YESTERDAY EVENING I TOOK myself down to the shoreline at Lissadell for a beachside walk-the first time in the weeks since the catastrophe that I have felt able to bear the sight of my stellagraph. Are the gloomy miasmas and vapours at last lifting; or, as I rather fear, am I growing accustomed, even comfortable, to darkness exterior and interior? There it floats still. Looking out upon it from the shore I was overcome by a colossal sense of disbelief that this fabulous engine should exist at all-that I should have any connection with it whatsoever, let alone that of creator and inspiring light. The sensation is that of long months of hallucination from which I have at last awakened into a grey and thankless world. Had I indeed misinterpreted a perfectly natural phenomenon? Was there, had there always been, a fundamental flaw in my calculations?

Reckonings cloud my horizon. Certainly, I can expect a letter from Blessington & Weir imminently. I still entertain increasingly vain hopes that the salvage from the stellagraph will prove sufficient for Craigdarragh not to have to be sold. Even more than the reckoning with Blessington & Weir, I dread my personal reckoning with Caroline. She will have no mercy. Alas, we have grown too far apart in these past years. Once I could have trusted her to stand by me. Now I can no longer be certain that she will not be howling with the rest of the dogs to lick up the blood of Ahab. She alone possesses the power to save me; the Barry fortune could buy a dozen Craigdarraghs. But I fear that even in these extremest of circumstances her uncle will not relent, should she even have the will to approach him.

And Emily? None of us will ever know the true circumstances of the vile ravagement that took place, but in part, I know myself to be responsible. In a sense, I am punished for my sins, for my inadequacies, for my willful dereliction of the duties and responsibilities of a father toward a daughter. I was not a father to her, and the consequences were dreadful. And now Craigdarragh itself is threatened because of that same arrogance and conceit. Ashes; ashes and cinders; that is all these past five years are to me now.

"Hello? Mary? Is that you? This is me. Hello, Mary. I can hear you clear as a chapel bell, can you hear me? Yes, a wonderful day it is altogether. No, no hurry, they'll be out for hours yet, both of them. I'm keeping rightly myself. And yourself? Oh now, I am sorry to hear that. Water from the washing well at Gortahurk. Five drops, and as much house dust as will cover a florin. Rub the paste well into the afflicted area. Every time, Mary. Miraculous powers, have the waters of Gortahurk. Five drops, that's right. As much as will cover a florin.

"Things? Well, Mary, not so good. Not so good at all. Well, far be it from me to gossip on the doings of me betters, but, well, things is in a terrible state of chassis. A terrible state of chassis indeed, and, in a sort of sense, I suppose I might be to blame for it all. Yes, of course I'll tell you all about it, Mary. It all began this morning when I collected the post from Mr. Conner the postman-such a nice gentleman, he is. Of late the Master's been most insistent that I separate all his letters from Mistress Caroline's and deliver them straight to his study. Well, I don't know how it happened, it must have been behind another thicker letter addressed to Mistress Caroline is all I can offer, but anyway, there I was, tidying away the breakfast crocks, and there she was, opening her mail with that Indian ivory letter opener of hers-never seen a woman receives as much post as the Mistress-when all of a sudden I hear the clatter of that letter opener of hers falling to the table and she's holding up this letter with a look on her face like she's learned she's going to be hung; whiter than the Lilliput Laundry advertisement, she was. Sat like that for two full minutes, like she was the one made of Indian ivory, then all of a sudden she lets out this terrible screech: 'Edward!'-the Master, you know-and she's up and out of the room with a look on her face I certainly don't want to see again this side of Judgement. Well, Mary, as you know, if something is troubling the Master and Mistress, Maire O'Carolan wants to know what it is. It was only the tiniest of peeks, but it was enough, Mary! I thought I'd been struck and turned to stone. Mary, the letter was from a firm of bankers in Dublin, saying that unless Dr. Edward Garret Desmond paid them-listen carefully now, Mary-the sum of twenty-two thousand pounds by the end of December, they would repossess the house and estate. What had the foolish man gone and done, Mary, but mortgaged ten generations of Desmonds to pay for that monstrosity down in the bay!

"A fight? I'll say there was a fight. Mary, the time they'd finished I reckoned I'd be sweeping up broken delft and wiping blood and hair off the wallpaper from now to Michaelmas. Well, I've been keeping my head down, Mary, out of the firing line, but the atmosphere is, well, shall we say, smouldering? The Barry millions? You mean you don't know the story? I'll tell you how much Caroline Desmond has to her name. Nothing. Not one brass farthing. After her father died, he willed control of the linen company to his brother and put all his children's money in trust, into stocks and shares and bonds and things like that that are money but aren't any real use. To release any of their inheritance, the Mistress would need the signature of her Uncle, and the old blackguard of a Presbyterian refuses to do that. Why? Because she married a Catholic. That old black-mouthed Orangeman won't speak to her, won't even sit in the same room as her, so the Master can kiss farewell and adieu to the Barry millions bailing him out.

"What's to happen? Well, one thing's for certain, it's no time for Miss Emily to be coming home. Oh yes, on the five o'clock train, Wednesday. Yes, dreadful. Poor child; I always feared for her, you know. I always feared that with those parents of hers she would come to some harm. I prayed for her every night. I even went on a solemn novena to Our Lady for her protection. Now, Mary, don't be saying things like that. Are you as wise as God? Well, then, keep your heathen opinions to yourself. I know that God always answers prayer. Still, it's no time for her to be coming home, expecting a baby and all. Hadn't you heard? That... that... animal, poor child, he left her with a baby. And all of the age of her, too. Evil times, indeed. You only have to look at the state of the country-those atheist Socialists running amok in Dublin, those heretic Protestant Unionists rampaging in Ulster. The likes of you and me should be pitying those poor souls who have no faith to give them moral guidance and strength.

"The house? Well, unless there's a miracle, and I'm hopeful, still praying, Mary, it'll all have to be sold. House, lands, everything. Well, Mary, I'm sure that whoever comes after, there'll still be need for a housekeeper, but all the same, it wouldn't do any harm to be keeping an ear to the ground, if you know what I mean.

"You know what I think? It's a curse. I do most certainly believe that. Someone, or something, is willing sorrow and misfortune on this household. There has not been one minute's good luck within these walls since the year turned. Bad luck-you can feel it, Mary, sometimes. Why, it's almost like a physical presence. You can feel it pressing down on you like an oppressive vapour. No, I'm quite serious; there is a heavy, dark atmosphere in this house. Everyone who comes notices it. Not that there've been too many of those-visitors, I mean.

"Oh: here, Mary, I'll have to go ... I can hear the master's car on the gravel. I hadn't thought he'd be so quick. In his current humour, I wouldn't want to be caught using the telephone. Yes, I will, surely, next free day I get. And good-bye to you, too, Mary."

Emily's Diary: October 12, 1913

I WAS GLAD, VERY glad, to be leaving the Fitzwilliam Square Clinic, the atmosphere in Dublin has grown sour and suspicious. On every side groups of men are taking names and arms and banners to march beneath: Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizens' Army, Fianna, Cumann na Mban, Sinn Fein, as well as the locked out workers. The streets are angry, the climate discontented. How far this autumn of disease is from impatient swallows flocking about Craigdarragh, woods full of the voice of the rooks. It makes me all the more eager to return. In the mornings the gardeners in the square sweep the paths and set fire to their little piles of leaves and the smell is enough to transport me, instantly: I am there. Blackthorn walking sticks in the hall stand; from the kitchen wafts of vinegar and pickling spice, baking pies and apples stewing with cloves; a particular golden light that shines into parts of the house it somehow never reaches in any other season; the hot stone jar down the bed and the equinoxial gales rattling the roof slates.

The sadness of the romantic imagination is to be ever disappointed that the reality never matches the imagining of it. Always in reality there are the shadows where the light will never reach, the wallpaper peeling by the skirting board, the hall stand missing a cherub and with a cracked tulip tile.

I have said I was glad to be leaving Dublin; I did not say I was glad to be home.

They did not even come to welcome me. Their only daughter, and they sent Mrs. O'Carolan in a trap with Paddy-Joe. Oh, yes, it was good to see Mrs. O'C and Paddy-Joe again, and their delight in seeing me was honestly transparent-Mrs. O'C could hardly speak a word; she must have wrung out an entire week's supply of handkerchiefs.

From my first glimpse of the familiar pillared facade, I could feel it. Craigdarragh had changed. It was more than the inevitable disappointment of romantic idealism; I felt that the entire spirit of the house had been changed. The autumn light no longer shone into those inaccessible places; it had been defeated by shadows. Oh, Mummy and Daddy greeted me lovingly enough, there on the steps. Mummy cried and Daddy harrumphed and harrahed into his beard though it was clear to all that he was on the verge of tears himself, but there was a tautness, a reserve between them, and especially toward me, as if I were a guest in a house full of secrets. I can best describe it as a darkness behind the eyes, a preoccupation with something that consumed all their energy in its concealment.

And in Craigdarragh the blackthorns leaned against the hall stand, the apple-cinnamon-bramble perfume of Mrs. O'Carolan's tarts seeped out of the kitchen into every corner and cranny, and the October sun through the cupola cast a rose of light on the stairs, but it felt infected. It felt tired and decaying, as if the autumn had entered and filled the rooms with its placid dying.

At supper tonight Mrs. O'C excelled herself; all my favourites, and I think it gave her more delight in the serving of them than I took in the devouring, but in spite of her best efforts, what should have been a joyous occasion was tense, taut, tiring. Whenever Mummy and Daddy asked me about the clinic and Dr. Orr and the general state of Dublin, it was evident that they had no real interest in my answers-they asked merely because it was polite to ask. Whenever I asked about what had been happening at home, they gave me very straight, very considered answers. When I said that they seemed a little distant, Mummy replied that so much had happened to me, so many hurtful and terrible things in so short a space of time, that it was almost as if I were a new Emily; that they knew only how to treat the old Emily, and that was no longer suitable for a woman in my ahem position.

I said that the new Emily was the old Emily, that I was more like shoots and leaves on an old tree than a whole new person. Daddy cleared his throat then, in that way of his when he is going to say something he does not want to have to say, and said that they had a lot of readjusting to do. My own mother and father treating me like a stranger at my own table.

Readjusting to what? I asked, and then I realised. They were ashamed of me. Ashamed. I was the final disgrace. By now it was all over the county-see her, Emily Desmond, pregnant, and not even an idea of the father, much less married. Shameless, shameless. What kind of people would let that happen to a child of theirs? what kind of parents?

Never mind that this child was forced upon me, never mind that I was violated, raped. Why were they afraid to say the word? All they could see was Dr. Edward Garret Desmond, the once-respected astronomer, on one side and Mrs. Caroline Desmond, the renowned poetess and Celtic scholar, on the other, and a big wobbling bulge in the middle.

I looked at them, at the expressions of mock concern on their faces. Suddenly I hated them so much, I wished them dead and damned on the very spot. I screamed something, I cannot remember what, sent dishes knives forks cruets and all Mrs. O'Carolan's good work flying, and rushed off to my room.

I can still remember the pale, staring faces. In my room I paced up and down, up and down. I wanted to be angry, I enjoyed being angry, I kept being angry because there was so much more of the anger I had wanted them to see. I found things to be angry at: stupid, inanimate things which took on stubborn wills and minds of their own-my left shoe, which stuck when I tried to kick it off, so I pulled and pulled and pulled until the laces snapped, then threw it against the wall, bringing down the lamp. I picked the lamp up and threw it down again. If it had to fall, it would fall when and where I chose it to fall, and it broke into two pieces.

I couldn't sleep. My head was bursting with that top-of-the-neck pain you get when you are too angry to be capable of expressing it. Hours passed. Realising that I would in all likelihood be awake to see the dawn, I decided to read something. I do not know what it was that made me choose that book: The Countryside Companion to the Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland. Summer and its wildflowers were long dead, and botany was never my strongest suit, yet I felt compelled to read the book. Propped up in bed, I opened it where the paper naturally fell and something slipped out onto the counterpane-something gossamer and moonlit and light as a breath.

The pair of faery's wings.

I picked them up delicately in my fingers, laid them on the palm of my hand, looked at them for a long time. Then I closed my hand and crushed them into dust.

This morning I did not want to see them. Whatever apology they offered, whatever apology they demanded, they would only have made me angry again. On the excuse of morning sickness, I rang for Mrs. O'Carolan to bring me breakfast in my room, which she did. At least I have one friend in Craigdarragh.

I went to the bathroom to wash, and as I did, I saw a thing contemptible in its familiarity in the light of a totally new revelation. At the end of the landing by the linen press was the small door that led to the old servants' staircase and their quarters in the attics. In all my living memory it has been locked shut; Mummy says that the floorboards are not safe. Mrs. O'Carolan keeps a small bed-parlour beside the potato store-the heat from the range is good for her rheumatism, she insists. The rooms under the eaves have not been used since before I was born. This morning, the door stood the tiniest, the very least crack ajar. How could I not explore?

Such treasure that had been buried in those servants' rooms and forgotten! The first room was filled with old cracked albums and crumbling boxes of photographs: soft, blurry daguerreotypes of upright moustached gentlemen in caps and bloomers proud beside their new bicycles; ladies who somehow looked cool and elegant in ruffled silks and taffeta on what must have been a stifling summer day; sportsmen in tweed jackets and knee boots leaning on staves; fox hounds too quick for the lens a blur about their feet; little boys in sailor suits, about to burst into tears; gents with hands thrust nonchalantly into pockets, lolling about the enclosure at the Sligo Races; tinker families posed self-consciously in their doorways, surly and unwashed looking; girls in first communion dresses standing shyly in front of Drumcliffe High Cross. Boating excursions, tennis parties, expeditions by jaunting car to local beauty spots, windswept family picnics in the dunes at Strandhill, weddings, baptisms, Easters, Christmases: all those times, all those moments, captured and frozen. I flicked through box after box of dusty, sepia-toned memories pressed like flowers in a Bible ... and I stopped. The photograph was of a girl of about thirteen, standing by the sundial in the sunken garden. On the face of the sundial was something I could not quite distinguish; it had moved just as the photograph had been taken and the plate was blurred, but it looked like a tiny person, no more than a foot high. The caption read: Caroly: Wood nymph: The Time Garden, August 1881.

In the next room watery light through the streaming skylight cast strange, rippling shadows over the bare floorboards. Everywhere were piled trunks, up to the ceiling in some places. When I opened them they turned out to be filled with old clothes.

But what clothes! In the first I opened were pure silk hunting stocks; white kid gloves still folded in their tissue wrappings; voluminous skirts split for sidesaddle riding; whips, crops, sticks, and over-the-knee hacking boots; hunting pinks and dubbined britches stiff with French chalk. One trunk held nothing but hats for every conceivable occasion from the most sober to the most preposterous: black Brussels lace funeral veils; bird of paradise concoctions bursting with fruit and feathers for the Fairy house Races; smart straw boaters, ribbons still crisp and clean. In another I found fringed parasols, painted Chinese fans, and mismatched pairs of pearl-studded opera gloves; in a third, party dresses and ball gowns, all as fresh and clean as if they had only last night been discarded after the Dublin season and laid in their trunks by Mrs. O'Carolan. But best of all, most beautiful of all, was what lay within the trunk directly beneath the skylight: a Chantilly silk wedding dress. I have never seen a dress so beautiful before, and I never shall again. When I am to be a bride, I shall be wed in such a dress of Chantilly taffeta and creme organdy. I lifted it out of its folds and held it against me; there was no mirror in the trunk room so I could only imagine how I looked. It felt made for me, hidden away in that trunk in the old servants' rooms all these years, waiting for my discovery. But I did not try it on. Somehow, the idea of it actually touching my flesh disturbed me.

It was the third room that I adored most of all. Pushing open the door, I saw a figure in the middle of the bare floor. It gave me quite a start before I realised it was only the reflection of my silly self in a full-length mirror. Even now, as I try to write down my impressions on entering it, I find that the only way to do justice to how the room revealed itself to me is to recall it as a series of photographs. Sepia: that was the first and overriding impression-of a creamy brown light that seemed to be made up of memories of things past. Stillness: motes of dust hung suspended in the rays of chestnut light; the rafters were festooned with bunches of flowers, set there to dry and desiccate in the still air, long forgotten. A strange perfume haunted the room, ubiquitous, unidentifiable, like the ashes of roses. The ochre light was broken into planes and shafts by the rafters and hanging posies of flowers. In one corner was a beekeeper's hat, veil, and smoke can. In the shadows where the sepia light did not reach, indistinct stepped pyramids were revealed by my inspection to be rolls of piled wallpaper. There in the shadows, the scent of sun-dried paper, soft and yellow and musty, was magical.

I do not recall how long I stood there as the room revealed itself to me; I was, for the most part, simply overwhelmed. That in the fifteen years I have spent exploring every nook and cranny of this house and grounds I should never have known of these hidden rooms before amazes me now, but then, I stood spellbound, setting the bunches of drying flowers swaying with a touch, tracing the patterns of the old wallpapers and friezes.

I would have stayed longer, but in the distance I could hear Mrs. O'C calling me to lunch. That time already! With reluctance I closed the door and took one last look back into the room of dried flowers. I saw something. I am certain I saw something. No trick of the light, I saw reflected in the mirror the Chantilly lace wedding dress, standing, as if before an altar, and where the body should have been, was sheaf upon sheaf of dried flowers.

October 26, 1913

Craigdarragh Drumcliffe County Sligo My Dear Dr. Chambers, I trust that this letter, coming as it does after so long a period since our paths last crossed, will not prove too great a surprise; I sincerely hope that it finds you in the best of health and fortune. Perhaps you recall the occasion of our last meeting-five years ago, at the testimonial dinner in the Glendalough House Hotel for our old beloved Headmaster, Dr. Ames. Certainly, the evening is still vivid in my memory. We were seated opposite each other and I recall enjoying a most stimulating conversation on the Home Rule question and the problem of Ulster, those most perennial of chestnuts which have, once again, reared their shaggy heads. I had meant, many times, to congratulate you on your appointment as successor to the post as Headmaster of Balrothery Endowed School. The oversight was most remiss of me; permit me to extend my sincerest best wishes for your past, and undoubted future, successes.

It is in your official capacity as Headmaster that, truth be told, I am writing to you. Please excuse my forwardness in so doing. Only the most extreme of circumstances, you must understand, would force me to such a pass. Alas, you cannot but be aware of the unfortunate lot that has befallen the Desmond household these past few months. The popular press doubtless penetrates even as shady a cloister as Balrothery Endowed, and, as a consequence, I am forced to put Craigdarragh and its lands onto the open market and content myself with a humbler estate in life. To this end, I am inquiring concerning the possibility of a teaching position at the school. I understand that you have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff of a suitable calibre in the disciplines of the sciences and mathematics-disciplines with which I am most intimately acquainted by dint of my former profession. I would consider it the greatest personal favour if you were to hold me in consideration should such a vacancy occur in the near future. You will need no assuring over my academic credentials, which are impeccable, and I know I can trust you to treat any slur the public domain may have cast upon my character with the contempt and disregard it so properly merits. I am sure that you will need no convincing that my services can be of enormous benefit to your establishment and, in concluding, may I express the fervent hope that you will look favourably upon my petition, and wish you the best of health, wealth, and happiness.

Yours Sincerely, Edward Garret Desmond, Ph.D.

Emily's Diary: November 5, 1913

I AM GETTING LAZY and lackadaisical. I have not been keeping you up-to-date, dear diary. It has been almost ten days since I last made an entry in your pages. I can make all manner of excuses-my moods, my feelings, this general lethargy which seems to have filled my bones with lead; this thing in my belly. Sometimes I feel I am nothing more than an elaborate fold of flesh wrapped protectingly around this tiny, inhuman thing. Sometimes I feel I am a great fat lazy bubble of warm oil, tautly stretched, ready to burst at the slightest tap. But the truth is that the honesty of your pages, the openness of your secret heart, frightens me. You reproach me; you demand that I confess.

So, if I must confess, I will confess. And what sin shall Emily confess this day? Sloth? Already confessed, set down in blue ink, and absolved into the receiving paper. Anger, perhaps? Yes, anger, diary.

They were so apologetic, so careful and chary lest the least little word would cause me to once again tip over the breakfast table and storm off to my room. Everything was explained to me in very slow, very deliberate, very simple words, as if I were a foreigner, or an idiot.

I can still see the smile on Mummy's full, moist lips; still hear the smug politeness in her voice as she said, "Emily, we are going to have to move from Craigdarragh. I know it won't be easy for any of us-we all love this house dearly-but with the money your father will receive from the sale of the lands, we'll be able to find a nice little place somewhere close to Dublin where we can all try to be a family once again, with the governess I promised for you so you can continue your education, and maybe even a nurse for the baby."

I imagined this nice little place, some desirable gentleman's town residence in Ballsbridge or Palmerstown-a red brick terrace with steps to the front door and servants in the basement and smoke pouring out of the chimneys with nothing to see from the window but other chimneys pouring out smoke, and rooftops, and telephone wires. A place where the wild spirit of the land has been chained up and tamed and smothered under respectability and properness and progress so long it has died and rotted without anyone ever noticing. Horrible! Horrible! I jumped up and knocked over my chair, screaming, "No! No! No! No! You can't sell Craigdarragh. You can't sell my home. You can't, You can't make me go to Dublin. I'll run away, just you see..." and I was halfway out of the room before the simultaneous replies came: "The notices have already been posted in the newspapers," and "Where do you think you could go in your condition, girl?"

Anger, diary, anger, and a growing, crushing grey cloud of misery. I suppose I had always considered it somewhere in my heart to be an inevitability that Craigdarragh would have to be sold. But being an inevitability does not make it a joy. Dying is the inevitable of inevitables, but that does not make it into a thing to be looked forward to. My only respite from the anger and the sense of despair growing day by day, hour by hour, was in the attic rooms-particularly that room I have named the Room of the Floating Rowers. There especially is a spirit of serenity and tranquility, a sense of beauty and wonder waiting to be discovered. I find myself drawn to that spirit, but also I fear it, for it is the spirit of the old magic, the magic of stone and sky and sea. Strange-that which repels me is also that which attracts me, perverse creature that I am.

I have discovered a splendid and totally idle amusement: with a pair of Mrs. O'Carolan's sewing scissors, I snip out the beautiful and complicated floral patterns on the rolls of old wallpaper and borders. Having cut out the twining vines and stems and climbing roses and ornate foliage and fantastical birds half living, half flame, I then move the shapes around on the floor, arranging and rearranging and mixing and mingling and combining them into funny little hybrid creatures: flowery chimeras; cloudy dragons; ugly, funny little basilisks made from tangled foliage; goblins and sprites woven from flourishes and curvets. It was the patterns themselves that suggested the pastime to me; they seemed to me somehow incomplete in themselves-parts of a greater pattern that had been separated and trapped, immobile, powerless, on the printed paper. All I provide is the connection between long-sundered parts.

Remarkable-when I am sitting on a cushion on the floor, busy with scissors and glue pot, the time just vanishes. Before I know it the latticed rectangle of pale autumn sunlight has moved from the left wall across the floor to the other wall and Mrs. O'Carolan is calling me for supper. Perhaps time is flowing faster up there in the attic. Perhaps the accumulated mass of the past gathered there is pulling time out of the future faster, like a weight on a line. Or perhaps, more mundanely, it is only that I am getting older every year and that it is the accumulated weight of time behind me that is unreeling the years with ever-increasing speed. What a horrible thing it must be to grow older and find that ever-decreasing number of years hurrying you faster, faster toward your grave, as if time were impatient to be rid of you.

I have deliberately hesitated in writing down the events of the Harvest Mass, not because it is the pinnacle (or should I say, rather, pit?) of this confession, but because what I saw there disturbed me so-disturbs me still.

I have always loved the great festivals of the Church. At those times, on those days, I feel the Church succeeds in bringing the spiritual realm and the worldly together. The flickering light of the Advent candles; the patient tolling of the iron bell, out across the winter fields, calling all the people to celebrate the death of the year and the birth of the Redeemer, the sombre pallid sorrow of the Paschal drama, pure, stripped of all colour and decoration, contrasted so wonderfully with the joyful celebration of resurrection and rebirth on Easter Day. When the Church reaches back to its ancient, elemental roots, heaven and earth seem closest. Most especially at the Harvest Mass, with the stacked sheathes of barley, the careful piles of apples and pears, the baskets of gooseberries and blackberries, the hampers laden with scrubbed carrots and parsnips, leeks the size of your arm, golden heads of onion and cauliflower, bushels of oats and rye; sacks and mounds of potatoes. Mountains of the noble potato are watched over by corn dollies and woven straw St. Brigid's Crosses. All celebrate the goodness, the holiness, of the earth we walk upon. For me it has always been the highlight of the Church Year. This year, as on every other Harvest morning, I was up with the lark getting myself ready. I dressed in my very finest, all earth colours, choosing russets and browns, tans and mustards and fir greens from my wardrobe. There wasn't much that would fit around my bump, but nevertheless, by ten thirty I was downstairs in the hall waiting for Daddy. When he came out of the drawing room, pulling on a pair of driving gauntlets, he was most surprised to see me.

"Emily," he said, "what are you doing?"

"I'm going with you to the Harvest Mass," I replied.

"My dear," he said, and from the words my dear, I knew nothing good was going to follow. "My dear, you can't come this year. I'm sorry, you'll have to stay behind."

I bit back the fury.

"Why can I not come?" I asked. Then out of the drawing room came Mummy, tying the ribbon on her Sunday hat in a bow beneath her chin, and the fury almost overwhelmed me, because Mummy never, never, goes to chapel. The one small battle she won over the Pope was that I would only go to Mass when and if I wanted to; she herself remained resolutely Protestant.

"Emily, darling," she said, "you're looking very prim this morning."

"She wants to go to the Harvest Mass," Daddy said, and Mummy looked at me as if I were a sick lamb or a lap dog and said, "But darling, dearest, you can't possibly go in your condition. Emily, darling, you don't know what you might catch, and, well, you wouldn't want to do anything that might hurt baby, would you? Just give it a miss this year, darling, all right? There'll be other years."

As if I were a lap dog, or a sick lamb. I was too furious to be able to do anything but stand there, dumb, stupid, while they got into the car and drove off. Mrs. O'Carolan waved shamefacedly and guiltily from the tip-up seat in the back. I watched them turn through the gates and down the road to Drumcliffe crossroads. Mummy's words whispered over and over and around and around in my head. But not the words she said; the words she meant. "Darling, dearest, we can't possibly let you be seen out in your condition. I mean, what would the tenants, the priest, the neighbours, my friends think, for heaven's sake, if they saw an unmarried pregnant girl of not even sixteen sitting as bold as brass in the very House of God?"

It was that decided me. I would not be shut away and hidden, a sordid object of sin and shame. One thought rang in my head as I stormed down the drive and along the road to the crossroads: I would be there, in the front pew, on my knees before my parents and the entire parish and God Himself. They were ashamed of me; they blamed me for what had happened; they held me responsible. A painful stitch in my belly wanted me to give up and stop, but it only stoked my fury all the more. I marched the mile and a half to the chapel in twenty minutes.

Father Halloran was about to start his homily (doubtless another tirade against the godless Protestant Unionists in the next county and the atheist socialists in Dublin); the people were rising from the prayer for the preacher as I entered. All I really remember is staring. Father Halloran was staring at me, and, seeing him staring, the parishioners turned around to see what had commanded his attention. My own father was blushing with embarrassment, rising from the pew to come to me, hurry me out. And myself; staring-not at the craning necks and turned heads, but at the centrepiece of the Harvest display. At the heart of the corn sheaves and plaited breads and St. Brigid's Crosses, there, her, all Chantilly silk and creme organdy, the bride's dress filled with dried flowers.

November 8, 1913

Advertisement in the Irish Times Carswell & Greer: Estate Agents For Sale (By private contract or auction) Craigdarragh House & Estate We are delighted to be offering for sale this superb property in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, comprising of a superior Georgian country residence set in two and one half acres of mature landscaped gardens, together with its 180-acre estate. Situated eight miles from the town of Sligo upon the south-facing slopes of Ben Bulben Mountain, adjacent to the local beauty spot of Bridestone Wood, the property offers all the charm of the rural life with the conveniences and comforts of urban sophistication, and would, in our considered opinion, make the perfect country seat for a discerning gentleman farmer-perhaps a retired military officer or colonial administrator.

Craigdarragh House dates from 1778 and was constructed in the Palladian style by Mr. James Gandon, later architect of the Dublin Custom House, and is a superlative example of his early work in the smaller country house metier.

The ground floor interior by John Adam comprises of a Classical entrance portico, a spacious hall with hung staircase, one of the few examples of its kind in the western counties; a main drawing room enjoying superb views across Sligo Bay; a dining room; two studies; a small library; a games room with billiards table; a morning room with attached conservatory; a kitchen with scullery and housekeeper's bed-sitting room; larder; and laundry room. The first floor interior, by the same architect, contains two master bedrooms at the front of the house, each commanding fine vistas of sea and mountain; three secondary, or guest, bedrooms; two bathrooms, a W. C., and a nursery. The spacious attic contains domestics' rooms, storage, and shelving, and may be reached by means of a concealed servants' staircase.

All is tastefully decorated, and much is period and in exquisite condition.

Exterior features include a stable block and stable yard with small hay loft, a disused gate lodge and two and one half acres of finely landscaped grounds, including rhododendron walk, sunken garden, Italian garden, walled kitchen garden, gazebo, and grass tennis court. Approximately fifty yards from the main house, close by the demesne-wall, is a small observatory.

The sale will also include the estate of Craigdarragh, comprising of 180 acres of farmland, fifty acres of which consist of the woodland known as Bridestone Wood, and the remainder being divided between three tenant farms of sixty, forty-five, and twenty-five acres respectively.

The tenancies are held under secured ninety-nine-year leases registered since the 1881 Act, and the rentable values set by the Fair Rent Court range from five guineas per acre per annum for the richer lowland leases to fifteen shillings per acre per year for the poorer hillside farm.

The tenant farmers also enjoy rights of foraging and coppicing in the estate woodlands and rights of communal grazing on the common hillside beyond the demesne wall. The prospective buyer will please note that these tenancies, though renegotiated under the 1903 Act, have been held by the same families for at least seventy-five years and that the farmers can be considered exceptional and trustworthy tenants.

The vendor has instructed us to advise any interested parties that house and estate are intended to be sold as an entity: offers for the estate alone will not be entertained, offers for the house and gardens only in the event that, no purchaser for the entire property being forthcoming, the tenant farmers exercise their option to purchase their tenancies. However, we are quite certain that there will be no shortage of parties with an interest in the property as an entirety.

Quite simply, a property of this quality must be personally inspected to properly appreciate the value for money it represents. Potential purchasers may arrange for personal tours of the property either through our Dublin office, our Sligo branch, or through the estate owner, Dr. Edward Garret Desmond; telephone Sligo 202. Without doubt, Craigdarragh is one of the finest and most desirable properties to have featured on the open market in recent years, and, together with the proven profitability of the tenant farms, consideration will only be given to offers in excess of 23,000.

Dr. Edward Garret Desmond's Personal Diary: November 16, 1913

LIKE A ROCK RISING from a troublous sea, this diary represents solidity and solace in these confusing times. To be able to write down, clearly, coherently, all one's clashing thoughts and feelings, to be able to order all one's confusions into disciplined ranks of blue copperplate-that is a great comfort in a bleak and chilly season. I take small comfort from the current closeness between Caroline and me. We both understand it is an artificial thing, a mutual defense against Emily's increasingly disturbing behaviour. Emily, Emily, what to do about Emily? Her terrible, sudden fits of fury have mercifully ended, only to be replaced with a withdrawn, sullen, silent depression. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate in writing down here that we are both terrified of our own daughter. She only comes down from her room to eat, two meals per day, surely not enough for one who is eating for two, and she is picky in the extreme in her menu. A meal she has enjoyed on numerous other occasions will be rejected, untouched, while she will devour with enthusiasm such things as parsnips and spinach, which she did not even grace with a sneer before. Our gentle (and not so gentle) coercions have failed. Even Mrs. O'Carolan's un-subtle bribery will not get her to unlock her door and communicate with us. If only we could make her understand that we only have her health and the baby's in consideration. It has come to such a pass that I am afraid that sometimes her prolonged absence suits us rather too well; denied her silent, sullen presence, it is all too much of a relief for Caroline and me to temporarily overlook her existence. So greatly does she overshadow our lives that, like the climate, like the view out of one's window, overfamiliarity has bred indifference.

Yet I suspect-no, I know-that she is considerably more active than she would have us believe. Why, in the dead of night, have I not on more than one occasion been awakened by the sound of footsteps in the old servants' quarters above that we have reopened for the inspection of prospective buyers? And have not many of the visitors I have conducted around the house been surprised to find little snippets and cuttings of what seems to be old wallpaper arranged so as to suggest spritelike nymphs and dryads? And in the strangest corners of the house: the bottom of the bath, the pelmet in the library, tucked into the drawing room chandelier-even behind the glass of the watercolour of Croagh Patrick from Clew Bay in the dining room.

More perplexing, and irritating, is to come down in the morning to a day's work to find that objects have been moved in the night: my books all rearranged on the shelves, my lacquered Japanese wastepaper basket upended over my globe of the heavens like a ludicrous fez; my electric reading lamp shut in a drawer and my fountain pen strewn across the carpet in its component parts. Caroline, too, has experienced these mysterious rearrangements-her workbooks went missing only to be discovered days later by Mrs. O'Carolan stacked in the broom closet, and Mrs. O'Carolan herself has complained of finding kitchen utensils in places she never left them, of batches of dough left overnight to rise rammed down the plug hole of the scullery sink, or salted with Vim. Most astounding of all was to discover my antique Indian brass orrery, normally resident in the observatory, rusting in the rain in the middle of the tennis court. The thing weighs nigh on three hundredweight, and takes all of Paddy-Joe's and Michael's strength, with the assistance of Dignan, to even budge it, let alone a four-months-pregnant fifteen-year-old! There is clearly something at work here that delights in confounding me. I do not know what it is. I cannot even begin to formulate a hypothesis-any conceptions I have are so outrageous as to be instantly dismissable. I can see that I will have to break, soon, and forcibly, if needs be, Emily's silence, and demand the truth from her.

December 2, 1913

Balrothery Endowed School Balrothery County Dublin My Dear Edward, It was with the greatest regret that I received the news of your misfortune. Please forgive me for not having responded with my sympathies sooner; however, I delayed writing for the most honest of motives-that of wishing to verify all the facts before being the bearer of good news. It is with the greatest delight to know that I am, in some small way, helping a fellow Old Boy out of difficulty that, on behalf of the Board of Governors, I am able to offer you the position of Master of Mathematics at Balrothery Endowed.