photograph of a young girl in white standing among leaves in a garden, leaning out of the tree's deep shade into a mist of sunlight. In one hand she held a flower. A rose. Look!
THE MAIN REASON I was not sent away to a proper school was that we could not afford it. The finances of Birchwood were dwindling at the same rate as the decline of Papa's interest in the farm, which had never been great anyway. I can still see him, with ink-stained fingers and collar agape, his gold tooth glittering, crouched at his desk in the library in a pool of lamplight, scrabbling desperately among a litter of bills, and, a little later, standing in the shadows, where glass clinked furtively on glass, running his fingers through his hair, soothing himself. Of course our genteel slide toward penury was never mentioned, not in my presence, but the silent evidence of it was everywhere around me, in the cracked paint and the missing tiles, the dry rot that ate its way unchecked across the floors and up the stairs, in the games of musical chairs which Mama played, switching them from the front rooms to the back in a circle of increasing degeneracy until the day when, groaning and creaking, they regained their original places and the wheel ceased to turn. A leak, preceded by a burgeoning grey patch of damp, appeared in the schoolroom ceiling. Nockter, after an inspection of the roof, reported that half the slates had come loose and some were gone altogether. It would be repaired within days, Papa promised, he would get a man out from town, but the days became weeks, and I studied to the intricate accompaniment of the plop and splash of rainwater falling into a battery of jamjars ranged around me, and at last Aunt Martha and I were forced to abandon the schoolroom for the library. Then an army of rats laid siege to the kitchen.
The final proof, the clincher, as they say, that the Godkins were going the way of all the gentry, that is down, was the newfound boldness of the peasants. As my people knew, and lucky they did, there is nothing that will keep the Irish in their place like a well-appointed mansion. They may despise and hate you, only put a fine big house with plenty of windows in it up on a hill and bejapers you have them be the balls, stunned into a cringing, cap-touching coma. But beware. It is a fragile thraldom. The first unmended fence will mean the first snigger behind your back outside the chapel yard, an overrun garden will bring them grinning to the gate, and a roof left in visible disrepair will see them poaching your land in daylight, as now they poached ours, contemptuous not only of the law but even of my father's shotgun, which was no mean threat. That summer he took to rising early, long before dawn, to stalk the wood in search of the wolves who were decimating his flock. Often I was woken by his stealthy preparations, the creak of his boots on the stairs, the muffled rattle of cartridges, that abrupt crisp click as he broke the gun over his arm, and in my warm world under the blankets these sounds expressed exactly what I thought to be the control, the heroism and the humour of his venture. The side door closed softly behind him, and the silence reorganised itself to await his return. I imagined him moving through the chill black morning, across the lawn, slipping into the wood so quietly that it hardly noticed him, and then he was no longer what I knew, but was become an element of air and darkness, of leaves, thrilling and strange, an icy grin burning under the still trees.
Sometimes his safaris produced a trophy, and he might appear at first light with a crofter's wild-eyed son by the scruff of the neck and a brace of strangled pheasants over his shoulder, but I never knew him to do anything worse to a poacher than warn hifti that by god if he ever showed his snout near Birchwood again he would get a backside full of buckshot. Such warnings mostly went unheeded, but then I do not really think Papa wanted it otherwise, for
THE MAIN REASON I was not sent away to a proper school was that we could not afford it. The finances of Birchwood were dwindling at the same rate as the decline of Papa's interest in the farm, which had never been great anyway. I can still see him, with ink-stained fingers and collar agape, his gold tooth glittering, crouched at his desk in the library in a pool of lamplight, scrabbling desperately among a litter of bills, and, a little later, standing in the shadows, where glass clinked furtively on glass, running his fingers through his hair, soothing himself. Of course our genteel slide toward penury was never mentioned, not in my presence, but the silent evidence of it was everywhere around me, in the cracked paint and the missing tiles, the dry rot that ate its way unchecked across the floors and up the stairs, in the games of musical chairs which Mama played, switching them from the front rooms to the back in a circle of increasing degeneracy until the day when, groaning and creaking, they regained their original places and the wheel ceased to turn. A leak, preceded by a burgeoning grey patch of damp, appeared in the schoolroom ceiling. Nockter, after an inspection of the roof, reported that half the slates had come loose and some were gone altogether. It would be repaired within days, Papa promised, he would get a man out from town, but the days became weeks, and I studied to the intricate accompaniment of the plop and splash of rainwater falling into a battery of jamjars ranged around me, and at last Aunt Martha and I were forced to abandon the schoolroom for the library. Then an army of rats laid siege to the kitchen.
The final proof, the clincher, as they say, that the Godkins were going the way of all the gentry, that is down, was the newfound boldness of the peasants. As my people knew, and lucky they did, there is nothing that will keep the Irish in their place like a well-appointed mansion. They may despise and hate you, only put a fine big house with plenty of windows in it up on a hill and bejapers you have them be the balls, stunned into a cringing, cap-touching coma. But beware. It is a fragile thraldom. The first unmended fence will mean the first snigger behind your back outside the chapel yard, an overrun garden will bring them grinning to the gate, and a roof left in visible disrepair will see them poaching your land in daylight, as now they poached ours, contemptuous not only of the law but even of my father's shotgun, which was no mean threat. That summer he took to rising early, long before dawn, to stalk the wood in search of the wolves who were decimating his flock. Often I was woken by his stealthy preparations, the creak of his boots on the stairs, the muffled rattle of cartridges, that abrupt crisp click as he broke the gun over his arm, and in my warm world under the blankets these sounds expressed exactly what I thought to be the control, the heroism and the humour of his venture. The side door closed softly behind him, and the silence reorganised itself to await his return. I imagined him moving through the chill black morning, across the lawn, slipping into the wood so quietly that it hardly noticed him, and then he was no longer what I knew, but was become an element of air and darkness, of leaves, thrilling and strange, an icy grin burning under the still trees.
Sometimes his safaris produced a trophy, and he might appear at first light with a crofter's wild-eyed son by the scruff of the neck and a brace of strangled pheasants over his shoulder, but I never knew him to do anything worse to a poacher than warn hifti that by god if he ever showed his snout near Birchwood again he would get a backside full of buckshot. Such warnings mostly went unheeded, but then I do not really think Papa wanted it otherwise, for
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