Ashes In the Wind (40 page)

He walks on around the shoreline, remembering the gaunt, turreted outline of the castle from his last visit with his father. John had been a reluctant guide. He had pointed out his old bedroom window at the top of the central tower, but didn’t want to spend much time at the castle.

‘Exactly what happened?’ James had asked that evening in the hotel. His father had thought for a moment, then told him the whole story. Until then James had heard only the barest of outlines; it was the first time he had seen his father weep.

The path is overgrown with rhododendrons and azaleas run wild from some long-ago formal planting; when James comes round the headland there is nothing where the shell of Derriquin used to stand. For a moment he thinks he hasn’t walked far enough, then sees the sea wall stretching towards him and realizes the castle has been demolished.

He walks on, running his hand
slowly across, down,
across, up the waist-high battlemented wall; Derriquin has been replaced by a car park. Beyond, there is a modern clubhouse instead of the old wooden pavilion, and the nine-hole golf course that used to run through the demesne has been upgraded to, as its sign proudly boasts, the ‘Derriquin Castle Championship Golf Course – eighteen holes, seven thousand two hundred yards. Visitors Welcome.’ James does not feel welcome. He feels violated by the final disappearance of his father’s house, of his house.

He doesn’t go into the clubhouse, turning back to the hotel via the old walled garden. That too has changed; a sign on the outside says ‘Sullivan Construction – Six Magnificent Executive Homes in a Gated Environment’. He opens the garden door, new and painted red, onto a building site where grass, fuchsias and foxgloves once grew, where crumbling glasshouses used to lean against the wall. The foundations for half a dozen houses are laid out, the building lines neatly marked by wooden pegs and taut twine.

The only sign of life is in the far corner, where a man in a hard hat is standing, smoking a cigarette. Noticing James, he puts out the cigarette, picks his way across the site, holds out his hand and says, ‘Mr O’Malley, you’re early. I’m Michael Sullivan.’

James explains he is not Mr O’Malley. ‘I’m just having a look around.’

‘That’s fine, help yourself. Here, have a brochure. They’re going to be great houses, each with half an acre, each with a great view. Look out to sea.’

James does look out to sea across several islands to the coast on the far side of the estuary and the low mountains beyond.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘If you’re interested, you can buy off plan, ten per cent down, fitted out to your own specification.’

‘I’m not in the market, but thank you.’

‘Ah well. To tell you the truth, O’Malley who I took you for is from the bank in Dublin, and if he doesn’t do the decent thing there’s no telling when all this will be finished. If ever.’ He offers James a cigarette and lights one for himself. ‘From England, are you?’

‘I grew up in County Kildare,’ James replies. ‘Tell me, what happened to the burned-out shell of the castle?’

‘Pulled down by the County Council. They said children were playing there and might get hurt. They used the stone for the clubhouse and the car park foundations. You’ve been here before?’

Before James can decide how to reply, they hear a car pull up outside the wall.

‘That’ll be O’Malley now,’ says Michael. ‘Nice meeting you.’

James thanks him for the brochure, passes Mr O’Malley at the gate and watches him pick his way across the site to Michael. O’Malley is dressed like an undertaker, and perhaps that’s what he is, James thinks. He walks slowly back to the hotel; it has started to rain, and the dripping, wild shrubberies along the path exactly match his mood.

In his hotel room he takes a careful look at Michael’s brochure. It has been well designed and expensively produced, and James admits to himself, a little reluctantly, that the architect, or at least the artist, seems to have a good feeling for materials and building design.

This is his last evening in Kerry. He tries the bistro, has a steak and a couple of glasses of red wine, and takes his coffee in the bar overlooking the little harbour below the hotel. The view looks washed and hazy after the rain; the setting sun touches the tops of the Scots pines over where Derriquin used to be.

As he is about to finish his drink and go upstairs, Michael Sullivan comes into the bar and orders a pint of Guinness. He looks around, sees James and walks over.

‘Michael – we spoke out at Derriquin. Mind if I join you?’

‘I’m James.’

‘How was your banker?’ James asks as Michael sits down.

‘Like they all are, the bastards. All over you to lend money when you don’t need it; they pulled the plug on me and my partner the moment times got rough. It’s his development now, and he can finish it himself since he won’t finance me to do the work. I’m ready to start over. I never pledged my home as security, and I’m back to what I know best, building houses for other people.’

‘I like the look of the houses in your brochure. I can’t say I admired the new bungalows along the Ring of Kerry.’

Michael laughs. ‘I’ll buy you another drink before I tell you why you’re wrong.’

He comes back with a Guinness and a whiskey. ‘You’re typical of the Anglo-Irish. You want to keep us in small, picturesque, damp, thatched cottages, and when we try to build anything new you insist we get the blessing of the Irish Georgian Society.’ He says this with such good humour that James is unable to take offence.

‘Fair enough. It is your country, but it needs looking after.’

‘Well, the good news is that there’ll be little enough building for a while yet. The Irish recovery is on the long finger.’

Michael stands up. ‘I’m away home. I need to tell the wife about Mr O’Malley. Lucky I’m married to a strong woman.’

‘Lucky indeed.’

The next day James drives to Cork, catches the midday plane to London and is back in Donhead by the evening. He has laid some ghosts to rest through restoring the family tomb. And the demolition of Derriquin has put an end to his long-harboured fantasy of rebuilding the castle and returning there.

A
NNIE
S
ULLIVAN
WAS
grandmother, mother and father to Michael Sullivan, and the only source of memories of Tomas, for whom Masses were said once a year in the church at Drimnamore. Father Michael said Tomas died fighting for Holy Mother Church, but Annie still had to pay for the Masses. A proposal to erect a memorial to him and other members of the Bandera Irlandesa had been discussed for the last twenty years by the County Council.

She still kept her dead son’s Garda uniform cleaned and pressed in a cupboard with the peaked cap of a District Inspector beside it on a hook, ready for a morning inspection or the Last Trump. Annie could hardly remember Kitty, whom she blamed in some unreasonable corner of her heart for Tomas’s death. Michael Sullivan had one photograph of his parents taken at a Garda ball in County Clare, his mother beautiful and smiling in a red dress, his father a head taller, serious, looking out beyond the reach of the camera.

At Ardsheelan, Michael was the man of the house. A tall, strong boy, from the age of ten he cut turf, dug drains, rebuilt stone walls, hung gates. Mass every Sunday in Drimnamore with Annie and a match in the afternoon during the Gaelic football season were the fixed points in the Sullivan calendar. Annie plastered the cuts and put ointment on the bruises he brought back from every game. ‘It’s a miracle you’ve nothing broken,’ she said to him.

Only on rare occasions could Annie Sullivan bring herself to watch Michael play, although she knew that football was a good way to get ahead. The Gaelic Athletic Association, the County Council, Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church were the four corners of power in County Kerry. And while it was known Tomas Sullivan had supported the Treaty and had been Michael Collins’s ADC, that was easily forgotten in the light of his son’s footballing skills.

‘Come to me when you leave school and I’ll fix you up with a job,’ said Gerry Murphy, a successful local builder, after seeing Drimnamore trounce Cahirciveen 3–8 to 1–4.

Michael took him up on the offer the moment he was old enough to leave school. He was a competent, hard-working bricklayer; more importantly to Murphy Construction, he was picked for Kerry when he was nineteen and captained the side when they beat their great rivals, Cork, in the All-Ireland final at Croke Park two years later.

Annie had been persuaded to make her first and last trip to Dublin for the match.

‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ she said to Michael on the long, triumphant train journey back. ‘You’ll be the big man in Drimnamore from now on.’

Michael, tired, flushed with success and Guinness after months of abstinence, pulled away from his singing supporters, hugged his grandmother and laughed.

‘Drimnamore? The Kingdom of Kerry is mine for the asking,’ he said, and was swallowed up in the crowd of happy, celebrating Kerry men.

‘It’s an amateur game, you can’t make a living out of Gaelic football,’ said Michael years later to James Burke in Drimnamore. ‘Most players barely cover their expenses. But it was the religion, particularly in the South-East and South-West. Rugby didn’t have the hold in Cork that it has now. In those days, if you were caught playing rugby or Association football, the Ascendancy games, you were banned by the GAA.

‘Anyhow, after we won the All-Ireland I was back to bricklaying on the Tuesday morning; Gerry gave me Monday off. That brought me down to earth all right. Then they tried to persuade me a month later to run for the County Council. “You’ll walk it,” they said. “I’m not even a member of Fianna Fáil,” I said. “We’ll soon fix that,” they said.

‘Thank God I was smart enough to know it wasn’t for me. I played for a few more years, we made one more All-Ireland final, then I broke a leg and called it a day. I still go to matches when I can, used to give the Drimnamore and Kerry clubs money in the days when I had plenty, and we always employed a few likely lads in the business.

‘It’s a great game, plenty of scoring. None of your nil–nil soccer draws. I’ll take you to a game one day, open your eyes.’

Michael started courting Aisling; she had bright eyes, long black hair, a good figure and a strong character. She was Gerry Murphy’s daughter and Michael wasn’t sure how that would go.

‘I’m only a brickie, when all’s said and done,’ he confided to Annie one evening at Ardsheelan.

‘You’re a brickie who captained Kerry, won the All-Ireland. Don’t sell yourself short. Is she good enough for you?’ said Annie.

‘That’s a grandmother talking,’ said Michael. ‘We’ll see what happens. She’s a great girl, sure enough.’

One morning Gerry Murphy called Michael into his caravan on a housing project outside Waterville.

‘You’ve been seeing a lot of my daughter. It’s time you two did something more than dance.’

‘I’ve not got much to offer. Ardsheelan, six acres and a cottage when my gran dies. It’s not enough for Aisling after what she’s used to.’

‘I started out as a plumber, I was a tradesman for fifteen years. But that’s not the point. I’m getting on, she’s my only child, it’s yours for the asking. If she’ll have you, that is.’

‘I’m a bricklayer, not a businessman.’

‘You know as much as I did when I started the business. You’re a worker, with great contacts – I never captained Kerry. Talk to Aisling, but you’d better be quick. She was Miss Rose of Tralee, there’s plenty out there after her.’

Gerry, four inches taller than Michael and twenty pounds heavier, stood up and this brought the conversation to an end.

Aisling laughed when he told her about the conversation.

‘You’re as good a man as he is,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t said you love me.’

‘I do, you know I do,’ said Michael. ‘I’m just not sure about marrying the boss’s daughter.’

‘That’s not who I am. I’m Aisling – look at me, for God’s sake.’

Michael held her face between his hands, kissed her, and they were married three months later. Gerry started Michael off as a site foreman, then brought him into the office and taught him about the accounts.

‘Listen, it’s simple enough. Is more cash coming in than going out? Have you enough in the bank to pay the men, pay the suppliers? Have you kept back enough for the tax man? That’s it. Forget what the accountants tell you about accruals and deferrals, and provisions, and reserves. I’ll show you my reserves.’ Gerry opened the wall safe to reveal stacks of tightly bundled ten-pound notes. ‘There’s twenty thousand pounds in there,’ he said, closing the door with a solid clunk and spinning the combination lock. ‘I’ll tell you the six numbers when you’re ready, but you’ll be in trouble if you have to go to the safe. I’ve used it once in twenty years.’

When Michael took over the business, he knew house-building from the bottom to the top. Sullivan Construction (‘Change the name. You’re better known in Kerry than I ever was, and Aisling’s a Sullivan now,’ Gerry had said) built thirty or forty houses every year for the County Council or small developers who had secured planning permission for a few acres.

Declan O’Donnell was a sharp dresser, a fast talker, drove a brand-new BMW. A bit of a stroke merchant, they called him; in Cork property circles this was a compliment. Not every construction company would deal with him, as he had a reputation for whittling away the final price, but he persuaded Michael Sullivan to build twenty-five houses on a re-zoned site outside Kenmare by sheer persistence and by putting up twenty-five per cent of the construction cost up-front.

‘Never done this before,’ Declan said to Michael. ‘But I know your reputation for doing a decent job and finishing on time.’

Sullivan Construction finished the twenty houses four days early. Declan’s quantity surveyor, whom he used as a battering ram to beat the final price down, was unable to fault the work.

‘We’ll use you again,’ Declan said. ‘How much did you clear?’

Michael’s first instinct was to say ‘None of your business,’ but instead replied, ‘Five thousand euros.’

‘Not enough.’