Ghost Light: A Novel

by Joseph O'Connor

  What shalt thou say

  – On Judgment Day?

  Yet if this map be – wrongly drawn

  Trav’ller – mercy – from thy scorn.

  She reads the final couplet aloud. He chuckles at her pronunciation. In his accent, it rhymes. In hers, it does not. For less have millions starved.

  It was stormy last night; an angry wind roared up the mouth of the Liffey. Soldiers from the barracks were mustered to Phoenix Park; a stand of ancient elms had been toppled in the Lord-Lieutenant’s demesne, threatening the stable-blocks and guest quarters and the ice-house. It had seemed to the girl that the holiday plotted so carefully and long might have to be postponed a little longer. Each of them had told lies so as to allow it to happen. The hurricane was troubling, its so-sudden coming-on an intimation of exposure, punishment. The bilious roar of thunder. She could not face the bed she shared with her sisters. It was summertime in Ireland again.

  The gaslight in the kitchen was warm, consoling. Her brother came in from his work. His dress suit was soaked – his work was waiting tables – and she helped him out of the waterlogged jacket. The restaurant had been busy. A party from the Castle. ‘West Brits and the turncoats who lick them.’ No more give you a tip than the steam off their piss. Like many who make a living being fleetingly pleasant to strangers, his belligerence at home was almost constant. But his vehemence could be softened when his favourite sister was present, becoming merely a role he seemed to feel he had to play for her: the long-suffering drudge, the putupon mule, the man forced to live amongst women.

  ‘There’s a night. Where’s Mother?’ His eyes were glimmering.

  ‘She went out to the sodality. She’ll be home in a while.’

  ‘Mother of Jesus, were we running. Your friend was there. That character Yeats. I’d say he says more than his prayers.’

  ‘Sit in to the table, Georgie, till I heat up your supper.’

  ‘That’s a covey I’d no more trust than I could spit a bloody rat. Says I: You know my sister, sir, she’s below in your playhouse. Know what he says to me?’

  ‘We’ve no bread in the house, Georgie. Will you take a mug of porter?’

  ‘She has a most refained speaking voice. Staring up at me so he was, the dirty long drink of water. And his butties all chuckling into the soup like lords and they shaking the oyster sauce off their dewlaps. D’make you heave up your supper at the sight so it would. And the talk out of them – Jesus almighty. Some playmaker was with them and he spouting more drivel than you’d hear in a leap year’s travel. Manners of a carthorse, the whole plain crew. They’d nearly shite trotting if they were let.’

  The whomp of her heart like a breaker striking a ship.

  ‘Don’t be cursing in the house, Georgie. Do you want the porter?’

  ‘Ah, go and boil the back of my arse.’

  ‘If you want it, it’s there. I’ve washing to see to.’

  ‘You’re gone fierce secretive lately. There’s nothing the matter?’

  ‘No, Georgie. I’m fine. Eat your supper.’

  A go-between came at midnight, saying the appointment still held, she was to be at Westland Row station at dawn, was to sit in the fourteenth carriage. The man would board the train when it pulled into Glenageary. She was not to acknowledge or greet him.

  ‘Who was that article,’ demanded her mother, ‘and he calling at this hour?’

  ‘Only a boy from the theatre saying the tour isn’t cancelled.’

  ‘I’ll theatre him now. And yourself along with him. And you streeling to the door of a Christian house in the black-dark night in your pelt. Close up your buttons for the sanctified Jesus. Is it a wetnurse I’m after raring? Or worse?’

  At the summit of Henry’s Hill they come to the triangulation point that was placed there, he tells her, by Queen Victoria’s sappers. The last of the haze is burning away; the day, they know now, will be violently hot, as a drover in Annamoe predicted when they approached him for directions. Below them, in the glen, is an L-shaped whitewashed cabin surrounded by the remains of a tillage field. No road leads down to the homestead but there is a trail worn through the sedge-grass, and as they pick their way along it they see head-high bulrushes, hear the mournful croaking of frogs.

  The cottage is unlocked, its door on the latch, its foot-long key inside on a hook. Cauldrons hanging from the rafters and in the cinder-filled hearth. A cracked daguerreotype of Daniel O’Connell over the inglenook. The room smells of linseed and musty old linen that wasn’t allowed to dry properly after laundering. On the mantelshelf is a black candle that has no wick, and he looks at it curiously and hefts it in his hand. She has to tell him it is a cake of furniture polish.

  The room contains a bed in a rusting iron frame that someone has long ago distempered black but the paint is flaking badly.

  ‘What is that you’re after taking out of your haversack, John?’

  ‘A hammock, you owl. I shall naturally sleep outside.’

  ‘That it may keep fine for you,’ she says, nonplussed.

  The nearest shop is at a distance of eleven miles. In the mornings, very early, he bicycles to Annamoe for bread, fresh eggs, yesterday’s London Times. (‘Should anything of consequence be occurring in Ireland, it will be reported in the London Times.’) If the huckster is open he buys butter, tobacco. He likes to converse with the postmaster and his three dirty children who are ‘surly as Satan’, he says. Sometimes he makes photographs of the villagers or their houses. He can be gone three hours or more.

  While he is away, she sweeps the cabin, goes down to the streamlet for water, launders their clothes; reads quietly in the ruined yard. She finds the thought exciting that her mother does not know where she is. She has lied to her mother for the sake of a man. It has the makings of a novel or a certain sort of play. She wonders who the leading character is.

  What is her mother doing now? Probably opening the shop, or sitting among the tallboys and wardrobes in the window, fingering her beads and waiting. She is a small, jolly, disenchanted woman, who, if you lick her hand playfully, as her younger children sometimes do, tastes faintly of disappointment. She was once haughtily beautiful, so the neighbours attest, cruel-tongued and dark and Spanish-looking. Every boy in the Liberties was destroyed by her in his time; her choice of husband disappointed her parents. They were right, she says. I hadn’t a pick of sense. She has a tiny back kitchen ‘for the steam and the smells’. Marriage smells of cabbage and twice-boiled mutton and towards the end of the week, of dripping. ‘A man’s body is the map of Ireland. Keep your hand away from Limerick. And if any of youse shame this house by coming home with a surprise in your belly, do you know what will happen before you’ve the door on the latch? I’ll put your grandmother out on the street – not you.’

  Difficult to read in the flat dead heat. The sunshine on the yellowed old pages. She attempts to make use of his hammock but the midges are so numerous beneath the twin bent yews that it is impossible to lie still for long. What is the history of this field, this cabin? Were children ever born here? Where are they now? And that rusted double bed with its creaking quoits – but it is better not to imagine such scenes. She finds a crumpled dollar bill that has been glued beneath the dresser, the words ‘do not tell him’ inked across Abraham Lincoln’s face. On St James’s Eve – she is wildly over-imaginative, he has often teased her – she turns in the yard, her blood shocked to riot, convinced she has heard an infant mewling from the midden-heap. But it is only a cat in heat.

  They hike to the abandoned lighthouse. The claustrophobically narrow spiral staircase, its heavy blockwork leading up to the beacon room. The putty around the shattered panes flaking to powder in her fingertips. In the distance, to the south, several miles down the coast, is the jagged island from which the arising beacon will glitter in two years. He will be dead by then. But neither of them knows it. They look out at the spray and the seabirds. In the bole of an oak she finds an eyeless rag doll, arms and legs gnawed to flitters.
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  One morning she bathes naked in Aurora Lake, the water fierily cold, lacings of moss on its surface. The echo of the corncrakes on the scree-terraced cliffs. She sees him silhouetted on the hillside as he returns from the village, pedalling hard, his cape trailing behind him. She calls out but some trick of the water means that he cannot hear her. Wild swans in the sky. An eagle.

  There is a script of Lady Gregory’s she has to learn: her role is difficult, complex. He reads the other parts for her, offers insights. He is a laughably dreadful actor, hamming lines, waving his arms, stomping around the cabin soliloquising to the rafters. His attempt at a Connemara accent would cause a turnip to cringe, but he knows he is no good so it doesn’t matter. He batters the love lines by saying them too loud, eviscerates the hate lines by speaking them too quietly, misses cues, waits too long, stutters, interrupts, and lisps when he means to be menacing. His oath-swearing warriors are gibbering clowns and his warlocks are effete English headmasters. One night he insists on donning a bedspread as the mystical robe of Cuchulainn. He raves in it, eyes bulging, his trouser-legs rolled up, his finger pointing vengeance on the fireplace.

  After a few days he comes to look like a countryman: sunburnt, dishevelled, his hair and beard bleaching, red earth on his clothes. His bleak, grey eyes seem filled with reflections. His stockings are holed. She darns them.

  ‘There is a wasp in your beard, John. Sit you easy till I get a cloth for to flurry it.’

  ‘It will not sting me, don’t worry.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘They smell the sickness in my blood. It repels them.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Or perhaps they are afraid of Protestants.’

  He has heard it said there is a Wicklow mushroom that has hallucinogenic properties. One sees visions and phantoms if one eats it. (‘Old Yeats tried some once. Sent him out of his mind. Course, he didn’t have far to go.’) She loves when he mimics Yeats; it is remorselessly accurate – the gestures, the accent, the studied floridness of expression. It is as though they are naughty schoolchildren lampooning a master who might materialise through the floorboards at any moment.

  ‘You’re an awful cur to go making a jeer of Mr Yeats. And I thinking youse the greatest friends ever heard of.’

  ‘You, my little dunce. I shall put you across my knee. “Ewes” is the plural of mature female sheep.’

  ‘Oh is it, Professor? I’ll wax your moustache for you in a minute.’

  ‘Poor, trying old Yeats. I adore him, of course. He is so slow and fierce and sleek and subtle. Like a great silverback gorilla in a cummerbund. His valet strips him down and shaves his back of a morning, did you know?’

  ‘He goes down like a dinner with Her Ladyship anyhow.’

  ‘Darling old Augusta. You know she breast-feeds him, don’t you? Every night during the second interval.’

  ‘That is enough blah out of you now. Let me alone to read, you scruff-hound.’

  ‘Actually I tell a lie. You do realise Augusta is a man?’

  ‘Would you quit your playacting this minute and give me some peace!’

  ‘Willie Fay told me he dandered into the jakes at the Abbey one morning and here’s Augusta, saving your presence, making Adam’s ale standing. Says Augusta: Me bould hack, that’s the soft day now. Says Fay: Deed and it is, Ma’am, thank God. And the two of them a-widdle like water-clocks in a fountain. Told me she pissed like a buffalo.’

  ‘There’s talk out of you now. Merciful hour but you’re lovely.’

  He finds a sickle in the thatch of the cottage and takes it into the forest, returning with an armful of nettles he asks her to boil, but the slick, green juice is too bitter. Vital to exercise caution in the countryside of Ireland, for certain of the flora can kill you. The berries of a yew, so lusciously scarlet, have poisoned whole legions of the ignorant.

  One morning she is wandering the laneways while he is away to Annamoe for bread, when a young policeman approaches on a bicycle. He is handsome, like a boxer, and he salutes as he dismounts. He is the girl’s own age, perhaps.

  Walking up the boreen with the constable at her side, she makes small talk about the weather, the birds. The constable is a Mayoman, ‘a blow-in’ as he puts it, and the phrase seems to hang in the air between them. It is clear he knows she is one of the people staying at the cottage. He is a policeman: omniscience is his trade. A boy returning from haymaking with a scythe over his shoulder glances back at the curious combination as they continue along the lane. The gorse in the fields smells richly sweet. You could hang a hat on the constable’s cheekbones.

  ‘I’m told himself is a writer, Miss.’

  ‘He is. Well, he tries.’

  ‘Sure, that’s all any of us can do in the end.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘My father now, God be good to him. That was the man could tell a story if you like, Miss. When the neighbours came in of a winter’s night. They do talk of him yet in the townland down at home – though he’s gone this fourteen year. He’d have you in transports with a story so he would.’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘Of the hard days, you know, Miss, when the Famine was in it. The people and they going to America. He’d a queer enough story of how the big house got burnt one time and himself and the brother tried to save the landlord’s family. But the flames was gone too high on him so he couldn’t do aught for it. He was harrowed by it. You know, Miss. The not being able to do nothing. For there was childer in the house, a little fellow there was. Never done a harm to no one, a little puppy, no more. The mother said he was never the same after.’

  ‘They were terrible times. When you think of the suffering.’

  ‘Indeed and they were. It’s better off out of them we are. The people set against one another and murder walking the country. God send we’ll never see the likes again.’

  ‘Well, we’re coming to the cabin. Would you take a cup of tea?’

  ‘Faith, I would if it’s no trouble, Miss. It’s gracious of you now.’

  He walks around the ruined garden, looking silently at the ground, before approaching a little shed and examining its lock. He tries the bolt once or twice. She makes him his tea. He removes his beautiful cap and places it carefully on a boulder.

  ‘We can’t change the past, Miss. In’t that the way it is?’

  ‘That’s what my mother does be saying.’

  ‘And himself is away to Annamoe. Is it long he’s going to be?’

  ‘Two or three hours. Sometimes more.’

  ‘More, I’d be thinking. Annamoe’s the road will sort them.’

  Wind moves the branches and a filigree of sunlight surrounds him. He toes speculatively at the earth as though the action might uncover something. Bending, he picks up a fist-sized, mossy stone, which he throws into a distant field.

  ‘The auld aim is gone on me,’ he says with a laugh. ‘One time I’d have hit a crow from forty yards.’

  ‘You’ve a strong throw,’ she says. ‘I’ve a brother plays handball.’

  ‘Used to play it the odd time myself. Down in Mayo, I mean. There wouldn’t be the call for it in Wicklow.’

  She watches as he throws, the huff as he releases, pictures him naked in a river, his tough body sunburnt as he bends to wash his shining black hair. Or inside in the cabin. Slowly barring the door. Watching as you unbutton your dress. God forgive you but it would be wonderful to be bedded a lazy hour by someone so hard and young. No love, no words, no past, no future, just his sweat dripping on your face and your back and your breasts. Christ, a bull he’d be like; you’d be destroyed with the pleasure. It would be worth a thousand years of Purgatory. Do men have such thoughts? Do other women, too? Does your Tramp? Does the young policeman?

  ‘You’ll be busy today, so? Or just going the roads?’

  ‘I’ve to take myself up to Enniskerry with the sergeant later on. There was a house robbed the other night. A bad business.’

  ‘Aren’t you brave? I wo
uldn’t envy you. Will you catch them that did it?’

  ‘I don’t know about that now. I’d say they’re flown, the same heroes. I was up with the squire yester-morning. He’s a decent auld sort. Says I: “You’d want to keep a weather eye on any girleen in the house, sir. A housemaid or that. You’re a man of the world, sir. Only some of the girls that’s going now do keep queer enough company. They say more than their prayers, the same young-ones.”’

  ‘Aren’t you an awful man now, to go blaming everything on the girls.’

  ‘God keep your innocence, Miss. That it might always be your blessing. But a young-one today, her head can be turned. These flyboys do be clever as Satan in brogues. They do hang about the dance halls and they sly as you want, with an eye for the decent girl in service. Or above on the esplanade in Bray when the girls do be walking. It’s allanah macree and the old sweet song and they talking the rain out of wetting them. The same fox will inveigle his cunning way. I needn’t tell you how, Miss. Some girls has no sense. Next thing we know it’s when does your mistress be out? Would there be e’er a bob of money left about in the house? Is there silver you do be polishing? Aren’t you the great lassie now. We’ve seen many such cases in recent times. And the girleen ruined, to boot.’

  ‘It’s well they’ve yourself to protect their honour all the same.’

  ‘The sergeant does say there’s more harm done in Ireland by dance halls and courting than all the dynamite ever come from America.’

  ‘What a terrible auld misery. And have you no sweetheart yourself?’

  ‘There was one I was great with. But she went to Massachusetts on me in the end. Two year we were courting – near enough to two year. I thought we’d be married. But didn’t she change her mind for Boston. Last Martinmas a year ago she went.’

  ‘And you’ve not been with another? Not in all that time?’

  Everything in the garden is silent for a moment. A blackbird arises from a cluster of rhododendrons. It settles on the roof of the pigsty near the kitchen beds and seems to cock its wise face at the sky. The constable’s eyes are steady as he meets the girl’s gaze.