Ashes In the Wind (30 page)

‘Your dad was the stallion man at the Fort when he was young, looked after our great horse, The Elector, won the big prize at the Dublin spring show with him. Never had anything as good since. He’s done well with the horses at Killowen. Would you ever move back when he retires?’

‘I’m not sure. I’m well on the way to becoming English – educated there, working in London. If I’d been to St Columba’s and Trinity College, Dublin, it might be different.’

They walk on, and James reminds Fred of their golfing expedition to the West of Ireland.

‘We were independent for the first time, driving that little Ford Prefect, staying in B&Bs, drinking in those run-down bars. The sun shone every day, unheard of in Galway and Mayo. Do you still play?’

‘Gave it up after you left for the army. I was never in your league. Didn’t you get a Blue?’

That evening James and Linda have dinner on their own at Killowen. They finish a bottle of wine between them, sit in front of a turf fire, and James says, ‘I think we should get engaged.’

‘Engaged? You mean, “Mr and Mrs Alexander Armstrong are pleased to announce...” in
The Times
? Shouldn’t you be on one knee?’

‘I’m too comfortable. What do you think?’

‘I think yes.’

James and Linda are married a year later in the chapel of Worcester College. ‘It was where we first met,’ says James.

‘Yes. And you had an Italian beauty looking at you adoringly all evening.’

‘Well, your Bullingdon beau spent the evening looking at himself every time he passed a reflective surface.’

‘No wonder we got together.’

The marriage is as simple as James and Linda can negotiate with Mrs Armstrong. James heads off the suggestion that they should leave the church under an arch of Royal Irish Dragoons sabres, pointing out that the university golfing team of 1963 would be most upset if their offer of an arch of golf clubs was trumped. They leave the chapel archless, have a fortnight’s honeymoon in Corfu, and begin their new life in a small house in Fulham that John Burke helps them to buy.

‘There’ll be little enough left when I’m gone,’ he says to James. ‘There’s a hefty mortgage on Killowen, and the racing barely covers the interest in a good year. But the money’s of most use to you now.’

T
HE
BOAT
CHUGS
slowly back to Ouranopolis in a cloud of diesel fumes. As John walks up the hill from the harbour at Daphne the breeze from the sea cleans away the diesel, replacing it with the scent of laurel, valerian, myrtle and oleander, leaving far behind the sharper, earthier smells of Ireland, peat, horse sweat, saddle soap, Guinness and whiskey. All he needs is in his small rucksack – two of everything, shirts, pants, socks, handkerchiefs and a single towel.

It is a four-hour walk across the island to the monastery of Stavronikita. The peak of Mount Athos is cloud-covered and the view of the coast recedes behind him as he climbs the rough road. Beyond the watershed the road is replaced by mule tracks, and John has to stop to regain his breath after each scramble out of the network of valleys separating him from the sea on the north. He passes through small woods of chestnut and oak, sees the occasional vineyard, and meets only one other pilgrim heading back to Daphne. When the buildings of the monastery come into view, his pace and his pulse quicken. He feels he has left home and is coming home.

The guest master greets him with an affectionate embrace, gives him some bread, cheese, olives and a glass of raki, and shows him to his room. It is the room he had on his previous visit – hard bed, single blanket, wooden table, jug and basin, a small window looking out over the harbour. A painted wooden cross hangs on the rough, flaking, whitewashed walls. The routine of the monastery embraces and sustains him – long services, simple meals, work in the garden, fishing, solitary contemplation and prayer.

The monks in Stavronikita are friendly but incurious – John’s Greek is still patchy, and unnecessary conversation is discouraged. Meals are taken at speed against a background of a reading from a sacred text. The monks, less than thirty in a collection of buildings that once housed over a hundred, are often outnumbered by the guests, who stay one or two nights and then move on. John is one of three who have permission from the Abbot to remain longer, and he has arranged a donation to the monastery that makes the monks happy to have him there. And he is a good fisherman, going out in the boat from the harbour twice a week to net fish for the table.

John finds it difficult to make much sense of his past life, and it is too late to create an alternative. He reads the New Testament in his room, attends the numerous and chaotic services when the wooden gong calls the monks to the central church from early in the morning until late at night. The services are sung or intoned; the Abbot and his deputy have fine, deep voices. On his previous visit John had been baptized, which enabled him to go to church. Now he feels it was an important step towards a destination that he cannot yet see clearly. He is seeking clarity about the world, forgiveness for his past violence in Spain and in Normandy, and an understanding of himself and his patchwork existence. He goes to confession in his first week, and although his confessor is different his sins are the same. He needs to refresh and confirm his earlier absolution.

This is John’s fourth visit to Mount Athos. His first trip was accidental. Kate had an assignment from the
New York Times
to write about the Greek monasteries and asked John to cover Mount Athos, where women were not allowed.

‘Even American women war correspondents, would you believe,’ she had said to John. ‘I tried to persuade them to make an exception and was told I was arguing with a thousand years of history. So I gave up.’

‘American women would make the monks especially nervous,’ said John. ‘It’s not aimed at you especially. They don’t allow anything female on the peninsula. No cows, no hens, no mares. I’d love to go. I haven’t been out of Ireland since the war; I don’t count Cheltenham.’

On his first visit he had been little more than a tourist, making copious notes, taking photographs and finishing up at the Stavronikita monastery on the north of the peninsula. After Kate’s death he went back a second and a third time to Stavronikita for a month’s retreat, drawing from his days there a comfort that stayed with him back in Ireland and made him eager to return.

He now spends every evening with Elder Daniel, who has been appointed his mentor by the Abbot. After he has been at the monastery for three weeks, the Elder says, ‘This time I think you will stay with us, enter fully into the life here, and the life hereafter,’ and John realizes he is not going to return to Ireland.

He drafts and redrafts a letter to James, knowing that sending it will be an irrevocable step.

Stavronikita,

Mount Athos,

19 July (by the Gregorian calendar)

My Dear James,

This is my third trip to Mount Athos (four, if you include my first visit as your mother’s surrogate reporter), and after weeks of contemplation and prayer I have decided not to return to Killowen. I have found a way of living here at Stavronikita that suits me.

They have encouraged me to stay and given me my own permanent room. Later this month I will formally become a novice; I am already baptized. I have made myself useful in the garden, and indispensable in the fishing boat. Perhaps the need for fresh fish explains their willingness to take me on! I have started to learn bookbinding, and I hope to be allowed to work on the wonderful manuscripts here, still not properly catalogued and many needing careful repair. Binding sacred texts, fishing and gardening seem a better way of ending my days than worrying about the two-thirty at Thurles.

Would you do me a great service and wind up the Killowen yard? Michael Molloy has been running things for two years now; I suggest he takes himself and as many of his owners as he can persuade (that will, I think, be most of them, as he’s patient and knowledgeable) to Dan Herlihy’s yard on the Curragh. Dan will welcome Michael if he comes with a dozen decent horses. You should decide what to do with the house. I think most of the mortgage is paid off. Once I am a monk I must give up all my worldly possessions, and I have made arrangements with our Dublin lawyers to transfer everything into your name.

What I have found here is, by definition, hard to explain; it is what St Paul calls in his Epistle to the Philippians, “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding”.
I know this is the right way for me. I also know that I will see less of you as a result, and nothing of Linda, and I regret that. I have been at best a fitful father, although one who loves you and is proud of you, something I’ve never found easy to show. Please come and see me soon. We welcome visitors.

Your loving father,

John +

‘He’s gone mad,’ says Linda when James reads the letter aloud over breakfast. ‘A retreat for a month is eccentric enough. But living there as a monk? And we can’t keep Killowen going.’

‘I don’t think he’s mad at all. He’s had a turbulent life, father killed on the Somme, mother executed by the IRA, ten years of war in Spain and Europe. He killed nineteen Germans with a Sten gun when he won his MC.’

‘Goodness.’

‘He’s a curious mixture, my dad, you think he’s only interested in horses and then he surprises you. There’s more to him than your average Anglo-Irish racehorse trainer – Ma wouldn’t have stayed with him else. I realized that at Ma’s funeral. He believes. And now he’s decided to do what he believes in. I agree it’s odd, but I admire him for it.’

‘You should go out and see him.’

‘I will. But it won’t be a mission to change his mind. He’s about to become Brother John, he’s not Major Burke, MC, formerly of Derriquin Castle, any more.’

James makes the trip out to Mount Athos in early September. His father has arranged his permit and sent careful instructions on the route across the peninsula to Stavronikita. James needs a little more than the four hours he had been told to allow for the journey, and he is impressed that his sixty-nine-year-old father had made the trip on foot. John meets him on the hill above the monastery, and they embrace. Then James pushes his father away, looks at him and laughs.

‘I like the beard. I’m not sure they would approve in the Kildare Street Club. You’ve gone quite grey.’

‘It saves on razor blades, and I do trim it. Most of the monks let their beards run amok.’

They walk down to the monastery and James is shown to his room by his father and the guest master.

‘There’s supper at seven, bread, cheese and some fish I caught this afternoon. No meat here, but plenty of raki. It’s strong stuff; I find half a glass plenty. After supper there’s a service in the main church. I’ve told them you are orthodox, and so you are, at least without the capital O. That means you can come into the church.’

The church is small, much of it in shadow, as hanging oil lamps provide the only light. The air is heavy with incense. James watches, copies his father’s movements and listens as he joins in the prayers. Now and again John takes James’s hand in his. Tired after the journey, James finds it hard to concentrate, and the exotic surroundings, the ritual and the language emphasize how far his father has come from the simplicities of the Church of Ireland.

‘It’s very strange to me,’ says James as they walk back to their rooms. ‘I’ve been to Catholic services, but this is quite different, Byzantine.’

‘That makes it mysterious,’ says John. ‘I don’t think your great-grandfather would approve, although he’d understand the search for peace.’

The next day they go out together in the little boat, and James helps John put out and pull in the net. They catch half a dozen red mullet.

‘Quite good for this time of year. They’ll be kept for the feast day on Thursday. We’ve many saints to celebrate.’

That evening they sit and talk in John’s room, where James notices on the table beside the bed three pictures – one of Kate taken in Spain, one of James and Linda on their wedding day, and one of a young girl on horseback.

‘I don’t recognise that. Mum when she was young?’

‘No. The daughter of an old friend.’

‘Anyone I know?’

‘They live in Maryborough. Don’t think you’ve met.’

Later, fortified by a full glass of raki, James asks his father, ‘Dad, why are you staying here? It’s as if...’

‘I have to unburden myself. I’m sixty-nine, I’ve spent my working life with horses, and that’s not a great preparation for the afterlife. Until I was in my twenties I was unformed, and what happened to Eileen and to me during The Troubles somehow froze me. Marrying your mother began a long thaw, but that’s still incomplete. Kate’s death was a great shock. She always seemed indestructible. And there’s been a lot of violence in my life, in Ireland, in Spain, in Normandy. All that presses heavily on me, and the load is lighter here.’

‘I’ve read the citation for your MC. You killed a lot of Germans.’

‘I feel worse about Spain. That was a vicious war.’

The next day James leaves the monastery to return to Ireland.

‘I’ll come with you up to the watershed,’ says John.

‘Dad, I can find my way back.’

‘I want to come. For the company, not as your guide.’

They reach the top of the pass, embrace, and James swallows hard as they part. John makes a sign of the cross on James’s forehead, kisses him again and walks down the hill. James watches him until the track curves out of sight through an olive grove. John doesn’t look back.

J
AMES
B
URKE
LOOKS
into his grandfather’s leather-bound shaving mirror. It is big enough to frame his face. The silvering has gone in a couple of places, revealing the leather back; the stitching still holds on all but one side. The leather border is scalloped to conceal the jagged edges of the glass. On the back his grandfather has written in faded black ink, ‘Glass taken from a shelled estaminet, Rue des Puits, near Croix Barbe, Pas de Calais, Feby 1915,’ and his initials, HB.