‘Must you go immediately?’ I interrupted because Violet’s eyelids were fluttering and drooping now as though she were very tired.
He looked surprised. ‘Yes. I think I must.’
‘Because I really think … Do look at Violet.’
He turned his head. ‘What?’
‘All the time you’ve been speaking her eyes have been open.’
He went quickly to the bed and bent over her. ‘Violet? Violet. It’s Finn. Look at me.’ From where I was sitting his shadow hid her face. After what seemed a long time but was, perhaps, a minute at the most, he straightened up. ‘I’m afraid you’ve allowed yourself to be deceived by wishful thinking. Or the movement of shadows.’
‘I didn’t imagine it.’ I tried to conceal my disappointment. ‘I swear her eyes were open and she was looking at you. Do you think I’d risk raising your hopes so cruelly if I weren’t absolutely certain?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure you really believe you saw it. Because, purely from disinterested kindness, you long for it to happen. But it was a trick of the light.’
‘If only you could stay a few days longer. I’m certain it’s your voice that draws her out of unconsciousness.’
‘Miss Norton – Bobbie – I’m touched by your concern for Violet, truly I am. But for the children’s sake, for everyone’s sake including your own, I don’t think it’s a good idea to invest too much in the idea of her getting better.’
Men are stubborn creatures. It is a mistake to argue with them for it only encourages them to harden their theories to adamantine and makes it impossible for them ever to admit they are wrong. With a superhuman effort I controlled my impatience and composed my face to express compliance.
‘I haven’t offended you?’ He was obviously nonplussed by my failure to respond with my usual acerbity.
‘Not in the least.’
‘It would be to a high degree ungrateful if I had.’
I made my voice brisk. ‘Let’s forget all that. In fact, I want to consult you about something else entirely. I’d like to stay on at Curraghcourt for a while if that’s all right with you?’
‘Do you need my permission? The boot is on the other foot, rather. Constance has threatened to tear me limb from limb if I quarrel with you one more time.’
‘Good. But I do need your approval and co-operation. Because I have a plan.’
THIRTY-FOUR
‘It was pretty good, actually.’ Liddy leaned back against the window. We were in Violet’s room. Outside massing clouds dripped moisture like swollen sponges. ‘I’ve never danced properly before. With someone who could.’
She chewed a fingernail while she reflected. We had had this conversation or something along the same lines at least every few hours since Lughnasa, seven days ago. The party had been proclaimed a success by everyone except Sissy who was more furious with me than ever. The cause of her anger seemed to be Mr Macchuin’s – Finn’s precipitate return to Dublin, though I had had nothing to do with that. We had come down to breakfast late on the morning following the party to find a note from the master of the house lying on the dining table, addressed to Constance. Propped against one of the candlesticks were three brief messages for the children. When Constance read aloud her brother’s apology for having left without saying goodbye Sissy had stamped her foot and hurled her piece of toast at me before rushing from the room. She was a good shot, having had a knife-throwing act at one time, and it hit me squarely in the face. The missile was too light to do me any harm but the butter was a nuisance.
‘I suppose all English public schoolboys can dance and kiss without drowning you in saliva,’ said Liddy, folding up her legs on the window seat where her father had sat a week before.
‘Don’t you believe it.’ This was the first I had heard about kissing. I was feeding Violet porridge made with cream and brown sugar. The watery stirabout had gone by the way. Her ability to swallow had improved and food no longer ran down her chin. ‘The best you can say about most public schoolboys is that they’re proficient at Latin. And playing girls’ parts in Shakespeare plays. They live in hope of finding a woman who won’t mind being called by her surname.’
‘I suppose you’re going to marry Kit?’
I stopped feeding Violet to look at Liddy. She had lost something of her bloom. That morning I had heard someone being sick when I walked past the bathroom. Liddy had emerged shortly afterwards, perspiring and pale. She attributed the attack of vomiting to having eaten something that had disagreed with her but I suspected she might have put her fingers down her throat. ‘I’m not thinking of marrying anybody,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ More chewing of the savaged nail. ‘I should think it would be very boring to be married.’ She examined the shreds carefully. ‘Kit’s so respectable. You’d have to open fêtes and be nice to the tenants.’
‘You know more about it than I do, obviously.’
‘He told me about his parents and their house in Norfolk. It sounds incredibly swanky.’
I began to feel slightly dissatisfied with Kit. What business had he to boast of his credentials and kiss sixteen-year-old girls?
‘I should hate all that sort of thing,’ continued Liddy. ‘Having to be on my best behaviour all the time. Probably he expects to be an old-fashioned husband. You know, separate bedrooms and he knocks on your door in his dressing-gown and demands his conjugal rights.’
Evidently Liddy’s imagination had been extremely active.
‘Does anyone behave like that any more?’
‘Haven’t the faintest.’ She wrapped her arms round her knees and was silent for a while, brooding. ‘I’d hate to be married to a man who was a lot older than me,’ she said eventually.
‘There’d be obvious disadvantages. A long widowhood for one thing.’
‘And he’d be terrifically masterful because he’d know so much more than you.’ She stared out of the window, dreaming, while I washed Violet and cleaned her teeth. ‘Bobbie?’
‘Mm?’
‘You’re not in love with Kit, are you?’
‘I’m not in love with anyone.’
‘Because I don’t think you’re suited to each other, really I don’t.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Liddy was unable to keep an eagerness from her voice. ‘You need to marry a man you can boss about and organize.’
I could not help smiling. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘And someone taller. If you wore four-inch heels you’d be the same height as Kit. Honestly, I really think it’d be a bad mistake for you to marry him.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Bobbie? Are you there?’ It was Kit.
I checked that Violet’s face was clean and that the paraphernalia of invalidism was tidied away.
‘Yes, come in,’ I called.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He stood in the doorway, holding a bunch of wild red fuchsias. ‘I stopped on my way from Kilmuree to pick these. I know how you love them. Hello, Liddy.’ He threw her a smile, not seeming to notice her blushes. ‘I must say, they look rather insignificant to me.’
I took the flowers. ‘Ah, but though they’re tiny, when you look into them they’re exquisite. It seems so profligate of Nature to scatter something so exotic as carelessly as though they were nettles. You’re early.’
‘The weather’s grim and the ms I’m reading is such tosh. I’m on the verge of cutting my throat. Say you’ll come to my rescue and have lunch with me at the Fitzgeorge Arms?’
I telegraphed caution with my eyes. ‘I can’t today. There’s too much to do.’ I had my back to the window so I was able to mime the words ‘Ask Liddy.’
‘Surely you can take one lunchtime off?’ Either Kit was obtuse or he was determined to ignore my signals. ‘It’s just conceit that makes you think you’re indispensable.’
‘None the less, it’s necessary for my ego. Perhaps Liddy would stand in for me, if you ask nicely.’
Kit ignored this. ‘B
ut you’re necessary to me. Think how horrible I’ll look with my throat grinning from ear to ear. And the mess the landlady will have to clear up.’
‘I’m going.’ Liddy sprang to her feet and bounded to the door. ‘Have a good lunch, you two. I only hope’ – her voice broke – ‘you don’t get food poisoning.’ She pushed past him and I heard her running down the corridor.
Kit lifted an eyebrow. ‘What’s up with Ireland’s answer to the falling birth-rate?’
‘Kit! How can you be so unkind!’
‘That girl’s too precocious for her own good.’
‘Did you kiss her at the party?’
‘Only a fatherly peck, I swear. I’m not used to being flirted with by someone young enough to be my daughter. I was brought up to consider it bad manners to reject a young lady’s advances but the experience brought me out in a cold sweat. Any moment I thought I’d be clapped in irons by the Garda Síochána for molesting a minor.’
‘I’m afraid she may be rather fond of you.’
‘You needn’t worry. I’m not remotely tempted to take advantage of a teenage crush. I have the Englishman’s horror of adolescent storms. And I like a little intelligent conversation from time to time.’
‘That wasn’t quite what I meant.’ I leaned forward to wipe Violet’s mouth then stopped, surprised. ‘Go on talking. Tell me about the manuscript you’re working on.’
‘It’s about an accountant called Brian whose plane comes down in a jungle and he’s the only one left alive. He’s rescued by this tribe of Amazons who strap him to a ylang-ylang tree and insist on every permutation of sexual intercourse several times a day. I’ve no doubt it got a lot of things out of the author’s system in the writing …’
I was watching Violet’s face. Her eyes were open and turned towards the door where Kit was standing. I nodded to him and flapped my fingers to encourage him to continue. He looked puzzled so I pointed to the bed.
‘What? Oh, Christ! I see! Ah … you want me to go on talking? … Yes, I’ve got to the end of the first chapter where one Amazonian – who I think may turn out to be the heroine – hits upon the merciful idea of a cold compress … It gets steamier. Not at all suitable.’
‘Talk about the weather. Anything. Stream of consciousness.’
‘It’s too wet to work in the garden this afternoon but I’m sure you’ve got something back-breaking indoors lined up. I was thinking as I lay in bed this morning how I’m going to miss this place. It hasn’t exactly been a rest-cure. In fact I’ve rarely worked harder but it’s got under my skin, somehow, along with the dirt.’
‘You’re going away?’ I kept my eyes on Violet’s face. ‘That’s a great pity. There’s so much to do and you’ve been so helpful.’
‘I haven’t settled on a day but I shall have to go back to London soon. I’ve resorted to the most ridiculous excuses to extend my trip as it is. Ferry strikes, enteric fever, shirts lost at the laundry …’
‘Before you go will you give me a lesson on the circular saw? Timsy says he’s too busy to help Flurry. And actually I think he’s telling the truth. The queue in the granary never seems to grow less.’
‘I’ll finish the sleepers before I leave, even if I have to stay up all night.’
‘You’re marvellous, Kit.’ I smiled up at him. ‘Thank you.’
‘I suppose it’s something to be missed for my industry. Is it foolish of me to want to be missed for my own sweet self?’
I turned back to Violet. ‘Go on talking.’
‘Well, now. I had an interesting chat with Maud yesterday. She told me – as usual, not pulling her punches – that I was wasting my time drooling after you. She said you were the sort of girl who liked things to be complicated and difficult so you could see yourself as a romantic heroine. You preferred a man who’d look daggers rather than sheep’s eyes. She wasn’t complimentary about either of us. She obviously sees me as an effete Englishman of the type she trampled on in the days of her power. Except that they at least were engaged in manly occupations. Landowners, army officers, masters of foxhounds. She has all the contempt for the arts that people of that generation and class generally feel. My grandmother and great-aunts all walked with a limp, their right legs withered from having ridden side-saddle to hounds for forty years, and considered anyone who liked poetry to be vitiated and deservedly consumptive. Of all the differences that separate humanity, I think the Arts versus Philistinism the most divisive. Catholics and Calvinists all believe in God. Whigs and Tories believe in the power of politics. Both the rich and the poor believe in the desirability of money. But a hunting man is blind to the beauty of an iambic pentameter and fiction to him is claptrap. And what do we intellectual dilettantes understand of the pleasures of hecatombs of warm, dead creatures offered to the god of sport? How’s that for loquacity? I think I’ve earned that lunch.’
‘It is horrible.’ Flavia stuck out her head from beneath the bed. ‘That’s what you meant, isn’t it? That it’s wicked to kill things for fun?’
‘Flavia!’ I said, startled. ‘What are you doing under there?’
‘I heard someone coming and I thought it was Pegeen so I got under the bed because she tells me off for disturbing Mummy and then just as I was going to come out I heard Liddy’s voice and I thought she’d tease me for hiding under the bed and then—’
‘Never mind,’ I beckoned to her. ‘Come and look.’
Flavia crawled out. I put my arm round her and turned her towards the bed. Violet’s eyes, the colour of black grapes in the gloomy, rain-streaked light, were wandering restlessly about the room. Flavia sucked in her breath in a harsh whoop. Her body stiffened beneath my arm, then shook violently as though she had received an electric shock. Trembling from head to toe, she picked up her mother’s hand and pressed it against her cheek. Violet’s eyes rested on her younger daughter’s face with an expression of puzzlement that became alarm.
‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ whispered Flavia, her tears falling fast. ‘It’s me, Flavia.’ Her highly sensitive nature enabled her to interpret Violet’s feelings instinctively. ‘I’ve got bigger because you’ve been asleep a long time.’
I could not decide whether the moisture that filmed Violet’s eyes before she closed them was a reaction to the swimming particles of dust or a response to the intense love in Flavia’s voice.
I was ruthless in making use of Kit’s energy and ingenuity now the possibility of his going away had been brought to my attention. Living within a ring of mountains in a remote area of unspoiled landscape did strange things to one’s concept of time. It was easy to imagine that nothing that happened in the world outside had much relevance. But we had a great deal to accomplish in our own small sphere. The great plan I had proposed to Finn on the eve of his departure was to take advantage of the scheme set up by Hibernian Heritage to assist owners of large historic houses to do running repairs in return for opening them to the public for so many days a year. It had been in my mind since Constance had spoken to me about the impossibility of such an undertaking on my first morning at Curraghcourt. Constance had been at first doubtful about the size of the enterprise but I persuaded her that we could do it. She had written at once to ask for a representative of HH to call and already someone had telephoned to make an appointment for the end of January. Meanwhile we had Finn’s permission to stir the castle to its foundations in order to present its most inviting face to scholars and tourists.
Constance and I spent a long time debating which parts of the house we would display and in what order. After an inspection of the first floor we decided to include the south tower room that was a grander version of my own and the room next to it which had the remains of a lovely Chinese wallpaper. I thought it would be a good idea to display the dressing room which led off it and was part of the fifteenth-century castle. Concealed within some fine early panelling was a jib door, behind which were the remains of a mediaeval garderobe.
‘Can we make this interesting enough, do you think?’
Constance surveyed the dismal furniture in the dressing room, a fake, badly carved Jacobean bed and some chairs upholstered in hideous mushroom Dralon.
‘We’ll make this into a bathroom. There’s a marvellous old slipper bath in one of the attic rooms. We’ll bring that down here.’ I scribbled a note to that effect. ‘And those old-fashioned scales. And the shaving table. There’s that pretty blue-and-white lav in the mahogany box next to the still room that no one ever uses. We’ll stand it against that wall. It’ll be plumbing through the ages. Before I went into the auction house I worked briefly for the National Trust. There’s nothing visitors like so much as kitchens, bathrooms and lavatories.’
Constance picked up a cushion and then threw it down as a large spider scurried out from its stuffing. ‘I must say everything looks incredibly shabby. Ought we to get new curtains for the beds and recover the chairs?’
‘We’ll put the later stuff upstairs, but anything pre nineteen twenty we’ll repair and clean. Shabbiness won’t matter as long as we can restore everything to a sort of ripe old beauty. It’s a pity we can’t show your brother’s room: it has the best view of the canals. Come to think of it, it would be a good idea to get rid of the weeds and regravel the walk between them. We might even trim those yews that have grown so massive.’
‘I know where there are some photographs taken in about nineteen thirty. The yews were cut into Christmas pudding shapes sitting on drums. Could we copy that? Or are the trees too old?’
Moonshine Page 50
