Tipperary (46 page)

They knew each other well—but they did not know that I was within earshot. As they exchanged bantering pleasantries, I looked out through a hole in some planks—and I saw that the man who had just arrived lacked a finger on one hand. This was the lout who had accosted me on the road to Bruree; and I suspected, but without being able to ascertain it, that I had seen him ride by on another unpleasant occasion. I burst out of the stable, he saw me—and ran.

When I asked the workman who this fellow was, he answered me sullenly that he did not know. I dismissed him instantly (and his sole colleague left that week). As to the man who ran away—there was nothing that I could do. My mistake was not having challenged him and his insolence on that day when he snatched Della's reins from my hand. But I vowed that were I ever to meet him again, he would feel my knuckles.

In 2003, the Irish government published the proceedings of a study group set up to examine the country's “heritage,” which meant, the document said, “built and natural heritage.” Here is the second paragraph from the Foreword:

“The built heritage includes a wide range of structures from terraced houses to thatched cottages, bridges and boundary walls to canals and castles, but the ‘Big House’ has a special place in Irish architectural history. Once considered not to be part of our patrimony, these magnificent eighteenth and nineteenth century houses, built by Irish builders, are now increasingly valued for their architectural significance and for the wealth of superb interior decoration created mainly by Irish craftspeople.”

In 1915, when Charles O'Brien began restoring Tipperary, under the ownership and patronage of April Burke-Somerville (as she soon began to call herself), no such official body had been attempting any such care of the existing mansions in Ireland. Many of them had fallen into poor repair, and not until the mid-twentieth-century founding of the Irish Georgian Society, led by Desmond Guinness of the renowned brewing family, had anyone taken the matter seriously on a wide scale. Charles, therefore, was well ahead of his time, to judge from his own text.

I began as I had hoped—with no workers hired; nor did I seek any until Harney took up his duties. He told me that, to begin with, we must be “men of charts,” and he showed me what he meant; he built a chart of each job, like a family tree, and he bade me do the same. Where my chart would take account of work required, and the guessed-at length of time it would need, his chart was to place the appropriate numbers of essential workers on that particular task.

Take the smallest example; the front door would need the following craftsmen: two carpenters, a Master and an experienced carpenter to help him; a Master Blacksmith, who would remove the hinges, repair what could be mended, and make new hinges if necessary; and a farrier's assistant to make the nails to the required length and thickness dictated by the Master Carpenter and Master Blacksmith. Thus Harney and I ran twin charts for each separate task, and I am pleased to say that by the time that he and I had completed our main charts, which was in the middle of October, and had begun to hire those people whom we could reach, we felt that we had taken command of the task.

The weather helped a great deal. I might not have believed that stonemasons would come to work in winter; but we had no early frost. And I would have refused to believe that a thirty-three-year-old, tall, and beautiful English widow would don the roughest of clothes and work along-side the hardest of men. On the first day of October, Mr. Higgins, the Master Stonemason, arrived to take up work. I had already traveled to his home in Hollyford in the hope that I might hire him. He told me that his great-grandfather Jack Higgins had personally cut the great capstone over the front door—which his great-granduncle Peter had then carved so exquisitely.

When he began to work that first morning, I accompanied him and told him that April (whom I introduced) would hope to assist. He never questioned; he merely looked at her and said, “You'll have to put that hair away. There's dust.” She and I understood him; she would work as a man, as a laborer, and learn about stone from him.

I waited a little, as I sensed his first lesson about to begin. Sure enough, he said to her, “There's silk and there's tweed and there's canvas. Stone's the same, and you have to decide what it is when you're cutting it.”

He then took her on a tour of her own house, pointing out the silk, the tweed, and the canvas—the door and window reveres, the main facades and cornices, and the sturdy buttresses. Within a week, she was on her knees beside him, steadying the strong planks he used to frame and hold the stone he was cutting. He showed her how to use a chisel, how to find the grain on a stone and go with it, where not to cut across the stone's own formed trend.

On the Saturday evening of that week, I met her in the Great Hall, from which I had had a great deal of the debris carted away. I myself was on my knees, looking into a hole beneath the floorboards to determine whether the cavity ran all the way down to the cellars. She walked to me, and as I stood up, I saw that she swayed. Although ready to catch her should she fall, I made no such move. She steadied herself, with a hand against the wall. I saw that she was exhausted; the impression may have been increased by stone powder in every pore of her face and a gray ring of dirt that ran around her forehead beneath her hairline, where she had taken off her head-covering.

Our relationship had been straightforward: we discussed castle matters without difficulty; she liked Harney and was easier with him than with me. In the presence of all workers—of whom we soon had a small army—she addressed me as “Mr. O'Brien.” When alone, she called me “Charles.” Now she said, in a worn-out voice, “I think I'm going to call you O'Brien—when there's nobody else around,” and she smiled at me.

I did not respond to the intimacy; I nodded—gravely, as had become my custom. Since we had begun this great task together, I had taken care to dwell always on the business in hand. We had no personal conversation of any kind; I inquired into nothing other than how she saw this wall, that floor, the other tree or shrub. I had determined to keep farther from that flame than I had been in the past, when I was severely burned by it.

“So, O'Brien,” she said. “I shall try to scrub this”—she gestured at her face and hands—“my own house from my own skin. Not that I shall ever remove it.”

She passed on, into the rear of the house and, I supposed, to the rooms upstairs that I had long ago indicated as potentially habitable for herself and her bridegroom.

What was it like in those first six months, working next to the woman for whom I had so fiercely expressed my passion, both in my life and in these pages? And what was April like? I received no practice at saying anything about her; Mother, in that time, never asked a question about her, about my feelings—never made an inquiry into anything but the work, in which she was deeply interested. Consequently, these next sentences will be my fresh impression of April, and of her place—if any—in my heart.

Fifteen years had passed since I first saw her. She and I had traveled through many events since then. We had both known failure and bereavement; she had lost her father and her husband; I had lost dear Euclid, and I had been attacked—nothing so lowers the spirits as assault. By all accounts she had failed to bring her husband into decency—having married him, as people speculated, so that he could help her to acquire the estate. And I had failed to make a mark on the world that would impress her—would have impressed her enough to think of marrying me.

Where our lives had touched, we had been without success toward each other, even at the level of friends. That she had gained more from me than I from her might seem, on the surface, to be true. She had garnered my good offices for the protection of the estate that she would inherit, and it was widely believed that my evidence in court had gone a considerable way toward helping decide the findings in her favor. Before the end of it, she was married; I lay in a hospital bed; and she soon dismissed me from her life and my usefulness in it. Those are the superficial impressions that any observer could not be faulted for noting.

I take a different view. By asking me to oversee her estate, she released me into the world for which I felt I had been born. When, on winter days, I walked those empty corridors alone, I somehow knew that I had come into my true life at last. I was no longer uncomfortable with myself; I did not feel like an awkward man trying to show the best face to the world, and yet afraid that no person would value me.

In short, I had been given a great gift by the woman whom I had been unable to wed. Now I believed it my turn to repay—by the restoration of her wondrous inheritance. Thus, I decided that I would not trouble her with remarks as to the proceedings of my heart. Certainly I had been fearful—fearful of meeting her, fearful of being in her company. Her rejection of me, and the curtness of it—these had wounded me greatly each time, even though I tried not to feel them. I mourned her father when he died; I had been so looking forward to what I felt would grow into a delightful relationship. And the many questions that had been raised by the proceedings in court as to how much the Burkes knew about Tipperary and when they knew it—I decided to let them lie.

SUNDAY, JANUARY THE 23RD 1916.

Charles came home today. We had a good talk. Bernard went out to look at cattle. Charles tells great stories of the castle. We debated much as to how he should have a great mural painting restored. Charles says that he and he alone will decide. “And not April?” I ask. “Oh, I may consult her,” he says airily.

Harney arrived later, for supper. He is such a wonderful young man. And he loves Charles as Euclid did. He hangs on everything that Charles says. While Charles bathed—he says that he is permanently stained from the castle works—Harney told me of Charles
in situ.
How he knows everything that is to be done. How even the Master Craftsmen defer to him. How he commands the suppliers and the workers. How his taste is appreciated by the Italians, the French, the English carpenters.

I did not ask the main question (re April). Nor shall I. I shall wait until I am told. If there be anything to tell. There may not be—but I cannot believe that my Charles has quenched that flame in his heart. It would have been like putting out the furnace at the core of the earth.