another one in the hold.”
We went round to the side of the bus where the driver was unloading. I pointed to a small blue suitcase.
Liam lifted it out, set it down on the pavement, folded me into his arms and that was that. Or it was till we reached the house and we had a row over nothing at all on account of the state of our nerves. Then we went to bed and that was that again.
Liam is a stonemason and a sculptor. He went to art college in Dublin, spent a couple of years in a stonemason’s yard in Cork, then moved himself here because he’d had about enough of cities. Liam comes from Tipperary—that’s the next county—a place called Graigmoyla, forty-odd miles to the west of here.
“Kilkenny seemed a good compromise,” he’d told me on Achill. “Close enough to home but not too close. People I knew around the place to give me a start.”
By that he meant near enough to see his family when he wanted to, but not so near that they’re forever dropping in. Liam is one of five, and he’s slap in the middle. Connor’s the oldest; he lives in the home-place with Kathleen, his wife, and they work the family farm. His father still lives there, and he keeps his hand in, though these days he does less and less. Then there’s Eileen and Liam, and after him, Carmel and Tom. Liam thinks a lot of his family, especially Connor and Kathleen, but he has to have a bit of a distance from them or he feels like he needs to come up for air.
Which suits me as well. I like the Kielys now that I’m used to them, I do my bit in the family-thing, but I wouldn’t want to live in the midst of the nest. Liam comes and goes, and they’re tactful enough to keep their distance and give us a bit of space. We have his mother to thank for that. She laid down the rules in the early days—without her, it might not have entered their heads to hold back.
We’re not one of these couples you never see apart. Not now, anyway, though we were to begin with, when I was new and everything was strange. I was glad enough of it back then, but it’s different now and I wouldn’t want to be always tagging along in Liam’s wake. It passes, the twined-fingers stage. You don’t see it going till it’s gone.
I’m getting ahead of myself again. When first he came to Kilkenny, Liam stayed with Dermot Power and his wife, Marie, the same two who’d lent him the house on Achill. Dermot was a painter, his oldest friend, so Liam wasn’t shy about cluttering up their living-room floor while he looked around for a house he liked at a rent he could scrape together. He was in no hurry, so he stretched his welcome. It’s a good story now—they laugh in the telling—but by all accounts he wore their patience thin.
Liam knew what he wanted, you see, and he wasn’t about to compromise just to have somewhere to live. He wasn’t like Robbie, saying yes to the first place we saw that wasn’t a total dump. Liam watched and waited, taking his time. At last he found a stone-built farmhouse with outbuildings and an owner willing to rent at a price he could afford. There was even talk of a lease, but it was only talk, the documents never appeared. Liam said quietly that he might be interested should Mr. Fitzgerald ever be thinking of selling. Mr. Fitzgerald let on not to have heard, but Liam knew well that he had. They understood each other. He would live there, and if it worked out to their mutual satisfaction it might come to a sale.
Back then that was part of buying a house—goodwill and compatibility were valid currency, to be taken into account. Not now. These days no one cares who you are so long as there’s a bank to come up with the mortgage. And neighbours don’t matter the way they used to now that everyone has a car.
For two years Liam had rented, but by the time I stepped off the bus he was already mired in the long, slow business of buying. It all took forever. Mortgages were hard to come by, and he’d no fixed income to show. His family helped: his father stood guarantor with the bank, and Connor and Kathleen lent him money for the deposit. The worst part was getting permission from Pat Fitzgerald’s five siblings. Pat (he’d long ceased being “Mr. Fitzgerald”) was the oldest son, so he had the farm, but the house had passed to them all when the old people died and emigration had scattered the rest to England or America. Two of them were hard to find but easy enough to persuade. The other three had done well for themselves, they’d no urgent need, so they couldn’t quite make up their minds to the sale.
“It’s only natural,” Pat said. “It’s where they were reared, so they’ll take their time. Push, and they’ll dig in their heels; we have only to leave them be and they’ll come round.”
So they were let be, and they came round. I wasn’t surprised, I’d been watching Liam, and I knew well he’d have his way. Robbie could want something and there’d be hell on if he didn’t get it. Then he’d spot something else and away he’d go, the first thing entirely forgotten and left behind. Not Liam. Liam knew when to push, and he knew when to wait, it was nearly sinister, this relentless patience. It shocked me a bit. I had thought him all ease and good nature, but it seemed there was a whole lot more to him than I’d let myself notice.
It’s a narrow house, two storeys high, tucked sideways into a steep treed hillside with a muddy half-cobbled yard at the back and a mesh of fields at the front. A lovely place, secret and domestic, the small, ambling meadows like thrown-down cloths scattered over with horses and sheep.
There’s a few other houses around the place, but nothing too close. I can hear Haydn’s dogs at night, and a voice if it’s raised to a shout. In winter there’s the shine of Fitzgeralds’ lights through the empty trees when I’m bringing in fuel from the yard. Quiet. That’s how it was when I came here, that’s how it is still in spite of the cars drawing up to bring folk for my hands. A quiet green place of spring wells and stone walls studded with white thorn and ash. About as far from Derry as the moon.
Around the yard there are outbuildings in different stages of dilapidation. There’s a gate at the side that leads to a bit of an orchard with old, twisty trees climbing the slope, and behind them the land rising steeply up to the ridge. Below the house the land slopes gently down, and off in the distance the Blackstairs Mountains walk the horizon. The main gate from the yard opens into our boreen, which gives onto a single-track road, which gives onto another road where two cars can pass if you’re careful.
There are more houses now. Coady’s empty dwelling-house by the spring well has been renovated, and there are new bungalows here and there on the road that leads up to the ridge. I don’t mind it, though at first I did. I’d got used to solitude; I didn’t want neighbours.
When first I came here the place was more like a barn than a house. The roof leaked, the plaster walls blossomed with damp, the windows rattled at every breeze. Liam saw none of its defects. He showed me around like a man showing off a mansion; I might have been looking at antique rugs stretched on polished wood floors, at traceried ceilings, at mahogany sideboards laden with fine bone china. He had all sorts of plans for the house—its potential had long since changed in his mind into fact.
The front door opened directly into what had once been a traditional farm kitchen, with a flight of stairs climbing up the back wall, and two small rooms opening off it at either end. But time passed, Pat married, his new wife had set about making changes as new wives do. When she’d finished, the old range had gone and the big room had been divided. In the poky, wee kitchen an electric stove stood on rickety legs, and a miserable one-bar heater burned pound notes if you turned it on, which we rarely did, for we’d no pound notes to burn. Somewhere along the line Pat and his wife had built themselves a new bungalow three fields away and put the house up for rent. The bungalow was double glazed with fitted everything. Liam was planning to undo most of the changes and bring the house back to what it had been.
Upstairs
