“What a strange childhood. And you do admire the French.”
“Yes. I’m afraid they’re not disciplined like the Germans or the Swedes. Still, the trains run on time, when they’re not on strike. No, my childhood didn’t fit me for the cosmopolitan life.”
“You learned quite well.”
“Perhaps too well. I’m a peasant at heart. Mind you, the country has gone to the dogs. Today the Irish are way down on alcohol consumption by comparison with the rest of Europe. AA meetings in all the villages. The hell-for-leather boys are now commuting to Brussels and Strasbourg in their Armani suits and delicately sipping their Mouton Rothschild with their low-cal meals. Busy trying to shake the cow-dung off their Gucci loafers. The ferry at Rosslare decanted nothing but Mercedes tanks and those on the road often had calves heads sticking out of the back windows. Give us our EEC subsidies, O Lord, we beseech thee.”
“I’m hungry. It’s brunch-time. Will we be able to eat soon?”
“Hold your horses till I find the local Taillevent. Let me remember the old Bluebird. The 1926 vintage car’s headlamps were carbide, and seldom worked. Many a time have I held a flashlight out of the passenger’s window as the only method of illumination on the road to Clonmel. This combined with a certain zig-zag course (the John Jameson automatic pilot) made for an exciting form of locomotion. The starting handle was iron with a brass sleeve and it was brutal. I remember once we passed a car that had rolled and was on its top, probably with someone inside it. The Boss wasn’t going to stop but my uncle insisted. As the uncle ran back to the scene, the Boss shouted ‘Take the starting handle in case he’s in agony!’ Yes, he was a card. The tube-patching kit and the tire-pump were the most-used accessories. Patchwork tubes they were, more holey than righteous. There was a thermometer (broken) on the nickel-plated radiator but the steam that issued forth was usually the first and only acceptable evidence of overheating. It took as much water to top it up per mile as a steam locomotive on the Canadian Pacific Railway going up the Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies.
“The road down to Waterford was always straighter than the road back. The Boss was not obsessively interested in beaches and disappeared for the best part of the day to relieve the boredom in some way which seemed to relax his normally stiff driving style but gave the car a certain drift. It sort of fell off the bumps and the furrows in the road and the drastic over-corrections from them led to series of corkscrew turns unless the car took over and you spun off and came to a lurching halt with the front wheels in the ditch. This was not an infrequent occurrence. In those days you were unlikely to meet another car on the road and any Civic Guard was likely to be pursuing an equally erratic course before falling off his bicycle. The only obstruction was the bridge at Waterford which opened up to let ships through, much like that one at Copenhagen that’s always up when you’re rushing in from Kastrup airport to commit a mortal sin in Gilleleje or Nyhavn 71, and God save the mark but weren’t they the great days, at all at all? Stage Irish intrudes, my dear.”
“I’d like to have met your father. And I’m still hungry.”
“I have to make one stop. An important pilgrimage. Let me rave on about the Boss. He was better with horses. His brother-in-law, Colonel Grover, who used to come over to fish and drink with him every year, gave his annual version of how the old man, arriving in Belgium during the early part of the first war, and finding the locals shouting to no effect in some strange tongue at the remounts shipped over from England, set to and taught them the commands in English which the horses, not like most of us being bilingual in Flemish, obeyed. He seldom missed a point-to-point or a meet of the South Kilkenny hounds and appeared to need a constant sip from the hip flash to keep out the cold. Having been gassed at Passchendaele he needed a lot of lubricant. This partiality for high-proof booze he passed on to me together with certain other self-destructive characteristics. The Irish virus is a powerful imagination which is fueled by alcohol. Am I boring you?”
“A little.”
“Well, I understand it. To be honest, that’s all about the Ireland of fifty years ago. Today the modern Irishman is beating the best in the world. Factories assembling computers, Moulinex at Clonmel, and dozens of Japanese and German firms finding a good labor force and intelligent. We’re there. Last stop but one before lunch.”
Dermot stopped at the one-track station of Fiddown, built for the Earl of Bessborough’s convenience like everything else around there since Cromwell planted him on thirty thousand acres of the best land in Ireland. He left from that station on the Rosslare Express in 1938 to be civilized at school in England. It didn’t take. A subsequent veneer of cultural sophistication covered a multitude of sins. Mixing Flaubert with O’Flaherty and Synge with Saramago is what got him into this screwed-up situation.
Every night, he’d sit on the stairs, just above the visible part, when they played whist with Paddy and Dermot Malone and wait for the whistle of the Rosslare Express as it passed through the valley. It was a sort of barometer.
“She’s loud tonight, there’ll be rain.” And: “She’s on time tonight!”
Nothing drove him up the wall more than the predictability of it. Talk about boredom.
The whistle of the Rosslare Express came to symbolize escape. When it was time to leave Ireland, he was petrified in case he missed it. The big excitement was when the Empire flying boats passed overhead on their way to Foyne, carrying a seaplane piggyback. All his life he was at airports and stations hours before time. Another legacy of Piltown. When he was lying awake in the house in the Luberon and he heard the freight train that goes through the valley of the Durance he heard again the Rosslare Express. But nostalgia had set in. He was beginning to miss the whistle that echoed through the valley of the Suir.
He said, “I can’t pass Fiddown without looking at the river.”
“Why, is it special? Looks like an ordinary river to me. Not like the Rhone at Avignon.”
“No. But it figures in my past.”
The bridge spans the wide river, the Suir. The odor from the low tide is not like anything that comes from a French perfumer. Suir is pronounced ‘shewir.’ After a few quick ones it was slurred phonetically and appropriately into ‘sewer.’
The steep mud banks and rivulets trickle down to the narrow, slow-moving stream. There was a new bridge, a nondescript concrete heap, but they had left part of the old wooden bridge alongside it. His bridge. It had a ‘Danger, No Entry’ sign and someone had made a half-hearted attempt to block it off. They should have done that years ago.
“This is the scene of two traumatic events of my childhood.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. We had been to Curraghmore. Riding back across the bridge, my pony shied at a flash of the sun on the metal strip where that bridge opened to let vessels through at high tide. She then put her front legs up on the low rail and tried to climb over it. The drop to the quay below was considerable and the rail was not that solid. I was petrified. The horse and I had an uneasy relationship at the best of times. I shouted. The old man turned and leaned out of his saddle. He grabbed the bridle. He succeeded in holding the pony, still reared up in panic on the guard-rail, while I slid off in a most unorthodox way. When he had restored everything to an even keel and quieted the pony, he led her off the bridge and ordered me to remount. I refused. Too much was enough. I never put my leg across a horse again. And the old man wrote me off as a dead loss. I was not fit for the society of the Kilkenny quadruped set. A bunch of horses’ asses looking at a bunch of horses’ asses, is how I thought of the horse shows to which I was subjected.”
“Darling, can’t we go and find a restaurant?”
“Yes. Next stop Clonmel. County Tipperary. It’s not a long way. Just let me get out and have a look.”
Nana the Troll was restive. Next stop real anger. Then violent recriminations. ‘Why did you make me come here? My husband—’ And so on. He knew that Nana found Ireland deficient and his childhood tales monotonous.
Unless he managed to stir up some sexual interest in her soon she’d discover that she’d forgotten some important duty in Denmark. There was a marked shortage of fashion boutiques with names like Chloe and Sonia Rykiel and Armani in the main street of Carrick on Suir and it wasn’t at all like Sloane Street or Strøget in Copenhagen.
He drove on to Piltown, slowing down and stopping for a few minutes outside the cemetery. She looked at him with total incomprehension. She didn’t like cemeteries. He sighed and drove on. No point in telling her all his ancestors were buried there under a large horizontal gravestone that he and his friends used to sit on before confession. It had been covered in moss and he had once scraped away the moss to read the names and the dates.
He slowed again passing the gates to the Bessborough estate and Anthony’s pub in which his father had spent so much time and what was left of the family fortune.
At the top end of the village he pulled into a driveway and stopped at the gate leading to a courtyard. It was not now an impressive entry. Broken walls, pools of liquid cowshit, the outbuildings in a state of collapse, the house itself looking shabby. An old Georgian rectory inhabited now by an insensitive farmer. Whitewash turned yellowwash, bare patches with moss growing out of the cracks. Wooden fences broken, all sad. He thought about her showplace of a Danish farmhouse outside Skagen. As featured in Interiors that he called Inferiors.
“Why are we stopping at this ruin?” she sulked.
“Oh, we’re not staying long. That’s where the friends of my youth grew up.”
“It’s a bit decrepit.”
“Yes, it’s Irish. Not like a model farm in Scandinavia. We owned it but my father thought all money not spent on booze or horses was wasted. Still, he kept the house in good condition when he lived here. But that’s forty years ago.”
“Are we going to your house?”
“I think not, if you don’t mind. I’d prefer to go there alone. It’s out of the village. Where the peasants live.”
“Well, you’re not a peasant any longer.”
“No, I’m a ball of fire. Up with the lark and up with the whatnot. International fireman, in fact. Putting out fires all over the world. Milan today, Hamburg tomorrow. Ferraris, yachts, Savile Row suits …”
“Women.”
“Only two.”
“Yes? How does Laure like it here?”
“She’s never been here. Not interested in Ireland. She’s French.”
“Sorry, I forgot. They’re so sophisticated.”
“Yes.”
“Where does she like?”
“Which places? Oh, Italy, Greece.”
“But not Capri or Mykonos.”
“Not exactly her cup of tea. Delphi, Crete, Urbino, Sansepolcro, Parma. Places where there are interesting pictures or buildings or Greek ruins or remnants of ancient civilizations. Viterbo, Tarquinia, the Palazzo Te in Mantua. That sort of thing.”
“All very cultural.”
“Yes, she’s no ignoramus.”
“Meaning me, I suppose.”
“Don’t be silly, Nana.”
“I think you should be with her.”
“Me? I’m just an Irish country boy.”
“You’re just as much a snob as she is. You go together.”
For a moment he thought so too but he didn’t answer. The snide remarks were getting to him. It was the beginning of the usual row. Could it be avoided? Probably not. When she got her teeth into something she wouldn’t let go.
Sometimes sex was the key to amiability. He reached over and ran his hand up her thigh. She slid down in the seat and opened her legs and smiled. Maybe it would be all right.
He felt in an extremely vulgar mood.
He backed out and went on up the hill. On the right was the village school with its carved inscription: ‘Donated by the Countess of Bessborough.’
He wondered why it didn’t say ‘generously.’ Cromwell gave them thirty thousand acres, and they gave back a small village schoolhouse.
He removed his hand to change up as they topped the hill. She sat up and switched to a cold, conversational mode. She had remembered that it was time to fight. It would not be all right after all.
“What’s that tower?” she asked.
“An Irish erection. Half up. A monument to a young Ponsonby. That’s the Bessborough family name. He went missing at Waterloo but turned up a year later so they never completed it. Ireland as you may have noticed is full of ruins.”
“Yes, I had noticed. The walls around the estate are impressive.”
“Paid for by one loaf of bread a day, and glad the workers were to get it.”
“Is it all like that?”
“Like what?”
“Poverty.”
“This is the richest part of Ireland. You should see it in the west. Remember, in 1845, at the time of the Famine, only five percent of the country was owned by the native Irish. All the rest, the best part, was owned by Plantation English and Scots. Baronets were created by the Brits if they could raise and pay two hundred soldiers to keep down the wild Irish.”
“Ulla’s husband is a baronet.”
“Yes, an Irish baronet. Sir Simon MacOgden. Good old Simon. But his ancestors must have taken the habits of the natives. I hear he’s broke and that he had to pawn the family silver recently. Ulla no doubt helped relieve him of his inheritence.”
“You never liked her.”
“No, never liked gold-diggers.”
“She had to look after her old age.”
“Yes. Married one rich man and got a house out of it. Married another for a title. Left him with nothing but the family silver. Which he had to pawn. Who has she lined up as the next victim?”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Ah, well, pecunia non olet.”
“What does that mean?”
“Money has no smell.”
“Look, can we get to wherever we’re going? I’m starving. And I think I want to go back.”
“Fine. But the nearest airport is Cork. There’s an excellent hotel near there. Ballymaloe House at Middleton. Let us at least have a decent dinner there. We can have lunch in Clonmel and make arrangements to get a flight from Cork tomorrow. We can stay at Ballymaloe and if you insist on going I’ll take you to Cork airport in the morning. In the meantime, can we try to get along?”
Without waiting for an answer he slammed the gear lever across the gate and double-declutched down into third, pushed the revs up to six thousand and the noise precluded any further arguments.
He was furious. Now he could not meander about the countryside, visiting his boyhood places. Couldn’t walk over the fields to the quai where they used to fish and swim. Couldn’t linger on the Limerick-Rosslare railway line where they used to put pennies and see them flattened. Couldn’t trace the little stream that they used to dam. Couldn’t recapture the drives to Dungarvan over the Knockmealdown Mountains past Mount Melleray, the monastery where his alcoholic family went on retreat but really to dry out and keep the peace, to Youghal, Ballycotton.
He wanted nothing so much as to be alone. The purpose of his search was wasted. Yet, he thought, one lesson stood out. Neither Laure nor Nana could ever live in Ireland. Neither one had the antenna to pick up the special strangeness of the land and its mysticism. Its poetry and its sadness and its intensely human relationships were outside the ken of both the followers of fashion and the intellectuals. They were overdeveloped. Overexposed. Mentally overcooked. Not knowing that raw vegetables are more sustaining than those with the goodness boiled out of them.
Of the two, Nana the Troll, being a wild gypsy sensualist, would adapt easier but she would miss exposure in the right places. She was someone for the fashionable places of the world. The hotels with hot and cold running chambermaids. Where the smart people gather. Even the Dublin Horse Show wouldn’t appeal as much as Smith’s Lawn and the polo. There would be no one in Ireland to lust after her. She would much rather be in the Eden Roc at Antibes or the Mill
Reef Club at Antigua or the Pelicano in Porto Ercole. Showing off her finery.
There was only one room available at Ballymaloe, a single. Dermot was relieved. He said she would stay there and he would go back to Youghal and then to the family house at Piltown. Nana went upstairs without saying goodby and he left. A dinner together would have been intolerable.
Once more he couldn’t help thinking how superior was Laure. He couldn’t get away fast enough. He roared over the Comeragh Mountains to Clonmel and was back at Grove House in Piltown tucking into fresh eggs and rashers and honest black pudding by six o’clock.
Glad to be shed of Nana, the Swedish Troll.
25. Mouse Works the Angles
I had a premonition. Never fails, if it’s a very bad one. Dermot was going to Ireland and that’s where I should be. He had to be induced to finish the job. The client had spent a lot of money and the results, so far as I could see, were catastrophic. The photographer would take the film to Paris and get it processed at Picto. Then he would make a first selection and take the negatives on to the studio in Zurich where the art director had the scribbles and the headlines. Out of the hundreds of shots there might just be a half dozen acceptable ones. It was by no means certain.
But Dermot, if he came back into the act, might be able to talk his way out of it. They thought the light of God shone out of his backside. The prize bullshitter. He would stage a rapid recovery and go to Cologne by way of Paris, Colonfay and Zurich in a week or so. If he decided to be the faithful son-in-law.
I knew of no way of getting in touch with him unless he showed up at Grove House. So I got a flight to New York and an Aer Lingus connection on to Shannon, arriving early Thursday afternoon. I rented a Ford Escort and headed east. Unbeknownst to me, our boy was even then headed up to Clonmel from Dungarvan and would arrive in Piltown an hour before me. When I stopped for coffee at the West Gate in Clonmel, he had just departed. He said he had felt fine as he drove through the Knockmealdown Mountains, past the monastery of Mount Melleray where the professional drinkers went on retreat.
Colonfay Page 19