Outside the rain gathered intensity and ricocheted in miniature fountains from the pavements before running in torrents down the hill. I felt a reluctance to get out of the little car, of which I had become strangely fond. For the last few miles I had been haunted by the spectre of supercilious strangers demanding a slavish application to uncongenial tasks. For a moment I was tempted to tell Kit to drive on fast, no matter what the consequences.
He put a hand on my arm, ‘You really do need someone to look after you.’
These words checked my impulse to flee. I shook my head. ‘I have to get on good terms with myself again by my own efforts. But thanks for the offer. Goodbye, Kit. I shan’t forget how good you’ve been to me. I do hope we meet again.’ I opened the door.
‘You bet,’ he said in his ordinary, cheerful voice. ‘I’ll get your cases out of the boot.’
‘Don’t. You’ll get soaked. It’s teeming.’
Kit insisted. I saw with regret the shoulders of his jacket become instantly dark with rain and his hair stick to his forehead. I seized the cases and ran.
FIFTEEN
The bus station was deserted apart from a friendly dog and a sleeping tramp. The ticket counter was shuttered. I put down my suitcases and sat on the cleanest bit of the bench that ran down one side of the waiting room. I saw Kit’s car go past the door on its way to Westport and a disagreeable shiver of loneliness ran over me like a cold draught. The dog and I exchanged sniffs and words with mild enthusiasm. It was a large dog with a coat of long brown ringlets, like an apprentice perm. As five minutes became ten, I grew increasingly fond of the dog and less fond of the tramp who muttered in his sleep, broke wind several times and scratched his stomach with a grimy fist. I began to wish that I had thrown in my lot with Kit and faced the inevitable complications of such a course. When, three-quarters of an hour later, my thoughts were too wretched to be borne and the bench too hard for comfort, I rose and began to pace. This provoked the dog to bark. The tramp opened his eyes and sat up.
‘Blood and wounds! Will you shut it now, you little devil, before I knock your dratted head off your body!’ he commanded. He screwed his knuckles into his eyes then stared at me. ‘Would your name be Miss Norton, by any chance? For Curraghcourt?’
‘Yes. I’m Bobbie Norton.’
The tramp revealed a jumble of teeth. ‘That’s good! You’re very welcome, miss! Timsy O’Leary is my name.’ He pulled off a ragged cap to reveal a shock of mousy hair standing up above a seam of dirt made by the band of his headgear. ‘I was sent to fetch you to the house.’ He looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Is that the time? The old one’ll be cross as briars with you being so late.’
It would not do to fall out at the beginning of our relationship so I restrained my natural feeling of annoyance. ‘Is this your dog? She seems … intelligent.’
‘No-ho. She belongs to Miss Constance. Sure you might scrape all Ireland with a fine-toothed comb and you’ll not find a better dog.’ He bent down, supporting himself with his hands on his knees. ‘Come here, Maria darling. Come to your uncle Timsy.’ Maria barked defiantly in his face and ran from the waiting room. ‘Well then, Miss Norton. We’d better be making tracks. The car’s outside.’
We followed the dog into the street. I perceived from the unsteadiness of his gait and the smell of alcohol on his breath that Timsy O’Leary had been drinking. Or could this be part of the stage Irishman impersonation Kit had described? Was Timsy O’Leary actually sober and wearing clean underclothes beneath the beggar’s outfit? Perhaps he had a consuming interest in Florentine Mannerist painters? I picked up my suitcases and followed him.
There was no car to be seen, only a strange-looking cart with two leather seats back to back and facing outwards over the wheels. A bedraggled-looking pony stood between the shafts. The rain was coming down in earnest and the poor thing hung its head with water trickling from its neck and sides.
‘Up with you, miss,’ said Timsy, grabbing my cases and chucking them into the bowels of the cart.
‘Oh, but … this is … Where’s the car?’
‘Sure, ’tis right before your eyes. A fine old Irish outside car. There’s many a museum would pay a lot of money for it. I gave it a polish till you’d be in danger of blindness with dazzlement if it weren’t for the rain that’s coming down in lakes to spoil it.’
I looked from Timsy’s beaming face to the cart, the woodwork of which was sketchily coated with flakes of paint which any polishing would have instantly removed. Two boxes of sopping, yellowing cabbages were roped on to one seat. The other was covered by a heap of old sacks. ‘You mean we’re going in … this?’ I had still enough innate optimism to hope this was the last act of the tragic Famine play and that there was something cheerful, fourwheeled and dry waiting round the corner.
‘Don’t be frightened, Miss Norton. You’ll not find a better man to guide a horse than Timsy O’Leary should you traipse the whole of Connaught. Besides, the Cockatoo knows the way.’
‘A parrot, do you mean?’ I imagined us being led through the darkness by a white bird, beating its wings frantically against the merciless onslaught of rain and wind to stay on its course.
‘No, Miss Norton.’ Timsy seemed inordinately amused by what seemed to me a perfectly natural mistake. ‘’Tis the pony’s name.’ He clapped a hand on the Cockatoo’s streaming rump which made the wretched animal start and kick up his back legs. I put my foot on the step and Timsy gave me a violent push from behind that nearly threw me over into the cabbages.
‘There’s a fine bit of cover for your back.’ Timsy grasped one of the sacks and knotted it about his neck and tucked two more into his belt to cover his knees. ‘They’ll keep you as dry as a nut in its shell.’
I picked up a piece of sodden hessian and wrapped it round my head, tying it under my chin. Timsy gave a hoot of approval.
‘Faith, Miss Norton, ma’am, you make a picture that’d draw a fox out of his hole, though the hounds were gathered round it, dripping at the jaws.’
I acknowledged the compliment with a smile that felt tight-lipped. Timsy hopped up to the driving seat and Maria leaped up beside me. With a jerk that nearly threw me out on to the road and made Maria step up her barking to a deafening scream, we set off down the hill.
‘Is it far to the house?’ I asked.
‘Nothing but a step. You could dance the whole way and not be out of breath.’
This was a relief. The steep incline of the street, the jolting motion of the cart and the slipperiness of the wet leather obliged me to hang on to the back of the driving seat with both hands to prevent myself from sliding off. Maria scrabbled with her claws and whined desperately. I gripped her collar and she managed to get a purchase by anchoring the front half of her body across my knees. When we began to go down the other side of the hill we were slightly better off though my hip soon began to ache from being jammed against the driving seat. Once we reached level ground I was able to relax a little and rearrange the sacking for maximum protection from the rain that dashed itself into my face and coursed in rivulets from every prominent point. Maria remained slung across my knees and I derived great comfort from the warmth of her body. From time to time she opened her toffeebrown eyes to stare into mine with what I interpreted as fellow feeling. We proceeded the length of Kilmuree’s main street, nose to snout.
Soon the houses petered out and we were in the countryside. There were mountains, trees and black sheets of water aplenty but no houses. As we trotted on through a narrowing valley that became more desolate with every twist and turn of the road I began to wonder at the elasticity of the ‘step’. Timsy O’Leary shook the reins and whistled cheerfully, from time to time breaking off to laugh aloud at nothing in particular as far as I could tell. It was marvellous how the man’s spirits kept up beneath the sluicing rain that penetrated the sacking and my mackintosh within minutes. There were no fences, no telegraph poles, no cars, no carts even; nothing but grazing sheep and flocks of crows to reass
ure me that Timsy, Maria, the Cockatoo and I were not the only sentient beings on the planet.
I began to dream of a telephone-box. As I comforted myself with the thought that in this wilderness of mountains and bogs the call-box was unlikely to have been vandalized, the pony whinnied, pranced between the shafts and stopped dead.
‘Get on there, you spawn of the devil’s arse!’ said Timsy. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Norton, I was forgetting meself and you the most refined, delicatest lady that ever was. Sure I’d like to cut out my tongue and lay it there in the road and drive over it—’
‘What’s the matter?’ I interrupted brusquely, my temper soured by the rain and the smell of cabbages. ‘Why has the pony stopped?’
‘’Tis an ass lying in the road there like a corpse. The Cockatoo cannot abide asses.’
I leaned over the side of the cart to penetrate the veils of rain. ‘Why doesn’t the donkey get up?’
‘I’ll be thrashing it till it does,’ said Timsy with energy, seizing the whip. Maria sprang from the cart and ran round to the pony’s head, yapping dementedly.
‘You mustn’t do any such thing,’ I said, jumping down myself. ‘Perhaps it’s hurt.’
‘Be careful, Miss Norton, ma’am. Those brutes kick like steam hammers.’
We had kept a donkey in the paddock at Cutham as a companion for my pony so I was not particularly alarmed. Far from kicking, it was passive, barely twitching its ears as I approached. I soon saw that the poor animal’s back legs were tightly bound with ropes that were attached to a heavy log.
‘Have you a knife?’ I called to Timsy. ‘It’s hopelessly tangled up. I wonder if this was done deliberately? I can feel knots.’
‘Faith, ’tis Michael McOstrich’s jennet, I do believe.’ Timsy had got down to stand beside me. ‘She’s got a white star right between the eyes. He’s hobbled the creature. To stop her straying, you understand. She’ll be putting her foot through a loop and winding herself up.’
I was disgusted by what seemed to me nothing less than outright cruelty. ‘Please give me your knife at once.’
‘A knife is a thing I never carry.’ Timsy adopted a moral rectitude that was wholly unconvincing. ‘And Michael’s a big fellow. He can knock a hole right through you so you can see the sky the other side. Better leave the creature and I’ll take the pony round on the grass.’
‘I’ll say you had nothing to do with it if you’re afraid of him.’ I took my sponge bag from my suitcase and found my nail scissors. Water penetrated the folds of my clothes during this operation but I was too angry to care.
‘Oh, Miss Norton!’ Timsy protested as I set to work, much hampered by the thickness of the ropes, the smallness of the blades, the rain and the diminishing light. ‘Will I take you back to Kilmuree now before Michael McOstrich finds out you’ve spoiled the best bit of rope this side of Galway?’
I said nothing, needing all my energy to saw through the wet strands. As the last thread was severed the donkey heaved herself to her feet. She shook herself, gave a delighted buck, then dashed away across the bog and disappeared into the gloaming.
‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Timsy’s voice was agonized. ‘When Michael’s roused to anger his eyes glow like coals with the bellows blowing them up. We’ll be putting all the bolts on the doors tonight. But I doubt they’ll stand up to his fists.’
‘Pooh!’ I said, climbing back into the cart. ‘I can’t believe the RSPCA, or whatever the Irish equivalent is, tolerates this sort of thing. And if Mr McOstrich dares to threaten me I shall call the police.’
‘Oh, no, I beg you,’ Timsy groaned. ‘Likely Michael will bring his brothers and they’re nearly as big as he.’
‘Oh, stuff his brothers!’ I was too tired and wretched to care if the entire McOstrich clan should come knocking at the door to rend me limb from limb. In fact, I would be grateful.
Timsy was so affected by my foolhardiness that he ceased to whistle and laugh and we travelled on for a while with no accompaniment but the clopping of hoofs, the creaking of the cart and the occasional bleat and caw from the sheep and crows. The rain fell lighter now and the cabbages smelt stronger. The light was fading fast. I looked at my watch then held it to my ear. Discouraged by the water which had dribbled between dial and glass it had stopped at eight o’clock, just as we left Kilmuree. I was on the point of asking Timsy the time before it occurred to me that time had become irrelevant. I sank into a state of miserable apathy. It was nearly dark before I glimpsed through the blur of moisture a trembling light. I fixed my eyes on it with feelings of hope and dread.
‘Whoa there, Sir Cockatoo,’ Timsy said as before long we drew up before a low sort of dwelling.
I could see at once why Mrs Macchuin had sounded despairing. It must have been the loneliest place in the universe. Light leaking between skimpily drawn curtains revealed some straggling leaves planted in whitewashed car tyres each side of the front door. Otherwise no attempt had been made with paths or trees or hedges or flowerbeds to graft the building on to the primeval landscape. The mean little porch might have sheltered a small child. But indoors, I reminded myself, it would be dry.
Timsy jumped down. ‘Come on, Miss Norton, we’ll have a taggeen to keep out the wet.’
‘A taggeen?’
‘A drop o’ the best. The dust’s got into my throat so my pipes are roaring like a chimney on fire.’
I doubted if there was a speck of dust to be found between here and Kilmuree. All was mud and bog and rock and water. ‘Is this Curraghcourt?’
Timsy laughed. ‘’Tis McCarthy’s place.’ When I hesitated, uncomprehending, he added, ‘A public house, ma’am.’
‘A public house?’ I must have sounded as evangelically abstemious as Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen before she is worked on by love and adventure. But Timsy was far from my idea of Humphrey Bogart. ‘We can’t stop here! We must get on to Curraghcourt. You said yourself we were late.’
‘Arrah! ’Tis as cross as the devil with thorns in his shirt and stones in his shoes the old one’ll be already. So we may as well hang back until the madness goes out of her.’
‘Mr O’Leary, will you please get back into the cart and drive on!’ I spoke with unusual firmness.
‘No!’ he replied with equal firmness.
‘I shall be extremely upset if you don’t.’
Timsy shook his head. ‘I’m sorry for that, Miss Norton. And there’s me thanking the good Lord for sending us a lady without equal for looks and with manners that’d make Cleopatra ashamed. However, if you’ll wait here I’ll just step in and take a nip of something wholesome and I’ll be out again quicker than a hen when she sees the cook coming.’
He opened the door of McCarthy’s. ‘God save all here!’ he cried and for a moment the clamour of voices accompanied a bright light. Maria ran in after him. The door closed leaving me alone, apart from the pony, in the dripping darkness. After a minute or two I swallowed my pride, cast aside the sacks and followed Timsy in.
The pub rocked with noise and light. Eager faces pressed close to mine and I was swept forward to the bar by a peristaltic wave of shoulders and elbows. A glass of pale brown liquid was shoved into my hand. I took a cautious sip. I seemed to feel the shock in my little toes. I put the glass down and tried to look friendly and composed. I was the only woman there. The men stared at me, one or two with lascivious looks, but mostly they were curious or shy and when I met their gaze they looked away uneasily. Conversation was impossible as one half of the pub was singing a quite different song from the other half.
An aeon crawled by on its hands and knees. I stopped trying to look friendly quite quickly. The composure went the same way after fifteen minutes or so. The pub was gloomy and dirty, the wooden counter ringed with stains and crawling with flies. I grew first cold as the damp state of my clothing contrasted unpleasantly with the tremendous heat of the room, then hot as I began to steam. Not only was I anxious about the effect my unpunctuality would have on t
he temper of ‘the old one’ but I was also so horribly bored that the notion of climbing on to the bar and screaming myself sick actually began to seem a possibility. Just as I was contemplating running up the nearest mountain and flinging myself from the top, Timsy put down his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and threw up his chin as a signal to me to make for the door.
The fresh air was reviving. Also it had stopped raining and the moon was occasionally visible between swirling clouds. Timsy scrabbled ineffectually to climb into his seat but the numberless taggeens had gone to his legs. I flinched from contact with the seat of Timsy’s trousers but a shove from below was the only way to get him on to the cart.
‘Perhaps,’ I said in a sarcastic, schoolmistressy tone when we were all seated, ‘if it’s all the same to you, we might get on to Curraghcourt.’
Timsy grabbed the reins and bellowed to the pony to get home ‘as quick as you can shake the stardust from your darling little hoofs, my angel’. Some evil genius prompted him to take up the whip and lash the Cockatoo’s back quarters. Maria and I exchanged sympathetic glances as the Cockatoo set off at a canter, bucking with his hind legs every few yards. I at least had hands to hold on with.
‘Timsy!’ I shouted. ‘For God’s sake, slow the pony down! We’ll be shaken to pieces!’
Timsy yanked on the reins and attempted to stand up which resulted in him falling backwards into the cabbages. Moonlight flashed on the soles of his boots as he slithered sideways headfirst on to the road. The Cockatoo stopped immediately.
‘’Tis my back is broken.’ Timsy began to sob.
‘Nonsense!’ I was unable to abandon the part of schoolmistress now I had got into it. ‘Pull yourself together and let’s get on but at a sensible speed.’
‘If it isn’t my back, ’tis my heart.’ Timsy continued to weep. ‘Ah, Kathleen! Kathleen, darling, will you not take pity on a poor misfortunate creature? Marry me, my beauty! Marry your own Timsy that loves you better than the king in his fine palace loves his crownded, diamonded queen!’
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