A Man in a Distant Field (35 page)

“Declan, no one could have done so but ye. I could not tune strings that had melted or broken. Ye might have left it as a memory, charred and unusable, but look at it now, polished and whole. And such fine strings, too. They'll last awhile at least.”

“Declan, I have been sorting out the storeroom and found this box of my grandfather's clothing. Why it ended up in the groundskeeper's cabin is a bit of a mystery, but Hugh thinks he perhaps passed along clothing he no longer wore and evidently it didn't suit or fit old Reilly. Hugh doesn't want any of it. You and my grandfather are of a size, if I may say that about you who are alive and my grandfather who has been dead for more than two decades, bless him. Can you use some jerseys and shirts? There are some sturdy corduroy trousers, too, and a nice jacket of Donegal tweed—my mother must have sent that to him, as I recognize the tweed.”

“It's very generous of ye, Una, and I will gladly accept them if ye're certain yer father does not need them so. May I leave the carton here until my own place is more ready?”

“You may indeed. And my father certainly does not need them. My grandfather loved the Erriff River and I'd like to
think of his clothing going on here, even if he's no longer alive to wear them.”

They were planning a sketching and gathering trip up the rough road that led out of Leenane towards Maam Cross. There were mountains, the Maamturks, and a valley between them cut through by the Glengosh River and the Bealanabrack River, and Una wanted to try the wild track which led up to a tiny community called Bunnaviskaun. They were taking lunch and the vasculum as well as an assortment of baskets for transporting living plants with a little clump of earth attached. It was raining lightly as they set out and the road was slick. Una drove carefully, having long since mastered the intricacy of the braking system—a brake for each wheel—and the gears. They went through the quiet centre of Leenane and took the Maam road. Devilsmother loomed to the north, wraithlike in mist, and small cottages hunched under their chimney smoke like sheep, summer forgotten. Una looked over at Declan and smiled. “You might find that the pheasants flee from you in terror when they see you in the jacket. My grandfather was a fearsome shot and was forever shooting at them.”

She was indefatigable in the field, even in rain. She strode through the woods near Dereen to a boggy area where once she'd found ragged robin and arrowhead and was lucky enough to find them again, although Declan had to take her word for it that the withered brown leaves belonged to something worth a portrait. She prepared them carefully, shaking excess soil from the roots and placing them in the vasculum. Several plants, including celandine, were taken with a good amount of soil on them so she could plant them at Marshlands in a small marshy area she was slowly populating with likely specimens now that there were no longer horses to trample them; these she wrapped with damp paper and nestled into one of her baskets. She showed Declan how to dig up plants, easing the trowel deeply
under them, in a way which brought up the entire root and which didn't disturb adjacent growth too much; he quickly caught on. She sketched the broader view and made small insets of things she found of interest—a variety of wintergreen that she said was too rare to lift and needed to be drawn in situ, with the palette carefully added to the edge of the paper for future painting, and globe flowers in a protected place with a last frail blossom clinging to the stem.

By lunchtime they were parked on the side of a very rugged road and walking over a footbridge that crossed the Bealanabrack River, swollen with winter rain, to eat their kippers and soda bread by the standing stones on the north side of the river. Many small creeks ran down to join the river, their meeting a chilly music. A crowd of dirty sheep wandered among the rocks, hunting for any tussocks they might have missed. Declan and Una ate and talked, examining the pattern of lichens on the standing stones, pondering the possible methods used to raise the stones at the dawn of time. And then they were driving up the track, it could not be called a road, nudging sheep out of the way with the car's bumper, passing farms so isolated that even the dogs forgot to bark in their surprise at seeing a car, passing the remains of a ring fort near Gowlaunlee, and then they were at the end of the road where a few bleak houses huddled together for warmth.

The families spoke no English. Declan told them that Una and he were looking for plants and hoped to walk beyond the end of the road. A man in a pair of homespun trousers with pampooties on his feet told them they were welcome and God be with them and did they know about the mass rock over yonder? They didn't of course, and Declan translated the directions carefully, writing down the names of the townlands in his notebook; they would walk in the direction of Gleniska, where the land would be high and where they might yet see the remains
of a farm or two, uninhabited, unworked since the terrible days of the hunger. Then they would come to the spreading rivers, and it was only a short distance to the rock where priests had arrived to say mass as in any church and where the worshippers might feel themselves safe for a time in the eye of the Lord. Two eggs, still warm from the hen, were pressed gently into Una's hands, and a woman told Declan in Irish that he was a lucky man to have found such a lovely woman. He did not translate this for Una but found a place in one of the baskets for the eggs, which he covered with a small bit of moss.

The route the man had described took them to where the first waters of the Glengosh River sprang from the earth and past a ring fort nearly complete, apart from what would have been its roof of rushes. Over a rise to where a spring came up from rock and started its descent down to Killary Harbour, gathering enough momentum to turn itself into a river on the journey. The mass rock came into a view in a small glen between two creeks; the view of it would be hidden from any other approach than the one they used. A long table of rock, which would have served as an altar to Catholics in the area during the time of the Penal Laws and after, Declan explained to Una, when the hope was that the religion would simply die away, with the education and ordination of priests illegal. But as he had learned in his own teaching, the will of the Irish to be educated and to hold and observe their faith was stronger than anyone might have supposed.

“How do people know about these sites?” asked Una. “To me, it could simply be part of one of the dolmens, the usual supports collapsed, or even a natural piece of rock which simply resembles an altar.”

“Ah, but ye've underestimated the power of memory, Una. When so much has been taken over the years, or forbidden, when education was denied us, land ownership prohibited, when ye've come through what the Irish have suffered, ye see
that survival as a people has meant using every faculty to its utmost, and maybe nothing was more important than memory. In one way, the use of this mass rock is beyond memory—we are talking hundreds of years, after all—but the language itself is congenial to the notion of the present tense. Everything is present, always, so talk of this place would be given to new generations as though its use was in the present tense. I think that makes what happened here harder to forget.”

“You talk of the Irish, Declan, as though I am not Irish. And yet the Fitzgeralds have been here since the time of the Normans, our family has memory, too, although not of mass rocks and ruined cottages, I agree. I think one of the saddest things for me about this country is how easily we neglect to include the others—for the Catholics, the Protestants; for the wealthy, those who are not—in the idea of what it is to be Irish, to be connected to this country. Sometimes I have knelt by a bed of wild cress, all foamy with blossom, and wept at the beauty of it, the fact that people have seen such things for longer than we can possibly imagine, and yet I am treated in the village like a foreigner. Everyone goes quiet when I go into the shop and I am always Miss Fitzgerald, even though I have asked to be simply Una.”

Declan saw that she was in tears. He moved to her and put his arms around her.

“No one sees me,” she cried, “they see what they think my forefathers have done to them, yet my grandmother opened her kitchen to the hungry, my great-aunt died making soup in the workhouse at Killybegs because the fevers didn't distinguish between Catholics or Protestants. Nor did she, which was why she was there; she thought God would expect no less from her. And look what has happened to both our families, for heaven's sake.”

She sobbed against his shoulder, which was clothed in the tweed jacket of her grandfather, and he patted her back, stroked her hair. There were so many words to say, and none.
They lived in a country of such wonders and such despair. Declan murmured reassurances that perhaps the tide was changing, that surely her goodness would be recognized in the village for what it was (and sure wasn't that why the Cumann na mBán had asked her to join them). He told her how sorry he was if his actions had made her believe he thought her less than Irish. She pulled away and found a handkerchief in her rucksack, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she smiled at him, the wide, generous smile he had come to take pleasure in, and told him she had never imagined him to be part of the problem.

“And what is this, Declan, this campsite we are standing by without even noticing?”

Looking around, Declan could see the pressed earth of recent use, a ring of stones where a fire had burned, some tins with their jagged lids askew. It was a protected place, the glen, with fresh water, trees for cover, good sight lines. He was not surprised to find some spent bullets at the foot of a tree, which betrayed from indentations in its bark that it had been used for target practise.

“I am thinking, Una, that this site has been used more recently than I supposed. Well, and doesn't it make sense that the hidden places would be where fellas would head to? It is perhaps what I meant when I said talk of such places made them alive to each generation. I am also thinking that the mist has turned to rain and we'd best be on our way so.”

By now the sky was very overcast. Gusts of wind were strong at that high elevation as well, tumbling branches of heather and gorse across the wide expanse. With the rain, it was harder to see where they were going and the landmarks they thought they'd recognize were so different coming from the opposite direction. It took them hours to find their way back to Una's car and they were soaked through to the skin. One of the farmers they'd talked to
before venturing off to find the mass rock came out of a cottage and insisted they come in for a cup of tea.

They were given old, clean feed sacks to dry their hair and to try to wring some of the water out of their clothing. A bench was drawn very close to the fire and they sat side by side with their feet stretched out gratefully while a group of small children watched from the side of their mother's skirt. Declan spoke to them in Irish but they were too shy to engage in any kind of conversation. They did not go to school, as it was too far to walk, but the master would visit them upon occasion and help with the alphabet and sums. Mugs of tea were brought, and thick slices of bread spread with brambleberry jelly. It was warm in the small house, and dark, with only a single lamp on the table for light. Declan asked the woman of the house whether she used plants for dyeing, and she said yes, they gathered autumn crocus to make a yellow dye for the wool of their sheep, and wild pansies for blue, and foxgloves for green. Nettles, she told him, were a great food, and she made broth for her elderly parents when they ached with the rheumatism. When they finished their tea, they reluctantly said goodbye, thanking the family for their hospitality. The woman replied tartly that it wouldn't be much of a world if you could not open your door to strangers and make them welcome. In Irish she reminded him that a guest should be welcomed no matter the hour since every guest is Christ. As they walked out to the car, she called a blessing, and Declan answered her with a “God save all here,” realizing that it ought to have been his greeting.

Driving back down the track from Bunnaviskaun, Una commented quietly that the woman had certainly proved her wrong, hadn't she, with her generosity, not making assumptions about her class.

“Aye, and I'm thinking that there are people like her all over this country but somehow the others have a way of making us
remember them. I am minded of the Greek stories where a humble couple take in a stranger, feed him up with the little they have, and he turns out to be a god who grants them a grand wish. Tell me, Una, why the car is suddenly making that noise?”

The car coughed a few times and then stopped. Una was unable to start it again.

“This will be the test of our resourcefulness, Declan! I was told that driving through puddles might cause the car to stall. Would it be that the wiring has become soaked?”

It took them more than an hour to figure out how to dry out the wiring, to check the spark plugs, Una repeating some steps she had been told in the parking area of the Great Southern Hotel, her voice strained as she said the mantra of the plugs over and over. Finally the engine fired. Their hands were cold, their only light from a very dim torch, and the rain streamed down their necks, completing the soaking.

Una drove slowly down the road to Leenane, the visibility terrible. They had to keep stopping to wipe off the windshield for the tiny difference it made, and the rain had caused the surface of the road to become slick and treacherous. The lights of Leenane were never so welcome as they were that night. Without saying a word, Una stopped at one of the public houses and ran inside, her hair drenched and lying flat against her head. She returned with a bottle she handed to Declan to hold.

“Guard that carefully. I think hot whiskeys will be more a necessity than a luxury, Declan. And I'm going to insist that you stop at my house for the night. You can't sleep in a turf shed as wet as you are with no facility for getting dry or warm. We don't want you contracting pneumonia and blaming it on a crazy woman hunting for celandine in January.”