Candle
Baby
Finger
May
coinneal
Leanbh
miar
Bealtaine
She brought very few personal items when she came to us, save for her most prized possession-her mother’s old three-legged milking stool. She sits on it before the fire conducting her language lessons, happy to have something to give beyond earnest common labor.
When I speak with Keegan about independence, he says tis a speabhraidi, a pipedream. I hope to soon turn him from this lazy-minded notion-it is a blasphemy.
John Mitchel said it for me-‘England is truly a great public criminal. England! All England! She must be punished; that punishment will as I believe come upon her by & through Ireland; & so Ireland will be avenged.’
Many casualties in the recent battle of Shiloh, well above ten thousand either side. It seems to me this war is not over human flesh but Greed as is the case in every armed conflict. God help the brothers who war against one another.
1 June
A fine, soft rain throughout the day-in America I had forgotten how often it rains in the Eire-gratifying nonetheless to be making the Rounds & seeing so many lift their Caps as we pass-Adam was given two apples by the children at O’Leary’s cabin, so well do they love my Mount & the fact that their Sister has a good home with the doctor & his wife.
Such a day is a Pleasure when one is haunted so gravely by the many one sees of Suffering.
Have hired on Danny Moore who is deft with the stump & gets about smartly on his crutch-though unskilled, he seems fitted for the plaster work & will apprentice to James Murray, a man of parts-I have given him a wage above that of other unskilled plasterers-he has given in turn his vow not to speak of it to the men as it would incite ill feeling-his mother came on foot to thank me-she & C having a fine tea together.
Will go down to the Dublin Apothecary Monday next, with further intentions of seeing our Solicitor & having a new coat with hood & warm lining fashioned for C-A shall also have something warm for her back-she is small & thin as a reed as are all her family from long years of poor nourishment.
Have today agreed with C how we shall divide our Estate as one never knows when one’s Call may come. Having no child of our own, I will name my orphaned nephew & namesake, Padraigin, as heir to Catharmore-he shows good sense in business affairs & is thrifty as a Scot. He has visited once at my decree-quite silent & cold as a trout but perhaps overstrained by travel undertaken on roads nearly in ruin-I would fain do for him what Uncle did for me. Only one of my brothers living & he in good fettle with fat cows & sufficient Bogland & a hale daughter to care for his needs. C’s widowed niece & her many offspring benefit in our lifetime rather than when we are laid in the Grave.
Without further delay of bad wether, we shall move our modest household into the manor no later than year’s end. Keegan will turn his cottage over to an ageing sister & lodge in a small room adjoining the Surgery.
C proposes that A should have the care of our lamps when in the house-she is deft at trimming wicks to produce a sweet flame & washing the chimneys without breakage. She will also have sole care of the laundry, the carrying out of ashes, emptying of slop jars & other general chores. A is pleased at the prospect of expanding her duties.
He came awake from Fintan O’Donnell’s complicated life and noted the simplicity of his own-Pud’s chin rested on his bare foot. Made him miss the Old Gentleman. He could say anything to Barnabas, read him the Romantic poets or discourse on the politics of the day; his good dog inevitably listened with grave interest. An elegant soul.
4 June
Balfour treats his servants the way slaves are said to be treated in the southlands of America. I doctered a southern slave on two occasions in Philadelphia-a striking figure of a black man with a voice as deep as that of a church organ & attired nearly as well as his Master in a vest of striped satin with a woollen frock coat & dove colored breeches-I recall that he carried a pocket watch & suffered from tumors of the mouth which we were able to address with some success-he oversaw the business dealings of a planter in the Carolinas & had a nobel manner about him.
Yesterday treated the head wound of a lad who was kicked by a horse while mucking Balfour’s stables-I learned that he was badly beaten twice when Balfour was in a drunken rage-He broke down in a fit of sobbing & pled with me not to tell it abroad else he be more fiercely treated & sent off the place. Having come from England with his father, now deceased, he would have no Family to turn to nor any place to lay his head.
From my experience in America & in my own Country, tis clear that Alcohol has wrought more misery than can be reckoned-it is as merciless as any plague in the taking of both lives & souls.
The caffeine was wearing thin. He trooped to the bed, Pud at his heels, and crawled beneath the duvet.
As he punched up his pillow, Pud stared at him, unblinking. Needless to say, there would be no balm in Gilead. None.
‘On or off?’ he asked his reading wife.
‘Why don’t we just cut to the chase?’
He patted a spot by his feet; Pud leaped onto the bed, nailed the proffered territory, lay down, sighed.
‘Only one problem,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We don’t know where this might lead.’
She turned a page, laughing. ‘Since when do we know where anything might lead?’
‘You have a point,’ he said.
Fifteen
Showered, shaved, and dressed for dinner, he opened the journal to his bookmark.
Fair
Having cured a sty on the eye of my own milch cow, the word has spread like brush fire-for everything from cow beetle to the infected teat, they are at me for treatment. No bastes, I tell them, no bastes! Old Rose McFee is determined I should deliver her calf.
Fair days-the men working at a pace-we shall take occupancy of Catharmore by early August or I’m damned.
I mark here Keegan’s report-that Balfour has twice made foul comments to the men about Aoife.
‘You’re all dressed.’ She limped from the bathroom on her crutch, steaming like a clam in the Darling Robe.
‘Why don’t you go visit in the library? Just come back in a half hour or so and give me a hand down the stairs.’ She leaned to him and fussed with the silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket, and he stood for any further improvements.
‘You’re looking very sexy,’ she said.
Until she came into his life, such a thing as looking sexy had never occurred to him-the notion would have seemed absurd.
There he’d been, tied up at the dock for better than sixty years, the waves occasionally swamping his boat, but safe at harbor, nonetheless. Then she’d moved next door and in no time at all he was unmoored completely. He was terrified of being dashed on the rocks, or adrift on the deep with no way to read the stars of his frightening passion-he was the old man ’way out at sea, in the thrall of a woman who found him romantic and clever. St. Matthew had asked, Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? Ha. He had grown ten feet tall in the first months of his fumbling courtship.
‘I mean it,’ she said, kissing him for a fare-thee-well. She drew away and laughed. ‘You’re blushing.’
‘Tight collar.’
‘I haven’t wanted to say anything, but you’re a little out of control with your diet.’
‘I’ll watch it.’ He hated watching it, but she was right.
‘Thirty minutes, then? Don’t forget me.’
‘No chance.’
Pud accompanied him downstairs, shoe in mouth. On the landing, he peered out to the garden-the rain had ended, thanks be to God.