Ashes In the Wind Read online

  ‘I like the beginning, and the four handsome sons. I’m not so happy about the boar, and the way she marries Fionn,’ says John.

  Grania smiles and jumps up. ‘Enough legends. There are no boars in Ireland any more, so you’re safe enough. And perhaps it’s you that have laid the geis on me.’

  John kisses her and she rides away.

  The Folly is becoming more comfortable; in one of the side buildings John finds a wooden table, a couple of serviceable chairs and some more cushions. He brings over a dark red carriage rug that he bought in Abbeyleix.

  ‘It looks like a Turkish seraglio now,’ says Grania, adding as she sees the crestfallen look on John’s face, ‘I’ve always wanted to be the only woman in the harem.’ She pulls him down onto the rug.

  They are never together more than a couple of hours, barely long enough to talk, barely long enough to give each other pleasure. When John tries to go further, Grania pushes him away and sits up.

  ‘I want you too, properly,’ she says. ‘I dream about you, about having you inside me. It’s not hell-fire I’m worried about, although when I go to confession I don’t tell the priest everything, just the sins of pride and envy, and that gives him enough to be getting on with. If I told him about us I’d be saying Hail Marys until Christmas. But I can’t risk getting pregnant. Mannion would kill the both of us. And I like what we do, even if it’s getting off at Rathmines.’

  ‘Rathmines?’

  ‘That’s what we convent girls call not going all the way. It’s the last station before Dublin. I’d like to go there with you again, please.’

  The next Thursday Grania brings lunch, hot soup in a thermos, slices of ham, some cheese, a couple of apples, two bottles of Guinness. They sit at the little table, drinking Guinness out of tin mugs. John plucks up his courage and asks about Eamonn, not certain he wants to hear the answer.

  ‘Charles says you’re about to get engaged to a lawyer in Maryborough.’

  ‘It’s none of his business, and I’m not sure it’s any of yours. They’re all well ahead of themselves. They don’t have enough to think about. You saw Eamonn at the dance. He’s decent, good-looking, rather dull. He’s a Pioneer, and that counts against a man in my book. He never touches a drop, not even this stuff.’

  Grania takes a sip of her Guinness.

  ‘Mannion would like me to marry him sure enough, see me settled with a professional man and surrounded by Catholic children. Funny, that, when you think about his life – farm labourer, gunman, didn’t have a feather to fly with until three years ago. Scrimped to send me to a convent school, thrilled when I went to university, likes the fact that I speak Gaelic better than he does. And now he’s a member of Dáil Éireann, although he followed Dev out and hasn’t been back.’

  She takes another sip of her Guinness.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else. He’s enjoyed the war, God help him. Commanding the IRA round here, and the revolver in his pocket, means that he’s respected and feared. People look up to you Ascendancy Prods automatically. I don’t mean you, my dear one, but you’ve got a confidence you were born with. Which I like, because it hasn’t turned to arrogance. Mannion’s earned his respect. He doesn’t have to touch his cap to anyone.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she says, and pauses. ‘Although he’s not easy. He gets angry, and takes it out on whoever’s handy.’

  She pauses, rubs the back of her neck, then goes on.

  ‘I’m a little afraid of him, if I’m honest. He’s thought about raising his hand to me once or twice, but never done it. He sees everything in black and white, or green against red, white and blue.’

  ‘I meant Eamonn. Have you ever...’ and John’s mouth goes dry before he can finish.

  ‘You needn’t worry; I don’t love him, and Eamonn would faint if I opened my mouth for a kiss. Here, let me show you something else he and I haven’t done together.’

  She pulls him down onto the rug, loosens his belt, grazes her cheek along his stomach, and takes him in her mouth. Then she says, ‘And you can kiss me there too,’ and shows him how and where.

  ‘Glory,’ she says when he has stopped. ‘That took me well beyond Rathmines.’

  Later John watches as she trots away down the ride. He sets off for his cottage, passes a wild apple tree, plucks a branch of blossom, turns around and canters after Grania. When he catches her up she has dropped the reins and her horse is ambling along; she is singing quietly to herself, ‘O my dark Rosaleen, Do not sigh, do not weep.’

  John pulls up beside her, kisses her and gives her the white and pink branch.

  ‘Sean, you’re my dear one,’ she says. They ride along slowly, knees touching and holding hands, until they reach the top of the little hill looking down on the Mannion farm.

  ‘Be off with you now,’ and Grania leans across for a final kiss.

  The next time they meet they leave the horses tied up outside the Folly and walk slowly through the woods, holding hands, stopping to kiss each other. Grania picks a bunch of primroses, which she puts in the tin mug above the fireplace. When they have finished lunch, John stands up, holds her hand and takes a step towards the cushions. Grania shakes her head.

  ‘The English have landed, it’s the wrong time of the month,’ she says, and John is happy at the reason for the morning’s celibacy. He sits down again and asks Grania about her mother.

  ‘She walked out on Mannion after the Easter Rising. She couldn’t stand the coming and going in the middle of the night, not knowing where the next meal was coming from. I went with her at first to Mountrath, but then my sister got married and I moved to the farm to look after Mannion and the horses. I go over there once or twice a month. She’s a teacher in the elementary school, teaches Gaelic. She got me going on the language, sent me away to summer school every year in the Gaeltacht, in Connemara. I love it there, it’s maybe as beautiful as Kerry. Wild enough, and it has those big Atlantic waves.’

  ‘You won’t go there this year, surely.’

  ‘Ah, my dear one, I will, I must. I speak no Gaelic when I’m here, read little enough, and I still have work to do on my MA thesis. It has a grand title, “The impact of The Lament for Art O’Leary on the poetry and politics of modern Ireland”.’

  ‘Art O’Leary?’

  ‘Shame on you, Sean, and it written by a Kerry woman from Derrynane, just down the road from Derriquin. Eileen O’Connell, aunt of the Liberator. Her husband, Art O’Leary, was murdered by one of yours – all right, by an Englishman – who wanted his horse. It sounds best in Irish:

  Mo ghrá go daingean tu!

  Lá dá bhfaca tu

  Ag ceann tí an mhargaidh,

  Thug mo shúil aire dhuit...

  ‘I know Mo ghrá, and mo mhuirnin. My love, my darling, I’ll find eight weeks without you hard.’

  ‘I will send postcards, although they won’t be very loving, as they all get read and passed around at the Post Office. And when I come back...’

  She doesn’t finish.

  ‘And when you come back?’

  ‘Then we’ll see. I’ll not be here next Thursday; I spend most of next week with my mother. I go to Connemara two days after I get back from Mountrath.’

  They hold each other for a long time outside. Grania’s face is wet with tears, which John kisses away.

  A day later John goes to take The Elector out to his paddock and finds him lying down in his box. He doesn’t get up until John gets Mick to help him.

  ‘Looks like colic,’ says Mick.

  ‘I looked in on him last night and he was fine. And he’s only getting a peck of hay, no oats.’

  ‘It’ll walk off, sure.’

  They take the horse up to the paddock; his eyes are dull, his head heavy. Once through the gate he stands still where he normally canters away.

  ‘He’s not himself at all. I’ll get Charles to come, see what he thinks.’

  Charles comes and looks worried. ‘If it’s colic
it’s bad – best get the big vet over from the Curragh. He’s your man for a real problem. I’ll phone him from the house. You take the horse back to the box and stay with him.’

  The big vet doesn’t come until the afternoon. The Elector is back in his box, head lowered and swinging from side to side, clearly in pain. Now and again he makes a low harsh groan, a sound John has never heard from a horse.

  ‘If it’s colic it should be better by the morning. See if he’ll take this in a bucket of water. Keep him on his feet if you can, but if he goes down, leave him be.’

  By the evening The Elector is down again. John spends the night in the box, watching for any signs of recovery. There are none. The vet comes back, looks the horse over, takes his temperature, and says, ‘It’s not colic, more’s the pity. It’s grass sickness.’

  ‘Grass sickness? We’ve the best grass in the county, and there’s no ragwort in our paddocks.’

  ‘It’s not the grass, it’s a virus and we don’t know much about it. I’ve only ever seen half a dozen cases.’

  ‘What’s the cure?’

  The vet looks first at John, then at The Elector and says, ‘There is no cure. It kills a horse in forty-eight hours or less. The kindest thing...’

  John turns his head away; he doesn’t want to hear the kindest thing.

  ‘He’s in great pain, you can see that, hear it in his breathing. And it’ll get worse.’

  Charles comes down ten minutes later. ‘We had a case here six years ago,’ he says to John. ‘The first and I hoped the last. It’s nothing you’ve done, or not done.’

  ‘Best do it out in the yard if you can get him up,’ says the vet.

  John, in a daze, scarcely believing what is happening, gets The Elector out in the yard with Mick and Sean.

  ‘You hold his head up, and mind you stand clear when he goes.’

  The vet holds the bolt gun to The Elector’s forehead, there is a sharp crack, and the stallion goes down sideways onto the cobbles, twitches and lies still.

  ‘I’ll get Timmy to come tomorrow and take him away for the hounds,’ Charles says, sees the look on John’s face and adds, ‘We’ll bury his heart by the big oak alongside The Archduke.’

  John, unable to hold back his tears, walks over to his cottage.

  The next day John watches as Timmy, Mick and Sean haul The Elector’s body up onto a trailer and drive away to the kennels. By now the dead stallion’s legs are stiff and straight like a child’s horse that has fallen over. He tries to remember The Elector proud and gleaming in the Dublin Show ring, but terrible images of the stallion being cut up and used to feed the hounds are hard to force away. Cis comes and knocks on his door in the evening, but he doesn’t answer.

  John spends the next day looking for ragwort in the paddock. He wants to be sure that it is a virus that has killed The Elector, and not carelessness on his part. The paddock grass is clear. All day he is unable to rid his mind of the stiff dead body of the stallion. He goes to bed early, and is lying awake when he hears a horse come into the yard; a few minutes later Grania comes into his bedroom. He jumps out of bed and she holds him, his head buried in her shoulder. After a minute or two John lights the oil lamp.

  ‘We’ve never been naked,’ says Grania.

  She undresses quickly, and they stand together in the lamplight, looking at each other, touching each other. John bends down, runs his hands from her heels to her calves, the backs of her thighs, her buttocks, strokes the channel of her back, then lifts her into bed. A few moments later Grania gives a little cry, and says, ‘That’s where you belong.’ She stays until morning.

  ‘You’ll be all right now?’ she says as she leaves.

  ‘We’ll be all right.’

  17

  JOHN SPENDS THE next three months working around the stud, repairing fences, painting gates, replacing old water troughs and cleaning every saddle, bridle and bit until they are almost worn away. Charles and he go to look at possible replacements for The Elector, but don’t see anything they like. Charles will consider only a stallion from The Archduke’s bloodline.

  ‘That two-year-old up in the home paddock might do,’ says Charles. ‘He’s by The Elector out of a good mare, and he looks the part. But he’ll have to do something on the racecourse first. He’ll go into training next month.’

  John continues to ride out most mornings at Paddy Brennan’s yard. He wins another hunter chase and is placed a couple of times on Hunting Cap, but the horse pulls up lame after a race at Naas and is put away for the season.

  John wants to forget The Elector; he wants to remember his night with Grania. He gets only a single unsigned postcard from Connemara, a view of the Atlantic and the Cliffs of Moher; on it Grania has written, ‘Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still.’

  The words make John happy; he is not sure what the Post Office will make of them.

  Towards the end of July he is called up to Dublin to see his solicitor in Leeson Street.

  ‘We’re making good progress with the claim. You’re entitled to compensation for the burning of Derriquin and its contents; we’ve asked for twenty thousand, and you might wind up with ten. Your mother was a careful woman; she maintained a detailed inventory of all the pictures, silver, books and furniture in the castle, and all the livestock and farm machinery.’

  John is shown the ledger, bound in dark green cloth, with ‘Derriquin’ in gold letters on its cover. Seeing Eileen’s neat writing brings back memories of his mother at her desk in the Derriquin library, her face illuminated by the soft light of the oil lamp, her fingers brushing a loose strand of hair from her cheek. John has to blink hard to avoid tears. He stands up, walks over to the window, looks at the busy street below for a moment.

  ‘How long will the claim take to settle?’

  ‘Probably a year or two. They’re snowed under with claims. We can arrange an advance against the final payment if that would help.’

  John declines the offer, but he goes away pleased. He’s never felt he needed more money, but he has started to think about Grania’s return.

  Two days later John is cleaning out the visitors’ stables when Mick comes into the yard looking worried.

  ‘He’d like to see you up at the Fort now.’

  John walks up to the house and sees an unfamiliar car standing outside the front door; he recognizes the driver, the man McCarthy who had come to collect Grania’s mare. He has a moment of elation, followed by a feeling of unease when he sees Mary the kitchen maid. She is not normally on duty at the front door.

  ‘They’re all in the dining room,’ she says.

  At one end of the mahogany dining table, below the full-length portrait of Nathaniel Burke in the full wig and red robes of a judge of the Prerogative Court, next to Grania, is a man he has never seen before. Johnnie Mannion is strongly built, with dark hair, bushy eyebrows, brown eyes, big hands that he opens and closes on the table in front of him. The knuckles and backs of his hands are covered in black hair. Grania has been crying and there is a bruise on her cheekbone, which she hides with her hand. She looks at John for a moment, then looks away. At the other end of the table are Charles and Cis.

  John goes towards Grania and is pulled back by Charles. ‘Better sit with us and hear what Mannion has to say.’

  ‘It’s Mister Mannion. And I won’t take long. Grania’s pregnant, and it’s down to you, Mister John Burke.’

  John looks astonished, then smiles.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter. You seduced my daughter.’

  Grania looks up, manages a little smile of her own, and says, ‘That’s not...’ John notices that her lower lip is cut and swollen.

  ‘That’s enough. I’m doing the talking. I know all about the love nest at the Folly, and it’s not the first time that it’s been used by a Burke for this sort of carry-on. You are never to see her again. And you’d better leave Ireland, else I won’t answer for the safety of this house nor anyone in it.’

  �
��There’s no need for that kind of threatening talk, Mister Mannion,’ says Cis.

  ‘I’ll marry Grania. I love her.’ John stands up, and Charles puts a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  Grania begins to cry quietly and holds her face in her hands.

  ‘I’ll see you both dead first,’ says Mannion. ‘You’re an English Protestant, the son of an informer. Your mother was responsible for the death of thirteen Volunteers, all good men. Grania’s to marry Eamonn McCann next week, and she’s lucky he’ll take her and your bastard. I want you to hear it from her.’

  Grania takes her hands away from her face, looks at John, says, ‘It’s true. It’s what will happen. Else you’ll be killed and this house burned.’ She buries her face in her hands again.

  ‘She wouldn’t say this if you hadn’t beaten and browbeaten her. What kind of man are you to knock your own daughter about, bullying her into marriage? Grania, I love you, you know that. I meant what I said.’

  ‘I meant what I said,’ replies Mannion. ‘Stallion man, is it? More a pony boy, I’d say.’

  He gets up, one hand around Grania’s elbow, the other in the small of her back. John looks at her stomach, still flat, not showing. As they push past John he reaches for Grania’s hand, but she pulls away, and they leave the room.

  Charles holds him back. ‘It’s a youthful infatuation and you’ll get over it soon enough, you’re only twenty-three, for heaven’s sake. The girl’s better off with her lawyer. But you can’t stay here; Mannion means what he says, and I’m not having Burke’s Fort go the way of Derriquin. Besides, we’ve no stallion now.’

  John says nothing more. He remembers how he had been slow to react when Eileen and William had been kidnapped by the IRA Volunteers; he is not going to make the same mistake again. He is determined to talk to Grania, confident that he can persuade her to come to him. Mannion’s a loud-mouthed bully, he thinks to himself. It’s our child she’s having, not Mannion’s to give away to Eamonn McCann. Our child, he says out loud, our child.

  John walks over to Mannion’s farm after dark. As he comes into the farmyard a dog starts to bark. He hears a noise behind him, turns and is knocked over by a powerful blow to the head. Half conscious on the ground, he curls up into a ball to avoid a series of kicks to the ribs and groin and head until he blacks out.