The Maker of Swans

by Paraic O’Donnell

  Her impulse is to climb down immediately, to take her things and go upstairs. She forces herself to lie still and listen, to make sure it is safe. As she does so, she tries to recollect all that has happened, to explain it to herself. She has been asleep, for how long she has no idea. It seems strange to her that she should have fallen asleep at all, in such circumstances. She is not quite well, she thinks. Her throat is constricted and behind her brow there is the faint thrum of fever. She caught a chill, perhaps, standing on the tower in the cold for all that time.

  Clara props herself up on her elbows. She hears nothing now, from outside or from the passageway above. Whatever it was that she witnessed in the stable yard, it is over. They have returned indoors, Arabella and the driver; to dress for dinner, she supposes, as she is expected to be doing. Or perhaps dinner has already been served. It may be nine o’clock, for all she knows. It may be midnight.

  As quickly as she can, given the darkness, she lowers herself from her hiding place. The dress, when she locates it, is perfectly dry. How long would that have taken? An hour? Two, maybe? Irritated, she pulls the dress on, smoothing it down with rough and careless strokes. There is a distinct and potent discomfort in waking with no way of knowing the time. She makes her way to the stairs, almost tripping over her shoes.

  In her room, at last, Clara can check the clock. She is late – it is almost a quarter to nine – but her movements, as she dashes around the room, are urgent yet aimless. She has no particular idea, she realises, of the preparations she ought to make. She has dressed for dinner before, but never on occasions when her efforts were likely to be noticed. She has read enough, of course, to know that young debutantes would be rouging their cheeks and dabbing scent behind their ears. She has been aware, without feeling the slightest urge to possess them, of the accoutrements that girls are expected to delight in. She does have a hairbrush, at least, and makes do with applying it to the more disordered parts of her hair. Feeling that she may have neglected something, she inspects her teeth briefly before the mirror and splashes some water on her face.

  On her way downstairs, Clara encounters Alice, who has been dispatched to look for her and is labouring up the stairs with a sternly pursed expression. ‘Well, there you are, Miss Clara,’ she says. ‘What can you be thinking of? The guests have gone in to dinner, and I’m sure I have enough to occupy me. Mr Eustace is most anxious, and I can’t say as I blame him. Honestly, child. I sometimes think you’re in another world entirely.’

  Clara follows her to the dining room, where Eustace is called out to present her to the company. He looks her over brusquely, clucking with disapproval at the appearance of her dress. ‘I was becoming concerned,’ he says. ‘You are all right? You are not unwell?’

  Clara shakes her head impatiently, taking hold of his wrist. Even as she does so, she realises that she is not at all sure how to explain what it is that she has seen. She does not understand what passed between Arabella and the tall man, only that it reveals something even Eustace does not know, something that places all of them at a disadvantage.

  Eustace pulls his hand away, reluctantly but firmly. ‘There is no time, Clara. You must tell me later. Think how rude this must appear. Did I not ask that you help me in this? That you show them some small courtesies?’

  Before she can respond, he turns and re-enters the dining room, holding the door open for her to follow. Alice prods her when she hesitates. ‘Go on, child, for heaven’s sake. You’ve caused quite enough of a fuss as it is.’

  In the dining room, Clara’s eyes adapt again to darkness. The faces of those seated around the table loom as if suspended in nothingness. She struggles to focus as Eustace introduces her.

  ‘Clara, this is Dr Chastern.’

  He indicates the elderly passenger she observed from the tower. He and Mr Crowe have been seated at opposing ends of the huge dining table, each partly obscured by a constellation of candle flames. It is absurdly formal and somehow unreal, like a banquet for ghosts.

  ‘And this is his associate, Mr Nazaire.’

  Twice now, Clara has watched this man while she herself remained unobserved, yet she is almost persuaded that the opposite is true. He studies her with such consuming deliberation that it seems impossible that anything might escape his attention. She looks down, unable to meet his gaze, and hurries to the chair that Eustace has pulled out. She glances at Arabella as she takes her seat – she is leaning towards Mr Crowe to hear some private aside – but quickly looks away again. Nazaire, she knows, is observing her every movement. He sits at the edge of her vision, still and vigilant, seeing everything.

  She clasps her hands in her lap and looks straight ahead. The curtains have not been drawn, she notices, and a candle flickers in each of the windows. She thinks again of John Crouch, looking in from the cold. Even Abel is inside in the warmth, standing with stiff decorum behind Mr Crowe’s chair. Alice brings Clara a bowl of the soup that the others have just finished. She is not hungry, but sets about it diligently, grateful to have something to occupy her.

  ‘You must forgive Clara,’ Mr Crowe says, breaking the silence. ‘She is a great adventuress, you see, and finds the tyranny of regular mealtimes to be insupportable. In this, as in so much else, we share a certain kinship.’

  ‘How delightful,’ says Chastern. ‘My own acquaintance with children, alas, has been no more than what I have glimpsed in books. In literature, of course, one scarcely notices dutiful children. It is only when they are thrust upon the world by some contrivance of circumstance that we may tolerably fix our attention upon them.’ He speaks slowly, and with a jaded languor, as if he takes pleasure in it but finds it somehow effortful.

  ‘A death, usually,’ says Mr Crowe.

  ‘Well, quite,’ Chastern says. ‘But death is hardly a contrivance of circumstance.’

  ‘It is when Dickens does it,’ Mr Crowe replies. ‘Some pallid and virtuous mama is usually required to die in childbirth so that our sturdy little hero, before he has so much as uttered his first word, is adequately furnished with woe. No, Dickens never dispenses a teaspoonful of misfortune when a ladleful will do. Still, it is no great fault. It is no more objectionable, after all, than the irruption of outlandishness that brings young Jim Hawkins into possession of Captain Flint’s treasure map. And what of it, if it gets the job done? He may be a cheerful and dauntless little urchin, but we shall hardly put up with him rinsing out piss pots for three hundred pages. Get things moving, that’s all that matters, and do not trouble yourself at occasional creaking from the scenery. Get his arse out the door so that things can happen to him.’

  Chastern considers this with a look of distaste. ‘A vulgar formulation, though I must defer to you, I suppose, as a master practitioner. And we must concede the principle, of course. Every tale must have its casus belli, its abducted Helen. Miss Clara, of course, finds herself in rather more agreeable domestic circumstances than did young Jim, but even such fine places as this may occasionally be visited by the agents of fortune.’

  ‘Et in Arcadia ego,’ says Nazaire. His voice is soft and measured. There is something unignorable in it.

  Clara raises her eyes from her soup. Both he and Chastern are looking at her as if awaiting her response. She toys with her spoon, the heat of discomfort rising in her face. Eustace, standing attentively at the sideboard, clears his throat and fixes his eyes on Mr Crowe, who seems after a moment to realise that he is expected to intervene.

  ‘Clara finds her voice on the page, gentlemen. Like me, she is devoted to the written word. If she had pen and paper to hand, and if we were not at the dinner table, I assure you that you would find her responses dazzling. She does not speak, however. It is a mark of singularity that she has always carried, and for which we cherish her all the more.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Chastern. ‘It is a detail of which Eustace took care to apprise me, but I confess that it slipped my mind. I’m afraid my age begins to betray me. You must forgive us, Miss Clara, if our inde
licacy caused you discomfort. The hopes and prospects of the young, you see, are intoxicating to those of us who have entered our declining years. So much awaits you in the world beyond this place.’

  Eustace comes to the table and leans over Clara, taking up her plate and adjusting her napkin. His arms shield her from Chastern’s view.

  ‘There is time enough to think of such things,’ Mr Crowe says. ‘She is a child still, and will be a comfort to us for some years yet. Besides, she does not want for amusement here. She has the run of this house and all that lies about it. She knows my library, I often think, better than I do myself. There is room enough here for any child’s adventures.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Chastern. ‘We do not forget, Crowe, how grandly you have established yourself. How ought one to describe the style of the house? It seems to have Elizabethan notions, among others.’

  ‘The house?’ Mr Crowe says. ‘The house has been added to by every age.’

  ‘There must be many rooms,’ says Nazaire, looking unblinkingly at Clara. ‘One could lose oneself.’

  She feels a cold pressure, as if something were coiling itself about her neck and chest. Eustace interrupts the conversation to announce the serving of the next course while Abel replenishes the wine glasses. When the food has been served, Mr Crowe begins to relate an anecdote involving a tsarina and a pearl necklace that he was somehow instrumental in restoring to her. Clara has heard the story several times, and does not give it her full attention. There is some joke in it, she thinks, that is intended to be obscure to her.

  ‘Splendid,’ says Chastern, when Mr Crowe has finished. ‘How splendidly you have lived. And you see, Clara, Crowe was never content to have his own adventures bounded by the walls of a house, however magnificent it might be.’

  ‘I was young, Chastern. It is a common condition, though you yourself managed never to succumb to it. This was long before I came into any property.’

  ‘Indeed,’ says Chastern. ‘But you have not quite lapsed into blameless senescence, have you? Even now, though you find yourself lord of the manor, with all the cares of your great Estate to weigh on you; even now, you contrive to find amusement for yourself, do you not? You do not want for the consolations of beauty.’ He looks at Arabella, who inclines her neck uneasily. Clara can see no marks on it, but she holds herself as if in some mild discomfort.

  Mr Crowe takes a mouthful of wine. He swills it for a moment, his head to one side. ‘What would you have me do, Chastern? Pass my evenings at the cribbage table? As long as there is life, there are pleasures to be taken.’

  ‘Just so,’ says Chastern. ‘As long as there is life.’

  Nazaire finds some obscure amusement in this observation. He laughs to himself as he cuts his meat. Like his voice, the sound is at once smooth and forceful, seeming calibrated to achieve some precise effect. Mr Crowe scowls and glances impatiently at Eustace, whose answering look is carefully restrained.

  Mr Crowe and Chastern continue to spar in this manner, expounding some high principle of art before returning, by an elliptical path, to Mr Crowe’s personal history or the affairs of his household. There is an elaborate formality to their exchanges, though Mr Crowe lapses occasionally into coarseness, and a refined if rather sour wit. There is no warmth or ease between them, it is clear, and even Chastern’s extravagant politeness seems to conceal something unpleasant. It makes Clara think of the jewelled handle of some gleaming and deadly implement. And at the periphery of the conversation, always, is some cloaked and unmentionable subject, something that is almost but not quite said.

  More courses arrive. There are tender morsels of pheasant and pigeon, blazoned with a sweetly piquant sauce. An elaborate confection of lobster is served, for some reason, in crystal goblets and garnished, astonishingly, with flecks of gold leaf. The arrangement of finely sliced beef that follows seems to Clara to be raw, though it has a delicate fragrance and is tender enough to be cut with the edge of her fork. Most of these dishes she pushes away untouched. She feels unmistakably feverish now, with a diffuse ache that has spread to her limbs.

  Nor is she the only one whose appetite is poor. Arabella, she notices, takes only a distracted mouthful of whatever is put before her. Nazaire consumes a portion – never more than half – of each dish before decorously setting down his cutlery. Chastern, meanwhile, examines everything that is brought to him with puzzlement or horror, and appears to find the very notion of food vaguely outlandish. Only Mr Crowe eats with relish, savouring every bite with a contented indifference to those around him.

  When Eustace announces dessert, Chastern raises a hand in theatrical protest. ‘Forgive me,’ he says, ‘but I must forgo any further indulgence. It is wrong of me, I know, to spurn such immoderate hospitality, but my constitution is no longer robust.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ says Mr Crowe. ‘Take something sweet, Chastern. It cannot but do you good. Look at you, you have the complexion of a scorpion.’

  Chastern does not immediately reply. ‘Perhaps I do,’ he says, at length. ‘It is the outward manifestation of what is now my nature. I have grown melancholy, you see, as age and infirmity stalk me, and I find myself beyond the consolation of sweetness. But the rest of you must continue, of course. I would not dream of depriving you of your – what was it, Eustace?’

  ‘A sorbet of passion fruit and eau de vie, Dr Chastern.’

  ‘Truly?’ says Chastern. ‘How very peculiar. Nonetheless, do carry on, all of you. I shall observe, as it were, from the gallery.’

  Mr Crowe screws up his napkin and drops it on the table. ‘I won’t hear of it,’ he says. ‘In any case, it will do none of us any great harm to abstain. We are all sufficiently glutted, I think, with the fruits of passion. But I trust, Chastern, that you will stay to take a liqueur with me. And a cigar, perhaps, if your physician has not ruled it too great a hazard.’

  ‘Perhaps I might manage a thimbleful of something,’ Chastern says. ‘I seem always to be troubled, of late, by one thing or another. It would be a comfort to me to discuss certain matters with you, to assure myself that our views are consonant.’

  Mr Crowe gives him a bleak look. ‘I wonder if you do not confuse me with someone else,’ he says. ‘But let us talk, by all means. Arabella, my love, would it be altogether too Edwardian of us to ask you to wait for us in the drawing room?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Arabella says, ‘I haven’t been feeling quite myself this evening. I think I may be coming down with the flu. It’s very rude of me, I know, but I’m afraid I may have to retire early.’

  ‘You poor lamb,’ says Mr Crowe. ‘Will you manage, do you think? Shall we have Alice help you upstairs? Eustace has cut off her rations, I think, and she appears remarkably steady on her feet.’

  ‘There’s really no need,’ says Arabella. ‘Alice has been run off her feet all evening. Perhaps Clara could be a darling, though, and help me to find something in the library. You’ll all think me ridiculous, I know, but when I felt poorly as a child, I used to curl up in the bottom bunk with Jane Eyre. It was probably awful of me, but I used to find it somehow comforting that Jane was having such a rotten time. Would you mind terribly, Clara? I couldn’t possibly find it on my own.’

  Clara smiles weakly. She feels feverish herself, and more fatigued now than she can disguise. She had hoped to escape upstairs alone as soon as she could be excused. Still, she can hardly refuse without appearing rude, especially in view of her late arrival at the table. She stands and waits for Arabella to precede her. The gentlemen rise too, and Chastern, as she passes him, stops her and takes her hand. His fingertips are parched and fibrous, with the peculiar softness of rice paper.

  ‘My dear creature,’ he says. ‘It was delightful to meet you at last. I had taken the trouble, on learning that Mr Crowe’s household was gladdened by the presence of a child, to discover some little about you, but I must admit that I did not expect to be quite so helplessly beguiled. I do hope it is not long before we may be reacquainted. I so look forwa
rd to witnessing these gifts of yours for myself.’

  With as much politeness as she can summon, Clara withdraws her hand. She glances at Nazaire, who looks on with placid and unwavering attentiveness. He bows elegantly, holding one hand across his shirt front. The smile that accompanies this gesture is shallow and colourless. Clara curtseys awkwardly in response, her movements thick-limbed and graceless. What she wants, more than anything, is to bolt from the room and race to the kitchen door. She wants to slip outside, as she has done so often, not heeding her fever or the November cold; to feel herself vanish in the darkness of the laneways, among the faint disturbances of the woods. She wants to be gone.

  Eustace tried the light switch again, though he knew it was foolish. The cellar’s cavernous central vault remained unlit. It was illuminated, normally, by bulkhead lights fixed at intervals along its ceiling. They were sturdy fixtures whose bulbs he seldom had to replace. This evening, it seemed, all three had burned out at once.

  He glared for a long moment into the darkened vault, tapping the plate surrounding the light switch with a fingernail, then turned and stalked back upstairs. From the pantry, he took a candlestick and a box of matches. He knew the cellars well enough, and could make his way quite passably by candlelight. Still, it irked him, after the pains he had taken, to be put to this trouble. It was not by any omission of his. He had brought up, in ample quantity, any wine that might reasonably be called for, given the evening’s menu. Of the claret he had chosen – a Margaux widely considered to be unimpeachable – four bottles remained, two of them already decanted. He had taken similar care with the port and the Armagnac.

  It had been Chastern who forced him to return to the cellars, referring in one of his lengthy and preening anecdotes to a 1928 Chateau Pétrus that had been served by the Master of Balliol College. Mr Crowe, of course, had felt obliged to demonstrate the parity of his own cellar, insisting that he possessed ‘seven or eight’ bottles of the same vintage and urging Eustace to bring one up.