Cashelmara (46 page)

“Don’t be so melodramatic and ridiculous! Just because there’s a serious crisis at Cashelmara—”

“It’s got nothing to do with Cashelmara!” she shouted at me. “It’s all to do with Derry! You’ve had to choose between us and you’ve chosen him!”

Well, what can one do with a woman who twists the truth in such a demented fashion and compounds her madness by making such hysterical statements? I decided I must keep my dignity and allow her time for her anger to cool, so I shrugged my shoulders and headed in resignation for the door.

I never reached it. My refusal to argue maddened her still further, and she grabbed me by the wrist. I turned to protest. She tried to hit me, and in an effort to smother her flailing hands I made a half-hearted attempt at an embrace. It was only when she recoiled from me in disgust that I finally lost my temper.

“Damn you!” I blazed. “You spoiled, selfish bitch!” I said other words too, words she had never heard before, and suddenly the anger had faded from her eyes and I knew she was frightened.

Now it was my turn to recoil. I couldn’t stand to see her quivering like a jelly. There was sweat on her forehead and she smelled of fear, and I was nauseated by her. I looked at her round breasts and they were ugly to me. I looked at her long neck and it was grotesque.

“What a miserable creature you are!” I said bitterly. “What use are you to any man?” The rage was flowing through me like a stream of molten lead. I felt overpowered by it, pressed by its weight into a different, darker mold. I no longer had any control over what I said, and it was as if a stranger were talking in my voice. “You think you’re so beautiful and desirable,” I said, “but you’re not. You’re sexless, a failure, no better than a unicorn, the biggest swindle ever made on a man who walked down the aisle to the altar.”

She began to cry. I had a blurred impression of watery eyes and straggly hair and was again so nauseated that this time I had to leave the room. But she came after me. She was sobbing noisily by this time, and she went down on her knees and clung to the hem of my jacket as she begged me to stay.

I pushed her away, ran upstairs and vomited. I expected to feel better after that, but I didn’t. My brain was numb; I couldn’t think clearly. All I could tell myself was: It wasn’t me. I didn’t say those things. It was someone else.

Someone I didn’t want to know.

I summoned my man, told him to pack my bags. Marguerite tapped on my door later, but I refused to see her.

I took the afternoon train to Holyhead, and the next morning I crossed the sea to Kingstown. It was evening when the Dublin train drew into Galway, and I felt so exhausted that I had no choice but to go to bed at once at the hotel on Eyre Square.

The headache was gone when I awoke next morning, but it soon came back. I couldn’t eat any breakfast and hadn’t the heart to make the effort to hire a private carriage, so I took the outside car which left daily for Clifden. I was alone. Not wanting company, I had left my man in London, and so there was no one to look down their nose in disapproval as I sat down between a priest and a farmer’s wife. The car grated along through the pastoral country to Oughterard, and then after that the trees died, the meadows gave way to bog and in the distance rose the huge naked mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country.

I left the car at Maam’s Cross where the roads to Clifden and Leenane diverge and managed to hire a horse from one of Derry’s distant relatives who lived there. The wretched animal refused to hurry no matter how much I urged him, so it was well over an hour before I left the Leenane road and headed uphill through the gulley to the pass between Knocknafaughey and Bunnacunneen.

It was unseasonably hot, and I had seldom seen the valley look more tranquil. Even the lough’s ragged edges seemed smooth, and on the hillside across the valley stood Cashelmara, shimmering mysteriously in that unnatural brilliant light.

He must have seen me coming from a long way off, for when I had passed the tip of the lough and my horse had begun to climb again I saw him running down the dark drive to the gates.

He raised his hand, waved joyfully. I knew that if I had been within earshot he would have said, laughing, “Ain’t life grand?” and suddenly I knew who I was again and none of my troubles mattered any more.

He began to unlock the gates with the giant key. I was still some way off, but when the gates swung open I stood up in my stirrups to call a greeting.

He never heard it. He came rushing out toward me, and before I could speak I saw the dazzling flash of sunlight on naked metal and heard the clatter of his gun as it fell unused from his hand.

He had stopped. For one long moment I saw him standing there very straight and proud, his eyes sparkling, his hair blowing lightly in the soft wind, and then he keeled forward, slipping from his knees to the mud road at his feet.

The knife shone in his back as obscene as an inverted cross.

When my horse refused to gallop I slid from his back and started to run. I ran and ran, the sharp stones rough beneath my city shoes, and the sun streamed down upon the valley from that hot and steamy sky.

I reached him. He was conscious. We looked at each other, but neither of us spoke, and the stranger inside me mocked us, saying we had never really talked to each other at all. As if to deny it, Derry made a great effort to speak, but it was too late. He was beyond all speech, and as I pressed him closer to me his face stiffened, his eyes grew darker and the blood ran from his mouth as he died.

I never saw the man who killed him. He must have been hiding among the large boulders above the road, and afterward it would have been easy for him to slip away out of sight around the corner of the walled grounds. I saw no one but Derry.

But I went after Maxwell Drummond. I summoned all the magistrates. I summoned the sub-inspector. I wrote letters to everyone concerned with law enforcement in County Galway. I even wrote to the Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Secretary of State and the Lord Lieutenant at Dublin Castle. And when people shrugged and said outrages were all too common nowadays I wrote to Gladstone at Westminster and said that what was needed in Ireland was not the secret ballot or land reform but law and order.

“We are the leaders of the civilized world,” I wrote, the words spinning dizzily from my pen, “and yet here on our very doorstep is this unspeakable country where the inhabitants are worse than savages and murder is so commonplace that it has ceased to be an atrocity and is treated as a way of life. Why can’t something be done about it? Why do we have to suffer this intolerable situation?”

Mr. Gladstone in his reply explained that Ireland was indeed a grievous cross for the English to bear, but as good Christians it behooved us to improve the lot of the Irish in order that they might be led from the dark waters of their discontent into the paths of enlightenment. In other words he had the insufferable nerve to say that the solution to outrage was to mollycoddle the Irish in order to make them happier.

“I’d like to shoot every O’Malley from here to Clonareen,” I said fiercely to George when he and his brother magistrates and the sub-inspector were at last assembled at Cashelmara. “For a start you must imprison Drummond. He’s the one responsible. Imprison him and beat him till he confesses.”

They all looked at me blankly. I started to shout at them, accusing them of sympathizing with the murderers, and when they tried to interrupt I cursed them till I was too exhausted to curse any more. After that I found myself alone with George, who said I was making a shocking exhibition of myself and must pull myself together at once.

“Not until I’ve found the murderer and seen him hanged!”

“My dear Patrick,” said George, “I may as well warn you, you’ll never find him and neither will anyone else. Drummond was at Leenane at the time of the murder. Half a dozen witnesses can vouch for his presence there. There’s not even a chance that we could prove he was a conspirator, and as for proving which O’Malley threw the knife … well, you’d fare better if you tried to prove the world was flat.”

“But there must be witnesses! If we offer a reward surely someone will come forward!”

But all George said was “Have you never heard of Ribbonism?”

I had but I must have looked blank, for he said in explanation, “Ireland is riddled with secret societies like the old Ribbon Society of the Forties, and all of them are busy fostering agrarian outrages in a continuing war against the landlord. The society which flourishes in this valley calls itself the Blackbooters, and no matter what anyone says to the contrary I’m convinced they’re supported by none other than the Irish Republican Brotherhood.”

“Oh, the Brotherhood—the Fenians—no Englishman could take them seriously!”

“Scoff if you wish, but mark my words, you’ll find no one willing to collaborate with the authorities in a case like this, for any collaborator would be subject to the most savage reprisals. You’ll never find a soul willing to testify on the subject of Stranahan’s murder.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?” I said in a great rage. “Sit back and let my friend’s assassin live happily ever after?”

George said nothing. His silence maddened me. I said, “Don’t think I won’t get even with Drummond one day. I won’t forget and I won’t forgive and one day I’ll see him hanged.”

I knew then that it didn’t matter who had thrown the knife. All that mattered was that Drummond had arranged it.

But there was nothing I could do except bide my time and bury my friend as best as I could. It was no easy task. I knew his grave would have been desecrated at Clonareen, and when I decided to bury him in a quiet corner of the family churchyard by the chapel at Cashelmara I couldn’t find a Catholic priest who would say a Mass by the graveside. Father Donal said he was crippled by a pain in his leg, and when I offered to send the carriage for him he said he had a fever and begged to be excused.

That was when I really began to believe George’s talk about the power of those rural secret societies, but fortunately Madeleine came to my rescue. I will say for Madeleine that she was always very good at doing the impossible. She bribed the Archbishop’s private chaplain to journey to Cashelmara, and although the poor man was terrified out of his wits and obviously expected to be murdered in his bed, I was at last able to give Derry a funeral according to the rites of his own church. I wished Clara could have been there, but of course I had to forbid her to come because I could never have forgiven myself if anything had happened to her.

Thinking of Clara made me remember Sarah, and after the funeral, when I had no choice but to face the fact of Derry’s loss, I became increasingly aware of my loneliness. A lassitude overcame me. I suppose it was the aftermath of shock, but I made no attempt to leave Cashelmara and shrank from going to London until I knew how I would be received. I still could not bear to think of our quarrel in detail, but eventually I wrote asking her to forgive me and saying that when I returned to London I did hope she would consent to talk matters over.

She did not reply. Presently I wrote again and said I was coming to London to take her to America as I had promised. I thought that at least would prompt some response, but when I heard nothing I suspected her letters were being intercepted by ill-wishers. At that point I sent for MacGowan. I was tired of living in an armed fortress, tired of troubles created by malcontents determined to make my life a misery. I told MacGowan to do whatever had to be done to put matters right with my tenants, and when he asked about the forestry plantation I told him I had abandoned the scheme and the O’Malleys could go back to their land if they wished.

I waited another week in case there was word from Sarah, but when none came I wrote a third letter. For the first time I tried to face the memory of our quarrel, and after many drafts I wrote, “My darling Sarah, I know I said unforgivable things to you when we quarreled, but none of them was true. Looking back, I feel that I never said them and that they were said by someone else. Whoever that someone was he’s gone now and I’m myself again. I’m no longer the man who made you so unhappy. I’m the man who loved you and married you and loves you still. Please give me another chance. All I want is to make you happy and prove I love you better than anyone else in the world. Please write. I shall leave here and come to you as soon as you send word that there’s a chance of me being forgiven. All my love,
PATRICK
.”

I waited. The days dragged past. Eventually in despair I wrote to Marguerite. Was Sarah determined to remain unforgiving? Had she perhaps already left for America? Was she ill? Dying? Dead?

“Please write,” I begged Marguerite. “Please, please write.”

I felt so isolated. Despite MacGowan’s overtures of peace to the O’Malleys I still thought it unwise to wander far beyond the grounds, so I didn’t go riding or boating or paying calls on my neighbors. Instead, as my lassitude ebbed, I began to work on the garden. I had decided to shape the lawn so that it resembled a lake surrounded by flowers and shrubs. Lawns, I had read, could provide a satisfactory visual substitute for water, and although I hoped later to build a lily pond I had decided to place that farther uphill on a plateau in the woods. The pond would be part of my Italian garden, linked to the “lake” garden by a long flight of steps. When the trees were cleared the view would stretch over the roof of the house to the lough and the mountains, and I could then frame the view by building some sort of pavilion—an Italian teahouse, perhaps, or a ruined temple. The garden would be Tuscan, not Renaissance, the design based on Petrarch’s idea of what a classical Roman garden might have been like, and the emphasis would be not on flowers but on water and stone. And to border my Tuscan garden … well, I thought a topiary might be fun. I liked the idea of shaping trees, molding them into different shapes, cutting, nurturing, experimenting.

I loved my garden already, although it was still a wilderness, and in my distress it proved to be a solace to me. I cut the lawn and edged it; then I found a rusty roller in one of the greenhouses and began to roll it up and down, up and down over the coarse bumpy turf.