The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  How it was that she had at one moment been summoned to the headmistress’s study, and the next discovered her mother throwing out her school uniform, replacing the wretched grey garments with Kim’s own home clothes, Kim would not find out for many years. That it had happened was undisputed, that it was due to Mr Waldo Astley she didn’t know, but whatever the reasons, whatever the decisions, the very idea that she wasn’t returning to school seemed so unbelievable that even kissing Hugh and Loopy goodbye was only sad once she saw how small they were growing on the harbourside. Tiny figures reminding her of the tiny figures that Hubert used to place on the station platforms of his toy train set when he was little, and their black Scottie dog Hamish used to take such a personal pride in swallowing.

  ‘’Bye, Granny, ’bye, Grandpa!’ she called suddenly.

  Seeing her waving one of the other passengers turned and smiled at Judy. ‘You’ll be returning to Ireland, will you, then?’

  Judy shook her head.

  ‘No, I’m taking my daughter there.’ She indicated Kim who was still staring back to where the shore had once been. ‘To school.’

  ‘To school is it, in Ireland? It’s usually the other way, we usually get taken to school in England.’

  Judy laughed. ‘I’m taking her to Loughnalaire.’

  ‘Loughnalaire?’ The tall, thin lady in the immaculately cut tweed suit stared at Judy for a few seconds, obviously lost for words. ‘Loughnalaire. I see. Have you been to the place, yet?’

  ‘No, but I’ve seen photographs of it. And a family friend recommended me to it. It seems he knows it very well.’

  The woman glanced secretively towards Kim and then looked back at Judy.

  ‘I don’t know whether she’ll like it. It’s very – unconventional. I just hope she’ll like it, poor child.’

  She left them to go below to the bar, while Judy and Kim remained on deck, Judy staring back at the widening sea behind them and wondering what on earth she was doing taking Kim across the sea to a strange place merely on Waldo Astley’s say-so. After all, what would he know, for heaven’s sake? He didn’t even have children. What if Walter turned out to be right, and it was just the wrong thing for Kim?

  Finally she said in over-bright tones to Kim, ‘Come along, young lady, time for some lunch, methinks.’

  There was nothing Kim felt less like doing at that moment than eating lunch, but seeing that the sea was roughening she followed her mother down below.

  ‘I know the last thing you want is lunch, darling,’ Judy said, guessing at her thoughts. ‘But the truth is you have more chance of surviving crossing the Irish Sea if you eat than if you sit about watching the waves and the winds, believe me.’

  Kim didn’t know it but her pale young face with its dark hair and dark eyes peering out from under her black astrakhan hat, with its matching black astrakhan collar, was a touching sight. All she knew was that her mother was ordering lunch, and she was meant to eat it. She stared unhappily about her, and was relieved to see the woman who had first spoken to her mother coming across at Judy’s invitation to join them at the lunch table. It would take Judy’s mind off how much Kim wasn’t eating.

  ‘It would be your first trip abroad, doubtless,’ she said comfortably to Kim, pushing a cigarette into a long black holder and placing it to the side of her red-lipsticked mouth, the way a sea captain might place his pipe while intent on steering a boat.

  Kim quickly realised that the placing of the holder was most strategic, for it enabled Cicely Smythe to smoke and talk while carefully avoiding the smoke drifting past her eyes. In some awe she wondered whether Miss Smythe would keep the holder there while raising her gin and tonic to her lips. She was almost disappointed when she found that the holder was carefully placed against an ashtray and Miss Cicely Smythe drank her gin in the normal way. She and Judy chatted and drank, ate and reminisced about the war for the whole journey, so that Kim was able to avoid doing anything at all except pick at her food, and stare out of the window at the wind and the rain, at the tops of the waves that seemed to be determined to hurl themselves forward against the windows of the ship, as if infuriated by the disturbance the vessel was causing as it ploughed through the rough seas.

  As Ireland approached, and despite the gale, they finally went to the windows and pressing their noses against the glass saw the wonder of Cobh, and the approaching shore. As she watched it, silent as always, seeing its wild, strange outlines, without quite realising it Kim was already putting Bexham behind her.

  Once they were through customs and reunited with their luggage, Cicely Smythe shook Judy and Kim by the hand.

  ‘I’ll keep in touch with the young lady here, if you’d like that, Mrs Tate, once you’ve returned. Just keep a weather eye on her. Meanwhile, if you want to prolong the journey, why not take the jaunting car? Kim will enjoy that, and it’ll drop you right at Loughnalaire’s doors.’

  She nodded briskly at Kim.

  ‘Pat the pony for me,’ she ordered. ‘He’s quite a friend of mine.’

  Kim hesitated, hearing Cicely’s words but not meeting her eyes, her own as always fixed somewhere near to the ground. Nevertheless she went to the pony’s head and patted it, and the pony, knowing that she was a stranger, picked up his head from its sleepy position in the shafts and stared at her. For the first time since the accident Kim found herself really looking into another pair of eyes, eyes that were somehow so shamingly honest that instead of turning away from him she stayed at his head, talking to him in a low voice.

  ‘He likes that, does Josephat.’

  The driver, a tall man, red-faced, large-handed, with a nose that spoke of having been boxed at a great deal when he, and it, were much younger, nodded at Kim and the pony.

  ‘Ladies.’ He touched his cap. ‘I’m Phelim O’Brien and I gather I’m to take you to Loughnalaire where one of you will be stopping for the nonce, is that right?’

  ‘And then it’ll be your brother over there who will be taking me to Tarkington House, young man, is that right?’

  ‘So it is, ma’am, so it is.’ Phelim scratched his head, and replaced his cap, before opening the passenger doors one by one.

  ‘And how far would Loughnalaire be from Tarkington House?’ Judy asked him as she stepped in.

  ‘As the crow flies it’ll be about fifty, I’d say.’

  Kim looked round at that. She’d heard Cicely telling Judy that she lived ‘nearby’ and would keep an eye on Kim. Now it seemed she lived far away, miles away, and would no more be keeping an eye on Kim than she would be giving up smoking.

  ‘Do you think, like,’ Phelim asked them, shouting over the sound of the weather, while swerving to avoid a clutch of horse-drawn caravans with donkeys tied behind, ‘do you think, like, that you deserve to be sent to Loughnalaire, miss?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, like Loughnalaire, you know, it’s a kind of a class of a strange place, full of hopeless cases and that’s just the teachers!’

  Kim’s grip on her new handbag tightened and for the first time in a long time she looked directly at her mother. First Miss Smythe’s house being miles away and not nearby at all, and now the driver making jokes about her new school – what on earth would this place Loughnalaire actually be like?

  However, she was soon distracted by Phelim who, having a corner in good stories, kept Judy and Kim so entertained on the short journey. It was only when the red-painted cart finally left the road to make its way up a stony track towards no visible house, that Kim’s nerves returned with a vengeance.

  The drive was up a steep hill, reducing the pony to a slow walk, and as she looked back behind them Kim realised that it must be well over a mile long, reaching back to the road, and, in her mind’s eye, to freedom. She imagined that she could always run away, although she thought she would not run back to Bexham. She would run far away where nobody knew her, where the haunting thought of Jenny and her scars, of the pain she must have suffered, must still be suffering,
was put so far behind her cousin that it would eventually fade away, never to return.

  Finally and at last the crest of the hill was reached, and down below them they could see a colony of whitewashed thatched cottages built round a square house with long elegant floor-length windows, the whole surrounded by semi-tropical plants and palms leading down to a strand of fine white sand, and a blue sea that sparkled under a sunny March sky.

  Phelim pulled up beside the largest of the cottages. It boasted a dark green door set about with fishing nets and buckets which when Kim stared into them held everything from fish to crabs.

  ‘This is it, this is Loughnalaire?’

  ‘It is so, ma’am. It is that.’ He jumped down from his seat, removed Kim’s large suitcase and two smaller ones from the boot of the jaunting car and placed them beside the buckets and fishing nets. ‘You’ll be thinking like you’ve arrived in some kind of madhouse, but you’ll find good understanding here, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘So this is Loughnalaire?’ Judy said again.

  ‘It is so, ma’am, and has been for some years now,’ Phelim said, climbing back into the jaunting car and flicking a fly from his pony’s rump. ‘The gint what owns her had the cottages all knocked down where they were, and then again around the house, which has been here a little longer, as you can see from her height. And hasn’t each of the cottages been modrenised, as we say in Ireland, d’you see, so that they no more resemble the things they all once was, any more than I do them Beatles now, if you get my meaning? And haven’t they all been installed with not just running water but hot and cold running water and comprehensible radiators too, the shibeens that is, not the Beatles. And now here’s Mrs Hackett come to welcome you, and with some luck she’ll have a mind to make some tea.’

  Phelim hopped off his driver’s seat again, dropping the reins on his pony’s back so that the animal immediately walked off to find a bite of grass, taking the startled Judy and Kim along with him, while Phelim took off his cap and blushed scarlet as he greeted the tall and beautiful figure of Mrs Atlanta Hackett. Mrs Hackett, a widow for some years as Phelim had explained to his passengers, and dressed in a long gown made of a vivid red velvet embroidered with a large gold Celtic A on its bodice, was sweeping majestically down the steps at the front of the lovely stone Georgian house.

  Unable to find the exact patch of grass for which it was searching, the jug-eared pony continued his ambulation further and further from the house, until he pulled himself to a stop on a circle of emerald green in front of a group of whitewashed cottages.

  ‘Get lost, Josephat!’ a cheerful voice came from within the nearest of the cottages. ‘Hasn’t the Widow told you off enough about eating her precious herbs?’

  A young, dark-haired girl who looked to be about Kim’s age appeared in the doorway dressed in an Aran fisherman’s sweater, black wool trousers and wellington boots. Although winter was barely over, her skin looked brown, perhaps tanned by salt sea winds and early spring sunshine.

  ‘You must be the new guests,’ she called up to the jaunting car, and wandered up unhurriedly towards the trap to pick up the pony’s reins and lead it round to its proper position nearer the house. ‘I’m Dorothy, and if you’re quick and change, you’ll be just in time to come and sea weed.’

  For the first time for heaven only knew how long Kim’s eyes met Judy’s, before she turned to the girl.

  ‘There isn’t a verb to sea weed,’ she said, at her most prim. ‘So I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘There is too, at Loughnalaire.’ Dorothy laughed. ‘Oh, there’s a verb to sea weed all right, as you’ll discover soon enough.’

  By now Judy and Kim were preparing to step down from the jaunting car, which had been duly returned to Phelim. He rolled up his cap and pretended to threaten Josephat with it, then carefully spat on his hand and wiped his cap over it before handing Judy and Kim down with solemn courtesy.

  ‘I keep telling Josephat he’ll have someone over the cliffs one of these days, the great eejity moke,’ he sighed. ‘I’m just praying it won’t be someone notorious.’

  The small party’s attentions now turned to their hostess.

  ‘Mrs Lyle,’ Mrs Hackett boomed in a quite wonderful baritone. ‘Miss Lyle. I trust you had a pleasing journey, and have indeed and duly arrived safely on the shores of Erin?’

  ‘Tate,’ said Judy. ‘Actually. Tate. Not Lyle. An easy mistake. And we had a good journey, for the time of year.’

  ‘Ah yes. Do you know, I kept saying “sugar, sugar” to remind myself when I heard the jaunting car at the door bringing you to us, but it’s difficult when you don’t take it yourself, don’t you find? Now come in, why don’t you? There’s tea made and plenty of it laid, as I am convinced you’ll be starving after your epic passage.’ She turned to stare at Phelim’s feet before pushing open the tall, elegant door that led into the tall and elegant hall of her house. ‘Phelim, you will do me a blessed favour and remove those boots of yours before you set one foot in my house, and pray to God that one day we will indeed see you finally change your stockings.’

  ‘Ah me, the Widow Hackett’s had it in for me socks these two years,’ Phelim sighed, but he removed his shoes, revealing a sock so thick that it might have been made of chain mail.

  ‘Follow me, now, ladies, follow me,’ Mrs Hackett called. ‘Kim, isn’t it? She’ll be wanting some tea, and then off to sea weed I dare say, as they all do.’

  ‘I think Kim’s wondering,’ Judy began, ‘I think Kim’s wondering what sea weeding is, Mrs Hackett.’

  Kim was wondering what sea weeding was, but since she was also feeling a little lost for words she nodded in agreement with her mother, her eyes sliding round the house, taking in the old furnishings, the silks and the brocades of bright but faded nature, the sculptures of horses long gone to their makers, the velvet cushions that had received so many visitors that they were now as thin as tissue paper.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Sugar – no, no, it’s Mrs Tate – sea weeding is the main and wonderful occupation of everyone at Loughnalaire.’

  ‘Yes, but what is it?’ Kim spoke up for herself at last.

  Mrs Hackett stared at Kim for a few seconds, one hand placed nobly on her gold embroidery, the other still held in a welcoming gesture.

  ‘Well, now,’ she began. ‘How shall we explain sea weeding? If I said to you now – Kim – we are now all of us going sea weeding, what would you expect to experience? What is it now that you would be thinking?’

  Kim’s eyes returned to the floor once more.

  ‘Well,’ she said, addressing her feet. ‘I’d say it would sound as if we were expected to weed the sea.’

  ‘And you’d be right, for that’s what we do here, morning, noon and night. We weed the sea, thanking God for its abundancy as we do so. The weed, you see, is good for everything from medicines to frying with your breakfast bacon – that’s the thin one, mind, not the thick old leathery stuff.’ She clapped her hands as they walked into the conservatory, calling back to Phelim. ‘Hurry along with Miss Tate’s portmanteaux, would you, Phelim. Or there’ll be no tea for you, and that’s the truth. Ah, now here’s young Dorothy again. She’ll take you off to your shibeen while Phelim follows with the cases. Mind, not a crumb of tea, Phelim, and never mind you’ve no teeth to your head, until that pony’s tied up as it should be. Off you go now, all of you, while I give tea to Mrs Tate here in the orangery. Off, off, off!’

  For a moment, as Kim looked back at her mother, while dutifully following Dorothy and Phelim, she was once again a small child being left at Bexham kindergarten, but then, thankfully in a way, Judy saw the distant, seemingly uncaring look come back into her eyes, and she followed the others out of the orangery, tossing her dark hair back in a manner that told her mother that really, she did not care who she was with, or where she was left.

  Mrs Hackett went to the tea table, which was both welcoming and laden.

  ‘You will of course concern yourself no end at having t
o leave your daughter with us, Mrs Tate,’ she said, in a matter of fact voice, as Judy, now feeling quite as lost as Kim, stared round the fine old glasshouse filled with orange trees, and jasmine, with clusters of plumbago and strange tall nodding purple trumpet flowers, not to mention a mass of prickle-branched bougainvillaea climbing unchecked through many of its immediate neighbours. The profusion of growth and flower was helped partly by the vast expanse of thick Victorian glass, but in the main by a huge cast iron stove that stood in the corner of the room and centrally heated the domed glasshouse through a complex of matching heavy iron pipework.

  To one side of it in an old deck chair a very large red-bearded man in a collarless grey flannel shirt, brown cord trousers held up with a length of clothes line, and large hobnailed boots with no laces had collapsed. He was fast asleep, the top half of his face shielded from the remains of the daylight by an open copy of Dante’s Inferno.

  ‘It would be better, on the whole, if you take no notice of Mad Rufus there,’ Mrs Hackett advised Judy, seeing her guest’s eyes straying to the recumbent figure. ‘He’s the odd-jobber, and sure if ever there was a depiction of a trade that fitted the subject quite properly, there you have it. He’s as lazy as a Sunday in July, and if he can do something wronger than either you or I he will take it upon himself so to do it. A fence needs mending, Mad Rufus will mend it so it falls down quicker. A gate needs painting, he will paint it so that it peels the faster. A door needs a handle, be sure that the next time you make to turn it the wretched thing will come away in your hand. He’s only good for reading, and even then.’ She shook her head, and poured a cup of tea while nodding to the milk and sugar. ‘It’s all there. Please help yourself, especially to the dropped scones, for if ever there was a product that deserves its name Loughnalaire’s dropped scones do exactly that, and then let us sit down and set to and realise what the full extent of what you’re committing Kim to exactly is, or something like.’