Near the crisp monolithic Garda Station in Donnybrook, the dog walkers with their masked faces waited patiently for their dogs to do a nostril waltz. The awkwardness of having to interact with another dog owner seemed beyond each of them as they focused their eyes firmly on their own dog, waiting for the waltz to end. A step back and turn, and the owners progressed on their walks, caught in their own thoughts of their own lives. One of the walkers and their dogs passed the arched entrance to the graveyard further up the street, the location of an old church by Saint Broc. This discreet graveyard is given away at this time of year not by the scale of the entrance, but rather by the battalions of daffodils marching alongside its spinal path.
Crossing over the empty road to have a look inside the locked graveyard gates, I read a plaque about the eminent people buried under the daffodils; one of which was Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. So this is where he lay all the years that I had been paying my bills in a bank he designed as The Irish Houses of Parliament. I admired the daffodiIs, locked in their pandemic isolation, between the built masses of a now empty Donnybrook. As I moved on, I remembered I had been to a lunch at a house Sir Edward Lovett Pearce designed between two lakes in County Cavan called Bellamont Forest for the Coote family. There were daffodils under the great trees in the park and enormous Irish wolfhounds that needed to be stepped over as a wild garlic salad was carried into the dining room. The wolfhounds were the same colour as the glass-smooth limestone paving in the old house; and were equally disinclined to move under foot. Polished marble Roman heads in high-placed roundels looked down condescendingly in the empty hallway and Dido spearing herself in the ballroom set a dramatic backdrop to the small lunch party. The daffodils at Bellamont Forest were the only flower in sight; their trumpet heads caught in cross winds on the narrow stretch between the two dark lakes with a temple beyond. The fires crackled as the spent logs spilled onto the ancient stone floors and the talk was merrily about a devil once seen in a bricked-up room in the basement. The brick of the house was the a warm pink colour; fired in the brickfields on the estate and the coffered ceilings disappeared into the ether. I knew if I was alone, I would lie on the floor to look at the ceiling but our charming host enraptured the group. The wild garlic salad had a blue and white linen cloth draped damply over it as it was carried into the dining room, prepared in advance of our arrival and collected beneath the enormous trees by our hosts’ daughter. She was like Eva Green, the other a gazelle; a foil to some of the dim and bawdy Dublin guests.
My grandmother had a larger linen cloth draped over the Sunday lunch when we would arrive in Monaghan to attend mass with her up on the steep hill early in the morning. She must have prepared all the food that morning, long before we clambered into the car for what seemed like an interminable journey listening to a diverse playlist of Abba, Foster and Allen, Charlie Pride or if we were bold; the rosary recorded at Knock. We fasted before mass, and all I could think about during mass in the church on the high hill was the blue and white cloth draped over the mounds of food like an autopsy about to commence. I always wanted to sit beside my grandmother when we arrived back at her house. When the blue and white cloth was slinked off the dining table offerings, the quietness of people eating would descend. During one of these quiet moments and feeling emboldened by my status of sitting next to my grandmother, I was taken aback to see her eating with her fingers. I offered to find some cutlery for her, or for her to use mine; and she said she preferred to eat this way. She said her friends didn’t have cutlery as she gestured over to the statues emerging from the darkness to the side of the dining table. These statues were just as condescending as the ones in Bellamont Forest, but more colourful with edges of gold, lambs at their feet.
As I ate my lunch with my fingers, beneath coffered ceilings years later, I remembered my grandmother. In my adult mind, I then knew that there had not enough cutlery for all of us to use. Being the lady she was, she ate with her fingers so that everybody else was taken care of. If anybody asked why I was eating with my fingers at this lunch, I knew I would bring those condescending Romans in the roundels into the fray as they had no arms to hold cutlery. The others guest may have retaliated by dragging the painted Dido into the conversation, but looking at the other guests, I decided to give my attention to the beautiful wolfhounds instead.
