by Molly Keane
‘Just you spoiling his bit of pleasure?’ He understood more than I had meant. He put his hand on the car door. He was going. Nothing had been forbidden or decided. Then he turned back. ‘My dear child,’ he said, ‘it makes very little difference. So long as he keeps happy, comfortable and happy – put up with things. And I’ll see you again on Thursday – or any day, if you’re worrying. Let me know. You’re a great girl, Aroon . . .’ There was no more I could do. I was set aside. Why did they ignore me? Things might have been different. I’m never sure.
•
There were times in the weeks before Christmas when I wondered whether Rose had exaggerated Papa’s sufferings with Nurse. Once Rose and Nurse had got on very well together. So had Rose and I when we first got rid of Nurse. It had been fun, spoiling Papa. I had been happy in my practical responsibilities. When I lifted him and eased him back onto his pillows, I felt really glad to be a big girl. I could hold him quite as comfortably as Rose could. But now her progressive slighting of my helpfulness was like a tide seeping in, quietly, inexorably taking my safe places from me. She said: ‘He’s resting,’ when I came in after luncheon for a chat. Papa was lying back with his eyes closed. I turned round from the door with no special reason and his eyes were open and lively. He was looking at Rose, who was looking at me with a kind of impatience. Perhaps Papa wanted his bedpan. I went away.
I took the dogs for a walk. I went down the drive where Papa and I had stopped to look at my Black Friday yearling – only his donkey was there, with a goat for company now. Would Richard understand that sale I had made out of love and pity?
For tea, I was back in Papa’s room. I was quite determined to keep that time inviolate. Though he did not eat much of them, Papa liked sandwiches and tiny scones, and medlar jelly, iced orange cakes, and ginger cake. Mummie, of course, ate nothing, so there was usually enough for me. Mummie watched with cold disgust and Papa with pleasure as I cleared up the plates. I couldn’t help myself. I hate waste. When I unfolded the day’s paper and started analysing the day’s racing results, she got up, hovered near him for a moment, then left the room, to go and sit under her tapestry in the library, a fresh hotwater-bottle at her feet.
Once six o’clock came Papa would get restless; his groans at the idiocies of the racing correspondents would be louder, his glances towards the door more longing. I knew it was not the correspondents – he liked nothing better than their mistakes. He was waiting for two things: Rose, and his whisky. When I heard Rose coming, strongly, neatly stepping along the corridor, I knew it was time for me to go. Because I could not allow that she had outdistanced me in the matter of the whisky, I had to pretend that it didn’t happen. I had to keep up some semblance of authority. It was like putting my foot in the door to keep it open.
31
That winter at Temple Alice we ignored Christmas; we were too bogged down in disaster for any jollity. We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour. Good Behaviour shrivelled to nothing as a support in my insensate longing for Hubert and Richard as the night of the Hunt Ball drew nearer, came so near that I was within touching distance of the event.
The afternoon hours before the ordeal were stiff with nothing to be done until the time came for bathing and scenting and strong girdling, a fortification of pink satin and écru lace, folded away since the Horse Show. At least I could light up the stove in my bedroom, filled from my ostentatiously private supply of paraffin, then I could manicure and buff my nails before the light failed and my courage too failed further from me. By then it would be teatime.
I was halfway up the staircase on the way to my bedroom when I was struck by a very practical and rather pleasing idea. It took me back to the hall and almost ran in front of me to the drawingroom door. Standing inside the doorway I was immobilised in the draughtless area of unused space; unyielding in its distance from our loves, Richard’s and mine and Hubert’s, the room contained a malevolent perfection of loneliness. I had not come to breathe back memories; I snatched up the small black gramophone, frozen all these months to the top of the grand piano. I had decided to practise my dancing before the ball; at least that would warm me and occupy time.
In my bedroom, I set the gramophone playing softly and set my feet moving with their own strict docility to the rhythm. Hubert always said I have an amazing sense of rhythm, and it’s true. And I am lighter than air when I am dancing. I danced across my room holding the afternoon light in my arms. I was good. I was exhilarated. I rewound the gramophone. I gripped the brass rail of my bed and limbered up my charleston. I didn’t hear Rose’s knock on my door, if she had knocked. She was standing there respectful, watching, not quite smiling, waiting for me to stop dancing and lift the needle off the record before she spoke.
‘I thought you might like to know, Miss Aroon,’ she said, ‘the Major’s having a little rest.’ That was all she said.
When she turned and went out, in her splendid, unhurrying way, I was blushing purple into the V of my shirt because she had watched me holding on to the bed rail, kicking out my strong legs to the music. She must have noticed my bosoms, swinging like jelly bags, bouncing from side to side; without words she conveyed the impression of what she had seen as unseemly – the Fat Lady in the peepshow. No. Forget the thought – a blush fails, armpits cease their creeping prickle. If Rose came back on any pretext, she would find me sitting at the dressing-table buffing my nails in a dégagé manner while the gramophone played softly with the lid down. I saw myself again as I was – a young girl getting ready for a very grand ball. I know I’m big, but I’m a girl, I suppose, not a joke.
At teatime I told Papa again where I was going to dine and dance. ‘Ah, watchit, watchit. Pretty high pheasants,’ he said. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Papa’s brain when he thought about shooting.
‘But I’m dancing, Papa.’
‘Awful. Awful,’ he said and caught my hand. I wondered if there was anything he didn’t understand. Even now.
‘No racing today,’ I said, when he began to fidget in an expectant way. I knew he wasn’t thinking of the results, but I clung to the myth of our usual evening occupation. ‘They’re frozen up in England.’ I got to my feet. I was going to leave him before I knew I must. ‘I’m changing now. I have to start early. Frozen roads.’
‘What?’
‘Ice.’
‘Take it easy.’ He was relieved to be left waiting for Rose. But when I was at the door he called distressfully.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I hear her on the stairs.’ Now I felt angry.
‘No. No. No.’ He was speechlessly urgent. ‘See you dressed UP,’ he said at last. My heart melted and I floated past Rose in the doorway as though she didn’t exist.
Excitement possessed me. I was dressing for somebody. As I strapped down my bosoms, I was outside my body and dressing it up with extreme care and calculation. At last I was ready for my dress. I struggled in. I looked at unbelievable me. Gold and pink swooned round, melting my size away. I stepped up to my reflection, then away from it, and I could find only surprise and delight in what I saw. Holding the rose here and there against my shoulder, I waited for a shudder of pleasure to run through me before I plunged the point of the safety-pin into the dress and shoulder straps. Last of all I took off the hair net. It would go back, of course, like the rose to its box, for the journey, but Papa must see me as I really am, every wave rigidly in its place, flawless. I was hungry for his approval as for a good dinner. I went swaying and floating round the balustraded circle below the starfilled dome, and on down the further corridor to Papa’s room; I floated across to the foot of his bed, poised and ripe for his stunned admiration.
Before my moment had time to live, it fell and shattered round me. Mummie was sitting with him, as though she had guessed I would be doing just this. She sat throwing sprigs of bay and lavender stalks onto the fire and sniffing up their little bursts of flame and scent, and then throwing on another sprig.
>
‘Aren’t you starting rather early?’ I might have been going to post a letter for all the notice she took of my dress.
I had meant to laugh and pivot about and show myself from every side to Papa; to kiss him and let him exclaim at my ravishing scent. But, as she looked across and smiled at Papa, I could only stand muttering about icy roads while my fever dropped from me and I loomed there, at the foot of his bed, as large as life again.
Papa was lying back against his pillows, his silver cup in his good hand. So arranged one forgot he had no arm to use on one side and no leg on the other. And almost no speech. His looks and his manner survived.
‘Good girl,’ he said. He looked over to Mummie to join him and help him elaborate his admiration. She considered me with a dull obedience.
‘Yes. Stupendous,’ was what she said. I blushed as I had when Rose stopped my dancing, and this time I was choking on tears of pain and hatred. It was a shocking moment for each of us. The worst possible instance of not knowing how to behave.
The door knob was in my hand when a sound from Papa’s bed impelled me towards him. He didn’t have a hand to give me, on account of the whisky cup, and we hardly ever kissed, but his look held me before him, held me away from him in admiration. And from the dark of time in his mind a catchword, a phrase, was snatched back and spoken distinctly: ‘I’m on your side, sweetheart.’ By no possibility could Mummie have avoided or escaped hearing him say it. He had restored me.
I drive well and that evening, along the icy roads to Ballytore Barraway, I felt less nervous than at any hour of the day. Phrases for the night’s dancing partners slid easily in and out of my mind: ‘I am sorry. I’m afraid number eight has gone too . . . Yes, they’re frozen up in England . . . no racing at Sandown . . . Marvellous tune . . . Yes, I’d love to . . .’ But as I arrived at the great, strange house an incoming tide of shyness belittled all confidence. A simple ache for Papa and Hubert filled me.
I drove under a stone archway, high as a railway bridge, on which the family coat of arms stood out, gross and gigantic. Beyond the archway, round three sides of a courtyard, Gothic battlements and towers thrust upwards and bellied outwards. Smaller archways squatted before dark doorways. Windows bulged on the vast spread of walls. It was Grimm’s fairytales gone mad in stone, and, like a fairytale, light shone from all the windows. For all the light I found it hard to tell which was the hall door. Double flights of balustraded steps led to a diversity of possible entrances. I chose the largest door with the longest, widest flow of steps, and I was right. In the hall a man so aristocratic and severe I thought he might be my host put me right about his status.
‘You’re staying, miss?’ he said gently.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to dinner.’
‘Ah, your coat? Upstairs, miss. The blue room. On your right. We dine at nine.’
‘Oh.’ I reeled. ‘Then I’m much too early.’
‘Oh, no, miss. Punctuality means nothing with us.’ As he said it, early and late fused in a sort of splendour.
The bedroom set apart for the ladies’ coats was blue and cream and blue again. My heels sank behind me in blue carpet that touched the ivory walls. I was up to my ankles in white fur. Before the swelling kidney of the dressing-table and its winged gold mirror I sat down on a blue-and-gold stool, my feet lost in the fur rug. I pinned the gold rose on my shoulder. I took off my hair net. I smeared pale lipsalve on my pale lips and, as I did these things, every easy phrase that I had manufactured in the car became extinct, leaving not one conversational hint for me to follow.
When I waited, ready and hesitant at the stair-head, a child ran up the flight towards me. She was one of the serene, well-mannered nursery sisters I had seen at race-meetings: children who knew how to comport themselves in the saddling enclosure. Tonight she tore past me, eating something. Her jodhpurs were tight as a skin, her little man’s shirt unbuttoned over a liberty bodice. ‘Hullo.’ I had to say something. She was halfway up the next flight before she stopped.
‘How do you do?’ She sounded corrosively polite. She added: ‘You are early,’ and went pounding away into her different life.
At the foot of the staircase I delayed, stretching out a minute before making my early entrance. On my arrival I had been too nervous to observe the hall. Now, as I looked round, it impressed me like a great Protestant hymn. ‘Pavilioned in splendour and girded with Praise.’ . . . Small suits of armour sank their pointed feet in the carpet. Once upon a time someone had said: I’ll just slip into my armour before we go out. Not here, I corrected myself, remembering how coolly informed Mummie was on the brief ancestry of these privileged people. Castle and title dated from the 1890s.
I stood there waiting. There was nobody to tell me where to go. I was the lost girl in the fairy story. I dared myself to go forwards. I opened a door, its architrave crowned by a bunch of swords. Then I was going headlong through a chain of rooms – large, smaller, smallest. In each room a fire was burning, not very brightly. Light came through deep parchment lampshades. Knole sofas, heavily tasselled, waited empty. Huge jardinières were filled with hyacinths and freesias. Photographs in lavish leather frames stood on every table. Photographs of children, race-horses, dogs, brides. I recognised a royal face, set apart from the rest, its modest isolation calling for attention.
At the end of the third room, from behind a closed door I heard voices. I knew I must go in. I couldn’t just stand in the doorway. Suppose it was opened? What should I say? ‘I’m Aroon’?
Within the room a man laughed. Nobody joined in the laugh. Then, as I opened the door, suddenly they all laughed out together, robustly enjoying and sharing a harsh, confident amusement.
Far off down the room five or six people sat round the fire. One and all, the men wore tweed coats and grey flannel or whipcord trousers and the women Aertex shirts and the finest wool cardigans and three, four, or five rows of pearls. I had not imagined them otherwise than in evening dresses and hunt coats with varied silk facings.
Standing unacknowledged in the doorway, I felt my bare shoulders swell into mountainous acres of flesh. I couldn’t find my voice, even if I could have found any words with which to announce myself. Then I realised they were all listening intently to a record – a husky thread of a voice galvanised their attention. A man got up to wind the gramophone. I felt he saw me, but I was none of his business, definitely less important than the record he was changing. I was wrong. He touched a girl whose great blond head was hung down between her shoulders; she seemed to be eating the pearls off her neck. She got to her feet and came loping across the room to me in flat leather shoes. She was as tall as I was, but her head was hung like a harebell on a thread of stem, and the length of her body shrank under her woollen clothes. Her voice was rich and concerned.
‘Aroon,’ she said, ‘how sweet of you to come. Were the roads ghastly? Have a drink. Do you know everybody? John Savernake . . . Mary Noisesome . . . Ronnie Pennine . . . Gwenny Fishguard . . . Dominick . . . Thomasine and Janine I know you know.’ They all murmured, and when the gramophone stopped they got off the floor and the chairs and went out of the room one behind the other, in a private follow-my-leader sort of game.
‘Oh, you rats,’ she moaned. I thought her name might be Penelope, but I’m glad I didn’t say it because I found out afterwards it was Mary Ann. She was the beautiful married sister . . . married to which of the beautiful men? And she was the very soul of kindness. ‘I’ll make you a warming drink.’ She looked down the length of the cocktail shaker; it was as big as a tunnel for a train. ‘This is all ice,’ she said. ‘What would you like? Just say. I’m so bad about drinks. Oh, that rotten Dominick, gone to first bath.’
‘May I have a glass of sherry?’
‘No. No sherry.’ She searched desperately among the bottles. ‘They are hopeless. Do forgive if I don’t call O’Brien now; he is so cross on party nights. Look – have a glass of champagne. Why not? Please do. Can you open the awful thing?’ She stopped tal
king and said, ‘Ooo, you are clever,’ when the cork came quietly out – Papa had often shown me how to do it.
‘Do be happy. Do keep warm. This room’s icy. Do you think they’ll do anything about the fire? Oh, and do be kind to Uncle Ulick. He’s quite a sweet, but so peculiar. You do promise? You won’t mind, will you. You are kind.’
I arranged myself near the fire. The day’s papers and a racing calendar lay on a low table. I thought it might be nice to be found reading the calendar; it would give me something to talk about: ‘So-and-so’s nicely in the such-and-such with ten-seven.’ But I couldn’t concentrate. I just held the paper in my hand while I drank my champagne and looked round the room. I couldn’t observe that properly either.
I have a wonderful head for drink – champagne or orangeade, it’s all the same to me – and I was just deciding to refill my glass when the door opened and an old man came in. He was tall and fat, and he wore patent leather shoes with bows on their toes. His huge grubby white tie looked as though he had been fumbling at it for days. Now it drooped, broken-winged; he was like a bird – not a very well bird either.
When he said, ‘I live in the pigeon house,’ it seemed more than likely. ‘They put in some very good plumbing and all that sort of thing, but the water hasn’t got to me yet. Do you have a good supply?’
‘Yes, very,’ I lied.
‘You are blessed. You don’t know how lucky you are. All the same I would rather live in my pavilion than in this sad Gothic building, wouldn’t you? I’m all for the dix-huitième. May I give you a glass of champagne?’ He poured out a glass and drank it himself. ‘Not very nice; I can’t say I recommend it.’ He poured himself out another. If I had had the courage I should have got up and filled my own glass, while he sat humming to himself and drinking as much as he could, as fast as he was able.
‘You’re an uncle,’ I said at last.
‘I’m rather deaf.’
