WORD FOR WORD:I set out to write a memoir that would be not about me but instead about the complex attachment I feel to the place where I live. The Crocodile by the Door is not an autobiography but a book about a family farm in that marginal zone on the edge of the capital where suburbia and countryside meet. So when my editor, Brendan Barrington, rang to tell me my book had been shortlisted in the biography section of the Costa Book Awards, the elation was tinged with just a hint of suspicion that someone somewhere had made a glorious mistake.
I started to write The Crocodile by the Door in 2007, just as the full tide of riches promised in a property deal was beginning to recede back down the mountain into the maw of the banks. It seemed then as if Ireland had lost sympathy with the real work that land entails. I wanted to explore the ethical dilemmas I had faced when I inherited an unprofitable farm worth millions that I didn’t want to sell.
I have walked Tibradden’s fields since I was a child. I learned the names of their flora and fauna at my grandmother’s side. When I began farming, I came to realise that this was a day tripper’s knowledge, born of leisure and books, at a middle-class remove from the slurry tank and lime that kept the pastures green. Schooled to admire grass as a background wash for the autumnal copper of bracken and beech, I now found myself challenged by the task of growing it as a crop to be efficiently grazed.
I sought help from my uncle’s elderly steward, Mrs Susan Kirwan, and her husband, Joe. Unable to read, Joe relied on his wife to fill out the Department of Agriculture forms on which their livelihoods depended. Almost blind, Susie struggled to keep up with the paperwork in her own shaky hand.
Tibradden’s fields were the pattern and the prayer of their lives: their home, their employment, their community. But, crucially, our fields were also undersubsidised. The Irish Farmers Journal became my weekly crammer. As I researched the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and other agricultural programmes to bring our farm out of the red, the Kirwans shrank further into themselves, until tragedy forced me to realise how profoundly my own pursuit of profit had compromised their lives.
I’m still enjoying the wonderful surprise of having my debut book nominated for a prestigious award, but I’ll admit that the grave responsibility of writing about other people’s lives tugs at the string to this big, blue balloon. For this reason, it’s the local accolades that really matter.
Last Sunday I opened the door to a very occasional visitor, someone who knew the Kirwans from his years keeping sheep on nearby Kilmashogue. His bike lay abandoned against the front steps in the pouring rain.
“I finished your book at a quarter to four this morning,” he said, “and I was going to text you, but then I thought no, I’ll cycle up instead.” His shining face lit up with a grin. “I wanted to let you know that you are my first. I haven’t read a book since The Little Red Hen. But your Crocodile is just as good.”
The Crocodile by the Door is published by Penguin Ireland
