in a shrubbery of towering rhododendrons, continuing through a gate that neither my father nor I ever opened, choosing instead to climb over it. Cows grazed in the sloping pasture beyond, and at the top of this there was a spot from which the mill and the house could both be seen, and the distant Haunt Hill, so called because of its haunting by my great-grandmother. We descended steeply then, through a birch wood and by the edge of a field that was ploughed in March and thick with growth by June, a mass of corn in August. Before we reached the mill my father said:
‘You’ll enjoy it, you know. You know you’ll enjoy it, Willie.’
He spoke of my going away to the school he’d been at himself, in the Dublin mountains. He worried sometimes in case Father Kilgarriff was not preparing me well enough, which was why he had wanted to send me to a preparatory school.
‘You’ll play rugby, Willie, and cricket maybe. You’d never find games like that in Lough.’
My father laughed, amused at the sophistication of cricketers in our village. I had never seen the games he spoke of played, but on our walks to and from the mill the rules of both had been explained to me and I had pretended to understand.
‘The teaching’s famous there, Willie. Pakenham-Moore became a circuit judge, you know.’
I nodded, endeavouring to display enthusiasm. He had also told me about a game called cock-fighting, a boy perched on another boy’s shoulders and smacking with his fists at a third boy, similarly mounted. There was fagging, and the tradition of flicking pats of butter on to the wooden ceiling of the dining hall. Prefects could beat you with a cane.
We reached the mill and I accompanied my father to his office, where Mr Derenzy was copying figures into a ledger. A fire was blazing in the grate, its coal recently renewed, the hearthTswept. Mr Derenzy brought sandwiches every day and ate them at his desk during the lunchtime break. Afterwards, if the weather was to his liking, he went for a walk and was often to be seen staring down into the water of the leat, a man devoted to Kilneagh Mill and to my father—and in a different kind of way to Aunt Pansy. Red hair fluffed into a halo about Mr Derenzy’s skull-like head and his blue serge suit shone here and there, polished where his bones protruded. Clipped to the top pocket of this suit was a row of pens and pencils, their neat presence a reflection of his pernickety nature. He disliked rain and heatwaves and warned Aunt Pansy against drinking from a cup with a crack in it. He carried a supply of snuff with him at all times, in a tin that had originally contained catarrh pastilles: Potter’s, the Remedy it said, red letters on a blue ground.
Unlike the other men at the mill, Mr Derenzy was a Protestant, which allowed him to have pretensions in the direction of my aunt. But considering himself socially inferior, he had never thought it proper to propose marriage. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, man,’ my father used to urge him, ‘say the word to her and have done with it.’ But Mr Derenzy would look away in excessive embarrassment. Every Sunday afternoon he arrived at the orchard wing to take Aunt Pansy for a walk and afterwards returned to Sweeney’s public house in Lough, where he lodged. According to Johnny Lacy, who appeared to know everything that went on in Sweeney’s, he spent Sunday evening drinking cups of weak tea and worriedly dwelling upon his presumption.
‘I’m getting the February overheads in, Mr Quinton,’ he said now. ‘Afternoon to you, Willie.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Derenzy.’
‘Liver and tapioca pudding,’ my father reported. ‘Were Mrs Sweeney’s sandwiches up to scratch?’
‘Oh, never better, Mr Quinton.’
I knew that one day I would inherit this mill. I liked the thought of that, of going to work there, of learning what my father had had to learn about grain and the machinery that ground it. I liked the mill itself, its grey stone softened
‘You’ll enjoy it, you know. You know you’ll enjoy it, Willie.’
He spoke of my going away to the school he’d been at himself, in the Dublin mountains. He worried sometimes in case Father Kilgarriff was not preparing me well enough, which was why he had wanted to send me to a preparatory school.
‘You’ll play rugby, Willie, and cricket maybe. You’d never find games like that in Lough.’
My father laughed, amused at the sophistication of cricketers in our village. I had never seen the games he spoke of played, but on our walks to and from the mill the rules of both had been explained to me and I had pretended to understand.
‘The teaching’s famous there, Willie. Pakenham-Moore became a circuit judge, you know.’
I nodded, endeavouring to display enthusiasm. He had also told me about a game called cock-fighting, a boy perched on another boy’s shoulders and smacking with his fists at a third boy, similarly mounted. There was fagging, and the tradition of flicking pats of butter on to the wooden ceiling of the dining hall. Prefects could beat you with a cane.
We reached the mill and I accompanied my father to his office, where Mr Derenzy was copying figures into a ledger. A fire was blazing in the grate, its coal recently renewed, the hearthTswept. Mr Derenzy brought sandwiches every day and ate them at his desk during the lunchtime break. Afterwards, if the weather was to his liking, he went for a walk and was often to be seen staring down into the water of the leat, a man devoted to Kilneagh Mill and to my father—and in a different kind of way to Aunt Pansy. Red hair fluffed into a halo about Mr Derenzy’s skull-like head and his blue serge suit shone here and there, polished where his bones protruded. Clipped to the top pocket of this suit was a row of pens and pencils, their neat presence a reflection of his pernickety nature. He disliked rain and heatwaves and warned Aunt Pansy against drinking from a cup with a crack in it. He carried a supply of snuff with him at all times, in a tin that had originally contained catarrh pastilles: Potter’s, the Remedy it said, red letters on a blue ground.
Unlike the other men at the mill, Mr Derenzy was a Protestant, which allowed him to have pretensions in the direction of my aunt. But considering himself socially inferior, he had never thought it proper to propose marriage. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, man,’ my father used to urge him, ‘say the word to her and have done with it.’ But Mr Derenzy would look away in excessive embarrassment. Every Sunday afternoon he arrived at the orchard wing to take Aunt Pansy for a walk and afterwards returned to Sweeney’s public house in Lough, where he lodged. According to Johnny Lacy, who appeared to know everything that went on in Sweeney’s, he spent Sunday evening drinking cups of weak tea and worriedly dwelling upon his presumption.
‘I’m getting the February overheads in, Mr Quinton,’ he said now. ‘Afternoon to you, Willie.’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Derenzy.’
‘Liver and tapioca pudding,’ my father reported. ‘Were Mrs Sweeney’s sandwiches up to scratch?’
‘Oh, never better, Mr Quinton.’
I knew that one day I would inherit this mill. I liked the thought of that, of going to work there, of learning what my father had had to learn about grain and the machinery that ground it. I liked the mill itself, its grey stone softened
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