Last Summer in Ireland, page 21
‘Yes, she did.’
‘I think he rather expected she would. Do you remember P.W. Joyce’s Irish Names of Places, in three volumes?’
‘Yes, of course I do. Green. With a twist of gold shamrock on the spine and a round tower on the front cover and pale brown spots on the flyleaves.’
‘My dear, what a memory! I am amazed. You can’t have seen those volumes since you were nine.’
‘I know, but I loved them so. They have all the old names with their origins and their meanings. That’s where he got Anacarrig from, though he had to change it from Anna to Ana, because Anna means ford and all he had was a small marsh.’
‘Yes, I do remember him telling me that, but when he explained it to me I was rather more than five years old. You become more and more your father’s daughter, my dear.’
‘Ticker, I’m so thrilled. I’ve always been so sad about Daddy’s books. I can’t think of anything I’d love more than the Joyce.’
Before he handed me over to Mary to make a date for supper, he said in his very firm way: ‘Now Deirdre, there may be some problems over your mother’s estate, but I see no reason for any anxiety. I don’t know your sister very well, but if she’d like to talk to me I’d be very happy to assist in any way I can. In any case, as your father’s executor, I shall certainly be involved. I shall have a copy of his will for you when you come.’
If I had inherited the whole land of Ireland from my father, I could not have been more pleased than finding those three precious volumes in Hector’s safe keeping. When I put down the phone after talking to Aunt Mary and gathered up again the scented blossom still misted with dew, it came to me that that was exactly what he had left me. Joyce was the key to the land he loved, for it was full of the names men and women had put upon each small corner in the ‘olden days’, that time to which the Irish refer with such a fine disregard for the distinctions between decades, centuries or millennia.
Two days after my call from Uncle Hector, I arrived back from shopping in Armagh and found that a ‘Sold’ notice had been nailed across the ‘For Sale’ board at the foot of the drive. I was so taken aback I stalled the car and had to do a hill start in my own drive. I got out at the top of the slope and walked back down to stare at the bright red letters on a white background. It said the same as it said on the way in. Sold.
‘Surely it should be ‘Sold, subject to contract’, I muttered to myself, as I stood gazing up at it. ‘Sold’ was so final. After all I’d heard from friends about interminable delays in conveyancing, it couldn’t possibly have got this far so soon. Could it?
But it had. When I rang the agents they said the contract was expected at any moment. Neither party had raised any objections over the ‘Questions before contract,’ so it wasn’t worth sending out the man with the hammer and nails twice.
I should have been pleased, but I wasn’t. The only possible good thing I could see about this sudden move forward was that I could phone Sandy in Germany and win back some of the brownie points I’d lost before she went. I tried to reach her on and off for the rest of the week, but I didn’t catch her till Thursday evening when I rang her London flat just before I went for supper with Mary and Hector.
The call was a disaster. Driving into Armagh afterwards, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Because of the awful stew I’d been in before Uncle Hector bailed me out, I’d spent ages rehearsing exactly what I was going to say to her. I fully intended to sound competent as I brought her up to date and then told her the good news of the sale. But what happens? She says ‘Oh good,’ in an offhand way and proceeds to tell me in some detail about her meeting with a young Euro-broker called Paul, who is an absolute dish. Married, of course. A minor detail as far as Sandy’s concerned, if not actually a positive requirement.
I did my best to show some enthusiasm about this most recent encounter, but when she paused for breath and I dutifully mentioned Mother’s will, she laughed at me.
‘What on earth made you think it was a will of Mummy’s we were talking about? I told you it was Daddy’s. What were you thinking about? Don’t tell me you didn’t even know that a will has to have four signatures?’
Sandy has a habit of treating me like some teachers treat conscientious pupils who are not very bright and can only achieve decent results by great expenditure of effort on their own part. But not this evening. She made it clear she wasn’t in the mood for explaining anything to anyone so limited in their grasp of the basic facts of existence.
I felt myself getting angry, but I do try not to get angry with Sandy. I’m the only person who knows how very unhappy she can be when she’s not ‘riding the maribou board,’ as Matthew puts it. She is either madly in love and on top of the world or fed up with everything, including herself. Given her violent swings of mood, how she ever manages to hold down such a responsible, well-paid job I’ll never know.
So I took a deep breath and told her about the three volumes of Joyce Daddy had left me. I ought to have known better. All she could manage was a dismissive: ‘Oh, that’s nice. Is it a first edition? I didn’t know Daddy was a fan of James Joyce.’
Mary and Hector live in one of the tall, Georgian houses that look out over The Mall. Before our meal, we sat by the open windows of their first floor sitting room drinking white wine and listening to the crack of ball on wood as the local cricket team played another match in the midweek league.
Mary said she really was feeling much better since the cruise and Hector was full of stories about the places they had visited. But what was such a delight to me was that they were just so pleased to see me. When they asked me how Matthew was getting on with his Indian project, or about my own work, or our life together in London, they were not just making conversation, they really wanted to know.
I thought as they listened to all I had to tell them how lucky I was to have them thinking about me and caring about me even when they don’t see me very often. I have often wished they had been a real aunt and uncle rather than friends of my father, but as we carried our wineglasses down to the dining room and settled at the small table overlooking the back garden, it struck me that it would have made very little difference where Mother was concerned.
Sandy and I don’t have many relatives, but even those we do have seem quite indifferent to our existence and that has to be because Mother made it so clear she hadn’t much time for them. She always said she was far too busy.
As Hector refilled our glasses, it came to me that Mother wasn’t prepared to have anyone around, relative or otherwise, who didn’t share her views on the bringing up of children. Two people like Mary and Hector who actually talked to them as if they had something to say would never find a welcome at Anacarrig.
After the meal, Aunt Mary excused herself for a little. When she had gone, Hector handed me my father’s will.
As I held it unopened in my hand, I thought of Deara and the parchment Merdaine had left her. I think I hoped I would discover something I didn’t know as she had done. And then I remembered how painful opening the parchment had turned out to be.
I knew Uncle Hector was watching me as I unfolded it and read its simple message. I recognised the handwriting. It was strange to see it again after all these years, but what brought sudden tears to my eyes was a tiny blot. I remembered Daddy’s favourite pen had always had a tendency to blot, but because he was so fond of it, he would never buy another one.
I blinked furiously and managed to stop my tears. Hector tactfully ignored them, but when he spoke his voice was so gentle. ‘I can assure you, my dear, this is now the only will relevant to your situation. As you see, your father left Anacarrig to you, jointly with your sister. It was your mother’s for her lifetime only. Had she died before your twenty-first birthday, I should have had the pleasure of being your guardian. Perhaps I might still make application for that privilege. Without the legal implications, needless to say.’
I went over and hugged him and accepted the large, spotless hanky he offered me. I sat close beside him while he explained what I needed to know. There were only a few sentences in my father’s flowing hand. One about the house, one about the Joyce for his elder daughter, Deirdre, and one about the guardianship he laid upon his friend and executor, Hector Anderson.
No revelations, no secrets, just a strange intimacy, as if my touching what he had once touched completed some unknown process I couldn’t even guess at. Then Hector handed over the Joyce.
It was exactly as I remembered it. I looked up Anacarrig and found it after Anacloan and Annaboe, and before Annagelliff, which means ‘marsh of the storm’. The names were like music, but there was more to them than beauty, each one had its meaning, a quite specific meaning that told you much about the history of the place, a history already disappearing under the debris of the present century.
‘The old storytellers used to believe that a story had the power to heal,’ I said suddenly, as I leafed through the pages of his introduction. ‘Did you know that, Hector?’
‘Now that you remind me, I do. Your father once told me of an old man, a storyteller, who no longer had an audience. Instead he used to tell his stories to his cows. When someone asked him why he did it, he said it was a waste of a good story not to tell it, for its healing could only work through its telling. If the story were not told, it would die, and with it, its power to heal. So long as it survived, someone might still hear it, one day, and be healed by its telling.’
‘Oh, I like that, Hector. “Someone might hear and be healed by its telling”. It has a kind of ring about it. I’ve been thinking I might try writing some stories.’
‘You used to tell me wonderful stories when you were a child.’
‘Did I?’
‘Oh yes. Where you got it all from I cannot imagine. I know your father read to you a great deal and you used to bribe other people to read to you, until you could read yourself, but you seemed to me to have a complete world at your fingertips.’
‘So, I bribed people, did I?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘Oh yes, you used to save your sweeties. I can remember quite well being propositioned when I came to collect your father for our excursions.’
‘How extraordinary, Hector, I remember nothing at all about that, yet I remember so clearly all sorts of other things from quite early on in my life.’
‘Memory is selective, you know, my dear. Sometimes whole areas of one’s life lie dormant until someone or something wakes them up. It’s amazing what turns up when they do. Ask your Aunt Mary about filling the kettle in the stream sometime. She did it on a camping holiday when the boys were young and it brought back a whole history. Very interesting story.’
It was, too, so much so that it was well after midnight when I finally got back to Anacarrig. But going to bed seemed out of the question. I was too elated, too delighted, altogether too excited. And yet what about, I could not tell. So I sat down at my table and wrote for an hour or more: I wrote about the past, about Hector and my father, about having people who really love and cherish you.
Feeling suddenly very tired, I put down my pen and reread what I had written. I came to the last lines:
What does it matter if I do only have a handful of people that care about me. I’m lucky to have even them. If it only needs one person to save a story from dying and losing its healing power then maybe there only needs to have been one person to have loved you long ago to keep you from losing your hope.
I stared at the words on the page, read them again and yawned. I wasn’t sure whether they made sense or not, but they were the words that had been given to me, just like the words that were given to me when I smashed the piece of china.
I closed the notebook, peeled off my clothes and draped them over a chair. It came to me as I crawled under my duvet that my father had not only left me the materials out of which I might make a story, but that he had also given me the love that might enable me to do it.
18
I came downstairs to find a long, fat envelope on the hall carpet. I knew exactly what it was. I laid it carefully on the kitchen table till I’d had breakfast, then I slit it open, took out the contract, fetched my pen and wrote my name in all the places marked with a pencilled cross.
In the space of two minutes, I signed away the ownership of half a house that had been mine for a mere two days and a garden I’d loved from the minute I’d pulled out that first flourishing head of groundsel. What I planned to do next was really very simple. I would walk along the main road to the postbox, send the contract on its way and then follow the familiar route down the lane, along the side of the great mound and through that small green gate with the silvered metal signboard with the words I know by heart.
I was opening the front door when the phone rang. I hesitated and then picked it up. It was Sandy. The moment I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong, though all she did to begin with was enquire irritably if I’d been out last evening as well as the one before because she hadn’t been able to get me.
I explained I’d been in the garden till dusk, but she was not remotely interested in anything I might have been doing. Something had upset her, but what it was, either she didn’t know herself, or she wasn’t going to tell me. My first thought was the dish called Paul, but I said nothing. I’d struggled with Sandy and men for years, but I never seemed to get any further towards understanding. Sunlight and birdsong flowed through the open front door, beckoning me. I felt my patience give way.
‘Have you had the contract, then?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, I was just on my way to post it.’
‘Aren’t you taking it in to them?’
‘Well, there’s not much point. They won’t act on it till Monday anyway.’
There was a only moment’s pause before she shot the next question at me.
‘You’ve remembered to cancel the auction, haven’t you?’
‘Cancel it?’ I was quite taken aback. ‘Why cancel it?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Deirdre, now they’ve found Daddy’s will we don’t have to go through with all that rigmarole. We’ll get far more for the good stuff in Belfast and a straight house clearance’ll deal with the rest. Couldn’t be simpler.’
For a moment, I didn’t grasp what she was saying. She’d never mentioned the auction when I phoned to tell her the contracts were almost ready. Given she wanted nothing from the house and the table from my room was the only thing I’d thought of keeping, the auction seemed as good a way as any of disposing of the contents, especially as it was already arranged, catalogued and advertised.
‘Who had you in mind in Belfast?’ I said slowly, to give myself time to collect my wits.
‘Oh, any of the really good ones,’ she replied hastily, naming several firms I’d never heard of.
‘Will they collect the stuff?’
‘Collect? For heaven’s sake there’s not that much is there? You could stick it all in the back of the car easy enough.’
I thought of the roomful of china, the amount of packing it would need, driving to Belfast, and having to find somewhere to park near any of the places she’d mentioned. The thought appalled me. Besides, I never wanted to see any of those stupid faces ever again.
‘There’s more than you think, Sandy,’ I said uneasily. ‘And there’s still a lot to do here.’
‘Well, perhaps you could cut down a bit on your gardening. No wonder you’re always short of money when you can’t even be bothered to run up to Belfast for the sake of five or six thou.’
‘Five or six thousand?’ I repeated blankly.
‘Surely you know what that china’s worth. Your half would be a tidy sum if you could see your way to taking a little trouble over it,’ she ended nastily.
‘But Mother wanted it to go to the church,’ I protested.
There was a pause. Then she began to spell out the new situation very slowly in her instructing-a-backward-child mode. It just never occurred to her I had no wish to inherit anything from Mother that she didn’t want me to have. The house was different. It was Daddy’s. He planned it, he helped build it and working so hard on it probably shortened his life. He’d left it to us when Mother would no longer have any need of it. That was fine and I was grateful. But that china was hers. It had never been any part of my life. If she wanted it to go to the church, as far as I was concerned, that is where it should go.
I took a deep breath and told Sandy just what I felt. If she wanted the china sold in Belfast that was up to her. She could arrange for it to be collected. I was not prepared to lay hands on it again or to benefit in any way from its sale.
‘You’re out of your mind, Dee, just out of your mind. Principle is one thing, but you’re just being ridiculous. If you want to throw away good money on the church that’s up to you, but I’ve a bit more wit. I’ll ring you back and tell you when the Belfast people can collect.’
She banged down the phone and left me shaking like a leaf.
‘Oh you fool, you fool. Why did you answer the wretched thing? Now she’s spoilt it all,’ I cried, as I collapsed into the nearest chair, my head throbbing furiously. I felt so angry with myself. All my pleasure and excitement at going to Emain shattered. And for what? A stupid business about an auction. As if it mattered. But it did. Anything connected with money mattered to Sandy.
There was no way I was going to Emain in this state. I would have to do something to calm myself. I began sensibly enough by going upstairs and taking two Anadin for my head and sitting down quietly at my table by the open window of my room. But that was the beginning of one of the most awful hours I have ever had.
It was not being able to find my pad of A4 that finally did it. I had decided to pour out my fury on paper, say all the angry and bitter things I was feeling and then tear it up, so that no one would be any the wiser. But my A4 pad wasn’t on my table where it should have been. I pulled open the drawer and looked under my little pile of books, but it wasn’t there either. And if it wasn’t there, where was it? That was its place. I felt tears spring to my eyes. I wanted to lash out, to smash something, anything.
