Chapter 18
Liam opened the passenger-side door to a dung-brown vehicle that vaguely resembled a Jeep, if the Jeep had been made of random car parts found at a roadside junkyard.
“Hang on,” he said, picking up a pair of mud-caked boots and flinging them from the seat into the back of the vehicle.
Next, he picked up a collection of wadded-up chip bags and tossed them into the back, along with a Styrofoam cup and two empty Coke cans.
He opened the glove box and rummaged around, bringing out a faded red bandana, and used it to dust off the seat, which was patched in multiple places with duct tape.
“Don’t want ya gettin’ hair all over your nice black pants,” he said, then gestured. “Please, take a seat.”
“This is quite an, um, car,” Maeve said, settling herself in. “Did you build it yourself?”
“You could say that,” he said, revving the engine and backing rapidly out of the gravel parking lot and onto the roadway. “My brother Cormac helped. He works at a salvage yard, you see. We built this as a lark, just to see if we could make it work. To our shock and amazement, it runs. Usually.”
As he’d pointed out earlier, the sun was indeed shining, and the day, which had started out chilly for Maeve’s taste, had warmed up considerably.
“I’ll show you the estate, shall I?”
He didn’t wait for a reply but made a sharp right turn onto an intersecting road.
“First stop, the home farm. It’s where most of the villagers lived back in the day. They didn’t own their land, of course; that was owned by the lord of the manor. But they lived and farmed there, some of them, right up until about twenty years ago.”
“Who owns that land now?” Maeve asked.
“It’s part of the estate, of course, so it belongs to the Irish Trust. They came in and restored a lot of the old places that had been abandoned and fallen into tatters over the years.”
“Why abandoned?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “You know anyone who wants to live in a hut with no electricity, no heat other than what you get from a fireplace, and no water except from a cistern in the kitchen? Also, no indoor plumbing.”
“Not really.”
“Yeah, neither did anyone else. Of course part of the problem is Ireland’s population is for shite, outside the big cities. Been that way for years.”
“That’s a shame,” Maeve said. “It’s such a beautiful place, just from what I’ve seen since we arrived.”
“Most beautiful place on earth,” Liam agreed. “But for most folks, it’s a bit of an acquired taste.”
He steered the Jeep past a sign pointing to TARRYMORE HOME FARM and drove around a sign sternly proclaiming NO ENTRY.
“Um, is this allowed?” Maeve asked.
He turned and flashed her a quick grin. “Not strictly speaking. But I’m on staff here, so to speak, and my cousin Maddie runs this operation, so I’m thinking she won’t have us arrested.”
The unpaved road climbed a steep hill, past a group of small outbuildings including a barn, and a pasture where five cows grazed placidly in the tall grass.
“I thought you said nobody lives here,” Maeve said. “Who tends to the cows?”
“Same ones who tend the sheep and the goats and the pigs and the chickens,” Liam said as he pulled the Jeep alongside a small one-story whitewashed cottage.
Smoke curled from the chimney, and pots of brightly blooming geraniums flanked a wooden doorway.
As they approached the nearest house a trio of chickens raced past, chased by a small pigtailed girl dressed in an old-fashioned homespun dress and pinafore.
“Whoa, there, Susannah,” Liam said, catching the child around the waist and swooping her up into the air.
“Put me down,” the girl protested, beating her fists against his chest. “My hens are on the loose again!”
“And how did that happen?” he asked, gently setting her back onto the ground.
“They’re just plain naughty,” the girl said, sticking out her lower lip. She ran off in pursuit of the fleeing fowl.
“You asked who takes care of things? My cousin Madelyn has the lofty title of director of operations, which means she’s the one who keeps the place running, along with a band of big-hearted volunteers.
Retired folk, mostly. Susannah, who you just met, is Maddie’s youngest. Six years old, and as you Americans say, a real pistol. ”
Maeve followed after him, walking slowly, taking in the little settlement. She could see four more similar whitewashed cottages assembled in a raggedy row, each separated by a small garden plot and animal pens.
The door of the nearest cottage opened, and a young woman poked her head out. “Liam,” she called. “What good luck! You’re just in time to help Gregory muck out the goat pen.”
She was an older version of her daughter, with straw-colored hair, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and the same wide smile, which she flashed now in Maeve’s direction.
“And you’ve brought help, I see.” She extended her hand to the visitor. “Hello. Madelyn O’Shea. And you are…?”
“An innocent tourist who is not about to be bushwacked by the likes of you,” Liam replied.
Maeve took Madelyn’s hand. “I’m Maeve Dunagin. I just did the tour of the distillery and your cousin offered to show me the home farm. My great-grandmother actually grew up in this area, probably in a farmhouse not too different from this one.”
“Come on inside then. We’ve only half an hour or so before we close up shop for the day.”
The interior of the cottage was no bigger than Maeve’s childhood bedroom.
The floor was brick, and the main room was dominated by a peat-burning fireplace.
The furniture consisted of a wooden table, three chairs, and a primitive settle covered with a homespun-covered cushion.
Pride of place in the living area was given over to a large walnut dresser where thick ironstone crockery and a few Blue Willow plates were displayed.
A plate in the center of the table held a loaf of rustic bread wrapped in a napkin and a slab of butter. “You just missed the butter-making demonstration,” Madelyn said. Liam tore off a hunk of the bread, slathered it with butter, and handed it to Maeve, who chewed and nodded appreciatively.
“You really make butter? From scratch?”
“Not me personally,” Madelyn said. “Ruthie, one of our volunteers, makes the butter from milk from our cows and bakes the bread right there in the fireplace. She’s gone home now.”
Maeve walked to the opposite side of the room where a linen curtain was partially hung across the doorway into the cottage’s single bedroom.
The bed was oak and low to the floor, and nearby was a pallet covered with a wool blanket.
Clothing hung from hooks on the wall and a large crucifix was prominently displayed on the wall above the bed.
“How many people used to live here?” Maeve asked.
“According to our research, the Egans, who were the last family to occupy this cottage, had four living children. I believe they moved out sometime in the late 1950s, when old Mrs. Egan passed away. Edwina, her name was.”
“Six people, living in this tiny space?” Maeve asked in disbelief.
“Not an easy life, but it was all they knew,” Madelyn said. “Some of the other cottages are larger and were updated, but this was the norm.”
“No indoor plumbing?”
“Not when the Egans lived here. And we didn’t want to add anything during the restoration, for the sake of authenticity.”
“Then where do you…”
She laughed. “There’s a decent loo out back, not that bad in a pinch, but usually I walk over to the visitor center, just up the hill a bit.”
The door was thrown open and Susannah burst inside with a chicken tucked under each arm. Her cheeks and pinafore were spattered with mud, and the pink ribbon fastening one of her braids had come undone.
“Mum! I caught Darla and Mabel, but Betty flew up in the bush and won’t come back down.”
“Well, she’ll have to just sleep up in that bush tonight then,” Madelyn said, gently taking the hens from her daughter. “Serves her right for being so naughty. Let’s put these other two girls back in the coop, and then it’s time to go home and get some dinner ready for your dad.”
“Thank you for the tour,” Maeve told her hostess. “It was really fascinating.”
“Glad to meet you,” Madelyn said. “Dunagin? Is that your family name? Liam and I grew up here, but I don’t think we know any Dunagins.”
“It was my mother’s family that were from here,” Maeve said. “She was a Sullivan, but her mother’s maiden name was Kathleen Rose Connor. According to , she immigrated to the US around 1926.”
“Kathleen Connor, did you say?” Madelyn and Liam exchanged a look.
“Yes,” Maeve said eagerly. “Do you know of the family?”
“There were a lot of Connors from these parts,” Liam said with a vague wave of one hand. “One on every corner, you might say.”
He pulled the Jeep up in front of the inn just as the sun was starting to set.
“Well now,” he said, turning to her with a mischievous smile.
“You’ve had a look at how the Anglo-Irish aristocracy got on at the grand estate, and on the other side of the coin, how the common folk lived back in the olden days.
But what are your plans for gettin’ out and about in the every day? ”
“My plans for tonight are a quick dinner, a nice hot bath, and an early bedtime,” Maeve said ruefully. “I’m afraid the jet lag has finally caught up with me.”
“You’ll not be leaving tomorrow, right?”
“No,” she said quickly. “My sister and I want to do a little family research. We’re here for a few more days.”
“That’s grand. Why don’t I come by tomorrow night and take you pub-crawling? You’ll need to hear some authentic Irish folk music, and I know just the place.”
Was he actually asking her out on a … date? Or just being exceptionally kind to a stranger in a strange land? Maeve was almost afraid to ask.
“Well, maybe I should see what Therese has planned…”
“Tell her you have plans,” Liam said. “I mean, if you’d like to go, of course.”
There was that damn smile again. The one that made the corners of his eyes almost disappear, and gave her an unaccustomed flood of what—butterflies?
She exhaled slowly. “Since you put it like that, okay, yes. I’d love to go pub-crawling and hear some Irish music.”
“Tomorrow, then. Seven o’clock, all right?”
She nodded and stepped out of the vehicle. He gave her a thumbs-up and pulled away in a swirl of gravel dust. Maeve walked slowly into the inn. “I have a date,” she whispered to herself as she opened the heavy glass door.
It had been nearly two years since her on-and-off-again relationship with Blake, the man she’d met at a William Faulkner symposium in Oxford, Mississippi, had permanently flickered off.
They’d burned up the roads between Savannah and Oxford for six months, but then he’d accepted a teaching position in Oregon and time and distance had ended things.
Maeve had buried her disappointment, first in work, then in taking care of Mary Helen during her illness, and romance had taken a back seat, again, to life.
But now, as she walked slowly up the stairs in a jet-lagged daze toward her room at the inn, she whispered to herself, “An honest-to-God date.”