Cashelmara (6 page)

“Speaking for myself,” he concluded with his peculiarly childlike sincerity, “I can’t recommend matrimony too highly, but make sure you marry the right girl, Patrick, because I should imagine it’s devilish inconvenient if you marry the wrong one.”

Both my parents had called me Patrick. My father had chosen the name in celebration of his love of Ireland, and I was never called by my second name until I went to Woodhammer Hall.

“Patrick!” cried my uncle Richard. “God’s teeth, Henry, only you could think it an advantage to label a boy an Irishman in that fashion!” And to me he simply said, “Did they give you a second name at the christening?”

So in England I was always called Edward, and as I grew up the two names seemed to symbolize my conflict as I struggled to decide where I belonged. As a child I thought of myself as Irish. When one is born and bred in a place it is hard to understand when one’s fellow natives—and even one’s parents—say one belongs elsewhere. England seemed very strange to me, but because, like other children, I hated to be an outcast I was willing to belong there if I could. But my English cousins called me Irish, and during the gloomier moments of my childhood I thought in despair that I would be accepted by neither country, unable to call any place my home.

Yet by the time I was a man I found myself equally at home in both countries and even fancied during one of my more arrogant phases that I had the power of choice in deciding where my roots lay. Having become well educated and cynical, I saw all too clearly that there was no advantage to me in yearning to belong to the most backward country in Europe when I could belong instead to the mightiest nation in the world, and for a while I neglected Ireland and pretended there was no reason why I should ever live there again.

But Ireland drew me back. My father died, and I went home to Cashelmara, matchless Cashelmara, and all the memories of my childhood came out to welcome me as I rode down from the hills along the road to Clonareen.

I knew then where my roots lay.

Cashelmara. Not a stone tower by the sea any more but a white house built by James Wyatt, surely the greatest of all those late eighteenth-century architects, who took the genius of Robert Adam and refined it with his classic simplicity and grace. It was a grand house, but it was not pretentious. A flight of eight steps led up to the plain front door, which was set squarely in the middle of the south wall of the house. On a level with the front door four windows stretched away to the left and four stretched away to the right. Above them on the upper floor were matching windows, all spaced with the same geometric precision, all decorated only with simple architraves, all long, slim and graceful. The basement windows, half above and half below ground, followed this same precise pattern, and far above them the pattern was echoed yet again by the windows of the attics. A pediment, stark and classical, balanced the vertical lines of the front door and the columns of the porch. There was no gross decoration, no fluting or curling or fussiness of stonework, and so nothing distracted the eye from those smooth clean lines arranged with unsurpassable taste and skill.

Matchless Cashelmara, incomparable Cashelmara—but no adjective could ever capture the peace and pleasure and satisfaction that overwhelmed me whenever I returned there after an absence in England. It would be insufficient to explain this extraordinary sense of well-being merely by saying that the house was beautiful. Of course it was beautiful, the most beautiful house I had ever seen. But it was more than that. It was my father’s life work, my parents’ happy marriage, my own idyllic boyhood spent far from dirty cities and the corruption of modern life. It was the past, the uncomplicated past seen far away at the end of the golden corridor of nostalgia, the rural simple world of yesterday untouched by the clamor of a thousand industrial machines, the roar of international revolution and the steady ruthless progress of science. I trust I am modern in my outlook. Indeed I have no patience with men who cannot move with the times, but after months spent in London immersed in the teeming confusion of modern life I always found it a comfort to retreat to the peace and seclusion of Cashelmara.

I found myself on the brink of that peace and seclusion on the evening of the third day after my departure from St. James’s Square. I had hired a carriage that morning in Galway to take me the last forty miles of my journey, and when the coachman, who was young and inexperienced, looked alarmed at the prospect of driving along the rim of Connemara into the wilderness of the Joyce country we had been obliged to waste time while I explained to him that I was not one of those landlords who were afraid to ride unarmed on their own estates. My tenants might waste their energies in barbaric faction fights, but no one wasted their time feuding with me because they knew if they wished to complain I would listen and if they wanted justice I would mete it out to them without fuss. I have never had any sympathy with the landlord who treats his tenants as animals and then moans in bewilderment when they regard him as the devil incarnate.

It was sunset when the carriage creaked through the pass between Bunnacunneen and Knocknafaughy and I was able to look down upon my inheritance. The lough, long and slender, lay limpidly below me, and far away at the other end of the valley I could see the road winding past the cabins of Clonareen toward Letterturk. The mountains ringed the valley. I knew all their names and had climbed each one of them in my youth. The carriage was easing its way painfully around a sharp bend, and as the wheels began to grind downhill at last I looked north across the valley, across the western tip of the lough, across the river and the bog and the walled potato patches to the studied stone elegance of my home.

Around the house lay several acres of woods framed by a high stone wall. The trees had been planted to protect the house from the winds which scudded up the valley, but from the front of the house, where a gravel sweep allowed a carriage to turn with ease, the drive zigzagged downhill so rapidly that the top branches of the trees by the gates swayed far below the basement windows. The chapel, my mother’s pride and joy, stood above the house on the eastern perimeter of the grounds. Its small stone tower was visible above the trees as one approached the house.

It was still light when the carriage reached the gates. The sun takes a long time to set at Cashelmara on summer nights, and never in all my travels have I seen a sight to equal the finest of the Irish sunsets. The lough was now a pool of dark gold in reflection of the afterglow, and the mountains, black in shadow, glowed a dull crimson beneath the slashed and dreamy sky.

Everyone at the house was stupefied by my arrival, although they had no reason to be. I made a habit of descending upon them without warning at least once a year in order to prevent slothful habits developing during my absence, and my stern response if all was not as it should have been was legendary throughout the household.

“Is it really yourself, my lord?” said Hayes, the butler whom I had brought to Cashelmara ten years ago from Dublin. It was hopeless to expect any of the local men to learn about buttling without becoming drunkards, and although Hayes had his shortcomings he had improved, like port, with age.

“Well, who do you think it is, Hayes?” I said irritably as I stepped into the hall. Despite my irritation I paused just as I always did to admire this magnificent entrance to my home. The hall was circular, surrounded by a gallery on the upper floor, and far above the massive Waterford chandelier, the design of the ceiling reflected the design of the marble floor. To the right was the door that led into the saloon and a chain of reception rooms, to the left was the library and on the other side of the hall beyond the stairs were the corridors that led to the servants’ quarters and the lesser rooms.

I sighed, savoring the familiar pleasure of my return, and then allowed myself to recall my irritation. “Arrange for a meal to be served in half an hour, please, Hayes,” I said abruptly, “and tell the maid to air my bed properly this time. One warming pan is not enough. Where’s my son?”

“I’m thinking he rode to Clonareen, my lord, with young Derry Stranahan.”

“I want to see him as soon as he returns. Bring some brandy and water to me in the library, if you please.”

The library was a square room that faced across the valley. The principal item of furniture was a huge desk that my father, in typical eccentric fashion, had designed himself, and, following my usual habit, I sat down behind it and glanced at Eleanor’s portrait, which hung over the white marble fireplace. Closer to me on the desk stood the miniature of my dead son Louis. He was smiling. It was a good likeness, and not for the first time I wondered how he would have looked if he had lived. He would have been twenty-five by this time. He would have taken his degree at Oxford and traveled abroad in the required manner; perhaps he would have married. Without doubt he would have gone into politics, won a seat in the Commons, joined the Carlton Club … Eleanor would have been so proud.

“Here’s your brandy and water, my lord,” said Hayes from a long way away. “And, my lord, your son and Derry Stranahan are this moment riding up the drive.”

I went to the window, the glass in my hand, and looked out at the son who had survived. Then before he and his friend could disappear around the house to the stables I set down my glass, left the library and opened the front door.

They were laughing together. They both looked drunk, but Roderick Stranahan, the boy I had fed and clothed and educated since his family had died in the famine, looked less drunk than Patrick. At seventeen one is more capable of holding one’s liquor than when one is fourteen.

I waited. They saw me. The laughter stopped.

It was Derry Stranahan who recovered first from the shock. He slipped from his horse and ran across the drive to greet me.

“Welcome home, Lord de Salis!” he exclaimed, very bright-eyed and bobbish, and held out his hand for me to shake.

Young rogue, I thought, but it was hard to be angry with him for long. Meanwhile Patrick had dismounted. I was astonished to see how much he had grown, and I noticed too that his new height had accentuated his marked physical resemblance to me. I could see nothing of Eleanor in him at all.

“Papa!” he cried and rushed so unsteadily toward me that he tripped and fell flat on his face.

“I’m sorry to see,” I said as Derry helped him to his feet, “that you’re in no fit state to receive me in a proper manner. Go to your room at once, if you please, before all the servants see you in such a disgraceful condition.”

“Yes, Papa,” he said humbly and still, despite what I had said, delayed his departure by attempting to embrace me.

“That will do,” I said, for I thought it unmanly for a boy of his age to indulge in such lavish demonstrations of affection, and besides I wanted him to know that I was angry with him. “Go to your room at once.” And after he had gone I said sharply to Derry Stranahan, “Long before I left for America I strictly forbade Patrick to drink more than one glass of wine a day, and I strictly forbade either you or Patrick to drink poteen. Since you’re the elder I hold you entirely responsible for this incident.”

“Why, yes, my lord,” said Derry, long-faced and mournful-eyed, “to be sure you do. But we were visiting my kin among the Joyces, and in Joyce country it’s considered a mortal insult if you refuse your host’s little token of good will.”

“I’m well aware of the customs of the country,” I said dryly. “This is not to happen again, do you understand? If it does, I shall be very angry. Take the horses to the stables and go to your room. I don’t wish to see you again today.”

“Very well, my lord. I apologize from the bottom of my heart, upon my honor I do. Might I have a little bite to eat before I go upstairs?”

“You may not,” I said, privately cursing him for his charm, which made it so hard to treat him as severely as he deserved. “Good night, Roderick.”

“Good night, Lord de Salis,” he said sadly and ran with great grace across the drive to the straying horses.

Returning to the library, I finished my brandy and moved to the dining room, where I ate the bacon and potatoes which had been hastily prepared for me. It was only after I had dined that I could summon the energy to extract my cane from the cloakroom cupboard and toil wearily upstairs to do my parental duty.

Patrick had lighted both lamps in his room. As I entered I found him dusting the table by the window, but although I suspected he had been carving I saw no trace of the telltale sawdust, and only the watercolors, pinned to the canopy of the bed, remained to betray how he had amused himself since running away from his tutor. Among this collection I noted a fine painting of his favorite Irish wolfhound, two bad pictures of birds, an interesting sketch of Hayes’s small daughter and a gaudy portrait of a long-haired gentleman whom I could only presume to be Jesus Christ.

I said nothing. He knew I did not approve of his pastimes, but he knew too that I tolerated the painting since it was preferable to any of his other pursuits. I had once caught him digging a ditch at Woodhammer Hall. He had solemnly explained to me that he was redesigning the grounds in eighteenth-century style and that the ditch was a ha-ha. Another time—again at Woodhammer—I had found him helping a thatcher repair the roof of a tenant’s cottage. At least he could paint in private without causing undue comment, but his artisan inclinations, displayed so carelessly for all my tenants to see, had proved an embarrassment to me and I had been angry that he should have been so ready to make a laughingstock of himself. Recognizing that his interest in horticulture might be directed into acceptable channels, I had tried to teach him various agricultural theories, but Patrick had refused to be interested. He did not care a fig for cultivating a field of turnips, he had told me; it was much more fun to weed a flower bed and plant a row of marigolds.

“But, my dear Patrick,” I had said in despair, “you cannot go through life weeding flower beds like a common gardener.”

“Why not?” Patrick had asked, assuming that puzzled expression which always infuriated me, and I had been obliged to give him one of those tedious lectures about his station in life, the obligations which would one day be imposed upon him and the necessity that he should interest himself in estate administration and, out of duty, politics.