by Ann Bridge
“Ye-es. Perhaps that’s why she took up with Billy in the first instance” Julia said. “All right—I will go.”
Before doing so, however, Julia bethought her that she had better send a card announcing her arrival, and realised that she had no address for her new acquaintance. Normally now, in Britain, in such circumstances, one looks in the local telephone book; but Mrs. Martin’s name didn’t appear in the Achill section. So Julia used the grape-vine. She rang up the big shop at The Sound, the place where a bridge carries the road across the narrow strip of sea which makes Achill technically an island, and made some enquiries about tweeds, which she wanted to look at anyhow; then she enquired casually if they could give her a Mrs. Martin’s address.
“Ah, she lives out in a little small house near the Amethyst Hotel” she was told.
“But how do I write to her?” Julia persisted.
“Mrs. Martin, Achill, will find her right enough. Sure everyone on Achill knows Mrs. Martin—she’s a grand woman.”
This Julia found interesting as well as useful; the Post Office was only a few doors from the shop, so she accepted the information as reliable, and sent off her card. A couple of days later, on her return from a walk, Lady Helen greeted her with—“A Mrs. Martin from Achill rang up, and said that Tuesday would be perfect—that was all she said. Who is Mrs. Martin?”
“Someone I met with Gerald at the Fair” Julia white-lied; if she mentioned the train, Helen was only too likely to remember her enquiries about the fair woman whom they had seen driving away from the station with Billy O’Rahilly. “I want to get some tweed for Edina, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. She invited me to look her up” she added.
“Oh well, if you’re going to get tweed at the shop, ask if they’ve still got some of Mrs. Geraghty’s; they had a lovely bit of hers in that beautiful plum-coloured dye she has the secret of” Lady Helen said. Most conveniently, her interest in the local tweeds deflected her attention from the subject of Mrs. Martin.
Of course when Tuesday came Julia was told to borrow the small car, and drove herself up the familiar road to Achill. She paused at the big shop at The Sound, which sells pretty well everything in the world as well as the tweeds for which it is renowned, secured a suit-length of Mrs. Geraghty’s famous plum-coloured tweed, hand-spun, hand-dyed, and hand-woven, for Edina Reeder; there was another lovely one, golden-tawny, like dead bracken in the sun—she got a length of that for herself. Then she drove on across the island towards the Amethyst Hotel. The far, mountainous end of Achill is still wild and desolate; from the edge of the cliffs one can look down, sheer eleven hundred feet, to the sea tossing below, and watch the ravens rolling and playing, like children on a feather-bed, on the ascending air-currents—an astonishing sight. The low-lying part is where people live: Achill has three or four fair-sized hotels, some small groups of shops, and a spatter of houses between them; but it was all a natural growth, Julia reflected as she drove along, called into being by the needs and wishes of the local people—even the numerous guest-houses reflected the inhabitants’ desire for more accommodation for the wealth-bringing tourists. No planners had laid out a scheme to develop the place—that was why everything was so charmingly haphazard; and though no one could call all the buildings beautiful, they were mostly in the local style, and nothing was arrogantly large, or modernistic in construction.
At the hotel the porter directed her at once to Mrs. Martin’s “shack,” which was what in Connaught is called a “country house,” one of the local thatched white-washed one-storey dwellings, with a corrugated-iron addition at one end—to house the bathroom, Julia guessed; a tank on a metal water-tower, standing a little way behind the house, confirmed this surmise. The whole establishment lay up a small by-road, and a space before it had been levelled to permit cars to turn; in front stretched the great view of the Atlantic, with part of Clare Island showing as a blue hump away to the south.
Mrs. Martin came running out to meet her when she pulled up, and greeted her warmly as she led her indoors. Julia was curious to see how this stranger would have furnished this very Irish dwelling, but it had been done with considerable skill and a sense of fitness:—a plain deal table laid for lunch, and wooden chairs, in the middle of the room; a tall range of bookshelves and a press against the far wall, a long low hearth-stool in front of the turf fire; the only things at all out of keeping were those essentials to modern life, some comfortable arm-chairs ranged round the hearth, and a television set. Even the drinks, she noticed with approval, were not in that modern horror, a cocktail-cabinet, but were standing on another high narrow deal table between the windows. The fair woman asked what she would drink—when Julia opted for whiskey her hostess earned her further approval by asking—“Do you take ice with Irish? I always do, though it’s supposed to be the wrong thing, I know.”
“As a matter of fact, I do too, if I can get it” Julia answered smiling. Her hostess darted towards a door in the partition at the end of the room farthest from the hearth; Julia followed her.
“May I see?” she asked, and looked into a neat kitchen, with an electric cooker, a sink, cupboards full of crockery, and a large fridge, from which Mrs. Martin brought out a bowl of ice cubes. They arranged their drinks, and then settled down with them in the big chairs by the fire.
“I think it’s so clever of you to have all the kitchen doings separate from the living-room” Julia said, leaning back in her chair and looking round her appreciatively, as she lit a cigarette.
“I’m so glad you like it. I wanted to keep this room as plain as possible—though one must have comfortable chairs!—so I had the partition put up, and concentrated all the kitchen doings, as you call them, in there; and I built on some bedrooms and a bathroom out behind. They’re pretty ugly,” Mrs. Martin said regretfully; “but it would have taken so long to get them built of stone, as I’d have liked, and I wanted to settle in as soon as I could.”
“Is this your headquarters in Ireland?” Julia asked.
“Oh no, I have a flat in Dublin; this is more a place for the holidays” Mrs. Martin said. “Ray and Annette go to school in England—I think England is tops for schools!—but Ireland is perfect the rest of the time.” She paused, and seemed to hesitate; then, with the air of one who has taken a resolution, she said—“Look, I feel I have to tell you this, after the other day. My husband and I don’t get on—he drinks too much, for one thing. And—well, there’s always some other woman around, and I just can’t take that sort of thing quietly. We were forever having rows, and I felt that was so bad for the children—so we just came apart. If Paddy had wanted me to put up with the American way of life for the children, he should never have brought me to Ireland!” she said with sudden energy.
“Oh, he brought you, did he?” Julia asked.
“Yes, for our honeymoon, and once after that—and I adored it.” She broke off. “Let me fill you up” she said, and took Julia’s glass, and her own, over to the drinks table; Julia raised no objection—she did not want to interrupt this flow of confidences. They continued while Mrs. Martin was busying herself with their drinks; speaking over her shoulder, she told of the overwhelming impression made on her by the gentle tempo of life in Ireland, the sweetness and simplicity and piety of the people; so utterly different from the hurry and uncertainty and anxiety of the rat-race in and around New York.
“Oh, I know the Irish are apt to be a bit light-fingered, and don’t worry too much about speaking the truth if they think you’d sooner hear something else, or that it would suit their book better to say something entirely different” she said, returning with the two glasses and reseating herself; “but there is peace here, faith and peace, and they’re the important things to live with. So that’s why I settled to make our home here. Does that sound crazy to you?”
“No, not a bit” Julia replied readily. “I think it’s very understandable.” She was both startled and slightly disconcerted by this unexpected out-pouring—it told her
a great deal that was highly interesting in itself, but not in the least what she had come to find out; above all she felt the urgent need to make an adequate response. “You may prove to have been wise” she said. “Tell me, does he ever come over?”
“Paddy? Oh mercy, I hope he never takes that idea into his head!” Mrs. Martin said energetically.
“Do the children miss him at all?” Julia ventured.
“I don’t think so. They were quite little when we came away, only three and five—and anyway, he never bothered with them.” She paused, and looked earnestly at Julia. “Why? Do you think they might? I don’t think they were all that fond of him; really they hardly knew him, you could say.”
“I just feel it’s more difficult for a woman to bring children up by herself” Julia said, thinking of her own problem, and how acute it was for her at the moment.
“Could you explain just why?”
“Oh, because then the masculine thing is lacking in their home life—it’s something quite different from the feminine thing, and it’s normal for children to have both” Julia said. “But I may be quite wrong about that” she added hastily.
“I think rows and quarrels in their home life, and seeing their father drunk half the time, are much worse” Mrs. Martin said firmly. “Anyway” she went on more hesitantly, “can’t one bring in some of the masculine thing, as you call it, from outside? I mean, one generally has a man around quite a lot of the time.”
Julia almost laughed, remembering the two men at the two railway-stations. “Yes, I suppose one does” she said smiling.
They had lunch; good to the point of extravagance, but labour-saving to the last degree—caviare out of the fridge, a raised game pie, which actually came piping hot out of the oven, but which Julia instantly recognized as having originated at Fortnums; ice-cream again from the fridge, and baked peaches from the oven, but both from the same source as the game pie—all her hostess had had to do was to dress the salad and cut the brown bread and butter for the caviare, Julia realised. Oh well, very nice if one could afford it, she thought a little uncharitably. She asked if Mrs. Martin had any help?
“Oh yes, old Mrs. O’Brien comes in and cleans, and does any wash-up we’ve left. She can’t cook, except to do a roast, and make soda-bread; she makes lovely soda-bread. I do most of the cooking” Mrs. Martin said.
“Do you enjoy that? Some people love cooking” Julia said.
“I wouldn’t say I love it, no; I don’t mind it, only it takes up so much time, when one might be talking, or out in the air, or reading.”
“How do you do for books here?” Julia asked; Lady Helen often moaned at the inadequacy of the library service in Mayo.
“Buy them—or borrow from Billy—Mr. O’Rahilly; he has stacks of books. Do you know him?”
“No, I’ve never met him—but then I’m not often here.”
“He knows the O’Haras; but I don’t think they see a lot of him.” Julia made no comment on this. “In fact, I have the idea that there’s a sort of general anti-Billy feeling among a lot of the people around here” Mrs. Martin pursued. “That’s a great mistake—he’s so kind, and terribly clever. Even if his boat does have a pretty noisy engine, that’s no reason for boycotting a nice kind person, who only wants to help people” she ended, almost indignantly. She got up. “Let’s have coffee by the fire.”
Julia picked up the coffee-tray, which stood ready at one end of the long table.
“Shall I put this on the hearth-stool?”
“Oh do—thank you.” Mrs. Martin gathered up their plates and carried them out to the kitchen, from whence she returned with a metal coffee-pot; after filling their cups she set this down in the warm ashes on the hearth. But Julia in her turn had taken a resolution. It was senseless to miss such an opening as the fair woman had given her, just out of cowardice; and after lighting a cigarette she leaned forward and said—
“Mrs. Martin, do you really not know what the O’Haras, and a lot of other people, object to about Mr. O’Rahilly?”
“I know they dislike the row his boat makes.”
“Yes, they do rather; but that isn’t the main thing. It’s this idea of his buying land along the coast for development—do you not know about that?”
“Well yes of course, vaguely—but what’s wrong with that? It’s to help the people: bring in more tourists, and more money, and give more employment. I don’t see how anyone can object to that.”
Julia sighed, almost in despair at such ignorance; she couldn’t bring herself to believe it was perversity, in this pleasant person. She tried to explain how unsettling high wages for a short season, and unemployment the rest of the year, could be to the local population, and how such development would destroy the very character of the country-side, what the quiet and discerning visitors came to find and enjoy.
“I don’t see why the season need be all that short—the swimming-pools will be heated anyway” Mrs. Martin objected.
“Yes, but the gales in winter!—the yacht-marina would have to pack up for seven months of the year. And the rain!—do you know that it rains 265 days out of the 365 in Mayo?”
“How do you know that?” Mrs. Martin asked sharply.
“Old Lord Oldport had a rain-gauge kept for over twenty years, and that was the steady average. You can’t sit out and sun-bathe much in that sort of weather” Julia retorted vigorously. “And if people are only going to do indoor things, like in a discothèque or a casino, why plant it here, on this lovely unspoiled coast? Why not put it down in the suburbs of Dublin, which are spoiled anyway? No, I think it’s all wrong, the whole idea.”
Mrs. Martin shifted her ground.
“Then why wasn’t there all this fuss about that German, who’s doing a development scheme down a bit further south? He’s put up a hotel and heaps of châlets, and no one seems to mind.”
Julia pricked up her ears at this.
“Where is he doing it, do you know?” she asked.
“Somewhere beyond Galway—I didn’t hear exactly. Oh, he’s doing all sorts of things—he’s started a tweed factory, and he’s taken on the boatmen that go after crawfish on a regular basis, full-time, because he’s built cement pens in the sea to keep the crawfish in alive, so he can sell them to the restaurateurs in France. I don’t see why if this Weber is able to make packets of money, and no outcry, Billy shouldn’t.”
“I don’t think there would be any outcry about the crawfish industry,” Julia said pacifically. “Nor about a tweed factory, so long as he doesn’t try to pass the stuff off as handmade. There’s a mill, or whatever they call it, for machine-made tweeds up in Donegal; they make that soft fine stuff. But has this German started a casino? That’s the sort of thing people think objectionable, here.”
Mrs. Martin didn’t know—or at least she didn’t say; Julia steered the conversation into less uncomfortable channels, and presently took her leave. She had not learned much, and what she had learned was on the whole unsatisfactory.
As she reported to Gerald, when she went down to pay a second visit to Rossbeg at the week-end. This time Gerald took her straight to the house, and before lunch showed her all over it. It was more spacious than it looked from outside, with plenty of fair-sized rooms—Gerald showed her three, with a large bathroom adjoining them, which he had thought would do to accommodate Nannie Mack and The Peanut; two had the view over the lake.
“They’re lovely” Julia said. “But where is the kitchen?”
“Do you want a separate kitchen for the nursery?” He sounded a little alarmed.
“No, no” Julia said laughing—“the house kitchen, I meant.”
“Downstairs.” Now he sounded puzzled.
“Yes, of course; but which side of the house?”
“The other side, next the haggard; that’s nearer for carrying in the milk.”
“Couldn’t the nurseries be on that side? May we look?”
“Yes, but those rooms have no view,” he said, leading the way towards th
em as he spoke. “Why do you want the nurseries over the kitchen? I assure you the whole house is quite warm, with the central heating.”
Julia laughed again.
“It’s not that. Oh Gerald darling, don’t faint, but the key to peace in any household is a food-lift from the kitchen, or near it, to the nursery—no carrying trays upstairs, nor any fuss about nursery meals making crumbs and mess down.” She told him about the food-lift at Glentoran, and what a boon it was—“It actually saves a whole extra domestic. And it need only be quite little—two or three shelves. In fact one shelf should be removable—then luggage can go up in it as well.”
Gerald was somewhat reassured by this; they looked at spaces downstairs and rooms up, and eventually found three rooms upstairs perfectly situated—the lift could go up from a corner of that spacious scullery where the butter was made, and emerge into the largest of the three rooms, also in a corner.
“No trouble to anyone—perfect” Julia said happily.
“But it’s got no view—only onto the haggard” Gerald said.
“Oh my dear man, children don’t give tuppence for a view!—watching pigs and calves is much more fun. Let your guests enjoy the view! And these two rooms get a lot of sun.”
Downstairs, over sherry, she told him about Mrs. Martin: how much she appeared to know about O’Rahilly’s development plans, and how impermeable she seemed to the local objections, as put forward by her, Julia. “So you see it’s no good trying to use her as a lever to stop Billy; and if the money behind him is her husband’s, that’s no good either, because she wants above all to avoid him—they’re at daggers drawn. We seem to be properly stuck” Julia ended gloomily.
“Yes, it doesn’t sound too good” Gerald agreed. “Tell me again where she said O’Rahilly was going to start next. I’m not clear on that.”
“Because she wasn’t clear. I don’t know if her vagueness was deliberate or not, but all she said was something about ‘beyond Galway.’ No, that’s wrong—that was the Hun who’s already got a bit of development going. She branched off onto how unfair it was that he should be allowed to get away with it and not her precious Billy. She said there’d been no fuss about him, and his hotel and châlets.”