by Ann Bridge
“Oh, musha!” Mrs. Keane exclaimed distressfully. “Lady’s car! Is it a bad dunt, Timmy?”
“Paddy thinks ‘twill hammer out all right” Timmy replied.
While this was going on Julia was taking in the details of the room. At the far end opposite the fire, partly concealed by a screen, was a large double bed with a brass-knobbed bedstead; in the middle stood a plain deal table, and against the far wall were some shelves with crockery, and a small cupboard below them. But what particularly caught her attention was what appeared to be a bed built into the wall, up quite near the hearth—a pair of wooden doors, charmingly painted with flowers on a pale green ground, opened in the wall some three feet from the floor, to reveal blankets and pillows. It seemed obvious that this room was not only the living-room, but also the sleeping-place for the entire family.
Mrs. Keane now got up and went over to the shelves, from which she took several glasses, which she placed on the table; from the cupboard below she took out and set on the table a small bottle containing some colourless fluid. On her way back to her seat she drew the painted doors of that curious wall-bed together, so that the bedclothes were no longer visible.
A moment later Paddy returned with the bucket, which he set down on the floor; he unhooked a china jug from the shelves, dipped it into the bucket, and wiped it with his sleeve before setting it down—the bucket itself he carefully placed well in under the table. This small action suddenly made Julia realise that she was in a house which had no piped water at all—every drop had to be carried in from outside; and, since the roof was of thatch, that useful adjunct to so many English cottages, the rain-water butt by the door, did not exist either. One would be careful of water, living in such conditions! Paddy now opened the small bottle, poured some of the colourless contents into a glass, added a little water, and handed it to her. Julia was rather surprised—she had expected “the hard stuff” prescribed for her by Paddy to be whiskey. However, she drank a little—and sank back choking and gasping; it was so strong it took her breath away. Paddy, who was filling the other glasses, burst out laughing; his mother got up, took the glass from Julia, and patted her on the back.
“Ye didn’t put in enough water, son” she rebuked him. “The lady isn’t accustomed to potheen.” (She pronounced it puccheen.) She herself took the glass to the table, put in some more water, and tasted it carefully—“Try that, now, lady dear” she said, bringing it to Julia again.
Julia, while vexed by Paddy’s unmannerliness, was also vexed with herself for having embarrassed this delightful woman—she took a more cautious sip this time, and then drank some more. “Yes, like that it’s fine” she said, though in fact she thought it rather nasty—it had no particular flavour, it was just strong. Rather reluctantly, purely out of politeness, she emptied the glass, hoping it would leave her with a clear enough head to drive on to Rossbeg, and presently rose and took her leave.
“I wish I could stay longer Mrs. Keane, but Mr. O’Brien will be wondering what’s become of me” she said. “Perhaps I might come and see you again sometime?”
This suggestion was enthusiastically welcomed. “And ye’ll be sure to be telling Lady how sorry I am her car got dunted?” Mrs. Keane said earnestly.
“Certainly I will. Goodbye.”
Paddy and Timmy came out with her, to go and retrieve the sow; as she started to back out into the lane she heard the hearse’s engine start up. She put her head out of the car window. “Oh for God’s sake let me get clear first, Paddy!” she called angrily.
“Sure we will, Miss—just you drive on” Timmy called back; Paddy merely gave more of his uncouth laughter.
Although she was aware of the after-effects of “the hard stuff,” out on the road, Julia, driving slowly, managed to reach Rossbeg without further incident. Gerald was waiting for her in the drive.
“Did anything happen to you? I was expecting you earlier” he said.
“Yes, lots. I’m so sorry, Gerald. Let’s come in, and I’ll tell you” she said, getting out. In the library, when he offered her sherry—“Not on your life! I’m full up with that ghastly white potheen stuff” she said.
“Who on earth gave you that?” he asked, sitting down and beginning to sip the rejected sherry himself.
“That sweet Mrs. Keane at the farm. Wait, and I’ll tell you the whole thing” Julia said, lighting a cigarette. And she told him the story. “I could see I was getting nowhere, there on the road, so when they pressed me to go up to the farm, I thought I’d better” she ended. “And I’m glad I did—I feel Mrs. Keane would be the nicest possible person to have living near one. I didn’t think much of the son, though.”
“Which son did you see?”
“Paddy. Why, is there another?”
“Yes, Tom. They’re both completely useless creatures, and mannerless with it! Is Lady Helen’s car much damaged?”
“No, mostly scratches, and one dent in the wing. I’m vexed that it happened, though.”
“Of course. You poor darling!” He got up and kissed her. “Shall I go and look at it?”
“Oh, I wish you would! And tell me if you think it can be repaired locally—it’ll be such a curse for Helen if it has to go to Dublin.”
“Galway, more likely” Gerald said, and went out. When he returned a few minutes later—“No, Paddy Kelly in Martinstown will be able to fix that perfectly well” he pronounced. “And it won’t cost anything that Helen will notice.”
“Won’t her insurance company pay for it?”
“I shouldn’t think she’d bother with that for such a small amount. Anyhow, who’s liable on the other side? The Keanes had the accident, but the hearse isn’t theirs—it belongs to poor old Browne!”
Julia laughed.
“Yes, I see that makes it a bit complicated. Oh Gerald, do please tell me this—why on earth use a hearse to take a sow to the boar in?”
“What else would they use?” the man asked. “It’s the right shape, and size, and has a back board that lets down to get her in and out.”
Julia laughed again.
“Yes, I see—I mean I suppose so.”
“Boarding it up is a bit of a chore, but Browne has all the boards now, so it doesn’t take him long. I fancy the hearse brings him in quite as much from pigs’ weddings as from humans’ funerals!” Gerald observed, with his grin.
Over lunch Julia had another question arising out of her morning’s adventures. They had been talking about the Keane family, Julia expressing surprise that such an ultranice woman should have such inferior sons—she was delighted that Gerald should usually refer to Paddy and his brother collectively as “the louts.”
“I expect she spoiled them, and Timmy is there all the time to do most of the work—he’s a cousin. If old Keane had lived he’d have put the fear of God into them with a strap!” Gerald observed, “but he died when they were quite small.”
“Are they very poor?” Julia asked.
He stared at her. “Poor! Why on earth should you suppose they’re poor? They’re one of the richest families round here.”
“The house is so bare” she said. “Those settles to sit at table on, and not even a rug in front of the fire, to keep the old lady’s feet warm! And no chest of drawers or wardrobe; I could see her cloak and shawl hanging on the wall, down at the far end of the room. The poorest peasant’s house in Portugal has at least one piece of furniture!” Julia stated.
“I don’t suppose the Portuguese peasants were tenants-at-will, under foreign landlords, for centuries on end” Gerald replied with vigour. “It’s got into their blood here to have as little as possible of furniture, or anything else, for fear of having their rent put up.”
“Oh yes, I remember your telling me about tenants-at-will the other day. But surely their rent wouldn’t have been put up simply because they had a rug in their living-room?”
“My dear girl, if the land-agent happened to see a tenant’s wife or daughter going to Mass on Sunday in a new bonnet, his re
nt would be likely to go up!” Gerald exploded.
“But that’s nonsensical!” She was silent, frowning, pondering all this. After a moment—“And you said there’d been ‘foreign’ landlords for centuries—who were they?” she asked.
“The English, you blessed innocent! Who else?”
She stared at him.
“D’you mean people like the O’Haras?”
“No, no; Michael is what the country-people call ‘one of the old lot.’ People like Mary Browne, though; all the Brownes are English.”
“But they’ve been here for centuries!” Julia protested.
“Only since Elizabethan days. That doesn’t make them Irish.”
“And Michael was a general in the British Army, anyhow” Julia pursued.
“That doesn’t make him English!” Gerald said, laughing. “Do get it into your pretty head that the English and the Irish are two utterly different races—don’t be misled by the fact that they apparently talk the same language. That was force of circumstances, and in any case they don’t, really—they use the same words and mean different things by them! That’s why they have been trying to understand one another for nearly a thousand years and didn’t really succeed yet!”
Julia sighed at this depressing pronouncement. She would have liked to ask why now, with their land their own, people as intelligent as Mrs. Keane, and by local standards as rich, should still not buy themselves a hearth-rug, but decided against it. Instead she enquired what “that ghastly ‘hard stuff,’ as Paddy calls it, is made of? It nearly blows your head off!”
“The potheen, you mean? Oats, as a rule; sometimes potatoes. I shall imagine the Keane’s potheen was made from oats.”
“It’s odd that it has no colour at all, it’s just like water, and it hasn’t a nice taste, like whiskey—it hasn’t any taste at all but fieriness.”
“I imagine the difference in taste may partly be due to using oats or potatoes and not barley, and partly to do with malting; but I’m not a distiller, so I can’t help you much there” O’Brien said, grinning. “The colour I do happen to have heard about; someone told me once that Scotch whiskey, when it’s first made, is quite colourless, just like potheen; but the casks the makers used to put it in to mature were old sherry or Madeira casks—economy, see?—and after some years in those it came out the colour we’re accustomed to. Whether they still do that I wouldn’t know; people don’t drink as much Madeira as they used to. But if there’s a shortage of the right casks, there must be other ways of giving it the colour that has proved popular.”
“How fascinating!” Julia said. Her mind went back to Madeira, and the peasants carrying the loads of grapes down little hill-paths to the waiting lorries on the roads. Funny that those same grapes, years and years later, might passively impart some of their own colour to Scotch whiskey.
After lunch they went down to the kitchen garden, at which Julia had only taken a cursory look on her first visit. As before, she was struck with its extreme neatness, and said so.
“Yes, Mac and the boy do quite well, if you keep them at it. But is there anything we aren’t growing that you think we ought to have?” Gerald asked earnestly, as they walked between the trim plots of vegetables and fruit-bushes.
“Well, where’s your herb-bed?” Julia rather hesitantly enquired.
“Oh, we don’t have an actual herb-bed. The sage is over there by the artichokes, and the thyme next to the cold frames, and parsley Mac sticks in wherever he has room for it. Ought there to be a regular herb-bed?”
“Well, if you could spare a small space in the border under the wall, up near the gate, it would save the cook’s time when she comes down to get her herbs” Julia said.
“Right you are—can-do, and will-do! Anything else?” he asked.
Julia looked about her.
“Well, I see you’ve got glorious masses of raspberries” she said. “But I don’t see any loganberries. They’re not nearly as nice as rasps,” she added hastily, “but they are rather useful for bottling, and they do come at a slightly different time, which is handy.”
“Bridgie doesn’t go in much for bottling, I don’t think” he said doubtfully.
“Not with an Esse? Why it’s made for bottling! You just fill the bottles and put them in the slow oven overnight, and take them out in the morning—there’s nothing to it!” Julia said. “I wonder Helen didn’t teach her that, while she was about it.”
“She did try—she did one lot with her, of raspberries, and they were perfect; but when Bridgie tried alone, the bottles all broke. That rather upset her.”
“Screwed the tops on tight, instead of leaving them loose, I expect” Julia said easily. “As I say, it’s perfectly simple, and no trouble, but you must do all the little things exactly right, every time.”
“Oh my dear child, you’ve put it in a sentence!” Gerald said on a long gusty sigh. “Doing all the little things exactly right, every time, is just the one thing this nation is practically incapable of! The English can’t not do it; the Irish, I honestly believe, can’t bear to do it.”
“Have you any idea why not?” Julia asked, much interested.
“I think subconsciously they feel it ties them down to mechanical things” he answered slowly. “That’s why ploughs and expensive mowers get left out in the fields to rust. They aren’t like that with animals, or growing potatoes; over those, things with life in them, they’ll usually pay immense attention to detail. Anyhow it’s something you just have to recognise here, and live with.”
The wrought-iron gate at the top of the garden whined on its hinges—O’Brien turned round.
“Oh good—it’s Mr. Macllroy!” he said; “come and meet him.”
“Who’s Mr. Macllroy?” Julia asked, walking up the path beside him.
“The Horticultural Instructor from Castlebar—a most splendid person.”
“Has he come to instruct you?” Julia asked, laughing.
“Oh, he likes to go round and keep an eye on everyone’s gardens; he instructs those that want instruction, and helps everyone” Gerald replied. “Afternoon, Mr. Macllroy; I’m delighted to see you.” He shook hands with a middle-aged man in a well-worn burberry with bulging pockets and introduced him to Julia. “Mrs. Jamieson thinks we ought to grow loganberries” he said. “Now where will I get those, Mr. Macllroy?”
“Loganberries? Well let me see—that’s not just so easy, short of Dublin” the instructor replied. “Yes, ye could put them in over there by the glasshouse, if ye took out a few gooseberry-bushes; this garden is terrible full of gooseberries, and logans don’t mind a bit of sun; they’re not like rasps.” He walked over towards the green-house, and indicated a couple of rows of gooseberry-bushes alongside it. “Just take those out—I know plenty of people would be glad of them, and the better of them too—our people don’t eat enough fruit—and put in a few eight-foot stakes and run wires along them, and there ye are.”
“And how long before they start bearing?” Gerald asked.
“Ah, that depends what age ye put them in at. Good, well-grown plants could give ye a small picking next year.”
“And where will I get those?”
“I’ll ask around and see who has some; the nearer the better, O’ course. There’s a place up in the Six Counties always has a good stock of bearing bushes, but that’s a long journey, and would set them back a piece.”
“I could go up and fetch them in the estate van; if your place is fairly near the Border they needn’t be out of the ground more than twelve hours, if they lift them while I wait—I could have the holes ready” Gerald said.
“There’s a proper gardener for you!” the instructor said to Julia. “I wish there were more like Mr. O’Brien—nothing’s too much trouble for him!”
“It’s the way to get results” Julia agreed.
“I didn’t see ye since ye got back from Morocco” Mr. Macllroy now said to Gerald. “What sort of a country is that for plants, Mr. O’Brien?”
“Well of course what catches a Northerner’s eye is the palms, because we’re so unused to them, and they are very striking—a big plantation of palm-trees, like the one outside Marrakesh, is a smashing sight” Gerald told him. “But I expect you were thinking more of the wild flowers.”
“That’s right, I was. What about those?”
“Well, there aren’t all that many; the country is very densely cultivated, you see. I believe you find some nice things down in the Atlas Mountains, but I didn’t get so far South. What strikes one up in the North is the Spanish irises, the blue ones—they grow in the fields as thick as moondaisies in our hay, in fact the fields are blue with them. And along the banks of the streams are big clumps of paper-white narcissus.”
“Wild?” Macllroy asked eagerly.
“They must be, I think—this was in quite uncultivated country, where I saw them. What I found surprising” Gerald went on, “was that there was so much heathy country, especially near the coast, and it was full of little blue scillas.”
“What sort of heaths? Mediterranea?”
“Yes, quite a lot of that, and some vagans and cinerea, but more ling than anything else.”
“I was hearing that there’s quite a bit of Mediterranea here in Mayo, but I didn’t see it yet” the instructor said.
“Well next time you’re going to Achill, look out for it just beyond Mulranny—it grows quite close to the road, on the right” Gerald told him. “Meantime, come to the toolshed for a moment.” He walked to a large shed on the North side of the greenhouse, where it did not obstruct the sunlight; inside, near the door, was a bench with the usual array of secateurs, tarred string, weed-killers and pesticides—tools leaned against the nearer walls, along with rolls of wirenetting. But at the far end, from floor to ceiling, the wall was covered with what looked like small square boxes, each with a label and a brass ring to pull it out by—Gerald peered at these for a moment, and then drew two a little way out, so that Julia saw that they were in fact over a foot long.