Reached by a mile long winding drive through vast entanglements of ancient rhododendrons, Andromeda Park stood a weather worn cold edifice three storeys tall over a basement on a hill surveying lonely standing oak, beech and chestnut trees in a forty Irish acre field inclining down to a small river. Here three children, two sisters and their baby brother played along the grassy banks of these trout waters and ran as cowboys and Indians up into the higher hills of forest hiding other distant fields and meadows. And when recaptured for meals by nurses and nannies, were led, sometimes by the ears, up wide granite steps through an oak bulletproof door fitted with a small iron barred grill out which the cross eyed butler Crooks asked visitors their business so it could be discerned as to whether they were friend or foe. The latter always being those with a bill who wanted to be paid.

His nurse called this alabaster skinned, blue eyed and black haired boy Darcy Dancer and swaddled, dressed, fed and minded him in his nursery till he was six years old when a groom taught him to ride. And sometimes at the open stained glass chapel casement, with his older sisters each holding a hand, he watched the cattle stampeding as the hunt assembled on their front lawn. Later as darkness fell he saw them through a blue tinted pane of a north east parlour window come straggling back, scarlet coats, black coats and breeches, mud spattered, horses steaming, a few lamed some maimed and all, as Uncle Willie said, relieved to be alive.

He counted from the shortest winter’s day right into early spring the lengthening minutes of light. Till on midsummer nights a cold glow lurked in the northern sky way past bedtime when in the illumined sunset darkness he listened to the donkeys braying. To be always finally lulled to sleep by the chiming bells of the clock tower from which his mother’s father had removed the hands when too many of the locals trespassed to a neighbouring hill to be told the time of day by a man who owned a spy glass. And just beyond this hill he often dreamt there were green and white bearded little fairies with angels’ wings who lived and played joyously there in the lonely grassy beyonds and would one day come and bring him into their hidden warm wonderful kingdom where nice little boys could sit with them mending shoes.

His games were to ride the hay top of ricks as they were drawn to the barns at harvest time. And his chores were picking summer berries for winter jam in the hedgerows. He grew taller amid the smells of drying saddles and the whinny of horses and the pounding of their hooves in springtimes out across the surrounding pastures. All moments of this tiny world golden within petals of a buttercup. Till one early morning dawn, falling out of bed, breaking a collarbone and rolling in agony where a rocking chair rocked, I was carried sobbing and trembling in my nannie’s arms to her bedroom further down the hall to mend and convalesce. And learn to know that just as poison lurked in the beauteous soft tissue of yellow meadow flowers, so too did pain and sorrow lie before all one’s footsteps.