Ashes In the Wind (15 page)

At the big double there is a near disaster; the horse two lengths in front falls on landing and sprawls to his right, unshipping his jockey, and only a quick pick-up by John and clever footwork by Hunting Cap prevent them being brought down. They lose a good three lengths, and John resigns himself to finishing second or third. But two fences out the rank outsider alongside the favourite falls, and the green and red colours of Lough Corrib start to come back. As the two horses go into the last fence together John asks Hunting Cap to stand back and reach for the fence, which he does. They land half a length clear of Lough Corrib and hold the advantage to the winning post. In a daze of mud-spattered, exhausted glory he trots back to the winner’s enclosure, where he is slapped on the back by an overjoyed Paddy Brennan, congratulated by Charles and hugged by Cis. He weighs in and three minutes later hears the confirmation over the loudspeaker, ‘Winner All Right’.

He leaves the tent through a cheerful, back-slapping crowd and is making his way to his car when Grania comes up and hugs him.

‘My money was on you; I can afford the stud fee now.’

John smiles.

‘You can’t have bet that much, surely?’

‘Twenty-five pounds, and I got on early at four to one.’

‘I’m glad I didn’t know before.’

‘I’ve always liked the horse – he’s the type for banks and walls, and I hoped you’d be smart enough to let him do the business. Fair play to you, you drove him into the last fence hard, and that was the race over. And you did well at the big double. Will I see you at the dance tonight?’

‘I haven’t been asked.’

‘Asked? It’s not one of your hunt balls. You just turn up and buy a ticket.’

John drives home via the yard and checks Hunting Cap over with Paddy Brennan.

‘He’ll be stiff in the morning. He’s a small cut on the near fore, but he’s eaten up well and drunk a river dry. Here, you take the cup – I’ve got the prize money. And the stable had a good bet.’

John goes home, falls asleep in the bath and again over supper up at the Fort.

‘Off to bed with you,’ says Cis.

John walks slowly back to his cottage and looks in on The Elector. It’s a long drive to Kildare, he thinks, and then remembers Grania’s bright eyes. He changes into his dinner jacket, drives slowly over to Kildare, buys a ticket and goes into the Leinster Arms. On his way to the ballroom John has to pass through the long, busy bar, and is immediately embraced by the jockey who fell in front of him at the big double.

‘We had you beat barring the fall,’ he says. ‘Any road, let me buy you a drink.’

There are many happy gamblers to help him celebrate his win. Paddy Brennan is holding court at one end of the bar; he beckons John over and insists on another bottle of champagne.

‘Big win for the stable,’ he says, his face red with the warmth of the room and the drink, his voice hoarse and only a little slurred. Paddy smiles at the circle around him, all happy to relive the story of the race any number of times as long as the drink keeps flowing.

John leaves the bar to look for Grania in the ballroom of the hotel. This is past its glory days, decorated, but not recently, in gold and red; heavy velvet curtains are drawn across its tall windows. A ten-piece dance band is playing quicksteps, waltzes and foxtrots from a gallery set above the dance floor. The royal arms – not for much longer, thinks John – are the only ornament on the wall. The room is filled with a noisy, cheerful crowd, many of whom have spilled over directly from the racecourse. Half the guests are in dinner jackets, half in tweeds or corduroys.

He eventually finds Grania in a large party around a table on the far side of the dance floor. She is wearing a dark green dress that shows off her white shoulders, her black hair gathered by a tortoiseshell comb, her lips red. She stands up, takes his hand and says to her table, ‘This is John, stallion man at Burke’s Fort and winner of the third race. He’s made me a rich woman, and I owe him a dance.’

They push their way onto the crowded floor, where luckily there isn’t enough room to test John’s quickstep. The band is playing ‘My Blue Heaven’. Grania is almost as tall as John; he holds her close, her hand on his shoulder. Their cheeks touch and stay together. Her fingers gently stroke the back of his neck. The dance is over all too soon for John.

‘I must go back to my table,’ says Grania. ‘Eamonn thinks he’s my beau. I’ll be over to see you with Tess next week.’

Is Eamonn her beau? wonders John as she walks back to her table. As he leaves the dance floor he is pulled into the bar by an insistent Paddy Brennan.

‘Just one for the road,’ he says, speaking slowly and deliberately. He is swaying a little. John sips a glass of Guinness.

‘We’ve drunk them dry of champagne,’ says Paddy.

The last waltz is played; John can’t see Grania on the crowded dance floor. The music finishes, there is a roll of drums and the Master of Ceremonies announces, ‘The National Anthem – The Soldiers’ Song’. There is one quickly silenced boo as the band strikes up the unfamiliar tune. Although the bar is quiet, it is clear not everyone knows the words; some are singing in Gaelic, some in English. John misses the beginning, hears,

...Sworn to be free,

No more our ancient sireland

Shall shelter the despot or the slave.

As he drives carefully home he remembers Grania’s fingers stroking the back of his neck.

Three days later she rides over in the morning on her cob, leading her mare.

‘She’s been ready for twenty-four hours, but I couldn’t leave the farm yesterday.’

‘We’ve no teaser stallion. We’ll have to leave it to The Elector to excite Tess. I’ll get Sean to come and hold her. You can have a cup of tea in the cottage if you like.’

‘I don’t like. She’s not Sean’s mare. I’ll hold her,’ and, seeing the look on John’s face, adds, ‘I
am
a farmer’s daughter.’

They take Tess into the covering stall, and John gets her ready, bandaging her tail, tying it forward, covering her quarters with the heavy leather blanket. As he swabs the mare clean, Grania, impressed, says, ‘She’s used to being turned out in the field with the stallion and told to get on with it.’

John puts on the bitted head-collar and leads The Elector out of his box into the yard.

‘Come on now, be a good boy, don’t let us down,’ he whispers.

And The Elector is a good boy, whinnying softly, circling and sniffing Tess for a few minutes. Tess is skittish at first, moving away from the stallion and pulling hard. John is surprised that Grania is able to keep hold of her. They take the mare into the covering stall, where Grania talks to Tess in a soothing voice and strokes her neck. After a first failed attempt, The Elector rises up and shudders violently into the mare.

‘That’s a good cover. You did well to steady her. We’ll put her in the visitors’ box and cover her again tomorrow to make sure. I’ll fork some hay down for her.’

They put the two horses away, and John climbs up the outside ladder to the hayloft. He pushes a double armful of hay down into the manger below, and turns to find Grania standing beside him. His heart leaps; he puts his arms around her and kisses her ears, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth. ‘Like this,’ she says, parting his lips with hers and pulling him down to the soft pile of hay. Her skin smells of lavender; John presses his mouth against her neck. ‘This might be more comfortable,’ says Grania, and it is more comfortable, more comforting than anything John has ever known. She runs her hand down to loosen John’s belt, and holds him, then strokes him to a climax. He touches her in return and she says, ‘There, just there,’ and closes around his hand. They lie together, holding each other, until Grania says, ‘Mannion’ll come looking if I’m not back soon,’ and they climb back down the ladder.

This time John knows to give her a leg up into the saddle.

‘Thank you, Sean, my dear one. And I misled you – I’ve never seen a covering before, it’s not thought suitable for young Catholic virgins. And they’re right.’ Grania smiles, leans down and kisses the top of John’s head and trots out of the yard.

T
ESS
IS
COVERED
for the second time on the following day, not out of necessity but because John wanted to be sure of seeing Grania again. He goes up to the Fort to hand over the eighty pounds to Charles.

‘Where’s this come from? They’ll be late enough foals.’

‘Two decent mares from Mannion’s. They don’t mind a late foal, they’re not for racing. Hunters is what they’re after. Mannion’s daughter brought the first mare over the day before yesterday.’

‘Saw her at the races. She’s a handsome girl, I’d say. I hear she’s about to get engaged to a lawyer in Maryborough. Did you see her at the dance in Kildare?’

News travels fast in the County, thinks John.

‘I did. She was well escorted, but I had a dance.’

‘One dance is probably enough with Johnnie Mannion’s daughter. He was at Boland’s Mill during the Easter Rising, and then became the IRA’s battalion commander round here. Bought his farm off the Nugents only three years since; two hundred acres for three thousand pounds. Nugent told me he paid cash.’

‘Where did he get the money?’

‘I doubt he got it from dealing in cattle. Boasted in the Dáil that he’d robbed twelve Post Offices in a fortnight. He’s an out-and-out Shinner, hates the Treaty. He’d have burned the Fort down long ago if it wasn’t for Cis. By the by, shouldn’t it be a hundred?’

‘Ninety for the two. And she took a ten-pound luck-penny.’

‘That sounds like a Mannion.’

John walks back to the cottage, his head full of Grania in the green dress, Grania’s luck-penny kiss, Grania in the hayloft, Grania kissing the top of his head. And of the lawyer from Maryborough.

The next day he comes into the stallion yard after putting The Elector out in his paddock, and sees a short, heavy-set man leading Tess out of her box.

‘What are you up to with the mare?’

‘Up to? I’m from Mannion’s. I’ve been sent to collect her. McCarthy’s the name.’ He doesn’t hold out his hand.

‘Have you indeed? I know nothing about it.’

‘Well, you know now. I’ll be riding her back; I walked over with the bridle, but I’d like to borrow a saddle.’

John is about to tell him to go to blazes, and then remembers the saddle will need to be collected.

‘I’ll find one in the tack room.’

They go into the main yard, not speaking; McCarthy saddles the mare and rides her away.

Two days later he rides over to Mannion’s in the morning to collect the saddle. When Grania comes to the front door John takes her by the shoulders and kisses her on the mouth. After a moment she pushes him away.

‘He’ll kill us both if he sees us carrying on – he’s only up in the long field, he’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Carrying on? Is that what we’ve been doing? It meant more to me than that, the dance and the hayloft.’

The look on Grania’s face softens. ‘And to me. Take the saddle and be off with you before he comes back. Meet me at the Trafalgar Folly at around ten next Thursday. He’ll be away to the market at Maryborough all morning. And I dare say he has other business there.’

She goes back into the house, hands over the saddle and looks around before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. They’re making a bogey-man out of Mannion, he thinks. We’re both adults, we can choose what we do and who we see. It’s the twentieth century, not the eighteenth.

John has ridden past the Folly but never been inside.

‘The Folly was built by my great-grandfather to mark the battle of Trafalgar,’ Charles tells him. ‘He was one of Nelson’s band of brothers, captained the
Bellerophon
, seventy-four guns, at Trafalgar. Lucky with the prize-money, spent most of it enlarging the estate and building the Folly. There was a story that he used it to entertain a woman from the village. We used to go there for picnics when we were young. Cis won’t go near the place, thinks it’s a house of ill repute.’

John visits the Folly the day after returning with the saddle. Hidden away in a wooded dell, it has the feeling of a grand doll’s house, two rooms, one above the other, each a perfect twelve-foot cube, with a single-storey cube on each side linked to the main house by a four-foot-high wall. There is an external double staircase curving left and right up to a door on the first floor. Above the door is carved ‘TRAFALGAR 1805’ and on the linking walls are the names of the ships at the battle –
Victory
,
Mars
,
Temeraire
,
Bellerophon
,
Ajax
,
Revenge
... John reads the sonorous names out loud, stops when he realizes his mare is the only audience.

The upstairs room is dry and bare, well lit on each side by two windows. John organizes a bunch of birch twigs into a makeshift broom, sweeps the floor into the fireplace, and lays and lights a fire. The wood burns quickly and there is a sudden roar as generations of rooks’ nests in the chimney catch fire. Alarmed, John runs outside, but the nests soon burn out, and there isn’t enough soot to set the chimney alight.

The room below is almost as bare except for a collection of old cushions, badly holed by moths, left there by past picnickers. In one corner there is an iron water pump and a Belfast sink. After a few wheezes the pump yields up first brown and then clear water. John waits until the fire dies out, collects up more wood and re-lays it, and goes home well pleased with his work.

On Thursday morning he is up early, takes The Elector out to his paddock, checks the mares and foals, and saddles up his own mare. He straps a tight roll of three blankets behind the saddle and rides over to the Folly, where he is sitting outside the first-floor front door, legs dangling, when Grania arrives. She ties up her horse and runs up the stairs to meet him; they hold each other in a long embrace.

‘Look what I’ve done,’ he says, leading her into the room. He has made a bed out of the cushions and blankets, put some honeysuckle in a white enamelled tin mug on the mantelpiece, and the fire is lit.