6. Kilranelagh Hill
As the train pulled into the station at Baltinglass it followed the road and the River Slaney, black now under still thickening cloud. Beyond the river, Baltinglass Hill rose up above the town, a great pyramid of green. Three thousand years ago the people who lived there had buried their dead on its slopes and had looked down from the stone fort at the summit, as a new people arrived. The newcomers had probably followed the river too. And then the people who watched from the fort were gone, even the words of their language had disappeared, unremembered for thousands of years. They left only the ring of stones on the hilltop and the megaliths that once covered their dead.
Stefan put Susan Field’s letters into the inside pocket of his overcoat. He looked across the river at the hill he had climbed so many times as a boy, and at the ruins of the abbey that had stood below it for a thousand years, sitting next to the small Church of Ireland church that had replaced it. The abbey was not quite forgotten, but it was another place of tumbled stones and unremembered words; it was where the dead were buried now, his grandparents and his great-grandparents among them. The train juddered to a halt with the grinding of steel on steel and a long, weary hiss of steam.
In front of the wooden station buildings, a tall, bearded man in his sixties stood on the platform. Next to him, tense with anticipation, his eyes fixed on the train, was a boy of four. The old man had Stefan Gillespie’s dark eyes and so had the boy. David Gillespie and his grandson Tom waited, and then Tom ran forward as a carriage door opened and his father got out. Stefan folded his son into his arms and lifted him up, laughing, for no reason other than that Tom was laughing, with the simple happiness of seeing him.
‘Jesus, you’re a weight, Tom Gillespie! What’s Oma feeding you?’
‘Will you carry me then?’
‘I will not!’ But he carried him a little way along the platform anyway, till they reached David. Inevitably Stefan’s father was looking quizzically at his face and the evidence of the beating. ‘And I’d a run in with a feller before you say anything else about it. It’s nothing but bruises so.’
‘Did you lock him up, Daddy?’ asked Tom, impressed.
‘Well, not exactly. It was sorted out.’ He laughed. His father just nodded, suspecting there was more to it than nothing but bruises, but he asked no questions. It was clear Stefan wouldn’t be saying any more.
‘Tom was at Mass with the Lawlors. He wanted to stay and walk back with you. And I fancied a bit of a walk myself. We had nothing better to do, did we, Tom?’ It was a two-mile walk from the farm on the saddle of land behind Baltinglass Hill and another two back up again.
Tom took his father’s hand as they walked to the road.
‘Is the trike in the window at Clery’s still, the way you told me?’
‘When did I tell you that?’
‘You told me last week, and the week before.’
‘And the week before, ever since you saw the picture in the paper.’
‘Is it there though?’
‘I’d say it is.’
‘Do you look every day?’
‘I maybe miss the odd one.’
The town began just beyond the station. The buildings closed in on either side of the road and shut out the fields along the River Slaney; the blank, stone walls of the mill on one side and low two-storey houses and shops on the other. As they crossed over the bridge the water from the mill race made the river noisier and more urgent, though as it spilled out on the other side it resumed its leisurely course. Again the hill rose up, this time over the wide main street. Here some of the buildings were higher; the bank, the solicitor’s. There were occasional splashes of colour on the rendered fronts of the small-windowed shops and houses, but mostly they were grey, and mostly the grey plaster was crumbling. In the square, next to the statue of Sam MacAllister, who had died in the hills beyond the town in the last days of the rebellion of 1798, was a Christmas tree, yet to be decorated. Beyond the square was the Catholic church. It marked the eastern end of the town as the abbey ruins did the western. But the business of the churches was done for this Sunday. As grandfather, father and son walked through Baltinglass a Sunday silence hung over it. The shops were shut. And for those who were not at home, the pubs — as was their way — were curtained and shuttered, looking in on themselves, and not out on the world.
They were soon through the town and among the fields again, walking away from the river now and beginning the climb to Kilranelagh Hill and the farm that had belonged to Stefan’s grandfather; where his own father had been born, and where David had returned when the Dublin Metropolitan Police had become, inescapably, part of a war that he wanted no part in. They talked about the sow that had farrowed last week and the six new piglets in the sty, and the geese being fattened for the Christmas market, and the one they’d picked out, the fattest one of all, that they’d eat themselves. They talked about the calf that was ill with scour that Tom had prayed wouldn’t die — it was better now and out in the orchard field with its mother, though she still hadn’t the milk for it and Tom was giving the calf the bottle himself. There was the window that Tom didn’t want to talk about at all, that he and Harry Lawlor had smashed, knocking tin cans over with Harry’s catapult. There was the book Opa was reading him now, about Eeyore and Piglet and Winnie the Pooh, and there was the rhyme he could sing from it to a tune Oma had made up on the piano. They always used the German words for grandmother and grandfather; the other grandparents, Maeve’s mother and father, were Grandma and Grandpa, but Stefan’s mother and father were always Oma and Opa, just as his mother’s parents had been to him. They talked about the speckled hen Oma was cooking for the dinner, the one Opa had to kill after Tess the sheepdog chased it into the hay barn and it broke its leg. And they talked for the fourth time and the fifth time about the tricycle in the window of Clery’s department store in O’Connell Street, with a trunk behind you could put things in, that Tom had seen the picture of in the newspaper. He’d cut the picture out and put it by his bed, next to the photograph of his mother and father and his collection of books and stones and tin soldiers. It had been on three lists he’d sent up the chimney, despite warnings that it wasn’t a good idea to overdo it with Santy.
There was a steep track into the farmyard from the road up to Kilranelagh Hill. There was the smell of dung and hay. A long stone barn stretched towards the house on one side of the yard. They heard the sound of the cows inside, calling for food. On the other side of the yard stood a rusty, corrugated shed, full of straw. Quite suddenly, something black and white hurtled through the barn door, barking and snarling furiously. Tess stopped at Stefan’s feet. She looked up at him and abruptly turned away, trotting back into the barn with just one backward glance to tell him that her job, a quite unnecessary job as it happened, had been done. Then as Tom opened the door to the kitchen there was the smell of the dinner. Stefan walked across the room and put his arms round his mother. Tom held up the paper bag his father had brought and took out the loaf of bread that was in it.
‘We’ve got some bread for you, Oma, some special bread!’
Helena stared at her son’s battered face. He put his finger to his lips.
‘It’s from Weinrouk’s. Do you remember it? I’m sure it’s still Mr Moiselle who makes it. Remember? When did you last have a loaf like that, Ma?’ She smiled. She remembered very well. She had more to say, about the bruises, but that would have to wait. She looked back down at the pots on the stove. She spoke quietly, not wanting to let her concern show to Tom.
‘Father Carey’s here. He’s been waiting.’
The sitting room was dark. It looked out on to the farmyard through a window that let little enough light in on a summer’s day. Now the clouds were black over the farm and over Kilranelagh Hill above. It wasn’t a small room, but it was lined with bookshelves that crowded the heavy furniture into the centre. The priest was by the fireplace, crouching down, almost on his knees, pulling out a book. He rose as Stefan Gillespie entered the room.
‘You wanted to see me.’
Normally the word ‘Father’ would have been added to this, and in a man he liked Stefan would have had no problem with that polite expression of respect, even though Anthony Carey was barely two years older. But there was neither liking nor respect, and the feeling was thoroughly reciprocated in the cold and cautious eye the priest cast in his direction.
‘It’s about the boy.’ No name, just the boy.
‘You’d better sit down.’
The priest made no attempt to sit down. Instead he walked to a table at one side of the room where he had
