‘Constance! What a brilliant idea! Yews are very good-tempered. You can cut them back as hard as you like and they shoot again from the trunk. What’s more, August is the perfect month for doing it. It’ll transform the garden and it won’t cost us a penny. I don’t know how I’m going to stop myself going out now with a pair of shears.’
We went into Finn’s room. It was extremely tidy and smelled faintly of vetiver. The four-poster had a curved tester decorated with oak leaves, perhaps Chippendale. I admired the view from the window. Clipping the yews would reveal the smooth sheets of olive water that were now just flashes of light between the branches.
‘It’s going to look stunning,’ I said with satisfaction.
‘Won’t it!’ agreed Constance. ‘We must include this room. We’ll make it the last on the tour. Finn could always sleep somewhere else if he objects.’
‘Well, you can suggest it. I wouldn’t dare.’ I admired the portrait of Liddy in red chalk that hung above the washstand, the pair to one of Violet that hung in Flavia’s room. It would be a good idea to include a résumé of the family history in the guide book we planned to write to accompany the tour. There was a painting of Constance’s grandmother hanging on the stairs among other Macchuin ancestors. Her expression was reproving and she was dressed in black relieved only by a crucifix on her large bosom. ‘It would mean we could display four rooms in a row. We could put a rope across the corridor by yours so the visitors have to turn left by the linen cupboards. Then Maud won’t be disturbed by tramping feet. They could go down by the back stairs into the kitchen without retracing their steps or running into people coming up.’
‘You’re going to show them the kitchen?’ Constance looked astonished.
‘No. You are. It’ll be an added thrill for them to be given the tour by a member of the family.’
‘Will we be able to keep the kitchen tidy enough?’
‘It’ll be good discipline. Besides, we’ll have all morning to be untidy in. We shan’t open until something like two o’clock.’
‘What about Katty and Pegeen? Won’t people think it odd to find two bodies slumped by the fire?’
‘They won’t have time to sleep. They’ll be too busy helping in the tea-room.’
‘A tea-room? Heavens! What’ll Finn say about that?’
‘Our visitors will need refreshment if they’ve come a long way. And lavatories. For the time being they’ll have to make do with the downstairs cloakroom. If the project gets off the ground, we’ll have to install a few more. Perhaps in the old tack-room.’
‘Can there be anything you haven’t thought of?’
‘Oh, plenty. We’ll be making it up as we go along, for the first few months at least.’
‘I’ll ring Finn this evening and ask him about including his bedroom on the tour.’
‘Will you say anything about Violet?’
Constance hesitated. ‘I think, in view of his reaction when you tried to tell him before, perhaps not. He’s convinced himself she isn’t going to get better so he’ll probably think we’re hallucinating and get worried. Let’s wait until he comes back and can see for himself.’
Since Lughnasa Violet’s condition had improved remarkably. It seemed that the deeper registers of the male voice were needed to rouse her from insensibility so Eugene had been deputed to recite poetry to her for as long as his strength held out. With exemplary devotion to duty he spent long hours between lunchtime and dinner in Violet’s room, sometimes thundering in defiance, sometimes reducing himself to sobs by his own pathos. Violet watched him at intervals, her eyes tracking his movements. Each day she opened her eyes more often and for longer.
On one of these occasions Constance had taken Flurry up to see Violet. Mother and son had looked at each other impassively for a brief moment before Violet had turned her eyes back to Eugene and Flurry had asked if he could go downstairs and get on with the steam dome of his engine which was giving trouble.
‘Poor Flurry!’ said Constance later. ‘He finds conversation difficult at the best of times. I suppose it’s the autism. Dislike of change is characteristic, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so.’ I gave the pastry for the onion tart I was making a quarter-turn. ‘I know so little about it.’
‘You can’t know less than I do. Finn didn’t seem to want to talk about it when he came back from the specialist in Dublin. He was sad and silent for a long while afterwards. I didn’t feel I could raise the subject myself.’
‘It must have made it more difficult that he couldn’t talk about it with Violet.’
‘Mm. I suppose so.’ Constance helped herself to a biscuit. I made them often now as Flurry had decided that he liked them. I crammed them so full with currants that they were nearly black with vitamin C. ‘Strange, isn’t it, how you can live so intimately with other people and yet have so many subjects that are taboo. I adore Finn but there are lots of important things we never talk about. Violet, the children, money, the future. I suppose he thinks I’m too impractical to be worth sharing problems with. That makes me feel very inadequate. And I know he doesn’t care for Eugene particularly but I’d like to feel that we could at least acknowledge his presence in the house. He can’t still be waiting for Eugene to go home. Not after nearly a year.’ She took another biscuit. ‘I’m a little afraid of Finn’s temper. I suppose that’s why I don’t like to bring things up. And what’s going to happen about Sissy? Can they still be lovers? I don’t think she’d be so cross if they were. Was there ever such a household for misunderstanding and obfuscation?’
‘That’s family life, isn’t it? It’s just like that at home. My father and I rarely speak without quarrelling. He ignores my brother’s existence except to express blighting contempt. And my mother never says anything to anyone except to complain. Curraghcourt seems relatively sane to me.’
‘Does it?’ Constance took a third biscuit. I put the lid on the jar and removed it. ‘You really don’t think we’re all quite, quite mad?’
‘I haven’t enjoyed anything so much for ages as being here.’
‘That isn’t quite what I asked. Never mind.’ She looked around vaguely. ‘Where’ve the biscuits gone?’
‘You know you said you wanted to lose weight? Those biscuits are made with lashings of butter. They must be more than a hundred calories each. You’ve just eaten a light lunch in a careless moment.’
‘Oh, well, there doesn’t seem much point in trying to improve myself. Eugene hasn’t made a move towards me. If Lughnasa couldn’t do it, nothing will.’
‘Nonsense! He’s terrified of rejection, that’s all. Somehow, subtly, you’ve got to let him know you like him. Why not write a poem about your feelings – in the abstract, not mentioning names – and show it to him? Get him thinking.’
‘He’s never read any of my poems. I’m sure he’d think they were so bad that he’d be completely put off.’
I almost said nonsense again but realized that I was turning into a sort of Lady Bracknell figure. ‘Kit thinks your poetry is good. What did he say? A command of imagery, passionate and subtle.’
‘He was just being polite.’
‘I don’t think so. But if you won’t believe him let me read some. I promise I’ll tell you honestly what I think.’
Greater love hath no woman than that she read her friend’s poetry. But then I truly did love Constance.
‘Would you, Bobbie? I’d consider it a great favour.’
‘Nons—I know much less about poetry than Kit. But, if it will help, I’d love to read anything you’ve written.’
Constance picked up a fragment of raw pastry and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘I wonder … could I really?’ Her eyes became unfocused.
I put the pad of paper I used for shopping lists in front of her and handed her a pencil.
When Liddy had been taken up to view the phenomenon of Violet with her eyes open she had stared at her mother for some time. Constance and I had stood sympathetically by, poised to offer reassuran
ce.
‘Golly!’ Liddy had said eventually. ‘I hope she isn’t going to mind too much about that white dress.’
‘She might not get well enough to mind,’ Constance had said. ‘We can’t tell how much she’s actually taking in. The message has to be sent from her eyes to her brain—’
‘Flavia’s got Mum’s hair but I’ve got her eyes,’ interrupted Liddy. ‘I suppose they’re Granny’s really but mine are darker than either of them. I’d rather it that way round. I mean, it’s easy to dye your hair any colour you want.’ She nibbled a cuticle while she digested the altered state of things. ‘If she does get really better she’ll have to have all new clothes,’ she said at last. ‘I shall be able to tell her what’s in. It might be quite fun.’
When Constance had told Maud that Violet was able to open her eyes Maud had said, ‘I hope you don’t expect me to be glad? What use will it be to her to be able to see the four walls of her room and the smirking, simpering faces of her attendants? She’d be better dead than in whatever limbo she inhabits. You’re a sentimental fool, Constance.’
Pegeen and Katty were also far from overjoyed by the development. When Pegeen had first seen Violet looking at her she had screamed and fallen to her knees and Katty had crossed herself several times with a face of doom. They seemed to think that Violet’s improvement was flying in the face of God’s will, even to suspect it was the harbinger of some apocalypse. For days afterwards Violet’s bed was damp with sprinklings from the stoop.
THIRTY-FIVE
‘What’s it all about?’ asked Father Deglan as he came into the drawing room. We had gathered for drinks before dinner. We had not seen him for two weeks as he had been enjoying his annual holiday in Dublin, standing in for a brother priest who ran a shelter for drug addicts and prostitutes. For once Kit was not with us. He had set himself the task of getting to the bottom of his pile of manuscripts by the expedient of spreading them over his bed at the Fitzgeorge Arms, thus prohibiting sleep until they were disposed of. ‘The talk’s all over Kilmuree that Violet has been seen walking over the mountains. There are rumours that she rides a pooka. But it’s all nonsense, of course. I can’t get it into their heads that belief in fairies is just childish superstition.’
‘Hark at the pot.’ Maud almost slammed down her glass of usquebaugh as she perceived that chance had delivered into her hands a scourge with which to flog the priest. ‘Roman Catholicism was devised as a means to control the ignorant masses by frightening them with fairy tales of pitchforks and purgatory. Don’t you ask the poor dupes to believe a miracle happens every Sunday to a box of cheap wafers and a bottle of inferior wine from Dooley’s?’
‘What’s a pooka?’ I asked, in the interests of Father Deglan’s cardio-vascular system.
‘It’s a fairy horse that gallops away with you,’ Constance explained, pulling a piece of red wool through the malodorous Persian carpet we were repairing. It was nineteenth century and good quality but in poor condition due to hard wear and constant damp. We could make it serviceable for tourists’ feet by darning the biggest holes and putting a layer of felt beneath to absorb moisture. The floors were dark and sweating now because of the rain that for the last month had swept the lawns and thrown itself against the long sashes.
‘Violet can open her eyes,’ Constance went on, ‘and we’re almost certain she can see something. How much we don’t know.’
‘God’s mercy is infinite.’ Father Deglan crossed himself and even his sad eye seemed moved to something like joy.
‘One might ask oneself, unless brainwashed to the point of idiocy, if it was merciful of Him to send her a stroke in the first place,’ said Maud.
‘It’s been truly said you Protestants are like white blackbirds.’ Father Deglan took up the gauntlet. ‘At home nowhere. Resented by the Irish and despised by the English. You’ve a cold apathetic sort of religion. You look down your long noses at holiness and you can’t give your hearts to God the Father Almighty because your souls are killed by pride. You have no meekness, humility or obedience and so you’ll be cast into hell for eternity. I pity you from the bottom of me heart.’
‘My family have lived in Ireland for three hundred years.’ Maud’s cheeks grew pinker with the pleasure of argument. ‘I think that makes me as Irish as any brat from a bog. But I suppose you think the only true Irishman is Catholic, Republican and Gaelic-speaking.’
‘Aye, I do and that’s the fact. For one thing St Patrick established Catholicism here in the fifth century and anything else is nothing but tinkering. For another no true-hearted Irishman is content to suffer under the yoke of the tyrant oppressors – you’ll excuse me, Miss Norton, if I speak plainly – and we’ll fight till the breath is out of our bodies to rid ourselves of the Old Enemy.’ He raised his fist in a salute.
Maud rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, simple minds!’
‘Is it guilt now for your kind’s misdoings that makes you so unreasonable?’
‘I’ve never felt guilty in my life,’ Maud said scornfully. ‘Guilt is extremely vulgar.’
‘I do like hearing Gaelic spoken,’ said Constance pacifically, ‘but it’s such a difficult language to learn.’
Father Deglan drained his glass of sherry and looked expectantly at the decanter. ‘There was no difficulty in my day. We were taught in Gaelic and heard not a word of English.’
‘I’ve heard Finn say that the predominance of Gaelic in schools is one of the root causes of Ireland’s backwardness,’ said Maud. ‘Half the children’s lessons are taken up with learning an archaic patter at the expense of maths and English and geography, while world history is scarcely touched on. We’re insular enough without that, God knows.’
‘I think censorship is as much to blame,’ said Constance as she stitched in red part of a border that should have been blue. ‘Eugene feels strongly about it, don’t you?’
Eugene nodded energetically, with popping eyes. He had a sore throat from hours of reading to Violet and was resting his voice.
‘Last time I was in Dublin,’ continued Constance, ‘I saw Hay Fever by Noël Coward. Hardly pornographic. But his plays were banned in Ireland until ten years ago. I mean, who in their right minds would consider “navel” a dirty word?’
‘Sure, Constance, you’re a victim of the newspapers and – hah – evil influences’ – Father Deglan glared at Maud – ‘with your harping on the ways of the world. What need is there to discuss the parts of the body at all, I’d like to know?’
I saw three men walk past the windows on their way to the apple store, with that indifference to rain that is so characteristic of the Irish. Business was booming. Someone had recently tipped off the Garda as to the whereabouts of the two shebeens that had been our only competition this side of Kilmuree. Timsy had publicly expressed his indignation at such treachery and threatened to ‘puck the gob of the lousy scut’ should the informer’s identity ever be discovered, but no one, I imagine, was fooled for a moment. Soon we would have enough money to buy the washing machine. I had not been able to forget that flicker of dismay on Finn’s face when I had asked him for a hundred pounds. I had not cashed the cheque.
‘Do tell me about your schooldays, Father Deglan.’ I liked the old man best when he was reminiscing. He was always willing to recall the hardships of his youth and his native facility with words made listening easy. ‘It’s a wonder you were able to learn anything at all,’ I said when he paused to drain his glass. I was genuinely affected by his account of a remarkable dedication to learning despite poverty, aching cold, fleas, shortage of books and even of something to sit on, all of which deprivations had been accompanied by a relentless, gnawing hunger.
‘It explains why the average Irish peasant is an illiterate dolt,’ said Maud.
I saw a naked figure cartwheel past the window and whirl down the path between the miroirs d’eaux. Luckily Father Deglan was staring at the fire, rubbing his corky nose as he searched for memories in the ashes that flew like flecks of foam each time the
wind blew down the chimney. Eugene strolled with a casual air towards the window, took up a position leaning against the architrave and stared pensively into the garden.
‘Yet we were as healthy as the Proddies that dined on steak and jelly every day of their lives. Hah!’ Father Deglan smacked his knee and gobbled down another generous handful of nuts.
‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that an inadequate diet and squalid living conditions have done nothing to spoil the peasants’ appetite for violence and drunkenness,’ said Maud. ‘Now I think I’ve had enough of Ireland’s bitter draught. What’s the news?’
‘What was your childhood like?’ I asked Constance as we washed up after dinner. The priest had been taken away by taxi and Maud had gone to bed. Eugene was dozing by the drawing-room fire. ‘I imagine it was very different from Father Deglan’s.’
Sissy, who was grinding berries and herbs, looked up sharply. Disdaining my cajoling smile she returned a stern gaze to her pottage. I made a mental note to buy an electric blender with money from the poteen fund next time I went into Kilmuree. It would be useful for both of us.
‘Finn and I were brought up by my grandparents. I told you, didn’t I, that the Republicans tried to burn Curraghcourt during the Troubles? Though my grandfather had converted to Catholicism and taught himself Gaelic he was still suspect in the eyes of the IRA because he was a senator. I was fond of my grandfather. Finn sometimes reminds me of him. His portrait’s in the library over the fireplace.’
I remembered it. The man with the military moustache.
‘My father went away to fight just after Finn was born in nineteen thirty-nine. I’m very proud of him for that. But you wouldn’t believe how unpopular it made him with everyone here. Though officially Ireland was neutral during the Emergency – that’s what we call the Second World War – half the country was actually pro-German. As a race we’re incapable of neutrality. You’ll not be offended, I hope, Bobbie, if I say that the only thing we’ve ever agreed on as a nation is our dislike of the English.’
Moonshine Page 51
