Blasket Spirit (19 page)

A deer stag inched his way towards us, nuzzling and chomping the grass on the clifftop. We watched him silently. Behind him the infinite expanse of blue sky merged into three thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean.

‘Why did you bring the deer into the island? Would introducing a new species not change the natural balance here?’

‘No, not at all. There were always sheep here, and the red deer and sheep are very similar in their behaviour and in what they eat. The red deer were very natural successors to the sheep, particularly since there are no trees on the Inis. The red deer is a native species that has survived in Ireland since the last Ice Age. When I came to the island, the only native herd in the country was in Killarney. At that time, that herd was under threat and falling in numbers. Any major setback, like foot and mouth disease, would mean that unique genetic link with the past would be gone forever.’

‘There are red deer in Wicklow and Donegal.’

Yes, there are and they are a very important part of our wildlife heritage, but they are not the native pure-bred Irish red deer. They were brought in from Scotland and England in the nineteenth century. The Killarney herd was then the only native herd of red deer, the same deer that the Fianna hunted. Inis Mhic Uibhleain provided a unique opportunity to preserve the native species. It gave us the base on which to build up a reserve herd, so that if the Killarney herd was ever threatened again, it could always be renewed from here. The Inis turned out to be an ideal habitat for the deer. They thrived and there are now over a hundred. We brought in the native Irish hare, another link in our wildlife heritage chain, and they are doing very well too.’

Red deer on Inis Mhic Uibhleain
.

There it was, that word ‘heritage,’ again. ‘It’s a pity that heritage isn’t a priority in Ireland today,’ I said.

‘
Heritage
. They can’t even spell the word.’

I watched the regal stag lift his head, smelling the wind. Behind him, An Téaracht rose from the sea like a volcano. Its pinnacle was topped with a motionless hazy cloud. The stag bolted and disappeared down the hillside. ‘I almost expected to see Fionn and Oisín in hot pursuit there.’

Charlie smiled. ‘I am afraid I cannot arrange that, but at home in Dublin, we have Cú Chulainn.’ I had heard of it. ‘It is a larger-than-life statue, carved by Joan Walsh Smith from the trunk of a fallen elm. We lost some elms in a gale in the early eighties. Joan carved Cú Chulainn out of one of them, and he now stands patiently on guard outside Abbeville.’

‘Well if Oisín came across the sea again, he would feel quite at home here, even now,’ I said, watching the larks spiralling up from the springy grass around the walls of the oratory.

‘Yes, I suppose it hasn’t really changed.’

His gaze then fell upon the house. ‘Well, the rate of wine consumption and the solar panels might
throw him
, just a bit.’ He chuckled to himself. I was slow to pick up his joke. ‘I don’t think Oisín needed solar energy to power his mobile phone.’

‘You still have to tell me the wine story,’ I reminded him.

He looked at me and said ‘my version… and I don’t want to be quoted.’ I sat back in delight while he regaled me with a tale of French wine, storm-bound builders, and French presidents. ‘Now, you will have to go to Larry Slattery over in Dún Chaoin to hear the full story of that episode, over a pint.’

‘You mean the ferrymen’s father?’

‘The very same gangster,’ he said affectionately.

The yacht returned for me much too quickly. Charlie walked to the top of the cliff with me when I was leaving. ‘Come back and see me again soon. You can tell me your Skellig story next time. I love to hear about the islands.’

We shook hands and said goodbye. I set off down the steep path. As I looked back up, he waved. Behind him, a herd of red deer grazed by the ruins of the ancient oratory. As I waved back, I knew that the secrets of the stones on this particular Blasket Island were in safe hands.

L
arry Slattery arrived into the Great Blasket Island a few days later. He was a jovial man who had time to chat with everyone. I approached him, as he stood on the cliff, above the slipway, watching the red ferry depart. He pushed the cap back off his head, wiping the sweat from his brow.

‘Charlie told you to ask me,’ he said and burst into guffaws of laughter. ‘That’s a good one. What did he say about it?’

‘Well, he laughed a fair bit too.’

‘The man has a sense of humour, I’ll say that for him, and it was lucky for us that he does.’

‘What happened?’

‘You know he built a house in on the Inis?’ I nodded. ‘Well, I was in helping Dan, when we did the deed.’

‘Who’s Dan?’

‘Dan Brick.
Brick
, the builder!’ he grinned. ‘When he started building first, there was only a tiny builder’s prefab there, for shelter and for making tea. It was fairly primitive. Most people imagine C.J.H. in a Caribbean paradise, but I can tell you, in on the Inis it was rough – no electricity, running water, firewood or toilet. When the wind and rain beat across the island, no work could be done of course. It was slow going. Loading and unloading materials, and even getting to the site left you at the mercy of the weather. Sure, you’d be exhausted before you’d even start.

‘At one stage, the weather turned really vicious. There was Dan, myself and two other lads stranded in on the island for a few weeks. Our supplies were soon gone, so what could we do only investigate Charlie’s stores. Luckily for us, his kids had an amount of tins of food put by, for when they might be caught out. We did OK for a while on tins of ham, but I had to draw the line at tins of snails. French snails, if you don’t mind. I even had a go at making a kind of bread over the open fire. We were getting pretty hungry, I can tell you.

‘Anyway, Dan sent me off to see what else I could find, and there it was – a case of wine. The boss told me to get a bottle and we’d try it. He said he didn’t think Charlie would mind. I poured it out, into the two old tin mugs that the Ó Dálaigh brothers used for the tea.’ He cringed as he remembered. ‘It was very rare French wine that he had been given as a gift. He had been nursing it for years, waiting for a special occasion. Nineteen forty-seven was on that bottle. It could have been the year they built the wine factory for all we knew. I suppose if we’d known how much each swig of the stuff was worth, we might have sipped it a bit more slowly, but to be honest, I didn’t taste much in it.’

‘Was it the most expensive bottle you drank?’

‘Bottle! Are you joking? We drank the whole case.’

‘Châteauneuf-du-Pape nineteen thirty-five was on the second bottle. According to Charlie, you can’t put a value on wine like that. Thank God he has a sense of humour. He seemed to get a great laugh out of the fact that we downed it out of the two ancient chipped, tin mugs of the Ó Dálaigh’s. We were stranded out there another two weeks after that. Now that I think of it, there was a bottle of vodka that we drank too. I’d forgotten about that. There was no sign of anyone coming out for us, so the four of us set off across the nine miles in a currach, and do you know, we did it in three hours,’ he announced proudly. ‘Three hours non-stop rowing to Dún Chaoin. Not bad going, eh?’

‘But what about the wine? Were you not afraid that Charlie would miss it?’

‘Sure Dan said we’d buy a couple of bottles in Garvey’s supermarket in Dingle, and Charlie would be none the wiser.’

‘That obviously didn’t happen.’

‘No, not quite. A couple of months later, Charlie came into the island with the architect and a few others, to see how the work was progressing. It was sweltering hot weather. He spotted me sitting on box outside the
bothán
, and over he came for a word. We were chatting about this and that, when, didn’t he decide that we both needed a drink! I offered him a cup of tea but he looked at me as if I was half-mad. Then, he proceeded to tell me where his treasured case of wine was stashed! This was the celebration he had waited years for, and he was going to open a very special bottle. I was nearly sick. I suppose I should have been honoured that it was me he thought of drinking it with, and not the hobnobs he’d come over with. I couldn’t get away fast enough, but sure there was nothing I could do. I arrived back with the two tin mugs and a bottle of plonk with one of those screw-on caps, which we’d bought in Garvey’s. He assumed that I couldn’t find the wine and he said he’d get it, so what could I do but look the man in the eye, and tell him that we’d drunk it.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well, I had to assure him a fair few times that we had, in all honesty, drunk the entire case. He was like somebody that was been told that one of the family had died, and it just wasn’t sinking in. I thought it was the end of me. Then would you believe it, he just put his head in his hands, and he laughed and laughed. He wanted to know all the details. He seemed to get great good out of the idea of the whole case being downed in the old tin mugs, like tea. He was breaking his sides laughing. I was in a bit of a state over it, so I reassured him that we had replaced the wine with much newer stuff from the supermarket.’

‘What did he say then?’

‘Nothing, he just didn’t stop laughing, and then he nearly cracked up altogether when he saw that the £1.50 price tag was still on it. Anyway, when he eventually drew breath, he sent me off to retrieve the empty bottles and corks. Then I got my first lesson on wine, as we sat on the old box in the sunshine. All I know about wine Charlie Haughey has taught me, and since then, I have a healthy respect for the grape. If there’s any trace of it still in my bloodstream, I’m worth a fortune.’

I didn’t know anything about fine wines, but even I could appreciate the travesty of a treasured case of rare wine meeting its end, swilled down in a chipped tin mug with nothing but a tin of ham for company.

‘You know that story has gone around the world like a boomerang. Charlie told it to President Mitterrand at a state dinner the following weekend, and it was told back to him in the States a couple of weeks after that.

‘When the house was finished, he invited me, along with half the population of Dingle and Dún Chaoin, into the Inis, for the party. He’s like that you know… but let me tell you, I brought a bottle with a real cork that time.’

A
ccording to Larry, Maria Simonds-Gooding would be in to visit the island the following morning. I watched the ferry arrivals carefully. I looked out for an easel or other such give-away. There was none. A homogenised crowd seeped through the lower ruins. Then a tall striking lady set off alone, up to the top of the hill. She radiated an enthusiasm and energy that set her apart. Near the brow of the hill she stopped, framing vast views with her hands. Like a fairy godmother, with one wave of her magic brush, she could immortalise all before her. That had to be her. I locked the door and set off in hot pursuit.

When I greeted her, she turned, smiling broadly, and introduced herself as Maria Simonds-Gooding. After chatting for a while, I asked her if she would tell me her ghost story of the Inis.

‘My goodness, I’m surprised you’ve heard about that. Not many people know about the calf on the Inis. It was a long time ago, but I remember it clearly, every bit of it. It was July 1968 and was one of the hottest summers I can remember. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I wanted to get out, onto one of the islands, to do some painting. One day, in Kruger’s pub, I met the skin-divers who were searching for the Spanish Armada shipwreck. They promised to take me out to whatever island I wanted. I organised my things and met them, as arranged, down at the Cusheen, at three o’clock. I had a sack with food and a bottle of Kruger’s port. My cousin Marie-Claire was with me. We decided on Inis Mhic Uibhleain, but the problem was how to land. The wreck of a small German plane was visible as we approached the pebble beach, on the east side of the island. We made several unsuccessful attempts to land, until eventually we took the dinghy in and managed to tie it to a rock while we climbed the steep cliff onto the island. My sack was hauled up the rocks on the end of a rope.’

Maria paused as she closed her eyes, remembering. ‘You know, I can still smell that port. The bottle had smashed and it had soaked into everything. The skin-divers left us alone on the island, saying they would come back for us in a week. We walked the island and decided to put up our tent in the field that was walled in for a blind sheep. It had been another very hot day and now it was an utterly still night. It was difficult to sleep, with the heat, and the noise of all the birds.

‘It was on the third night that it happened. We had the weeniest of tents and I remember that I had three beetles in my sleeping bag that night. At eleven o’clock every night, like clockwork, the storm petrels came in from the sea. The noise was deafening. The storm petrels were all flying in from as far as forty miles away, back to their nests in the stone walls around the field. They were everywhere. Then there were the chilling wails of the manx shearwater. There was no hope of any sleep. We had to shout at each other to be heard over the racket. We had a plan to divert them, so we got up and lit the lantern.