‘None but Seamus will be stirrin’, poor divil. He’s th’ butler at Catharmore-always up at th’ crack, cooking, polishing, laying fires. God above, th’ man’s a saint.’
‘Fires in August-that’s usual?’
‘We keep a bit of fire burnin’ year-round, th’ Conors.’
They were having a shout over the rattle which filled the Rover from front to rear; the scent of last night’s rain poured through the open windows.
‘We’ll do a quick shot around the drive, then be off.’
The road was steep, rutted, strewn in places by blossoms of wild fuchsia loosed by the downpour. Fallen trees decayed among brambles at the wood’s edge.
‘Most of the house is on th’ ruin-still an’ all, it looks out to one of the finest prospects in th’ west of Ireland.’
They rounded a curve overhung by rhododendron. The house appeared on a treeless prominence, engraved against a billow of clouds.
He was unaccustomed to limestone houses. In his rustic view, limestone was the material of stoical municipal buildings with their crust of soot and pigeon droppings.
‘The Conor cabin,’ Liam said, ironic.
He sensed that he was to think Catharmore handsome. He did not.
‘Built by an Irishman in the early 1860s, name of O’Donnell. Thanks to a rich uncle, O’Donnell emigrated to Philadelphia as a lad-medical school, a successful practice, everything a Sligo boy could dream of. Came home to Lough Arrow with his wife in 1859. The hunger years had put th’ passion in him for helpin’ th’ poor at home.’
‘The lintels, the keystones-very striking,’ he said. His mother and Peggy had raised him to look for the positive in every common thing. ‘A splendid portico.’ It was the best he could do.
‘Father bought it when he was fifty-two; moved out from Sligo, where he owned a sizable building operation. Came with an invalid wife who was after havin’ th’ country air. Then his wife died, and he married her nursemaid.’
Liam braked for the view down the slope.
At the foot of the hill, the blade of blue water, slicing through green; the clouds-cumulus, immense, on the move. He instinctively crossed himself. ‘Glorious,’ he said, genuinely touched. ‘A privilege to see it.’
‘The red roof showin’ among the trees, that’s us at Broughadoon. The specks on the water might be our lads. I put our order in for five bric and a nice pike-this afternoon, there’ll be four American women on us.’
‘Whoa.’
‘A book club, they told Anna, that turned off to a poker club.’
They laughed.
‘But lately ’t is a travel club.’
‘Flexibility, that’s the ticket.’
The Rover rattled along the grass circle at the front of the house.
‘The nursemaid was my mother, Evelyn McGuiness. Twenty-some years of age and a ravin’ beauty, they say; one of seven raised in a one-room cabin a few kilometers from here. Fierce an’ ravishing, my father called her. Th’ lord of th’ manor made a mighty case for himself, but she says ‘t was th’ fine Irish house she married.’
Five bays. Windows on the second and third floors blind with interior shutters, as if hiding the rooms from bird and hawk; vines protruding from copper guttering. As they approached the portico, three Labs raced down the steps.
‘That’s Roddy th’ yellow, Kevin th’ chocolate-you met them at th’ lodge-and the oul’ black fellow’s Cuchulain.’ Liam braked and dug biscuits from the pocket of his wind-breaker. ‘Show y’r manners, ye lazy cods. Ah, Cuch, ye’re a good by, yes ye are. Roddy, ye’re latherin’ up m’ arm, get a grip on y’rself.’ He flung a handful of biscuits across the grass. ‘Run for it, lads, ye’re too fat altogether.
‘There was a garden wall ten feet high,’ Liam said as they drove down the hill. ‘My brother, Paddy, pulled it down. He can have the place and all th’ nuisance of it. I’m happy with my books and my Barret.’
‘There’s a senior Barret and a junior, I believe. ’ He had read a little about Irish art; the senior was definitely the bigger ticket.
‘This is th’ senior. Paddy’s after me to sell it, or give it to Trinity College-as if he ever gave two quid to th’ place.’
‘You’re a Trinity man?’
‘Read Latin and botany at Trinity. Barely half a year was all I could take of it. Too confinin’. When Father died at th’ middle of term, I made off for Lough Arrow an’ never looked back. Truth is, I grew up wild as bog cotton; took my degree in th’ woods and fields.’
He’d taken a degree of his own in the woods and fields. The sweltering summers of his Mississippi youth had been his favored university.
‘I learned off a few poems as a lad, but a bit of something by Synge is all that comes to mind these days-I knew the stars, the flowers and the birds, the grey and wintry sides of many glens, and did but half remember human words, in converse with the mountains, moors and fens.
‘I excused myself from bein’ raised, you might say. I liked bein’ in th’ open, studying flowers and weeds and bushes and bugs. I was brought up by th’ people, really-snagged hares, took ’em to a cottage door for my supper. Was wild as a hare myself-a wonderful childhood. The upbringin’ I lacked from my mother, I got from twenty others. I never felt so happy as when sittin’ by the open fire of a cottage, listenin’ to a story or a fiddle or talkin’ to the old people about home cures. Ah, they’d go on about pus and gangrene and bile and deformities of all kinds- people risin’ up from their coffins at a wake, birthin’ infants with two heads. Fascinating.
‘I like to think I wasn’t a completely bad fellow, for all that. Didn’t drown any cats or cut th’ tails off dogs, though I did scare th’ daylights out of a teacher I tangled with more than once. I pulled a bedsheet over m’self when she was walkin’ home at dark, jumped out of th’ hedge, and yelled at th’ top of m’ voice, May th’ divil put warts on y’r oul’ nose! She was easier on me after that, and I was easier with her-’t was an unspoken pact we had; I think she knew who was under the sheet.
‘But see here?’ Liam tapped the right side of his nose. ‘A wart. Came there some time later, but made me wonder, nonetheless.’
They laughed, comfortable.
‘Is primogeniture still practiced here?’
‘Outlawed in the sixties. Ever since he was a kid, Paddy was fierce to have th’ house. When Father died, there was no chance of Mother sellin’ th’ place, though God knows, there was hardly two bob left to maintain it-he was eighty-some when he passed.
‘I did my bit to help-worked as a finish carpenter around th’ villages and townlands; at weekends, came home and tried to keep th’ place standing. Paddy had graduated Trinity a few years before, joined forces with an ad agency in Dublin and tricked himself out as an art director. Our mother was proud enough-though she was after havin’ a doctor in th’ family. Then off to London Paddy went, where he became somethin’ of a star in the ad business.
‘He lived in London a few years, married twice, divorced twice, made a name for himself. Then off to New York an’ puts together his own outfit an’ marries again. ’t was a smash, th’ business, but a bust, th’ marriage.
‘When he came home a few years back, he’d just sold his company to some Madison Avenue bucko. He was what any man in Sligo would call rich-but here’s where th’ cheese gets bindin’. ’t was his dream to turn Catharmore into a country house hotel. ’t is th’ fashion, you know, turning our country houses into hotels.’
‘Helps keep the roof over your head.’
‘Th’ place had run down altogether; we thought he’d gone simple.’
‘Catharmore is competition for Broughadoon, then?’
‘Ah, no. He never finished th’ job. Mother wanted the ground floor done up first, for a good impression to the guests; and of course th’ kitchen had to be done up if you’re to feed a mouth in these parts. He cobbled that together with a crew from Dublin, and what’s done is grand, I’ll give him that, but th’ cost was three times th’ bloody estimate, an’ no place yet for a guest to lay his head.
‘His money was gone, th’ wind was whippin’ th’ tiles off th’ roof, and th’ drink took over completely. ’t was a right cod.’
The Rover splashing through pools along the lane; in the hedges, rain-washed light on scarlet fuchsia.
‘Broughadoon-is it part of Catharmore?’
‘’t was. Th’ lodge would have passed to me, but Mother sold it off after Father died. Maybe a hundred acres in terms of your American real estate. Anna’s father bought it.’
‘William.’
‘Aye. He deeded it to Anna when we were married; he has life estate.’
They were silent for a time.
Along the verges, a colony of bizarre vegetation-leaves the size of small umbrellas, fruit similar to a pineapple. Scary stuff.
‘Gunnera tinctoria. Th’ blasted wild rhubarb. ’t is takin’ us over.’
Even the Irish had their kudzu.
‘Meant to tell you I saw deer this morning,’ he said. ‘A breathtaking sight in the ground fog.’
‘We farm deer for Sligo and Dublin restaurants, and our own tables at Broughadoon. Around forty head these days.’
‘That’s roughly the number up to destroying my rosebushes back home.’
‘We get a bit of that, too, th’ buggers, but the herd you saw is fenced. I’m also runnin’ around eighty head of sheep on land leased from a neighbor, and of course there’s th’ chickens-some for eggs, most for meat. A patch of bog gives turf for th’ hearth, I cut it m’self when I can.’
‘Well done.’
‘In this business, have to paddle like a son of a gun to keep the oul’ head above water. Anna makes our preserves, does most of th’ cooking, keeps th’ gardens, books th’ guests, runs th’ lodge altogether.’
Liam glanced at him, suddenly shy. ‘A grand woman, Anna-I’m mad for her. I’ll never forget the day she threw herself at me, as she says. I thought she loved me, but she wouldn’t marry me, for all that. She said no, but there was th’ look of yes on her face. ’t was like she was boltin’ th’ door with a boiled carrot.’
He laughed.
‘’t was a desperate time, I felt I might lose her. Then one day I was walkin’ along the oul’ cart road an’ she was standin’ on th’ bank, so, and suddenly she just leaps off th’ bank, I saw it in slow motion. Just surrenders herself to the air, to me, an’ lands in my arms, nearly knockin’ me over. An’ that was that.
‘She got herself a finer education than my own. Her da sent her to Mount Anville in South Dublin, where th’ sisters took a great likin’ to her. She has the gift for French and Italian, and a fine way of speakin’ her feelings.’
‘We married above ourselves,’ he said. ‘How many guest rooms?’
‘When I’m done down th’ hall, a total of nine. Looks like I’ll have to do th’ finish work m’self. Nobody wants a day’s honest labor anymore. Gave th’ boot to a bloody Englishman last week; he had th’ skills of an angel an’ th’ soul of a devil. Could cope to stone like nothin’ you ever saw, but couldn’t keep his mitts off th’ dope.’
Fields interlaced by crumbling walls. A cow barn with a single blue shutter. ‘Ireland is more beautiful than I remember,’ he said.
‘By suffering worn and weary, your Mr. Longfellow wrote, but beautiful as some fair angel yet.’
‘You know Longfellow!’
‘No, no. ’t was a line my father liked to quote. When he wasn’t fishin’, he had his nose in a book.’
‘You love his books.’
‘Maybe because I loved him. He was a very fine class of a man. Very devout. We fasted, we confessed, we walked the Mass path. He loved us, though there was none of that touchy-feely stuff the young get nowadays. You knew you were loved and that was enough, you never wanted more. He set me on his lap occasionally, which was closer than I ever got to my mother. I remember being uneasy up there where his whiskers seemed to have a life of their own.’
They turned out of the lane to the highway.
‘God above,’ said Liam, ‘I’ve gnawed your ear off.’
‘Not a bit. I happen to like stories of other people’s lives.’
‘My mouth is a terror, Reverend, and that’s a fact.’
He laughed. ‘Listening is one of my job requirements. ’
‘My father was a grand listener, I could tell him bits I couldn’t tell anyone else. There’s something about you that reminds me of him.’
When they arrived at Broughadoon after two o’clock, he found his barefoot wife enthroned in the green chair, wearing jeans and a sweater.
‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll tell you everything.’
Even in a locked room, she would have something to report.
‘Made the rounds,’ he said. ‘Saw Catharmore, the big house on the hill. Went to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The butcher was a fellow named Cavanagh spelled with a C, who knows nothing about us poor goats with a K. Twinty-foive yares agoo, he said, there ware foor of us in th’ village. There’d be soom of’em yet if ’t weren’t for th’ big chains coomin’ in.’
‘’t is stirrin’ th’ Irish in ye,’ she said, pleased.
Actually, he had felt a stirring-some sense of home or consolation that he hadn’t expected.
‘Let’s see. We bought stamps. Saw a castle in the distance-Liam says castles are a dime a dozen, one on every corner like the American drugstore. Then we had lunch-a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat. Drank a pint.’
‘A pint of what?’
‘A pint of what everyone else was drinking.’
She laughed. ‘In Rome.’
He sat on the foot of the bed, exhausted. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘your turn. I guess you know the power’s still out. They can’t send workmen ’til tomorrow, and Liam’s fit to be tied. The landlines are down, too, of course, and their computer. Not good for business.’
‘I’m in need of a real bath, but I love the power being out.’
‘You would,’ he said.
‘When you left, I…’ She sneezed.
‘Bless you.’
‘I sketched the view from the window. Want to see?’
‘Is the pope a Catholic?’
She had always been tentative about showing her work to him. She gave over the sketchbook as a child might-abashed, hopeful.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, gawking. A flame of pride shot up in him. ‘You’re a wonder.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘I absolutely mean it.’
‘Would Henry like it?’
‘He’d be thrilled. I’ll finish up his letter tonight, we can send it off tomorrow.’
‘And this is the dear lady who’ll be doing our laundry.’
Bad teeth, radiant smile, thinning hair. The face of suffering, the face of courage.
‘Maureen McKenna. She helped Anna work on putting this place back together. Born with a deformed leg. Can cook, iron, clean, and sing. She’s the sunshine of Broughadoon, Anna says.’
He turned the page.
The girl who had brought the hot towels around. Scornful. Beautiful in a menancing sort of way.
‘Bella,’ she said. ‘Bella Flaherty. Anna’s daughter by a first marriage. Plays the fiddle-a trad musician.’
‘Trad?’
Traditional. Plays the old tunes.’
He was strangely unsettled by the portrait. ‘You’ve been busy.’ He stooped to kiss her forehead. ‘How did you learn all this?’
‘It’s a very talkative household.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Broughadoon is the perfect place at the perfect time, sweetheart. I love being here.’
‘Ah, Kavanagh, what don’t you love?’ It was another of their mantras.
‘The spelling of Jane Austen’s surname with an i. Cold showers. Fake orchids.’
How she came up with this stuff without a moment’s hesitation was as unfathomable to him as how to extract nickels from someone’s ear.
‘How’s your ankle?’
‘Hurts. But I took something for pain; it’ll be fine.’
He dumped stamps and pocket change on the dresser. ‘It was all that sitting for so many hours.’
She sneezed.
‘Bless you.’
While in the Rover, he’d thought of calling Robin, the Irish distant cousin who gave the tea party those years ago. He’d entered her number into his cell phone, not sure whether the number would even be current. And Dooley-he should call Dooley. His cell phone… where was it? Maybe in his blue jacket. He should probably look for the charger and the connector thing, and get some juice in it when the power came back.
She took a handkerchief from her jeans pocket and sneezed.
‘What’s with the sneezing?’
‘When you left, I was dying to go back to bed. But I couldn’t. After I sketched the view, I felt compelled to get dressed. Thought I’d visit the beech grove, and watch the chickens pecking at their kitchen scraps.’
She liked her birthday present; he relished seeing the pleasure in her.
‘But I got no further than the library, which is where I found this-beneath a stack of books in the corner. It spoke to me, somehow.’
She reached to the table beside the chair and hauled a large volume into her lap-it was a whopper. ‘Being the private journals of Cor-mac Padraigin Fintan O’Donnell, MD, Lough Arrow, County Sligo,’ she read from the fly-leaf. ‘And be warned-the dust of the ages is gathered here.’
She had a pretty volatile allergy to the dust of old books. ‘Should you be doing this?’ he asked.
‘I have to do this,’ she said.
She put on her glasses, opened the leather-bound book, and read to him.
14 March 1860
Freezing winds off the Lough
A late Spring of blistering cold yet Caitlin & I are besotted with comfort in our rude Cabin near the Lough-Thick walls, an agreeable hearth & a dirt Floor warmed by Uncle’s Turkey rugs have made it more than hospitable.
No draft can seek us out in our alcove bed-my Books line the walls on racks I joined myself & are a fine insulation into the bargain. For a Surgery, God in his mercy has given us a Turf Shed attached to the Cabin, a scantling of a room-it serves well enough though difficult to heat in frigid weather.
We have been spoiled these many years by the comfort of Uncle’s grand Residence in Philadelphia to which we repaired at his urging from our wedding sojurn in Italy. He spent such little time in his well-furnished Home that we had it nearly to ourselves & four servants into the bargain. C eventually assumed the running of his Household for which he esteemed her very highly. Uncle did not discuss where he often lodged-we assumed it was with someone rumoured to be his mistress, of whom he never spoke-at least to myself. We did not learn the surprising truth until his death.
C & I wonder yet why he declined to marry-surely it would have been socially beneficial to his many Enterprises. As well, we wondered at his refusal to attend Mass though we exhorted him on many occasions to come with us to Old St. Joseph’s. I confess that we never fully understood Uncle but had a profound affection for him as did countless others. For all the resentment of Irish in that city, he was admired & respected by Catholic & Protestant alike.
Working by Lantern to complete the Drawings-careful to restrain any impulse to vainglory though this in no way owing to Balfour’s summon to modesty. Such a consuming task could not be carried forth without Uncle’s rare & valuable books on architecture-Palladio and Inigo Jones being the masters who inspired the design of his fine house in the township of Philadelphia. Thanks to God for many felicitous hours spent with him as he labored over the drawings-often seeking my opinions and observations though they issued from rude instinct only.
Must amputate Danny Moore’s gangrenous leg on the morrow-he is but eighteen & the provider for his Mother, Grandmother, & four Sisters. Caitlin and I will travel horseback to their cabin for the surgery taking a basket of food, chloroform & a flask of Whiskey-what thin comfort can be offered at such a grievous time.
A desperate Circumstance-Heaven help this decent son of Ireland.
‘Here’s the backstory,’ she said. ‘Fintan O’Donnell was the bright, devout son of a poor tenant family who lived near Lough Arrow.’
‘Liam gave me a quick bit on O’Donnell. But keep going.’
‘Turns out he had what we’ve all dreamed of at one time or another-a rich uncle. So the uncle, who lived in Philadelphia and was busy making a fortune in shipping, said he would sponsor the brightest boy of his sister’s four. The family proposed Fintan, and off he went at age seventeen, frightened out of his wits. I was sorry for the brothers, how it must feel to be the unchosen, but they absolutely didn’t want any part of it and practically shoved him onto the boat.
‘He trained as a physician, had a very successful practice, and married a nurse whose family had immigrated from Roscommon. But he mourned the hunger years in Ireland and the evictions and the fevers and all the rest-he said he could sometimes audibly hear the tolling of the death bell and the lamentations of his people.
‘He wrote this in the frontispiece:
I hereby stand with the venerable William Stokes who said when elected President of the College of Physicians: Loving my unhappy Country with a Love so intense as to be a Pain, its miseries & downward Progress have lacerated my very heart.
‘When he was fifty years old, he came home to Lough Arrow with his wife, Caitlin, to devote himself to the poor. His uncle had died some time before and the estate passed to Dr. O’Donnell. In light of that and the money he’d earned in his practice, he had deep pockets to fund a free clinic.
‘Timothy? Are you all right or shall I stop?’
‘Don’t stop; I’m with you.’ He moved to the wing chair; he would just rest his eyes…
‘The doctor and his wife were looking for land in these parts and made the acquaintance of Lord Balfour, an Englishman who’d built a big pile up the road from Broughadoon. Good timing, or maybe not, Fintan saved the life of the lord’s ten-year-old daughter, and made some headway with the old boy’s dysentery. So Balfour gave the doctor roughly two hundred acres of his own immense property, but with the caveat-get this-that O’Donnell wouldn’t put on airs in the architecture of his house. O’Donnell thought it would be grand to accept the land.’ She sneezed. ‘Want me to stop?’
‘No, no. Go on.’
17 May
S. O’Connor came with his wife last night at a late hour-having no pony, S. walked the four miles in the traces of his cart, pulling her along-her abdomen swollen & tender, much vomiting.
Attempted to remove Appendix but too late-expired ten minutes past midnight, S. distraught, keening, alarming the dogs-Caitlin managed to hold the poor man down as I dosed him with Laudanum-he slept warm in Surgery beneath one of the Turkey rugs.
S. returns the corpse home after noon this day-the putrid smell from the rupture pervades the Surgery & cannot be kept from the Cabin though the windows be thrown open.
A cruel cold rain at seven this morning-we pray heaven would stanch it for the cart to pass home dry.
Moira O’Connor, mother of four living & two deceased. May God rest her Soul.
She turned pages, searching passages.
20 September 1860
The people of these Parts take great pride in the building of the House. Caitlin & I recently met a lad down the shore who held his hat over his heart as we passed-twas not ourselves he saluted, but the Irish house that rises in his view.
As we went by Canoe yesterday to O’Leary the Shoemaker, Keegan & I looked up and saw the bold silhouette against the mackerel sky-as Months have passed since I viewed it from such a vantage point I was surprised to find the new Garden walls giving the look of a Fortification. Even in its yet skeletal form, the house appears defensible & mighty on its high prominence & gives the People a sense of being protected by their own. I admit that seeing it thus has warmed me with pleasure.
Though the worst years of Famine have recently passed, we are Haunted yet by the devastation which appears to have no end. Mark this. It is not merely a well-made house by the Lough, but a Proclamation to the Irish people that it is an Irish house built by Irish resolve-on Irish soil sanctified by Irish blood.
May it proclaim that day when our Bonds be thrown off & our people free to govern our Destinies.
‘You’re fading, sweetheart. Get in bed; we’ll do this later.’
He hauled himself up and undressed and did as he was told, eager for the consolation of the pillow. ‘Get in with me,’ he said, patting the blanket.
‘I’m right behind you.’
She sneezed, blew her nose, pulled off her sweater.
‘Very sad to think of those times, though heaven knows, what had passed and what was coming was fearful in the extreme. Anna says Liam read a few pages when Paddy’s work crew found it; it was stashed behind a wall.’
‘It belongs to Catharmore, then?’
‘Anna says Paddy had no patience for it and turned it over to Liam for the library. She’s never read it, the ink is too faded. Of course, the doctor’s handwriting isn’t the best, either, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, it’s flying along.’
She stepped out of her jeans. ‘What does his house look like, Timothy? Is it beautiful?’
He heard the hope in her voice.
She slipped in beside him, and he turned to her and touched her cheek.
‘In its own way,’ he said. ‘In its own way.’