An Irish Country Welcome Page 26

  Consuela chuckled. “Always you two tease each other and, Fingal, you make me laugh. When I asked you, what means ‘Bally’? You have so many towns that start with that name. Tell me again, please.”

  “‘Bally’ means a townland, a village and surrounding country, but it can also be a polite way of saying ‘bloody.’ That lets us use the names of four real places to say, ‘If you weren’t so Ballymena with your Ballymoney you could have a Ballycastle for your Ballyholme.’”

  Consuela’s laugh was rich and throaty. “Thank you.” She shook her head. “So, Fingal, what is the next treat?”

  “The Giant’s Causeway.”

  Kitty feigned amazement. “The Giant’s Causeway? Good Lord. I was sure you were going to say the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery.”

  “No,” he said, “although it does have the distinction of being the first-ever licensed distillery in the world. King James I issued one in 1601. I believe they make some very good whiskeys, but I’m not sure it would be of great interest to you ladies.”

  Kitty smiled. “You surprise me.” She took his hand. “Not about the date. Knowing you, you probably know the colour of ink on the paper. Thank you for being considerate. We don’t want to tire Consuela out.”

  “Oh, I am not tired. And I am very fit,” she said. “Our daughter Josélita is a very keen tennis player. Her heroine is Maria Bueno. Already at twelve, Josélita wants to win Grand Slams too. She beats me regularly. She will have to rely on her father to play her while I am away. She will probably beat José too.”

  All three stopped at the Rover 2000.

  “Thank you, Tia Kitty, thank you, Fingal. You are showing me this country which I have wanted to see since I was a little girl, when Tia Kitty first told me stories about her beautiful Emerald Isle.”

  * * *

  The narrow road ran through small fields, some enclosed by dry stone walls. Stubble left from the harvest, golden in the sun, kept company with the pastures of green that gave Ireland one of her nicknames.

  O’Reilly pointed to Consuela’s right. “That dark green island shaped like a fat wishbone is Rathlin. On a clear day like today you can see clouds of sea birds, eider ducks and gannets, over the island. Some of the same geologic formations that you’ll see here are there too. Way in the distance in the heat haze is the Mull of Kintyre at the mouth of the River Clyde in Scotland. The island of Ailsa Craig is thirty miles from here, in the middle of the river.” He changed to a lower gear to descend a series of hairpin bends built to enable cars to get down a high, steep, grass-covered escarpment. “The causeway was formed after a sheet of lava ran over the cliffs. In some places it’s ninety-two feet thick.”

  “Lava?” Consuela looked around. “Ireland has volcanoes?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Kitty. “Many. But they’re all extinct now. Not like your Mount Tiede in Tenerife.”

  “It is close to San Blas, Fingal. Papá remembered when Mount Tiede erupted. He was just a little boy then.”

  Kitty leaned forward from the backseat and laid a hand on Consuela’s shoulder. “Fingal and I were so sorry for your loss, but very pleased that your letter brought us together again three years ago.” The three were quiet for a long moment before O’Reilly spoke again.

  “These are like no lava formations you’ve ever seen, I’ll reckon. There are about forty thousand columns forming the causeway, making perfect stepping-stones. The same basalt formations are at Fingal’s Cave in the Scottish Hebrides. But these have to be seen to be believed. And that’s just what we’re going to do. Here we are.” He parked in a circular parking lot near some construction vehicles and a pile of granite stones.

  O’Reilly and his passengers got out.

  “There was a once-in-a-lifetime storm last year that washed away part of the causeway. It is being properly protected with these great granite blocks as rock armour.”

  “Please. Rock armour?”

  “They’re laid at the water’s edge to protect the causeway from further damage by the waves.”

  “I’ve heard the sea is never calm here,” said Kitty. “Just look at the line of white water smashing on the rocks below.” She pointed at the shoreline and then out to sea. “And that’s the North Atlantic. Waves that start forming off America or Greenland have a long way in which to build up their strength.”

  Consuela leaned back into the car and brought out her camera. “I must take some more pictures to show to Josélita and José.”

  A rough path led them to the way down to the causeway.

  Even from above, O’Reilly could hear the sound of the waves smashing on the peninsula and the rocky shores of the two convex beaches, one on either side of the causeway proper. The Atlantic, although blue in the shallower water inshore, gradually became darker the farther he looked. The smell of the ocean filled his nostrils, but no spray was thrown up to where he stood.

  He looked up to see a pair of large glossy black birds with wedge-shaped tails and single “finger” feathers at their wingtips soaring on the updraft from the escarpment. Ravens. If it were May, the waters would have been filled with fulmars, a tube-nosed seabird that returned to this area to breed each year. But now those pelagic birds would be living far out at sea.

  O’Reilly and the two women arrived at the edge of the lava columns.

  Consuela clapped her hands together and stopped dead. “Dios mio. I did not know what you mean by columns, Fingal, but now I see. Incréible.” She handed him her camera. “Please, will you take Kitty and me in the foreground?”

  O’Reilly did, and returned her camera. “They say the place was drawn to the public’s attention by the bishop of Derry, who visited here in 1692. This is the Little Causeway. The columns are interlocking and it’s easy to walk on them. From here to the end of this peninsula, where the causeway disappears into the ocean, is about half a mile, and we’ll take our time. It’s not difficult to twist an ankle.” As he looked down, he reckoned there were about thirty other people ahead, some going, some returning.

  “I’ll go first,” Kitty said. “You’ll be closer to Fingal, Consuela, and he’s a very good tour guide.”

  O’Reilly pointed down. “Do you see, Consuela, how most of the black basalt columns are six-sided? But not all on this stretch. They can range from four to eight. The next bit, the Middle Causeway, has the best stretch of interlocking hexagonal ones.”

  She nodded but did not turn her head because, like O’Reilly himself, she was concentrating on where she was stepping. As they picked their way along, the pattern underfoot took on the marvellous geometrical symmetry he had described.

  Gradually, the columns were stepping down ahead. Those to their left ended in a shallow plateau that made a beach where two little boys and a man, presumably their dad, were examining a lump of lava. It was a large hollow cylinder bent at ninety degrees in the middle with one side lying on the pillars and the other sticking vertically up. “Look left. There’s the Giant’s Boot.”

  Kitty’s voice came back. “Glad I don’t have to wash his socks.”

  O’Reilly chuckled. “We’re getting there. Kitty, start angling to your right. You can see tall columns that almost stretch in a row to the end of the peninsula fringing the right shore. I want Consuela to get a good look.”

  “Right.” Kitty set a diagonal course. As they passed a low, reddish, weathered column, O’Reilly said, “That’s a giant’s eye. They’re all over the place.”

  Now on the Grand Causeway, where the going, still downhill, was harder, no one spoke, and they steadily neared the forty-foot columns. O’Reilly made a quick calculation. He was more than six feet tall. They were nearly six and a half times his height, and to fully appreciate their dimensions he had to hold his head back and stare up.

  Kitty and Consuela were both gazing up.

  “Give me your camera.” O’Reilly captured the shot, the small people in the foreground giving perspective to the towering black columns. “Those are the pipes of the Giant’s Organ. I find it most i
mpressive. It ends about one hundred yards from the sea.” He sat on one column with his back leaning on an organ pipe and put his feet on the next column below. “I think a short rest might be in order.” From behind the pipes, he could hear men shouting, and the crash of rock on rock. The rock armouring was going on apace.

  And all the while the Atlantic combers noisily threatened the basalt shore with breaking and entering and filled the air with spray.

  Consuela, from where she sat between O’Reilly and Kitty, said, “You Irish are great storytellers. There must be many legends about your causeway.”

  “Indeed, there are,” said O’Reilly. “All concern a giant called Finn MacCool, who must have been a quarrellsome so-and-so. One has it he was engaged in a running battle with a Welsh giant. One day he ran out of stepping-stones. He was so enraged he pulled up a huge sod—”

  “Please. Sod?”

  “Grass with the earth beneath attached.”

  “I see.”

  “And hurled it at his enemy. It fell short into the sea. Today that sod is the Isle of Man, and it is said that the crater it left is Lough Neagh.”

  Consuela chuckled. “I like that story.”

  “As children we were taught that story, and the Lord knows how many generations before us have passed it on. If you draw the outline of the isle and hold it over a picture of the lough, the outline is not such a good fit.” Kitty laughed. “But some people still believe it.”

  “That’s true,” O’Reilly said, “and I’m with Mark Twain. ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’ And remember what I am going to tell you are legends going back to Celtic times. If you take them literally, I’ll be happy to introduce you both to the faeries at the bottom of our garden when we get home.”

  “I think Arthur Guinness chased them away years ago,” Kitty said.

  O’Reilly hesitated. Poor old Arthur. Och well.

  He said, “I’ve always liked that story of the lough and the island, but I’m fonder of one of the two concerning the Scottish giant Bennandonner—it means ‘mountain of thunder’—who challenged Finn to a fight. You remember I told you about there being basalt columns in Scotland as well. They’re on the island of Staffa, just across the sea. According to one legend, Finn hopped over to Scotland and beat Bennandonner. That’s easy enough to believe—assuming you accept giants. The other one is much more subtle and shows how Finn’s wife, Oonagh, outsmarted the Scotsman.”

  “Women usually do, dear old bear,” Kitty said with a smile and a stuck-out tongue tip for Fingal. “At least the ancient Irish took us women seriously. One of the reasons Pope Adrian IV, the only ever English pope, gave Ireland to the Norman Henry II in 1155 was to reform the Irish Catholic Church. Not only was His Holiness unhappy that Irish monks shaved their tonsures from side to side at the front instead of circular ones like all other monks but, perish the thought, the church in Ireland ordained women priests.”

  “This would never be allowed in my country.” Consuela looked out toward Scotland. “And still you have religious troubles to this day, I know,” she said. “We see reports on our television. Ireland is not alone. In Spain in this century, many Catalans have been trying to separate since 1922, and many Basques are constantly agitating for independence. It is so sad. José and I, we do not agree, we feel we are stronger together, but people,” she sighed, “they wish to have their own countries rather than work together.” She smiled at Fingal. “But I am having a lovely day and I do not want us to be sad. Please, Fingal, tell us the other story.”

  O’Reilly was silent for a moment, struck by the not-quite parallels between the two countries. Here in Ulster one side wanted to unite with the rest of Ireland. The other wanted to remain separate and stay united with the UK. “Right, well, it seems that Oonagh got word that Bennandonner was on his way across the causeway. Now make no mistake, Finn MacCool was no coward, but Oonagh hated bloodshed. She persuaded Finn to let her disguise him as a baby, put him in a cradle, and gave him a great stone to pretend to chew on.”

  Consuela’s eyes were sparkling. Laugh lines ran from the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  “Bennandonner arrives looking for Finn, and Oonagh tells him to lower his voice. He was going to disturb Finn’s baby.

  “‘Holy thundering Jas—’ sorry ladies—says the Scot to himself. ‘If MacCool has sired a child of that size, how big is this Finn himself? I’m not waiting to find out!’ And off he runs, ripping up the causeway as he goes so Finn can’t give chase.” He smiled at Consuela, who was clapping her hands in obvious delight.

  “Oh, that is a wonderful story,” she said. “I like how Oonagh stopped the fight.”

  “Aye,” Kitty said. “‘Blessèd are the peacemakers—’ We could use a few here in Ulster.”

  O’Reilly rose and changed the subject. “Come on, Consuela, I want us to get to the very end, then we’ll go back to the car. I’ll take us home by a shorter way and we’ll be at the Culloden in time for dinner. I’m going to have Scottish salmon.” He smacked his lips.

  “I like the sound of that, Fingal. Thank you.”

  Together they set off, and soon reached the end of the peninsula.

  “Now,” said O’Reilly, “you can tell your friends you’ve seen the famous Giant’s Causeway. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.”

  “Very much, and before we go…” She waved her hand so she could take a photo of Fingal with his arm round Kitty’s waist and the causeway in the background.

  O’Reilly laughed. “We’re glad you enjoyed it, and that makes you one up on the renowned Doctor Samuel Johnson. His chronicler, Boswell, quotes him as saying about the Causeway, ‘Worth seeing; but not worth going to see.’”

  “What?” Consuela came close to stamping her foot on a hexagonal stone. Her face flushed. She took a deep breath. “You and Kitty have shown me one of the world’s most beautiful coastal roads and a thing of beauty that you said, Fingal, ‘Would take the sight, no, the light from my eyes.’ It has. And as for your Doctor Johnson, to borrow a phrase I overheard yesterday when Kitty took me shopping in Belfast—” Her look was angelic but her words vitriol, “His head was full of hobby-horse shite.”

  O’Reilly laughed so hard he missed his next step up and grazed both palms in breaking his fall.

  27

  Make Haste Slowly

  O’Reilly ushered Kitty and Consuela into the hall of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. The building, erected between 1897 and ’99, was richly Edwardian inside and contained a treasure trove of yachting memorabilia. O’Reilly had always had a particular fascination with the tiller from Lord Cantelupe’s yacht Urania, which in 1890 had been wrecked on the rocky shore nearby. Although the crew had been saved, the gale had hurled the young viscount onto the rocks and his body had been found by a fisherman a month later. A reminder of the deadly power of nature.

  “This is very grand,” Consuela said, looking around the hall, half-panelled in dark oak, a large fireplace filling most of the left wall. “I am a little nervous about meeting a real marquis. In Spain a marqués is second only to a duque, and both must be addressed as ‘The Most Excellent.’ How shall I speak to your lord, please, Fingal?”

  O’Reilly smiled. “A duke outranks a marquis here too, but among friends Lord John MacNeill is very informal. No need for you to curtsey, but don’t offer to shake his hand. That is his prerogative. Call him ‘my lord’ or ‘sir’ unless he gives you permission not to.”

  “You’ll like him,” Kitty said. She smiled. “He’s a charming man and we’re all very fond of him.” Kitty moved closer to Consuela and lowered her voice. “He’s bringing Mrs. Ruth Carson, the mother of Sebastian, our trainee.”

  “Ah,” Consuela said. “A romance, perhaps?”

  “Ladies, you’re missing the architectural splendours of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club.” Fingal pointed to a staircase to their right. “Have a closer look at that, Consuela.”

  She moved over, scrutinized it, and returned. “The side panel is cover
ed in carved ships and flowers. And very beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it?” He led them through the lounge, where more half-panelled walls, their upper sections decorated with photographs of famous yachts and yachtsmen, rose to a white embossed ceiling. Members and their guests stood at the bar or sat at tables. The hum of conversation was pleasantly low, the tobacco smoke minimal, and its smell mingled with that of old seasoned leather.

  Now in the dining room, O’Reilly excused himself while Kitty and Consuela carried on to where the marquis was standing, waiting to greet them at a window table. O’Reilly wanted to stop and exchange pleasantries with a friend and colleague. “How are you, Jamesie? Haven’t seen you for a while. You’re well?” Doctor Jamsie Bowman, who practiced in Bangor, was one of a four-doctor syndicate who owned the Long Island on Strangford Lough.

  “Well? Och, aye, and it has been a while. I think last year on the island?”

  “In October.”

  “Would you like to come down for a shoot someday this season?”

  “Thank you, but no. I’ve hung up my gun.”

  “Have you now. Good for you. I’m thinking about packing it up too.” He grimaced. “Too bloody cold down there at four A.M. when you get to our age.”

  O’Reilly laughed. “Maybe you and your missus will come over to Ballybucklebo some evening?”

  “Love to.”

  “I’ll be in touch, but I’d better join my party now.” O’Reilly walked across the dining room where wooden tables sparkling with silver and crystal on white napery, and flanked by plain hard-backed, leather-cushioned chairs, were arranged in parallel rows. Not many were taken, and the reason was obvious to anyone looking out the window. People tended to stay at home on such a miserable day.

  As he approached their table, set at right angles to and abutting the sill of a wide window, the wind-driven squalls rattled the sashes and rain ran down the glass.

  John had seated the party with Consuela and Kitty opposite each other and closest to the view. Ruth Carson sat beside Consuela. John MacNeill stood at the head of the table and inclined his head to the vacant seat between him and Kitty.