the house, hear about the people…write a book about it.’
There, she’d said it. Dan was always urging her to write one, but Jodi didn’t know if she had the spark required for fiction and, until now, she’d never had an idea for non-fiction.
‘A book on Rathnaree! Wicked!’ the librarian replied. ‘There’s a guidebook on the town with information about it,but that’s all. Don’t move! I’ll find it for you. You’ll love the house. It’s beautiful. I mean, imagine living in a mansion like that.’
A copy of the photo now lay on the passenger seat of Jodi’s car along with a small local guide to the area which carried another photo of Rathnaree House as it had looked in the fifties. She rounded the last corner of the avenue to the house, mentally muttering about how hopeless the car’s suspension was, and how bumpy the avenue. Avenue was really far too grand a word for it, she decided, for even though it was lined with stately beech trees and was at least a mile long, it was nothing more than a country track with a high ridge in the middle where grass grew.
And then, when she’d cleared the last corner and driven past an overgrown coral pink azalea, she saw the house. And her foot slid automatically to the brake, hauling the little car to a stop on a scree of gravel.
‘Holy moly,’ Jodi said out loud and stared.
The grainy black-and-white picture in the Tamarin guidebook hadn’t done justice to the house. In its nest of trees, once-perfect hedging and trailing roses, stood what the guidebook had described as ‘ a perfect example of Victorian Palladianism ’. In reality, this meant a gracefully designed grey building with the graceful arches and stone pillars of Palladian architecture and vast symmetrical windows looking out over a pillowy green lawn dotted with daisies and dandelions.
The huge house stretched endlessly back and widened into stables, servants’ quarters, a Victorian conservatory to the right, and the lichened walls of a kitchen garden that led off to the left. Giant stone plinths topped with weed-filled jardinières signalled the start of a box-tree-edged herb garden designed in a knot layout, now rampant with woody rosemary and lavender that sent their hazy smells drifting into the air.
There were no ladies in elaborate flowered hats and long dresses standing about beside stern moustachioed men, nor any sign of long sweeping cars with gleaming bonnets. But this Rathnaree, although older and clearly much less tended than the version from either of the photographs, still retained the unmistakable grandeur of the Big House.
Fleets of servants would have been needed to run it and thousands of acres of land would have been needed to pay for it all.
It was another world, a time when Tamarin was the little town where the powerful Lochraven family sent their servants to do their bidding. Now Tamarin was a thriving place while Rathnaree was empty, the Lochravens long gone, apart from the house’s owner, a distant cousin who never set foot in the place, the librarian had explained.
‘Rathnaree is the Anglicised version of the name. It’s really Rath na ri – fort of the king, in the Irish language,’ she’d continued. ‘Can’t remember half of what I learned in school, but we all had that drummed into us. I had a history teacher once who was very interested in the Lochravens, said her mother had been at hunt balls at Rathnaree House in the thirties; it was very formal, with a butler and women wearing long dresses and gloves. Imagine! I like those sort of dresses but I wouldn’t be into the gloves. Do you want me to draw you a map of how to get there?’
‘No,’ Jodi said. ‘I know roughly where it is. I’ve been living here for two months now.’
‘You have? Where? Tell us.’ The girl had leaned companionably on the counter.
‘My husband and I moved from Dublin,’ Jodi explained, as she had so often since she and Dan had arrived in Tamarin.
No chance of not knowing
There, she’d said it. Dan was always urging her to write one, but Jodi didn’t know if she had the spark required for fiction and, until now, she’d never had an idea for non-fiction.
‘A book on Rathnaree! Wicked!’ the librarian replied. ‘There’s a guidebook on the town with information about it,but that’s all. Don’t move! I’ll find it for you. You’ll love the house. It’s beautiful. I mean, imagine living in a mansion like that.’
A copy of the photo now lay on the passenger seat of Jodi’s car along with a small local guide to the area which carried another photo of Rathnaree House as it had looked in the fifties. She rounded the last corner of the avenue to the house, mentally muttering about how hopeless the car’s suspension was, and how bumpy the avenue. Avenue was really far too grand a word for it, she decided, for even though it was lined with stately beech trees and was at least a mile long, it was nothing more than a country track with a high ridge in the middle where grass grew.
And then, when she’d cleared the last corner and driven past an overgrown coral pink azalea, she saw the house. And her foot slid automatically to the brake, hauling the little car to a stop on a scree of gravel.
‘Holy moly,’ Jodi said out loud and stared.
The grainy black-and-white picture in the Tamarin guidebook hadn’t done justice to the house. In its nest of trees, once-perfect hedging and trailing roses, stood what the guidebook had described as ‘ a perfect example of Victorian Palladianism ’. In reality, this meant a gracefully designed grey building with the graceful arches and stone pillars of Palladian architecture and vast symmetrical windows looking out over a pillowy green lawn dotted with daisies and dandelions.
The huge house stretched endlessly back and widened into stables, servants’ quarters, a Victorian conservatory to the right, and the lichened walls of a kitchen garden that led off to the left. Giant stone plinths topped with weed-filled jardinières signalled the start of a box-tree-edged herb garden designed in a knot layout, now rampant with woody rosemary and lavender that sent their hazy smells drifting into the air.
There were no ladies in elaborate flowered hats and long dresses standing about beside stern moustachioed men, nor any sign of long sweeping cars with gleaming bonnets. But this Rathnaree, although older and clearly much less tended than the version from either of the photographs, still retained the unmistakable grandeur of the Big House.
Fleets of servants would have been needed to run it and thousands of acres of land would have been needed to pay for it all.
It was another world, a time when Tamarin was the little town where the powerful Lochraven family sent their servants to do their bidding. Now Tamarin was a thriving place while Rathnaree was empty, the Lochravens long gone, apart from the house’s owner, a distant cousin who never set foot in the place, the librarian had explained.
‘Rathnaree is the Anglicised version of the name. It’s really Rath na ri – fort of the king, in the Irish language,’ she’d continued. ‘Can’t remember half of what I learned in school, but we all had that drummed into us. I had a history teacher once who was very interested in the Lochravens, said her mother had been at hunt balls at Rathnaree House in the thirties; it was very formal, with a butler and women wearing long dresses and gloves. Imagine! I like those sort of dresses but I wouldn’t be into the gloves. Do you want me to draw you a map of how to get there?’
‘No,’ Jodi said. ‘I know roughly where it is. I’ve been living here for two months now.’
‘You have? Where? Tell us.’ The girl had leaned companionably on the counter.
‘My husband and I moved from Dublin,’ Jodi explained, as she had so often since she and Dan had arrived in Tamarin.
No chance of not knowing
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