of prey that has scented danger. I nodded. His mouth took on a grim set. Then he turned on his heel and walked swiftly from the room.

  7

  EN ROUTE TO IRELAND

  April 1982

  Easter

  Although we had spent weekends in the Loire and in Burgundy, it was Normandy we liked best. On the Wednesday of Easter week, we drove on the new AutoRoute to a hotel we knew in Thury-Harcourt, not far from Caen, which left us with a short run the next day to the ferry at Cherbourg. I had booked three rooms and the five of us went out to dinner, at which Emmet and I ate wild boar. Afterwards, we left the children and Nurse Fleming playing Scrabble, and walked through the town to a bridge where moonlight danced on a fast-running river.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Waterloo,’ I said. ‘When we get home, I’m going to sell it. I want to buy in Paris, but I don’t want to borrow.’

  Sugar thought for a moment. ‘Sell all of it?’

  ‘We might keep a few acres, in case the children want to come back and build there.’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘We can stay with them.’

  She lit a cigarette and tossed the match over the parapet. ‘We’ve been away a long time. You should get advice.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘I don’t know—Bobby Gillece? He’s your family, after all.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to involve him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s complicated.’

  She leant against the stonework and blew smoke towards the sky. ‘May I ask you something? Something quite personal?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Last time we were home, I came across some old photographs that I assume belonged to your parents. One of them was taken on the quay in Waterford when you were twelve or thirteen. You’re standing beside a woman who I’m pretty sure is Bobby Gillece’s wife, in other words, your father’s sister Kate.’

  I didn’t know what was coming next. ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’s most attractive. It took me a minute to work out who she was—I mean, when I last saw her she was enormously fat, but this woman in the picture is really striking.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Your arm is around her waist. She’s looking at the camera, but you’re looking at her.’

  ‘I was just about to get on a boat and go away to school.’

  ‘I’m curious,’ Sugar said. ‘Were you in love with her?’

  I laughed. ‘She was my aunt!’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I was a child! What’s all this about?’

  ‘I just wondered, that’s all,’ said Sugar sweetly and flicked her cigarette away.

  Throughout the sea passage next day, I kept thinking of my last encounter with Bobby, in his pub, when his guard had dropped for an instant, and I thought I had seen what he really felt about me. But now Sugar had made me think again about the reasons behind his dislike. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Iggy. I already knew that Bobby had seen me kissing Kate on the quayside, all those years before, and, although he had been drunk when he told me, he had implied that his marriage with Kate had never been consummated. What had really happened, I wondered? Had Kate’s ancient affection for me become an issue for them? She could have, for example, during a row, or at a time when Bobby might have denigrated me in her presence, eulogised me. And he might have flung this back at her when, perhaps, she might have withheld intimacy from him on the basis that he was drunk, which he frequently was. Auntie Kate may well have compared Bobby to me if their failure to have children was his. I was speculating, but I thought I could suddenly understand Bobby’s hostility in a new light and, if this were true, then my deeper fears around him were unfounded.

  As the children watched excitedly for a glimpse of Ireland next morning, and the first bumps of the Saltees appeared off the port bow, I asked myself how Alison would have dealt with the situation. She would have breezed ahead, just as I was doing, I decided, remaining positive, never offering the enemy a faltering stride. Which was also how the Captain would have done it, I reflected, and as I did so, I grasped in a moment of long overdue comprehension, why I had loved Alison so much.

  8

  WATERLOO FARM

  Easter 1982

  Everywhere I looked I saw my parents, and our horses, and Alison carrying out a tray of home-made lemonade to the tennis court, now a pasture for mountain ewes. We put our backs into wiping mould from leathers and fabrics, and setting fires and opening windows, and cleaning up the shit of the sparrows that had become trapped inside and died horribly around the windows. And yet, the old charm of the place began to creep over me, even as I picked up the telephone and rang Bobby Gillece.

  An hour later I was sitting in his kitchen.

  ‘Great to see you,’ he said. ‘Long time—too long.’ My sniper’s sight could see no chink in his smile, which, when added to my seaborne epiphany, made me wonder how wrongly I had judged him. ‘How’s it going in Gay Paree?’

  I drank tea as I told him of our new life, and how it seemed to suit us. I told him of our decision.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, ‘I never thought you’d let it go.’

  ‘It’s just a bloody house.’

  ‘All the same—but fair play to you.’

  ‘We’ll keep a few acres for the kids.’

  ‘Great idea. Keep the name going up there.’

  I tried to see beyond Bobby’s natural deviousness, to see what this news really meant to him, but I could make out nothing other than surprise, polite regret and a swift series of calculations to see how he could benefit financially.

  ‘Waterford has never been the same for me, to be honest, since Iggy left,’ I said, watching closely to see how he would react to such a shameless assertion.

  He coughed. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that, looking back, when we were all here together was the happiest time of my life.’

  Bobby coughed again, but I could see nothing in his face but faint puzzlement.

  ‘So,’ he said, rubbing his hands, ‘how long are you home for?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  ‘Then we’d better get things in motion. I’ve the right man for you. He has contacts longer than your arm, and you can trust him, which is the main thing. I’ll set something up for next week.’

  We all went to mass in Ballyhale on Easter morning, where the smells and sideways glances, the familiar profiles, even the sound of feet shuffling towards the altar rail for Communion were exactly as I remembered them. Georgie had become a Holy Communicant; she wore a simple white veil as she stood in line to receive the host with myself and Nurse Fleming. Sugar, as a Protestant, could not receive Communion, and remained in the pew with Emmet. He had become quite independent in his attitudes, including his view of religion, which was, from what I could gather, one of indifference.

  We drove home on the narrow road that sliced across open country towards our mountain. Sun and colour exploded to reveal ewes and their lambs by twinkling gullies. I would always love this place for its beauty, serenity and gut-tightening isolation, but now I would have to love it from afar. Those who lived in a place permanently seldom appreciated it, I reasoned; my childhood here was stored away in careful
images, caverns full of them, enough to get me through to old age. Much as the sight of our lake, as it now appeared, and the wash of valley below it begged me to hold them tight for ever, I knew in my blood that my time there was up.

  It was warm enough at lunchtime on Easter Monday to light a fire by the lake and grill the trout Emmet had caught the night before. I sensed the heady feeling of a group about to embark on a new adventure. Although the children were polite enough to behave as if they enjoyed being in their ancestral home—a Captain-like term if ever there was one—more than once I heard them chatting quietly about Paris. That was exciting, for it seemed to prove where our real home was and that my decision to sell Waterloo was the right one.

  We discussed the piece of land I had earmarked to keep, on the west side of the lake with views on a good day to the river, but I knew now that these European children found my plans for a lifeline to this lovely barren spot at best endearing. Sugar and I drank a bottle of Montrachet.

  ‘Do you want to come to this meeting tomorrow?’

  She looked at me. ‘And spend an hour with Mr Gillece? No thank you very much.’

  ‘It’s your property, too.’

  ‘Not really, Marty,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you don’t need me there.’

  A dramatic sunset set the hills on fire. I sat with a drink outside the hall door, a fleece around my shoulders, imagining from time to time that Oscar, my childhood dog, was near at hand.

  9

  WATERFORD

  Easter Tuesday 1982

  I had driven out across the soldier course of cobbles that marked the boundary between the gravel sweep around the house and the rough, crushed flint of our so-called avenue, and was almost at the bridge beneath which the water from the lake regained its status as a stream and flowed on downhill through tens of thousands of acres of heather and rock before eventually uniting with countless others of its kind before becoming a tributary of the River Suir, when they stopped me. I might not have seen them had I been looking the other way, or if the morning sun had blinded my wing-mirror with its radiance. In the moment that I did see them, running and waving for me to stop, perhaps within that moment it might have been possible to ignore what I saw—for I knew from the way they were attired what they wanted—and I could have driven on alone, continued as I had intended, by myself, to finish what I alone had started.