“Linnaeus? Should I know the name?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Una laughed. “I am so immersed in this that I imagine everyone must know exactly what I know. Which isn’t much, mind you. Well, Linnaeus. He was a Swede, born in the eighteenth century, and he spent his life working as a botanist. He was a bit odd, but I think his brilliance lay mostly in his efforts to simplify the way plants were classified. Remember I told you a little about taxonomy when I lent you that book? He came up with the binomial system, really, the one I explained to you—the genus and then the specific name. The first designates and the second sort of describes. It’s a bit more complicated than that when you get into things like classes dependent on sexual parts or lack of them, but the basics of it are brilliant.”
“Well, Una, I can’t say that such things were covered by the priests who taught me. Latin, aye, but many of them would not let the name of Darwin cross their lips and perhaps this Linnaeus fella was thought of in the same way.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” she replied. “Now, if you open that folder there, you’ll find some loose plates of things David was able to find in London. My favourite is that one there, yes, the one you’ve got in your hand, the saffron crocus. That artist, John Miller, published something called An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, and I think his work is wonderful. Some of the illustrators would clutter the page with too much detail and there wouldn’t really be any system to it. But Miller’s eye was very good. There is something so clean and fine about this plate, and it’s quite accurate too, considering it was done about a hundred and fifty years ago. And see what he’s shown—a couple of views of the plant at different stages in the life cycle, details of the corm, the roots, seed pod, leaf. It’s what I aspire to, but I’d like to be able to also develop a logical way of showing the plant in all its seasons, even dormant, without the page getting too busy. Who knows, it might be possible.”
“Ye explain things very well. Have ye thought of teaching so?”
She smiled and replied, “I haven’t had a plan at all, really, and have just gone from one thing to the next, particularly since David died. I have a small trust fund and haven’t needed to think about work in order to eat, which is lucky, I suppose, although it’s allowed me to lose any focus I might have developed. But I feel too old to drift now and want to apply myself to the illustrations and see if I am able to produce something good. And speaking of producing, I think the food is probably ready for us to eat.”
The table by the window had been laid with two places, two blue willow-ware plates and two settings of heavy silver, two shining wine glasses, damask napkins, and a loaf of grainy bread on a wooden board with a border of carved wheat. It was a welcome meal to Declan, who had not eaten anything but food fried over his fire, or pans of stew kindly brought to him by Bride Mannion, and once, the promised meal of mutton cooked by Pegeen Devaney, or Breen as she was now, a strapping young woman hugely with child and settled into a cabin at Clogh with her Padraig and a brace of sheep dogs. To be a guest at a table, a meal prepared for him as for a guest, a glass polished with a tea towel before placing it just so at the tip of the knife—this moved him, made a lump form in his throat. He had felt solitary and lonely for so long that he had almost forgotten how people spoke to one another at a meal, how they acted the courtesies of host and guest, passing a bowl of potatoes, the dish of sweet butter. For the care shown him, he might have a travelling god, disguised in homespun, testing the hospitality of a chosen household.
After dinner, Una told him she had been approached by two women in the village and asked if she might like to join Cumann na mBán, the women’s organization within the Republican movement. As it turned out, she had acquaintanceship with some of the organizers throughout Ireland—Countess Markievicz and Mary MacSwiney—through her family’s involvement in the Gaelic League, and word had filtered down to women at the local level that she was reliable and sympathetic to the Fenian cause.
“I’ll attend meetings, Declan, having now begun, to see what might be done but I suppose I am in part being asked because I might be able to contribute money. It is very difficult to completely embrace the Republican position, though, because I had such admiration for Michael Collins and sympathy for how his days ended, shot down in his own west Cork. However, these are nice women and I have been hungry for conversation. No doubt you have wondered how one woman can talk as much as me!”
It would not have occurred to him that she might be herself lonely, but of course she would have been accustomed to the company of women and men in Dublin and London. Watching her draw in firelight, he realized that she was finding ways to claim a place for herself, both in the context of Marshlands and the larger community, that was hers alone. Not rebuilding her grandfather’s house, driving a car, making friendships, such as their own, taking up the sketching again—these things were hinges to a life that would be hers, self-forged.
“The first meeting I was able to attend was fascinating. Breda O’Toole’s friend was visiting from Dublin and her experiences with the 1916 uprising were so inspiring. She told us about the little summer house in Stephen’s Green which they used as a first aid station, putting people in the potting shed when they needed more light to treat wounds or extract bullets. After the surrender, she spent time in Kilmainham Gaol where she could hear the pistol shots as the leaders of the uprising were executed.”
Declan listened in wonder. “It seemed so far away to us, here in the West, although there were men of course who made the journey across the country to join the Citizen Army. And there’d be rallies in Leenane, too, which we’d go to and get fired up—though there didn’t seem to be roles for many of us then. I mind that many of the same fellas that came out to those rallies were also there when the King and Queen came to Leenane, oh, it must be twenty years gone now, the big yacht I’m thinking they called it, a big boat at any rate, coming down Killary as proud as you please. The same fellas waving flags and helping to put up the buntings and waving pleased as punch as the two and their entourage motored through the village and down towards Kylemore. Anyway I thought teaching was the best contribution I could make to Ireland, to make sure her citizens would know their own history and language.”
Una said she agreed with him, that it was important. “I did nothing, really. Con Gore-Booth, well, Markievicz now, is even a distant relation and we all thought she was wonderful—though rash. She is afraid of nothing and never cared a whit for what people thought. When I mentioned her the other day at the meeting, people acted like I was talking of a personal encounter with God himself. When I confessed that she was a distant cousin, that I’d picnicked with her as a child at Lisadell, well, then there were the questions. Was she as beautiful as everyone said, was it true she could shoot like a champion? All true, I told them, and fired up with courage as well. Look, here is a sketch I did at our meeting. They seemed such a comely collection of women and as interesting to draw as flowers.”
She showed Declan a pencil drawing of nine women in a parlour he recognized, tea tray at hand, and papers on the low table. And the women he recognized, too, mothers, some of them, of children he’d taught, parishioners he knew from church, a publican’s wife, a doctor’s wife. Una had captured their variety and purposefulness, he saw, and the differences in their economic stature could be seen by the costume they had worn to this event. The doctor’s wife wore a loosely fitted suit with a lace-collared blouse draped over the jacket, a hat resplendent with feathers, a long knot of beads. The mother of one of his students, a farmer’s wife who sold eggs for extra money, wore a plain skirt and what was probably her one good blouse, high-necked, with a cameo at her throat, and her hair escaping from its pins, no hat to contain it. A young woman, a cousin of the barrister, whom he’d met once at a ceilidh, wore one of the new dresses which showed the leg, her pretty shoes drawn with great detail. Her hair was bobbed in the new way, too, making her look exotic in that group of women in their middle years.
/> “I have seen more than one son of these women on the road recently, Una, travelling to or from exercises in the area near Delphi, and I am rather relieved that in those families at least, there is agreement between mother and son on their politics. I have heard of dreadful cases where the fathers are staunch Republicans and the sons support the Treaty, or vice versa.”
“Oh, I agree, Declan, it is a terrible thing. And I sense that the women agree, too, although we rolled bandages and made certain that disinfectants were on hand in case of emergencies, as though that was all we had to think about. So much is unsaid but communicated nonetheless in stray comments or opinions on local businesses. I have learned that the other publican might well be an informant and is being watched. This was not said outright but it was certainly implied and agreed upon by hums and sighs.”
They returned to the floras and Una showed Declan some examples of pressed flowers she hoped to draw, quickly sketching one so that he could see how she would try to reanimate the flat specimen, bringing its dry stems to fullness again, its opaque petals. There was the asphodel, a sample gathered the previous summer, just one stalk—before Una’s discovery of the excess at Cregganbaun—laden with bright yellow blossoms; to Declan’s eye, it so resembled the death camas tossing in the wind around the canoe and for a moment he was back on that bluff, the stinging sea below him and the talkative birds telling him to look at the prow to see how their brother still carried the craft forward, if only in dreams.
When Declan walked to Tullaglas later than night, carrying a candle in a tin with holes pierced to make light and a wire fastened to the opening for a handle, his mind was filled with the memory of flowers. The books had been a revelation, a new way of seeing, of understanding how a single plant might fit into the great pattern of nature with its stamen and stigma, the small dignified ovaries, the glow of pollen, hum of insects, and then the fruiting phase. As he walked, he could hear a fox yipping beyond the river. Badgers would be out from the setts, he imagined, rustling in the darkness, thinking his candle lantern a small constellation moving through the night. He passed a cabin with a lamp lit in the window, perhaps for a man returning from the shore with a few salmon, caught by torchlight, and a dog ran to see who was passing so late, hackles raised: Declan spoke quietly to it and gave it a crust he carried for just such an occasion. There was the smell of fires damped for the night and the deep reek of soil turned for potatoes. He thought of Rose’s letter and was glad that such a thoughtful girl now had the opportunity to attend school. He gave himself a brief moment to remember Argos, a pang of sadness rising in his throat and suffusing his shoulders and face with regret. It all seemed so far away now and he could scarcely believe he had been that man in the cedar canoe, paddling in Jervis Inlet with the sea lions swimming nearby and the whirling rapids of the Skookumchuck, which Alex had told him meant “strong waters,” calling to them like a siren.
And close to his home, he could see the far-off smudge of light at Tawnynoran, heard the crack as a rifle fired. Ghosts were abroad in the night, a few phrases of “The Lowlands of Holland” floating across the lake like a whistling of blackbirds. The voice of a young woman singing, as it had always been, he supposed, making music out of the sorrow of losing men to guns and war. And yet there were the battles countesses had gone to prison for participating in, and where women had nursed the dying in potting sheds for the light the small windows provided, carrying iodine and gauze bandages rather than trugs and secateurs.
Una had suggested Declan bring his books and pages of translations to her cabin where he could have a table near the fire for working on them. It had not seemed right at first—he had begun the task in isolation, first at the school, then at World’s End, as a way to stave off grief, then loneliness—but he came to think that his version of the poem ought to reflect the ongoing changes in his life, as the original poem reflected the rhythms of Odysseus’s: companionship, survival, amours, friend-ship, reunion ... He could tell how much better his later lines were than the earlier ones; he had learned to hear the poetry and find approximations not just in his own language but in his own experience. So he accepted Una’s generosity and put his books on the little shelf she provided and set out his ink, his pens. He would come every few days and spend several hours at the table. Una was generally at work in the upstairs room although she would come periodically to show him things: a slice of stem or section of leaf mounted to view under the microscope, a pressed flower she was rehydrating in order to examine its structure and then draw as though fresh, the notes kept by David from their trip to Dingle before the War.
And waiting all the while, in the storage room, was the harp. Declan had cleaned it as thoroughly as he was able, had rubbed mineral oil into the thirsty wood. It drank it in. More would be applied, left briefly, and then rubbed and buffed until something like its original patina began to develop. The smell brought back the image of Grainne working on her instrument with a small tin of oil and a rag, her hands stroking the harp’s lines and learning its contours as a lover would study the body of the beloved. She had entered the earth without having been held by a man, save the embraces of a father, had not been kissed in the drenched air of an Irish evening with the fuchsias blazing in the hedges and the perfume of primroses making a person dizzy with joy. She would never hand Declan a wrapped bundle of child, a granddaughter for him to cradle and adore. Her life was an instrument without music, gone beyond his love. He kept studying the diagram for stringing the harp, trying to make sense of each new term, seeing in them a language as foreign as Greek: tuning peg, pitch, the tension of the frame, not foreign in themselves, as words, but their meaning, relative to the harp, was a puzzle. He wanted to know more before he asked Bernadette Feeny for her assistance. He wanted the strings to be loosely strung, ready for tuning, he wanted to understand the importance of tension and the trick of the knot.
A tussle occurred on the road south of Leenane, not long after the National army converged on Clifden and arrested a number of Republicans; when the dust had cleared, it was discovered that Liam Kenny had disappeared. Where had he gone? His name was not on the lists of prisoners taken to Galway Gaol, unlike a handful of local lads who were taken away by armoured car to Galway; they were released to their families after they signed an undertaking that they would not take up arms against the Irish government, although arguments raged as to what was legitimate government and what wasn’t. But Liam Kenny: was he among those who had escaped to the Partry mountains or among those who had spirited away by boat? No one could say. But the school had no master. A contingent came to ask Declan if he would teach. He did not want to do so until his house was finished, and perhaps not then, but was moved to be asked.
“Can you recommend anyone, sir?” he was asked, “And could you keep the idea of it in yer head for the future?”
He considered both things. The first was not difficult. A Conneely from down towards Renvyle had finished his university degree and was willing to come. The second request proved more of a conundrum. He assured the men he would think on it, and think on it he did.
He had never been idle, had never been offered any opportunity to be so. His small holding could certainly fill his time, but it would not allow him to engage young scholars, to offer them the benefit of his knowledge and experience. Seldom had he risen from his bed in the days before the fire and not looked forward to the trek down the Delphi road to the Bundorragha school, often joined by his students for a portion of the walk or the way entire. His daughters had always walked with him and that had been one of the pleasures of his life. As had been the returns, the homecomings, to a warm fire and a loving wife.
So now, he thought, it would be different. But perhaps that was not entirely a bad thing. He would see with his own eyes what Maire had directed him to see—blackbirds gathering nesting material, stitchwort and shepherd’s purse coming into bloom, a pine marten disappearing into hazel scrub. And Grainne’s great gift of music might find its way into his teachin
g, somehow.
There was time to think on it, anyhow. Cathal Conneely arrived, and was suitable, if dull. The work on the house was slow, but Declan was nothing if not patient. Some days, on his walks, he would notice a particularly fine stone and would borrow Fergus Mannion’s donkey and cart to bring it to his farm where he would find a way to work it into the structure. Down by the lake, where the river emptied into it near the lodge, he found a millstone and mortared it above the entrance lintel. A flat slab of limestone made a splendid step by the door, and a tall pillar of basalt stood by his gate like a totem from one of the western islands, marking a burial or a death. Or, he fancied, a Janus head, to look out at the world and inward, as well.
Una had gone to London to spend Christmas with her cousin and his family; her parents were joining them from their home in France. Before she left, she handed him a package, wrapped in green tissue, and tied with silver ribbon. “Don’t open it until Christmas, Declan. And make no decisions until you’ve seen it.”
Her cryptic comment puzzled him. But he tucked the parcel away in a corner of his turf shed, wrapped in a clean shirt to protect it against the smoke and dust, and thought no more about it. The Mannions stopped by to ask did he want to go to Mass with them, and he realized it was actually Christmas Day. He declined, politely, still at odds in himself with the notion of God and not wanting to have to explain himself to his good neighbours.
He had a rabbit, skinned and cleaned, to cook in a pot over his fire, he had a few measures of Connemara malt left with which to honour the day, and, he remembered, he had a gift. He removed it from its covering of shirt and untied the ribbons carefully. Inside was a book. It was not a new book but one with a well-worn cover, dog-eared around the corners. The pages were thick paper, very dry to the touch, with a heavy impression of ink. It was a herbal, a book about plant remedies for various illnesses, and each plant entry was illustrated with a woodcut in black and white. Declan opened to the plant he felt he shared with the great Achilles. The wood-cut did not give a detailed view of the plant but simply an impression. Declan read the litany of the plant’s names through history—staunchweed, sanguinary, Knight’s milfoil, soldiers’ woundwort—and how it was one of the herbs dedicated to the Evil one and had been used for divination purposes. Tisanes were prepared against the ague and cramps and it was useful to stop headaches by its ability to cause nosebleeds, thus drawing the old blood out. How fascinating, he thought, that a plant might have such a history!
A Man in a Distant Field Page 22