Una remembered it vividly.
‘May I tell it, Robin?’ she asked. ‘Tell Kate the story?’
Robin nodded. Una began.
‘He was ten years old and we were climbing a tree on the estate when he fell and broke his ribs. One pierced his lung and he could not breathe. He was screaming. He was in such pain but I sat helpless, not daring to move him, afraid the rib would dig deeper and tear his heart. Father had ridden off for a doctor and left the priest to pray for him. But it was father’s fast horse and the doctor who saved him.’
‘I remember the priest crossing himself and praying for my soul,’ Robin said. ‘But he could not ease my pain, he could not mend my broken bones. All he could offer was a prayer and a promise.’
‘And so’, Una continued, ‘he said he would not become a bishop when he grew up. He would become a doctor instead and our playroom, which had once been a make-believe chapel, became a hospital ward.’
For the first time in her life Kate glimpsed family life, watching, listening to their banter, joining in their laughter. She had never known what it meant, nor had she ever expected to discover it. Now she had been enveloped by two families, both so different, and she knew she could love them both just as comfortably. She arranged to stay the night and as she lay in bed, she wondered how she might join the two together.
She was woken by the sound of gunfire. She opened the window wider. She counted twenty shots and then the boom of a distant cannon. She heard Sir Robert shouting in the kitchen below. She put on her dressing gown and went down. Robin and Una were there. Sir Robert was still in his nightshirt and sleeping cap.
‘That’s forty shots at least,’ he said. ‘What on earth is happening?’
‘I thought I heard a cannon,’ Kate said.
Sir Robert nodded. ‘So did we all. And I wish we hadn’t.’
‘The firing is coming from the harbour,’ said Robin.
‘From the harbour it is,’ said Sir Robert. ‘And by God, I think I can guess what it’s all about.’
Within an hour, his agent arrived at the door. Sir Robert had guessed correctly. Crowds in Youghal had plundered the shops and marched on the ships anchored in the harbour, ships about to sail with their cargoes of Irish wheat and oats, bound for Liverpool. The magistrate had sent troops to stop them crossing the River Bride at Youghal Bridge, but they had pushed past, shouting that it was a sin for Irish food to be sent abroad to England. Women had held their babies to the soldiers and bared their breasts to show they had no milk.
‘But the shots?’ Sir Robert asked. ‘The cannons?’
‘It’s Dungarvan, sir,’ said the agent. ‘Things are worse there. They say that a thousand or more have marched on the town. They charged through the line of soldiers and crossed the bridge to the quayside. The first volley of grapeshot killed a dozen but it didn’t stop them. Before the ship’s crews could cut the mooring lines, the leaders were aboard, pulling off the sacks of grain and heaving them ashore. Then the soldiers let go their second volley and there was nowhere to hide. Many fell overboard and were taken by the tide out to sea. When it was all over, the dead were thrown on the carts and taken to the lime pits.’
‘It was long happening,’ Sir Robert said. ‘But I knew it had to. Youghal, Dungarvan. What next? You mark my words. There’ll not be a ship that’s safe. The government will have to send warships to escort them out and put a Redcoat in every field that’s being harvested. The people won’t put up with this any longer and who can blame them?’
Sir Robert was as close to his tenants as any landlord could be. He knew their grievances and the limit of their patience.
‘The government was so sure that people would sit tamely by until the potato was ready again and maybe they would have done if there had been some work and a little money. But there’s been precious little of either and when you grow thinner and hungrier and see the ships taking food away, what is a man expected to do?’
He rose and brought the heavy kettle from the cooking range and refilled the teapot.
‘Is it any wonder the English consider the Irish so stupid? And is it surprising these poor people should need to do such desperate things to prove they are not?’
‘I was told of something yesterday by one of the Quakers,’ Una said. ‘Something so desperate it made me cry. It was in a village at Tallow just below Lismore. They visited a young lady who was said to be alone and desolate. They say she could not have been older than twenty and very pretty. She came from Dublin, from a family of business people, but they had all broken up and deserted her. She was living in a small cottage on her own and when she knew the Quakers were visiting she had hurriedly made it trim and proper. She put on such a show of genteel respectability and laid out her table with little items of crockery and ornaments she had brought with her from Dublin. She did her best to hide her worn dress with an apron and a silk scarf. They brought her a little bread but she refused it, saying it should go to the poor and yet she was herself starving. Such pride. Such sad, helpless, gentle pride.’
Robin nodded. ‘It is the same with them all, Una, young and old. I heard of a fisherman’s widow who walked twenty miles to the coast, pushing a hand cart with two planks of wood in it so she could give her dead husband a decent burial. He had drowned in a storm and was washed ashore at Curragh. She eventually found what was left of him, carried his body to higher ground and dug a grave with her bare hands. She put his body between the two planks and bound them together with rope. That was his coffin, the best she could do. But she would have been satisfied he’d had a proper Christian burial. Pride by another name. And proper.’
For the first time in over two months, clouds covered the sky. Thin long fingers of sunlight poked their way through but then quickly disappeared as if God had clenched His fist. A chill sea breeze rushed in and shook the trees that had been still for so long. Kate tasted salt on her lips and waited for rain. But the clouds burst a long way out and thunder was only a soft rumble. Then came a perfect rainbow, a thick arc spanning half the horizon, each of its seven colours pure and vivid. Its beauty mocked the drama of the day.
Sir Robert and Robin had gone to Dungarvan to discover if any of their tenants were among the dead and wounded. Una had instructions to keep the gates locked and leave the loaded shotgun ready on the kitchen table.
The girls sat side by side on a bench in the garden beneath one of the old oaks. There had not been a gardener in the grounds for over ten years and much of it had now returned to nature’s own indiscipline. The grass around them was long with scattered clusters of cornflowers, rosebay willowherbs and daisies and, beyond the lawns, creeping carpets of nettles. There was a mass of scarlet poppies where once there had been peonies, creeping ivy where there had been rose beds and a great sprawl of pink and white rhododendrons bending under the weight of a thickening canopy of bramble. Only the stone statues of the Connemara Bacchus and his sprawling maidens at the front of the house reminded a visitor of how splendid the house had once been.
‘Why is the house called “Salvation”?’ Kate asked. ‘Was your father’s family religious?’
‘They bowed their head and paid their dues and kept the clergy in liquor. At least that’s how father describes them. He has no time for either Church. He thinks the Catholics are servile worshippers and their priests dreadful bullies. I’ve heard terrible stories about them, especially what they do to …’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ Kate interrupted. ‘Not on a beautiful day like this. Tell me about the house. Why Salvation?’
‘It was built by an Englishman, about a hundred years ago, we think. He meant to settle here and breed horses but it was the Irish weather that defeated him. Some scoundrel selling him the land must have told him our summers were always dry and warm. But when the winds turned in autumn and it rained until the next March, he packed his bags, went straight back home to England and never returned. The house stood empty for another twenty years and became the home of bats and crows and
a succession of tinkers who tore the place apart. But then came the wonderful part. A sailing ship on its way to Cork was caught in a storm, blown inshore and floundered on Clonard Rock. All forty crew aboard were drowned except for one man. He was washed up on the beach and his name was Sir Walter Fitzgerald, a wealthy landowner from Country Antrim. The story goes that as he lay on the sand and raised his eyes to heaven to thank God for his salvation, he saw this house beyond the cliffs. At that moment, he vowed he would settle on this parcel of land that had saved his life.’
‘And so he did?’ asked Kate.
‘And so he did. With his wealth and energy he restored the house and named it Salvation and every morning, whatever the season, he would go from his bed to the balcony and bow respectfully to the sea that had so very nearly taken him.’
‘It’s a wonderful story, Una.’
‘But that’s not the end of it. When Sir Walter, my great-grandfather, died content in his old age, he left the estate to his eldest son. But he was a wastrel and cared nothing for the house or his father’s love of it. Soon he mortgaged it to pay for his gambling debts and his drinking and whoring. The house went to ruin, and the parkland returned to a jungle. He died on his thirty-fifth birthday from a liver destroyed by gin and a variety of other ailments given to him by those he chose to live with. Then my grandfather inherited it and began its restoration all over again, all the time struggling to pay off the debts. Now my father carries on that same struggle. But every year he grows more weary and poorer. Like Ireland itself.’
‘It must have been so beautiful,’ Kate said. Una plucked a blade of grass and chewed its juicy stem.
‘When I was a little girl,’ Una said, ‘one tiny stray weed would have caused a commotion and given the head gardener a fit. But it is not easy to worry about weed-free gravel, topiary and the symmetry of the lawns when people are so wretched beyond the hedges. I don’t think a pretty garden would ever occupy my time again. If I ever had one, and I doubt that very much, I should let it grow like this, free and full of itself. Only the English seem to care so much for gardens.’
‘Perhaps we have nothing more important to worry about,’ Kate said.
Una laughed, in her loud, unaffected way.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t ridicule your own people that way. The English have done many fine and wonderful things in this world. But father says the moment the name ‘Ireland’ is mentioned, they bid goodbye to their humanity and common sense. He says they act like tyrants towards the Irish.’
‘I’ve heard my father say that whatever’s good for England is bad for Ireland and vice-versa,’ Kate said.
‘But I remember my father once saying that if more of the world was English, it would be a better place.’
‘I don’t suppose he believes that now,’ Kate said.
‘I think he still half believes it. We are still a part of the Empire, even if we are forgotten.’
‘How odd you should say that,’ Kate said. ‘Somebody once said that to me— ’ She stopped and looked away.
‘Go on, Kate,’ said Una, laughing. ‘Who was he? Your lover. Tell me he was your lover.’
Kate took Una’s hand. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Not my lover. He was someone I was very fond of. I didn’t love him, not as you might expect. Had he lived he would have been more like a brother.’
‘Tell me.’
‘To tell you a little of it would not be enough and to tell you more might be unwise.’
‘You make it sound very serious, Kate.’
‘It is. Or rather, it was.’
‘Kate, we are friends,’ said Una, ‘You can trust me. Do trust me. Share it with me. We can become allies.’
They had been Shelley’s same words on the day he left Cork, the last time Kate saw him. Her reservations about confiding in Una faded with those words.
They sat in the shade of the oak on that hot summer morning and Kate told of her conspiracy with a young English captain who had become a traitor in Ireland’s cause, of Edward Ogilvie and his bullwhip, of Eugene and his encyclopaedia and finally of Keegan’s little schoolroom. When Kate had finished her telling, she and Una hugged each other and it was agreed: they would ride to Kinsale together and there Kate would introduce Keegan and his class to her new friend and ally.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first spikes of the morning sun caught every colour of the convoy: the riders’ uniforms of green and blue, yellow and scarlet, their helmets and the swords in their scabbards, the flashing polished brass of the horses’ harnesses, the rifles of the infantry.
The line of wagons was the longest yet to leave Cork Harbour, thirty of them piled high with grain, the pulling teams pounding at the ground, the crack of whips over their heads and the shouts of the wagon masters urging them on. People lined the roads to watch them pass but no one cheered. Who could applaud such a precious cargo that was on its way to somewhere else? How could they believe there were others hungrier than themselves?
Kate saddled her mare and watched the column until it was out of sight. As she left the stable yard, Dr Martineau came from the house and stood in her way.
‘These are dangerous times, Miss Kathryn,’ he said in his soft and silky way. ‘Is it wise to leave Cork?’
‘I have left it too often to wonder now whether it is wise or not,’ she replied coldly.
‘Indeed you have,’ he said coming closer. He held the bridle as she mounted.
‘And I know the road so well, Dr Martineau, that I shall not need your escort to follow me today.’
‘Dear me, Miss Kathryn! I’m surprised that you should take offence at what is only my concern for your safety …’
‘An escort with a spyglass?’ she interrupted him.
‘Indeed. With a spyglass and a pistol too, which he has orders to use without hesitation should there be any risk to your safety. I wonder that you protest so much.’
‘I shall tell my father you have me followed.’
‘As you wish.’ He ran his hand along the mare’s neck. ‘I can only hope he will not press me for details of your little excursions, innocent though they may be. It might worry him nevertheless.’
She wanted to bring her whip across his smiling face. Angrily, she pulled hard on the reins and, with a kick of her heels, she cantered away out of the yard and onto the track that led up the road to Kinsale. A minute later the cobbles echoed again as a rider in a black cloak followed, a spyglass and a pistol in his pockets.
The rendezvous had been arranged. She was to meet Una Fitzgerald by the ferry at Glanmire and from there they would ride together the twenty miles to Kinsale and meet with Keegan and the children.
The sun was already warm and at Ballygarvan they stopped to water their horses. Una had brought a basket of her father’s oatcakes and a small flagon of his homemade ginger beer. They sat by a stream and ate breakfast.
‘Una, I’ve asked this of so many others but let me ask you too. Why have the Irish always been so dependent on the potato? Why don’t they grow wheat? Why don’t they bake bread?’
Una reached out, touched the tips of Kate’s fingers and began the rhyme: ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man … Kate, I’m running out of fingers. You’ll marry a beggar man.’
‘Una, don’t play. Answer me.’
Una rolled on her back. ‘Kate, you’ll not see bread baked anywhere from Valencia to Malin Head. An oven is unheard of in any village in the whole of Ireland. There’s scarcely a woman among them who knows how to cook anything but a boiled potato.’
‘But they could be taught.’
‘And what would they bake?’
‘Bread, of course.’
‘And you bake bread with …?’
‘With flour, of course. What else?’
‘And where would they get their flour?’
‘Una, you’re teasing me.’
‘No, Kate! It’s just that you assume too much. How can they afford to buy flour when they can barely find the money for
their seed potatoes? If they have enough land to sow wheat or barley or oats, it is to sell to pay their rents. They can’t afford to eat them. They call the potato the lazy crop but what else can a poor man grow to keep his family alive? All he needs is a quarter acre, a spade and a pocketful of faith.’
‘I’m sorry, Una. You must think me stupid but I know so little of the Irish. When I was in England I thought of you all as foreign. Now I am the foreigner and I’m struggling to understand. Why are there so many extremes here? Kindness and hatred all in the same mix.’
Kate waited for her to answer. Una ate the last of her cake and blew away the crumbs. A small bird, yellow and blue, hovered and dropped into the long grass in search of them. Una turned and lay on her stomach.
‘I was born among these people, Kate. All I can ever remember is their fun. They were famous for it. They would help build each other’s cottages, all coming together, the women and children too, gathering the wood and the stones and the thatch. The tenant brought the food and there was always a lot of drink. If he could afford it, he’d have music and as long as it was light they would work to the fiddler’s tunes. There was always a song then, always singing, whatever the reason. A child was born, a girl was married, an old man buried. There was a fiddler at every wake and sometimes even a piper. They would have poteen and whiskey and tobacco for the men, talk for the women. There was such kindness. They would never close a door on a stranger. There’d be a plate of potatoes for him, a jug of buttermilk and a stool for conversation. But it’s all gone and how I miss it! I wonder if it will ever come back.’
Una stood and brushed off the grass. ‘Come, Kate. It is time to meet your lovely schoolteacher. Let’s be off. We’ll go the pretty way.’
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