such an arrangement had never been an option for Willis as the three Coolowen sisters, Honor, Eleanor and Martha, were almost twenty years his senior. Honor, the eldest, married a British army captain and, when the couple had a daughter, it was assumed that – with time and a little more effort – they would later produce a son: the son who would succeed to Coolowen. But ‘there can be many a slip twixt cup and lip’, and Captain Dick’s death at the Somme in 1916 was just such a slip, so that Eileen, his 10-year-old daughter, was left as the solitary hope for a future generation of Sales. To compound the calamity, Eileen eloped at the age of eighteen and – becoming a Catholic in the process – married an Irish navvy whom she had met on the boat to Liverpool. Honor, feeling disgraced, cut off all contact with her daughter and ignored the birth of her grandson nine months after the elopement. When her son-in-law, Liam, met his death in an accident two years thereafter, Honor made it known that she regarded the tragedy as ‘just retribution’ for Eileen’s waywardness and iniquity. As to her grandson, Fergal, she never met him.
Meanwhile the other sisters, Eileen’s aunts Eleanor and Martha, embarked upon the familiar voyage that was a life of permanent spinsterhood. ‘They never married’ is what people used to say of Eleanor and Martha, as though it had been their choice entirely. Their father, in making his will, had bequeathed Coolowen to Eleanor but Martha continued to live there. It was Eleanor who always took charge and Martha – who insisted that she was always in pain and ‘never strong’ – always gave way; and that was the pattern of their existence, an existence in which companionship and affection was constantly challenged by aggravation and discord. Their celibate state was unsatisfactory – and a source of disappointment – to both of them; but, more to the point, it meant that, as sure as leaves fall from a tree, they would be the last of the Sales of Coolowen.
When Honor died unexpectedly, in the summer before war broke out in 1939, it came as a great shock to her two sisters. They had thought of Honor, as they thought of themselves, as young, and her sudden death brought a discordant note to the pleasant melody that had for long been life at Coolowen. The outbreak of war in Europe, and the consequent privations in Ireland, as well as the loss of Honor, made Eleanor and Martha fearful for the future. Although they did not voice it much to each other, they felt – for the first time in their lives – vulnerable. They recalled Honor’s persistent urgings that they must think of what was to become of Coolowen and their resulting irritation when she, no more than they, could not come up with a plan; and, while they had been content to drop the subject then, they felt the need to take it up again after her death. But no matter how often they discussed it, a solution always eluded them.
It was Martha who, without mentioning it to Eleanor, wrote to Eileen a few months after Honor died.
‘Your Aunt Eleanor does not know that I am writing this…’ her letter began and then she said how much they missed Eileen and having news ‘about her little boy who, I suppose, must be fourteen by now’. She mentioned how they had always tried to get Honor to put the rift behind her and make contact with Eileen but that Honor never would. In the letter, Martha suggested that Eileen should write to them – ‘without mentioning this letter’ – as she knew that Aunt Eleanor would be open to reconciliation if the approach came from Eileen herself. She hoped that Eileen did not feel angry ‘as she had every right to be’ at the family’s treatment of her and that ‘the means might be found for her and her son, Fergal, to be made welcome at Coolowen’.
When Eileen’s letter arrived a few weeks later, it was Eleanor who opened it.
‘It’s from Eileen, of all people,’ she said when she took the letter out of the envelope. ‘I wonder what she has to say for herself.’
The letter was very friendly with hardly any reference to the years of estrangement between Eileen and the family. She hoped the sisters were well and that with all the shortages – ‘I know you have rationing in Ireland too although I suppose it’s easier being on a farm’ – times were not too difficult for them.
‘Well,’ said Eleanor as she took off her glasses, ‘it’s friendly enough. What do you think she means by writing to us?’
Martha knew that, underneath, Eleanor was very pleased to get the letter. She also knew that, if she herself expressed too much enthusiasm, Eleanor would not respond to it or pursue the possibility of a reconciliation. Over the next few weeks they talked the letter over.
‘Honor made her last years very miserable by taking the attitude she did,’ Eleanor would remark to Martha. ‘It’s what killed her in the end.’
‘God never intended that a mother would cut a child out of her life the way Honor cut out Eileen,’ said Martha. ‘And no amount of religion could be sufficient excuse.’
‘It wasn’t just that Liam “dug with the wrong foot”,’ said Eleanor, ‘it was the insult, as Honor saw it, of Eileen having to become a Catholic when she married him not to mention the fact that the little boy had to be brought up as a Catholic too. She resented being dictated to by the Catholic Church and she wasn’t alone in that.’
‘No,’ said Martha. ‘Although, if anything, Honor didn’t give a fig about religion. After she married Dick and went to live in England, the Catholic–Protestant thing meant nothing at all to her. Do you remember how she used to chide us by telling us how bigoted we all were in Ireland?’
‘Do I, indeed?’ said Eleanor. ‘She did mind, though, that Liam was only a labourer and “no class”, as she used to put it, and she was mortified that Eileen had to marry him, as it were. Said she would never be able to live it down.’
‘And I suppose, in a way, she never did,’ said Martha.
Eventually Eleanor replied to Eileen. She invited her to come over and stay at Coolowen, bringing Fergal with her.
‘It’s an odd sort of name to have given the boy,’ she remarked to Martha, ‘I suppose it’s something Irish.’
‘I think it’s a lovely name,’ said Martha.
Although travel between Ireland and England had already become restricted, Eileen and Fergal came to Coolowen during the Christmas holidays that year and, as the visit was a success, they came again for longer in the summer. The sisters were delighted with Eileen, who seemed to harbour no resentment that she had for so many years been banished. They came to see her almost as their own daughter and they were enchanted by the 14-year-old Fergal.
‘A proper little gentleman,’ Eleanor said to Martha. ‘Honor did the right thing in providing for his education. Ampleforth is a very good school, I’ve always heard that. It’s already given him a lot of polish and he has beautiful manners.’
‘Very, very handsome too,’ said Martha.
She looked straight across at Eleanor.
‘And he didn’t get that from our side of the family,’ she said.
Within a year or so, Eleanor had decided – and Martha had given her wholehearted approval – that they should make Fergal their heir. And, the sooner the better, as far as they were concerned. Eileen had no objection to the plan. Having been brought up in England, she had never known Ireland but in the period since the reconciliation, she had grown to love Coolowen and she was very fond of her aunts. Before the war she had had a good job as matron in a school near Birmingham and now she did what she called ‘war work’ without elaborating as to what that work actually was. She could not leave England but was happy that her son would make his life in Ireland.
But if the general sense of satisfaction which accompanied the sisters’ decision, Eileen’s consent, and Fergal’s obliging willingness seemed like the arrival of spring after the cold winter that was the sisters’ years of worry, there lingered an annoying wind which blighted the promise of early growth. This had hardly been referred to in all the sisters’ deliberations even though it was uppermost in the minds of both. The decision that Fergal should one day inherit Coolowen had been relatively simple. He was, after all, their great nephew, their own flesh and blood, and – although slightly indirect – their only descendant. Much more difficult to accommodate was the fact