The Red And The Green Read Free

Drumm, was, like her husband, Anglo-Irish; but whereas Andrew’s father had spent most of his childhood in Ireland, Hilda and her younger brother Barnabas had been brought up in London. Andrew was vaguely aware that his mother and his uncle had in some way not got on with their parents, but he had never troubled to diagnose what was wrong, nor indeed been in a position to, since his grandparents both died when he was a small child. His maternal grandfather had been a civil servant of small means, but well known in his circle as a gay social man and a party-giver. He was also by way of being a famous practical joker. It may have been that these antics offended Hilda’s sense of dignity, or it may more simply have been that she compared the London menage unfavourably with the bigger, grander and altogether more ceremonious houses of her Irish relations. Andrew recalled from childhood the tone of slightly querulous envy with which she spoke of these establishments: a sentiment not shared by his father, who, although he retained a strong nervous interest in his family there, and especially in his half-sister Millie, seemed always thankful to have escaped from Ireland.
    The purchase therefore, just completed, of a house in Ireland no doubt represented for Hilda the fruition of a very long-term intention; and, especially since her head was turned by the extreme cheapness of Irish properties, it was with difficulty that Andrew had persuaded her not to acquire one of several available castles, each one damper and mouldier than the last though undeniably inexpensive, and had coaxed her at last into buying a pretty and reasonably sized house in Dalkey. His uncle Barnabas, for some long time now settled in Ireland, had been of little assistance. But as Hilda often said, not much could now be expected of Barney. Barnabas, who had figured as notable in Andrew’s childhood because he was a crack shot rather than because he was a promising mediaeval scholar, had latterly, it was generally agreed, gone to the dogs. Barnabas too had felt the urge, as Hilda herself put it, ‘to escape from the parents’, though Andrew could not understand what in this case was felt as menacing. His uncle was the reverse of snobbish. But he too had evidently felt some imperative need to return to Ireland, had married into another branch of the family there, and, to Hilda’s and indeed to Andrew’s intense horror, had become a Roman Catholic. He was even, so Hilda would sometimes report in a whisper, said to be writing a history of the Irish saints, an activity which his sister found for some reason highly improper. It was in addition said of him that he had at one time wanted to become a priest, but Hilda would never publicly countenance this rumour. The fact that Uncle Barnabas had also apparently taken to drink was almost welcomed as a more normal manifestation of black sheepishness.
    That some of the family were converts was something which Hilda felt as a continual affront to herself. It caused her real pain, and she spoke about it as little as possible, even to the point of keeping it dark. She had been deeply wounded by her brother’s defection, for although her conception of family ties in general struck Andrew as rather worldly, she was, or had been, extremely fond of Uncle Barnabas. ‘The family’ was a great subject with Hilda, and Andrew had become a little reluctantly interested in the matter himself, especially as he somehow found it necessary always to explain that Frances was a distant relation. The situation was complicated. ‘We Anglo-Irish families are so complex,’ Hilda used often to exclaim with a kind of pride, as if complexity in families were a rare privilege. ‘We’re practically incestuous,’ his Aunt Millicent had once added. ‘What does that mean?’ the child Andrew had asked, but no one had enlightened him. He sometimes felt now that ‘the family’ had indeed