The Maker of Swans

by Paraic O’Donnell

  Eustace muttered disgustedly at the recollection. He strode through the vault now, guarding the candle flame behind bracketed fingers. Mr Crowe, of course, had hardly helped matters. He knew better than anyone what faced them this evening. He knew – even if he did not care to enquire into the details – that Eustace was occupied with much more than the niceties of hospitality. Yet even now he could not check himself. He was so long accustomed to the indulgence of his whims that he rose to Chastern’s bait without an instant of reflection.

  At the heart of the cellar was a storeroom. It was used to hang cured meats and to keep the whole cheeses before they were cut. Along the walls, there were rough benches that had once done duty as pews in a chapel. In the centre of this low-ceilinged room was an old tasting table. From one of its deep drawers, Eustace lifted out the logbook, a wide and heavy ledger that was wrapped in oilskin to protect it from the damp.

  The log had been kept since long before the cellar had come into his custody, by Cromer and his predecessors. The earliest pages were faded almost beyond reading. Though a 1928 wine would have been laid down by Eustace himself, it was far too long ago for him to recollect. As he turned the coarse and yellowing pages, his forefinger descending column after column of meticulous entries, he hardly recognised what he himself had written. It was like poring over an ancient register of births and deaths, kept by some long dead and unremembered clerk.

  Still, he found the Pétrus before too long. There were two bottles of the 1928 – there had never been more – and the location of each was exactly as the log recorded. He could be thankful, at least, that Mr Crowe had not ferreted them out during some long-forgotten and undocumented debauch. Eustace checked his watch in the candle-light. He had been away from the dining room for fourteen minutes. Fourteen minutes, in spite of the care he had taken to ensure that he need not leave at all.

  He drew out one of the bottles, handling it gently so as not to upset the sediments. He stroked the dust from the label with a thumb, checking the particulars of the vintage. With a clean flannel, he polished the rest of the bottle. He did not intend, if it could be helped, even to decant it, yet there were proprieties that he would not sacrifice. He would not have it said.

  Reaching the stairs again, he paused with his hand on the rail. He stood for a moment, his head bowed and his eyes closed, then straightened again. Briskly, he dusted his own cuffs and collar with the flannel. He cleared his throat, so that he would not be forced to do so in the dining room, and hawked up a bolus of dust-thickened phlegm. Holding the bottle at the correct angle, he climbed towards the light.

  Arabella stops and looks around, her heels snapping to a halt on the polished tiles of the hallway. ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘You’re such a quiet creature, aren’t you? I don’t mean— oh, I’m sorry. I was worried that I had lost you, that’s all.’

  Clara pauses too, preserving the distance between them. She hears the strenuous cheerfulness in Arabella’s voice, the mild and patient exhalation as she waits for an answering smile. Clara does not look up. She is feverish, her thoughts dull and humid, her legs growing more silted and ponderous with every step. She wants only her room now, a few minutes at her desk. She will lock her door and open her window. She will not have her music box – she remembers this with a small pang of sorrow – but she will be able to lie still at least, to feel the cold spilling from beneath the curtains.

  ‘Yes, well, I’m sure you’re very tired,’ Arabella says, turning and walking on. ‘Poor thing. This won’t take long, I promise.’

  A little further along the hallway, Arabella stops again, pivoting this time towards an ornate mirror. She inspects herself with brisk dissatisfaction, bunching and distending her lips as she applies a rich slick of raspberry-coloured polish. ‘How perfectly monstrous I look,’ she says quietly. She glances at Clara with a lopsided smile. ‘You mustn’t think I’m always like this. It’s just that I’m not quite feeling myself.’

  At the doors of the library, Arabella produces the large brass key that Mr Crowe entrusted to her in the dining room. She examines it distractedly, seeming embarrassed as she turns again to Clara. ‘I suppose you’ve read it lots of times? Jane Eyre, I mean. Or isn’t it considered serious? I really don’t know very much about these things.’

  Clara nods hesitantly. She has read Jane Eyre many times, never giving any thought to whether it is serious or not. The books she loves most are those that seem somehow complete, their worlds proximate and habitable. There is an ease in entering those other lives, in feeling herself enclosed by another consciousness. It is strange, that unruptured intimacy, like possessing a second skin.

  ‘Well, now you know,’ Arabella continues, sliding the key into the lock. ‘My secret is out, for better or worse. You won’t think badly of me, will you? We shall have the chance to get to know one another better, when all this is— well, when the time is right. You’ll show me all the things I ought to have read, and I’ll introduce you to some of my favourite music, though that’s probably disreputable too.’

  Arabella sighs with impatience and jiggles the key in the lock. Clara wishes she would let her try. There is a trick to it, a slight upward pressure that must be exerted as the key is turned.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she mutters. ‘It’s like breaking into a bank vault. Yes, you must let me introduce you to jazz. You’d adore it, I’m sure you would. We’ll become the best of friends, you and I. You’ll see that I’m not so awful.’

  Arabella rattles the lock as she speaks, her voice lurching from gaiety to exasperation.

  ‘I’m sure it’s a bore for you,’ she says, ‘having all these strange grown-ups descend on your home. And grown-ups can seem terribly caught up in their own world, can’t they? Doing things for all sorts of odd reasons. But you’ll see— ah, here we are at last.’

  Arabella holds the door a little way open. Beyond it, the library is in darkness.

  ‘Would you mind if I waited here?’ she asks sweetly. ‘I’m sure you’ll be much quicker if I’m not in your way, and then we can both be off to bed.’

  Clara peers into the unlit room. Arabella smiles fixedly, holding open the heavy oak-panelled door. She holds the key in the lock with her other hand, gripping it so tightly that her fingertips have whitened against the brass.

  The certainty comes to her with a strange ease and finality. It is like the disorienting relief of recognising a face that has seemed for a long time familiar. For a strange, suspended moment, Clara stares at the key, at Arabella’s tensed and blanching fingers.

  Then she runs.

  Nazaire was gone.

  He had replaced his chair carefully after vacating it, and someone – Alice, Eustace assumed – had cleared his place. Chastern, meanwhile, had taken the chair next to Mr Crowe’s. He spoke to him now in a low, confiding voice while Mr Crowe stared into his wine glass, listening with grudging attention.

  In deference to the privacy of this conversation, Abel had withdrawn a little way from Mr Crowe’s chair. He shook his head fractionally when Eustace consulted him. He had seen or heard nothing beyond what was evident. It was hardly surprising.

  Eustace approached with the wine, which he presented with a modest flourish. ‘So good of you, Eustace.’ Chastern reclined in his chair. Regretfully, he caressed the label of the Pétrus. ‘I’m afraid, however, that we have put you to needless trouble. Our visit, alas, must be cut short, though we had only begun to savour your hospitality.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it, Dr Chastern. It is nothing untoward, I trust, that has forced this change in your plans?’

  ‘Oh, it is nothing of the slightest interest. I am called away on college business. Such is the lot of the humble scholar.’

  ‘Humble my arse,’ said Mr Crowe. ‘Aren’t you the dean of something? Surely there are lackeys?’

  ‘It is a matter of sensitivity,’ said Chastern. ‘And there are few enough functions, in my office, that I am called upon to exercise. No, I must not compla
in too bitterly, and Crowe and I, at least, have had leisure to discuss a matter that had been troubling me. It relieves me greatly to have had his confidence.’

  Eustace paused. He was not expected, he knew, to believe this story. Since it could not be questioned, no great care had been taken over its appearance of plausibility. Something eluded him, though. Something in the mechanics of it.

  ‘It is very regrettable,’ Eustace said. ‘Did the news reach you this evening? I was not aware that anything had arrived.’

  ‘By telephone,’ Chastern said. ‘A wretched instrument that I myself refuse to operate. Nazaire was good enough to speak to the other party when your housekeeper advised us of the interruption.’

  Eustace set the bottle down quietly. ‘Alice?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s right, Eustace, though I don’t believe you introduced us.’

  ‘Of course.’ He turned to face the table. ‘Mr Crowe has no doubt expressed our dismay at your early departure. You will let me know, of course, if I may be of service as you make ready to leave.’

  ‘You are kindness itself, Eustace.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am made of rather coarser stuff than that.’

  He offered a curt bow, but Chastern had returned his attention to Mr Crowe. While they resumed their private dialogue, he busied himself with small tasks about the table. When he was satisfied that his actions were unremarked, Eustace approached one of the windows, taking up a small brass douter that lay next to the crescent moon candlestick. He hesitated a moment, releasing a long, silent breath, then snuffed out the flame.

  For a minute or two, he waited at the window. In the darkened glass, his own face had an almost lunar pallor. Eustace proceeded to the kitchen door then, addressing Abel calmly before leaving the room.

  ‘I must attend to one or two matters about the house. You will see to everything here?’

  Abel glanced at the window, and then at Eustace. He nodded, briefly and without emphasis. He said nothing.

  On the stairs, Clara stumbles. She tries to catch herself, but the fever has coarsened her movements. The steps bite into her ribs, into the tender underside of her outstretched arm. Glancing downwards, she sees Arabella at the foot of the staircase. She has made herself wide-eyed and solicitous. She does not wish to seem hurried.

  ‘Why, Clara, darling – whatever is the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’

  Clara rights herself, sitting up to tug off her shoes. She frees one foot, then pushes herself up another four or five steps, still seated. She struggles with the tiny buckle of the other ankle strap, her fingertips blunt and easily thwarted.

  Arabella mounts the first step. ‘Clara, dear. Come back down. You must tell me what the matter is. We’ll fetch some paper from the library.’

  The strap gives way. Clara grips the banister and lurches upright, scooping the loosened shoe from her foot. She clutches it for a moment, breathing thickly as she scans the hallway below. For now, no one else is coming.

  ‘My darling, please.’ Arabella climbs to the second step, clasping her throat and extending a beseeching arm. Clara tries to wring some sound from herself, some grunt or shriek of rage. The impulse wells uselessly in her nape, but nothing comes. She hurls the shoe. It catches Arabella’s thigh and skitters across the tiles.

  Then she is turning, lunging up the stairs again. She takes them in twos and threes, slipping again as she nears the first landing, but scrabbling to her feet without stopping. She will not stop again.

  Eustace pulled off his white gloves as he strode down the passageway, thrusting them at the porter who stood aside as he passed. He flung the kitchen doors open, startling a scullery boy whose stack of greasy plates slid from his grasp into an empty and echoing sink. A maid paused above the blood-glutted board she had been scrubbing, sleeves bunched at her elbows, fouled soap sliding from her arms.

  Alice was at a broad work table, plucking the shreds of meat from a slumped carcass. She wiped her fingertips on her apron.

  ‘There’s a racket, Mr Eustace. Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘You,’ Eustace said, approaching her. ‘You stay. The rest of you, out.’

  At first, none of them moved. The maid turned to Alice, her face slack and uncertain. He took up a utensil and examined it. It was a meat tenderiser, a sturdy wooden mallet with a serrated face. He hurled it at a dresser, shattering one plate outright and sending two others crashing to the floor.

  ‘Out, I said! Out, or you will wish you were never here!’

  When the others had fled, he turned again to Alice. She had retreated from the work table and was standing now with her back to a sink, holding her forearms upright and looking around for something to clean them with. There was alarm in her face now. Her eyes were alert, evasive. She no longer mistook him.

  ‘Mr Eustace,’ she said. ‘What’s all this about?’

  With one foot, he hooked the leg of a chair. He pushed it out into the middle of the tiled floor. ‘Sit,’ he said.

  Without taking her eyes from him, Alice lowered herself onto the chair. Making do with her apron, she worked the clots of grease from between her fingers, the darker, syrupy residues. He paced around her in a slow circuit.

  ‘Mr Eustace, I—’

  ‘There was a telephone call, is that correct?’

  He circled her again. Twice. Three times.

  ‘For Mr Chastern, yes—’

  ‘For Dr Chastern.’

  ‘For Dr Chastern, I mean. While you were in the cellar, this was, or I would have left it to you, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Around her again. ‘The telephone rang in the hall, then? And yet you heard it from here?’

  ‘I was in the passageway, Mr Eustace. Goodness, you’re like the police. I was in the passageway, on my way from the dining room.’

  ‘I see. And the caller, he or she said what, exactly?’

  ‘He, Mr Eustace. A very well-spoken gentleman. A university man, I suppose, like Dr Chastern. He asked for Dr Chastern, that was all. Said there was something urgent, some college business, and would I be so good as to call him to the telephone.’

  Eustace stopped behind her. ‘There was nothing else?’

  ‘No, not that I— no, I believe those were his words.’

  From an inner pocket, he fished out the twist of wire. Reaching over Alice’s shoulder, he dropped it into her lap. ‘This will be familiar to you, perhaps.’

  She picked it up hesitantly, turned the coil in her lap. ‘I’m no good with all these electrics.’

  ‘It is the telephone wire, Alice. It belongs to the telephone in the hall.’

  She followed him with her eyes as he circled her, glancing over one shoulder and then the other. ‘I don’t understand. What have you brought it in here for?’

  He leaned towards her ear. ‘I brought it here from a drawer in my office, where it has lain these last eight months, since I found it bitten through by mice.’

  Her shoulders lapsed. Like her ears, they were flushed and pink. ‘Mr Eustace, I don’t understand—’

  He stepped away, drew his leg back and kicked the chair from beneath her. Alice came down on her hip. With a scandalised gulp of fright, she shunted herself across the tiles.

  ‘There was no telephone call,’ he said. ‘There have been no telephone calls for eight months, as you might have known, you drooling halfwit, if you had kept your snout from the bottle for even half the day.’

  ‘Mr Eustace, please, I must have made a mistake.’

  She worked herself into a corner, between the range and a stack of copper kettles. He lowered himself on one knee in front of her. ‘Yes, Alice, you have made a mistake. You have made a grave mistake. And now you will tell me the nature of that mistake, and how it was that you were persuaded to make it. You will tell me everything, and you will do it quickly, before someone comes to harm.’

  Alice sobbed. Eustace took her mottled chin between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Did you think you knew me, Alice? You did
not, and you do not yet. But understand this. If any harm comes to the child – if she is so much as touched – then you will know me. Then you will come to know me very well.’

  The house is coming apart.

  The hallways are too long, receding to vanishing distances or folding upon themselves, their geometry all undone. The walls slide in opposite directions, like the rose-patterned hulls of gigantic ships, and the carpet sinks as if laid over a swamp. The shape of everything is wrong, the distances impossible. She cannot reach the ends of things.

  It is the heat, Clara thinks. The heat of the fever. The walls are not viscous to the touch, the picture frames not sagging like ropes of molten gilt. But no, it is more than that. She can feel it. Beneath her feet, behind everything, an absence is deepening. Everything she knows, all the quiet and the dust. It is coming apart.

  Still she runs, runs or stumbles. On the last landing, she crawls. She is sure of nothing now, trusts nothing to bear her weight. There is no listening now for sounds from below, no turning and looking behind her. She keeps her eyes on her own splayed fingers, on the carpet whose whorled and ancient flora dissolve beneath her knees.

  She drags herself the last telescoping yards, grasping at collapsing table legs. When she reaches out, there is nothing. She grasps only the heated and vacant air. The shapes of things are wrong, their lines dog-legged like sticks in water. Like what light does. The bend from true. The colours too are failing, even the whites distended, pulled down the octaves of lesser heat, like the falling away of galaxies.

  She slumps near the end, grasps at something but cannot quite. A vase tumbles across her back, and on the floor is broken where her hands. When she. The inside bones of it, the shell of everything gone thin. And a small blood now, the jewel tear. But quiet. What if they. All the broken noise.