Hungry Hill (62 page)

He slowed down the car, for the pass was narrow here, and as he turned the bend he saw, right in front of him, a barricade of torn heather and loose wire lying across the road, and beside it a man standing with a rifle in his hand. John-Henry drove slowly to the barricade and switched off his engine. The man did not move, except to cover him with the rifle, and then, putting two fingers in his mouth, he whistled loud and shrill. Some half-dozen figures crept down from the boulders above the pass. All of them were armed.

John-Henry knew none of them. One, he supposed their leader, came to the door of the car and leant upon it.

“What’s your name?” he said curtly.

“John-Henry Brodrick.”

“Where are you going?”

“To my home, Clonmere, at Doonhaven.”

“You served in the Royal Navy in the war, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“What are your politics?”

“I have none.”

“Were you staying last night in the Hotel Metropole in Slane?”

“I was.”

“All right.” He jerked his head to a couple of his companions.

“I shall have to ask you to get out of your car.”

“What for?”

“That’s our business. You’ll not be harmed if you go quietly. Try to be funny with us, and we’ll put a bullet between your shoulder-blades.”

“What are you going to do to my car?”

“You won’t see it again. Cars are too precious to us.”

The man grinned for the first time. John-Henry shrugged his shoulders.

“I was warned not to take my car on the road.

I’ve only myself to blame. Go ahead then. What do you want me to do?”

“Stand still while we bandage your eyes. I tell you again, we’re not going to hurt you. Now put your wrists behind your back. Take his arm, Tim-you know what to do if he plays tricks.”

What a damned fool he had been to fall into this trap! They had told him in Slane it was an act of lunacy to take a car out upon the road. And now he would probably be shot in the back and left to die on the hills. It was the loss of his car that angered him most. The old car, the faithful friend, being driven to hell and damaged by these madmen. No hope of ever getting it back again, of course. He cursed and swore uselessly to himself, as he stumbled over the heather and the stones, a man guiding him on either side.

They must have walked three miles or more, in heaven knew what direction, before they came to a standstill, and there was a sound of a door being unlocked, and someone saying something in a low voice, and then the bandage was removed from his eyes and the bands from his wrists, and he was standing on the mud floor of an abandoned cabin.

There was some loose straw in the corner. The small window was blocked with rags, and the hearth was black with long-burnt sticks and ashes.

“You’ll have to stay here awhile,” said the man who had unbound him. “I shall be outside on the hill, and my orders are to put lead into you should you run. I’ll be bringing you something to eat and to drink.”

“How long,” said John-Henry, “is this foolery to go on? And what am I supposed to have done?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” said the man.

“I have my orders, that’s good enough for me.”

And he went out, bolting the door behind him.

Oh, God damn them all, thought John-Henry; what in hell’s name do they want with me, and why must I be mixed up in a revolution which means less than nothing to me, and with which I have no concern ? He went and sat down upon the straw, for there was no chair or bench, and presently the man was as good as his word and brought him some bread, and some very sour cheese, and a pitcher of water.

“You haven’t any ale, I suppose?” asked John-Henry.

“I have not,” said the man, “but I have a flask on me with a drop of whisky in it, and you can have a spot of it if you’re that way inclined.”

John-Henry swallowed the whisky, and the man smiled.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I can get more when I want it, and you’ll be here till the morning, or maybe the day after, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Look here,” said John-Henry, “you can take my wallet-there’s twenty pounds in it-if you’ll let me out of this place.”

“I don’t want your money,” said the man.

“We’d have taken it from you if we’d had the need.

Is it robbers you think we are?”

“You stole my car, didn’t you?”

“We borrowed it for the cause. When the country is free you can have it back again.”

“That’s nonsense, and you know it. Why am I kept here?”

“I tell you I don’t know, and that’s the plain truth, before God. Do you play two-handed whist?”

“I did once. I haven’t played it for a long time.”

“I have a pack of cards here in my pocket.

If you’re agreeable we could have a game, and it would help to pass the time. I can’t do a thing outside your door but kick my heels and look at the heather. We might as well be company one for one another as not.”

“All right,” said John-Henry, “bring out your cards.” They sat down together in the small, close cabin, with a patch of light coming in at the stuffed-up window, and they played two-handed whist, and finished the whisky in the flask.

And this, thought John-Henry, is surely the madness of all time, that my captor and I pledge one another in illicit spirit, and he takes money off me in whist that he is too proud to steal, and we discuss the best method of snaring rabbits. Tomorrow he shoots me in the back, and maybe, as the sentry said in Slane, he will weep with pity and bring flowers to my funeral.

Two days passed, with the fellow Tim leaving him from time to time and coming back with bread, and sometimes cold bacon, or a fowl’s leg, and more whisky in the flask to keep body and soul together, and each time John-Henry would ask him, “Well, Tim, when is the execution to be?”, and each time Tim shook his head and said, “I’ve told you before, there’s to be no execution.”

“Then what am I doing in this confounded cabin?”

“You’re having a rest, for the good of your soul,” answered Tim, and out would come the greasy pack of cards, and the tipple of whisky, and was it fifteen pounds that Tim had won now or seventeen?

John-Henry did not remember, but it was fair exchange for the whisky, and maybe if he was warm enough in mind and body he would have no fear when they shot him in the hills.

The third night Tim brought rather more whisky than usual in his flask, and the guttering candle made a sickly light, and the cards stuck, and the few pieces of turf that they had kindled filled the room with smoke, so that John-Henry yawned and stretched and finally flung himself upon the straw and slept soundly, with his head pillowed in his hands. He woke to find a red dawn staring at him through the open door of the cabin, and his captor gone, and the white mist clearing away from the hills. He rose to his feet and rubbed his eyes and stared out upon the day, a lank, untidy figure, with straw in his hair and a three days’ growth of beard, and he stood by the open door and felt the sun upon his face, and saw a curlew fly low over the hills and vanish. Then he looked upon the ground, and close to his feet, lying beneath a stone, was a newspaper, with the dew upon it, dated the day before. There was a cross on the front page, and a scrawling writing above it, saying “Turn to page 3.” He opened the paper, and there on the centre page was a picture of Clonmere. The caption above the picture, in heavy black type, said “Historic Mansion Destroyed.”

John-Henry knelt down and spread the paper on the ground, for his hands were trembling. He placed a stone at each corner of the page so that the morning wind should not blow the curling edges. Underneath the picture, in smaller print, were some half-dozen lines, “Clonmere Castle, at Doonhaven, on Mundy Bay, was last night burnt down by persons unknown. Some of the contents were saved by people in the village who woke and saw the house ablaze, but the building was a shell by morning. The owner, Mr.

John-Henry Brodrick, is believed to be in the country at the present time.”

He knelt upon the ground, looking at the paper, and the first blind rage that filled his heart died suddenly away, leaving him cold, and stupefied, and numb.

A lark rose from the ground to greet the day, and the mists rolled back, baring the bright sun. In the far distance shimmered the pale sea. And while the ruins of his home and the wreckage of his dreams stared up at him from the printed page, John-Henry saw once again the eyes of the man in the hotel in Slane, and the blue-eyed, freckled Tim grinning at him over the pack of cards, as, pledging John-Henry’s future in a flask of whisky, he whispered..

“Ourselves Alone.”

The anger was spent, and the sorrow too. It seemed to him that he looked upon something that would stand for ever as a symbol in his heart, and could never be destroyed, whatever the fire might have done to the bricks and stones. The past would always cling to him, the unseen, ghostly hands of the people he never knew, but who had so great a part in him. This was no farewell, standing amongst the rubble. In a sense it was a dedication to the future. One day he would understand in full measure what it was that he had lost, and he would return again, because this was where he belonged. Now, being young, rage and grief that have such sharpness in their coming would quickly pass, and even now he felt something of a schoolboy’s excitement bent on treasure-seeking, as he stirred the embers with hi? feet and looked for the lost treasures.

The people had great delicacy. They stayed away, they did not trample the grounds and stare at the blackened walls. He had his heritage to himself. And he knew that they had taken already the things they wanted, for outside one of the cottages in Oakmount was part of a dresser that he recognised, and a little child at the gatehouse was playing with a porcelain vase that had stood once on the drawing-room mantelpiece.

There were other things, no doubt, lying snug and secure in the cottages at Doonhaven, for a fire, like a wreck, is public property until law and authority walk in. John-Henry was neither law nor authority. He was someone who must take his chance in a country that was torn in civil war, and if his possessions were lost to him he must suffer in silence. Little remained, then, that he could bring away, except that lying on the bank, untouched and quite unharmed, was the smiling portrait of Great-great-aunt Jane, and he was glad of this because he had always loved it, and his mother should have it in her house. The curious thing was that from a little distance the walls of his home appeared untouched. The chimneys stood, and all the windows, and it was only on approaching closely that he could see that nothing had been left of the inside, and the ceiling was the sky.

Yet the foundations of every room remained. And he could walk amongst the rubble and recognise each room, although no room remained. The old part of the house had suffered most. The new wing, always untenanted, looked as it must have done those fifty years ago when it was being built and his father had climbed the scaffolding as a little lad. The iron balcony above the great front door was twisted, but unbroken, and it clung precariously from the blackened walls like a fairy thing, the windows bare behind it, and the walls of the boudoir gone for ever. These were what he valued most, for no known reason, the iron balcony and the portrait of Aunt Jane. With a strange impartiality the fire had spared them both.

When John-Henry had finished probing amongst the stones, he stood on the bank below the castle, and he saw coming towards him down the drive a herd of cattle, which grazed by the wayside as they came, driven by a leisurely fellow with a cap on the side of his head, who sucked a grass stem as he walked. The cows took kindly to their new pasture, they nosed the shrubs, and trod the soft gravel and the leader of them, seeing the creek below, led his followers down the bank to the water-garden, amongst the wild plants that once had been the pride of Jane and Barbara, and thence to the creek itself, where they drank deeply, raising their heads now and again to gaze across the water. The cowman watched them, swishing the grass with his stick, but averting his eyes from the ruins of the castle all the while as though from delicacy.

John-Henry walked down the bank to join him, and the man took the grass stem from his mouth and touched his cap.

John-Henry felt at once that the man, who was young, about his own age, had a face that was familiar to him, seen surely within the last week, and in a sudden wave of perception he saw a likeness to the man in the bar of the hotel in Slane. For a moment he said nothing but “Good-day,” and the pair of them stood staring at the cattle which grazed below.

“Were you here when they burnt the house?” said John-Henry at last.

The man shook his head, and went on looking at his cattle.

“I was not,” he said, “I was in bed up at my house, and I had no knowledge of it until my mother told me.” He paused a moment, and then he said, as though in afterthought, “It was nobody in Doonhaven that did it.”

John-Henry lit a cigarette, and smoked awhile in silence.

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’ve done none of them any harm. I remember your face, but I can’t put a name to it.”

“Eugene Donovan,” said the man, “grandson to Pat Donovan who had the farm up by Hungry Hill when you were a boy. My father was called Jim Donovan. He went to South Africa when they closed the mines here.”

“That’s right,” said John-Henry. “I remember you now. You took over the farm then, when your grandfather died. Didn’t you have a brother?”

“I have a brother Michael. He did not care about farming.”

“What’s happened to him?”

“We’ve seen nothing of him this long while. He was friendly to Pat O’Connor and some of the boys.”

“Ah! I see.”

And in the half-veiled admission John-Henry understood that no more would ever be revealed. But he could trace now the story from the beginning, and he could see again the face of Michael Donovan in Slane.

He would have gone from the hotel to his friends outside the city, and told them that John-Henry Brodrick of Clonmere gave drinks to the enemies of his country, and was a traitor to his home and to his land. And so they came by night and burnt his house. Not Michael himself, nor any of the men of Doonhaven, because to do so would have brought ill-luck upon them, and the Saints would not have wished it. John-Henry knew this, and Eugene Donovan the cowman knew it too, but they did not speak of these things. Justice had been done. There was no more to be said.