Moonshine

‘Now I can see for myself that you are fair,’ Kit said. ‘In at least two of the … let’s see’ – he counted on his fingers – ‘six meanings of the word that I can think of immediately. Neither a market-place nor good weather. Beautiful and with light-coloured hair, yes. And I’m willing to bet that you’re just and impartial. But never mediocre.’

‘Oh, don’t! It was so lovely to forget about me. I must look a wreck. And of course I’m not impartial. No one is, however hard they may try to be.’ I attempted to run my fingers through my hair but it was tangled by the wind.

‘I’ll comb it for you,’ suggested Kit. The brightening rays of the sun shone through his ears, turning them crimson. His hair was curly and brown. His eyes were blue and intelligent. It was an appealing face, with its high forehead and good-humoured mouth. Not handsome but attractive.

‘Certainly not. People will think I’m an escaped lunatic and you’re my keeper.’

‘I shan’t mind if you don’t. That steward hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you woke up. You’re putting colour into his drab existence. Can’t you gibber a little and play with your lips? Where’s your sense of civic duty?’

‘I probably am a lunatic. Only a madwoman …’

I paused. Kit had been so sympathetic that I had been tempted to tell him something of my circumstances but then I thought better of it.

‘Oh dear. That suspicious look again. You’re as wary as a bird of paradise who’s just spotted a woman in a rather dull hat.’

I laughed but said nothing.

Kit turned to lean his back against the rail so that he could look directly into my face. ‘Forgive me if this is an impertinent question, but when we get into Cork will there be a husband or a boyfriend standing on the quay, counting the seconds?’

I thought of Burgo, imagined him with the collar of his coat turned up against the importunate July breezes, hands in pockets, frowning, impatient of delay, already running ahead in his mind, planning what we were going to do, where we were going to eat, make love. I felt a pang of desolation.

‘No.’

‘I see. Would it be presuming to ask where you’re going to in such solitary splendour? I promise not to divulge the information to MI5.’

‘I’m going to Galway. To Connemara.’

Kit whistled. ‘Among the mountainy men? It’s a wild sort of place and they’re a strange, interesting breed. “To Hell or to Connaught”, as they used to say. Meaning, of course, that there was little to choose between them.’

‘Where’s Connaught?’

‘Where you’re going. The ancient kingdom of the West. Where Cromwell sent the indigenous Irish after dispossessing them of their nice, fertile, well-drained lands in the east. Are you an accomplished Gaelic speaker?’

‘Not a word. Will it matter?’ I had a vision of myself shut away in some mountain fastness, in a household of eccentrics of whose culture and language I was entirely ignorant. Anthropologists would no doubt have delighted in the prospect. I found it alarming.

‘Not at all. Despite the efforts of the Gaelic League and Sinn Fein to establish it as the first language, it’s fiendishly difficult and the majority of Irish speak English. I just wondered if you were writing a book about the Gaeltacht or researching the dress code of the high kings or something like that.’

‘I’m going to be housekeeper to a family named Macchuin.’

Kit whistled again. ‘That’s the last thing I’d have guessed. What do you know about them?’

‘Almost nothing. I answered an advertisement in a newspaper. When I telephoned, the woman I spoke to said she was desperate for help. She engaged me on the spot.’

‘And you accepted, just as impulsively?’

‘All relevant questions, apart from how to get there, went out of my head. I needed to get away.’

‘I hope you won’t feel as urgent a need to get back. They might be dipsomaniacs, drug-smugglers, sexual psychopaths or an IRA stronghold, for all you know.’

‘Perhaps all those things at once. Though we only talked for five minutes at the most I liked the impression I had of Mrs Macchuin. And I was flattered that she seemed so thrilled when I agreed to come.’

‘Only someone absolutely hell-bent, neck-or-nothing, on escape would be encouraged by such enthusiasm. Are you impetuous, rash, devil-may-care by nature or are the bailiffs after you?’ When I smiled but didn’t say anything he went on, ‘So what did this excitable woman say? Any kind of job description?’

‘All I know is that there are three children between the ages of eight and sixteen, and six adults, one of whom is generally away. Mrs Macchuin sounded exhausted rather than excitable.’

‘Worse and worse. Why is she exhausted, I wonder? Badly behaved children? Too little money? Or too much Mr Macchuin, perhaps.’

‘I didn’t ask. I was trying to think myself into a new role. The sort of person who does as she’s told and doesn’t ask questions. An efficient, invisible menial.’

‘You’ll never be that. Invisible, I mean. You don’t look terribly efficient but here appearances may be deceptive.’

‘I must admit my life so far hasn’t really demanded efficiency. But it can only be a question of application.’

Kit sighed and shook his head. ‘I see problems ahead.’

‘It’ll only be for six months or so. Then I’ll go back to London, probably.’

‘I wish you’d trust me.’ He looked at me gravely. When I did not reply he pointed behind me and said quietly, ‘Land ahoy.’

While we had been talking the ferry, unobserved by me, had been turning slowly. We were about to enter a wide channel bounded by distant promontories, perhaps a mile apart. I felt excited as I examined the low cliffs, half hidden in mist, trying to imagine my immediate future.

‘Your first view of Ireland,’ said Kit. ‘It’s such a beautiful country with the best people in the world, yet the most terrible things have happened here. Do you know anything of Irish history?’

‘Not much.’ I dredged my mind for facts. ‘Um … Cromwell and the Siege of Drogheda. And there was the Battle of the Boyne. James the Second. I think he lost. That’s about all I can remember. Oh, and of course the IRA. I don’t understand any of that. Why did they assassinate Airey Neave? Wasn’t he trying to help the Irish?’

‘Ah, that’s a complicated one. You may as well forget your history lessons. Seen through Irish eyes, Ireland has suffered eight hundred years of merciless exploitation beneath the yoke of English imperialism. Make no mistake. We English are still the “Old Enemy”.’ I must have looked alarmed for he added, ‘Don’t worry. You won’t be held accountable. They’ll be charming to you. It’s the British government and the army they hate. But you’d better acquaint yourself with some proper Irish history if you’re going to make sense of the place. The Irish take enormous pride in their long struggle for national identity. Now they’ve joined the EEC things are looking up economically and a cultural change radiating from Dublin is gradually persuading the country people to abandon their inwardlooking, backward-looking colonial complex, but essentially you’ve still got a population that is rural, conservative and poor.’

‘I thought it was such a fertile country. Why is it poor?’

While Kit was talking, one part of my mind absorbed first impressions of my new country of residence, which I hoped would be something of an asylum. As we steamed into the mouth of the River Lee towards Cork Harbour I saw gentle hills, fields and farmsteads lit by a rosy light. Then the channel broadened and they receded into haze.

‘Again that’s not easy to say in a few words. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century conditions for the peasantry were tough but they were healthy and happy enough if one can believe the historians. Thackeray, in his Irish Sketch Book of 1842 described the Irish as being like the landscapes: “ragged, ruined and cheerful”. But then they were struck by the worst disaster in Irish history: the Great Famine, when the potato crop failed four years in succession. Out of a population of eight million people one million died of starvation or disease. Two million, probably the brightest, most energetic ones, emigrated, mostly to England and North America. So much misery and loss is bound to have an effect on a nation’s psychology. A sort of fatalism, a melancholy, that leads to inertia.’

‘Oh yes, I see. But did we – the English I mean – do nothing to help?’

‘Not enough, in my opinion. Certainly not enough in the opinion of the Irish. But there isn’t enough time to explain exactly what happened. We’re coming into Ringaskiddy. That’s the ferry terminal. It’s another two or three miles to Cork itself.’

The ship was turning as sharply as a large ferry can, which is not very, and we were moving at a sluggish pace towards land. The terminal was the usual noisy, busy, ugly conglomeration of warehouses, cranes, lorries and moored craft. Much too quickly it increased in size. The propellers reversed to reduce our speed to dead slow and we drifted towards the quay. Until this moment I had been lulled into a state of passivity by the knowledge that there was no alternative to idleness while the ship was in motion. Now anxiety returned with full force.

‘I’d better go and get my things.’

‘No hurry,’ said Kit. ‘Most of the passengers are still asleep. They’ll take the cars off first.’

‘All the better. I’ll go before there’s a crowd.’

‘What’s your cabin number? I’ll fetch your cases for you.’

‘No, really. You’ve already been kind beyond the call of duty. And I ought to wash my face and brush my teeth.’

‘How are you getting to Connemara?’

‘Train. Apparently it takes all day to go a hundred and fifty miles. I have to change twice. Then a bus from Galway to Kilmuree. But I shall have scenery to look at.’ I tried to sound enthusiastic.

‘I’ve a better idea. For the next few weeks I’m travelling round the country spreading light and hope among my lonely authors. Part business, part holiday. There’s a delightful old boy on my list who lives near Westport. Writes books about geology. Sells about four a year but we like to diversify. He’ll be thrilled to see me a few days early and I can drop you off at your destination.’

‘You’ve got a car?’

‘Picturesque though a high-perch phaeton is, I find it inconvenient. And too exposed to the elements.’

‘I couldn’t possibly ask you to change your arrangements.’

‘But I can insist, truthfully, that I’m happy to do so.’

‘I’m being met at the bus station.’

‘All right. I’ll drop you there.’

‘But not until seven o’clock. In the evening, I mean.’

‘We’ll have a leisurely lunch on the way.’

It was too good an offer to refuse. I descended to collect my things. My cabin-mate was still asleep, lying on her back with her mouth open, snoring like a nest of wasps. The smell of horses had intensified. A wild creature with matted clown triangles of hair and smudged saucer eyes stared at me from the mirror.

‘My word!’ said Kit as I rejoined him on deck half an hour later. ‘I was beginning to worry that you’d jumped ship. But it was worth the wait. You look glorious. That colour is marvellous with your skin and hair.’

I felt a stab of pain then, remembering Burgo saying the same thing, almost word for word, about the pale yellow linen dress I had put on.

‘I don’t want to give the Macchuins the impression that the steamiron and I are unacquainted. My skirt not only bears all the signs of having been slept in but looks as though it might have been used as a picnic tablecloth as well.’

‘I’m not so conceited as to suppose that you put it on for me.’

Kit’s expression was non-committal but there was a slight sharpness in his tone. Had I sounded ungracious, I wondered?

‘There’s the old bus now.’ He leaned over the rail and pointed to a red sports car being driven off the ramp and along the quay. The hood was down so we could see quite clearly a man in overalls behind the wheel, playing with the dashboard and flashing the headlamps. Kit watched with the sort of glazed impassioned look that mothers get when people bend to coo admiringly into the pram.

We were the first passengers to present ourselves at customs and were through it in no time. Kit’s car gave a throaty roar at the first turn of the ignition key. My experience of cars was limited. In London I used buses and the underground. My father’s ancient Austin Princess and my mother’s battered Wolseley were my transport in the country. They rounded bends under protest and were rebellious when it came to starting. Kit’s car seemed barely able to contain itself as we trundled through the streets of Ringaskiddy. It had a gravelly growl and made little menacing rushes at obstacles, like a lion on a leash.

‘All the men are giving you envious looks,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about cars. Is it something terrifically glamorous?’

‘It’s an Alfa Spider. But it isn’t the car they’re jealous of.’

Some men consider it only polite to keep up a steady trickle of compliments.’ I liked Kit and I was grateful to him, but I had no heart for the game. To flirt successfully you must believe yourself to be desirable. I was near to hating myself. Depression threatened. I pushed it away. I owed it to Kit to be a cheerful passenger.

The urban sprawl at the outskirts of Cork offered nothing particular to admire but the surrounding countryside made up for that. It was at once apparent why Ireland was called the Emerald Isle. It was not just emerald, though. Different tones of green – olive, apple, lime, grass, sage and chartreuse – reflected the sun with a glossy luxuriance. Even the light was green.

‘That’s Blarney,’ said Kit, waving vaguely towards the west. I looked but saw only a church spire. He began to recite:

‘There is a stone there that whoever kisses,

Oh, he never misses to grow eloquent.

’Tis he may clamber to a lady’s chamber

Or become a member of Parliament.

‘I know which I’d rather,’ Kit went on. ‘As Topsy said, I’m mighty wicked and I can’t help it, but I lack the cold-blooded cynicism necessary to be a good politician.’

I glanced quickly at Kit’s profile but it was a picture of perfect innocence.

‘Look over there, to the north-west. The Boggeragh Mountains.’

I saw a series of massive heather-coloured triangles. We purred between stone walls that divided the land into tiny boulder-strewn fields while the trees laid blue and purple bars across the road, empty but for a few wandering sheep. Beside the road ran a sweetly purling river and seconds later we crossed it by means of a small hump-backed bridge.

‘What wonderful names. This really is fairy-land.’

‘Certainly it is. And you must be careful to keep on the right side of the good folk. They can be spiteful if crossed and they never forgive an injury.’

I examined Kit’s face carefully for signs that he was teasing me. He must have felt my eyes upon him for he turned his head briefly and smiled. As we drove north through the small town of Mallow and on towards the Ballyhoura Hills, I watched the landscape unfolding into higher and ever more beautiful curves and angles, marvelling that I had been ignorant all my life of so much beauty lying in wait across a small sea.

I found myself wondering what Burgo would have thought of it. It occurred to me that in the twelve months that I had known him I had not once heard him comment, favourably or adversely, on the works of Nature. Had this been because our meetings had so often been snatched from commitments elsewhere, appointments with other people, and there had not been time to think about our surroundings? No, that wasn’t it. Burgo had often been irritated by the shortcomings of the places we had been obliged to make use of. In fact he was highly conscious of his environment and of the way his presence changed things. Does that make him sound egotistic? Well, he was. Surprisingly, this had not stopped me loving him.

He was not, on the face of it, a vain man. I suppose his clothes must have been made for him because despite his height – he was six feet four inches – they fitted him perfectly. But I never heard him mention his tailor. His hair was straight, silvery fair, untidy. Probably he knew he was attractive to women so he never fussed about what he looked like, never looked in mirrors, was careless about mud and creases, did not seem to possess a comb. It was this confidence which had drawn me to him, which had been the fatal lure, I decided as I slid down in the car seat to escape the wind that whipped my hair into my eyes. Burgo’s attitude was neither aggressive nor defensive. This must have been because his ego was never in danger. Other people’s insecurity amused him. Possibly mine was what first attracted him. Certainly the occasion of our meeting had been unpropitious.

Dangerous though I knew it to be, a sense of ease and restfulness I had not felt for days tempted me to let my mind wander back to those first weeks of knowing him, when I had managed for the most part to live only for the moment; when only to think of him had lifted my despondent mood and made my heart race.

FOUR

Burgo and I had met five weeks after my return to Sussex to look after my mother. The encounter was preceded by a period of almost unrelieved dreariness. Despite visits from a physiotherapist, my mother had made no discernible progress. I had sub-let my room in Paradise Row so that Sarah could continue to pay the mortgage. I became supersensitive to the awfulness of Cutham Hall. When I walked into the house the smell of my father’s cigar-smoke mixed with the rubbery smell from carpet underlay that was beginning to perish made me feel sick.

‘It’s the Conservative lunch on Wednesday,’ my father had said at breakfast towards the end of the fifth week. ‘As your mother refuses even to look at the wheelchair provided for her at enormous trouble and expense, you’ll have to stand in.’

We were alone as usual so I knew he meant me, though he did not look up from his boiled egg. I cannot think quickly first thing in the morning. Irrelevant thoughts went through my mind. The wheelchair was on loan, gratis, from the Red Cross and had cost him only the telephone call I had made to order it and the cupful of petrol I had used when driving to pick it up.

‘You don’t mean you want me to go with you?’

‘There isn’t anyone else.’

‘Well, thank you for such a flattering invitation but on Wednesday I’m taking the kitchen sofa covers into Worping for dry-cleaning, then I’m dropping the Wolseley at the garage to be serviced and while that’s being done Oliver and I are going to the cinema. Mrs Treadgold’s agreed to stay later to look after Mother.’

‘You can do all that any day of the week. Your mother was tremendously relieved when I said I’d take you. You don’t want to set her back, do you?’

‘Please!’ said my mother later as I poured her a cup of tea the colour of white wine and buttered wafer-thin slices of toast. She had protested she was too weak to do her own buttering. ‘Please, for my sake, go to that ghastly Conservative lunch with him. He has to have a woman on his arm. If he’s on his own he feels as naked as going without trousers. He’s threatening to make me go in the wheelchair. As if I could! If you knew the pain I’m in. All the time. It’s relentless.’

‘Honey or marmalade?’

‘Marmalade. Sometimes I think I’m going to take all my painkillers at once and finish it for good. When your father starts hectoring me I absolutely make up my mind to do it. If he mentions this beastly lunch one more time, I shall.’

Brough, wearing his peaked cap and a cheap grey suit from the Co-op which was his chauffeur’s uniform, drove us to the Carlton House Hotel in Worping where the lunch was to be held. I had offered to drive so that Brough would not have to kick his heels, throwing stones at seagulls, for two hours but my father was adamant that we should travel like important dignitaries in the back of the Austin Princess, hoping perhaps to excite envy and admiration in the breasts of his political brothers.

Attempting to reverse into a space before the hotel’s porte cochère Brough crushed a plastic ‘No Parking’ sign and from the accompanying crunch of metal I guessed something had happened to the rear wing.

A man in a tail coat and striped trousers came running down the hotel steps. ‘You can’t park here. Didn’t you see the sign? This space is reserved for the mayor and the brass hats.’

‘I am a brass hat, as you put it,’ said my father, getting out of the car.

At that moment the mayor’s car drew alongside. It was of a size and magnificence to empty the rate-payers’ pockets before anyone had even considered street lamps or drains, and all traffic came to a standstill.

‘There was a time when the damned peasants knew their places,’ said my father with feeling. ‘I blame the Welfare State.’ He strolled up the steps and disappeared into the hotel.

I saw that we had already drawn a crowd who were watching Brough’s attempts to disengage the rear wheel (which had become wedged against the kerb) with unconcealed amusement. ‘I’d better go in,’ I said. ‘See if you can find a space in the car-park.’

I opened the car door in time to hear one of the witnesses to our humiliation say, ‘Who was that pompous idiot?’

‘That’s Major Pickford-Norton,’ said his companion. ‘The sort of man the Conservative Party needs like a hole in the head. Blimpish, bloated with self-consequence—’

‘Oh-ah-ha-a!’ said another, whom I vaguely recognized. I think he had once been to our house for a shooting lunch. He threw me an embarrassed glance. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you. This is Miss Roberta Pickford-Norton.’

There was an uncomfortable silence. None of this was my fault yet I felt myself blush with mortification.

‘Miss Pickford-Norton,’ said the one who had called my father a pompous idiot. ‘I apologize for my unparliamentary language. Will you let me try to make amends by buying you a drink?’

He put his hand under my elbow and I found myself being borne upwards into the hotel foyer. He ushered me into the dining room, which was already nearly full. Several men and women surged towards him and began conversations, while others waved and tried to catch his eye.

‘Hello, Lottie, how are you? Yes, I know, but you must excuse me for a moment. Good to see you, Herbert, talk later? Hello, Mrs Cholmondeley. No, I hadn’t heard. Really? Let’s talk about it after lunch.’

He tightened his grip on my elbow and steered me into a side room, which was comparatively empty.

‘Just a minute.’ He went away and reappeared almost immediately with two glasses of white wine. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘I hope you like speeches and being bored to hell and drinking’ – he sipped his wine and shuddered – ‘something you could clean paintbrushes with because you’re in for it now and no mistake. And in addition you’ve had to put up with my unforgivable rudeness. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stamp off in a rage. In fact’ – wheeling round to look about him – ‘if I weren’t the most selfish of men that’s exactly what I’d advise you to do. It’s going to be unmitigated hell. But I hope you won’t. If you can find it in your heart to forgive a blundering idiot – I mean me – I’d be grateful because I can see at a glance you’re the only person here I want to talk to.’ He grabbed a bowl of peanuts from a nearby table. ‘You look hungry. Won’t you celebrate a truce with a friendly nut?’

He had dark eyes that slanted upwards at the outer corners. Despite his repentant tone and the solemnity of his expression I could see he thought it was funny. My parents never found anything amusing and Oliver was usually in the toils of creative agony. My own sense of humour, having fallen into desuetude, revived. I took a few nuts to show there were no hard feelings.

‘I forgive you,’ I said. ‘I’m not tactful myself. But you’ve confirmed my worst fears. I didn’t want to come. I hate politics and I loathe politicians. Particularly Conservative ones.’