Father Deglan pointed again to the article. ‘You’ve lured a man from his lawful wife and brought them both to trouble and despair. Is that the work of love? I’d call it the destruction of the sacrament of matrimony. The work of the devil.’
‘Yes. Well.’ I felt exhausted suddenly. It had been a long day. ‘Of course you can tell Constance whatever you please. But before you damn me to boiling pitch in perpetuity you ought to ask yourself whether my being here might not do her and the children more good than harm.’ I felt my chin tremble and tears of vexation and weariness gather.
Perhaps he saw them for his belligerent, ugly face softened a little. He paused, then nodded. ‘There’s something in that. Constance is sorely put upon. I saw this evening how she liked having you here. And though you assert your right to be answerable to none I take it as a sign of grace that you’ve removed yourself from the path of temptation and come to a better place where, if it please God, you may see the error of your ways. Resist the devil and he will flee from thee.’ He put his face so close to mine that I was forced to lean back. He smelt strongly of sardines. ‘Christ said to the woman taken in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” I’ll say nothing to Constance if you’ll give me your word that you’ll tell her yourself.’
We looked at each with mutual dislike.
‘I was planning to tell her anyway.’
‘Your promise, daughter.’ Father Deglan’s good eye was flinty while his filmy eye had the abstracted gaze of a philosopher. ‘I won’t leave without that.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said at last, with ill grace.
‘Meanwhile, I’ll pray for you, my child, night and day, that you may be saved from eternal punishment.’
This was annoying but most of the fight had gone out of me. I summoned what strength I had left to keep up a brave front. ‘That’s kind of you but you needn’t put yourself to so much trouble. I don’t believe in hell.’
He put a fat forefinger practically on my nose. ‘Obstinacy is a sin against the Holy Spirit.’
‘I may not believe in him either. I haven’t yet made up my mind.’
Father Deglan made a hissing noise like a tyre going down. ‘Oh, my girl, you’ve a rebellious heart and a tongue to match—’
‘Now, Father, stop bullying Bobbie.’ Constance came into the kitchen with the tray of coffee cups. ‘She isn’t one of your congregation and it’s very naughty of you. Your taxi’s outside and it’s time you were going.’
Constance took him firmly by the arm and led him into the hall. I heard his voice raised in protest and then the front door slam.
‘Constance,’ I said, when she returned. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
TWENTY-THREE
Late the next morning Flurry, Liddy, Maria and I jolted along the two miles of track that led from Curraghcourt to the outside world. We had left Katty and Pegeen, who were suffering from bad hangovers, to work their way through a list of tasks. Timsy had not, so far, put in an appearance. Constance was in charge of feeding those who remained behind with the macaroni, tuna and baked bean pie I had assembled earlier. Speaking for myself, I was glad to be lunching out.
I had invited Flavia to join us but she said she had begun a new book about rabbits called Watership Down and besides she was usually sick in cars and always in the Land-Rover. I remembered the story well.
‘It isn’t altogether a happy book,’ I warned her.
Flavia became pale. ‘You don’t mean … I don’t think I can bear any more sadness. I haven’t got over’ – she bit her lip while tears welled – ‘poor Bodger!’ She had rushed from the kitchen overcome by a renewal of grief.
‘Of course, it’s no good hoping they’ll have Vogue at the newsagent’s,’ sighed Liddy. ‘You can get it sometimes in Galway but that’s thirty miles. Mind that pothole!’
I did mind it but a little late and Flurry received a blow to his chin from being thrown forward on to the dashboard.
‘Sorry. I haven’t quite got the hang of driving this thing. It seems a little unresponsive.’
‘Dad says there’s something wrong with the brakes.’ Flurry rubbed his chin. ‘Can you stop a minute? I think I’ll get in the back with Maria.’
The road to Kilmuree was smoother but narrow. There were passing places which were barely wide enough to accommodate both the Land-Rover and the tractors and lorries which came the other way. Sheep, ignorant of the inefficacy of our brakes, were inclined to wander out in front of us. While I concentrated on not running over them or us into bogs, Liddy grumbled about the unremitting dullness of the scenery, the frumpishness of every dress shop in Ireland apart from Brown Thomas in Dublin (which she had managed to visit only three times in her life), and the awfulness of Ireland generally.
‘Honestly, I can’t agree with you.’ I swerved to avoid a sheep lying in the middle of the road. ‘Just look at those great mountains against those racing clouds. They’re almost black in this light and the grass is swirling in brilliant shades of green, just like malachite.’
‘It’s going to rain,’ Liddy replied unmoved. ‘I suppose you bought that coat in London.’
‘Yes. From Woolland’s, a big department store at the top of Sloane Street. It’s pretty ancient, though.’
‘I think it’s wonderful.’ She fingered my sleeve. ‘Why’s it so soft?’
‘It’s part cashmere.’
‘Cashmere!’ Liddy groaned. ‘I’ve only got my school coat. It’s dark green Harris tweed: so scratchy you could de-fuzz your legs with it. And this old Burberry that used to be Mummy’s. It stinks of fags and damp. The downstairs cloakroom’s growing mushrooms on the walls.’
‘At your age I didn’t possess even a decent mac. Only my school raincoat. Navy gabardine and completely hideous. I had to wear it over my evening dress to my first proper grown-up ball.’
‘Not really!’
‘It was raining and my mother insisted. I screwed it up and hid it behind a chair in the cloakroom. All the other girls had borrowed their mothers’ fur wraps and evening coats. That raincoat was a badge of shame. I wanted to go home straight away.’
‘What was your dress like?’
‘Grey tulle, with a full skirt and fake pearls sewn on to the bodice. I’d made it myself. I’d just been to a performance of Swan Lake and was mightily inspired by the cygnet costumes.’
‘I don’t know, it might have been rather pretty. Did you like the ball?’
‘At first I hated it. I felt so shy. I hadn’t grown up with those kind of people. They were much more cultivated than the hunting, shooting and fishing types my parents knew. I spent the first few dances standing by the fire with a superior expression on my face, repelling all conversational overtures, trying not to look as though I was dying from loneliness.’
‘What were the other girls’ dresses like?’
‘One of the girls looked marvellous in a strapless sheath of black satin. I thought it was the height of chic. Suddenly my dress, which had thrilled me so much when I’d put it on, seemed childish and silly. This girl was dancing with a man with long, straight black hair, parted in the middle, a sort of Aubrey Beardsley type. He looked aloof and bored and to my eyes immensely sophisticated. He was the best-looking man in the room. The only good-looking one actually. The rest were all either ancient or weedy.’
‘I know what you mean,’ sighed Liddy. ‘Men are such a disappointment.’
‘When this paragon of masculine beauty walked over to me and asked me to dance I almost fainted with shock. Also I’d been getting dreadfully hot standing by the fire but I hadn’t wanted to draw attention to myself by moving away. My hands were pools of stickiness.’
‘Poor you!’ said Liddy with kind condescension. ‘What was he like to dance with?’
‘He was a wonderful dancer and incredibly easy to follow. He squashed my few pathetic attempts at conversation. Didn’t speak, didn’t smile, didn’t look at me. But I was enraptured because he was so handsome. I know it’s proof of base
ness of character to put so much emphasis on appearance.’
Liddy dropped her tone of weary woman of the world. ‘Did he try to kiss you?’ she asked.
‘No. I’d have been pretty alarmed if he had. I was completely inexperienced. We danced for hours, whirling about in heaven. At least it would have been heaven but for the fact that after a while I needed to pee. I’d no idea how to excuse myself gracefully. Telling this demi-god that I had to go to the lav seemed beyond impossibility. Eventually, when I was terrified my bladder was going to burst, I said I had something in my eye. I fled before he could offer to help.’
Liddy giggled. ‘You took a risk, letting go of the only decent man there.’
‘I had to, I was in agony. One of the girls in the cloakroom said to me, “Bad luck on getting landed with Orlando Weeks. I wouldn’t dance with him if he was the last man on earth.”’
‘What a giveaway! She was jealous as hell.’
‘Yes, but I was too dim to realize that at the time. I was astonished. I knew nothing whatsoever about him. Not even, until that moment, his name. But I was utterly smitten and already imagining myself married to him with four children with straight black hair and eyelashes as long as paintbrushes. Did I mention the eyelashes?’
‘I was picturing someone more brutally male.’
‘Ah. Well, anyway, I asked her what she meant, and she said, “Orlando Weeks is a dreadful creep and my father says I’m to have nothing to do with him. He takes drugs and things and he’s queer.” I had no idea what a queer was but of course I wasn’t going to admit it. I’d concluded from my father’s frequent homophobic rages that queers were men who were keen on flowers, cats and their mothers. I couldn’t see anything wrong with that.’
‘Dad told me about homosexual men. When I was thirteen he called me into the library and gave me a lecture about the facts of life. And abortions and venereal disease. He said he didn’t want me to grow up thinking babies were found in the strawberry patch. He said that men were thoroughly irresponsible when it came to sex and that I had better be armed with knowledge. It was jolly embarrassing and I could see Dad was embarrassed too though he pretended not to be. He started off leaning against his desk as though we were just having a chat but when he got to the bit about … you know, what penises are for, he started to walk about and looked awfully stern. He said a young girl had to be careful not to be taken advantage of and getting pregnant was easier than falling off a log.’ Liddy giggled. ‘Afterwards I heard him tell Aunt Connie that he’d rather be flogged at the cart’s tail than go through that again.’
Of course Mr Macchuin had been right to give Liddy the unvarnished facts but I took exception to his assumption that men were, as of right, predatory and that women had better look out for themselves. Naturally he judged by his own standards.
‘Granny says sex before marriage is only for girls without breeding because they aren’t expected to produce an heir to anything. She’s such a snob. I’m going to do as I please about that,’ Liddy added defiantly. ‘Anyway, what I want to know is what happened next. When you left the cloakroom, I mean.’
‘Orlando was standing by the door, waiting for me, looking moody and quite irresistible. He said, “Do you want to dance again? We may as well. There’s another hour till supper.” I felt as thrilled as though he had asked me to marry him. Just as I was about to fly away in his arms my host came up and said Brough, our driver, had arrived and was waiting to take me home. It was only eleven o’clock!’
‘God! Quelle horreur! Parents are the end!’
‘Orlando kissed my hand and said, “Goodnight then,” and walked off. I floated out to the car on a cloud and was borne away in a dream because of the kiss. I was nearly home before I realized that my future husband and the father of my children didn’t know my telephone number or even my name.’
‘What are you two giggling about?’ Flurry called through the little cracked window in the partition between the front and the back of the Land-Rover. ‘You’re making Maria bark in my ear.’
‘Is that how it ended? Did you ever see him again?’
‘No. Someone told me years later that he was living with an ancient margrave – that’s a sort of German prince – in Morocco. Of course he’d forgotten me even before Brough had driven me home. The entire thing was the romantic projection of a rather lonely schoolgirl.’
Liddy sighed. ‘I’d rather have some kind of romance, however made-up, than exist in this awful boring way where nothing ever happens. Who did you fall in love with next?’
‘That’ll have to be for another day. This must be Kilmuree.’
The town looked quite different when dry and lit by the occasional burst of sunlight. The small, square, shabby houses, some of them brightly painted, had a gay, almost holiday air. We left the Land-Rover in gear on the practically vertical main street and extracted Flurry from among ropes, sacks, and empty crates. He staggered at first, his tie under one ear, his spectacles crooked.
‘It’s like being bounced on a potato riddler in the back,’ he complained. ‘I can’t see straight and Maria’s barking’s done something to my brain.’
I was struck by the contrast in appearance between Flurry and a group of boys roughly the same age lurking beside a cigarette machine in jeans and football jerseys. ‘Why are you wearing your school uniform?’ I asked. ‘I thought it was the summer holidays.’
‘I like to put on the same thing each day,’ he explained with dignity. ‘It saves thinking.’
‘You wouldn’t be more comfortable without your tie?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. I’d wonder why it felt loose round my neck and that would be bothering. I’m going in here.’ He disappeared into an ironmonger’s shop.
‘Dad took him to see a doctor in London,’ Liddy said as we walked together along the pavement, ‘and he said Flurry was mildly – what’s the word? – autistic. His IQ’s incredibly high but he likes to do things in patterns. I don’t understand it but Dad said not to tease him about it. Luckily everyone’s so batty in Ireland it hardly shows that Flurry’s odd. Of course he didn’t take me to London,’ she added resentfully.
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you come and stay with me when I go back to England? I live in a tiny house but it’s right in the heart of Chelsea and we’ve a camp-bed and you could share my room for a week—’
Liddy’s scream drew the eyes of the street. ‘You don’t mean it! Oh, Christ!’ She flung her arms round my neck. ‘Please, please, please mean it!’
I disengaged myself sufficiently to look in Liddy’s eyes that were shining with excitement. ‘I mean it. I faithfully promise that you shall come and stay with me in London.’
‘Could we possibly go to Harrods?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Will you take me to Bond Street?’
‘Every day, if you like.’
‘I’m so happy.’ Liddy spoke with emotion. ‘You’re an angel. Would you help me get a job in London so I needn’t go home? It needn’t be modelling at first. I could be a waitress or a shop assistant.’
‘Let’s talk about that another time. There are things like A levels and university to be considered. Your career—’
‘I don’t care about a career. I just want to have decent clothes and go to good restaurants and be taken out by gorgeous men.’
‘All right. But just this minute I’ve got to think about a week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Where’s the greengrocer’s?’
Liddy tucked her hand under my elbow and with her on one arm and the basket I had borrowed from the still room on the other I proceeded down the declivitous street, greatly to the inconvenience of the other pedestrians. Being the provider of pleasure is a delightful feeling. Liddy smiled and giggled and the sun shone and had it not been for constant nagging thoughts of Burgo I would have thoroughly enjoyed myself.
We ordered large quantities of vegetables, meat, groceries and cleaning agents. The shopkeepers knew Liddy, of course, a
nd we were treated like royalty. Chairs were dusted and cups of tea offered. The greengrocer’s was the strangest of its kind I had yet encountered. There were hardly any vegetables in it, except the plastic ones making a display in the window, a few sacks of potatoes and carrots and several boxes of yellow cabbages. When I picked up a carrot and managed to bend its leafy end to its muddy tip without breaking it, Turlough McGurn, whose shop it was, informed me that these particular carrots were kept solely for the tinkers’ horses. Those destined for Curraghcourt were even at that moment being plucked from the ground and would be delivered to the castle before we reached it ourselves. A tentative enquiry about celeriac, chicory, French beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and, at Flavia’s request, several pounds of oranges received the immediate assurance that the identical articles would be supplied along with the carrots. It seemed simpler for the whole order to be sent at the same time. The greengrocer bowed us to the door, swearing that such was our radiant beauty it would seem as though the sun had set the minute we departed.
Sean Rafferty, the butcher, said he would need time to prepare the particular cuts I had requested. He could tell I was a lady of unrivalled judgement and taste, accustomed only to the best and I must never be tempted, therefore, to patronize Dermot McBride’s shop where the meat was more closely related to a donkey than the donkey’s own mother. He would deliver my order himself. We were to receive the best joints that money could buy, dispatched at breakneck speed.
In the chemist’s, while Liddy examined the revolving stand of hair-slides and earrings, I selected soap, bath salts, several rolls of decent lavatory paper and a giant bottle of hand cream. I also bought eye ointment for Flurry’s stye, flea powder and some pastilles to burn to counteract the smell of cats in my bedroom. After this we called at the ironmonger’s where I bought a bath plug and a padlock for the kitchen cupboard. Flurry was still there, choosing nuts and bolts with single-minded purpose.
While Liddy explored the garish delights of Lulu’s Hat Box I crossed the road to inspect the national dailies on the counter of the newsagent’s. When, the night before, I had told Constance about the scandal attached to me, she had listened with a face that was first amazed then sorrowful.
Moonshine Page 33
