The Holy City Read Free Page A

passing of Wee Dimpie, God rest her soul — she died of cancer when I was in my late teens — I was subsequently informed by a solicitor that my tenancy of the house remained valid until I had attained the age of twenty-one. After which I would be expected to vacate the premises in order that ownership might succeed to the Thornton family. But, as it happened, poor old Henry went and passed away himself, not so very long after my mother in fact, and quite suddenly, precipitating some complicated wranglings in the family overthe will. So in the event, to my surprise but immense pleasure, no one ever did expel me from the Nook. And, as they say, between hopping and trotting, I was eventually informed that my tenancy was secure, provided I paid a nominal rent. With the result that, by the time adulthood had come around, lo and behold I was still lord of my little manor. King of my cottage and three acres of scrubland, with a dozen sprightly bronze chickens standing guard.
    As I say, chiefly as a result of Wee Dimpie’s tutelage, I by no means disgraced myself in the world of rustic authenticity. Indeed proved every bit as competent a yokel as any of them. And became well integrated, setting myself up in a dairy business. Purchasing a nice little tractor and trailer, now to be seen jangling about with my porringers and churns, dispensing my milk to the thirsty of the province.
    â€” There he goes, Cullymore’s very own Eggman! Young McCool there. How are they hanging? Will you leave me in a dozen of your turnips? And I think I’ll have a porringer of crame! they’d call out good-naturedly as I came phut-phutting by, in my sturdy Massey Ferguson 35 tractor and trailer.
    â€” There he goes! they’d cry. Cullymore’s finest Eggman! For the most part, I have to say, my neighbours tended to be genial fellows. Carrying on with their lives like their fathers and mothers before them.
    â€” Howya, Eggman! A grand day now! Sure it’s great to see it and thank the Lord for it! they would call good-naturedly after my tractor as I passed.
    But deep in my heart I knew that even if I wanted it to be the case I could never be like them. Knew instinctively from the furtive nocturnal visits I had received of old and from Dimpie’s veiled intimations and general behaviour towards me that I was ‘different’. And that part of me would always be Protestant. Which was why I continued to be fascinated by Thornton Manor. That once breathtaking eighteenth-century edifice, clad in ivy and set in beautiful woodland, which was now on its way to becoming a ruin. So many times I made it my business to go up there just to gaze fondly at its crumbling towers, its grim Gothic dourness already becoming history, like the hegemonie ascendancy world of Dr Henry Thornton, esteemed literary critic, landowner and espouser of the traditional ‘values of empire’.
    And there I’d stand, in absolute silence, mesmerised, staring through the high French windows. Thinking about ‘Protestants’, their traditions and their values. And how, once upon a time, if things had been different, I might have ended up being one of them. Now, however, being just an impotent witness, to a world now fast fading, if not already gone.
    So that was hardly going to happen, was it?
    I thought about it nearly all the time — not just occasionally, or maybe now and then. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to tell you the truth. About the mysterious, fragrant night-time lady who came with parcels of food for Dimpie, who arrived with Ethel Baird her companion like a strange figure from a book. But what a beautiful book,it seemed to me now: a storybook of dreams that made you feel good.
    And I would see myself there then, standing outside the high French windows of Thornton Manor, with Lady Thornton kind of blurred inside — as she sang ‘All People That on Earth Do Dwell’, turning the pages of the