Johnny had established his headquarters in the O’Connell Arms, a handsome building at the top end of North Street. From his bedroom he could just see into the grounds of Macroom Castle. Nothing moved. Nobody was taking a walk through their property. No children could be heard playing in the grounds. Perhaps they had all gone away. Johnny decided to jump his fences as soon as he could. He bought a drink for the landlord in the lounge bar of the hotel, the walls lined with pictures of horses, rickety tables that had seen better days scattered round the room like patients waiting for the dentist.
‘That’s a grand day we’re having now,’ said the landlord. ‘They say it’s going to rain tomorrow.’
The weather, Johnny remembered, was often the overture to most conversations in Irish bars.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t last,’ said Johnny, keeping the meteorological ball in play.
‘Have you come far?’ said the landlord.
‘I’ve come from London as a matter of fact,’ said Johnny.
‘That’s the divil of a long way,’ said the landlord. ‘We had a lad from the town here two or three years ago who went to London, so he did.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked Johnny.
‘Didn’t last. He came back a week later, Declan Dempsey. He said he couldn’t stand the noise and the huge numbers of people. He’s a regular in this bar on alternate Wednesdays after the cattle sales. If he has too much porter he’ll tell you all about London. There isn’t a customer here who hasn’t heard the story fifteen or twenty times.’
‘Tell me,’ said Johnny, taking a very large draught of his Guinness, ‘are there people still living in the big house up there?’
‘Up in Macroom Castle? There are indeed. There’s Mister Jonathan and his wife and a herd of children. Why do you ask?’
‘I knew a man in the Army who used to stay there years ago,’ Johnny lied. ‘He said they had very good parties.’
‘We wouldn’t know about that,’ said the landlord. ‘We’re not invited.’
‘Could you tell me this, seeing you’re a knowledgeable sort of man about the locality,’ Johnny plunged on, ‘is there anybody round here who knows about the history of the place, a local historian if you like? A friend and I are writing a book, you see, and we need some information about Macroom’s past.’
‘A book, do you say? Who would want to read a book about Macroom’s past, for God’s sake? Nothing ever happens here. People are born, they get married, they die. That wouldn’t even fill a page.’
‘The book’s mainly about the famine,’ Johnny said. ‘We thought we should write it while there may still be people alive who can remember it.’
The landlord crossed himself. ‘The famine. Mother of God. It was bad in these parts, very bad. But perhaps you knew that. That’d be a fine thing to do, writing a book about the famine. Nobody’d buy it, mind you. Not round here. Not in Ireland. We’re still trying to forget the whole thing. We had a young priest here years ago who formed the theory that the reason the locals drank so much was that they were trying to forget what had happened to their ancestors.’
‘Seems rather a complicated reason for liking a drink,’ said Johnny, finishing his pint and ordering another. ‘He’s not still here, is he, the priest?’
‘No, no. He gave up. He did manage to enrol most of the adult males in that you can’t have a drink thing they have, the Temperance League or whatever it’s called. One day he happened to pop in here for a glass of water or something and found the whole lot of them knocking back the porter in the public bar. He never got over that, Father Bell. The boys told him they’d only joined up to make him happy, they never intended to go dry at all.’
‘Poor man,’ said Johnny, ‘can you imagine what it’d be like never having a drink? You’d never get through the day.’ He took another liberal helping of stout to calm his nerves.
‘You were asking about the local history and stuff,’ said the landlord. ‘I tell you now the fellow you want. Brother Healey, he’s your man. He teaches history up the road at the Christian Brothers and he’s always described as a mighty scholar. They say he once had an article published in the Cork Examiner.’
‘And where would I find him?’
The landlord looked at his watch. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘He’s regular as clockwork. After school he goes back to the house and marks the homework and polishes his strap or whatever they do. Sometime between six and six fifteen he pops in here. Two glasses of John Powers and he’s away again. I’ve never seen him take any more and that’s a fact.’
‘Perhaps he joined the temperance lot too,’ said Johnny. ‘I think I’ll take a walk now. I’ll be back in time to meet the Christian Brother.’
Johnny knew he was torturing himself. He could perfectly easily have stayed in the hotel bar and chatted to the landlord. Instead his legs carried him, almost without his knowledge, to the gates of the big house. He stood there for a moment, staring up the drive. I’m like a love-struck schoolboy, he told himself, lurking outside his girl’s house in the hope of seeing her. He wondered briefly about walking up to the house and knocking on the front door. A butler would open it. Johnny Fitzgerald, the butler would proclaim, and he would be ushered into the presence. What would he say then? What would she say? What would the husband say, if he was there? It was all too embarrassing. Johnny was nearly back at the hotel when he heard a carriage rattling up the street. As he turned to look he caught a glimpse of a hat, only a hat, not the face he had kissed so passionately all those years before.
Brother Healey was a small Brother of about fifty years, plump now and with small eyes, holding tightly on to his whiskey glass as if somebody might come and take it from him. Johnny introduced himself and explained his mission. He gave a more elaborate version of his legend about the reasons for his visit this time. He and a friend, he told the Brother, were writing a book about the famine. They had been commissioned by a very rich American called Delaney who was particularly interested in the Delaney family, many of whom he believed had perished in the years of hunger. Did the Brother know anything about these Delaneys? Would he care for another shot of John Powers to lubricate the brain? Brother Healey did care for a freshening of his glass as he put it.
‘Delaneys,’ he said, savouring the word as if it were another variety of whiskey, ‘there are a whole lot of Delaneys buried there in the field outside the town. It’s not a period I know a great deal about. I’m rather better on Cromwell and the redistribution of land, myself. But I know a man who is an expert on the famine. It’s rather late in the day to call on him now, I’m afraid.’
‘But it’s only a quarter past six,’ said Johnny.
‘I know, I know,’ said Brother Healey. ‘I wouldn’t wish to speak ill of the fellow. But he begins to take a drop of refreshment very early in the day, if you follow me. Before breakfast, I believe. The woman who looks after him says it’s the drink that’s kept him alive. She says he’s so pickled in John Jameson that no disease could get near him. But he’s the man for you. I’ve got the first two lessons off tomorrow. I’ll take you round to him then. You see, he’s well over eighty now. He lived through the bloody famine. He survived.’