A Man in a Distant Field (29 page)

True to his word, Liam Kenny came by an evening later. Over whiskey, he told Declan something of his background. A Galway man, he had been raised in a Republican household and his father had been a member of one of the Flying Columns near Oughterard. His education had been interrupted at times by his father's imprisonment, but he had completed his teacher training and Bundorragha was his first school. He told Declan he had been approached, shortly after he'd arrived, by some men, Irregulars, who knew his father; it was assumed he'd assist with Connemara Division ambushes.

“I am not saying of course what my reply to them was. They are an active lot. Mostly they've been trenching roads, which the Nationals repair soon enough though the Republicans have had the benefit of the Galway County Surveyor among their supporters, which has helped a great deal with technical knowledge. There has also, I understand, been the occasional bridge. But the lads have made the hills their territory, sir, and like you, they know every wrinkle, every bush of gorse. No one would hurt you, I am thinking, but I want to tell you that it's not altogether a safe thing to walk at night as you evidently have always done.”

Declan could not respond. The hills had always held their secrets—a still where poteen was made by moonlight; an outlaw; the remnants of a fire ring or field boundary pre-dating
the Famine. He had walked at night because it was peaceful, because the work of a schoolmaster required long hours, because he might have needed assistance with a difficult calving, or simply because the long-eared owls were to be heard in the conifers near Tully on March evenings and he would accompany Maire to listen to them. And more recently he walked at night because the dark came so soon and daylight could not contain all the tasks to be done—he might walk to O'Learys to borrow a tool or to the shores of Dhulough where he knew a certain shape of rock might be found, moonlight a frequent companion.

“Mr. Kenny, are ye drilling the lads? They have been seen entering the gap near Tawnynoran with rifles. And I suppose it is no secret that rifles were hidden in my turf, with it known I was abroad and no one to take the fuel of a family burned out in such a way.”

“Mr. O'Malley, I was raised to believe in a free Ireland. There are differences of opinion as to how this will come. I mind that the Treaty has not done away with Partition and I hope that negotiation will bring us a sovereign Republic, one that includes Ulster. In the meantime, work must be done—even here, in these lonely mountains.”

Declan spoke quietly about the boys who had done sums at the desks in his classroom, who had learned the genitives and subjunctives of their grandparents' language, how he had hoped that they might have opportunities not available for him and his own brothers, particularly the ones at rest in France. He told Liam Kenny that he was opposed to guns and violence, that any loss of life was a tragedy that cast a long shadow over fields that had seen too much bloodshed and sadness already. Yet he too believed in a free Ireland and knew that it would not come without a cost. He did not want his scholars to pay the ultimate price, though, when hardship was what had defined their family
histories for too long and the loss of a son was terrible fodder to gain a country.

“I am thinking we are not at odds in our ideas, Mr. O'Malley. I have not come to argue with you but to ask that you be careful. Or perhaps mindful is what I am hopeful you will be.”

A week later, while he was working on the house, he was startled to hear a car horn on the road below his farm. So few cars travelled the Delphi road! He was more startled to see it stop on the side of the road by his gate and to see Una emerge from it, laughing. She was wearing trousers and stout leather boots and a cloche pulled down over her hair. The fog-coloured shawl was flung over her shoulders.

“Declan, look what I have!”

“How on earth did ye get a car, Una?”

“Apparently Hugh decided I could not live at Marshlands without one and he arranged for the estate to buy it. Fintan Walsh came by the other morning in a great excitement because a call had come for me to the Post Office, saying I was to take the bus to Galway to collect my automobile. Fintan would not let me wait ...”

“Aye, he wouldn't, that one!”

“No, he had the bus schedule worked out then and there and nothing would do but that I got my old bicycle and rode behind him to Leenane to catch the bus, the one that lugs itself up over the Maam road to Oughterard and then Galway. The Clifden bus would of course been an easier trip but it wasn't scheduled for another three days and Fintan could never have waited!”

Declan smiled. Fintan Walsh was a busybody if ever there was one and Una's description was exactly right. He could see the man racing over the Leenane road on his elderly bicycle to get Una on the bus on time, and no doubt he would have accompanied her to Galway too, given any encouragement.

“Sure enough, Hugh's solicitor was waiting at Eyre Station with this little car, having been telegraphed by the Post Office to say I was on my way. I know how to drive a little, David taught me, although it took me ages to figure out these gears.”

“Did you make the trip in one day so?” Declan asked.

“No, I stayed overnight in Galway, waking up through the night with the most excited feeling, like Christmas morning, and then remembering that I now owned a car, or at least Marshlands owns a car. I was able to shop for some supplies in Galway, and didn't I feel proud to tuck them into the boot and then, making sure I had enough petrol, to drive home in this wonderful car. I stalled many times and almost hit a sheep near Ballynahinch, but I got back safe and sound, stopped once by Nationals near Recess who cautioned me about blood-thirsty Republicans near Clifden and once by Republicans near Kylemore who cautioned against trigger-happy Nationals. I gave Fintan first ride as a point of gratitude, and now I've come to collect you for a sketching trip!”

“Were ye not frightened, Una, to be stopped by soldiers?” It unnerved Declan to hear her speak to flippantly of soldiers stopping her on the road, their guns at the ready.

“I remembered reading something in the
Connaght Tribune
a year or two ago, when the Republicans held Clifden. They expected everyone to carry a permit and Monsignor McAlpine was quoted as saying he absolutely refused to do so. When he was stopped from visiting a house without permission, he declared he would rather die by the roadside than ask for a permit from boys he had baptised. I feel a little that way myself.”

“But surely it could be dangerous?”

“Oh, what could men who have burned my family home possibly do to me now, apart from shoot me? All the memories of my childhood, the happy rooms—poof, they're ash. And I will not live my life in fear. My elderly aunt in Donegal had her car taken from her by the IRA, and her a supporter! They needed it for some reason, and when it hadn't reappeared in her courtyard several days later, she marched down to the Barracks—this was after the Republicans had taken the town—and demanded it back. She reminded the captain she had known him since he was a mewling infant in nappies and that she expected him to behave in a more civilized fashion. All this she told me in a letter as well as the fact that she had received a profuse written apology!”

Declan simply looked at her. Her lightness, her laughter, made him think of her in one way, and this was a different woman, fierce, refusing to be intimidated. He followed her to the car, an Austin Seven painted dark blue, and let her show him each feature, each wiper, each wheel, as well as the spare tyre in the boot and special tool for jacking up the car if there should be a need to change that tyre. (“Hugh's solicitor had a man show me how to change a tyre in the parking area for the Great Southern Hotel.”) Una had packed a basket of food along with a flask of tea so all that remained for Declan to do was to gather his waterproof jacket and open the passenger door.

“I'm going to drive up to Cregganbaun, Declan, as there are some small lakes just west of there with plants I'm hoping to collect. Are we forgetting anything?”

He didn't think so. It was a little unsettling to feel the car shake and judder as they left the farm, but Una assured him she was still getting used to the clutch and hoped he would bear with her because it couldn't take forever, could it? Bride Mannion was bringing in wash as they passed the Mannion farm
and Una waved gaily to her, calling out that she'd take Bride for a run to Leenane one of these days if she liked. Bride looked as startled as Declan had been to see a car on the Delphi road, one that didn't belong to the marquess's estate, and when he waved to her, when she recognized who Una's passenger actually was, her amazement showed.

“Oh, Declan, I'm afraid they'll have us married off by the end of the day, sure as anything.” Una was laughing, but Declan knew there was an element of truth to her words. Men and women did not spend time together unless they were married or promised. But the Fitzgeralds were a family planted in the area nearly as long as his own, and he felt the differences of their upbringing—the Fitzgeralds were Ascendancy stock, supporters of the Church of Ireland, while he'd had the teachings of Rome inculcated from the cradle—could be put aside for the sake of a friendship. And he knew the Fitzgeralds had entertained proponents of the Gaelic League in their home (in a small community, everything was known; it was not that the walls had ears, exactly, but that the serving people and grooms were from local families), had supported the notion of national pride of language and literature, and surely these were in accordance with his own family's hopes and dreams, though expressed in the different terms of class and privilege. And both families had lost homes to the Troubles, had lost, temporarily or permanently, their sense of security and belonging. So now he would drive with Una Fitzgerald up the winding road past Dhulough and Glencullin Lough to look for marsh plants on a chilly day in early December and would pinch himself under the guise of adjusting his weight in the passenger seat to make sure he was not dreaming.

Una had David's vasculum in the back seat. Declan had never seen such a thing before, a metal box with a domed lid, and many place names and dates engraved on its sides.

“David used to engrave the place and date of each trip onto the vasculum, a trick he'd learned from a professor at Trinity College. He kept lists of plants, of course, like birders do—he and his friends called them life lists. But he liked to see at a glance where his passion had led him, and when. An uncle who was a jeweller gave him a small engraving tool which he kept fastened to the underside of the cover. In his journals, he'd make detailed notes about the trips, like a mariner exploring foreign seas. Compass bearings, weather notations ... This one, well, this was heaven.”

Declan looked closely and saw “Dingle Peninsula May 1914” engraved into one side of the vasculum. It was the most recent date he could see. He asked Una how that trip had come about, to County Kerry, a place he'd only heard about.

“David's grandfather knew a priest in Dunquin who invited us to visit—he loved botanizing and wanted the opportunity to show his favourite places to us. We went down by train and then bus, over wild country. It was so beautiful. I remember the bus winding up the Conor Pass and seeing the fields and bogs laid out below like swatches of velvet. The priest met us in Dingle and drove us in a battered old car to his home in Dunquin. He lived beside the old graveyard, which seemed to exist over a community of beehive huts, quite wonderful. You'd be walking along, looking at graves, and suddenly you'd realize that you were standing on a mound from which poked the capstone of a clochan. And the wildflowers, oh, they were exquisite, Declan, particularly the saxifrages.”

“And were ye long in Kerry?”

“We spent the whole of a week there, almost entirely outside, even when it rained the way it can only rain in the West of Ireland. We would get soaked to the skin without even noticing, and David would spend his evenings with the priest, preparing his specimen for his herbarium, while I read books I'd only ever heard of before, never seen, because Father Mulcahy had the
most eccentric library, with our wet clothing sizzling by the fender. And we'd be served huge dinners by a housekeeper who plainly disapproved of Protestants sleeping under the same roof as her employer. She was grim, but the food was delicious.”

The road was rough and the car rattled as Una navigated the potholes and rubble. Damage had been done during the time of the Black and Tans and repairs had yet to be executed; if Liam Kenny was to be believed, there was every chance that the roads would remain dreadful for some time yet. Hills on either side of the road were dressed in the russets and browns of winter with the occasional vivid red as a tree still clung to its last leaves. A standing stone stood impassive on one shoulder as they approached the little hamlet of Cregganbaun, watching for the side road to the lakes Una wanted to visit. It was more a sheep track than a road when they found it, deeply rutted and overhung with trees. It threaded its way over tussocks and gravel, over the rushing water of the Carrownisky River, and sidled up to Lough Mahaltora after passing an ancient tomb standing on the road like a patriarch. This was where the car stopped and Una began to unload her equipment, pulling on wellingtons as she talked.