Also, she carried that same holding mood into the delivery of the words. There’s an exercise I’d like you to think about. When next you hear a major singing star performing a song that you know and love, and have sung often in the bath or the shower, follow the words silently. See how the the singer holds back. Note how he delays the phrase. Observe how he waits to deliver the freight of the line.
That’s what Venetia did. She understood—and I think it was by instinct—how to keep an audience waiting without the audience knowing that it was waiting. And she understood that acting is mostly reacting. I used to watch her “reading” the audience, as she called it. She didn’t appear to be looking at them; it always seemed that she was not of them at all; for example, I never saw her making eye contact—or so it seemed.
But she saw them, all right—she told me so. She never referred to it as “the whites of their eyes”—she loved them too much to say that—but that’s what she was looking at.
And she reacted to what they loved. Not that she allowed herself to be steered by them—not at all; she just wanted to make sure that they were getting the full value of what she had to offer. When she had divined what they were enjoying, she gave them more—and more.
And every night, as I stood there in the wings and watched her, my pride grew. And every night she not only never disappointed me, she made me even more proud. And afterward I got to hold her in my arms, sometimes all night.
If I woke up and didn’t get back to sleep, I often tried to imagine what lay ahead. Would Venetia go back to the Abbey—or had King Kelly fouled the water in that well for all time? I wouldn’t have wanted her to, especially if Sarah intended to continue playing seasons there; mother was not good for daughter professionally, no matter how much they loved each other.
My belief now is that we would have gone on to do what she dearly wished—establish a theater in a country town, and give it a touring company too. In between she’d play roles in the great theaters of the world—and we knew she would because scouts came to see her, and offers reached us all the time.
In particular, though, she so wanted to go on bringing these beautiful words, these time-honored emotions to the people in the countryside, who lived by “the rules of nature,” as she put it. She understood that they had grim lives, mostly—they did hard, scrabbling work with the rewards few.
The night after we heard the doctor’s good news we decided to tell nobody. Except Mrs. Haas. I had to establish the legal age for marrying, and the means of doing so. At the same time, we had a major distraction, a new member of the company; his name was Cody.
A smallish man with a hooked nose and a broad Irish accent with a slight whine, Cody walked into our lives one night as a performance ended. He seemed more than respectable, but his suit, when scrutinized, had shiny patches, and his shirt had been in a war or two.
Cody carried a briefcase, and he said that he’d worked in England for some theaters and traveling companies, and had what he called “tremendous experience” in managing the finances of people who worked on the stage.
He didn’t steal money; that may be your initial suspicion. Nor did he fracture the company’s economic structure. On the contrary, Cody helped us in many ways.
For instance, we had problems in the amount of cash we had to carry—all our takings from, often, three shows a day, at least two performances on most days—average fourteen shows a week. Cody set up a relationship with a bank that enabled us to draw money in any decent-size town. A worry evaporated.
He also identified, for future purposes, the towns where our income had been greatest—on account of venue capacity and so forth. Not that we’d ever have abandoned the little places that only held fifty people, and another hundred and fifty peering in through the doors and windows, and on one occasion in Kilcallaghan, hanging from the roof beams.
In short, Cody eliminated the need for us to keep such a close eye on the financial end of things and allowed us to concentrate on the repertoire and the logistics.
Venetia checked Cody’s work with a rigor that surprised me. Every week she examined the books that he kept, and reconciled things with every bank we visited. What she couldn’t check was what we didn’t know—that Cody had no intention of hitting our pockets; his intent, a strategized effort, had much greater damage in mind.
We married in the depths of the summer. Venetia wore flowers in her hair. It wasn’t a conventional wedding but it was legal. We did it in Galway, which was my idea; I took a leaf from the book of Mr. de Valera’s life.
As we strolled the docks a ship sat at anchor about half a mile out. I asked a dockhand where she’d come from, and he told me New York. This happened before Cody had streamlined the cash and the banking arrangements, and we were carrying in her purse and my pockets a considerable amount of money.
I told Venetia my plan, she got some flowers, and I hired a boatman to take us out to the ship. We called up to a deckhand, who sent for the captain. They dropped a ladder, we climbed, and the captain (for a consideration) married us. He had to weigh anchor to do so, because the law required the ship to be under way. The persuasion eased when we told him of the expected baby—he had nine children at home in New Jersey.
Mrs. Haas wept, and baked a small wedding cake when we went back to Charleville at the weekend. We swore her to secrecy. By the time Venetia’s condition became obvious we would have worked out how to tell people. Mrs. Haas loved keeping the secret.
Only one other person knew about the pregnancy and the marriage—Cody. We had to tell him on account of banking papers and signing authorities, and we swore him to secrecy too. We didn’t know that there were no conditions under which he could keep such a confidence; he was pulled by other, more powerful string masters. If ever I meet Cody again, I will end up in jail.
And so the year 1932 wound on. I never missed my daily ration of politics, and with this newfound maturity I began to see things in a much clearer light. I watched the posturing of our leaders; I watched how they arranged to be photographed with church dignitaries who came into Ireland for the giant Eucharistic Congress, an international Catholic Church assembly in Dublin to celebrate worship.
And I watched the rise of King Kelly too. He did indeed become a member of the powerful Finance Committee. And he did indeed sit in the Opposition Front Bench, as it’s called, where he was the shadow spokesman on finance—which meant that he shadowed the finance minister. Which meant that if Mr. Cosgrave ever got back into power, King Kelly would himself become the country’s finance minister, the second most powerful job in the land.
I made no contact with my parents. As James Clare had advised, I did nothing—not least because I still hadn’t unwrapped the meaning of his final remark to me: “Your strength is in the power of others.”
James had said, “Meet me in the west; I want to show you the ocean.” On the day after the wedding, I went to the post office to find a letter for me; James knew that in a matter of weeks we were coming to Sligo, and we’d meet there.
Knowing that James could keep a secret, I resolved to tell him that I’d seen the ocean, and tell him how and why—that Venetia and I had married onboard a ship. I longed to hear him tell the next chapter of the story.
You must visit Sligo one day, Yeats’s town—for me his shadow stalks the place. Here are his two magic mountains: The body of Queen Maeve, the most ancient and most famous of all Irishwomen and the most warlike and the most fearsome, lies in a stone cairn on Knocknarea’s peak. Across the country from her sits the magical table mountain of Ben Bulben, and the people of the netherworld fly between the two, but you have to be quick to see them and you have to be able to see in the dark.
I’m repeating more or less accurately James’s words to Venetia, as we walked around the town. She enchanted him, and he delighted her. He told her stories that made her clap her hands in amazement; he taught her scraps of ancient poems; he explained the structure of the old world to her—who the “Little People” were wh
o lived beneath the ground of Ireland.
We came to rest on that first day in a public house in the outskirts of the town, where, James said, the landlady would make us a meal. He added that he had a surprise for me—and he had: Miss Dora Fay. She went to Sligo for a week every summer, and she and her old friend James tried to coincide there.
I was delighted to see her and she was staggered—and thrilled—at our marriage. Never had I seen her so excited; she said over and over to Venetia, “But, my dear, you are lovely, lovely.” And then said, “And what a young man you’ve found for yourself, what a guy.”
She and James came to all the night performances of the week; they knew that the program changed with each show. Miss Fay knew every word of every scrap of drama; I could see her from where I stood—she was mouthing the words and smiling in all the right places. James sat back, proud like a man at his child’s school play.
In the new repertoire, Blarney’s role had changed. He still had a solo appearance with Venetia, and he still did “political commentary”—but she also deployed him in the play extracts. He did Fool from King Lear; he was young Gobbo, and Autolycus, and most touchingly of all, Ariel, the wistful but dangerous sprite from The Tempest. Venetia had arranged costumes for him, and he electrified the audiences—and the players—in his new colors.
On the last night in Sligo, we had arranged for our hotel to put up a late meal for us with Miss Fay and James. By now we’d met on a number of occasions, and it was clear that for them our marriage amounted to a gift. At a moment during the meal, Miss Fay said to me, “How are your parents?”
She said it with some caution, her face down somewhat.
I said, “I’ve been on the road since late February.”
Venetia, always quicker than me, said, “Should Ben go to see them?”
James said, “The nothing time is over.” He smiled and explained to the two women, “Something I said to Ben when we last met. There is always a time when to do nothing is to go forward.”
We all agreed to meet next day and say our farewells. Venetia and I walked upstairs to bed; her condition didn’t yet show; the baby wouldn’t be born until December. In the room I took the Blarney suitcase off the bed and she said, “No. Open it.”
She took Blarney from the case and sat down. Blarney began to speak.
“Ben, you like stories, don’t you?”
“Yes, Blarney. I like stories.” What was this? Venetia ignored my raised eyebrows.
Blarney went on. “Ben, there’s a story I can’t tell you yet. But I will one day. You’ll probably find it out before I can tell you. All I want you to know is—it’s no part of my story. You know that, don’t you?”
“If you say so, Blarney.”
“Do you mean—you don’t believe me?”
“I think you’re a tough little fellow, Blarney.”
“Ben, I’m hurt. Will you believe me if I tell you that Venetia has nothing to do with that story either?”
“Is this a bad story, Blarney?”
“It is, Ben. It is.”
“Then I know that Venetia had nothing to do with it.”
Blarney lowered his head and Venetia looked away. Then they both recovered and Blarney said, “You should go to visit your parents, Ben.”
“I don’t want to leave Venetia.”
“Venetia understands. Don’t you, Venetia?”
She nodded and Blarney said, “And go soon, Ben.”
Next morning we made arrangements. James and Miss Fay were taking a train to Dublin that evening. I decided to go with them; much easier to get down home from Dublin than from Sligo, whence I could find no direct route. Venetia came to the station. She seemed unusually somber, and I put it down to the fact that we had never previously parted. I boarded the train, and waved from the window.
As we left Sligo, James began to point out the landscapes of Yeats’s poems and recite from them.
“‘I will arise and go now, and go to Inisfree.’”
Miss Fay and I chimed in. “‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.’”
The two adults began to talk about the poet. For all of my young life, from the time that I began to read as a pastime and not merely as a school necessity, the figure of Yeats stood in the Irish landscape like a huge tree. The analogy isn’t mine. Friends who are authors and poets and dramatists have often said to me that any Irish writer in the early twentieth century found it hard to get the warmth of the sun in a shadow as great as that.
My lasting image of Yeats has as much to do with his physical appearance as with his verse. I saw him many times—a big man, bigger than my father, and much heftier. Unlike my outgoing and smiling parent, Yeats always wore a preoccupied air, as though pondering great things.
Perhaps he was—but as I’ve already hinted, I’ve since learned from many people who knew him that he was a calculating man who judged carefully the image that he wished to present to the world.
None of his shrewdness, though, or his attempts to conceal it, impinged upon his poetry, and if his large frame in his cloak and wide-brimmed hat dominated my mind’s eye in my teens, twenties, and thirties, his poems became my sound track—and the nation’s.
James then remembered a story that he had told Yeats.
“He sat on the edge of his seat like a child. His eyes were round and wide, and his mouth open like a bag. He was hanging on every word.”
Miss Fay commented, “It must have been a wonderful story, and therefore you have to tell us.”
He began; this is what I recall of it. As James told it, and as I see it written down now in my own words, I understand that the language was as important as any of the narrative drive. And as ever, James was using it to teach me about life in general.
There was a man one time and he knew many things. He knew how to grow beautiful ears of wheat and when to take the new potatoes out of the ground. He knew when a horse was ready to be taught how to jump a ditch, and he knew when to bring his dairy cows in for the winter. He knew how to take care of his family, for he had a wife and a son, and he knew how to hire good men and send bad men away. This was a man who knew how to get himself liked, and how to like people, and that is one of the greatest gifts of all.
Above all he was a man who knew how to conduct himself decently, and to keep himself on a safe and steady path. If he felt sorry for himself, he never allowed anybody to know it, not even his dear wife. If he felt sudden bursts of gladness, as we all do, he knew they were dangerous things too, and he kept a lid on them most of the way, like you’d keep a lid on a pot, with just a little bit open so that the water doesn’t boil over.
The people who knew this man well, who saw him every day, saw that he was a man who understood things. He understood how the sun rose, followed by the moon. He understood why hares danced in the fields at certain times of the year. He understood why grain had to be harvested at an exact moment in its ripeness, and people used to send for this man and ask him to come and rub the ears of their wheat between his fingers and tell them if it was ready to be cut.
There were many other things he understood—like the moment to stand in the river and catch a salmon with your hands as it leaps northward over a weir on its journey to the spawning grounds. Or not to cross a male donkey with a female pony, but to do it the other way ’round; otherwise you’ll get an animal over which you’ll have no control, your only reward will be biting and kicking and bucking to beat the band.
This was a man who understood why the stars are brightest on a frosty night, and why a shout can be heard for miles across a lake. And why milk turns yellow at certain times of the year, and as a consequence, the care to take when feeding cows that have calved. And why a man will look you in the eye during the making of a bargain, but you should always look at his feet, because if his feet shift you have a liar on your hands.
Now this man was also a successful merchant, and he practiced his merchantry in great style. He sold barley to make ale and he sold pit
chforks to make hay. He sold polish to make boots shine, and he sold cards to make men gamble. He sold pipes to smoke tobacco and pipes to make music. And he dispensed all these things with always the good word, always the willing piece of advice.
“Mind, now,” he’d say, “that you don’t let the dog lick the polished boot for he’ll get dizzy. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that you clean the inside of this basin with cold water, else the milk’ll turn sour when the moon rises. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that the stone for that knife is kept wet for an hour and a half before you come to sharpen—otherwise the stone won’t like the blade. And mind, now,” he’d say, “that you give your good lady a ribbon for her hair to match her eyes—otherwise she won’t know that you think her a beautiful woman.”
This was also a man of learning. He had learned what other men will take by way of orders, and what they won’t take. He had learned that some trees have to be cut down in a particular way, because he was also a man who sold timber. He had learned the names of all the old gods, because he knew that a day might come when he would need to speak to one of them. He had learned the lessons of the old sages because he understood that wisdom, if there is such a thing, takes three hundred years and three hundred days to be worth anything. And he had learned one of life’s most important lessons, which is when to talk and when to fight.
So, as I say, this was a man who knew a great deal of things about a great deal of things and was generous with his knowledge and his advice and his observations.