The Collected Stories

Kinsella’s Barn. ‘Just the ruin of a wall is all that’s left.’

‘Harold’s interested, Father.’

They set off on their walk, leaving the old clergyman ashamed that he could not like Harold more. It wasn’t just his griminess: there was something sinister about Harold, something furtive about the way he looked at you, peering at you cruelly out of his afflicted face, not meeting your eye. Why was he so fascinated about a country that wasn’t his own? Why did he refer so often to ‘Ireland’s struggle’ as if that struggle particularly concerned him? He hated walking, he had said, yet he’d just set out to walk six miles through woods and fields to examine a ruined wall.

Canon Moran had wondered as suspiciously about Thomas and John and Carley, privately questioning every statement they made, finding hidden motives everywhere. He’d hated the thought of his daughters being embraced or even touched, and had forced himself not to think about that. He’d prayed, ashamed of himself then, too. ‘It’s just a frailty in you,’ Frances had said, her favourite way of cutting things down to size.

He sat for a while in the afternoon sunshine, letting all of it hang in his mind. It would be nice if they quarrelled on their walk. It would be nice if they didn’t speak when they returned, if Harold simply went away. But that wouldn’t happen, because they had come to the rectory with a purpose. He didn’t know why he thought that, but he knew it was true: they had come for a reason, something that was all tied up with Harold’s fascination and with the kind of person Harold was, with his cold eyes and his afflicted face.

In March 1798 an incident had taken place in Kinsella’s Barn, which at that time had just been a barn. Twelve men and women, accused of harbouring insurgents, had been tied together with ropes at the command of a Sergeant James. They had been led through the village of Boharbawn, the Sergeant’s soldiers on horseback on either side of the procession, the Sergeant himself bringing up the rear. Designed as an act of education, an example to the inhabitants of Boharbawn and the country people around, the twelve had been herded into a barn owned by a farmer called Kinsella and there burned to death. Kinsella, who had played no part either in the harbouring of insurgents or in the execution of the twelve, was afterwards murdered by his own farm labourers.

‘Sergeant James was a Nottingham man,’ Harold said that evening at supper. ‘A soldier of fortune who didn’t care what he did. Did you know he acquired great wealth, Mr Moran?’

‘No, I wasn’t at all aware of that,’ Canon Moran replied.

‘Harold found out about him,’ Deirdre said.

‘He used to boast he was responsible for the death of a thousand Irish people. It was in Boharbawn he reached the thousand. They rewarded him well for that.’

‘Not much is known about Sergeant James locally. Just the legend of Kinsella’s Barn.’

‘No way it’s a legend.’

Deirdre nodded; Canon Moran did not say anything. They were eating cooked ham and salad. On the table there was a cake which Deirdre had bought in McGovern’s in Enniscorthy, and a pot of tea. There were several bunches of grapes from the greenhouse, and a plate of wafer biscuits. Harold was fond of salad cream, Canon Moran had noticed; he had a way of hitting the base of the jar with his hand, causing large dollops to spurt all over his ham. He didn’t place his knife and fork together on the plate when he’d finished, but just left them anyhow. His fingernails were edged with black.

‘You’d feel sick,’ he was saying now, working the salad cream again. ‘You’d stand there looking at that wall and you’d feel a revulsion in your stomach.’

‘What I meant,’ Canon Moran said, ‘is that it has passed into local legend. No one doubts it took place; there’s no question about that. But two centuries have almost passed.’

‘And nothing has changed,’ Harold interjected. ‘The Irish people still share their bondage with the twelve in Kinsella’s Barn.’

‘Round here of course –’

‘It’s not round here that matters, Mr Moran. The struggle’s world-wide; the sickness is everywhere actually.’

Again Deirdre nodded. She was like a zombie, her father thought. She was being used because she was an Irish girl; she was Harold’s Irish connection, and in some almost frightening way she believed herself in love with him. Frances had once said they’d made a mistake with her. She had wondered if Deirdre had perhaps found all the love they’d offered her too much to bear. They were quite old when Deirdre was a child, the last expression of their own love. She was special because of that.

‘At least Kinsella got his chips,’ Harold pursued, his voice relentless. ‘At least that’s something.’

Canon Moran protested. The owner of the barn had been an innocent man, he pointed out. The barn had simply been a convenient one, large enough for the purpose, with heavy stones near it that could be piled up against the door before the conflagration. Kinsella, that day, had been miles away, ditching a field.

‘It’s too long ago to say where he was,’ Harold retorted swiftly. ‘And if he was keeping a low profile in a ditch it would have been by arrangement with the imperial forces.’

When Harold said that, there occurred in Canon Moran’s mind a flash of what appeared to be the simple truth. Harold was an Englishman who had espoused a cause because it was one through which the status quo in his own country might be damaged. Similar such Englishmen, read about in newspapers, stirred in the clergyman’s mind: men from Ealing and Liverpool and Wolverhampton who had changed their names to Irish names, who had even learned the Irish language, in order to ingratiate themselves with the new Irish revolutionaries. Such men dealt out death and chaos, announcing that their conscience insisted on it.

‘Well, we’d better wash the dishes,’ Deirdre said, and Harold rose obediently to help her.

The walk to Kinsella’s Barn had taken place on a Saturday afternoon. The following morning Canon Moran conducted his services in St Michael’s, addressing his small Protestant congregation, twelve at Holy Communion, eighteen at morning service. He had prepared a sermon about repentance, taking as his text St Luke, 15:32:… for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. But at the last moment he changed his mind and spoke instead of the incident in Kinsella’s Barn nearly two centuries ago. He tried to make the point that one horror should not fuel another, that passing time contained its own forgiveness. Deirdre and Harold were naturally not in the church, but they’d been present at breakfast, Harold frying eggs on the kitchen stove, Deirdre pouring tea. He had looked at them and tried to think of them as two young people on holiday. He had tried to tell himself they’d come to the rectory for a rest and for his blessing, that he should be grateful instead of fanciful. It was for his blessing that Emma had brought Thomas to the rectory, that Linda had brought John. Una would bring Carley in November. ‘Now, don’t be silly,’ Frances would have said.