Raneslough [antikvár]

(^haphJu 6mL Even though I should live to be a hundred, I know that I shall never forget my first glimpse of Raneslough. The castle dominated a rocky point of land at the base of Ireland's rugged Caha Mountains, overlooking the slate-blue waters of the River Kenmare, which, as it turned out, was not actually a river at all, but a salt-water estuary sweeping in from the sea between high, stony-ribbed bluffs. I sat in my rented car at the mouth of a steep, rocky pass high above the castle, overwhelmed by the fierceness of this far comer of Ireland where my father had died, far from home and alone. My father's death, following so closely upon the death of my mother, had left me feeling lost and abandoned. Not even a promising career as an artist, at the comparatively early age of twenty-two,_had sufficed to divert me from the haunting sense of disaster that seemed to trail after me like an invisible shadow. Trouble comes in threes. My mother had fallen into the habit of intoning that ancient Irish augury during the final months of her life, as if, I thought, she had somehow known ours was a family doomed to tragedy. And although I had always prided myself on my own common sense, which left very little room for superstitious speculation, I could not help but feel shaken when very recently death had sought to claim me as it had done my parents. I had learned something of importance about myself as a result of that chilling encounter: No matter how lost and alone I might feel, I wanted above all else to live out my life free from the strange, shadowy dread that seemed to hover so threateningly around me. It had seemed doubly important then for me to come to Raneslough. 5