A Man in a Distant Field (38 page)

Is that the sum of it, then?
thought Declan.
A man might think himself returned, but the self he has become is so unrecognizable that both the home and the man might be presumed to be lost or dead. The way itself lost? Sure my home was a shell, and myself too. I have rebuilt the former, but it will not be the home it was, populated by women. And as for myself, I was dead for all purposes, that much is true, and I am no longer dead. In the canoe I met my mother in the other world—a man who has walked among ghosts, who has used stones heavy with memory to rebuild his house, a man who has planted his oar on the graves of his women and made small sacrifices of rabbits for his cooking pot
. And he almost could not
bring himself to remember the man in Una's arms, clean from the bath and kissed alive as he would have not thought possible.
Have I lost my true self?
he thought.
It is something to think on
. He wondered if Neil might be thought of as a sort of suitor, a rival, though not for his wife's attentions. Rather he stood in the way of Rose becoming what she might become, in the fullness of time; he used force to keep his wife from following her own instincts with her children. And in an act of extraordinary violence, he had lost his head.
How swift is justice, or what we might want to think justice
, thought Declan. In his mind's eye he was looking at a scene as grisly as any in the
Odyssey
—a ground wet with blood and a head at some remove from its body, bits of tissue and bone mixed with tree branches, the fertile cones of evergreens. Only the boots were worth saving, and in that was a terrible irony. Boots to be worn, to be filled by sons growing up in the absence of such a man.

Una collected him again for jaunts into the Partry mountains or to the hills above Kylemore where new grass was greening and insects were at work in the hazels, male catkins hanging in clusters of yellow. One such trip, up a shoulder of Ben Baun, in weather so warm it might have been summer, saw Una dressed in a frock of flowered lawn, a lace collar soft on her shoulders and a necklace of amber beads around her neck. On her feet, sensible walking shoes, which did not detract from her spring-like appearance but proved her practicality. The same haversack which had carried her iodine and gauze now held a flask of tea, some barmbrack and cheese, bananas. It felt safer in the mountains, although signs would be found of campsites, spent bullets, even a stash of something that might have been dynamite in a natural cave high beyond the road on Devilsmother. They walked a wide circle around this last and decided silence was the better part of valour.

“Old Kathleen O'Meara told me that people carry a hazelnut in their pockets as protection against lumbago and
rheumatism. Do you think they'd help against explosives?” Una asked, as she sketched a female catkin, the red styles protruding. “And look, Declan, don't you think those catkins look like lambs' tails? We just need some lambs now to compare them to.”

“My mother always said that hazels warded off bad spirits, like the rowans,” Declan remembered. He was thinking how pleasant it was to watch Una draw, how it felt like he was drawing her at the same time, paying attention to the shape of her face, the line of her breasts through her jacket. They had made love together in her bed several more times since the day they had driven to Bunnaviskaun and back and the night she had been called to tend the wounded; each time he wondered how it was that a woman like her could desire a man so plainly made as himself. But she would touch him as though his body was a fine fabric to be stroked and smoothed, and she responded to his caresses with joy; this impressed upon him again that there were mysteries in the known world, secrets in the human heart that revealed themselves unexpectedly. He had been beloved once and was again.

Below them, the castle at Kylemore nestled in its grove of trees and the lake was placid in the still morning. The Republicans had taken Kylemore House for a time in ‘22 and young men from hill farms had seen grand bathrooms for the first time, and rooms as big as potato fields. Declan had been told about a holy well, Tobar Maoilean, along the trail up Benbaun. They had walked up through a tunnel of rhododendron heavily in bud and across a small bridge over the Mweelin River. They could hear water and walked towards the sound, laughing as a group of sheep scattered at the sight of them, the lambs with their tails like catkins. The well was housed in a small stone hut, slate-roofed, with a step down to where water puddled in a depression in the ground. It was
dark in the hut, but cress grew on the damp perimeter. Sticks in the earth held tatters of cloth, and some coins glittered in the water.

“What are the bits of cloth, Declan?”

“I am thinking this must be a well for infirmities. Some of them have to do with fertility, I know, but all of them are said to have great healing powers. Ye leave a bit of clothing here and it is thought that your illness or misfortune stays once ye've gone. And as the cloth wears away, so does yer condition. My grandmother knew about the wells, and I wish I'd paid more attention. See the pins there, Una? I mind her saying that ye could make a wish and toss a pin into the well and that was as good as a coin. And sure in many families, a coin is too precious to toss down a well, particularly if there is a person needing a lot of care.”

Una reached into her haversack and took out two pennies. She handed one to Declan and tossed the other one to the well. Then she went outside and sat on a rock near the well to sketch the hut and its surrounding vegetation. The wide sky was hung with drifts of cirrus clouds like crinkled banners streaming.

“Mare's tails, we called those in Donegal when I was a girl growing up. So lovely, all of it—this view, the sky, those pretty lambs tucking their noses into their mothers' milk bags! In a few months, the rhododendrons will look spectacular. It's hard to believe that they're considered a pest, isn't it? Will you have a drink of tea?” she asked, bringing out the flask.

There was such comfort in her company, thought Declan. He had made a wish at the well, that ... well, he was superstitious enough not to want to actually think it even to himself. She was precious to him, and he wondered what to do with such feeling. The night she had driven off to treat the wounded, he had briefly imagined her lost to him. Falling down into grief again, he had waited and waited, almost not hoping, until the headlamps of her car illuminated the way to her cottage from the main road. There
had been such missions since, but she did not speak of them, telling him that it was better he not know. Once he heard her in conversation with a woman at the door and heard her exclaim, “Hunger strike! And what day is she now?” and then the voices lowered as if suddenly aware of his presence.

Declan was walking back from Leenane, a sack of oatmeal over his shoulder, when Una stopped her car at the bottom of her lane.

“Declan, Fintan has brought me a telegram. Who do you suppose has decided to come to favour us with his company but the lily collector I told you about, Edward Higgins. He has wired me to say he will be staying at the Killary Arms and will I show him the choice spots for lilies. He who has been to China and Japan and Nepal—I am fearful that he will not be impressed with our small offerings of wild garlic and those bog asphodels, and in any case it is too early for many of them to be in bloom. So my dear, I will be busy with him for the next week or so. But surely you'll stop in for a meal when you're passing?”

He nodded, shared a few words with her, and then went on his way. He was stung again by jealousy, the same sour note of it that had sounded when she'd mentioned Higgins after her return from London and again during their first night as lovers. A man with a castle and a whole background in common with Una's. A man who knew plants and had the means to travel far in their service and who could offer Una such trips. He could not believe that she would not find the man more suitable in contrast to himself. And he was not sure that his stopping for a meal would be welcomed by such a man.

As it turned out, he did not need to stop in, for one day, as he worked on his house, Una's car stopped again by his gate as
it had that day so many months ago when she had taken him to Cregganbaun, but this time a man sat in the passenger seat. Both of them emerged from the car, the man tall enough to duck his head and unfold his arms and legs. He had the look of a man born to plenty—his fair hair was cut and smoothed back with some sort of pomade, his clothing, fine soft tweed, was brushed and tidy, a cravat knotted casually around his neck. When he smiled, his teeth were very large and white.

“Declan, this is Edward Higgins. And Edward, I'd like you to meet my friend Declan O'Malley who is just rebuilding his house as you can see. He is a man of many talents, is Declan. He is also translating the
Odyssey
and has learned to string a harp!”

The two men shook hands. Declan was acutely aware that he must cut an odd picture in his worn trousers from Una's grandfather's box and a jersey which was much in need of a wash. As he was himself, having just planed a door to fit an opening and hoisted flat stones up from Dhulough for his hearth.

Higgins praised the view and then poked his head in the front opening. “And you will live here, will you?” was his only comment, to which Declan nodded yes. It must look so meagre in the eyes of one born in a castle, the small rooms with their single windows, the uneven slates of the floor. Una began to talk about their outing, saying that she was returning to the area where they'd found the orchids. She hoped there would be something to show Edward but wondered if it might be too early.

“There are the ransoms now in the wood near Delphi Lodge,” Declan told her. “I'm after picking some to have with potatoes.”

“Oh, thank you,” Una exclaimed. “We'll stop there on our way back, though ransoms are perhaps too simple for you, Edward! Still, wild garlic in an Irish wood is worth adding to your life-list, if only for its very novelty!”

The man sniffed, then smiled again, though there was something of a sneer to his smile. The little common wild garlic, with its starry blossoms, was not what he had come to Ireland to find, Declan was aware of that, but watched as the pair got into the car, their vasculums on the floor behind the seats. His heart sank down into his boots.

Una had invited him to have dinner with them on the following evening, so Declan washed one of his better shirts and aired out a jersey, not wanting to bring the smell of the turf shed to the table. Fergus Mannion was going to Leenane in his donkey cart in the late afternoon and offered to leave Declan off at Marshlands on his way. There was a sympathy in Fergus's eyes, though he did not say anything about Una or Higgins. But of course everyone knew Declan was courting her, in a manner of speaking, and of course everyone knew that she had a visitor from England, staying at the Arms. He had been seen already, fly-fishing in the Erriff River, with a local boy holding his creel for a few pennies. He had stood the drinkers a pint in the pub of the Arms and held forth briefly on the sunset as viewed through the small-paned window. And Una's car—well, it could not be missed, being one of only three in the immediate area. Fergus talked only of potatoes and the weather until he pulled the donkey in where the Marshlands lane met the road, and then he turned to Declan, grasped his hand, and said, “Yer a better man than him, Declan, and if she is the one for ye, then ye must declare yer heart.”

That very heart did leap and sink as he walked to Una's cabin where smoke flowered out of the chimney and the hens clustered near the door. A smell of roasting lamb issued from the door when Una opened it, a wide smile on her face.

It irked Declan to see Higgins so at home in the cabin, his vasculum on the sideboard and his coat hanging on the hook where Declan usually hung his own. He was offered an aperitif—
such a word!—by the man, had joined him by the fire where Higgins held forth on the scarcity of blossom near Cregganbaun, and was beginning to wish he'd never come when Una asked them to be seated at the table, indicating that Declan should sit opposite her at the head.

“May I ask you to carve, Declan?”

And he did, the sharp knife slicing the leg of young lamb into rosy portions after running it along his thumb to test its edge. There were also potatoes boiled in their jackets with a clipping of wild garlic strewn over them in their dish. There was a small unpleasant moment when both men tried to help Una to mint sauce and their hands met on the dish, Higgins recoiling as though his hand had been soiled. More talk about their gathering jaunt ensued, and a few details were settled about the next day, when Una was to collect her guest at his hotel and drive up the Maam road to drop him off so he could make a foray into the wetlands on Joyce's River; she herself was unavailable to accompany him. He wanted to go to Kerry at some point to see the rare
Simethis plan-ifolia
, which grew nowhere else in Ireland. After the meal they sat by the fire with tea and small glasses of a rich port the visitor had brought and Higgins spoke of trips taken in search of elusive lilies—the beautiful
Nomocharis aperta
, which he'd collected in western China in high alpine pastures, and a glorious white lily from Nepal that he'd seen in every variation from green to brown and crimson. It was interesting to listen to his descriptions, but Declan felt that he had nothing to add or to offer in return. When he mentioned the small orange lilies he'd seen on the rocks by Francis Point, he was told that it was almost certainly
columbianum
and very common at that; Kew had both plants and seed in the collection. Declan remembered the scent of oranges, the notion that Indians had eaten the roots in great numbers, and how he had been enchanted by the notion of sustaining one's life with a flower. But it was not something he wanted to talk about with Edward
Higgins, who had perfect posture and who was clearly interested in Una Fitzgerald. She tried to include Declan in the conversation, even directing Higgins's attention to the harp, telling him how Declan had figured out the difficult stringing process himself. That sniff again! And though he looked at it in a cursory way, he showed no interest in how a harp might be strung, how it might be played. He evinced a passion for chamber music himself. By now they were all seated around the fire, which Una had stoked with dry logs from a fallen tree in her woods. A fire so warm, and he so weary after days of lifting stones for his fireplace and hearth, that he found himself dozing off. When he opened his eyes, he realized that Una and Higgins were arguing.