Ashes In the Wind by Christopher Bland Read Free Book Online Page B

next morning John travels down to Queen’s County and is met at the station by his father’s cousin Charles. The two Burke brothers, who had arrived in Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century, had gone their separate ways, one to twenty-six thousand acres of County Kerry, the other to eight hundred acres in Queen’s County an hour out of Dublin.
    ‘Our branch of the family had the best of it,’ says Charles Burke. ‘It’s hard to scratch a living out of bog and rock. It’s a wonder you Kerry Burkes lasted as long as you did. Some would say you’re well rid of the place.’
    Seeing the look on John’s face, he quickly adds, ‘Although I wouldn’t agree with them. The most beautiful county in Ireland.’
    ‘It is,’ says John quietly.
    ‘I don’t think I’m going back to Trinity,’ he tells Charles later. ‘I don’t like the idea of Dublin any more.’
    ‘Don’t blame you. Never thought a lot of a university degree. Although, mind you, I did matriculate – got under starter’s orders, fell at the first fence.’
    They pull into a long drive flanked with great beech trees.
    ‘You’re always welcome here.’
    At the end of the drive is Burke’s Fort, a solid, handsome Georgian house in grey stone standing among rolling pastures grazed by horses and a few cattle. John walks through a hall full of an untidy clutter of boots, whips, hunting caps, odd items of saddlery, almost tripping over an elderly foxhound fast asleep in a crumbling basket.
    ‘Cleo from the Bicester, best bitch we ever had,’ says Charles.
    The drawing room is dominated by an enormous oil painting of a stallion. ‘Now there was a horse,’ says Charles. ‘Beaten once in fifteen starts, and then only because he was giving a stone and a half to the winner.’
    John admires the picture, slightly distorted as it is by the artist’s eighteenth-century approach to horse anatomy. He loves the stallion’s bright, nervous, white-revealing eye, the star on the broad forehead, the gleaming chestnut coat. The horse is half rearing, the better to show off the powerful muscles of his hindquarters; the groom, in a bottle-green long coat and soft jockey’s cap, has eyes as nervous as the horse, the halter rope at full stretch. In the background is Burke’s Fort; the artist has added an extra bay to each side of the house, bays that Charles’s great-great-grandfather had perhaps planned, certainly never built, but was happy to leave uncorrected. A small cartouche says,
    THE ARCHDUKE, 1787–1817
    Winner of fourteen races, including the Ormonde Stakes and the St Leger.
    ‘He’s the foundation stallion for this place,’ says Charles. ‘All our mares trace back to him, one way or another, although after a hundred years it’s a little diluted.’ Charles plainly feels that a sixtieth of The Archduke’s blood is enough to transform the foal of even the most modest mare.
    Around the rest of the room are racing scenes from Punchestown, the names of the horses and jockeys in narrow bands below each print.
    ‘Seventeen started, nine finished. My great-grandfather was on the winner, horse called Lisrenny out of a mare of the Filgates from County Louth. Horse never did a damn thing afterwards, but the Conyngham Cup’s on the sideboard in the dining room.
    ‘Would you like to hunt?’ says Charles as he shows John upstairs to his bedroom. ‘While young Charlie’s away you can ride his two. One’s a patent safety, the other’s a little wild, but they both jump anything in the county.’
    For the next two months John hunts two or three days a week, always two days with the Queen’s County pack, plus a day with one of the neighbouring hunts. Occasionally they go out with the Ward Union, although Charles disapproves of hunting carted stags.
    ‘You never have a blank day,’ he says. ‘But it’s not natural.’
    Hunting for John is the perfect distraction; up at six to get the horses ready, the long slow hack to the meet, convivial fields