Moonshine. Victoria Clayton

       EIGHT

      ‘So you managed to resist him,’ said Kit. ‘What’s much more remarkable, almost incredible, in fact, is that he managed to resist you.’

      We had left the town of Ennis behind us and were heading northeast. The wind had risen and snatched impatiently at the ends of the scarf I had resorted to winding round my head like a turban. I had no wish to arrive in Connemara looking like the thorn-bush on the moon. Ahead of us a lavender-grey cloud marred the exquisite blue of the sky.

      I was used to Kit’s flattery by now and continued to ignore it. ‘I suppose even politicians, sex-crazed psychopaths though they are by reputation, draw the line at raping fellow guests at respectable dinner parties in the Home Counties.’

      ‘Not often, I should say. Anyway, is Sussex a Home County?’

      ‘Not quite. But you know what I mean. Is there any chance of a cup of tea, do you think? So much talking’s made me thirsty.’

      ‘We’ll stop at the next town. On condition you go on with the story the moment your thirst is slaked. I absolutely must know what happened next. I identify closely with those Victorians who used to stop complete strangers in the street to ask if Little Nell was dead. It’s quite as gripping as an episode of The Old Curiosity Shop.’

      ‘You exaggerate my powers of narration. It’s a trite tale that’s often been told.’

      ‘Now don’t be bitter, Bobbie. It doesn’t suit you.’

      ‘I apologize for sounding stupidly melodramatic. I’m suffering badly from hurt pride, that’s all. I mean, really, what an absolute idiot I’ve been! One small comfort is that by telling you – I haven’t confided in a soul … well, only one other person apart from Oliver – it’s like reliving those days when Burgo and I were so entranced by each other. Now I remember why I was ready to risk my peace of mind, my self-respect, even my sanity for something that could never have a happy ending.’

      ‘Is there a man or woman alive who hasn’t taken a gamble and lost? Just because your unlucky speculation has been emblazoned in headlines the length and breadth of the country doesn’t make it specially heinous. I gather his wife is not the vulnerable ingénue portrayed by the press. Nor, perhaps, a chaste Penelope working her fingers into calluses at her loom, until such time as her lord and master cared to drop in?’

      ‘Burgo hardly ever talked about his marriage. I don’t know if it was satisfactory or not. I assumed that it wasn’t because he wanted me but I see now that was laughably naïve. I believed the truism that it’s impossible for an outsider to break up a good marriage. I wonder what persuaded me to place reliance on that piece of sententious, simple-minded claptrap? Marriages are mutable, anarchic, boundless things and no two are alike.’

      ‘What you seem to be forgetting is that things aren’t quite over yet.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Your running away is not necessarily an end. Perhaps it’s just another part of it. Love affairs don’t usually end with a neat severance. They gasp out their life in a slow, merciless suffocation of hopes and dreams.’

      I felt a resurgence of optimism that a second later was dashed. ‘Whatever our desires may be, it is over.’

      Kit’s silence told me that he was sceptical.

      ‘What’s that marvellous old building?’ I pointed to a tall cylinder of stone with tiny windows and a pointed door standing in a field. I wanted to change my mood from high-flown pathos to something resembling cheerfulness.

      ‘It’s a tower house, like a small castle, you know, belonging to one of the lesser chieftains. Probably fifteenth or sixteenth century. The fortified enclosure running round it is called the bawn. There are lots of them all over Ireland.’

      ‘What a lot you know.’

      ‘Extensive reading is a requirement of the job. I’m no scholar, just a store of scraps of information. I never do anything with it. Too lazy. I’m a dreamer.’

      How different from Burgo, I thought but did not say. As the car swooped over miles of more or less empty road the sky changed from blue to dove grey to pewter and the green of the Irish landscape became livid, the colour of brass. We drove through a succession of hamlets, which were usually single streets of small, dilapidated dwellings. There were broken windows patched with cardboard, and sections of roof covered with tarpaulins. The southwest seemed prosperous by comparison.

      ‘What do people do here?’ I asked. ‘I mean, to earn a living.’

      ‘Oh, they farm mostly: smallholdings not quite big enough to sustain the inevitably large families. Galway’s coming up fast and there are good jobs there but the country people are reluctant to leave a way of life they’ve always known. You can understand it.’

      ‘Oh yes. But the fields look so stony. There are great lumps of rock sticking out of them. Surely it must be difficult to plough?’

      ‘Impossible in some places. The limestone pavements are famous for rare wild flowers – gentians, orchids, ferns – but of course you can’t eat those. People used to grow potatoes by making what are called “lazy beds”: scraping the earth into little heaps of a few square yards to get the required depth. In the good years when there was no frost or famine, the average Irish peasant ate fourteen pounds of potatoes a day.’

      ‘You’re making it up! No one could eat that many.’

      ‘Truthfully. Many families existed on an exclusive diet of potatoes and buttermilk. And poteen, of course. That’s home-brewed whiskey.’

      ‘But surely on such an unvaried diet they’d be ill?’

      ‘On the contrary, they were the healthiest people in Europe. Boiled potatoes and buttermilk provide all the nutritional needs of a full-grown labouring man. There were herrings and seaweed for those who lived near the coast.’

      ‘But think of the terrible boredom of eating the same thing day in and day out!’

      ‘Ah, but boredom is the luxury of affluence. You must remember that some of the country people were so poor their clothes were hardly more than rags. It’s all about expectations, isn’t it? They considered themselves as rich as kings if they could afford a pig or two, a cow and a few hens. All around them were living examples of what happened if you couldn’t pay your rent. You were evicted and the roof was pulled off your houses. So you were forced to live in what were called scalpeens: hovels pieced together from a bit of corrugated iron here, an old door there, without windows, without chimneys even. Then you were too hungry, too cold, too miserable to be bored. When the potato blight destroyed your crops you and your children lay down in your hovels and died of starvation or typhus and your bodies were picked clean by foxes and crows.’

      ‘And the landlords did nothing to help them?’

      ‘What you must understand is that the vast majority of landowners were of English or Scots origin. They’d got their Irish estates through the land confiscations of the sixteenth and seventeenth