Wedded To The Land

“What a battle my father and grandfather had to win the good in this land.”

His father stopped speaking and looked out from where they stood on the elevated turfed mound of Dun Beara Castle. Before them the land swept down to the blue of Bantry Bay. Thick hedgerows bordered lush green fields filled with grazing black cattle.

Ciaran shifted uneasily. He had heard this story before, how both his father and grandfather had worked and saved to get this land and this tower house into good shape.

Yes, tower house. There it stood, three stories high; the square stone tower built by the Normans on an ancient site of the O’Sullivans. Some called it Dun Beara Castle after the old Celtic dun but that was, in a way, to give it airs for it was more of a tower. However when the Ordnance Survey man asked the name and they told him, he simplified it and called it Castle Beara, and that was how it was marked on the map now.

 The Normans had thrown the old clan chief from the battlements during one rebellion and starved another, the young chief, Rory Og, to death in the dungeon. When Norman power waned the McCarthys took it over, but the O’Sullivans attacked and reclaimed it. Somehow it escaped the attention of Cromwellian troops, perhaps because Donal O’Sullivan was abroad in Spain. For supporting the Jacobite cause it was forfeit but later the O’Sullivans got it back. Much later, in 1820, the then chief lost it through gambling to the MacSweeneys.

 But Brendan O’Sullivan, Ciaran’s grandfather, won it back in a card game 100 years later.

 This time it was his wife who preserved the place. By keeping a lid on her husband’s gambling, Castle Beara was never that way put at risk again, and, she saw to it that it was prudently run. Now it was in the hands of Brendan’s grandson Dermot O’Sullivan.

The castle wore a patina, its stonework showing the wear of time. It had been scaled, partly burnt, attacked by artillery, occupied by Jacobites, and later, in 1922, by the Free State army, and all the while it had been scoured by the salt winds and rain of West Cork. Dermot loved the place dearly and had devoted himself to restoring it.

 Now, he was 52, a big man, a working farmer still, who spent his days on the tractor or working with cattle. He had a shock of tousled black hair and light brown eyes set in a longish noble face, the complexion dark. Some say it was the Spanish blood of his great great grandmother Maria Isabella that lent him his darkness of skin, prominent nose and a quick temper. His nose had been broken in a hurly match and this had flattened it a little, only serving to heighten his slightly piratical look.

In contrast, his wife Nuala was slim and blond with blue eyes set in a round face. Good bone structure gave her a delicate Celtic beauty. She too, had loved Dun Beara and, once the children had grown up and gone off to pursue their own interests, had used it to pursue her passion for horses. Sean, her youngest son, had recently returned, a temporary victim of the Irish credit crunch. His job at Dell computers in Limerick had vanished as the company took the factory overseas. But a different cloud hung over Castle Beara today.  Nuala had recently left Dermot for Tomas Crowley, a local Pharmacist and fellow horse enthusiast, and now the “D” word was being spoken.

 Father and son continued to look out over the fields below. His father turned to him.

  “There’s only one way out of this,” he said. I must pass over the land to you now Ciaran, not in twenty years time but now, so it will  be kept intact.”

   “Surely mother would not want the land?” Asked Ciaran incredulously.

   “She would, and if she hasn’t thought of it her divorce lawyer will. Think of it. Half would be her share.

   Oh the lovely land, and the value of the tower, split and divided.” His father’s eyes were moist.

   Ciaran looked out once more at the fields. What did he feel?

 His parents had been rowing constantly recently, so his brother Sean said. Living away from home in Waterford where his company was based, Ciaran had noticed an

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: alastair macleod
Bildmaterialien: alastair macleod ;"woman and horse", purchased from Dreamstime royalty free photos
Lektorat: alastair macleod and oyster catcher
Übersetzung: cover typeset in goodfish
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 14.12.2012
ISBN: 978-3-7309-0177-9

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Widmung:
"for the people of Ireland the land has an emotional draw, far surpassing that felt by the inhabitants of other countries"