Moonshine. Victoria Clayton
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usurpers, their masters.’
‘Were they all – the bosses, I mean – callous and greedy?’
‘There were some conscientious landlords. They waived rents and set up soup kitchens. But a lot of landowners had larger, more important estates in England. Some never set foot in Ireland. They didn’t give a damn about the peasants who worked and starved to provide the rent money on which the landowners – in the old days anyway, before the eighteen eighties – grew fat. After the Great Famine years of eighteen forty-seven to eighteen forty-nine some landlords chartered ships to take their tenants to America to start a new life.’
‘I suppose that was better than nothing?’
‘It was cheaper to send them abroad than to pay for their keep in the workhouse. But the conditions on the boats were so bad that they were called coffin ships. At least half of them died on the journey.’
I tried to imagine what it must have been like: the ravaging of the flesh by hunger and cold and disease. Watching one’s children suffer and being powerless to help them. Being uprooted from home and family, enduring appalling hardships to land in an alien place among alien people. Knowing that the prosperous world was indifferent to one’s pain and grief. It made my own unhappiness seem contemptible. I resolved to say not another word of complaint about my own misfortunes.
‘And now? What about British presence in Northern Ireland? Should we stay or go?’
‘Ah! That’s a hard one. And I’ve lectured you long enough.’ Despite my assurance that I wanted to hear more, he changed the subject. ‘See that ruin on the hill-top?’ I looked obediently to my left. A row of Gothic arches stood proud against a Constable sky, smudged with shades of grey and indigo as clouds gathered. ‘That’s all that remains of a once magnificent Palladian mansion and a substantial demesne. That’s just the folly, the eye-catcher, which no one could be bothered to blow up or burn down.’
‘Where’s the house?’
‘Among those trees. I went to look at it last time I drove up here. It’s nothing but walls and glassless windows now, and chimneys colonized by crows.’
‘Oh, what a pity! There’s a foul little bungalow slap-bang next to that exquisite stone gateway. And an electricity pylon on the other side. It should never have been allowed!’
‘You can’t expect the Irish to be exactly fond of the glory of the Ascendancy.’
‘No. But beauty, no matter how degenerate its creator, is still precious, isn’t it?’
‘If it’s a reminder of injustice and misery, it may no longer be beautiful.’
‘Surely the making and preservation of fine buildings is one of the great consolations for man’s sorrows?’
I must have allowed more indignation to appear in my tone than I had intended for Kit laughed and said, ‘You’re absolutely right. Don’t be cross. I’m only trying to see the other point of view. Playing devil’s advocate.’
‘I’m not at all cross with you. How could I be when you’ve been so kind? What happened to the house and the family?’
‘It was burned during the Troubles.’ Kit paused to negotiate with an oncoming lorry for the left-hand side of the road. ‘The family went to live in England. The people who live in that bungalow you so despise are the descendants of a long line of stewards who looked after them. They were very friendly and keen to show me round. Ironically, they were proud of the majestic ruins which they seemed to feel gave them a reflected status.’
‘What was the point of it then? What good did it do to burn the house and presumably destroy the livelihoods of all the people connected with a working estate?’
‘Good? No good at all, I should say. If you’re going to get on in Ireland you must be prepared to abandon notions of cause and effect. Other things are more important, like love and generosity and good fellowship. And drink, of course.’
‘It doesn’t seem to me particularly loving or generous to burn someone’s house down.’
‘Ah, you’ll understand in time. Logic’s of no possible use to you here. Forget all about it and you’ll be much happier.’
I wished I could be happy. I wished I could rid myself of a sense of loss that weighted my limbs with despair. But I reminded myself that my problems were trivial.
‘What’s up, Bobbie? Suddenly you look as though you’ve swallowed a bitter pill.’
I had taken it for granted that Kit’s eyes would be on the road ahead. He might claim to be an idle dreamer, but in fact he was sharply observant.
‘Oh, nothing.’ I smiled. ‘Just … I was wondering if my new employers have been reading the newspapers. They may well recognize me as a woman steeped in sin and hurl me out on my ear.’
‘In that case you’ll ring me from the nearest telephone box and I’ll come and rescue you.’
This was reassuring. But I was conscious of getting deeper in Kit’s debt. We stopped at a hotel in the town of Williamsbridge for tea. It was called, inaccurately, the Bellavista. The sitting-room windows looked across the car-park to the public lavatories. They had run out of sandwiches but there was cake, a sort of spiced bread called barmbrack. It was stodgy but I did my best to get some down, knowing that a few calories can do a lot for one’s mood.
‘I like to see you eat,’ said Kit. ‘It’s depressing to see a girl squeeze the oil out of an olive before she downs it. My last girlfriend ate nothing but lettuce, poached fish and sorbet when I took her out to dinner but I’d find her standing by the open fridge at two o’clock in the morning guzzling a tub of chocolate ice cream. I fail to understand the rationale behind this peculiar eating pattern.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Fenella.’
‘How old-fashioned and pretty. Were you very much in love with her?’
‘I thought so at first. Then I discovered it was her face I was in love with, not her.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘She had marble-white skin, a hooked nose and bulging eyes. I know that doesn’t sound alluring but there was a symmetry about her face and a kind of sculpted quality that I found fascinating. Her eyes were pale green, like the inside of a cucumber. She was cold, too, like a cucumber, and almost as immobile. At first I yearned to lie in her arms, like reclining on the bed of a fast-flowing stream. But after a while, I got chilly. That was when I fell out of love with her.’
‘Was she dreadfully hurt?’
‘Annoyed more than anything. Her mother gave her a lot of stick for parting company with me.’
‘Her mother? How did she come into it?’
‘She was a mink-wrapped, ruby-hung adding machine, totting up my credits, setting them against my debits.’
‘The credits being? If that isn’t an impossibly rude question?’
‘An inheritance. A nice old house in Norfolk. An entrée into other nice old houses belonging to people she approved of.’
‘I had no idea you were such an eligible parti.’
‘I conceal it brilliantly, don’t I?’
‘Now don’t fish. And the debits? Those are well hidden.’
‘It’s a little late to truckle, Miss Bobbie. Debits minimal, from Fenella’s mother’s point of view. An inability to take life seriously, a shocking inconstancy in matters of love, a face like an amiable schoolboy’s and a strong dislike of scheming, snobbish mammas.’
‘You said Fenella was your last girlfriend. Describe your present girlfriend, if you’d be so kind.’
‘Situation vacant.’
‘So