The Star of the Sea

by Joseph O'Connor

  He walked around the rear of the black stone church, opened his cuff, tugged up his sleeve. Improvised a tourniquet from his New College necktie. Took what he needed from the pocket of his overcoat.

  The spike pierced his skin with a small, clean burn. A bright bead of blood appeared from the puncture and he soaked it dry with a monogrammed handkerchief of his father’s. Dullness flooded him: a soporific heaviness. He turned to leave.

  And that was when he saw her.

  Standing in the rusted gateway with a baby in her arms.

  She was wearing a black bodice and a dark green skirt; laced black boots that came up to her ankles; and it came into his mind for no good reason that he could not remember seeing her wearing anything on her feet.

  A ribbon was tied around her frost-white neck; a twist of dried rushes around her fragile wrist. She was humming a ballad of broken love: quietly, coldly, with graven stillness. Crows rose up from the scrubland behind her like fragments of charred paper borne on the breeze. Her eyes had a defeated, closed-down look, but otherwise she had not changed in any way he could see. It shocked him how very little she had changed. A little thinner, that was all. A little more pale. But her hair was still beautiful: lustrous and black.

  He tried to smile. She did not smile back. Unbuttoning her bodice, she put the infant to her right breast and continued lilting it the ancient tune. He knew the song. He had heard it often. It was said that if you sang it to an enemy, he died.

  ‘Mary?’

  She took a sharp step back from him but never stopped humming. He watched the tiny child as it suckled, as her fingertips stroked its downy head around the fontanelle. The child gave a stir and wearily puked. Weakness trembled the watcher’s legs. He wanted to sit. He wanted to run. A hot, strong thirst was salting his mouth.

  ‘Is everything all right, David?’

  He became aware of his wife and Johnnyjoe Burke standing behind him. Without saying a word she had turned and left the gateway, cradling the baby close as she pushed through the nettles. He watched her walk away across the muddy, thorned morass, the hem of her skirt knocking spores from the ragwort.

  ‘Your Lordship? Are you sick, sir?’

  He managed a laugh. ‘Why would I be sick?’

  ‘Your face is terrible white, sir. Should I get Doctor Suffield?’

  ‘No no. Just rather gave me a start. Seeing Miss Duane after all this time.’

  His wife was giving him a curious look.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to mind that one, sir. She’s gone odd as bedamned.’

  ‘What was her name again, Johnny? – Mary or something, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, that one twasn’t Mary, sir. Tis her sister. Grace Gifford.’

  Merridith turned to him slowly. ‘You don’t mean little Grace?’

  ‘Married now, sir. Living over in Screeb.’

  The black-plumed horses were whinnying as the hearse was led away: down the rutted hill and towards the hungry town of Clifden.

  ‘And her parents? Both well, I hope.’

  ‘The mother’s gone on a year now, sir. The father six months. May they rest in peace.’

  ‘Oh dear. I didn’t know. That is very sad news.’

  ‘Aye, sir. Old Mrs Duane, Lord have mercy on her – she had a great fondness for you, sir. She spoke about you often, so she did.’

  ‘I was terribly fond of her, too. She was a very natural person.’ His words sounded so trite that he hated himself. He wanted to tell Burke that Margaret Duane had seemed a mother to him, but somehow that seemed the wrong thing to say.

  ‘And what’s-her-name – Mary – would be married herself now, I suppose.’

  ‘Aye, sir, this past ten year and more. Living up near Rusheenduff. Little babogue of her own now, too, I believe. A girleen I think.’

  ‘She keeps in touch with us from time to time, does she?’

  ‘I seen her in Galway Market the other week I think.’ Burke gave a dismissive wave and looked at the stony ground. ‘But she doesn’t be coming down this way much any more, sir. Not for a good many year. She’s her own little clan up there now.’

  ‘I wonder – would it be possible to visit Mr and Mrs Duane’s grave. Just to pay one’s respects. Do you think we might arrange it?’

  ‘You haven’t much time, sir, I know. You’ll be wanting to head back to London as soon as you can.’

  ‘It would only take an hour. I assume it’s at Carna; wouldn’t it be? At the RC chapel?’

  ‘I don’t think you understand me, sir. You’ve been away a while now.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Johnny? How do you mean?’

  Burke spoke very quietly, as though ashamed of a crime. ‘Their grave – it isn’t known, sir. They died in Galway workhouse.’

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE UNPAID ACCOUNT

  IN WHICH DAVID MERRIDITH COMES INTO HIS KINGDOM.

  The steadfast plack of the casement clock, the odour of dust and antique leather so redolent of the headmaster’s study at Winchester.

  He would build a new pier and a moorings for the fishermen, perhaps a model school for the smallholders’ children. Get in a proper estate manager to help the tenants; some local man, a young man, who was clever and decent. Maybe send him to the Agricultural College in Scotland. Teach the people about soil and hygiene. Give them the benefit of modern ideas. Encourage them to widen their old-fashioned thinking, to change their outmoded customs and unwise ways. This reliance on the ‘lumper’ or ‘horse potato’, for example, when it was clearly so prone to infestation by blight – that could all stop now. Merridith would stop it. Kingscourt would be the best-managed estate in Ireland, or anywhere in the United Kingdom for that matter.

  The heavy door opened, ending his private thoughts. The lawyer came stately into the dark panelled chamber like an executioner entering the condemned man’s cell. He sat at the desk without uttering a word; broke open the seal on the scroll of vellum.

  ‘This is the last will and testament of Thomas David Oliver Merridith, R.N., K.C.B., Admiral of the White Ensign of the Queen’s Fleet, the noble Lord Kingscourt, the Viscount of Roundstone, the eighth Earl of Cashel and Carna.’

  ‘What, all of them?’ Merridith’s dowager aunt chuckled feebly: to a disapproving glower from the notary public.

  It commenced with a number of small bequests. Fifty guineas to a fund for indigent seamen, sixty to establish a naval bursary at Wellington College: ‘for a boy of the labouring classes who would serve his country but whose family’s means do not come up to his abilities’. Two hundred pounds per annum to the new workhouse at Clifden: ‘to be utilised for the benefit of the women and children only, my beloved son David to be Chief Trustee, and sole executor of my entire estate’.

  His assortment of rare and extinct zoologica was willed ‘to some respected institution of animal scholarship, preferably open to the poor and the young; that the fruits of a lifetime of cataloguing and classification may be shared, and the seed of the pleasure of solitary learning planted’. It was stressed that the collection was to be exhibited intact, properly insured for its full value and named in memory of his late wife: ‘The Verity Kingscourt Memorial Collection’. Merridith’s eldest sister Emily was bequeathed her father’s library, also his collection of ancient charts and maps. His other sister, Natasha, was to receive a number of paintings, her father’s nautical instruments and his Erard grand piano. Small trust funds had been established for both the Earl’s daughters, ‘to be annulled, naturally, on the occasion of their marriages’. Twenty pounds was to go to Mrs Margaret Duane of Carna, ‘in thanks for her services in the care of my children’. Lord Kingscourt’s two best horses were left to his stable manager, a local tenant farmer named John Joseph Burke: ‘as a mark of gratitude to a true and loyal friend’.

  At that last phrase, Emily started to quietly weep. ‘Poor Papa.’ Merridith crossed to her quickly and took her by the hand. That only seemed to make her more upset. ‘Whatever shall we do without him, Davey?
’

  ‘Shall I continue, My Lord?’ the lawyer asked barely.

  Merridith nodded. He put an arm around his sister.

  ‘The demesne, dwelling house, outbuildings, fishery, creamery and sundry other lands now held in tenantry at Kingscourt in Her Majesty’s County of Galway, are left in entirety to the Law Life Insurance Company of London to which said properties have been mortgaged in full.’

  The solid tick of the clock: how it seemed to fill up the room. Down in the street a cart trundled past. He could hear the clop of the drayhorse’s hooves, the lonesome cry of a costermonger. His aunt, his sisters did not even glance at him. They knew the moment was too shameful for direct looks. They had bowed their heads, or gazed at their hands, as the lawyer’s voice continued its sombre enumeration. The Latinate cadences of England’s laws. The antique French phrasings of law’s own poetry. The knifely precision of Merridith’s disinheritance.

  When the reading was finished, the lawyer expressed his sympathies. Discreetly he asked Merridith to remain behind for a moment. There were a number of matters arising which must be discussed. The ladies need not be troubled by such trifling preoccupations at this time when their grief was so natural and fresh.

  From a drawer he took a dossier the size of a family bible, stuffed with letters from banks and insurance companies, relating to the mortgaging of Kingscourt. His father had granted lien on the property fifteen years ago, to raise funds for an investment in a bauxite mine in the Transvaal. But he had been poorly advised and the venture had collapsed. It was profoundly to be hoped that the sale of the estate would cover at least the capital sum. The value of land in Ireland had been plummeting lately. But we would worry about that when the time came to worry about it. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. And there were matters that would have to be worried about now.

  In the food shortages of ’22 and ’26 and ’31, His Lordship had spent considerable sums importing grains for charitable purposes. Apparently at the suggestion of the late Lady Verity, he had commissioned a brigantine, at very great expense, to fetch a cargo of India meal from South Carolina to Galway. Whether such had been an entirely judicious course (or not) was perhaps not a matter for the lawyer to adjudge. Certainly in the wake of those unhappy events, promised rental income from the estate had failed to materialise. The lands, in fact, had been allowed badly to deteriorate and had not been adequately maintained for several decades.

  All of the late Earl’s accounts at his bank had been overdrawn for some years. There were a number of other unpaid loans, some considerable and long overdue, secured against numerous sizeable investments, which had either not realised or been disappointing in the extreme. One hesitated to employ such an indelicate word, but the late Earl was in effect bankrupt in all but name. Large amounts were owing to vintners and horse dealers; also to bookbinders and dealers in animal curiosities. A very substantial sum had been borrowed from a certain Blake of Tully, fourteen years ago now, at moderate but still significant interest. The debt was being called in under threat of litigation. The Commander wished to extend his landholdings and was being prevented from so doing by the non-payment of the deficit. It appeared at least a prima facie case of nonfeasance. As sole executor, Merridith was personally liable. Court action would be expensive and highly unpleasant.

  There was also the small matter of the lawyer’s own account which had accrued over thirty years and never been paid. Perhaps now might be an opportune time to clear matters up, as it were. He pushed the crested parchment rather contritely across the desk, as though surrendering a piece of pornography of which he was ashamed.

  The sum could have bought David Merridith a mansion on Sloane Square. ‘You’ll take a promissory cheque, I expect, will you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think there is any –’ The attorney paused. ‘That is to say –’ He stopped and began again. ‘Whenever you have time to attend to the matter will be quite sufficient, My Lord. You will have your mind on other subjects at the present.’

  Merridith took out his debit book and wrote a draft for thirty-five thousand guineas, knowing he had less than two hundred pounds at his bank. The lawyer took it without looking at it and put it into a file.

  ‘I expect Your Lordship must be feeling a little taken aback by developments.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I mean the position regarding the lands in Ireland and so on. Your Lordship must have had certain expectations.’

  ‘Naturally Father explained the situation some years ago. We had a good talk. I quite understood his position.’

  ‘I had no idea Your Lordship and the Admiral were so close. I should imagine that must be a great comfort to you now.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You were with him at the end, of course?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  The lawyer nodded tactfully and lowered his eyes. ‘If I may say so, sir – your father was a great man. A man who deserved better than providence allowed him. We who were destined to come into his orbit were really most fortunate. If only we knew it.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘There it is. There it is. We know not the hour, sir.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Still – you’ll receive the most important thing, of course. The treasure which no vicissitude can ever depreciate.’

  ‘What is that?’

  The lawyer stared across at him as though the question was ridiculous. ‘Well his title, of course, My Lord. What else?’

  The ninth Earl’s maiden address in the House of Lords was on a proposed change to the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), which had made hard labour a condition for entry to workhouses. The speech was reported in The Times the following morning under the headline NEW CALLS FOR DECORUM IN THE HOUSE. Laura snipped it out and pasted it into a scrapbook.

  I thank My Noble Lord for the warmth of his remarks but I confess myself ashamed to stand in this House tonight. This place which gave its benison to one of the most ignominious manoeuvres ever to originate from a civilised parliament; this repulsive contrivance for wrenching the grief of desolate widowhood; for refusing the hand of friendship to needy age; for incarcerating the foundling in Bastilles of neglect and for sentencing to beggary the betrayed and abandoned poor.

  Three hundred miles north-west of the point where he was standing, a woman was passing a milestone for Chapelizod. She was hungry, this idle tramp: this fodder for the workhouse. Her feet were bleeding badly and her legs were very weak. Not so long beforehand, she had given birth in a field; but the ratepayer would not be burdened by having to keep the child alive. She walked easterly, quite slowly, in the direction of Dublin, and beside her flowed the Liffey on its way to the sea. On the sea must be a ship that could take her to Liverpool. Glasgow or Liverpool. It did not really matter. All that mattered now was to stay on her mangled feet: to somehow keep walking through the town of Chapelizod. Her name would not be mentioned in the House that sunny evening; nor in The Times for the following day.

  As she came to a brow and saw the sea in the distance, those debating her across that sea were remarking on something curious. The extraordinary passion with which the new peer was speaking; how odd was his ardour, his clear sense of outrage, when the gallery was almost as empty as the chamber itself. Hansard records the making of a genteel intervention.

  MISTER SPEAKER: Might I respectfully counsel His Noble Lordship that although some Noble Lords may be a trifle hard of hearing, and although his Hibernian tones are pleasant in the extreme, there is really no need to raise them to quite such an operatic degree. (Laughter from the House. Cries of ‘hear hear’.)*

  It was as though he was not making a speech at all, many said. As though he was shouting at someone in the room, some enemy he had long been waiting to attack. All the more strange when you looked up the records and saw that the man who had seconded the original bill was Thomas David Kingscourt of Carna, the Viscount of Roundstone: the maiden Earl’s father.

  The Chief Director of the
company agreed to a compromise. Forty thousand guineas would have to be paid immediately, the remaining three hundred thousand at the end of the year. Those were the very best terms that could be offered. They had only been possible because of Lord Kingscourt’s position. Nobody wished to bankrupt a peer of the realm; to auction the lands of his birthright would be utterly unthinkable. We Old Wykehamists had to stick together now.

  The literary evenings stopped. The sculptures were sold, then the paintings and finally the entire library. The Renaissance fresco was purchased by a Yorkshire grain merchant who was building a Gothic mansion on the outskirts of Sheffield. The total raised was a little short of nineteen thousand. It wasn’t enough, the company said.

  Laura sold the jewellery she had inherited from her mother, having first ordered paste copies to be made of every piece. She dreaded letting her father know what course she was taking or the circumstances that had caused her to take it. If he ever discovered either, he would be enraged to a fit. Six thousand guineas were raised at the auction at Sotheby’s, a disappointing sum given their actual value. It was still not enough, said the company’s banker. The instalment required was forty, or the lands would be sold.

  The rent on the house at Tite Street was eight thousand a year. If they gave it up and took the children out of school, they could scrape together the forty thousand. The plan was sold to the boys as a great adventure; similarly sold to Laura’s father. The family would be removing to Galway for a while. Clean air. Open fields. The ancestral lands.