Letters From Constance

by MARY HOCKING

  The Met. Wrens are billeted in a small house on the outskirts of the town. From here, we can bicycle into the country in a matter of minutes. Yesterday we hitch-hiked to Cushendun, which is a Catholic village. The man who gave us a lift advised us to get out before dark. One never knows with the Irish whether they are serious or just amusing themselves at one’s expense. Certainly, the locals weren’t friendly. The woman in the post office would have liked the stamps to be heavier so she could have thrown them at us. It all seems rather comic, but we did get out before dark.

  An Irish officer tells me they still celebrate the Battle of the Boyne, The Orangemen swagger through the streets, beating drums and blowing fifes; then in the evening they all get drunk and the Protestants beat up the Catholics, It sounds a bit silly to me. I mean, how long ago was the Battle of the Boyne? I don’t think I shall be able to take all this Irish feuding seriously, even though the Catholics do kill an English soldier every now and again to discourage the others.

  This seems to be a land haunted by the past. The countryside abounds in ruins - not English ruins, with holes for windows and slates off the roof; whoever ruined these buildings did a thorough job of it, the walls are mostly down to shoulder level. Sometimes one comes across imposing iron gates with nothing beyond to show that a house has ever been there. It tinges the countryside with melancholy. The cottages snuggle so close to the ground that at a distance they seem to be no more than an outcrop of rock.

  I have attracted the attention of Number One, a prodigious roué. He is aware my heart has been broken and that in consequence I am very fragile. His intentions appear to be honourable. He is nearly forty and treats me like a daughter. We go to concerts and he tells me no one can enjoy music fully without having experienced the joys of sex. It wounds him to think of how incapacitated I am. I look at all the people listening with glazed expressions and wonder whether they are throbbing with sex. He thinks I am in danger of becoming sentimental about the Irish, whom he regards as bog peasants, and he plans to take me to the West the better to demonstrate his point. I don’t think I shall come to any harm with him. A sheep in wolf’s clothing.

  Let me have your news as soon as you can.

  Love,

  Constance

  Belfast

  March, 1945

  My darling,

  I read your letter in growing astonishment and outrage. He needs time to think? What is this all about? He had an unconscionable long time to think before you gave in to his pleas. How come he didn’t discover he was so sensitive then?

  I am amazed at your ability to stand back from a situation in which you are so deeply involved and see yourself as only a part of the whole. Were it me, the entire world would be reduced to a tiny globe containing only me and my woe. Yet you see Jeffery with such clarity, undistorted by bitterness. You believe he wants you above all else, but he can’t live on the level of his own longings; he is a man who will always run for safety and his tragedy is that he knows it. I don’t see Jeffery as the stuff of tragedy. I see him as a bit player who will always miss his entrances and fluff his most important lines.

  Just supposing, when he has done his thinking - and always assuming he won’t be posted to some unit where he might actually have to fight - he decides he wants to come back. What will you do?

  Darling Sheila, the future must hold so much for you. Be not too generous with this craven man.

  My love,

  Constance

  A long way beyond the back of beyond,

  Connemara

  April, 1945

  My dear Sheila,

  I’m here, not with the roué as you might have imagined, but with an Irish officer I may have casually mentioned in a previous letter. His name is Fergus Byrne. He is twenty-nine (I winkled that out of the Commander’s writer). He is tall and has the sort of frame which looks as if it had left space for future development. His hair is soft and reddish and fluffy and I look at it fondly because I can see it will part company with him some time in his thirties; it’s that kind of hair and it is already in retreat. I don’t think he will look particularly distinguished bald, but he has a good, nobbly sort of face which will rise above adversity and the eyes won’t change - blue and tending to look into the far distance where something amusing seems always to be happening. A generous mouth.

  All this on a rather short acquaintance. He asked me to spend this short leave with him at a time when we hardly knew each other. His intentions appear to be honourable. Is it simply that he likes my company? Are we to remain good friends?

  We have spent hours trudging across moorland and scrambling over rocks. There have been times, so bumpy is our passage, when physical contact has been made abruptly and I have not found this unpleasing. On the occasions when we have touched, he has seemed to hold me steady as though he were keeping us both on course. For what? I would like to think that this forbearance represents what I am sure Miss Addiscombe would have called respect. He is a Catholic. Do you think Catholics are particularly respectful, or could it be he is indulging in some hitherto undisclosed Irish roguery?

  Whatever happens, we have shared experiences I shall always remember. The place where we are staying is out in the country and out in the country in Connemara bears no resemblance to what passes for country in Suffolk or Essex or places south. The fields are littered with rocks and at a distance the landscape is like one gigantic, untended graveyard. Closer inspection reveals that some of the rocks are in fact dwellings. At one such dwelling we stopped, as I thought, for a drink. The woman who served us had red hair which puzzled me, it was so fiery. Red hair fades quickly. Yet I couldn’t believe her hair was dyed; it had life still, which was more than could be said for her tired face. It was a shock to realise, studying her while she talked to Fergus, that she was probably still in her thirties. The brew was strong and the afternoon had dwindled before it occurred to me that Fergus was expecting I would consent to pass a night in this place. Oh, they are a cunning folk! The red-haired woman showed me the room with such pride I couldn’t have refused it, even though the space was so restricted I could see no way I was going to fit in, save by sleeping with my body inside and my head out of the window. Later, when the woman brought me a basin of cold water, the children crowded into the doorway to look upon this strange creature which had arrived in their midst. We have now been here three days.

  The room is on the first floor, but, as the place was built to house dwarfs, when I lean out of the window I am nose to nose with the donkey who is rubbing his head against the wall in an endeavour to kill off a few fleas. Fergus sleeps on the floor somewhere downstairs. He seems quite at home here and long after I have retired I can hear him talking to the man in what passes for a bar. He is talking down there now as I write this by torchlight. He is a great talker - not a chatterer, but a serious, long-distance talker.

  Yesterday, strangers came. Not an Irishman with an Englishwoman in tow, but two creatures so rare they might have come from another planet. Americans. I swear the word was carried around the whole of Connemara: people running by day and riding donkeys by night brought the news to the furthest croft. By morning there were as many people here as if a fair had pitched its tents.

  It is a bizarre and, I feel, sad little tale. Imagine. A man and a woman, brother and sister, both in the US Army, have managed to get a few precious days’ leave in Ireland. They have come on a quest, seeking their grandfather’s home. The only trouble is they do not know exactly where in Connemara grandfather lived. Communication is not easy. I am beginning to realise it is fallacious to think that all the people who speak a version of the English language are thereby enabled to understand one another - particularly when one of the parties has another language up its sleeve. Furthermore, I am not sure how high a place understanding has in the Irish order of priorities.

  In the first instance, the man, Dan, made his approach to the wrong person.

  They were standing in the lane when Fergus and I met them, looking a
t the stone-littered hills. By what series of lies and half¬truths they had been led this far, we never discovered. Betty was saying, ‘I remember Dad telling us it looked good on a fine day but that at other times it was like a stonemason’s yard. I didn’t expect the fields to be so small, though - like the squares in a piece of patchwork.’ Later, they told us they came from Wyoming.

  Betty said to us, ‘Grandad was such a big man.’

  Her brother said, ‘We never met Grandad, Betty.’

  ‘But Dad said . . .’

  ‘Dad just naturally made everything sound big.’

  It was then that the old woman came round the side of one of the outhouses. When I first met her she struck me as being a creature of unfathomable wiles and nothing which has happened subsequently has caused me to change my mind. Now here she was carrying a bucket, wearing a shawl over her head, shuffling her feet, muttering to herself and generally behaving like a character out of Riders to the Sea. I am sure her keening would be the wonder of the Western World. The brother and sister advanced to meet her. She put the bucket down by the outhouse wall and studied them. Americans don’t melt naturally into alien landscape. She gave a crow of triumph. ‘And will you be from America?’

  They were delighted. He began to make introductions, but she interrupted, ‘Then I expect you’ll be the film folk that are staying down at Spiddal?’

  ‘Film folk?’ I said to Fergus.

  ‘Since Flaherty made Man of Aran they have been awaiting another film-maker as eagerly as the Second Coming.’

  Betty was shocked. ‘Oh, no, ma’am. We’re from Wyoming.’

  Dan said, ‘Is it possible I am addressing Mrs Sadie Farrell?’

  An obstinate expression came over the old woman’s face; this, I have observed, is the expression most natural to her. Dan tried the direct approach, ‘Would you be Mrs Sadie Farrell?’ A measure of craftiness was added to obstinacy.

  Dan said to us, ‘I guess these folk don’t trust strangers all that much.’

  Fergus began, ‘I don’t think it’s that so much as . . .’, but Betty was speaking again and Fergus never managed to say what was in his mind, although I think he could well have made his voice heard had he chosen.

  ‘You see, Mrs Farrell, I think we are probably related.’ Betty’s voice was solemn and a little unsteady. ‘My father was James Farrell. He would have been your nephew, perhaps?’ Her hopeful pause was answered by an angry glare. Confused, she said, ‘Well, cousin, perhaps? We can work out the family tree later, I guess. He emigrated to the States when he was little more than a boy. But then you know all about that. . . . He used to tell so many tales about his home here, particularly about his grandfather.’ The old woman muttered under her breath. Betty said anxiously, ‘You are Mrs Farrell, aren’t you?’

  There was a long pause, then the old woman turned away and emptied out the malodorous contents of the bucket.

  Dan said quietly to Betty, ‘Father never kept in touch, Betty; it must have been bitter for his folks.’

  The old woman picked up the steaming bucket and began to walk away, then turned and looked over her shoulder. She said with a smile which sat ill on her distrusting old face, ‘Will you be taking tea, maybe?’

  The children and the donkey watched as the two Americans stooped to enter the front room of the shebeen. The red-haired woman came forward with a baby in her arms. She looked tired and hot. The old woman said, ‘Will I make the tea?’

  Fergus and I remained outside, observing what went on in company with the children and the donkey. Betty walked round the room examining its meagre contents. The red-haired woman had gone into the kitchen to join the old woman; they were talking in what I took to be Gaelic and the red-haired woman sounded cross. The baby was grizzling.

  Dan said to Betty, ‘I don’t think we should hope for too much. We may be related to these folk, but we are still strangers when all is said and done.’

  ‘Yes, I promise I won’t force any intimacy on them. It’s being here that’s important. Dad always meant to return but he left it too late, the way he always did. I feel he would have liked to see us here.’

  Dan smiled. ‘Yes, I reckon this would have tickled his fancy.’

  Beside me, Fergus whispered, ‘Oh, it would indeed!’ I sensed then that the Irish find laughter in any event which offers itself, their humour bubbles up fresh and impersonal as a wayside spring and every bit as cold.

  The door of the inner room had opened and the woman with red hair came out carrying a tray. The old woman followed, carrying the baby. The red-haired woman poured tea. She had become talkative. ‘And did you come on the bus as far as Carraroe? Then I expect they will have told you there was a terrible bad accident the other night. It was young Seamus O’Reilly was going down to town with . . .’. The story flowed on while Betty tried awkwardly to hand round the cups and Dan crouched like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. ‘. . . and one cow so frightened it put its head right through Mrs O’Leary’s front window’. The children laughed from the doorway and she shouted at them to go away. Betty said quickly, ‘We should very much like to meet the family.’

  The woman seemed surprised but she gave the children incomprehensible instructions and soon their voices could be heard shouting across the field. Men’s voices, further away, replied. In a few minutes there were heavy footsteps and an old man and a young man appeared in the yard. The old man was cross and the young one amused. The family talked in Gaelic.

  When there was a pause, Betty said how happy she was to be with them and began to introduce herself and her brother, but they took little notice.

  ‘Is it New York you’re from?’ the young man asked.

  ‘No. We’re from Wyoming.’

  ‘Eileen Cleary that was at the post office at Ballymorgan went to Chicago,’ the old woman announced. ‘She went to Chicago and she worked in the post office there and she wrote to her brother Finn that she sorted a thousand letters a day.’

  ‘And I’m thinking of going to New York myself,’ the young man said.

  The red-haired woman looked at him sharply and the old woman repeated, ‘A thousand letters a day’

  Betty was looking at a faded photograph balanced inconsequentially on a ledge between a jug and a tankard. ‘Is this Grandfather?’ She pointed to the groom in a wedding group, a mountain of a man glaring fiercely into the camera with a wisp of a girl on his arm.

  ‘Aye, that’s himself,’ the red-haired woman said sourly. She made the sign of the cross and added, ‘God rest his soul.’

  ‘He’s a very fine-looking man,’ Betty said.

  ‘A terrible noisy place, New York,’ the old man said irritably to the young man. He turned to Dan. ‘They tell me New York is a terrible noisy place.’

  ‘It certainly is. We’re from . . .’

  The young man said, ‘I’ve heard that in Texas . . .’

  Betty said, ‘Was it here that Grandfather was born?’

  The red-haired woman got up and went to the door. ‘He was born in the old house, over there.’ She pointed to the outhouse.

  The children were playing in front of it, hurling stones through the gaping windows. Grass grew out of the thatch and the donkey was nibbling at one corner. The two women walked across the yard and stood in the opening; the door was long gone and the floor was covered with bits of turf and cow dung.

  Betty said, ‘But it’s so small.’

  The red-haired woman put up her hand and pushed at the stone around the lintel; dust spilled on to the ground. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all very small. That’s why Kevin wants to go away.’

  ‘My father . . .’ Betty began, but the red-haired woman was walking back across the yard. As she and Betty went into the shebeen the young man was talking about California. The baby was crying. The old man was looking through the window at the field where he had been working.

  Dan said, ‘I think we should go now.’

  Betty bent down to the baby and I saw her press a note int
o the crumpled fist, ‘They didn’t ask about Dad,’ she said softly, ‘I waited and not one of them mentioned him. But this is a present from him to you.’

  Dan was standing by the door saying to the young man, ‘I’ve never been to San Francisco, but they tell me it’s a wonderful place.’

  The family lined up and waved as they went away, a plump woman walking as though a little tired and a tall man, arm consolingly round her shoulders. As their figures grew smaller the watchers moved away until there was just one child and the donkey left in the yard. Fergus and I went into the inn. I said to the red-haired woman, ‘What did you think those people wanted?’

  She clattered the kettle in the hearth. ‘I’m sure I’ve no idea. Perhaps Gran will tell us, since it’s her they spoke to.’ She put her face close to the old woman’s and shouted, ‘Or maybe she will not, for she doesn’t know herself. Will you never admit that it’s deaf you are?’

  A look of sly triumph came over the old woman’s face. ‘They’re film people staying down at Spiddal. I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t have acted naturally.’ She picked up the teapot and shuffled towards the door. ‘They’ll be back tomorrow with their cameras. You wait and see.’

  ‘You knew that all the time,’ I accused Fergus. ‘Why didn’t you put a stop to it?’

  The idea caused him intense surprise. ‘Why ever would I do that when they were all enjoying themselves so much?’

  ‘But it wasn’t true.’ I was never more Miss Addiscombe’s pupil than at this moment. ‘It was all a terrible mistake.’

  This assertion appeared not to impress Fergus. ‘What is so important about truth? They will all make their own truth out of it.’

  ‘How can they? They weren’t related. And the film company will never come up from Spiddal.’

  ‘There is money in the baby’s hand, and Betty and Dan have got a good enough idea how life is in these parts to keep them talking many a day.’

  ‘I shall never understand the Irish.’

  This amused him. ‘Will you not? And is it so important to understand? Admit you wouldn’t have missed it whether you understand it or not.’