Ashes In the Wind (48 page)

‘You need a doctor, and I’ll call the Garda. When did Zach leave?’

‘He’s been gone two hours, back to Cork and the ferry. Please don’t call the police, that would make everything worse. I need a bath, not a doctor.’

Anna cries out as James helps her into a hot bath. Her ribs are painful and there are purple bruises on both thighs. In the bath, still crying, she looks up at James, sees the unasked question in his eyes, and says, ‘He didn’t just knock me about.’

Anna spends the night curled up on her side of the bed, moaning occasionally when she changes position. The next morning she is silent, and it is difficult for James to find the right words of comfort. When he suggests again that he should call the Garda, her reply is clear.

‘I don’t want that. And some of the fault is mine.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I should never have gone to Cork, never encouraged him.’

‘You said—’

‘—I wasn’t going to sleep with him. And I didn’t. But he put his arm around me in the clubhouse bar after the game, kissed me on the cheek and I didn’t push him away. He behaved to his team-mates as though I’d come back to him, tried to persuade me to return to England.’

‘None of that justifies what he did, morally or in a court of law. You told him you and Jack were with me, you came back to Drimnamore.’

‘I know. But I completely mishandled him.’

When Jack is dropped home from the Sullivans’, she hugs her son, winces as he hugs her. ‘I had a fall while you and James were away,’ she says, managing a little smile. ‘I’m not safe on my own.’ Jack is happy with the explanation.

It takes Anna most of a week to recover, to walk without limping, for her swollen cheek to return to normal. She doesn’t want to talk to James, and his attempts at the gentlest of touches are pushed away.

‘Have you talked to Aisling?’ James asks.

‘No. And you’re not to tell her.’

‘You need some help, some comfort, and I don’t seem to provide any.’

‘I need to deal with this myself. It’s my problem, not yours or Aisling’s.’

Maybe, thinks James, but it affects us all.

He spends the next week on the packing line, explaining Anna’s absence as gastric flu. On Friday, Danny drives him over to Kenmare for a court hearing, which lasts all of a frustrating day in which an earlier case drags on so long that theirs is postponed for a further two months.

‘That’s typical of the Irish courts at the minute,’ says Danny as they drive back. ‘They’re up to their oxters in repossessions and bankruptcies.’

When James arrives at Pier Cottage his car is gone. There is a note on the kitchen table.

Jack and I are on the way to Farranfore to catch the afternoon flight to Stansted. I’m sorry I’ve stolen the car. You’ll find it in the airport car park – I’ll push the key into the exhaust.

Please don’t come after us. It’s all too much for me to handle at Drimnamore, and I haven’t been able to share my troubles with you. That’s my fault, not yours, dear James. It seems we weren’t meant to be together for very long.

Anna

Below there is a message from Jack.

Dear Dad,

Mum said we had to rush to catch a plane. Sorry not to say goodbye,

See you soon,

Love,

Jack XOXO

James crumples up the note into a ball, then smoothes it out and reads it again and again. He looks for comfort and affection and finds little, apart from the ‘dear James’ at the end of the letter. Jack’s letter gives him some hope. He knows enough not to pursue Anna and Jack or to try to contact them straightaway.

He goes over to the Sullivans and tells them all that has happened. He finds himself speaking of Anna in the past tense, as if she were dead.

‘She was great on the packing line, didn’t talk much, worked really hard herself. She knew not to boss the ladies about.’

Michael pours out three glasses of whiskey.

‘She’s gone for good; they’ve gone for good, haven’t they?’ says James.

‘I’m sure she’ll be back,’ says Aisling. ‘She fitted in here, she was well liked.’

Michael says nothing.

James doesn’t stay for supper. He hasn’t yet been to Farranfore to collect his car; as long as the car is at the airport, Anna and Jack seem more likely to return. He walks home via Derriquin and sits on the rocks where his grandfather and father were photographed together in 1908. Once he had thought of getting Anna to take a picture of Jack at his knee on the same rock, but that moment has gone.

He recalls Cathleen wondering whether she was better off knowing about her real father, and asks himself if he would have been happier if he’d never met Anna. He curses the independence that made her think she could manage Zach. He picks up half a dozen stones and throws them into the sea one by one, then realizes that he is close to blaming Anna for what had happened. That way madness lies, he says to himself. It was Anna’s independence that had brought her and Jack back to Drimnamore. And then taken her away again.

His sense of loss is far greater than when Anna had first moved out of his life. This time she had brought Jack, and while the three of them had been together at Drimnamore James felt that Anna’s restlessness had gone. He remembers a verse of Auden’s, stands up and says the lines to the rocks and the sea:

That later we, though parted then,

May still recall these evenings when

Fear gave his watch no look;

The lion griefs loped from the shade

And on our knees their muzzles laid,

And Death put down his book.

Then, as the light fades, he walks back to his empty cottage, his lion griefs alongside him.

Before he makes his supper he walks around, looking for traces of Anna and Jack. She had always travelled light; her chest of drawers is empty, but on top of it he finds the red box, opens it and sees that she still has the ring. Otherwise nothing, apart from a single blue sock at the bottom of Jack’s bed, to show that they had ever been there. He picks up the sock, holds it to his cheek, then puts it in his pocket.

When James’s mother had died, it was as sudden as Anna’s departure, but then he had most of his life ahead of him. Now most of it lay behind. Kate’s death was final; Anna and Jack’s departure has left unanswered questions. Might they come back? Might he follow them? Neither seems likely, either that evening, or through a troubled night when he dreams of Anna stroking his cheek, or when he wakes up.

The next morning James looks into his grandfather’s shaving mirror and remembers the moment twelve years ago when he had set out for Edinburgh and left the train for Allenmouth. And Anna, and Jack, and the oyster beds. The face he sees framed by the worn leather is lined, tired, his hair one-third grey. He hasn’t shaved for three days. Perhaps it’s ‘shiva’, he thinks, perhaps Anna might as well be dead. He runs his hand over his face, whistles for Mick, then leaves the cottage.

He goes down to the pier where Danny is repairing one of the oyster purses.

‘I need to clear my head,’ James says as he steps into his boat.

It is a grey, blustery day. He uses the outboard to get past Rossdohan, then hoists the sails. The boat heels over sharply, and James realizes he should have reefed the mainsail, decides to leave it be. He sails out towards the mouth of the estuary in a series of tacks, Mick at his feet, from time to time whimpering his disapproval.

James concentrates on the boat, trying hard to banish the images of Anna and Jack. The wind has risen, making the rigging hum, and he sees the dark line of a heavy squall just in time to turn for home. The estuary now has lumpy, white-capped waves as its rivers fight the tide, and James has to use all his strength to keep the boat straight and avoid a jibe. He is still a mile away from Oysterbed Pier when a violent gust sweeps the boom across, striking James’s arm as he ducks and protects his head. He hears the mast snap off two feet above the deck and the boat tilts sideways. As the water comes over the coaming, he is thrown clear of the sinking boat, which drifts away from him in the current and the wind.

The cold water knocks the breath out of James and clamps his chest – he is forty yards from the shore with a damaged arm and no lifejacket. For a moment this seems as good a way to go as any, then Mick’s nose pushes into his neck. Mick is paddling strongly and James is shamed into survival. He can only manage a clumsy, one-armed side-stroke, but Mick keeps him company as the wind and tide take them gradually towards the land.

Mick scrambles out and waits while James pulls himself painfully over the rocks onto the springy grass of the foreshore and lies there, listening to the wind and the waves, his cheek pressed into the earth. His left arm is badly bruised, he is soaked through and shivering, his physical pain increased as he remembers Anna and Jack are gone.

After ten minutes Mick shakes himself vigorously, which persuades James to get to his feet. He stands for a moment, then, waterlogged and tired, walks with his dog along the road and past Drimnamore. As they turn together into the lane, Mick starts to bark, then trots down towards Pier Cottage. James looks up, sees a car parked outside the cottage, looks again and breaks into an awkward run towards whatever the future may hold.

We hope you enjoyed this book.

For more information, click one of the links below:

Acknowledgements

Christopher Bland

An invitation from the publisher

I want to thank Michael Sissons, who volunteered to read an early draft and agreed to become my agent; Rosie de Courcy at Head of Zeus, my publishers, who bought the book and made many important editorial suggestions; and Celia Levett for help with the chronology.

Several people read my manuscript at various stages and gave me encouragement and help; Xandra Bingley, John and Kitty Fairlie, Michael Abrahams, Godfrey Bland, Thomas and Val Pakenham, Richard Eyre and Sue Birtwistle, Norah Perkins, Tony Gibson (who was a Troop leader during the Malayan Emergency and was Mentioned in Despatches), Simon Barrow (who put me in touch with the Colchester Oyster Fishery), and Patrick Perceval (who told me about Mount Athos). Archie Bland gave me a detailed and invaluable edit, and Jamie and Elizabeth Byng were generous with their advice on the text and on publication.

My teachers at Birkbeck were Claire Collison and Lois Keith, and at the Faber Academy, Gillian Slovo; I am very grateful to them and to my fellow aspiring writers for their encouragement and constructive criticism. Our Faber group has had a continuing and enjoyable existence during the two years after our formal course finished.

I used a number of sources as background for the novel; in particular
On Another Man’s Wound
by Ernie O’Malley, who escaped from Kilmainham Jail in February 1921, and
Lady Hostage
by Tim Sheehan, an account of the abduction and execution of Mrs Lindsay after the Dripsey ambush in County Cork.

Ashes in the Wind
is a novel, not history, but I have used some real characters, Michael Collins and Emmet Dalton in particular, and some real events. I gave Michael Collins an ADC at Béal na mBláth, but the Big Fellow was the only casualty in that tragic skirmish. Michael O’Hanrahan was executed after the Easter Rising, but had no daughter. Lord Midleton was the leader of the Southern Unionists from 1910 to 1922; his sister Albinia Brodrick, who is buried in the churchyard in Sneem, Co. Kerry, was an active supporter of Sinn Féin. I moved Laytown Races to County Kerry. And I used my author’s prerogative at the end of the book to compress time and allow Michael Sullivan to rise and fall with the Irish property boom.

Finally, I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my wife Jennie, who has encouraged and supported me during the years of writing this book, as she has throughout our life together.

Two boys are growing up in County Kerry, Irish Tomas Sullivan and Anglo-Irish James Burke, close friends from different tribes. This is Ireland in 1919, and their friendship will be torn apart in the War of Independence and in the Civil War that follows.

The entwined fates of the Burkes and the Sullivans are played out over three generations, in Kerry, Spain, Northumberland, Mount Athos and finally back in Kerry, where the two families meet again.

Subtle, gripping, beautifully written, Ashes In The Wind is rooted in the history of Christopher Bland’s own Anglo-Irish family, and brings to vivid life the people and places of 20th Century Ireland in a story of love, violence and redemption.

‘Intriguing and fast-moving... I loved its characters and convincing historical detail.’

Lady Antonia Fraser