Wanda’s father featured too, having trouble with a member of the SS. He hit on the idea of having a Mass said, and that, as Wanda said, speaking of the SS man, ‘put an end to him!’
It was in fact fortunate that in my dream encounter with King George VI he had not accepted my invitation to lunch. We were now in dire straits for money and I would have looked pretty silly having to borrow from him, especially as English kings and queens never have a bean on them. There was no bank in Ballyvaughan, and my Coutts cheques and various credit cards were treated withextreme suspicion. Finally, Mr O’Lochlan offered to help, provided we could work out what the exchange rate was.
We had intended to seek out together a very esoteric remain known as St Colman Macduagh’s Hermitage which was hidden away at the foot of a mountain called Slieve Carron, but by the time we had negotiated this deal and arranged for a local farmer to give us a lift to Ennistymon the following morning, it was nearly midday. The weather was beautiful, so we decided to go to a place called New Quay on the south side of Galway Bay where we could buy oysters.
New Quay was nice. There was a pub, a house or two, the sheds of the oyster company, and a jetty which the tide was doing its best to sweep away as it came ripping into Aughinish Bay at a terrific rate, covering the dark, whale-like rocks and penetrating into other bays within, Corranroo and Cloosh. On the promontory beyond it was a Martello tower, built to discourage Napoleon from landing an army there. The sea and sky were bright blue and everything else bright green, except for the grey stone walls and buildings, and the rocks along the foreshore.
Three men were working outside one of the sheds, selecting oysters and putting them in sacks. At their destination they would sell for £1 apiece, one of them said. ‘Not for the likes of us,’ said another. But here Wanda bought a dozen for £3.50 and they threw in two more for luck. Even here, almost at the source, lobsters were £6.50 a pound. Leaving Wanda to ride back to Ballyvaughan, where she had an appointment with a fisherman who might be able to sell her a lobster on more advantageous terms, I set off on my bike for the Hermitage, which was some eight miles off on the east side of the Burren in a wilderness called Keelhilla approached by the first section of a hellish hill, six miles long.
The Hermitage was hidden from view in the hazel thickets at the foot of the cliffs of Slieve Carron, across about three quartersof a mile of limestone pavements full of parallel and apparently bottomless grykes, so I hid my bike in one of the thickets that bordered the road and set off on foot. Some of these grykes had had slender pillars of limestone inserted in them at intervals, as if to mark the way to the Hermitage, but after a bit they came to an abrupt end in the middle of one of the pavements.
I passed a small cairn and came to a dry-stone wall, beyond which was the wood. Like so many other old walls in the Burren, this one was a work of art. It had been built with an infinite expenditure of effort, using thin flakes of stone set vertically instead of being laid horizontally. I climbed over the wall and went into the hazel wood. It was a magical place. Everything in it – the boles and branches of the trees and the boulders among which they had forced themselves up – was covered in a thick growth of moss, dappled by the last of the sun. The only sounds were those of the wind sighing in the trees and of running water.
By absolute chance I had arrived at the Hermitage. It was in a clearing, among the trees and the boulders. There were the remains of a minute church with a white cross in front of it, and two stone platforms one above the other. The water I had heard came from a spring in the cliff and ran down into a sort of box-shaped stone cistern in a hollow. Above the church in the face of the cliff was a cave, big enough for two people to
It was in fact fortunate that in my dream encounter with King George VI he had not accepted my invitation to lunch. We were now in dire straits for money and I would have looked pretty silly having to borrow from him, especially as English kings and queens never have a bean on them. There was no bank in Ballyvaughan, and my Coutts cheques and various credit cards were treated withextreme suspicion. Finally, Mr O’Lochlan offered to help, provided we could work out what the exchange rate was.
We had intended to seek out together a very esoteric remain known as St Colman Macduagh’s Hermitage which was hidden away at the foot of a mountain called Slieve Carron, but by the time we had negotiated this deal and arranged for a local farmer to give us a lift to Ennistymon the following morning, it was nearly midday. The weather was beautiful, so we decided to go to a place called New Quay on the south side of Galway Bay where we could buy oysters.
New Quay was nice. There was a pub, a house or two, the sheds of the oyster company, and a jetty which the tide was doing its best to sweep away as it came ripping into Aughinish Bay at a terrific rate, covering the dark, whale-like rocks and penetrating into other bays within, Corranroo and Cloosh. On the promontory beyond it was a Martello tower, built to discourage Napoleon from landing an army there. The sea and sky were bright blue and everything else bright green, except for the grey stone walls and buildings, and the rocks along the foreshore.
Three men were working outside one of the sheds, selecting oysters and putting them in sacks. At their destination they would sell for £1 apiece, one of them said. ‘Not for the likes of us,’ said another. But here Wanda bought a dozen for £3.50 and they threw in two more for luck. Even here, almost at the source, lobsters were £6.50 a pound. Leaving Wanda to ride back to Ballyvaughan, where she had an appointment with a fisherman who might be able to sell her a lobster on more advantageous terms, I set off on my bike for the Hermitage, which was some eight miles off on the east side of the Burren in a wilderness called Keelhilla approached by the first section of a hellish hill, six miles long.
The Hermitage was hidden from view in the hazel thickets at the foot of the cliffs of Slieve Carron, across about three quartersof a mile of limestone pavements full of parallel and apparently bottomless grykes, so I hid my bike in one of the thickets that bordered the road and set off on foot. Some of these grykes had had slender pillars of limestone inserted in them at intervals, as if to mark the way to the Hermitage, but after a bit they came to an abrupt end in the middle of one of the pavements.
I passed a small cairn and came to a dry-stone wall, beyond which was the wood. Like so many other old walls in the Burren, this one was a work of art. It had been built with an infinite expenditure of effort, using thin flakes of stone set vertically instead of being laid horizontally. I climbed over the wall and went into the hazel wood. It was a magical place. Everything in it – the boles and branches of the trees and the boulders among which they had forced themselves up – was covered in a thick growth of moss, dappled by the last of the sun. The only sounds were those of the wind sighing in the trees and of running water.
By absolute chance I had arrived at the Hermitage. It was in a clearing, among the trees and the boulders. There were the remains of a minute church with a white cross in front of it, and two stone platforms one above the other. The water I had heard came from a spring in the cliff and ran down into a sort of box-shaped stone cistern in a hollow. Above the church in the face of the cliff was a cave, big enough for two people to
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