Читать книгу Last Summer in Ireland - Anne Doughty, Anne Doughty - Страница 16

8

Two days after the estate agent’s visit to Anacarrig, a lengthy communication dropped through the letterbox. He thanked me for my kind instructions, repeated all he’d said about the state of the market, the possibility of finding the right kind of buyer and the likelihood of achieving a satisfactory sale. He named a selling price which amazed me. But it was his final paragraph that left me feeling agitated and upset for the rest of the morning.

He regretted he’d been unable to advertise in this week’s local papers because the photographs of the property were not available until Thursday afternoon. However, he’d gone ahead with putting the house in the Belfast Telegraph, as we’d agreed. Their weekend property guide had a wide circulation, he assured me, and as his firm’s offices remained open all day on Saturdays he would no doubt be in touch with me to arrange viewing for this coming weekend.

Working so hard all week to get the house ready for viewing, it just hadn’t struck me I could end up having to show people round so soon. The thought appalled me. I realised with a shock that I wanted to see no one here at Anacarrig.

For a whole week I’d hardly spoken to a soul. Apart from the estate agent, the only other person was the mechanic who was working on Mother’s car. He’d called in on his way home from work to let me know why it was taking so long. A matter of a part that hadn’t been sent when it was ordered. Mr Neill had rung to ask if I needed anything from the shops in Armagh, but I’d reassured him that Sandy had filled the freezer so full I’d have a job eating it all up before it was time to leave.

I would have phoned my dear friend, Helen, but she was still in Oxford on her course. Joan had gone to visit a cousin in Rye, Sandy was somewhere in France buying old farmhouses and my beloved Matthew was visiting hill villages north of Maharajpur a dozen miles at least from the nearest telephone.

I hadn’t been aware of my solitariness at all. In fact, I had actually enjoyed being on my own. Tears of disappointment and frustration sprang to my eyes as I read the letter a second time and imagined what would happen when the phone started to ring.

And, of course, I had a rotten morning as a consequence, the kind where nothing you begin to do can be carried through. Some tool, or code number, or critical piece of information just isn’t available and you can’t get on without it. It got so bad at one point and I felt so irritable that I just couldn’t keep going. I took myself off across the lawn and down to the hawthorns. I hoped if I sat down and composed myself something might come to comfort or inspire me. But nothing happened. All I was aware of was the scratch of the worn stone against the seat of my jeans, the buzz of an insect swooping around behind me, the clacking racket of some new piece of machinery in the farmyard across the road and a dull throb in my lower back. Of my friend, Deara, there was no trace. I simply couldn’t reach her.

I gave up eventually, tramped back to the kitchen feeling thoroughly upset, climbed awkwardly up onto the work surface, took down the curtains and put them in the washing machine. After the morning’s record of disasters, I could hardly believe my luck when I pulled the switch and it actually worked. I watched the curtains swoop and fall, swoop and fall, and was strangely comforted by the rhythmic swish of the rotating drum.

‘All things pass, however ghastly.’ The words took shape of their own accord. Yes, it was true. There was no doubt I’d feel better in an hour, or a day, or a couple of days. What I did while they did their passing was the problem.

Not surprisingly, I ended up in the garden and although I worked much more slowly than usual I made some progress. I trimmed my way along the sandstone path at the foot of the rockery, taking out the dead leaves from the flourishing succulents that spread over the warm flagstones. I touched their bright rosettes, each fat point tipped with red. I began to feel it was far better to get on like this and do what I could manage than to strain after something way beyond my present capacity.

After a time, I leaned back on my kneelers, stretched my aching neck and turned it towards the sun, so its warmth would be like a gentle hand on the tight muscles. The thought of Deara and the brooch she had carried from the Hall of Council came into my mind. I’d caught only a glimpse of it: dark, gleaming metal inset with bright points of colour.

I spread some loosened soil on the path in front of me and traced its circular outline with my finger, hoping I might recall the pattern of its subtle, intertwining spirals. But what happened was very different. My finger bit deeper into the soil, but it was not the soil of the Anacarrig garden.

Startled, I looked around me. The path had gone. There was no garden around me, no house perched on the terrace above me. I was kneeling on the soft, dusty edge of a small, sloping vineyard through which a stony path led upwards to the hilltop. A low colonnaded villa with a tiled roof stood silent in the warm sun. There was no sign of anyone about.

I stood up and ran my eyes around the countryside spread out below me, hoping to find some familiar landmark. But there were none. Apart from the pink and gold touch of autumn on a cluster of chestnut trees nearby, there was nothing remotely familiar in the whole landscape to tell me where I might be.

The valley below was densely wooded. Only in the distance where I saw the gleam of water did the woodland give way to lush green meadows. Cattle were grazing there – angular, bony creatures, shaggy and hollow-chested, a far cry from the plump Frisians and the well-fed Shorthorns on the farms close to Anacarrig.

Apart from the villa, there were no other signs of human habitation, though there were trackways, criss-crossing the water-meadows and disappearing into the woodland. From where I stood, the path ran downhill and joined a more substantial causeway at the bottom. This stony track skirted the hill, cut through the woodland to the water-meadows and then disappeared again into more woodland away to my left.

Suddenly, a flash of light caught my eye. To my right, as far as the causeway reached before being enveloped in the woodland, a party of horsemen had just come into view and the sun glinted on their metal collars and the weapons they carried. They were moving fast. Moments later, over the thud of hooves, I heard the jingle of harness as they drew nearer.

Wanting to get a better look, I moved towards the rosemary hedge which bounded the vineyard. It was then I heard a rustle behind me. I turned and saw a young woman walking towards me, a wicker basket hung over one brown arm.

To be honest, I didn’t recognise her, but the moment she saw me, she held out her hands and smiled. With those grey eyes, it could be no one else. She seemed taller, less waif-like, more confident than I had remembered her. Pinned to the left shoulder of her pale olive green tunic was the brooch.

‘So you have come again as I prayed you would. You are so welcome. I hope the migraine troubles you no more.’

I was completely taken aback for the words she spoke were perfectly comprehensible.

‘Thank you, it went away when I slept. It hasn’t come back,’ I heard myself reply, to my amazement, as easily as she had spoken. And then I realised why: it was neither Italian, nor Greek, of which I have only a smattering – it was Latin. Not exactly the Latin of Tacitus or Pliny I know well, closer to the late Latin poetry I’d loved so much, and a form I could certainly follow. And it was clear from her cry of delight that she had understood what I had said.

‘But now you speak the tongue of Rome as I do. How is this? Come, let us sit in the shade. I have been waiting so long for you to come. But I had not thought we might speak words to each other that we might understand.’

She took my hand and led me to a stone bench below the colonnade. On either side of its fine-grained marble surface, two great wine amphora held single-petalled roses, one pink and one red. As I sat down I brushed against one of them and some petals fell, bright red splashes on the flagged terrace. I could see the veins in the rose, the grain in the quarried stone and feel the warmth of a brown hand holding mine.

Sitting there in the sunshine, her familiar-looking wicker basket at my feet, I felt both easy and excited. Easy, as with an old friend like Helen, whom I’ve known since our very first day at grammar school, and yet excited, like the first meetings with Matthew when it was so obvious to us both that all we wanted to do was be together.

There seemed so much we had to say to each other and yet a strange sense that we had shared so much already, as if we had been friends for a long time, but had been separated and now lived in different countries.

‘Please, how is it that you speak the Roman tongue?’

‘I learnt it at school in Ireland a long time ago.’

I thought my words sounded very stiff, rather like one of those guide books for eighteenth century travellers with phrases like: ‘My postilion has been struck by lightning.’ But if I was, it seemed not to bother her.

‘But we are in Ireland now, not far from the God’s well where I first met you. Do you not recognise this place? Over there to the west is Emain, and behind us is the town, Ard Macha, where the traders live. This is the villa of Alcelcius, my teacher.’

‘Is Alcelcius a Roman?’

I could not conceal my curiosity or my excitement. I so hoped she would say he was.

‘Yes, Alcelcius was a surgeon with the legions in Albi, but he came to Ireland disguised as an eye-doctor to spy for his general, who thought to conquer us. But Ireland conquered Alcelcius instead. He made his home here when he was discharged with honours.’

I laughed with delight. I knew it. I always knew it. I had been right after all. I was back at school, the soft voice of Miss Barbour in my ear. I had liked Miss Barbour very much, she was kind, hard-working and very fair. Without her, I would probably never have won my scholarship to university. But she would never accept a statement unless I could produce concrete evidence. I could still hear her steady, unperturbable tone.

‘Well, yes, Deirdre, I can see the reasoning behind your suggestion. The Romans were indeed adventurous, they do show a decided tendency to explore and document, but we have no evidence at all that they came to Ireland. It is true, Agricola did calculate that he could subdue the country with two legions, but the attempt was never made. As we all know, he shortly had to give his mind to more pressing problems.’

And with those quiet, bleak phrases, quite unknowingly she had snuffed out some possibility that was beginning to grow in my mind. I had felt such loss, such disappointment, and now suddenly that old hope returned.

‘And are you also Roman?’ I asked quickly, the words coming to me more easily now, in spite of my haste.

Her face, so full of pleasure and enthusiasm, changed instantly and I glimpsed a different Deara, vulnerable and ill at ease.

‘I know nothing of my family,’ she said uneasily. ‘I was brought up by the Lady Merdaine of Emain, but she died some four years ago, a few days before you first came to me. After her death I came to study with Alcelcius. He is such a good, kind man. He has taught me Latin and Greek, as well as medicine and the ways and customs of the Romans. Have you come from Rome?’

I shook my head and smiled.

‘No, I’m not a Roman. I’ve been to Rome once, many years ago, but there haven’t been Romans in Britain for a very long time. I think you and I live in different ages rather than in different places. Can you tell me what year it is, here, at this moment?’

The grey eyes widened and she nodded slowly.

‘This is the fourteenth year of the reign of Niall, son of Laoghaire, King of Tara and the tenth year of the reign of Morrough, son of Ferdagh, King of Emain.’

I shook my head and laughed, none the wiser.

‘That sounds like a long time ago. Presumably the Romans are still in Britain?’

‘Britain? Where is that, please?’

I tried to think what Britain was called in Roman times, but I just couldn’t remember.

‘Where Londinium is,’ I offered helpfully.

‘Ah yes, Londinium. Alcelcius served there before he went north to Eboracum. You know Londinium?’

‘Yes, I live and work there, but it’s rather larger now than it was in Alcelcius’s day . . . or rather, I mean . . .’

‘You mean that you have come from the future?’

‘It looks like it. I know quite a lot about the Roman Empire and I’ve read Agricola, but his world was about nineteen centuries before the time in which I live.’

‘So, how have you come? Why have you come?’ she asked earnestly, pressing my hand, as if my answer was of the greatest importance to her.

‘I don’t know. Why did you come to me six days ago when I was sitting crying with my migraine?’

She shook her head gently and smiled, that lovely warm smile which banished all anxiety.

‘My friend, for you the time was but six days, for me, four years and four months. It seems there is much we do not know. But some things are clear to us.’

‘Such as?’

‘Who we are. That we are friends.’

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. I was terribly taken aback. Until I met my sister-in-law, Diana, I’d never been kissed by a woman. She’s one of those Anglican clergy wives who kisses everyone, so it shouldn’t have been a problem, particularly as I happen to like her. But it was. Every time Matthew and I went to visit I d get worried I might react in spite of myself. Eventually we managed to work out what lay behind it. Mother, of course. As if we couldn’t have guessed. She’d never held or kissed either Sandy or me, even when we were very little, and her comments were always quite vicious if she ever saw two women kiss each other.

‘Please, tell me your name,’ she said earnestly.

‘Deirdre.’

‘Oh . . . so . . .’

Her eyes grew round with amazement.

‘What’s so strange about that?’ I asked, as I saw her begin to smile.

‘I too am Deirdre, but only a few people know that, a Druid who bears me ill will and my foster-mother, who gave me the name Deara.’

‘But why did she do that?’

‘Because Deirdre was a name too hard to bear.’

She said it so softly that I wasn’t sure I had heard her properly, and yet I felt it was the most important thing she could have said. Yes, it was too hard to bear, being Deirdre. Often enough, just existing could be too hard to bear.

I thought of the strange scenes and images I’d experienced when Deara had laid her hands upon me and all that had come to me in the days that had followed. Her life had been as full of anxious thoughts as mine seemed to be. I wanted to understand how and why this had happened to her. I asked her about the woman who had died by the God’s well, about the Druid who had tried to have her executed. And she answered all my questions, quite easily and steadily, explaining both what had happened on the night of her birth and how Conor had behaved towards her as she was growing up.

‘But, Deirdre, how is it you know these things about my life when we have not spoken of them until now?’

I was about to explain, when suddenly the warm stillness of the afternoon was broken by the most appalling noise, a kind of high-pitched scream, followed by shouts and a fierce metallic banging like the dustbin lid protests up the Falls Road in the early days of The Troubles.

I jumped and went rigid. Her hand tightened around mine and she said softly: ‘It’s all right, Deirdre. The King has arrived back at Emain with the ambassadors from Tara. That was the guard shout and the warrior greeting. I hate it too. When I’m up there and it happens, I hide in my workplace till the speeches begin. They go on a long time, but they’re quiet. Did you see the King’s party pass by?’

I nodded, not yet trusting my voice, for my heart had leapt into my mouth at the sudden jarring noise.

‘Just a glimpse, before I saw you,’ I managed to reply, my mouth suddenly dry. ‘Was that the King at the front?’

‘Yes, it would have been. He is always so happy to ride home. He’s not overfond of Tara and he hates negotiations, but that is the only way to keep the peace. Without going to Tara, it would be easy for enemies to make trouble between Emain and Tara. Then many suffer, not just warriors. Do you live in a time of peace, Deirdre?’

I shook my head wearily. I could not bear to tell her of the killings, the car bombs, the ambushes and the thousands of innocent people the last years of bitterness and hatred had claimed.

Again, a violent clamour erupted from the west. I felt it like a physical blow, but before I could react she took my other hand. I saw the look of concern on her face as she explained gently and patiently, as one does to a frightened child, that the guest cup is offered to the ambassadors, and it is the children who make the noise with blunt swords and broken shields, a tradition which would not go on for more than a few minutes.

I seem always to have hated loud noises. Long before The Troubles began, with their real threat from bombs and bullets, I had jumped out of my skin at fireworks, or cars backfiring, or even some child bursting its paper bag at lunchtime. The racket had now died away. I took a deep breath and tried to forget it.

‘Is it impolite if I ask what age you are, Deara?’ I asked, knowing that I sounded formal again because I couldn’t find a word for ‘rude’, only one for ‘vulgar’ and another for ‘obscene’.

‘Surely not. I was twenty-one in the fifth month of this year. And you, my friend?’

‘I shall be thirty-five in a few months’ time.’

‘By then we shall have known each other a long time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t exactly know what I mean, but that is how it seems to me. We shall be good friends, shall we not?’

She looked at me with the warm smile which I found so utterly appealing. I was about to speak of the hope that was beginning to grow in me, born out of the strange situation in which we found ourselves. But I didn’t manage it. Without any warning, a huge noise away to my right broke in on me, a noise that filled up all the space inside my head.

‘That noise, Deara, that awful noise. Whatever is it? Make it stop. Oh, please make it stop. I can’t bear it. It feels as if it will make my head burst.’

I covered my ears with my hands and felt tears spring to my eyes. She couldn’t hear it. I knew she couldn’t hear it. And she wouldn’t believe me if she couldn’t hear it. Nothing I could say would make her believe me. I wanted to scream and scream, but no sound would come. Everything was blotted out by pulsing waves of pressure. I couldn’t even see her any more. Then I felt her hands on my wrists.

‘Deirdre, my dear friend, I am here. Give me your hands. Do not shut out the noise. Listen to it. Let it speak to you. I will not let it harm you.’

There was a strength in her voice I had not heard before. It was firmer than reassurance, much firmer, it was the strength of one who speaks to command. She drew my hands away from my ears and held them firmly in her own.

‘Listen, listen to it,’ she insisted quietly. ‘It cannot harm you now.’

As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. I could see her face again. She was watching me with enormous concentration. She released my hand as I moved to get my hanky out of my pocket. I blew my nose and mopped up my tears.

‘Are you all right now? Has the noise gone?’

‘Yes, it’s gone. I’m so sorry, I can’t think what happened to me. It’s so silly. Please forgive me.’

‘Forgive you? What is there to forgive between us? It is you who must forgive the woman who harmed you in this way.’

‘Woman? What woman?’

‘A woman with glass in front of her eyes who crept up behind you when you were sitting on the stones by the God’s well and talking to yourself. The same woman in a long bedgown who found you walking in your sleep and scolded you, and when you spoke of hearing a noise she said you were telling lies. A woman who did not comfort you when you wept.’

‘That’s my mother. She died the week before last.’

‘Such women leave great burdens on the spirit. You must rest and pray to your God.’

‘I have no God.’

‘Then I shall pray to mine. It makes no difference,’ she said, as she touched my cheek with her hand. ‘You are very pale. Will you drink a cup of wine? It would help you.’

Suddenly I became so aware of the blue threads in my jeans, the fallen petals of the rose and the soft, brown hand still holding mine.

‘Thank you,’ I said, nodding and looking up at her.

But she was gone. I was sitting on my stone under the hawthorns. Indoors, the phone was ringing. I didn’t move. I let it ring until it stopped.

I sat on for quite a while, letting myself absorb what had happened. Then I realised how thirsty I was. I got up and walked across the garden to the path along the bottom edge of the rockery. There was the circle I had begun and not completed. I bent down and drew my finger through the soil to close it.

The phone rang again, that fierce, strident ring I could identify as the Anacarrig phone from wherever in the world I might hear it. I went in and picked it up.

‘Deirdre Weston speaking.’

I heard my name as if it were the first time I’d ever used it. It was the estate agent with a query about the rateable value. I told him what he wanted to know and wished all queries could be dealt with so easily. And yet, as I filled the kettle, I felt sure that finding answers to the questions that were really important to me was going to be a whole lot easier. If there was something I had to do while I was here, then I was being helped to do it. There was no point asking for it all to be clear to me now: I just had to get on and do the best I could.