by Molly Keane
Rose put an iron arm round me. ‘Ah, what stick, what nonsense,’ she said. ‘Lean on me. You’ll be all right.’ She was like a nurse of steel, a wardress in power. There was refuge in her great authority, but I would refuse that refuge, I would resist the abyss of yielding. I pulled myself out of her arm and stood alone.
‘Oh, hold on to her, Rose,’ Mummie said plaintively. ‘She’ll break that other leg of hers if we’re not careful.’
‘Come on.’ I might have been a refusing horse, Rose’s voice was so urgent and impersonal. ‘Bed’s the place.’ Her hands were on me again.
‘Let me alone,’ I said.
‘I wonder would I tell Mr Kiely come in?’ Rose looked to Mummie, speaking across me as if I were not there. ‘She might go with him.’ Mummie nodded some silent meaning. Their meeting eyes frightened me. I stood there between them, and the shape of my future blew up, nightmare large in its certainty of their conspiracy.
‘I’ll ask him so,’ Rose said, ‘and when we have her settled I’ll bring in the drink tray.’
‘The other sherry, I think,’ Mummie said, ‘not the you know.’ She didn’t speak after Rose had gone. It was as if she retreated into her quiet, well-behaved sorrow. She contained it for herself, hid it beneath good manners. Her clothes dressed it gracefully, distinct from everyday clothes, but not flamboyantly widowlike. When Mr Kiely came in, her unchanged voice forbade any thought of mourning.
‘Ah, Mr Kiely?’ she almost questioned his identity, as if she were kindly recognising a lesser person, successfully remembering his name, putting him at ease. ‘And I hear you are most kindly driving Major Massingham to the station. We mustn’t let him miss his train, must we? So shall we be very quick—’ She looked at the briefcase in his hand.
‘I have the document here,’ he said. ‘If we had a lamp I could read it.’ The darkness came a pulse nearer at his words, our grandeur and our poverty joining in our discomfort.
‘Yes, yes, of course. They’re just bringing the lights. I wondered if you would perhaps give my daughter an arm across the hall – I expect she can manage when she gets to the staircase and the bannisters. It would be kind.’
‘Of course. Delighted. No trouble.’ He didn’t even speak to me. I stood there, some sort of animal, hopping lame, that had to be housed and cared for and put out of sight. Mummie looked at me with agonised distaste.
‘Mr Kiely will help you,’ she said to me, and I knew the dismissal in her voice. But he took me by both hands as if dancing with a child, to guide me back to the sofa.
‘There are a couple of small legacies and gifts,’ he said, and he looked from me towards the door. ‘Rose Byrne is mentioned too. They should both be here.’
‘Must we really have all this now?’ Mummie implored, shrinking away from him, putting her feet under her and her hands on the arms of her chair as if she must get up and say: Goodbye, so kind, but another time would really be better. Before she could perfect her avoidance of the moment Rose had come with the silver tray of sherry and the smallest glasses, followed by Breda with the brass lamp and the silver lamp, lighted and smelling faintly of paraffin, ready to be dropped into the baskets of their standards. They made a new kind of dimness in the room, quelling the afternoon, while simmering in the great spaces of uncurtained light.
‘Leave those curtains.’ Mummie spoke quite sharply to Breda, who was going about her usual evening ritual as carefully as on any other day. Now she reared her head like an insulted hen. ‘Just leave them,’ Mummie said more politely, ‘till later. Thank you.’
Rose turned towards the door too, accepting the dismissal with propriety. Mr Kiely looked up enquiringly from the papers he was sorting under the lamp, but before he spoke Mummie’s voice encircled Rose: ‘Stay with us, Rose. There’s a message for you.’ Rose turned from the door, waiting respectfully without eagerness, her sense of good behaviour matching Mummie’s own. I was the only one to fail the code. Tears, squeezing through spasms of anguish, bounced off my cheeks and fell onto my hands. My own despair surpassed any love I had known, for Richard, for Papa, for Hubert. At that moment I knew myself entirely bereft. The sofa murmured and creaked under my sobbing.
Mummie glanced at her watch: ‘Aroon, please. If we don’t get on with this he’s going to miss the boat train.’ She was keeping strictly to the day’s essentials; things must be done, masks against any vulgar intrusions of grief. I felt like a child who wets her knickers at a party. Nowhere to hide, no refuge from the shame of it. Rose moved a step nearer.
‘Miss Aroon,’ she said urgently, ‘think of your mother.’ I sobbed, gulping on, regardless.
‘Well,’ Mummie said hopelessly to Mr Kiely, ‘if you can make yourself heard . . .’
Mr Kiely stood up near the lamp to read from the papers he had sorted out; he needed the light, improving now beneath its beaded shade. His dark overcoat was still tightly buttoned. He looked like a priest in a cassock and I was as inattentive to what he read as to the voice of a clergyman in a cold familiar church. I was still sobbing and rocking the sofa when he stopped. In the silence I caught my breath, and caught it again. Something had happened. The silence had nothing to do with good behaviour. It was astonished. It was unbelieving. Rose had crossed her distance. She stood behind Mummie as if to shelter her.
‘Actually,’ Mummie was speaking to Mr Kiely, ‘I think there must be some silly mistake, don’t you? Because Temple Alice happens to belong to me.’
‘You made it over to your husband five years ago, didn’t you? The deeds are in my office.’
‘That was just a temporary arrangement. And this is an unfortunate misunderstanding – it can all be cleared up.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs St Charles. Everything of which he died possessed, with the exception of those small legacies to yourself and Rose Byrne, is left to his daughter, Iris Aroon.’
‘That’s my name,’ I said.
‘Yes. Do you understand? – He’s left everything to you.’
I wondered if I could go on breathing naturally, through the delight that lifted me. Twice over now this euphoria of love had elevated my whole body; I was its host. Then the vision changed; it was as though the face of my old world turned away from me – a globe revolving – I was looking into a changed world, where I was a changed person, where my love was recognised and requited. Through the long assuring breaths that followed my sobbing I drew in the truth: that Papa loved me the most. Explicit from the depths of my breathing, like weed anchored far under sea water, I knew a full tide was turning for me. Love and trust were present and whole as they had been once on a summer afternoon. Inexactly present, inexactly lost, the memory fled me as a seal slides into the water with absolute trust in its element. A disturbance on the water closes and there is nothing again. I particularly wanted Rose to hear it again. I was claiming what was mine – his love, his absolute love. I wanted them to understand that he had loved me most.
‘Would you read that bit again, the bit about me?’
Mummie moved suddenly in her chair. It was as if she gulped back something she could not swallow. ‘Don’t read it again. I understand perfectly. I can explain it to my daughter – later, when she is calmer.’
Mr Kiely turned from her to me as though he hadn’t heard: ‘To my dear daughter, Iris Aroon, I give and bequeath . . .’
Rose moved closer and closer still to Mummie while he was reading. I thought she was going to put her hands on her shoulders, but it was only her breath I could hear when Mr Kiely’s voice stopped. Her breathing was like a shadow round Mummie. They must be minding dreadfully. Empowered by Papa’s love I would be kind to them. Now I had the mild, wonderful power to be kind, or to reserve kindness. I looked at them with level, considerate eyes.
Mummie looked at her watch. ‘I’m so dreadfully afraid you may miss that train.’ Her voice was full of anxious consideration, but the dismissal, as she rose to her feet and faintly held out her hand, was obvious. I got up too. The pain in my ankle was gone, due to
the bandaging, I suppose. I walked over to the tray of drink.
‘Do have a glass of sherry,’ I said. And to Rose I said: ‘This seems very nasty sherry. Would you bring us the Tío Pepe?’
‘Ah, no thank you, not now.’ He refused the drink. ‘I really must get off. Come in and see me in the office and we’ll look into things.’ I gave him my hand quite warmly, because I felt he was in my employment now. Then I walked easily across to the fire, throwing out all its heat to me from the chimney breast. I stood there waiting to say something beautiful to Mummie, when Rose should have gone. She stayed on, as though she were needed, until I remembered Dr Coffey’s woodcock. ‘We’ll have them tonight,’ I told her, ‘and you may take a glass of sherry for your sauce. It’s better than nothing. Thin potato chips and an orange salad, don’t you think, Rose? And would you ask Breda to bring us the Tío Pepe.’
‘I know you like it best,’ I said to Mummie when I was left alone with her.
‘I don’t want it, thank you.’ Mummie had sunk back into her chair. She looked smaller and her eyes looked smaller too. Her pretty hat, worn so concisely, had changed its perfect angle.
‘But you must. It will do you good.’ When Breda brought in the sherry I filled Mummie’s glass to the very brim, and, walking soundly across the room, I stood above her, shrivelled back again in her chair, and I spoke to her in a voice I didn’t know myself – a voice humid with kindness: ‘Drink this,’ I said, ‘and remember that I’ll always look after you.’
She took the glass and looked up at me from under the absurd tilt of her hat; in an odd way her look reminded me of a child warding off a blow.
‘Yes. Always,’ I reassured her firmly.
