A Man Over Forty (26 page)

Presently O'Halloran led them back to the surface, and said to Balintore, ‘Are you satisfied now?'

‘It's all very interesting.'

‘I'm needing the money, I tell you.'

‘But £500 is a lot of money, and there's no evidence – none at all – that I'll get any return for my investment.'

‘There's the evidence of that old manuscript, and the evidence of geology.'

‘I haven't seen the manuscript.'

‘And you're not going to! But I tell you this: you'd better make up your mind quickly.'

‘Surely there's no immediate hurry,' said Palladis soothingly. ‘We can talk it over tomorrow night – you're coming to dinner, you remember?'

‘I remember,' said O'Halloran sullenly.

They left him at the door in the wicker fence, and Palladis said, ‘I hope he remembers to shave.'

‘He threatened me,' said Balintore. ‘That was certainly a threat.'

‘Was there anything behind it?'

‘Bad temper, I suppose.'

‘No guilty secret?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Then you've nothing to be afraid of.'

‘I'm not afraid. But it's annoying to be threatened by a man like that. A man who's coming to dinner.'

With Honoria they discussed at length O'Halloran's mine, and late that evening, and again in the morning, they heard the dull sounds of subterranean explosion. In the library Balintore found a set of shabby volumes that contained ancient chronicles of Ireland: four volumes of the Annals of Ulster; the Book of Leinster; and a Calendar of Irish Saints. But in none could he discover any description of gold-mining.

On Friday evening Dr and Mrs Brennan, and her sister Miss Prynne, arrived punctually at half-past seven; and were followed by O'Halloran only a few minutes later. He wore a well-cut suit of Donegal tweed, he had shaved with care and clipped his moustache, and appeared to be in a mood of dignified reticence.

He was at once engaged in conversation by Miss Prynne, a tall lady of massive build who wore a dress of bright brown silk and what seemed a superfluity of bracelets, necklaces, brooches, and ear-rings. She was a librarian by profession, and an ardent lover, as she quickly told him, of all things old and Irish. She had heard of his discovery of an ancient manuscript, and she thought she could guess what it was.

‘Is it,' she asked, ‘the Annals of Clonmacnoise?'

‘It is not,' said O'Halloran.

Dr Brennan was a short, round man with a dark, close-cropped, round head, and weather-beaten complexion. He
drank his sherry at a gulp, and said to Balintore, ‘Have you had good fishing?'

Balintore refilled his glass, and told him at some length of his fortune on the lough. He spoke of Michael Dooley, his gillie, and Dr Brennan said, ‘It's a great family for tubercle. I've signed death certificates for seven of them, young and old.'

Honoria said to Mrs Brennan, ‘I hope the children are well?' and left Palladis to listen to her reply while she went down to the kitchen to make sure that Mrs Moloney was keeping an eye on the clock, and the girl Nelly Kate wasn't giving way to excitement.

They sat down to dinner at a quarter-past eight, and Palladis, who had looked after the wine, was assiduous in refilling glasses. It was a burly Chambertin they drank, and when Honoria said to O'Halloran, who sat at her right hand, ‘Will you be dining off gold plate next year, Mr O'Halloran?' he answered generously, ‘It's a cup of gold will be the first thing that's shaped, and that for your own hands.'

‘Well, what could be nicer than that!' said Honoria. ‘I've always wanted a gold cup.'

‘In the old days,' said Miss Prynne, ‘Ireland was famous for the purest gold in the world.'

‘And kept none of it,' said Dr Brennan.

‘From the beginning of time,' said O'Halloran, ‘we've been robbed of our birthright.'

‘I wish we knew more about the Firbolgs,' said Miss Prynne.

‘Why?' asked Honoria.

‘Well, they were very clearly early inhabitants, and it's said they came from Greece. But I think it's much more likely that they came from Bulgaria.
Fir-bulgs
may have been an earlier form of their name.'

‘That's nonsense,' said O'Halloran. ‘We've all heard stories of great waves of people coming out of the Mediterranean and settling down here on the Atlantic shore, and there's not a word of truth in any of them. The truth is that civilization began here in Ireland, and when it was ripe for the move we put out to sea and founded Greece.'

‘How interesting,' said Miss Prynne. ‘How very interesting!'

‘I can prove it,' said O'Halloran, ‘and you can see the proof with your own eyes. You know Dun Aengus, the great round fort on Inishmore?'

‘Where is Inishmore?' asked Balintore.

‘The Aran Islands. And that great fort is a wonder of the world. But it's not unique, there's masonry of that sort in other places. You'll know where Stonehenge is?'

‘I have seen it,' said Balintore.

‘And Maeshowe in the Orkney islands? That's the finest megalithic tomb in Europe. Well, think of those three together, and where else can you find architecture of a like sort?'

Palladis refilled his glass, and O'Halloran, looking round the table, waited for an answer.

No one ventured to reply, and O'Halloran said quietly, ‘In Mycenae. The Lion Gate of the Treasury of Atreus. There and nowhere else! And Mycenae was built by the sons of the builders of Dun Aengus, who did their work here, and then went to Greece as teachers and the bringers of civilization.'

‘Well, I do think that's a good idea!' said Honoria. ‘I've never been able to understand why people should leave the Mediterranean to come and live here; but to leave Ireland and go to Greece – well, that makes sense, doesn't it?'

A somewhat confused debate on the movements of antiquity occupied their attention till the ladies left the table; and when O'Halloran and Dr Brennan, and Palladis and Balintore sat down again, O'Halloran said to Balintore, ‘Have you made up your mind yet?'

‘Yes,' said Balintore. ‘I'm not going to investmoney in your mine till you can show me that I'm likely to get some return for it.'

‘So that's the line you're taking? Well, now, and there's something I might be telling these gentlemen that they'd find very interesting. Have you ever told Mr Palladis, for instance, how you happened to get wounded when you and I were in Spain together?'

‘That was too long ago,' said Balintore, ‘to be of any interest now.'

‘I'm not so sure of that.'

‘Were you badly wounded?' asked Dr Brennan.

‘No.'

‘I want to know,' said Palladis, ‘why you fought for Franco.'

‘I was a good Catholic then. Not now, you understand. I gave up the Church when it got too lax and liberal. If the Pope had done his duty – that's the old Pope I'm talking of – he'd have excommunicated the Russians, one and all, when they betrayed the Poles in Warsaw. But he gave way to expediency, and look what that's led to! To tolerance and broad-mindedness and plain indifference, so that nowadays the Pope – the new one, I mean – will sit down to tea with Anglicans and the riff-raff of the world. It was different in 1936.'

‘It was your ardent Catholicism, and nothing else, that took you to Spain?'

‘I wouldn't say nothing else. I went out in the Irish Brigade, under General O'Scruffy, as we called him, and when they went home again, not having done much for the good name of Ireland, I stayed on and joined the Requétes. I was in the Tercio del Alcazar for two years, a commissioned officer at that, with a silver badge on my good red beret. And that's where I met Mr Balintore. I was with him when he got wounded.'

‘I was wounded at the Casa del Campo,' said Balintore.

‘It's another time I'm thinking of.'

‘It's a trivial story of no interest,' said Balintore.

‘I think the gentlemen would like to hear it,' said O'Halloran.

‘Not now,' said Palladis. ‘We've been sitting here long enough, and we ought to join the ladies.'

‘It wouldn't take more than three minutes—'

‘You can tell me later on,' said Palladis; and got up, and opened the door.

In the long drawing-room Miss Prynne immediately advanced on Balintore and said, with a sort of luxury of self-reproach, ‘You will hardly believe it, but I have only just discovered that you are
the
Mr Balintore! Though I live in England, I am one of that small minority – perhaps I might say that exclusive minority – which doesn't own a television-set.
So I didn't recognize you, and though your name was familiar I certainly hadn't expected to meet
the
Mr Balintore in such unlikely surroundings as the wild west of Ireland. It must be a strange experience for you to find yourself in a country where you're not instantly recognized.'

‘It's a great relief,' said Balintore.

‘You don't feel an alarming sense of isolation?'

‘In a world like this, isolation is an enviable condition.'

‘How true!' said Miss Prynne with warmth in her voice. ‘I myself often long for solitude.'

Honoria was speaking to O'Halloran; though he wore a surly expression that seemed not to encourage conversation.

‘Before I drew the curtains,' she said, ‘I saw lights at your mine; or rather, in the little wooden house on top of it. Do you always make your men work so late?'

‘We're in a hurry,' he said, ‘and I've promised them a bonus if we get through within the month.'

‘But is it safe to leave them there alone? Without supervision?'

‘There's two of them with good experience: Tom Devlin and Patsy Ryan. Devlin was a miner at Noranda in Quebec, till he got homesick for the old country, and Ryan was a quarryman. He's worked all over, and might be a manager today if he could keep off the drink. Dan Clancy's just a labourer, but the others will see to it that he does no harm.'

‘Do you really think you can find a way, or open a way, down to the river?'

‘No fear of that?'

‘And quite soon?'

‘I've got the materials. I've enough gelignite to blow the front off the Four Courts, I'm not worrying about that. It's shortage of capital and the thinness of my purse that's a plague and perplexity, as it has always been – and if you'll excuse me I'll just go and have a word with Mr Balintore, who's promised to help me if he can.'

His intention was interrupted by the appearance of Palladis who, still playing the butler, came in carrying a silver tray on whose burden of glasses and a decanter of whisky the light of
the two great Waterford chandeliers found genial reflections. It was too early for whisky, but Palladis had pleaded his duty to escape a harrowing tale, which the Brennans told as a duet, of their younger child whose fingers had been trapped between the chain and driving-wheel of a bicycle.

He put the tray on a small table, and turned to see O'Halloran beside him.

‘Would you like to hear that story now?' asked O'Halloran.

‘What story?'

‘About the way Balintore got wounded.'

‘Why do you want to tell it?'

‘I'd like to have your opinion on it.'

‘Is it a discreditable story?'

‘To the like of you or me it would make no difference at all. But for him —'

‘Are you going to tell me that he wasn't wounded in battle? That he never fought in Spain?'

‘Ah, he fought all right! We were together in the Tercio del Alcazar: didn't I tell you that? And we'd fighting enough, at the Casa del Campo in the siege of Madrid, and then at Bilbao, and down on the Guadalajara front. We'd a bellyfull of fighting.'

‘Then whatever you say can't discredit him very seriously. Unless you murdered your prisoners or set fire to a house full of women and children?'

‘We did not! We left that to the Republicans!'

O'Halloran looked earnestly at the decanter, and said, ‘It's a shame to see good whisky sitting there ignored by all, and no one making use of it.'

Palladis poured him a stiff tot, which O'Halloran drank neat. Not greedily, not in a single gulp, but slowly and thoughtfully. Palladis waited for him to speak again, but he remained silent till he had finished his drink; when he held out his glass and said, with simple gravity, ‘A bird never flew on one wing.'

Palladis gave him another tot, and O'Halloran walked to the far end of the room where Balintore, though restless now, was still held in conversation by Miss Prynne.

‘You'll forgive me for intruding,' said O'Halloran in a
truculent tone, ‘but there's a matter of some urgency that Mr Balintore and I have been waiting all evening for a chance to discuss.'

‘That isn't quite true,' said Balintore.

‘It'll be true enough when you've heard what I'm going to tell you now!'

Miss Prynne, in some alarm, looked from one to another, and retreated in a discomfiture made evident by the shimmer and tinkle of her abundant jewellery. O'Halloran pushed Balintore into a corner, and began to speak in a low, menacing voice.

In the middle of the room Mrs Brennan was beginning to say that it was time they were going home, but Dr Brennan, talking to Honoria with a tumbler of whisky and water in his hand, paid no attention; and Miss Prynne, to repair her shaken nerves, let Palladis pour a little whisky for her, while assuring him that to drink spirits was quite contrary to her habit.

Gradually they became aware that the discussion at the far end of the room was growing unfriendly. A mutter of storm –as if waves were breaking on a distant beach and a far-off gale was harassing the clouds – came from the corner where Balintore and O'Halloran still argued.

Then O'Halloran said loudly, ‘All right, if that's your decision you'll have to take the consequences, but don't say I didn't warn you!'