I had been up several times before, with my father and Pappa and sundry guests, and was familiar with the easiest route. But somehow the climb took longer than expected and as I approached the top the weather began to change. The air lost its crispness and the Galtees to the north-west disappeared as clouds came rolling south over the plain of Tipperary. Before I was halfway down both the clouds and the dusk had over-taken me. But I was too inexperienced to be immediately afraid. For ten or fifteen minutes it all seemed a glorious adventure and I never doubted that I would soon hear the stream and feel the road beneath my feet. Not until darkness came, and the mist turned to rain, and a wind began to moan, did panic threaten. Then I stumbled into an old turf-cutting that should not have been on my route and burst into tears.
Pulling myself out of the icy water – I was soaked through – I recognised the extent of my stupidity. Plainly I was lost for the night and, though I never doubted that I would get home eventually, my parents could not be expected to think so. It is far from clear to me now why I assumed that I would survive a midwinter night on an exposed mountain without food or shelter. It is precisely this irrational faith in one’s own durability which can earn an undeserved reputation for courage.
Having accepted that I was lost, and that no rescue party would dramatically save me because no one knew in which direction I had cycled, I kept moving for what felt like hours, still desperately hoping to find the road. I tried not to think of what my parents must be suffering. Even at ten, mental or emotional suffering had the power to move me as physical suffering could never do. I was now feeling for them a great deal more than if they had, for instance, been seriously injured in a motor-smash.
Already I felt weak with hunger, my leg muscles were throbbing and my sodden clothes seemed heavy as lead. At this point my secret endurance tests were justified. I had never inflicted on myself anything comparable to my present trial, yet I believe that by using the techniques I had so often light-heartedly practised I kept moving for longer than would otherwise have been possible.
I was close to collapse when I came on a low stone wall. Knowing my mountain, I realised that I must now be on its east or north side; had I still been on the south side I would have had to cross a road to reach such a wall. From its existence I deduced a cottage at no great distance and felt a resurgence of hope and energy. I groped on eagerly through the darkness, following the wall, and then came not on a cottage but on an unoccupied animal shelter, built of stone and roofed with turf. Inside were great mounds of cut bracken. I stripped naked and buried myself in a mound and not even the thought of my parents’ distress could keep me awake.
When I opened my eyes the sun was rising and the wind was tidying the clouds away. As I struggled to put on my sodden clothes I felt not only stiff and weak but very ill. Stumbling out of the shelter, I saw a cottage some hundred yards away: but it was deserted. A boreen led down to a narrow road and there I realised I was above Newcastle. Now, in daylight, with my safety assured, I ceased to worry about my parents and felt only a considerable fear of their reaction to my escapade. I sat by the roadside to await rescue and in my debilitated condition the imminence of my mother’s just wrath was too much for me. I was weeping dismally when an astonished farmer came along on his donkey-cart and picked me up.
The rest is a blur. For some reason I was taken to a priest’s house – perhaps there was no local gardai barracks – and fed and put to bed by the housekeeper. When I came to I was in my own bed, running a high temperature and feeling too terrible even to want to read. And I had to stay in bed for the next fortnight while there were mutterings in the background about pleurisy.
My parents never once reproached me for having put them through eighteen hours of hell; possibly they considered the experience itself sufficient punishment. It must also have been obvious that I had learned my lesson and would never again embark on such a reckless adventure. I willingly promised to tell my mother, in future, exactly where I was going when I left home for a day’s cycling; and this satisfied her, though both Mrs Mansfield and Father Power urged her to put me on a much tighter rein. Curiously, I felt during those years that she molly-coddled me to humiliation by closely watching my diet, making me change my clothes if they got damp and sending me to bed at seven-thirty. Yet short of throwing me into the middle of the Irish Sea in January, and telling me to swim for the shore, she could scarcely have been less fussy about my physical safety.
Years later my mother admitted that despite being frantically worried throughout that long night she had known I was safe. My father, on the other hand, had decided by six-thirty that I had been killed. But apart from notifying the gardai and checking nearby roadsides there was nothing immediate to be done and my mother had discouraged the formation of what could only have been an ineffectual search-party. Father Power and Mrs Mansfield had both spent the night at our house, providing moral support, and by breakfast-time even Mrs Mansfield was not entirely sober. (On Christmas Day, and during periods of extreme nervous tension, she coyly accepted the addition of a little whiskey to her tea. Two teaspoonfuls made her quite merry and three induced a degree of hilarity she would normally have considered most reprehensible.)
When the good news was brought from Newcastle, Father Power drove my father to collect me; our own car had been put on blocks by this date. Surprisingly few of the neighbours ever heard of my misadventure and I was grateful to my parents for not publicising it; to have become the laughing stock of the whole town would have been intolerable. Now I feel that in such ways they were over-protective and that it was wrong to spare me this part of my punishment. It would have done my bumptious ten-year-old pride no harm at all to be wounded in such a fashion. I did of course voluntarily confide in Mark, from whom I hid nothing. With him I felt no need, either then or later, to project an image of myself that was an improvement on reality.
By 1942 I had come to detest those educational Sunday walks so much enjoyed by my father; and one day I decided to use cycling as an excuse to break with tradition.
My mother looked stricken when I defiantly announced that I would not be going for any more long walks with Daddy because Sundays must henceforth be left free to practise long-distance cycling. This transparent excuse did not for a moment deceive her and after a tiny, tense silence she said quietly. ‘But that’s absurd. You have plenty of time for cycling during the week.’
Then the truth came out – or what at that time I imagined to be the truth. ‘Daddy’s so boring!’ I exclaimed miserably. ‘I can’t stand it and I’m not going with him again and anyway I’m ten so why should I be forced to go for walks like a little girl?’
Staring at my mother, I was appalled to realise that she, like myself, was close to tears. Then I knew that she saw my point. But her first loyalty was to a man whose vulnerability was not any the less extreme for being so far below the surface. Recovering herself, she reasoned with me gently, tacitly admitting that I had a case but stressing how unkind it would be to rebuff a loving father who so enjoyed our weekly walks. As I listened I knew that she was right, but I didn’t care. Or rather, I was determined to act as though I didn’t care. Deep down I cared so much that the guilt bred by this calculated cruelty remained with me for twenty years.
Why did I feel such an overwhelming compulsion to detach from my father, even though I fully recognised that my doing so would hurt him as perhaps nothing else could? Had our inability to communicate driven me to an extremity of frustration that could only be relieved by meting out the punishment of rejection? For he was the grown-up, the powerful one and it must all be his fault … We might have been basically indifferent to one another, as parents and children quite often are, and then we could have casually sustained an amiable, meaningless relationship. But our bonds were very strong; we understood each other intuitively in a way which to me, on the threshold of adolescence, may have seemed a violation of my spiritual privacy.
I do not know how my mother explained away my decision t
o my father, or if she even tried to soften the blow. But I never again went for a walk with him and he accepted my defection without a comment, a query or a protest of any sort.
A few months later, while we were all in Dublin, an incident occurred which I now regard, perhaps exaggeratedly, as one of the saddest wasted opportunities of a lifetime. My father had arranged to meet me at an aunt’s house for lunch, but he was late; half-an-hour passed, and an hour, and still he did not come. Then it was lunchtime and we all sat down to our grilled cutlets and creamed carrots. There were meringues for pudding, but by that stage I was in a daze of terror and grief. My father must have been killed in a car-crash – he was a notoriously absent-minded driver and had borrowed my aunt’s Morris. I felt certain that I would never see him again and remorse about my cruel aloofness devastated me. But I must not make a fool of myself by fussing and fidgeting in front of all those grown-up cousins who were accepting Uncle Fergus’s non-appearance with what seemed to me heartless placidity.
My father had in fact telephoned at twelve-thirty to explain that he had been delayed, but no one had bothered to inform me. When at last he arrived I nonchalantly said ‘Hello’ before slipping away to the lavatory to be sick. (Even today the mere sight of a meringue makes me feel queasy.) Then I went out to the garden to talk to the dog.
Later, as my father drove me back to Charleston Avenue, I desperately wanted to tell him about all that I had suffered at lunchtime because I thought he was dead. But I could not. Many years passed before I realised that even a slight reference to my ordeal might have significantly altered our relationship at a crucial stage. After that summer, we grew further and further apart on the surface while retaining our indestructible and uncomfortable mutual flair for reading each other’s thoughts.
As my leg muscles grew stronger my cycling ambitions grew bolder and soon I was longing to cycle the twenty-five miles to Helvick Head. But fifty miles in one day sounded a long way. Frighteningly long, for one who had never yet attempted more than thirty. The project began to worry me. I passionately wanted to achieve those fifty miles yet I dreaded failure. It would be so un-live-downable for ever if I could not make the last few miles and had to signal for help. Eventually I mentioned the idea to my mother, very casually, as though it were a matter of no great consequence.
‘Probably I could easily do it,’ I said; and years later she told me that as I spoke I looked at her with an expression of the most pathetic doubt and anxiety.
But she kept the conversation on the casual note I imagined I had sounded. ‘Of course you can do it,’ she said cheerfully, ‘if you want to do it enough.’
Thus encouraged, I left for Helvick at six o’clock on a radiant June morning – a morning all blue and gold and green. The air smelt damp, warm, rich and full of promises. From every tree, bush and hedge came the harmonious confusion of bird-song, seeming to celebrate my own joyous excitement. As I turned towards the coast, and settled to the rhythm of pedalling, I experienced an exaltation I have never forgotten. The vigour of my body seemed to merge with the eager abundance all around me and in an almost sacramental way I became totally aware of myself as a part of nature. Unconsciously, I had taken another step away from the faith of my fathers.
On the previous evening the wireless had guaranteed good weather, but my mother pretended not to have heard. Before I went to bed she gave me the first pound note I had ever been in charge of (to be returned if not needed) and remarked that should the weather deteriorate, or my bicycle break down, or some other disaster occur, I could spend the night in a Dungarvan hotel.
In fact there was no hitch of any kind. By six-thirty I was home, nauseated with exhaustion and bursting with pride. The last twelve miles had been torture, but I would not tarnish the glory of my achievement by admitting this. And even during that terrible final stage part of me had relished the sense of power derived from driving my body beyond what had seemed, at a certain point, to be its limit.
Yet without my mother’s moral support I would never have had the courage to attempt that trip at that age. It was fortunate for me that she was not as possessive as she was dominating. Her influence over me was so strong throughout childhood that had she wished to destroy or stunt me she could certainly have done so. Instead, I was aware of being regarded – and respected – as a separate personality rather than as an incidental appendage to the adults in the household. At the time I took this for granted: now I know what an uncommon attitude it was in the Ireland of my youth.
Some people imagined that my unusual upbringing was a result of being the only child of an invalid. But my mother’s mothering would have been no less odd, I feel certain, had she been in rude health with a family of ten. As a perfectionist, and a woman who saw motherhood as an important career, she approached child-rearing in what I can only call an artistic spirit. Given as raw material a newly conceived child, she saw it as her duty and privilege to form an adult who would be as physically, mentally and morally healthy as intelligent rearing could make it. Physically she was completely successful. The other aspects of a child’s health are, alas, less amenable to maternal regulation.
My childhood diet was generally considered freakish. Up to the age of sixteen I drank four pints of milk daily and was allowed no tea, coffee or fizzy drinks. Sweets, chocolate, ice-cream, cakes, sweet biscuits, white bread and white sugar were also forbidden. My ‘treats’ were muscatel raisins and fat, glossy dates in gay boxes. Included in my staple diet were raw beef, raw liver, raw vegetables, wholemeal bread, pinhead porridge and as much fresh fruit and cheese as I could be induced to eat. Naturally I flourished. And one can understand what it must have meant to my mother to look at me as an adolescent and to know that I was capable of enjoying, to the fullest extent, what she had lost.
8
Fanciful though this may sound, the Blackwater River was among the chief and best-loved companions of my youth. To me, it has always seemed Lismore’s most tangible link with the saints and sinners and scholars of the past. Many centuries ago it was most appropriately known as Nem, an Irish word meaning ‘Heaven’. Much later, Spenser mentioned it in The Faerie Queene – ‘Swifte Awnaduff which of the English man is Cal’de Blackewater’. Later still, some enthusiastic Victorian tourist (Thackeray, I think) decided to rename it the Irish Rhine and this inanity – as absurd as calling Swat the Switzerland of the East – has earned him the undying gratitude of the Irish Tourist Board.
The Blackwater – one of Europe’s great salmon rivers – rises near Killarney and flows for seventy miles through the countries of Kerry, Cork and Waterford. In the twelfth century both Dromana House and Lismore Castle were granted charters entitling their owners to extensive fishing rights and even now these charters of King John of England remain good in law, much to the annoyance of certain local rod fishers.
A river shows different aspects to the fisherman, the naturalist, the trader, the artist, the soldier, the boatman and the swimmer. I formed my relationship with the Blackwater as a swimmer. Before I can remember, my father regularly immersed me in the cool, dark silkiness of its depths and I swam almost as soon as I could walk. It is a good thing to have had a river among one’s mentors; its strength develops the body, its beauty develops the soul, its agelessness develops the imagination. Also, its moods teach respect for the mindless power of nature. The Blackwater is very moody: it has deep holes, sudden floods, hidden rocks, tricky currents and sly weeds. It claims at least three lives a year and I was not allowed to bathe alone until I was twelve. Although I could easily have broken this rule without being detected, it never occurred to me to do so.
Our shared devotion to the Blackwater had always been important to my father and myself. It was not simply that we were both keen swimmers; our bathing was as much a rite as a pastime and during the summer, whether the weather was summery or not, we met outside the Library at five-thirty every afternoon and went together to the river. But at the beginning of this summer of 1942, only a few months after I ha
d spurned those Sunday afternoon mobile lectures, what was to become of our traditional bathing-rite? I could not decently imply that I was now prepared to endure my father’s company as a convenience. Yet if the custom were allowed to lapse my swimming season, which normally opened in mid-May, would have to be postponed until Pappa arrived at the beginning of July. My father might have been forgiven had he chosen to leave me excruciatingly impaled on the horns of this dilemma. Instead, he remarked at breakfast-time one fair May morning, as he had been remarking on such mornings for as long as I could remember, ‘I think we’ll need our togs today’. This was much more than I deserved, and I appreciated it.
A new phase of our relationship had begun. I was consciously in control and my father no longer tried to be educational without direct encouragement. Astronomy was then one of my main interests and it pleased me to be lectured on it day after day. Probably an observer would have detected no strain as my father and I considered the solar system. Yet a great sadness underlay our relationship, an awareness that somehow we had failed each other and that what now existed between us was merely a civilised façade to conceal failure.
Another of my hobbies at that time was the Black Death and related subjects. For a few years past I had been fascinated by diseases, epidemics, surgery, new medical discoveries and the like. Had I not been so committed to the writing life I would have wished to be a surgeon. My interest in corpses and skeletons was profound. I had never actually seen a human corpse, but I longed to observe closely the phenomenon of putrefaction. For this purpose I installed a dead rabbit in my bedroom. My observations, however, were unsympathetically terminated when the rabbit reached an interesting and therefore perceptible state. In the same cause, I cultivated the society of an aged British Army pensioner and begged him to describe in detail all the corpses with which he had become acquainted during the First World War. But he was tiresomely evasive, plainly considering me mad and morbid. So I had to make do with disintegrated skeletons, which could not even be brought home for study. At the beginning of my osseous phase I had pranced into the dining-room one lunchtime brandishing a skull and expecting my parents to greet it rapturously. But my father had declared the appropriation of human bones to be unseemly, irreverent and possibly unhygienic and I was made to return my trophy to its source without delay. Fortunately – because I was hungry at the time – its source was nearby. In those days the ancient graveyard surrounding St Carthage’s Cathedral was a wilderness, full of briars and romantic melancholy, and by visiting it shortly before a burial one might find, beside the newly dug grave, a femur, a few ribs, a length of spine or even, on very good days, a skull. My ambition was eventually to assemble a whole skeleton by hiding my bits of bones in the furthest corner of the graveyard and adding to them from other ancient graveyards in the area, when the local paper informed me a burial was about to take place. But it was all too difficult and in the end my Identikit skeleton came to nothing. Or rather, it came to an embarrassingly large heap of bones which, belatedly inspired by some flicker of respect for the mortal remains of various people, I surreptitiously transferred to an open grave on a wet December afternoon when no one was likely to be about.
Wheels Within Wheels Page 12