‘I’ll just take a drop more tea.’ Katty picked up the black bottle. ‘I’ve a thirst like a camel’s. Pegeen, give us your cup. ‘Twill put some red into your cheeks for you’re as pale as though Death himself was outside the door.’ They both crossed themselves.
I gave them one minute. ‘Right.’ I turned from the sink and consulted my watch. ‘It’s half past ten. Katty and Pegeen, I want every bedroom in use dusted and vacuumed and the beds made. In exactly one hour I’m coming to inspect them.’ They stared at me, round-eyed. Pegeen made as though to get up but Katty put a detaining hand on her arm. ‘Timsy?’ My voice was regrettably loud and bossy. ‘What are your jobs for the morning?’
‘Well now, missy.’ He took a swig of tea and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘If it stays dry I’m cutting turves.’
‘Right. Off you go.’ They remained frozen to their seats. Katty permitted herself a derisive smile and this goaded me into action. I swooped down on the black bottle, snatched it up and walked over to the sink. ‘If there’s any more time-wasting, I’m going to pour whatever this is down the plug-hole.’ I unscrewed the cap and began to tilt the bottle. There were gasps of consternation.
‘Oh, missy!’ said Timsy. ‘You wouldn’t do that! That’s medicine for my back. My spine’s as cracked in pieces as an old jar that’s been rolled down Croagh Patrick!’
I tipped it further and a few drops of brown liquid that reeked of bonfires splashed into the sink. There was a swell of muttered protest.
‘All right, all right!’ Timsy sprang up. ‘We’re going.’ He gave a sideways twitch to his head. ‘I shouldn’t like to be in your shoes, missy, if the master catches you pouring away good drink now! Waste is something he cannot abide and he’s got a temper like a bear that’s been woken out of his winter sleep by a swarm of bees.’
I had noticed a cupboard to the right of the sink which had a key in its lock. ‘Until I’m satisfied that the work’s been properly done this goes away.’ I put the bottle into the cupboard, turned the key, then dropped it into the pocket of my jeans.
With faces that expressed their outraged feelings Timsy and the two women left the kitchen.
‘Well done!’ Constance was admiring. ‘I’d never have thought of that.’
‘It’s too soon for congratulation. I can see I’ve got a fight on my hands. They don’t like me or respect me because I’m English. Isn’t that right?’
‘Well … it’s partly because you’re young and beautiful and capable and clever and not at all like poor Mrs Heaney who was none of those things.’
‘Go on, admit it. In their eyes I’m a reincarnation of Oliver Cromwell.’
‘There is still a little anti-English feeling, I’m afraid, among some of the country people.’
‘Probably it’s justified, if half of what I’ve been told is true. But we’ll have to work towards some kind of truce if I’m going to do my job properly. I suppose that’s poteen in the bottle?’
‘Timsy lives on the stuff. I don’t think any of them are ever entirely sober. I can’t imagine what their stomachs can be like. I’ve tried it occasionally. It takes the skin off the roof of your mouth.’
‘We’ll see what effect a period of abstinence has. Where does Timsy get it?’
‘Lonnie Flanagan has a shebeen at Kilmuree.’
‘That must be at least ten miles.’
‘Twelve and a half.’
‘We mustn’t let Timsy have the keys of the car or Land-Rover. And we must stop him using the outside car. I know, we’ll lock the harness up with the bottle.’
‘Bobbie! There’ll be a mutiny!’
‘Supposing you threatened to sack them?’
‘I couldn’t! They’ve worked for us all their lives. They’re part of the family. I’d as soon think of sacking the children or Maud.’
Though this un-English attitude was inconvenient, I was charmed by it. ‘Does this loyalty work both ways?’
‘You mean, would they walk out? Never. Their parents worked here for my grandparents. Curraghcourt is in their blood.’
‘Well, then. That makes us even. Let me try it my way, Constance. I can see it’s difficult for you. I’ll take the consequences.’
‘You’re a brave woman.’
‘No. But I don’t like to fail when I’ve set my mind to something.’
‘You’re really going to stay? You’ll never know how relieved I am. Honestly, it’s like a great weight being lifted off me.’ Constance frowned and then smoothed her forehead as was her habit. ‘To tell you the truth, I think I’ve been a bit depressed lately. Quite honestly, unless I’m reading or listening to poetry, my stomach is churning with worry practically the whole time. But what a fool I am! I don’t want to put you off.’
‘No fear of that.’ I continued to wash up while Constance picked up a tin of potatoes and absent-mindedly rolled it about between her hands, staring into the middle distance.
‘These days I find that things that wouldn’t bother me in the ordinary way – silly little things like how I’m going to get the iron mould out of Flurry’s school shirts, whether I ought to get in the sweep, what to cook for supper – seem monumental and insurmountable. Yesterday I stood in the barn and bawled my eyes out just because the rats had got into the chicken pellets again. I’ve begun to wonder if I’m going mad.’ Constance frowned again. ‘That reminds me, I must go and check that Timsy remembered to milk Siobhan. She gets mastitis if he forgets.’
‘You don’t seem in the least mad to me. Just overburdened.’
Constance smiled at me. ‘Bless you for that.’
As soon as she had gone I finished the washing up and started cleaning the kitchen. It was possible to wipe swathes through the dirt, like those television advertisements for cleaning powders. While I worked I thought about Burgo and wondered if he was thinking about me.
Once more I was overwhelmed by misery and uncertainty. Had I selfishly added to his troubles by my flight? Supposing he thought I had committed some desperate act, even killed myself? Was he at this moment ringing hospitals and visiting morgues, steeling himself to examine smashed bodies picked up from motorways or weed-wrapped corpses fished from rivers? No, of course not. I rubbed hard at an unyielding, slightly sinister dark red stain. Burgo knew me better than that. Besides, by now he would probably have received my letter posted for me by Mrs Treadgold, saying that I was safe and well and had left the country.
But wouldn’t it be reasonable to ring him, just once, so I could fortify myself by hearing his voice? I might also allow myself to say that I loved him. Though he knew that well enough. And I was sure of his love. Wasn’t I? I wrung the cloth vigorously under the tap to strangle doubt. Or was it – oh, hateful, humiliating question, which I had not dared to put squarely to myself until now – was it all about sex? If peculiar medical circumstances – a weak heart, a rare gynaecological disease – made it impossible for me to make love again would Burgo still want to spend the rest of his life with me? No, came the answer, swift and sure. He might hang dutifully around for a while but sooner or later he would drift away. But was there a man alive who would not do the same? Supposing the boot was on the other foot and Burgo became impotent? Sex was a thrilling aspect of our relationship but it was not the reason I loved him. I would have despised myself for leaving him for such a cause. I plunged the cloth into boiling water and pummelled it clean with the stick end of the mop. Did men ever really love anyone but themselves? I exchanged the cloth for a scrubbing brush.
Burgo had, as far as I knew, spent every minute of his spare time with me since that ridiculous tennis tournament. On the few nights I could get away from Cutham I would wait for him in his flat in Lord North Street until the voting finished at one, two or three in the morning. He always woke me, apologizing for the urgency of his desire. He had cut down his Christmas holiday in Provence from a month to two weeks and had spent those fourteen illicit days staying at the Fisherman’s Reel so we could see each other for at least a smal
l part of every day.
It was during that brief period of holiday that Burgo first spoke of divorce. Of course I had thought about it but I had decided that no circumstances could justify raising the subject myself.
‘This situation is so hard on you,’ he had said as we sat in the snug sharing a bottle of wine before supper. ‘I suppose the decent thing all round would be to ask Anna for a divorce.’ For a moment the room seemed to grow dim as terror and joy clouded my vision. ‘It won’t be easy,’ he had added. ‘Anna likes the arrangement as it is.’
‘She must realize that something’s changed,’ I said, attempting to speak lightly. ‘The fact that you’ve cut short the time you usually spend with her, for one thing. And I suppose you are not the same?’ I would rather have been stretched to six feet six on the rack than ask him if they still made love.
‘If Anna noticed a difference in me she’d put it down to pressures of work.’ He smiled, I thought rather affectionately. ‘She’s not the suspicious kind. Her childhood’s cocooned her against self-doubt. All her life she’s had exactly what she wanted. Including me.’ Burgo was building a pyramid of beer mats but paused for a moment to look at me. ‘She does love me, you know. Does that sound horribly conceited?’
I felt a tightening of my stomach muscles. ‘No, but it makes things more difficult, doesn’t it?’
‘What I mean is, some people might think we spend so much time apart because we’re indifferent to each other. That’s not the case. Until I met you I thought no woman could ever mean as much to me as Anna. I actually believed that our ability to be apart for long periods without damaging our relationship was a sign that we were perfectly matched. I’ve never wanted a Darby and Joan set-up: taking each other for granted; having to talk about trivia to conceal our boredom from each other. Anna is eccentric – some might say egocentric – but she’s never dull.’
I was thankful that he had returned to his beer-mat construction so he did not see my face. Jealousy flared and burned hot, turning my insides to water. For one insane moment I wanted to ask him what the hell, if he was so well suited, did he think he was doing in the Fisherman’s Reel with me? He had pursued me without encouragement despite being perfectly satisfied, it now appeared, with his wife. It shows how little I knew of men that I found this behaviour illogical.
Whenever I had allowed myself to think of Burgo and Anna I had imagined an early passion cooled to something lukewarm, perhaps to indifference bordering on dislike. He had told me during our first meeting that he thought her beautiful. I had managed to keep insecurity at bay by telling myself that certain kinds of beauty were cold and unengaging. But his admission that he never found her dull threw me into a ferment of self-doubt. Presumably he had not so far been bored by me because our time together had been constantly interrupted by the demands of Cutham and his job.
But my idea of earthly paradise was to spend as much time with Burgo as I possibly could. I had fantasized about us buying a cottage in the country, Kent perhaps, or Essex. We would be short of money to begin with. I would continue to work. We would both commute daily. While he sat late in the House I would undertake all those wifely tasks like ironing his shirts and digging the garden and cooking and … Vague ideas of making chutney, growing cucumbers and remodelling my winter coat were jumbled together in my mind, accompanied by a sense of blissful satisfaction that I would be doing those things for him, for us. And when he came home, I would have thought it nothing short of perfect happiness to discuss with him the trifling concerns of the day which he dismissed as boring. A Darby and Joan set-up sounded like heaven to me. I had schooled my expression into impassivity and after another glass of wine my pulse had returned more or less to normal. But those few sentences of Burgo’s were imprinted in my mind, never afterwards to be far from my thoughts.
On that last day at Cutham, as I stood by the front door waiting for Brough to bring round the car to take me to the station, I had yielded to impulse and called Burgo’s flat. I had been quite certain he would be out but foolishly I had wanted to picture the telephone ringing in the hall on the bookcase beneath the print of Charles I. When the receiver had been picked up after one ring and Burgo had said, ‘Hello?’ my face had burned with the shock. There had been a pause during which I had been unable to speak. Then he had said, ‘Roberta! It’s you, isn’t it? For God’s sake! I’m going mad, not seeing you, not knowing what you’re thinking—’
I had jammed the receiver back on its rest and unplugged the telephone. I knew if he asked me again to go away with him I would agree. So I had left without saying goodbye.
But just a minute, said the other voice in my head during this infernal internal dialogue, that isn’t true. I stopped scrubbing the table for a moment and stood cradling the brush in my hands. What had made me put down the receiver without speaking was the terror that he might listen once again to my sensible, unselfish argument and say, in tones of thinly disguised relief, that perhaps after all it would be a good thing if I went away for a while, that we ought to give ourselves time to think about what would be best for both of us. Then indeed I might have had to be dragged from the river or scraped from the motorway.
‘“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”’ I said aloud, practically raising smoke from the scarred oak as I launched myself savagely yet again at the unpleasant stain.
‘Is it the table you’re talking to?’ said a voice immediately behind me, making me jump.
I knew at once who it was because of the long, dark, slightly ragged hair, though now she was the right way up and fully clothed. It was an unusual outfit for a sunny weekday morning. She wore a long crimson velvet dress that revealed most of her breasts. Her head was garlanded, Ophelia-like, with flowers. She was less than five feet tall, not beautiful but in an odd way extremely attractive. She had a small face, olive-skinned with black eyes rimmed with kohl, a short, flattened nose and a long upper lip. When she put her head slightly on one side and regarded me with solemn unblinking eyes she reminded me of a charming monkey.
‘I was talking to myself.’ I smiled and held out my hand. ‘How do you do? I’m Bobbie Norton. The new housekeeper. And you’re Sissy. I was admiring your athleticism from the dining-room window.’
Ignoring my hand, she screwed her face into a fearsome scowl and walked round me, examining me from every angle. ‘Housekeeper? Pooh! You don’t look as though you could mend a stocking without you’d have to lie down after.’
‘I may not be able to turn cartwheels but I’m not as feeble as that.’
‘You’re English.’ She sounded gratified by the discovery. ‘He won’t like that.’
‘Who won’t?’
‘Finn. He doesn’t like the English. He says they’re double-dealing.’
I looked her squarely in the eye. ‘Perfidious is the term generally used.’
Before I had any idea of her intention she had seized a clump of my hair and twisted it until it hurt. I minded the pain a great deal less than the fact that her hands were filthy. ‘Don’t do that!’ I said, pulling away.
‘And he doesn’t like blondes. He says they’re frivolous. Troublemakers.’ She put her head on the other side and stared at me, then wrinkled her small nose in disgust.
‘Does he, indeed?’ I felt thoroughly ruffled by this mistreatment. ‘Well, if he doesn’t interfere with my prejudices I shan’t trouble myself about his.’
Sissy flared her nostrils and stood arms akimbo. ‘You’ve a fine way of talking. Finn doesn’t like clever women. He says they rattle on too much. Now me, I can be quiet for hours. He likes that.’
‘Look here,’ I said, exasperated. ‘I don’t care what Mr Macchuin thinks. I’m here to look after the house. I’m not interested in winning his liking or admiration.’
‘No?’ Sissy sounded doubtful. ‘You’re not going to fall in love with him?’
‘Certainly not. I particularly dislike bad-tempered, opinionated men who neglect their wives and children and keep …’ I had been goi
ng to say mistresses openly in the same house but restrained myself. ‘And anyway I don’t expect I shall see much of him so this is all irrelevant.’
‘You swear by Mary, Mother of God, virgin of virgins?’
‘Certainly!’
Sissy flashed splendid white teeth in a wide smile. ‘In that case, you and I are going to get along just fine. Fáilte! Welcome to Curraghcourt.’
TWENTY
When, at the end of a long day, I reviewed my achievements, I was not entirely dissatisfied. There had been failures and even near disasters but successes, too. When I went upstairs to make my inspection of the bedrooms I found Katty and Pegeen on the landing, leaning on brooms and gossiping in Gaelic. I was quite sure that they were talking about me and that it was uncomplimentary. But I praised the making of the beds and the transference of fluff, flies and soot from one surface to another more than they deserved.
‘I’ve always heard that the women of Galway are excellent housekeepers.’ I take the view that a lie for a good cause is permissible.
‘Is it excellent?’ said Pegeen. ‘Why, there’s none in the world can beat them!’
I presented her with a rag tied to the end of a long cane. ‘Would you take down those cobwebs, please?’ I pointed to the webs, blackened by the dirt of ages, which hung like petticoat frills above our heads.
‘Them creatures can cover a house faster than you could say níor bhlas sé an biadh nach mblasfaidh an bás,’ observed Katty sulkily, folding her arms and looking grim.
I affected not to notice the sulking. ‘What does that mean?’
She smacked her lips. ‘It means: “He has not tasted food who will not also taste death.”’
This was irrefutable. Pegeen twirled the stick feebly above her head, complaining of a headache but at least she was compliant. When I asked Katty to vacuum the carpets, however, I met with a check.
‘The devil’s in those machines,’ declared Katty, taking a step back from the antique cleaner I had discovered in a cupboard. It looked like an exhibit from the Science Museum but when I plugged it in it made a roar like a football crowd and sucked up several inches of the tattered red runner.
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