March 8, 2026 • 42 mins
CBS Radio Mystery Theater was a noteworthy attempt to revive in American radio dramas like Inner Sanctum (1941-1952) and Suspense (1942-1962). Radio dramas were widely considered "dead" 12 years prior to this series. CBS Radio Mystery Theater, or simply Mystery Theater, was created by Inner Sanctum creator Himan Brown and ran on CBS from 1974-1982. The show, much like older radio dramas, was introduced by a host (E.G. Marshall in this program), who steers us through the creaking door to start the episode. Many voices from the golden age of radio were featured, including Richard Widmark, Bret Morrison, Agnes Moorehead and many more. Find more classic, old-time radio series at Theater of the Mind - OTR | Spreaker | Apple | YouTube
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Enjoy all six of our commercial-free internet radio stations at theaterofthemind-otr.com - Do you want to discover more of these classic, old-time radio series? Search "Theater of the Mind - OTR" on your favorite platform or visit Theater of the Mind - OTR | Apple | Spreaker | YouTube | Spotify | Amazon | iHeart
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The CBS Radio Mystery Theater Present. Come in.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm e. G. Marshall. If there ever was a country
of myth and legend, it's the Emerald Isle, that precious
gem that adorns the restless sea Ireland. But for all
its gay and infectious beauty, its green fields and the
riot of colored flowers, there is a darker side than
(00:44):
haunts this shining aisle. Not all the mythical spirits are
as captivating as leprechauns, or as gentle as the fairy book.
The Celtic gods of olden times still lurk in the
shadow of the woods, the deep mountain gloss, the black
velvet Knight.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This man swam.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Across the Irish Sea, and not mansars.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sure he was more than man, a bolger, or a god,
or whatever you'd like to call him, and evil as
a raven cause. As that he was so, no ship
or house could hold him, and his heart as black
as the pits of Hell. Our mystery drama The Witching
(01:32):
Well was written especially for the Mystery Theater by Ian
Martin and stars Paul Hect and Carol Titell. It is
sponsored in part by Buick Motor Division and sin off
the sinus medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'll be back shortly with that.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
One.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
One of the basic pagan worships in any land is
the adoration of water. From the beginning of man, the
well has been a shrine, a symbol of life to
be propitiated by sacrifice and prayer, if not the well itself,
the gods or devils or guardians of its sacred content.
(02:19):
So now let us join Patrick Kinsella of Boston, fourth
generation Irish, as he starts unwittingly on a trip which
will take him back to his family roots and beyond
them to a brooding, misty foreboding past, a past where
timeless spirits stir and live again.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Thank the Lord, you are not your father's son.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And what does that mean?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
I am antally that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
You take after your mother's side of the family home.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Mother, I hope not.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I remind you that you're talking about my daughter.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I'm I'm sorry, uncle Eth. I didn't mean to hurt you.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It's just that mother was so cold and withdrawn, I
don't know, bitter.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Whatever she was.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Your father made her that way, with his woman eying
and his extravagance and his drinking. It's not true He's
only driven to that because, in the name of heaven'
you leave him alone to lie dead in peace.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And mother too.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I am glad you have some regard for her.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I do, Uncle, I do.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's just that somehow we we were never close, like
like you and Michael. He Lord knows he loved you,
the one unselfish passion he ever had.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I suppose we.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Does that complete the formalities concerning father's will?
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Just one more thing?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
This? What is it?
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Eh?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
An envelope obviously sealed about his contents?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know nothing? Is it? Is it all right to open.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
It's address to you?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Why are you hesitating? I don't know, hunch, just a feeling.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Hot soft, of feeling that maybe this should should die
with him, that it's something better left below.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Do you know me, Uncle?
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yes, you were a.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Strange and wonderful little boy. I have to remember, when
I was younger and a little more full of sap
and vigor, I used to call you the changeling. I
wouldn't have been a bit surprised to find your ears
growing into points. You seem to be aware of so
much beyond the stiff necked old yankee.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I remember you used to kid me about leading you
to the pot of gold at the end.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Of the rainbow.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's why i'd like to have you in the bank now.
I still think you could lead us all to it,
just the way I thought your father could. Ones Let's
not get back into that, uncle, Let's just open this
mysterious uncle.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, it's just something he wants me to do.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Is it a secret?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh no, O, he doesn't say, and sort of I
suppose you're not between us. Well, let me read it
to you, dear son.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Among all the things in our relationship which has made
it the best of my life was the fact we
never questioned each other.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But accepted us on faith.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So I ask a final act of faith, with no
questions asked. Please continue to issue a banker's check for
eight hundred dollars every month as indicated to the following
address box thirteen Branwell, County.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Meath, Ireland. That is all Yep, no name, no name,
what car, no no indication or how.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Long he's been paid?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Nope, and how much? Eight hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
That's nearly ten thousand a year.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
You're not going to keep paying that out?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh yes, uncle, f I am it was my father's wish.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I'm living up to it. There's only one thing I'm
not living up to. That is I'm not going to
do it out of reason, which means I can answer
an earlier question of yours. I know what I am
going to do with myself.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I'm going to make a trip to Ireland. I'd like
to know just who's picking up that check.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
From box thirteen GPO, Bramwell, County me If I wasn't
quite living up to my father's last request, I wasn't
being completely honest with my uncle either, for there was
a name as well as an address.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bo and Connaught.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So on the next plane I left for Ireland and
bran Well wherever that turned out to be.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
At the top of the evening to you has heard
part of it?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Be oh, I'll just have have you any draft beer?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I prayed of county beat would have you? After drawing
you are? Yeah, I'll have a glass of you do
right now?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
From the tone of your voice, you would not be
from these parts America?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Is it? That's right? But I am of Irish descent.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
There's your drafts and what brings you to drum?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Carry drum kerry? I thought this was Branwell.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Ah, wait, so it is, so it is in a
manner of speaking, or was you See in all of
eighteen years since we used the old name, the old name,
that's right, sir, up till January fifteenth, nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Then it got change.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
A lot of things change once we became the Irish
Free State.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
You mean this town has been called drum Carry since
nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's how it'd be, all right?
Speaker 3 (07:39):
If letters were male, I mean posted to Branwell, they'd
still be delivered. Oh naturally, even after all these years.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Wait now, God bless you, sir. I've been postmastered here
in the last twenty five so I can assure you
any letter.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Sent here would find his.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Way to its proper destination, whether it was the Brandweed
or drum Carry.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I see.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Why why did you change the name? Oh?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I don't know, superstition, Maybe not a very pleasant name, after.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
All, it seems pleasant enough to me.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Why that's because you wouldn't know Irish history, or a
local history for that matter. One reason or another, it's
been a real curse.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
That old well well? What what old well?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We know one the town got its name from Brand's well.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Do you see to begin with, yes, there actually is a.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well oh yes, oh yeah, well that is there was being.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Capped up ever since you wade long enough ago.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
No need for it.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Once the waters of time was brought in, folks weren't
usual it anyway, what with its history.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
But what happened to the world? Did it go back
from bad to worse? Though?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Twas never any good in the first place, to my mind,
not after as they say, brand took it for his
living place. Who was No, you never heard of him
wor sure it is not surprising since he was Sassanach
and you, being a Irish descents a british Man British,
he belonged to them, and we never asked any part
(09:12):
of him. But they chased him out of Wales. And
it was an ill wind ever, blew him west to
swim the Irish Sea and up the Bowne till he
found our subterranean caves under the mountains.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
There. This man swam across the Irish Sea, not man, sir.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Sure, he was more than man, a bogul or a
god or whatever you'd like to call him, and evil
as a hoody crow or a raven called norsl. He
was so no shipherd house could hold him, and his
heart black as the pits of hell. His grandfather himself
(09:51):
told me that the well was brackish enough already in
his time. And to be sure, I always thought it
tasted like bagua, I said.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But no matter, no matter.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
They finally had to cap it after there was one
too many that.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Won too many one? Ah?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, sure?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Why should I be bothering you with the local gossip
and old wife's taals?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I have another brew on the house. Oh that's very
kind of your sir.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, it's getting late. I have to find some lodgings.
Do you also have an inn here?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No, I'm afraid not.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
How long would you want to be staying?
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, I'm a writer and I wanted to get some
background and local color. Could you suggest somewhere I might
find a room?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Now? I might just be able to do that, for
I see someone coming down the road?
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Would be just the answer.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Go on, cut out?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh and Conrad, where is he? He will shoot?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
What is the matter with you, tall bo?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
There's a lady's name, and there she is herself.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
If you look out the window on our way here,
bless her heart. Sure it's the lonely, brave soul.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
She is in a hard, long life.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
She lives taken in borders to make ends meet. Come
out now, we'll meet her by the stoop, God save you,
missus Canna.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Where are you off so late.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
In the even in such a hurry?
Speaker 7 (11:21):
I had a call in, mister muldoon. Did you see
who call?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And I'm from where it had on the telephone?
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Sure you know I don't have such an instrument in
the house.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
From the voices, Oh no, that is a mite early
for the little folks to be about.
Speaker 7 (11:38):
Yet stop your nonsense, Sean muldoone. I don't hold with
tippery the like of that. I have my own voices
and they serve me. Well. Was there something for me
in the post? Then?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Ah?
Speaker 5 (11:52):
No, sure not even one of them.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Advertisements Number thirteen is as bare as the old woman's coverard.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
But I heard it sucks here.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Well maybe you did, after all, for he's a gentleman,
a writer, and all is looking for lodgend.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
For a whiles.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And twas in my mind that you might want to
take him in.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
It'll only be for a couple of weeks, missus Connaught.
I'm willing to pay anything within reason.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
You're from the state, Yes, I am.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I should introduce myself. My name is Patrick Kinsella fa.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Now there's a fine Irish name for you, is it not.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
Kimsella Patrick.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, the full name is Michael Patrick Canseller.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
Ah, that'll be it. The room will be ten and
six a day with breakfast, eighteen shillings with for board.
No reduction by the week or a month, it's just
by the day.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Well, that'll be fine. And I let me see. I
suppose I pay you two weeks in advance.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Have you look that's in my car outside. Come along,
I'll drive and you direct me where to go. The
strangest sense that I'd stepped across a border into a
dream fantasy world.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
We drove a short.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Distance and over a bridge, and then at her direction,
I turned down a hill and onto a cobblestone road
to stop in the courtyard paved the same way next
to a round structure about waist high that was roofed
over by some heavy oaken timbers, dovetailed together and.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Shaped to fit like a lid.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Is is that a well?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
What else?
Speaker 7 (13:33):
That's brand's?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
The one that's never used anymore.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
The one that was fowled forever as well.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
You know what do you mean as well?
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I know who would know better? Now I want to
know something else. What Why did you come back, Michael?
Why did you ever come back?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
For the moment, pat Kinsella can only stare open mouthed
at the tiny woman who is suddenly all blazing eyes
burning with accusation. He realizes, of course, that he is
being mistaken for his father. It isn't the first time
people have noted the resemblance. But what fascinates and repels
him is a secret that seems about to be revealed,
(14:23):
a secret he is not sure he wants to know.
I shall return shortly with that too. So here is
Michael Patrick Kinsella in the year nineteen hundred and forty,
(14:44):
sitting in a car next to a little wisp of
a woman who, for some inexplicable reason, his dead father
has been supporting for over twenty years, secretly, and next
to a well that has been caped and shut tight
against what the legends of the enormous demigod who lives
(15:04):
far below in its subterranean caverns, always hungry for the
sacrifice of a human soul for some more practical reason
that the water is fouled or the well has outlived
this usefulness.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I'm afraid you're making a mistake, Missus Connaught. I'm not
who you seem to think I am.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
I never fear a whisk lad, You're just who you
have to be.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
My name isn't Michael. I mean that's not what I'm
called by its path?
Speaker 7 (15:33):
It's a long time, do you know? And who remembers
all the names? The way they can change with the
pass in years? You're still the one expected?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Are you not expected?
Speaker 7 (15:45):
The voice was after telling me you'd be back. Did
you not hear it yourself?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The voice?
Speaker 7 (15:51):
What else would you call it? You'll not be telling
me it didn't call you?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Then? Else?
Speaker 7 (15:58):
Why are you here again?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I'm not here again? Ah?
Speaker 7 (16:02):
There? Now? It had to be such an important anniversary,
twenty one years.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
You had to be here here for what.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
To strike off the chains, set the soul at liberty
to rest in peace?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Missus Connaught?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Forgive me, but I really don't know what you're talking about.
Do you're not Michael? I'm not Michael. I'm Pat Michael
was my father?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
Ah?
Speaker 6 (16:30):
Is it?
Speaker 7 (16:31):
So that might account for it?
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Then?
Speaker 7 (16:35):
Ah? But here tis late, it's coming on to be
and you could be tired and have a good meal.
Is what you need under your belt. We'll leave the
car here and walk to the house and I'll get
you settled in again again. You'll see once you're in
the house and it all begins to come back.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I didn't really want to get out of the car
and the Irish gloaming and that peculiar half light between
day and dark that lasts so long. But grabbing my bags,
I beautifully follow the tiny figure of my hostess as
she'd clumped doggedly, but yet with a kind of grace
down the path to a small thatched cottage with thick
stone walls. Inside. She lit kerosene lamps and bustled about
(17:23):
getting me settled in an upstairs room with a dormer
window poking through the thatch and overlooking the well.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
Do you remember now?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Why can't I make you understand? There's nothing to remember
all I'm here.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Why you can't deny that bed and the well outside
the window, and that here It was the wedding night,
or so I thought. Heaven saved me.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
What are you trying to tell me, miss Connach?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But my father was here. What was it you said
twenty one years ago?
Speaker 7 (17:56):
I'm here's the light now, and let me look at you,
boy carefully.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I may look like my father, or rather like he did,
but I am my own man.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
You're it's spitt an image if you're not.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I couldn't be my father under any circumstances, because.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
He's dead God defenders.
Speaker 7 (18:18):
He's a way to the other world then and abandoned.
The girl is shamed. So that's why you were called.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I wasn't called. I came here to find.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Out who the mysterious Boan Connach was and why my father.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Was paying was paying you all that money? But maybe
it would be better if I left.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
You want to run away without finding out.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I don't think I want to find out anymore?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Why?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Boy, Because you think I'm an old lady touched in
the hill. I didn't say that, but it was in
your mind for sure, because these old eyes are dim
and I thought I saw him. So I raised up
from the past and come to make us whole.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
You see now that I'm the son and not the father.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
More's the pity for now. Indeed, we're lost, and there's
no more waiting this side of the curtain tis all
too late, and the shame must burn itself into eternity.
My life is done.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
This cannot let me be honest.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
If my father deserted you or walked out on you
sometime in the past, I'm sorry, but it looks at
least as if he's tried to pay his debt.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Walked out on me. Sweet Mary looked down on us.
Twas not me, he walked out on wisdom there. Now
it's the storm. It's been threatening all day. What I
had to say will have to wait. Why with the
wind away to the northwest, the rain oft blows down
(19:56):
the chimney, I'll have to set the damper down. Un
little windows exhausted, I'll call you when I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This would have been my moment to pick up my
heels and run my last chance. But I had waited
too long. I went to the window, peering out through
the streaming rain.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
That blurred the window panes.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
For one left catching moment, I thought I saw the
lid on the well lift, as though some strange creature
was about to answer the knocking of the rain drops.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
On his door. And then sudden it was too dark
to see any moment.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
By the middle of dinner, the rain was gone, and
by the end of it, Miss connaught was too.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I had tried to question her, and she refused.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To talk until I'd eaten, And now she seemed to
disappeared into thin air.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Suddenly.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I wasn't mystified anymore, or apprehensive or afflicted by any
form of e sp.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I was just plain angry, and I wanted out.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
I packed my bags, slung them in the car, headed
out of the cobblestone yard and along the road to
the bridge. But that's as far as I was going.
It was a wash a foot under the swiftly flowing river.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
All right, just a.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Minute, I'll roll it down. What are you looking for
me now, miss Connard? Frankly, I was taking a powder.
I thought you had run out on me, so I
decided to run out too.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
I am not run very far this night. The bridge
is underwater and the river isn't even crested yet. If
we get ma rain tonight, we're in for flood. Did
not get a cross very soon?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Boil all right, then climb in. I'll take you back
to the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Looks like we're fated to open some graves.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
It wasn't me, your father deserted. It was my younger sister, Deirdre.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I never heard my father mention that now, and I'm sure.
Speaker 7 (22:24):
Of that he didn't, Dare, why not? Your father was weak.
He wasn't a bad man, just a weak one. It
was the spring of nineteen eighteen in Paris that Dedre
met up with Michael on what they call the left bank,
down by the river Sea.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I mean, oh, your pardon a mom, Madame mademoiselle.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
I'm not friends.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh well, I was just trying to say I I
didn't know anyone was down here.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
Well, now you know, yes?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Are you alone?
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, well I guess you want to stay alone.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So well, I'll just hey, listen, couldn't we just talk
a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I mean, I don't speak French, so I don't get
to talk to many girls.
Speaker 7 (23:28):
Is that funny now?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Not?
Speaker 7 (23:31):
Here? And I speak English, but you don't get to
do much talk in a social way with the English soldiers.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Oh, I'm not English. I'm American, and you are not English.
You are Irish.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I can hear that. And if I am, you know
I'm Irish too. I mean three generations?
Speaker 7 (23:49):
Are you now, And where do you live in the
state Boston?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
There's almost as many of us there as there are
in Dublin.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
Is that a fact? And you're here to see gave
us all and to be a soldier?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Boy, I'm here to help eat the kaiser and save
my skin if I can.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I'm not much for war.
Speaker 7 (24:08):
And or me. That's why I'm down here now looking
at the river tonight, trying to forget another one, a
special one who died tonight.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You're your fiance, no boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
No anymore than there are all that the poor hurt darling. No,
I'm a nurse, you see. Oh well, not a real nurse,
not an rian, just a helper like me.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh my name is Michael Kinseller.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
How do you do I'm dead to connaught? Hello, Hello, Michael.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I never called a girl by her first name that
fast before.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
You know me? You boy, you're a fast worker, Michael KINSELLA.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I'm because I've never really been in love before at
first sight.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Don't you feel anyway the same?
Speaker 7 (25:08):
It's a shamed I should be to admit it. But
the trouble is I do. That's the way they met,
and for the most of that year they were seldom separated.
It was just sheer luck that Michael was assigned to
the quartermaster's staff in Paris and never saw any action.
(25:28):
The war was just a sort of holiday to him
until the day he was assigned to return home and
he had to face the truth at last. But you
can't just leave me behind, not now, not the way
I am.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It's all right, darling. I've gotten to leave.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I'm going to see you home, home, as far as
London anyway, and the way it is, I have to
go there on business.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So the hotel reservation has been made.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
We can try to work it all out, work what out,
what we're going to do, I mean, how it's going
to end.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
End.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It has to be.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Ah, there's no excuse. I know I should have told
you from the very beginning.
Speaker 7 (26:13):
But.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Well it's over for us. Why because I can't ever
marry you. I'm married already you married?
Speaker 7 (26:24):
Does someone else?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (26:27):
But you can't be Mike. You can't. I'm having your child.
What am I going to do?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
It's all right, darling. You won't never have to worry.
I'll support him and you, I promise. Look, when we
get to London, everything will be arranged.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Legally, legally be legal. There's nothing I can do now.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Neither of us believe in divorce. And besides, just out
of the question why my whole position with a bank,
my future in business, is because I married my wife.
Her father owns the bank and half of Boston.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
For that matter. They cut me loose.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I couldn't support myself, let alone you and.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
And the child that's coming.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
So you're giving me one who's to have no father.
But that wasn't the way it turned out at all,
because when they got to London, Deirdre was ready to
go into labor. And what faced them there was enough
to bring it on full force.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
What faced them, Miss Connaught.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
What would you guess, missus patrickin Feller, the woman from
whom your father would have done anything to hide his
affair with Deirdre, my mother, your father's wife.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Quite suddenly our story has moved from the world of
fantasy to a world of quite sordid reality. I'll be
back shortly with X three. I'll leave all of you
to imagine what happened in the scene when Michael kinsella
(28:10):
indeed Racconnaught, already seven months pregnant, unexpectedly had to face
Michael's wife. There was no longer any chance for subterfuge.
Everything was out in the open. And at last our
story has reached the moment when the past is about
to be revealed and Michael's son Pat is going to
learn a buried truth that will shake him to his heels.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But what was my mother doing in London.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
Missus Kinsella, Well, sure she knew the hotel had been
engaged in London for business. And didn't her father offer
her the trip across the ocean to greet her husband
that much earlier?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Didn't my father know she was coming?
Speaker 7 (28:48):
I suppose missus Kinsella thought to give him happy surprise.
Oh twas a surprise, no doubt of that. That's far
from a happy one to.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Begin with, that is, what do you mean to begin with?
Speaker 7 (29:02):
Well, first off, it was a terrible shot for Deirdre,
and the baby was born out of its time, oh
no before his time, but alive and kicking and screaming
and ready to hang on to life. There was no
easy way do you see out of it all? Or
so it seemed.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
What are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 7 (29:22):
Did you never wonder why you never had any brothers
or sisters at all?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh, of course, I suppose every only child dies and.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
You'll not have to wonder any longer when I tell
you that the one you've thought your mother all this
time never could have a child, and they saw any world,
And well she and your father knew it before they
were ever married.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You mean that I am that baby.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
What chance had a child born outside the church for
a life here in Ireland against the future for him
in America. Oh, not to mention the miracle it was
for a barren woman to be given the gift of motherhood.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
No one ever guessed.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
Why should they. The one you thought your mother had
said farewell to her husband only seven months before. She'd
been waiting a month in London, and it was weeks
before she left the sail over. You were born early,
and it was easy to bring the time into joint
with all the red tape of mustron out your father
in England instead of America, and the holiday that pretended
(30:27):
had take in Europe after By the time the three
of you got back to America, there was no one
to question it was her having a baby but had
delayed their.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Return, except you and my real mother.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
If only you were safe, whence you'd been bought off.
I was paid for and delivered.
Speaker 7 (30:45):
I wished that so fast. If I'd realized then what
I did later, I would never have stood for it.
Your father brought your mother home to this house here
in drum Carry after you were born to sleep, appear
in this same room as you're sleeping.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
In to night. And when my father left, I thought
he would be back.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
But he never came. He never came.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And my mother, your mother.
Speaker 7 (31:16):
What was there left for her to live for? Betrayed
by the man she loved more than life itself, without
her baby to give her a reason for living.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I still say she didn't have to sell me.
Speaker 7 (31:28):
It's a long time ago, Patrick then, and a different
world it was. She thought to do it for your sake.
Oh many is the time she regretted her decision, but
it was too late to change her mind. She could
only hurt three other people, your father and his wife
and yourself by recalling it, and maybe in the long run,
(31:50):
herself too, for there was nothing at all to keep
life together, and a roof between her and the wind.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
And the rain.
Speaker 7 (31:58):
But the money from America bitter ashes. In the end,
what did it matter. Her life was over, So she
went away.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
She went away where they do say.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
That Bran lives in the caverns beneath the old well
out there, and every generation he claims a life in sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I'm on this, Connard. Don't give me old country superstitions.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Answer me.
Speaker 7 (32:27):
The well is fed by the River Boyne, through caverns
that wandered deep in the earth, through solid rock. She
was not the first to step into Brand's well and
drop into eternity.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And that's how my how my mother died.
Speaker 7 (32:45):
It's how she tried to die.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Now, what are you saying?
Speaker 7 (32:50):
You are of the faith? Are you not?
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (32:54):
And what hope of salvation would a woman twice stand
have a child out of wedlock? Only her father's coming
back and set Matt straight might have saved her.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
If he couldn't do that, I mean, even if he
hadn't been, as you said, weak is his own religion.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
She knew that so lost already. She was ready to
commit the other mortal pin and take her own life.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
Now she knows no rest.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Her body was never found. No, she was never buried,
There was no service.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
She died in sin and has left her own seeking
forgiveness with the one who might have brought her.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
Peace dead himself. Well, there it is now, and.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
The storm looks to be coming back. Oh, I am
so tired, and you must be too.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
That's a way to bed and find some rest every cap.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I don't suppose I've ever felt more tired in my life.
My mind churned with all the revelations I had. But
underneath it all, as I tossed and turned while the
thunder growled in the background, was that strange sense of
inner vision I had wrestled with since childhood, the unexplained
(34:30):
knowledge of events future and past that.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Had haunted me all my life. And in this turmoil
I fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I was startled by an enormous thunderclap, followed by the
wrenching split of wood. It brought me bolt upright and
in one bound to the window, where in the courtyard below,
in the flash of the lightning, I could see that
the oaken cap over the well deep open, and through
the sudden curtain of rain I could only half see
(35:05):
emerging from the shattered split in the.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Wood a strange e emerald presence.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
The last huge clap of thunder drove me inexorably downstairs
and out into the rain, and towards the well, be
behind it.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Like you're right, horse, you're you're you're getting soaked? Are you? Well?
That doesn't matter, because we should go into the house.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
Should Why?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, it's crazy to stay out in the storm like this.
Speaker 7 (35:41):
Let's stop it.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
The rain stopped, the thunder is gone, the moon is shining.
Of what happened?
Speaker 7 (35:53):
You asked for it, I gave it to you.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Who are you?
Speaker 6 (35:59):
You must know by now?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Dear dead?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yes, but.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
You're dead, Oh, how.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
I wish I were. I'm only passed over. I can't
be dead, you see, not yet, not till I'm waiting, waiting,
waiting for what for him to come? Who him? The
(36:30):
one who released me, the one to let me sleep
at last?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He is dead. My father is dead, I know.
Speaker 7 (36:39):
But he can't save me. Only you can.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Why me?
Speaker 7 (36:45):
Because you are the one who has been wronged. Only
you can forgive?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Why should I? When you sold me?
Speaker 7 (36:55):
I wanted a better life than I could offer you
the mom It was not my idea, but your father's.
I never spent a penny of it. It's all saved
off against the day of your coming here. As I
knew you would, it would be yours now and you
will be independent now and free, and the way Michael
(37:19):
never was.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Ooh, it's near the dawn and my time is running out.
Speaker 7 (37:29):
Patrick, Darling, my son, don't turn your back on me
as your father did.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Please Mother, Mother, it it's too late.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I never knew your love, not as a child. How
can I find it now when you are dead and
in the grave.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Give me yours now, and you will find my love.
Set me free, and I'll come to you in good time.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You will see Mother.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I I forgive you.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
I forgive you with all my heart, and my bones
are broken, and I can go meet your father as
my new born self in the southern life.
Speaker 7 (38:28):
Look for me, my darling, Look for me. I will
come to you at last and will bring you all
the love you have missed.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I came awake, my head ringing with the force of
the thunderclap.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I rushed to the window. Even through the streaming rain,
I could see the well.
Speaker 7 (38:55):
The cap was unbroken in place.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
What would that be? I had seen it split in two?
Could all that have been a dream?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
The first light of day was banishing the storm, and suddenly.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I had a premonition. I searched through the house for
miss Connaught.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I found her sitting in an easy chair in the
living room, the small seamed face smoothed of wrinkles, a
smile on her lips, her eyes closed, and a locket
on a chain resting in her hands. She was quite dead.
(39:46):
She must have been dead for some time. I dressed
hurriedly and drove to the village.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
So poor little boy and Connaught as gone alasts ah wait,
tis a blessing little she had to live for and
all without a man.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Ever, mister maltoon the will, Miss Connaught had that cat,
didn't she?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh? No, indeed that was the town. There were too
many young Cuttings over the years stepping off its copd
and the last one was just too much.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Miss Connaught's sister.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Deirdre, sister bo and Deirdre Connaught. Sure she never had
a sister in this life. Single she was, and half
the boys in the county after till she came back
from Paris, France in the First War, and never another
man would you give the time of day two from
that time till no, now that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
She's in her grave. So there it was.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I suppose I should have guessed it all along, that
sad little lady was Deirdrec, though the mother I never knew,
and all that love unspent between us. But somehow I'm
not sad. I opened the locker, and there is a
picture there of her as she must have been when
she was young, tousled red hair and sea green eyes,
(41:16):
dancing with pinfish merriment.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
And I know that somewhere in the future she is
to come to me again, and this time we will
live out our years together.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I am as sure of it as I am of
my own name.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Of footnotes. Shortly after pat Kinsella returned to America, came
the disaster of Pearl Harbor. He enlisted immediately and fought
with distinction through all of World War II. In the
summer of nineteen forty five, after v e Day, his
first night in Paris, he went to the left bank
of the Seine, retracing his father's footsteps down the steps
(42:01):
to the wharf. Did he know, in some mystic way
that he would find there the young nurse whom he
would marry. They are still living happily ever afterwards. I'll
be back shortly. The old dark gods may still haunt
(42:27):
the Emerald isld, but somehow it's the bright and happy
ones who seem to win out in the end. So
for all her traveil, her sorrows, and her harried history,
let's remember Ireland with the face she always manages to
turn to the world, the one with a smile. Our
cast included Paul hect Carol Titel and Ian Martin. The
(42:50):
entire production was under the direction of Hymond Brown.
The CBS Radio Mystery Theater Present. Come in.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I'm e. G. Marshall. If there ever was a country
of myth and legend, it's the Emerald Isle, that precious
gem that adorns the restless sea Ireland. But for all
its gay and infectious beauty, its green fields and the
riot of colored flowers, there is a darker side than
(00:44):
haunts this shining aisle. Not all the mythical spirits are
as captivating as leprechauns, or as gentle as the fairy book.
The Celtic gods of olden times still lurk in the
shadow of the woods, the deep mountain gloss, the black
velvet Knight.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This man swam.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Across the Irish Sea, and not mansars.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Sure he was more than man, a bolger, or a god,
or whatever you'd like to call him, and evil as
a raven cause. As that he was so, no ship
or house could hold him, and his heart as black
as the pits of Hell. Our mystery drama The Witching
(01:32):
Well was written especially for the Mystery Theater by Ian
Martin and stars Paul Hect and Carol Titell. It is
sponsored in part by Buick Motor Division and sin off
the sinus medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'll be back shortly with that.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
One.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
One of the basic pagan worships in any land is
the adoration of water. From the beginning of man, the
well has been a shrine, a symbol of life to
be propitiated by sacrifice and prayer, if not the well itself,
the gods or devils or guardians of its sacred content.
(02:19):
So now let us join Patrick Kinsella of Boston, fourth
generation Irish, as he starts unwittingly on a trip which
will take him back to his family roots and beyond
them to a brooding, misty foreboding past, a past where
timeless spirits stir and live again.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Thank the Lord, you are not your father's son.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And what does that mean?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
I am antally that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
You take after your mother's side of the family home.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Mother, I hope not.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I remind you that you're talking about my daughter.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I'm I'm sorry, uncle Eth. I didn't mean to hurt you.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It's just that mother was so cold and withdrawn, I
don't know, bitter.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Whatever she was.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Your father made her that way, with his woman eying
and his extravagance and his drinking. It's not true He's
only driven to that because, in the name of heaven'
you leave him alone to lie dead in peace.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And mother too.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I am glad you have some regard for her.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I do, Uncle, I do.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's just that somehow we we were never close, like
like you and Michael. He Lord knows he loved you,
the one unselfish passion he ever had.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I suppose we.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Does that complete the formalities concerning father's will?
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Just one more thing?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
This? What is it?
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Eh?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
An envelope obviously sealed about his contents?
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I know nothing? Is it? Is it all right to open.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
It's address to you?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Why are you hesitating? I don't know, hunch, just a feeling.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Hot soft, of feeling that maybe this should should die
with him, that it's something better left below.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Do you know me, Uncle?
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Yes, you were a.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Strange and wonderful little boy. I have to remember, when
I was younger and a little more full of sap
and vigor, I used to call you the changeling. I
wouldn't have been a bit surprised to find your ears
growing into points. You seem to be aware of so
much beyond the stiff necked old yankee.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I remember you used to kid me about leading you
to the pot of gold at the end.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Of the rainbow.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's why i'd like to have you in the bank now.
I still think you could lead us all to it,
just the way I thought your father could. Ones Let's
not get back into that, uncle, Let's just open this
mysterious uncle.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, it's just something he wants me to do.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Is it a secret?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh no, O, he doesn't say, and sort of I
suppose you're not between us. Well, let me read it
to you, dear son.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Among all the things in our relationship which has made
it the best of my life was the fact we
never questioned each other.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But accepted us on faith.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So I ask a final act of faith, with no
questions asked. Please continue to issue a banker's check for
eight hundred dollars every month as indicated to the following
address box thirteen Branwell, County.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Meath, Ireland. That is all Yep, no name, no name,
what car, no no indication or how.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Long he's been paid?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Nope, and how much? Eight hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
That's nearly ten thousand a year.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
You're not going to keep paying that out?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Oh yes, uncle, f I am it was my father's wish.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
I'm living up to it. There's only one thing I'm
not living up to. That is I'm not going to
do it out of reason, which means I can answer
an earlier question of yours. I know what I am
going to do with myself.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I'm going to make a trip to Ireland. I'd like
to know just who's picking up that check.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
From box thirteen GPO, Bramwell, County me If I wasn't
quite living up to my father's last request, I wasn't
being completely honest with my uncle either, for there was
a name as well as an address.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Bo and Connaught.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So on the next plane I left for Ireland and
bran Well wherever that turned out to be.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
At the top of the evening to you has heard
part of it?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Be oh, I'll just have have you any draft beer?
Speaker 6 (06:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I prayed of county beat would have you? After drawing
you are? Yeah, I'll have a glass of you do
right now?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
From the tone of your voice, you would not be
from these parts America?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Is it? That's right? But I am of Irish descent.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
There's your drafts and what brings you to drum?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Carry drum kerry? I thought this was Branwell.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Ah, wait, so it is, so it is in a
manner of speaking, or was you See in all of
eighteen years since we used the old name, the old name,
that's right, sir, up till January fifteenth, nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Then it got change.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
A lot of things change once we became the Irish
Free State.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
You mean this town has been called drum Carry since
nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's how it'd be, all right?
Speaker 3 (07:39):
If letters were male, I mean posted to Branwell, they'd
still be delivered. Oh naturally, even after all these years.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Wait now, God bless you, sir. I've been postmastered here
in the last twenty five so I can assure you
any letter.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Sent here would find his.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Way to its proper destination, whether it was the Brandweed
or drum Carry.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I see.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Why why did you change the name? Oh?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I don't know, superstition, Maybe not a very pleasant name, after.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
All, it seems pleasant enough to me.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Why that's because you wouldn't know Irish history, or a
local history for that matter. One reason or another, it's
been a real curse.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
That old well well? What what old well?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We know one the town got its name from Brand's well.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Do you see to begin with, yes, there actually is a.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Well oh yes, oh yeah, well that is there was being.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Capped up ever since you wade long enough ago.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
No need for it.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Once the waters of time was brought in, folks weren't
usual it anyway, what with its history.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
But what happened to the world? Did it go back
from bad to worse? Though?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Twas never any good in the first place, to my mind,
not after as they say, brand took it for his
living place. Who was No, you never heard of him
wor sure it is not surprising since he was Sassanach
and you, being a Irish descents a british Man British,
he belonged to them, and we never asked any part
(09:12):
of him. But they chased him out of Wales. And
it was an ill wind ever, blew him west to
swim the Irish Sea and up the Bowne till he
found our subterranean caves under the mountains.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
There. This man swam across the Irish Sea, not man, sir.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Sure, he was more than man, a bogul or a
god or whatever you'd like to call him, and evil
as a hoody crow or a raven called norsl. He
was so no shipherd house could hold him, and his
heart black as the pits of hell. His grandfather himself
(09:51):
told me that the well was brackish enough already in
his time. And to be sure, I always thought it
tasted like bagua, I said.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
But no matter, no matter.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
They finally had to cap it after there was one
too many that.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Won too many one? Ah?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Well, sure?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Why should I be bothering you with the local gossip
and old wife's taals?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I have another brew on the house. Oh that's very
kind of your sir.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Well, it's getting late. I have to find some lodgings.
Do you also have an inn here?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No, I'm afraid not.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
How long would you want to be staying?
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, I'm a writer and I wanted to get some
background and local color. Could you suggest somewhere I might
find a room?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Now? I might just be able to do that, for
I see someone coming down the road?
Speaker 7 (10:41):
Would be just the answer.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Go on, cut out?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Oh and Conrad, where is he? He will shoot?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
What is the matter with you, tall bo?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
There's a lady's name, and there she is herself.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
If you look out the window on our way here,
bless her heart. Sure it's the lonely, brave soul.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
She is in a hard, long life.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
She lives taken in borders to make ends meet. Come
out now, we'll meet her by the stoop, God save you,
missus Canna.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Where are you off so late.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
In the even in such a hurry?
Speaker 7 (11:21):
I had a call in, mister muldoon. Did you see
who call?
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And I'm from where it had on the telephone?
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Sure you know I don't have such an instrument in
the house.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
From the voices, Oh no, that is a mite early
for the little folks to be about.
Speaker 7 (11:38):
Yet stop your nonsense, Sean muldoone. I don't hold with
tippery the like of that. I have my own voices
and they serve me. Well. Was there something for me
in the post? Then?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Ah?
Speaker 5 (11:52):
No, sure not even one of them.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Advertisements Number thirteen is as bare as the old woman's coverard.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
But I heard it sucks here.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Well maybe you did, after all, for he's a gentleman,
a writer, and all is looking for lodgend.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
For a whiles.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
And twas in my mind that you might want to
take him in.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
It'll only be for a couple of weeks, missus Connaught.
I'm willing to pay anything within reason.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
You're from the state, Yes, I am.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I should introduce myself. My name is Patrick Kinsella fa.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Now there's a fine Irish name for you, is it not.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
Kimsella Patrick.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, the full name is Michael Patrick Canseller.
Speaker 7 (12:34):
Ah, that'll be it. The room will be ten and
six a day with breakfast, eighteen shillings with for board.
No reduction by the week or a month, it's just
by the day.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Well, that'll be fine. And I let me see. I
suppose I pay you two weeks in advance.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Have you look that's in my car outside. Come along,
I'll drive and you direct me where to go. The
strangest sense that I'd stepped across a border into a
dream fantasy world.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
We drove a short.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Distance and over a bridge, and then at her direction,
I turned down a hill and onto a cobblestone road
to stop in the courtyard paved the same way next
to a round structure about waist high that was roofed
over by some heavy oaken timbers, dovetailed together and.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Shaped to fit like a lid.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Is is that a well?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
What else?
Speaker 7 (13:33):
That's brand's?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
The one that's never used anymore.
Speaker 7 (13:38):
The one that was fowled forever as well.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
You know what do you mean as well?
Speaker 7 (13:43):
I know who would know better? Now I want to
know something else. What Why did you come back, Michael?
Why did you ever come back?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
For the moment, pat Kinsella can only stare open mouthed
at the tiny woman who is suddenly all blazing eyes
burning with accusation. He realizes, of course, that he is
being mistaken for his father. It isn't the first time
people have noted the resemblance. But what fascinates and repels
him is a secret that seems about to be revealed,
(14:23):
a secret he is not sure he wants to know.
I shall return shortly with that too. So here is
Michael Patrick Kinsella in the year nineteen hundred and forty,
(14:44):
sitting in a car next to a little wisp of
a woman who, for some inexplicable reason, his dead father
has been supporting for over twenty years, secretly, and next
to a well that has been caped and shut tight
against what the legends of the enormous demigod who lives
(15:04):
far below in its subterranean caverns, always hungry for the
sacrifice of a human soul for some more practical reason
that the water is fouled or the well has outlived
this usefulness.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I'm afraid you're making a mistake, Missus Connaught. I'm not
who you seem to think I am.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
I never fear a whisk lad, You're just who you
have to be.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
My name isn't Michael. I mean that's not what I'm
called by its path?
Speaker 7 (15:33):
It's a long time, do you know? And who remembers
all the names? The way they can change with the
pass in years? You're still the one expected?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Are you not expected?
Speaker 7 (15:45):
The voice was after telling me you'd be back. Did
you not hear it yourself?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The voice?
Speaker 7 (15:51):
What else would you call it? You'll not be telling
me it didn't call you?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Then? Else?
Speaker 7 (15:58):
Why are you here again?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I'm not here again? Ah?
Speaker 7 (16:02):
There? Now? It had to be such an important anniversary,
twenty one years.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
You had to be here here for what.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
To strike off the chains, set the soul at liberty
to rest in peace?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Missus Connaught?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Forgive me, but I really don't know what you're talking about.
Do you're not Michael? I'm not Michael. I'm Pat Michael
was my father?
Speaker 7 (16:29):
Ah?
Speaker 6 (16:30):
Is it?
Speaker 7 (16:31):
So that might account for it?
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Then?
Speaker 7 (16:35):
Ah? But here tis late, it's coming on to be
and you could be tired and have a good meal.
Is what you need under your belt. We'll leave the
car here and walk to the house and I'll get
you settled in again again. You'll see once you're in
the house and it all begins to come back.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I didn't really want to get out of the car
and the Irish gloaming and that peculiar half light between
day and dark that lasts so long. But grabbing my bags,
I beautifully follow the tiny figure of my hostess as
she'd clumped doggedly, but yet with a kind of grace
down the path to a small thatched cottage with thick
stone walls. Inside. She lit kerosene lamps and bustled about
(17:23):
getting me settled in an upstairs room with a dormer
window poking through the thatch and overlooking the well.
Speaker 7 (17:31):
Do you remember now?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Why can't I make you understand? There's nothing to remember
all I'm here.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Why you can't deny that bed and the well outside
the window, and that here It was the wedding night,
or so I thought. Heaven saved me.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
What are you trying to tell me, miss Connach?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But my father was here. What was it you said
twenty one years ago?
Speaker 7 (17:56):
I'm here's the light now, and let me look at you,
boy carefully.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I may look like my father, or rather like he did,
but I am my own man.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
You're it's spitt an image if you're not.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
I couldn't be my father under any circumstances, because.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
He's dead God defenders.
Speaker 7 (18:18):
He's a way to the other world then and abandoned.
The girl is shamed. So that's why you were called.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
I wasn't called. I came here to find.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Out who the mysterious Boan Connach was and why my father.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Was paying was paying you all that money? But maybe
it would be better if I left.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
You want to run away without finding out.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I don't think I want to find out anymore?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Why?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
Boy, Because you think I'm an old lady touched in
the hill. I didn't say that, but it was in
your mind for sure, because these old eyes are dim
and I thought I saw him. So I raised up
from the past and come to make us whole.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
You see now that I'm the son and not the father.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
More's the pity for now. Indeed, we're lost, and there's
no more waiting this side of the curtain tis all
too late, and the shame must burn itself into eternity.
My life is done.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
This cannot let me be honest.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
If my father deserted you or walked out on you
sometime in the past, I'm sorry, but it looks at
least as if he's tried to pay his debt.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
Walked out on me. Sweet Mary looked down on us.
Twas not me, he walked out on wisdom there. Now
it's the storm. It's been threatening all day. What I
had to say will have to wait. Why with the
wind away to the northwest, the rain oft blows down
(19:56):
the chimney, I'll have to set the damper down. Un
little windows exhausted, I'll call you when I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This would have been my moment to pick up my
heels and run my last chance. But I had waited
too long. I went to the window, peering out through
the streaming rain.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
That blurred the window panes.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
For one left catching moment, I thought I saw the
lid on the well lift, as though some strange creature
was about to answer the knocking of the rain drops.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
On his door. And then sudden it was too dark
to see any moment.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
By the middle of dinner, the rain was gone, and
by the end of it, Miss connaught was too.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I had tried to question her, and she refused.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To talk until I'd eaten, And now she seemed to
disappeared into thin air.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Suddenly.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I wasn't mystified anymore, or apprehensive or afflicted by any
form of e sp.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I was just plain angry, and I wanted out.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
I packed my bags, slung them in the car, headed
out of the cobblestone yard and along the road to
the bridge. But that's as far as I was going.
It was a wash a foot under the swiftly flowing river.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
All right, just a.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Minute, I'll roll it down. What are you looking for
me now, miss Connard? Frankly, I was taking a powder.
I thought you had run out on me, so I
decided to run out too.
Speaker 7 (21:46):
I am not run very far this night. The bridge
is underwater and the river isn't even crested yet. If
we get ma rain tonight, we're in for flood. Did
not get a cross very soon?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Boil all right, then climb in. I'll take you back
to the house.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Looks like we're fated to open some graves.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
It wasn't me, your father deserted. It was my younger sister, Deirdre.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I never heard my father mention that now, and I'm sure.
Speaker 7 (22:24):
Of that he didn't, Dare, why not? Your father was weak.
He wasn't a bad man, just a weak one. It
was the spring of nineteen eighteen in Paris that Dedre
met up with Michael on what they call the left bank,
down by the river Sea.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I mean, oh, your pardon a mom, Madame mademoiselle.
Speaker 7 (22:55):
I'm not friends.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh well, I was just trying to say I I
didn't know anyone was down here.
Speaker 7 (23:02):
Well, now you know, yes?
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Are you alone?
Speaker 4 (23:08):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, well I guess you want to stay alone.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So well, I'll just hey, listen, couldn't we just talk
a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I mean, I don't speak French, so I don't get
to talk to many girls.
Speaker 7 (23:28):
Is that funny now?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Not?
Speaker 7 (23:31):
Here? And I speak English, but you don't get to
do much talk in a social way with the English soldiers.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Oh, I'm not English. I'm American, and you are not English.
You are Irish.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I can hear that. And if I am, you know
I'm Irish too. I mean three generations?
Speaker 7 (23:49):
Are you now, And where do you live in the
state Boston?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
There's almost as many of us there as there are
in Dublin.
Speaker 7 (23:57):
Is that a fact? And you're here to see gave
us all and to be a soldier?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Boy, I'm here to help eat the kaiser and save
my skin if I can.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I'm not much for war.
Speaker 7 (24:08):
And or me. That's why I'm down here now looking
at the river tonight, trying to forget another one, a
special one who died tonight.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You're your fiance, no boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
No anymore than there are all that the poor hurt darling. No,
I'm a nurse, you see. Oh well, not a real nurse,
not an rian, just a helper like me.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Oh my name is Michael Kinseller.
Speaker 7 (24:37):
How do you do I'm dead to connaught? Hello, Hello, Michael.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
I never called a girl by her first name that
fast before.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
You know me? You boy, you're a fast worker, Michael KINSELLA.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
I'm because I've never really been in love before at
first sight.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Don't you feel anyway the same?
Speaker 7 (25:08):
It's a shamed I should be to admit it. But
the trouble is I do. That's the way they met,
and for the most of that year they were seldom separated.
It was just sheer luck that Michael was assigned to
the quartermaster's staff in Paris and never saw any action.
(25:28):
The war was just a sort of holiday to him
until the day he was assigned to return home and
he had to face the truth at last. But you
can't just leave me behind, not now, not the way
I am.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
It's all right, darling. I've gotten to leave.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I'm going to see you home, home, as far as
London anyway, and the way it is, I have to
go there on business.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So the hotel reservation has been made.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
We can try to work it all out, work what out,
what we're going to do, I mean, how it's going
to end.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
End.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
It has to be.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Ah, there's no excuse. I know I should have told
you from the very beginning.
Speaker 7 (26:13):
But.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Well it's over for us. Why because I can't ever
marry you. I'm married already you married?
Speaker 7 (26:24):
Does someone else?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (26:27):
But you can't be Mike. You can't. I'm having your child.
What am I going to do?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
It's all right, darling. You won't never have to worry.
I'll support him and you, I promise. Look, when we
get to London, everything will be arranged.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Legally, legally be legal. There's nothing I can do now.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Neither of us believe in divorce. And besides, just out
of the question why my whole position with a bank,
my future in business, is because I married my wife.
Her father owns the bank and half of Boston.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
For that matter. They cut me loose.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
I couldn't support myself, let alone you and.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
And the child that's coming.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
So you're giving me one who's to have no father.
But that wasn't the way it turned out at all,
because when they got to London, Deirdre was ready to
go into labor. And what faced them there was enough
to bring it on full force.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
What faced them, Miss Connaught.
Speaker 7 (27:29):
What would you guess, missus patrickin Feller, the woman from
whom your father would have done anything to hide his
affair with Deirdre, my mother, your father's wife.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Quite suddenly our story has moved from the world of
fantasy to a world of quite sordid reality. I'll be
back shortly with X three. I'll leave all of you
to imagine what happened in the scene when Michael kinsella
(28:10):
indeed Racconnaught, already seven months pregnant, unexpectedly had to face
Michael's wife. There was no longer any chance for subterfuge.
Everything was out in the open. And at last our
story has reached the moment when the past is about
to be revealed and Michael's son Pat is going to
learn a buried truth that will shake him to his heels.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
But what was my mother doing in London.
Speaker 7 (28:34):
Missus Kinsella, Well, sure she knew the hotel had been
engaged in London for business. And didn't her father offer
her the trip across the ocean to greet her husband
that much earlier?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Didn't my father know she was coming?
Speaker 7 (28:48):
I suppose missus Kinsella thought to give him happy surprise.
Oh twas a surprise, no doubt of that. That's far
from a happy one to.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Begin with, that is, what do you mean to begin with?
Speaker 7 (29:02):
Well, first off, it was a terrible shot for Deirdre,
and the baby was born out of its time, oh
no before his time, but alive and kicking and screaming
and ready to hang on to life. There was no
easy way do you see out of it all? Or
so it seemed.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
What are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 7 (29:22):
Did you never wonder why you never had any brothers
or sisters at all?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh, of course, I suppose every only child dies and.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
You'll not have to wonder any longer when I tell
you that the one you've thought your mother all this
time never could have a child, and they saw any world,
And well she and your father knew it before they
were ever married.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You mean that I am that baby.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
What chance had a child born outside the church for
a life here in Ireland against the future for him
in America. Oh, not to mention the miracle it was
for a barren woman to be given the gift of motherhood.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
No one ever guessed.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
Why should they. The one you thought your mother had
said farewell to her husband only seven months before. She'd
been waiting a month in London, and it was weeks
before she left the sail over. You were born early,
and it was easy to bring the time into joint
with all the red tape of mustron out your father
in England instead of America, and the holiday that pretended
(30:27):
had take in Europe after By the time the three
of you got back to America, there was no one
to question it was her having a baby but had
delayed their.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Return, except you and my real mother.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
If only you were safe, whence you'd been bought off.
I was paid for and delivered.
Speaker 7 (30:45):
I wished that so fast. If I'd realized then what
I did later, I would never have stood for it.
Your father brought your mother home to this house here
in drum Carry after you were born to sleep, appear
in this same room as you're sleeping.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
In to night. And when my father left, I thought
he would be back.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
But he never came. He never came.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
And my mother, your mother.
Speaker 7 (31:16):
What was there left for her to live for? Betrayed
by the man she loved more than life itself, without
her baby to give her a reason for living.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
I still say she didn't have to sell me.
Speaker 7 (31:28):
It's a long time ago, Patrick then, and a different
world it was. She thought to do it for your sake.
Oh many is the time she regretted her decision, but
it was too late to change her mind. She could
only hurt three other people, your father and his wife
and yourself by recalling it, and maybe in the long run,
(31:50):
herself too, for there was nothing at all to keep
life together, and a roof between her and the wind.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
And the rain.
Speaker 7 (31:58):
But the money from America bitter ashes. In the end,
what did it matter. Her life was over, So she
went away.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
She went away where they do say.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
That Bran lives in the caverns beneath the old well
out there, and every generation he claims a life in sacrifice.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
I'm on this, Connard. Don't give me old country superstitions.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Answer me.
Speaker 7 (32:27):
The well is fed by the River Boyne, through caverns
that wandered deep in the earth, through solid rock. She
was not the first to step into Brand's well and
drop into eternity.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And that's how my how my mother died.
Speaker 7 (32:45):
It's how she tried to die.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Now, what are you saying?
Speaker 7 (32:50):
You are of the faith? Are you not?
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (32:54):
And what hope of salvation would a woman twice stand
have a child out of wedlock? Only her father's coming
back and set Matt straight might have saved her.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
If he couldn't do that, I mean, even if he
hadn't been, as you said, weak is his own religion.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
She knew that so lost already. She was ready to
commit the other mortal pin and take her own life.
Speaker 6 (33:23):
Now she knows no rest.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Her body was never found. No, she was never buried,
There was no service.
Speaker 7 (33:31):
She died in sin and has left her own seeking
forgiveness with the one who might have brought her.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
Peace dead himself. Well, there it is now, and.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
The storm looks to be coming back. Oh, I am
so tired, and you must be too.
Speaker 6 (33:59):
That's a way to bed and find some rest every cap.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I don't suppose I've ever felt more tired in my life.
My mind churned with all the revelations I had. But
underneath it all, as I tossed and turned while the
thunder growled in the background, was that strange sense of
inner vision I had wrestled with since childhood, the unexplained
(34:30):
knowledge of events future and past that.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Had haunted me all my life. And in this turmoil
I fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I was startled by an enormous thunderclap, followed by the
wrenching split of wood. It brought me bolt upright and
in one bound to the window, where in the courtyard below,
in the flash of the lightning, I could see that
the oaken cap over the well deep open, and through
the sudden curtain of rain I could only half see
(35:05):
emerging from the shattered split in the.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Wood a strange e emerald presence.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
The last huge clap of thunder drove me inexorably downstairs
and out into the rain, and towards the well, be
behind it.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Like you're right, horse, you're you're you're getting soaked? Are you? Well?
That doesn't matter, because we should go into the house.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
Should Why?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Well, it's crazy to stay out in the storm like this.
Speaker 7 (35:41):
Let's stop it.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
The rain stopped, the thunder is gone, the moon is shining.
Of what happened?
Speaker 7 (35:53):
You asked for it, I gave it to you.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Who are you?
Speaker 6 (35:59):
You must know by now?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Dear dead?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yes, but.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
You're dead, Oh, how.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
I wish I were. I'm only passed over. I can't
be dead, you see, not yet, not till I'm waiting, waiting,
waiting for what for him to come? Who him? The
(36:30):
one who released me, the one to let me sleep
at last?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
He is dead. My father is dead, I know.
Speaker 7 (36:39):
But he can't save me. Only you can.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Why me?
Speaker 7 (36:45):
Because you are the one who has been wronged. Only
you can forgive?
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Why should I? When you sold me?
Speaker 7 (36:55):
I wanted a better life than I could offer you
the mom It was not my idea, but your father's.
I never spent a penny of it. It's all saved
off against the day of your coming here. As I
knew you would, it would be yours now and you
will be independent now and free, and the way Michael
(37:19):
never was.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Ooh, it's near the dawn and my time is running out.
Speaker 7 (37:29):
Patrick, Darling, my son, don't turn your back on me
as your father did.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Please Mother, Mother, it it's too late.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I never knew your love, not as a child. How
can I find it now when you are dead and
in the grave.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
Give me yours now, and you will find my love.
Set me free, and I'll come to you in good time.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You will see Mother.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I I forgive you.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
I forgive you with all my heart, and my bones
are broken, and I can go meet your father as
my new born self in the southern life.
Speaker 7 (38:28):
Look for me, my darling, Look for me. I will
come to you at last and will bring you all
the love you have missed.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I came awake, my head ringing with the force of
the thunderclap.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I rushed to the window. Even through the streaming rain,
I could see the well.
Speaker 7 (38:55):
The cap was unbroken in place.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
What would that be? I had seen it split in two?
Could all that have been a dream?
Speaker 3 (39:09):
The first light of day was banishing the storm, and suddenly.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I had a premonition. I searched through the house for
miss Connaught.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I found her sitting in an easy chair in the
living room, the small seamed face smoothed of wrinkles, a
smile on her lips, her eyes closed, and a locket
on a chain resting in her hands. She was quite dead.
(39:46):
She must have been dead for some time. I dressed
hurriedly and drove to the village.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
So poor little boy and Connaught as gone alasts ah wait,
tis a blessing little she had to live for and
all without a man.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Ever, mister maltoon the will, Miss Connaught had that cat,
didn't she?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh? No, indeed that was the town. There were too
many young Cuttings over the years stepping off its copd
and the last one was just too much.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Miss Connaught's sister.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Deirdre, sister bo and Deirdre Connaught. Sure she never had
a sister in this life. Single she was, and half
the boys in the county after till she came back
from Paris, France in the First War, and never another
man would you give the time of day two from
that time till no, now that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
She's in her grave. So there it was.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I suppose I should have guessed it all along, that
sad little lady was Deirdrec, though the mother I never knew,
and all that love unspent between us. But somehow I'm
not sad. I opened the locker, and there is a
picture there of her as she must have been when
she was young, tousled red hair and sea green eyes,
(41:16):
dancing with pinfish merriment.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
And I know that somewhere in the future she is
to come to me again, and this time we will
live out our years together.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I am as sure of it as I am of
my own name.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Of footnotes. Shortly after pat Kinsella returned to America, came
the disaster of Pearl Harbor. He enlisted immediately and fought
with distinction through all of World War II. In the
summer of nineteen forty five, after v e Day, his
first night in Paris, he went to the left bank
of the Seine, retracing his father's footsteps down the steps
(42:01):
to the wharf. Did he know, in some mystic way
that he would find there the young nurse whom he
would marry. They are still living happily ever afterwards. I'll
be back shortly. The old dark gods may still haunt
(42:27):
the Emerald isld, but somehow it's the bright and happy
ones who seem to win out in the end. So
for all her traveil, her sorrows, and her harried history,
let's remember Ireland with the face she always manages to
turn to the world, the one with a smile. Our
cast included Paul hect Carol Titel and Ian Martin. The
(42:50):
entire production was under the direction of Hymond Brown.
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