Looking back, I now think that I grew up with the country. First, the rowdy infancy—we’d had a revolution in 1916, and a two-year guerrilla war that began in 1919. Then the age of reason, with agreements and treaties. Next, the first noisy childhood of the new state—and we certainly knew all about that. Then, the adolescent fights with parents and siblings—the Civil War.

When it ended, there was a sort of settling-down into a system, a maturing. In politics, as in life, those who want to be successful see the writing on the wall and, unless they want to be permanently unemployed and powerless, they get themselves organized.

Where democracy is an option, that pattern is familiar all over the world. Ireland still provides a tidy case history, because we modeled that pattern more or less exactly. Having at first thrown into turmoil the post-treaty debates about how we should govern ourselves, Mr. de Valera’s republicans strengthened and rallied voters behind them.

All through the 1920s, noisy and aggressive, they began to give the governing party of Mr. Cosgrave a run for its money—Dev even had fringe elements still threatening armed struggle. The government countered, shouting the word “sedition,” wondering aloud about an armed coup, striking fear. Mr. de Valera grew stronger and stronger in parliamentary and local polling, and in late 1931, he seemed at his strongest. And here was I, also fledgling, trying to grow up very fast, too fast. That, you understand, is hindsight again.

Now, given that interest in politics, you can imagine, can’t you, how excited I was to meet an actual parliamentary candidate? At that first meeting in the cottage, no alarm bells rang—or at least I was deliberately deaf to them, and a little overwhelmed by King Kelly. Therefore, despite how uneasy I was about the rental transaction—I thought he’d bullied Mother—I couldn’t wait to get to the cottage next day.

At ten o’clock in the morning, I set off. By then, as had become my habit when at home, I had checked Mother’s general condition, found out what was happening everywhere on the farm, eaten breakfast, read the paper, and done some more thinking about the “situation.”

I had plenty to think about: The Kelly women, they’ve left some kind of mark on me. I’ve never met their like—they’re mysterious. And I knew that they were exotic—I gathered from her photographs that Sarah had sparkled in the brilliance of New York, and I guessed that she and Venetia had outclassed the new style of Dublin. Can you imagine how they looked in the small towns of Munster, where fleas still hopped, where milk went sour when the sun came out?

My father, though, he doesn’t look happy; that was my next thought. Is he unhappy because he hasn’t got his familiar things around him? Or is he unhappy because he’s trying to put on a kind of new personality? He looked cold in his bones, and I don’t think he’s enjoying his food. I didn’t sense much nourishment in his life. Those clothes, they didn’t look right on him—or is that because I’ve never seen them before?

And that affable certainty that was his hallmark—that was gone. He seemed more hesitant, not exactly timorous, but he had less assurance about him, and he conducted himself, his hands, his face, his general expression and demeanor, as though struck by a kind of permanent half-shyness. That smile—it had an embarrassed tinge to it.

My thoughts kept switching between him and the two women: Which of them had captivated him? A blind man could have figured that they were mother and daughter—the same walk, the carriage of the head, the neck. But whereas I’d been entertained, so to speak, by Sarah, and she’d engaged in conversation with me very fully and generously, I had no clue as to Venetia’s personality.

As I finished breakfast and prepared to walk down to the cottage, I thought again of the face behind the scarf. And I stepped back like a man scalded. Of course! Of course! It all hangs together!

How is it that a fraction often tells the whole story? Synecdoche—the part represents the whole. How is it that a sliver of light illuminates a whole room? From no more than the glimpse of the person behind the scarf, I somehow knew that she with her eyes glowing at me, and her mother with the soft touch and deep welcome—they were King Kelly’s blood.

Would this man, therefore, if indeed he were connected to the people with whom my father had run away—would he be any good in getting my father to come home to us?

The innocence that I had then. Oh, the innocence.