by Ann Bridge
“The drive looks quite well-kept” Julia said. “Are you sure no one lives there?”
“How literal you are!” He turned a rather mocking smile on her. “Sure it’s well-kept—it’s a convalescent home for T.B.s. I just meant it was no longer what it used to be and what it was meant to be, a family house with a woman in it. Now it’s an institution.”
She laughed. “And the T.B.s are un-persons! Yes, I see what you mean. I’m sorry.”
Gerald now took a turning to the right, first through woods, then in open country again; at the foot of a low ridge was a gateway with a lodge, a modest one this time; he turned in and up a drive between tall slender oak-trees till they reached a grey stone house, like the gateway modest, and pulled up.
“Here we are” he said.
Julia got out and looked about her. Beyond the broad stretch of gravel in front of the house was a range of pastures divided by post-and-rail fences, which seemed to be full of horses; as Gerald appeared from behind the car a number of these galloped up to the nearest fence, tossing their heads and whinnying.
“Ah, my lovely boys! Were you missing me?” he said walking over to the graceful leggy creatures and fondling one or two of them, who nuzzled at his pockets; but as Julia moved to join him they flung up their heads and heels and galloped off again in a swirl of flying manes and tails.
“Gerald, they are pretty!” she exclaimed, genuinely delighted.
“Ah, they’re shy,” he said. She moved further along the fence; here the fields fell away steeply to flat, marshy meadows bordering a vast expanse of lake—“Oh, that must be Lough Balla. How huge it is!” she said.
“Yes, it’s big all right; and from up here one sees most of it at once.”
“Where’s the garden?” she asked.
“The other side of the house, facing the sun. But come in now, and have a drink before lunch.”
As they entered, Julia looked at her surroundings with almost painful interest. A long hall ran right through the house, its walls adorned, if that was the word, with rather withered stuffed birds, discoloured with age, and two enormous stuffed fish in glass cases; at the nearer end, immediately inside the front door, was a strange miscellany of objects: fishing-rods on racks, garden-tools, gum-boots and baskets standing on the floor, while from hooks hung raincoats, riding-whips and lunging-reins, and a variety of hats and caps, including a couple of sou’westers—everything was rather dusty. By contrast, some of the rugs on the unpolished wooden floor were, even to her not very expert eye, superb. Gerald threw open a door on the right, and they went into the drawing-room, which was full of light from a big bow window commanding the immense vista of the lake; the furniture was covered in fresh bright cretonnes, matching the curtains. “Oh, what a pretty room!” Julia said.
“I had it done up two years ago, when I let the house— Helen found the stuff for me, and got it made up” he said. “It was then I put in the bath rooms.”
“Had you none before?” Julia asked; after her first sight of the hall she had begun to wonder about bath rooms.
“Only one terrible old thing, with a sort of wooden sentry-box at the end!” he said. “Now there are four—Helen said I’d better do the job thoroughly while I was about it. We put in central heating too, and all oil-fired—so if the girl oversleeps it doesn’t matter, neither the house nor the water is cold! Now have some sherry.”
The sherry-drinking again offered certain contrasts. Glasses and decanter were set out on a vast and very beautiful lacquered tray, which was, however, far from clean; the glasses did not match, but the Waterford decanter was magnificent, and so was the wine it contained.
“Gerald, what lovely sherry!” she said.
“I’m glad you like it. I get it from some people in Limerick who import it themselves; they know Spain well, and get good stuff.”
“They do indeed!” She took her glass over to the window.
“Goodness, it is a view! What an extraordinary colour the Lough is, that sort of pale pastel-green.”
“That’s the lime on the bottom. The whole floor of the lake is covered feet deep in white mud, a deposit from the streams flowing in from all that limestone you saw.”
“But the rivers at that place were as clear as crystal!”
“I suppose it doesn’t show when it’s in suspension in the water; but that’s why Balla has that particular colour.”
There came a knock on the door, and an elderly woman with red hair turning grey poked her head round it.
“The lunch is ready if the lady is” she said.
“Oh, don’t you want to wash? Bridgie, take Mrs. Jamieson up to the spare-room bathroom.”
Julie followed Bridgie up a flight of stairs, as dusty as the hall, and into a neat modern bathroom, complete with fitted basin and hot towel-rail.
“Mind your hands now. The water’s awful hot” the woman said, as Julia reached towards the tap—and indeed, when she turned this on, the water gushed out in a cloud of steam. “The thermostat must be set too high” Julia thought to herself.
Luncheon provided more contrasts still. All the food was served on magnificent massive silver, which from lack of cleaning was as near as no matter black; the main dish, boiled chicken on rice, smothered in a thick bechamel sauce, was perfect, but the eggs en cocotte which preceded them were hard. “Oh dear, she always over-cooks the eggs” Gerald said gloomily, when Bridgie had left the room.
“They’re awfully tricky to get just right” Julia said. “What do you cook on?”
“An Esse.”
“Esses are very good. Do you have any trouble about getting the fuel?”
“Not if I remember to get it in before the snow comes! Otherwise the lorry can’t get up the hill; one has to take a whole lorry-load at a time, from Galway.”
The crème brûlée which ended the meal was so faultless that Julia was quite startled.
“Good Heavens, Gerald, but this is marvellous! Is your Bridgie chef-trained?”
“No, Helen came over and taught her to make this; she knows I love it. She came for three nights, and we had six crèmes brûlées!—and the last one was like this.”
“I haven’t eaten its equal outside Clare College, Cambridge” Julia stated roundly.
But the coffee, which they had in the drawing-room, was appalling. Julia wondered why Helen O’Hara had overlooked this essential, among her other efforts on Gerald’s behalf, and made a mental note to send him an electric percolator as a present the moment she got near a shop.
“Now, would you like to see the rest of the house, or shall we look at the garden?” he asked.
“Oh, the garden!—the sun’s so lovely.”
They went out through glass doors at the far end of the long hall, on to a terrace with flower-beds set in the gravelled surface; from this, steps led down to a wrought-iron gate giving onto a walled garden—through it Julia caught a glimpse of neat plots of fruit-bushes, a strawberry-bed, and flower-borders just showing the early green of what would later be phloxes and lupins. But as they started down the steps they were intercepted by a tall grey-haired man.
“Mr. O’Brien, Sir, would you come to take a look at Belinda?”
“Oh, all right, Mac. Where is she?”
“In the haggard, Sir.”
“Do you mind? It won’t take a moment” Gerald said to Julia.
“No, I’d like to come.” Julia rightly guessed that Belinda was a cow; she would like to see how the haggard at Ross-beg was kept, she thought, and followed Gerald up the steps, along the terrace, and out into a small farmyard where stone-built sheds, pig-styes, and hay-ricks stood in a pleasant confusion.
“Here she is, Sir, in the cow-stable.”
In the sweet-smelling gloom of the shed stood a large brown-and-white cow; MacGarry, the herd, stooped down and pulled skilfully at her large udder—a few feeble drops dripped down onto the dung-stained straw.
“She only gave three pints this morning, and only four last night.”
/> “How long is it since she calved?”
“Seventeen weeks, Mr. O’Brien.”
Gerald also stooped and felt the udder carefully.
“No, she’s not withholding it; she has no milk there” he said. He walked round and felt the animal’s muzzle. “How old would she be now, Mac?”
“Well, we bought her for five, and it’s four years now we had her.”
“Nine. Well, say ten—she might be a bit more than five when she came. No, she shouldn’t be failing yet—old Ellie was giving her two gallons when she was fifteen.”
“Ah, that was a great cow! You’ll not get many like her. Anyway, Sir, shouldn’t we be getting another? Miss Collis is complaining she hasn’t enough milk for butter.”
“Yes, we’d better. When is the next fair? Oldport on Wednesday? Right, take her into that, and get a cow. Micky Tom Billy can get rid of her, and you buy the new one yourself.” He walked away.
“Do you make your own butter, then?” Julia asked.
“Yes, Bridgie’s a great hand at butter, especially since I got her an electric separator.”
“Where is your dairy?”
“Oh, my dear girl, we don’t have a dairy!—this isn’t Ros-trunk! The separator’s in the scullery, and she makes it there; there’s heaps of room.”
Julia found these tidings rather encouraging. From the state of the sherry-tray and the silver dishes at lunch she had begun to wonder what degree of cleanliness would obtain in Bridgie’s scullery, but if butter was made there, it would be clean; she remembered with a pang how delighted her husband had been with the Irish phrase, quoted to him by Lady Helen—“You can’t fool butter.” Boiling water and scrubbing-brushes invariably surrounded every phase of the sacred ritual of butter-making.
They went down to the garden which lay, in its high walls, “facing the sun,” as Gerald had said; it was exquisitely trim and neat, with flourishing plots full of vegetables, and huge old-fashioned earthen-ware seakale-pots. “Oh, do you grow seakale? How lovely!” Julia said.
“Yes, masses of seakale, and tons of asparagus! We’re just near enough to the coast to send the lorry for a load of rack when we need it, and seakale and asparagus both love rack.”
“What is rack? Some sort of seaweed?”
“Yes, that common kind all over little bobbles that grows everywhere right on the shore. Come on, there’s nothing out here yet. Come and see the rest of the house.” He started up towards it again; but as they reached the top of the steps he glanced at his watch. “It’s later than I thought—I said I’d take you to tea with the Fitzgeralds at Kilmichan, so we’d better be making a start.”
“Who are the Fitzgeralds?”
“Some sweet old neighbours up near the far end of the lake; I want you to see them—they’re a type that’s dying out fast.”
They got into the car again, Julie taking a polite farewell of Bridgie, and once more out on the main road spun rapidly northwards, catching glimpses as they went of the pale-green expanse of Lough Balla on their right. A turning beyond the end of the lough led them to the village of Kilmichan; as they passed the small group of cottages Julia said—“Oh, there’s a post-office! Could we stop? I forgot to get stamps anywhere this morning, and it will be shut at Oldport when we get back.”
Gerald accordingly pulled up at the minute post-office, and went in with her.
“Well if it isn’t Mr. O’Brien! You’re heartily welcome!”
“It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Spicer. How are you?”
“Great, thanks be to God.”
“Mrs. Jamieson wants some stamps” Gerald said. When her needs had been supplied—“It’s up to the House you’ll be going?” the post-mistress said.
“Yes. How are they all?”
“Mr. Richard and the Mistress are great. Miss Oonagh is a bit weaker than usual. Did ye hear that Mr. Richard got us a van? Affie’s bicycle was busht altogether, so Mr. Richard wrote up to Dublin and said he should have a van and not be riding about in the wet—and we have the van!”
“Splendid—I’m very glad” Gerald responded heartily.
“Ah, Mr. Richard’s a grand man. ‘Tis pity he’d ever die!” Mrs. Spicer said firmly, as they left.
“Who is Miss Oonagh? And why is she weak?” Julia asked as they got into the car.
“She’s Norah Fitzgerald’s sister, who lives with them; she’s rather dotty, so I suppose ‘weaker than usual’ means that she’s in one of her bad fits.”
“Oh dear, how wretched for them” Julia said, with genuine sympathy.
“Oh, they don’t mind—they take things as they come” Gerald said cheerfully, as he swung the car into another of the drive gateways that Julia was coming to think of as a special feature of the West. They went up a long drive, and into a wood of tall trees, dense and dark—“That wood on the right is bewitched; if you go in you may never find your way out” he said.
“What can you mean?”
“Fact. I went in once, just to try it, and I was utterly lost; spent hours trying to get out. Thank God the keeper happened to come along, and he brought me back onto the drive. ’Twas terrifying, I can tell you.”
“How did the keeper know his way?”
“Ah, he had the dogs. Nothing will send him into the Big Wood without them.”
Julia pondered this in silence, wondering what form of witchcraft it might be that affected human beings but not animals. But just as she was about to put a question about it the drive emerged from the wood and broadened into a vast gravelled space in front of a tall grey stone house, with curved steps leading up to the front door.
“Oh Gerald, what a lovely place!” she exclaimed.
“Isn’t it? And but for Norah and her quick wits it would be a heap of ruins now” he said, pulling up at the far side of the gravelled expanse. “Wait now while I tell you. D’you see that row of little windows right at the top, under the parapet?”
“Yes—attics, I suppose.”
“I daresay. Anyhow in the troubles Richard was away, and there was only Norah and Oonagh in it, and the boys in the village got very drunk one night, and decided to come and burn the place down.”
“But I thought the Fitzgeralds were so popular” Julia said in surprise.
“So they are—so they were then; ’twas just silliness, and the potheen in them, and hearing how many other houses were getting burnt. Anyhow old Barney, the gardener, heard their talk, and saw how tipsy they were getting, and he managed to slip up and warn Norah.”
“And what did she do?” Julia asked, with eager interest.
“Opened all those little top windows, and put a maid at each one, holding a broomstick out of it—crouched down, so they wouldn’t be seen; and she herself loaded Richard’s gun and stood at that big window over the front door—she locked poor Oonagh away in a room at the back, so she wouldn’t do anything silly. And when the boys came up the drive—they were carrying the trunk of a small tree they’d cut down, to ram in the front door—she roared at them— We’re armed! See the guns at the windows! The very first one of you that sets a foot on the steps, we’ll shoot him as dead as a maggot!’
“Well ’twas getting dusk, and the boys saw the broomsticks and took them for gun-barrels; she had the lamp on behind her on the landing, and they could see the light shining on the barrel of Richard’s gun, no mistake about that! And they came to their senses and turned round and went back the way they’d come.”
“How splendid.” Julia glowed. “But do you think they’d really have done anything to people they knew so well, and liked?”
“Sure they would! Look what they did to Moore Hall, the far side of the lake! There was no one in that, and they filled the ground floor with hay, and poured petrol on it, and burnt the whole place to ashes—furniture, portraits, silver, everything!”
“How ghastly!” She reflected. “But were the Moores perhaps not so well liked as your friends here?”
“NO!” He almost shouted the word. “No one in the wo
rld had done more than old Colonel Moore to get the people their rights, and the land, and decent conditions; ’twas with the Government and their own class that they were unpopular! No, it was what I say—just the drink in them, and a sort of emotional silliness, really hysteria. Our worst and our oldest enemy” Gerald said sadly. “Come on—let’s go in.”
Chapter 3
Julia felt a lively curiosity to see the heroine of this remarkable episode. An elderly maid-servant opened the door, led them up a short flight of stairs, and ushered them into a large room which seemed crowded with people and with furniture, in which small glass-topped tables full of medals and curios predominated; through these a tall woman with auburn hair turning grey, and a worn handsome face, came forward to greet them with loud cries of pleasure—“Ah my dear Gerald, here you are at last!”
“My own self, Norah! And this is Mrs. Jamieson.”
She was closely followed by a small man, clean-shaven, with neat features and a conspicuous neatness about his dress and his whole person, whose words of welcome made Julia guess him to be her host, the “Mr. Richard” whose immortality was so much desired by the Kilmichan post-mistress; the introductions, like the room, produced an effect of some confusion, with person after person pressing up to greet Gerald and to wring her warmly by the hand, often saying— “Never mind now who I am; you’ll get us all sorted out later.” At last Richard Fitzgerald took matters into his own hands, saying in his precise tones—“Norah, let Mrs. Jamie-son sit down and give her a cup of tea”; as he spoke he took his new guest by the elbow and steered her to a chair next to a very little old lady dressed in black, saying “Mary, this is Mrs. Jamieson, who is staying with the O’Haras at Rostrunk; Mrs. Jamieson, let me present you to Lady Browne.” This lucid formality Julia found rather soothing; she shook the old lady by the hand, rightly assuming her to be the late owner of the house which was now a sanatorium for T.B. patients, who had managed so badly. She cast about for a polite remark to open the conversation; one could hardly say “Where do you live now?” which was what she rather wanted to know. However the old lady spared her the trouble by asking most unexpectedly—“Do you want a fur coat? I’ve got a lovely one that my son-in-law gave me; it’s mink!”