The Kilternan Legacy

by Anne McCaffrey

  “Until Sunday, then?”

  “What time is Irish tea on Sunday?” asked Snow in her little-girl voice.

  “Why, half four, of course.”

  “Oh?” In that one surprised, haughty syllable, Snow managed to convey how unaccustomed she was to taking tea at such an unfashionable hour. Nor was the implication lost on our relative.

  “You mustn’t go to too much trouble for our sake,” I felt obliged to say, but I would not be hypocritical and reprimand Snow. It had been too delicious of her.

  “My husband will collect you, for sure you’d never find your way.” And Mrs. Robert Maginnis stalked down the lane.

  “Well, ain’t she somethin’?” Snow said, glaring at the portly retreating figure. “She was dying of curiosity about the house. I wonder who she thinks ought to inherit?”

  “One of the ‘more deserving’?” asked Simon. He altered his voice to a falsetto imitation of his great-great-aunt: ‘“And there’re cousins the same ages as yourselves’… Yeah.” He went bass again. “1 can just imagine. Do we have to, Mother?”

  “Well, yes we do. We accepted, for one thing. For another, we might find out more than they want to.” I shook a warning finger at my daughter. “And you’d better watch your manners, missy. I gather that children are seen and not heard here.”

  “I’ll behave. ‘if I can.”

  “You know, she’s the second person who’s suggested that we’d be selling … I must get hold of Michael Noonan.” But he was out.

  “You know something,” Snow said musingly as she sat on the steps and peered at me through the rail, “she didn’t take her gloves off, but I’ll just bet anything she’s got grabby little fat-fingered paws.”

  “Oh, let’s not start that one again,” I begged, which reminded me that Shay Kerrigan’s long-fingered, well-shaped hands did not obey the twins’ much-vaunted criterion.

  “Say, Mom, didn’t Kieron mention something about Aunt Irene keeping tabs on our kith and kin in the family Bible?”

  “Yes, he did, Sim.”

  “We might as well have the sheet to keep score on.” We found the family Bible readily enough in the little desk in the living room, complete with family-tree chart, branches, twigs, and leaves all neatly name-tagged. I could only hope that we weren’t going to meet all the relatives listed. Objectively, I could appreciate why Imelda Maginnis might be miffed with the property going out of the immediate family … the immediate Irish family.

  “How was it Great-great Irene put it?” asked Snow. “‘Out of three generations and five lots’? Well, there sure isn’t another Irene. And look, she knew about cousin Linda’s baby! Who could’ve told her?”

  I followed Snow’s pointing finger. Aunt Irene had been up-to-date, all right. I knew Mother had too much else to do to correspond with anyone regularly. Then Simon thought of looking for any mail in the back-room office desk.

  We didn’t find any correspondence, but there were receipted bills from previous years, all neatly bound, as well as old ledgers—but none for the previous and current years:

  “Probably the tax people took them away. Or Mr. Noonan,” Snow said. Which seemed logical. Then she found the worn leather address book and the problem was solved. My eldest sister, Jenny, was listed with all her changes of address.

  “That figures,” said Snow. “No, it doesn’t. Why would Aunt Jen be so big with letters?”

  “I dunno. Except she’s the clubwoman type. Organized,” said her twin.

  Simon was still pondering the family tree. “Grandpa wasn’t the only wild goose to leave the family nest. There’s a slew of others, if this ‘E’ means emigrated. It’s after a lot of names.”

  “Unless it means ‘E’ for egress and they’d died.”

  “Naw! Boy, look at how Imelda produced. Six!”

  “Alice and Winnie were as good. Now where would you put six kids in a house this size?” Snow wanted to know.

  “I wonder what did happen to her letters,” I said, noticing a good supply of nice notepaper. It probably was Mr. Noonan. I tried reaching him again, but this time he was engaged with a client, so I didn’t think it would do any harm to ask his secretary what had happened to my aunt’s private papers.

  “Anything to do with the estate, or income taxes, is here, Mrs. Teasey, and will be returned to you. I believe that one of the tenants burned all Miss Teasey’s private correspondence, at her request. Shall I have Mr. Noonan return your call when he’s free?”

  I said yes, because I wanted to find out about this probate business and Kelley’s threat. Just as I hung up, a leatherbound scrapbook was thrust at me. I held it off far enough to distinguish a headline and realized that this contained my aunt’s Professional clippings.

  “Wow!”

  Irene Teasey in a hundred photographs … costumed and made up for her stage performances as one of the leading lyric sopranos of the Covent Garden D’Oyly Carte Operetta Company.

  “Gee, she was pretty!” said Snow.

  “And small. Look at her. Who was she here, Mom?”

  “Probably Mabel in Pirates,” I said, considering the parasol and the pantalettes.

  Some rather lovely—and painful—memories surged up out of storage. I had a vivid recollection of Mother’s expression when she saw me costumed as Mabel for my first performance in Pirates.

  “I suppose it just skipped generations, dear, but you manage to sound exactly like your aunt Irene Teasey. She was good!” Until now, sitting in Great-aunt Irene’s living room, I really hadn’t thought past the approving note in Mother’s voice (for Mother has very high standards in theater). “Odd that that break in both your speaking voices never occurs when you sing. You did very well, my dear. Very well.”

  That was the trouble. I did do very well. The Jan Hus production of Pirates of Penzance was extremely well received by the off-Broadway critics. There was talk of the group turning into a professional repertory company and doing tours of G & S. Teddie was just starting with the agency, and he was torn between wondering if my career was good for his, and pride that he could show off a wife of star caliber. I certainly wasn’t making any money at it. And I wasn’t really any good at anything else musical. I had the perfect G & S ingenue voice, I looked Victorian, especially my figure, and, I was often told, I had the natural style of G & S. When the craze in musical tent circuses for summer circuit was going strong, I had one very exhausting, nerve-wracking, divine summer before I happily discovered I was pregnant. In spite of the fact that Simon was his spittin’ image, Teddie had had a drunken habit of casting doubt on the paternity of the twins, acidly remarking that bitches could get pups from a number of dogs and I’d had plenty of opportunities to be unfaithful to him with my stage cronies. I don’t know where he thought I’d’ve got the energy, with the schedule we had: rehearsals during the day and just enough time to bathe, eat dinner, and get made up for the evening’s show, after which we were too tired to do much more than eat a hurried supper and fall into bed—alone. Of course, I had much the same routine once the twins were born—only, no applause. And the cruel criticism of a frustrated husband.

  “You don’t suppose she made any recordings, do you,” asked Snow, hauling me back to the present.

  “She didn’t sing in the Dark Ages, love, and there are recordings of Caruso, you know.”

  My great-aunt had done all the lead roles from Angela to Yum-Yum. There were press clippings, including those of a tour, until a final notice, a few sentences really, dated March 1944, which told me why my aunt’s career had been ended. She’d been injured in a buzz-bomb blast.

  “How?” asked Snow.

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “Must have been bad,” suggested Simon. “Remember, Kieron said she bought the queendom in 1945.”

  “Her face?” asked Snow, flipping through the final pages. “No. Here she is, standing in front of the house. We could ask Ann Purdee.”

  “We could, but should we?”

  “Why not? It�
��s not your fault that we don’t know very much about Aunt Irene. I think we should be curious now. It’s only grateful.”

  “Aw, c’mon, stop the yammering,” said Simon, and shooed us out of the house before him.

  Then we all stopped, our progress impeded by ignorance.

  “Which is Swallow cottage?” asked Snow.

  “She comes to the back door,” Simon said, and pointed to the path and the small pasture gate. “That way, George!”

  It seemed logical, and it was. When we had gone through the little gate and started down the steep path to the row of cottages, I had sudden second thoughts about the venture.

  Three cottages were in a line, terrace cottages, they call them, the fourth (which I sincerely hoped was Ann Purdee’s) at right angles to the others. Each cottage had a fenced-off rear yard, but only one looked cared for at all. The other two were junk heaps, with all sorts of rusting, molding, decaying garbage. The right-angled cottage was completely different: The palings had been secured, and there was a flourishing garden. Neat lines held a variety of children’s garments flapping in the breeze. We had to go all the way around the house to get to the first of the two doors.

  In the kitchen, Ann Purdee was up to her elbows in flour. Two very small and beautiful children were sitting on a braided rug, playing with cooking utensils and a cocoa can. A carry-cot on a small chest wobbled from its occupant’s motion. Kieron Thornton’s handiwork was obvious in the cupboards, the table and banquette benches, the shelving by the cooking range.

  Ann Purdee and I stared at each other, and I was somehow embarrassed. She seemed surprised and apprehensive.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said, and tried to back us out.

  “Don’t go!” She hurriedly dusted her hands. Then Snow saw the children and started to squeal with compliments, demanding of Ann if the children minded strangers, could she play with them, weren’t they gorgeous, and what a lovely kitchen, was it bread she was baking? Real Irish brown bread?

  Snow’s exuberance is infectious, and Ann Purdee’s initial shock dissolved.

  “We have come at a bad time, Snow …”

  “To be sure, you’re always welcome here, Mrs. Teasey.” The emphasis was unmistakable.

  I couldn’t help wondering who wasn’t welcome. However, it wasn’t something I could ask Ann Purdee … yet.

  “Please don’t stop what you’re doing,” I said, for she’d been about to wash her hands, and that bread still required kneading. “We only dropped in because … I mean …”

  “What Mother’s stumbling over is that we want to gossip a bit with you. No one tells us anything!” Snow rolled her eyes in exaggeration and then beamed at the small child she’d placed in her lap. “What’s her name?”

  “Fiona.”

  “Such magnificent eyes! See, Mom?”

  Simon and I had taken places at the table. I nodded vigorous approval.

  “What was it you wanted to know?” Ann asked me, pounding the dough expertly.

  “For starters,” Snow began, seeing me floundering again, “the accident Aunt Irene had, the one that ended her career—why did it make her give up singing?”

  Of all the questions in the world that we could have asked, that was evidently the one Ann least expected, for her hands poised a long moment above the dough. She also looked relieved.

  “It was a terrible thing that, and would have been no bother to anyone but your auntie. She was hit by splinters of glass from a shattering window.”

  “But there’s no mark on her face.”

  “She protected her face like, and her eyes with her arms. They were scarred, but the splinters pierced her throat.”

  “Her vocal cords!” I cried, and my hand went to my throat protectingly. I had that awful stomach-sinking of utter regret. “How awful for her!”

  Ann shrugged. “She said it was as well. She’d had the best of the cream, and had no fancy to do character roles.”

  “Did she ever make recordings?” asked Snow.

  “I believe so, but she’d none in the house, nor player.”

  “By preference?” I could see that it would be easier to give up music altogether.

  “I ‘spect so. She never did mention the matter.”

  “Did any of her relatives visit her often?”

  Ann’s expression became angry. “Neither of her sisters bothered their barneys about her until the solicitor phoned to say she was in hospital. Then they flocked up the lane like …”

  “Vultures?” Snow suggested helpfully when Ann faltered.

  “Yes. And when … she died … why, they’d’ve stripped the house and turned—” She stopped, snapping her teeth closed over what she’d been about to say. But I heard it. ”’…turned us out.’” Why on earth would Ann Purdee be considered an undesirable tenant?

  “But you and Kieron had hidden the silver by then, hadn’t you?” Snow was asking.

  There were defiant tears in Ann’s eyes, which she blinked away furiously. “She’d told us over and over that we were to hide it all from the tax people. Just as well. Had they ever seen it …”

  “None of her relatives were ever in the house to see the silver?” I asked that so very innocently that Simon gave me an odd look.

  “No, I couldn’t say that. There were several came around often …”

  “Which ones?”

  Ann Purdee looked at me sternly. “I’m in no state to cast stones.” She sighed, and gave the bread a punch.

  “Well, then,” said Snow, her resigned voice at variance with the grin she was giving the child she held, “we have to enter the Maginnis den without knowing friend from foe.”

  “Maginnis?” Ann was startled enough so that all the color left her face. “Mrs. Robert Maginnis?”

  “None other, in her best bib and knit suit,” said Snow. “commanding us to tea on Sunday at her house.”

  “She was here?” Ann could not absorb the information.

  “And has gone,” Simon put in, “with a grinding of gears.”

  “Oh!” All the life had drained out of her.

  I went on briskly. “Mrs. Maginnis—I cannot for the life of me bring myself to call her Auntie Imelda—”

  At my exasperated tone, Ann seemed to pull herself together.

  “Whoever named her?” Snow wanted to know.

  “She can’t drive worth a dime,” Simon added, sensing what we were trying to do.

  “At any rate, she seems to think that I’ll oust my perfectly good tenants on her say-so because I’m in Ireland now and the men in the family will tell me how to go on.”

  Snow hooted with derision, and then Simon leaped to his feet and advanced ominously toward Ann. “So, my gel, behave with me!” He twirled an imaginary moustache and leered down at her, until she had to smile. “I’m the man in this family, you know.”

  “You are not to worry over what Mrs. Maginnis may say, Ann Purdee.”

  “My, you’re well grown for fourteen,” said my irrepressible daughter in Mrs. Maginnis’s bright accent, “‘Twins? How intrusting!’” She went on, although she accidentally slipped into the role of Lady Bracknell discussing handbags and railway stations, but she had Ann Purdee actually laughing, getting her face all floury when she raised her hand to cover her mouth.

  I decided we had said enough on that subject and rose. “The other thing was, did someone dispose of my aunt’s old letters and correspondence?”

  “She told me to burn all her letters. She made me promise I would …”

  “Oh, please don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. Purdee. We just noticed the absence of letters in the desk. We were looking for the family Bible.” I didn’t want her to think we were pawing through my aunt’s things.

  “She’d burned a great lot herself when she recovered from the first stroke, you see. Said she didn’t want anyone laughing at her mementoes.”

  “I’ll bet Great-great’s mail would have made fab reading,” said Snow.

  I reprimanded her, but
Ann Purdee smiled and went on shaping the loaves, slapping them negligently on the baking tray before she deftly sliced the tops with a heavy knife.

  “I’ll be a bold American—may I buy a loaf from you when they’re done?”

  “Sure, and I’m baking one with your name on for welcome!”

  “Wow!” came from Snow and Simon.

  “C’mon, kids,” and I signaled them. “We’ve got a lot to do, and so does Mrs. Purdee.”

  Ann didn’t try to stop us, so I knew my guess was accurate. Snow pleaded to stay with the babies and keep them out of Ann’s way, but I insisted on her coming with me. Ann Purdee was a well-organized body, and I’d bet her children kept out of her way, young as they were, until she had time for them. Just as we were about to leave, I heard the sleepy cry of a young child upstairs, so I hurried my twins out the door. When Ann Purdee realized that we were going to walk down the front of the cottage row, she—almost frantically—suggested that it was shorter the way we had come.

  “I thought I’d see if I could meet the other tenants,” I explained. “Which one is Lark?”

  “Ah, oh, the end one, but Mary’d be at work. And no one else is at home either.”

  I wondered why she was apprehensive, but the child cried again and Ann just closed the kitchen door.

  “Great-great only said Swallow and Lark cottages should stay, and I can see why the others could go,” Snow said, pointing to the litter in front of the one immediately to the right of Ann’s.

  The back seats of two cars, stuffing coming out through the rents in the upholstery fabric, were propped up against the wall, under the two dirty windows. Muddy bottles crowded the windowsills; cracked pots held dead branches and assortments of rusty tools and shredded paintbrushes. Propping up one end of a wooden bench were several rusty, corroded gallon paint buckets. The only door was bare of paint in places. I wasn’t very happy with the appearance, and wondered how Aunt Irene had let the tenant get away with such slovenliness. Although I knocked on the door, I hoped that no one was in.

  “Hey, Mom, we gotta do something about this,” Simon said, and I agreed. “Maybe this is who Auntie Imelda meant as ‘those’ tenants …”