The Belfast Girl at O’Dara Cottage. Anne Doughty

I was at U.C.D. I used to visit the north in the long vacations. My mother had relatives in Fermanagh.’

      ‘What did you read?’

      ‘English literature. Only for two years though. I had to give it up.’

      His eyes were on the road ahead, but the soft tone in his voice and the set of his face spoke with more feeling than the words themselves. I wanted to ask why but something held me back. After all, I hardly knew him. I nodded and said nothing.

      ‘My father died and then my brother was killed. Someone had to take over at home. So I packed up my books and became the squire.’ He turned towards me, touched his forelock and mumbled, ‘Yes, sur, no, sur.’ He sounded just like an ancient retainer in a sentimental, Irish comedy.

      I laughed aloud, delighted by the accent and gestures which were so exactly right.

      ‘And what about the books?’

      He had made me laugh, but beyond his mimicry I felt the shadow of painful memories.

      ‘I still read. Oh, not as much as I’d like. But some. Have you read Tolstoy, Elizabeth?’

      ‘Oh yes, but only Anna Karenina so far. I thought that was splendid, though I didn’t like Vronsky and I just couldn’t understand Anna. Kitty and Levin were much more interesting. I really felt for Levin.’

      ‘So you like Tolstoy?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose I do, but I shouldn’t really say that.’

      ‘Whyever not?’

      ‘My English teacher used to say you couldn’t possibly “like” a writer on the evidence of one book. You had to study the range of his work. But I liked Tolstoy from chapter one. I’m afraid it’s a weakness of mine, I make up my mind far too quickly. That’s what happened with the islands.’ I waved my hand towards the familiar shapes which lay darkly below the massed thunderclouds. ‘The minute I saw the islands, I knew I would be happy here.’

      He pulled across the road at a point where it widened and had a broad grass verge. He angled the car so that we were looking out straight across the turbulent white-capped water.

      ‘Funny you should say that,’ he replied. ‘I always stop here on my way to Limerick and have a think. Perhaps the distance lends a certain perspective.’

      His eyes were fixed on the far horizon where silvery rays pierced the dark storm clouds. A gust of wind spilled round the car, buffeting it as a curtain of rain descended, pattering on the roof. In a few moments, the islands had disappeared and we heard the first rumbles of thunder. I wondered what he meant about distance lending a certain perspective.

      He turned abruptly and smiled at me.

      ‘I must take you home, Elizabeth, or the locals will have us married off by tomorrow. I expect you’ve worked out what small communities are like by now.’

      I nodded vigorously and told him about a man on a turf cart passing the cottage, who greeted me by name, and the way the postmistress had checked me out.

      ‘I used to spend a lot of time in the country before I went to Queen’s, but I’ve not been there very much these last few years. I’ve forgotten things I used to know. I haven’t got my lines right yet. But I keep remembering things all the time.’ ‘I take it the work is going well.’

      ‘Far better than I expected. My tutor really did lay it on about me being a woman and a Protestant in a male-dominated, Catholic community. He advised me not to come.’

      ‘But you came anyway?’

      ‘I was lucky. My tutor changed. The new one is an anthropologist and she’s just come back from fieldwork with the Masai. She didn’t see any problem.’

      ‘Have you managed to get any figures for acreages and landholdings?’

      ‘Oh yes. But I did explain I wasn’t from the income tax or the Land Commission, that I just needed them for my examinations. They were very good about it.’

      He shook his head ruefully. ‘I think perhaps Michael Feely was right. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard of who’s got any real information out of them. I’ve known these people all my life and all I get is a version of the truth.’

      ‘Yes, but you are the squire.’ I touched my forelock and said ‘Yes, sur, no, sur,’ just as he had done, but I couldn’t get the accent quite right. ‘And I’m only a student who’ll pass the time of day for a week or two and then disappear for ever. They can afford to be generous. I don’t threaten them, because I’m only a stranger in the place.’

      ‘You don’t have the feel of a stranger,’ he said promptly. ‘You have the feel of someone very much at home here.’

      He stopped outside the cottage and looked across at me.

      ‘Yes, I am. I’m far more at home here than I ever am in Belfast. I’m trying to work out why. It’s far harder than the land-use bit.’

      ‘Will you apologise to Mary and Paddy for me? I must get back. Will you be in on Saturday?’

      ‘Yes, I expect so. It’s easier for Mary, if I do the shopping.’

      ‘Come and see me when you’ve finished,’ he said, as he came round and opened the door for me. ‘I’ll be shut up with the stock books, Kathleen will show you where. I’ll be needing a spell or two by then.’

      ‘Thank you for bringing me home. If I come on Saturday, I shall pester you with questions,’ I warned him, as he walked back round to the driver’s side.

      ‘I shall look forward to that.’

      He raised a hand and was gone.

      Mary was standing in the middle of the kitchen with the empty kettle in one hand and the tin mug she used for filling it in the other. ‘Boys, Elizabeth, was that Patrick Delargy’s car I saw outside? That hyderange has grown so high I can’t see a thing these days.’

      ‘It was indeed, Mary. He gave me a lift back, for he said it would rain. Wasn’t it nice of him?’

      ‘It was, it was that, but shure he’s a very nice man altogether.’

      She stood peering out of the door. ‘He’s a great one for books, like yourself,’ she said, as if the thought had floated in with the exhaust fumes of his departure.

      ‘We were talking about books. He said he’d been to college, but had to leave.’

      ‘Aye, he did, poor soul. Shure, it was a tragedy. First his father died, and then Walter was killed and their poor mother an invalid. They say she died of a broken heart. Poor lady, she was kindness itself.’

      As I started unpacking the shopping on the table, she went to the bucket of spring water and filled the kettle.

      ‘What happened to Walter?’

      ‘Ah, it was a fall. He was a great man for the hunting. The whole family were great for horses, but Walter was mad about them. Well, it was the Boxing Day meet and he had this new horse. They say Patrick advised him not to ride it with the ground so hard. Oh, that was a bad year, Elizabeth. I found a wee bird in the haggard frozen with cold and I put it in a box near the stove, but it died, poor thing.’

      She pulled back the rings of the stove and poked up the fire before she went on. ‘But Walter would ride the new horse and it threw him on the road, just below the house. They say he never moved, his neck was broken.’

      ‘But why did Patrick have to leave college?’ I asked after a few moments. ‘Was it because of his mother?’

      ‘’Twas partly that,’ Mary answered sadly. ‘Yes, ’twas partly that, but indeed she didn’t live long after Walter died. I suppose Patrick came home because there was no money for the girls. Patrick’s father was a lovely man, but he was no use with the land, or the shop, or the hotel. He’d inherited them, but he had no interest in