Last Summer in Ireland. Anne Doughty
a flowerbed I had set out to weed or a bookcase I had decided to sort and pack. Once, I even found myself sitting on the low wall near the back door unable to remember what I was supposed to be doing there until I saw the neatly tied bag of rubbish at my feet.
To my amazement, the peaceful quality of the weekend persisted into the following week. We all have good hours and good days, times when things go right beyond all reasonable expectation, but that whole week it appeared I could do no wrong. Whatever I put my hand to, some tedious job in the house or some piece of executor business, the problems just melted. Like the child who had once walked round the garden with a magic ring, making things happen, I appeared to be mistress of all I surveyed.
Entirely new to me was the sense of steadiness and purpose I felt. Sometimes I just marvelled at my good fortune; at other times, I found I was looking around for new worlds to conquer and had to laugh at myself.
I was able to finish a routine piece of work for Robert Fairclough in record time and I had lively phone calls from the friends to whom I’d written. I wrote page after page in my blue notebooks, sketched out thoughts for short stories, and developed an idea for a longer work. As if this were not joy enough, early one morning I even had a call from Matthew in Maharajpur.
We tripped over each other and said the most banal things in the few minutes that could be spared on the up-country hospital’s one and only phone. There would be another opportunity for us to go to India together and work on the project we’d had to set aside this summer, he said. He sounded so excited at the prospect and both pleased and relieved that I was in such good spirits with things going so well at Anacarrig.
But beyond and behind all the objective things that had lifted my spirits, there was Deara. Unlike any friend I had ever had, however dear, her presence seemed to reassure me in a way I could not put words to as yet.
When I tried to puzzle it out, I told myself it was because she had survived a situation far, far more dangerous than anything I had ever experienced. With no one to care what happened to her, she had been totally vulnerable after Merdaine died. The actual threat from the Druid I would have found terrifying. And yet, despite everything being against her, she had won through, she had kept her nerve and ended up with Alcelcius, a man who was not only kind but one she could be sure would never let her down.
Day after day as I went on with the work in the garden, I thought about her, going over in my mind all I knew of her, putting together everything that first meeting had offered with what she herself had told me when we discovered we could talk to each other. I longed to see her again, and yet, as I moved through those memorable days, I felt she was with me, an active presence in my life, steadying me, showing me ways of being that were new to me, bringing me hope and confidence.
Whether it was thinking of Deara or the happy chance of Mother’s car having arrived back from the garage, I really don’t know, but on the Friday afternoon, I suddenly put down my trowel, abandoned my bucket of weeds, scrubbed my fingernails at the kitchen sink and set off for the library in Armagh.
The magic of the week was still at work when I got there. I almost burst out laughing when the librarian looked up from her filing in the empty reading room. It was Maureen Purdy. Years ago, at primary school, when we came top of the class in reading, Maureen and I had had the job of going to the library and choosing the weekly box of books for our class.
‘Deirdre Henderson, how are you? When did I last see you?’
The reading room was unusually quiet that afternoon, so Maureen was free to talk to me. We spoke about our schooldays and she filled me in on the lives of school friends I hadn’t heard of for years. Then I told her I’d got interested in the fifth century. By the time I left, she’d made me a list of titles for the early Christian era and suggested I go round and meet the curator of the museum who had made a special study of that period.
When I did track him down in his minute, congested office, I discovered his wife had been at Queen’s with Sandy. I’d been working in London so long I’d almost forgotten what a close and intimate community I’d once been part of. As I watched him raiding his shelves and extracting material from his own files to photocopy for me, I felt quite overwhelmed by his generosity and his willingness to help. This responsiveness, this kindness, was once a familiar part of my experience. It was a part with which I had completely lost touch.
Back at Anacarrig I staggered into the house with my arms full and caught sight of myself in the hall mirror. I was wearing such a broad grin I reckoned I must look like the lucky winner of one of the ‘Biggest Ever Prize Draws’ that kept dropping through Mother’s letterbox despite all my efforts to turn them off.
I laid out all my stuff in the sitting room, books and photocopies and lists of forthcoming publications. I was tempted to sit down and begin reading there and then, but I remembered I’d just dropped my tools and gone off into town, so I went back out into the garden.
The mixed perfumes of the newly opened perennials and the very first rosebuds lay on the warm air. All was quiet. I went on where I’d left off and when I tired I fetched some of my new books and sat under the hawthorns in the last of the sunshine. Soon I was so absorbed, had the phone not rung I’d probably have been there till it was too dark to see the print.
It was Helen, safely back from Oxford and looking forward to our meeting the next evening. As I put the phone down I thought of the calls I’d been putting off. I’m happy enough to talk on the phone once I get started, but I’m often reluctant about actually making them. I brought a chair into the hall and settled down to make up for my delays.
I rang the rectory in Norfolk, spoke to John and passed on Matthew’s news from Maharajpur. Then a marvellous talk with my sister-in-law, Diana, which included her account of the latest episode in the long-running row among the flower ladies over the colour scheme for the patronal festival.
Still smiling, I rang Tanza Road and heard Joan’s familiar voice. She had some really exciting news. Her great-niece Sarah had just been accepted for the Purcell School; the scholarship would give her the best possible opportunity to become the clarinet player she wanted to be. Joan questioned me most carefully and sympathetically about the trials of clearing the house. I felt so grateful I had a friend of her wisdom and experience, one who would actually speak about mortality and its effects upon you instead of merely uttering the conventional platitudes and cliches which made her feel comfortable.
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