The Silence in the Garden
William Trevor
for J.C.
and in memory of
my mother
1. Sarah Arrives
It is 1971, and the home that has been provided for Sarah Pollexfen for so long is still a provision that is necessary. She and a one-time maid, Patty, and Tom—illegitimate son of the Rollestons’ last butler—are left at Carriglas, the place that once was magical for her.
Dunadry Rectory, September 14th, 1904. ‘It came from Carriglas, Sarah.’ Mamma said when first I asked about the china on the sideboard. Teapot and sugar-bowl, three cups and saucers, milk jug, a single plate: pale pink roses on a white ground, the last fragments of a set that has once been grand, for ornament only now. I imagine the drawing-room at Carriglas, and the Rollestons drinking from the rosy china. I imagine the island shore where the house is, and the town you can see on the mainland. Hugh has been there. Today Hugh returned after another summer on the island and described the walk from the pier to the white gates, the scent of honeysuckle that accompanies you. He described how you round the last curve of the avenue and there the grey house is, flanked by a monkey puzzle on one lawn and strawberry trees on the other.
In old, leather-bound account books, formally lined, red lines and blue on stiff paper, Sarah has kept her diaries. Stacked beneath the window-shelf of her bedroom, they offer moments in a life. Dunadry Rectory is glimpsed, bleakly cavernous and damp, in the middle of nowhere. Her mother stitches a tablecloth in the porch, warmed by the sun through the glass. ‘Never play with a bee,’ she warns. ‘A bee will sting you, Sarah.’ Sarah’s father reads to Hugh from History of a Churchman. ‘Be so good as to attend,’ he commands, ‘since trouble is being taken.’
A lifetime later Sarah draws the attention of her last companions to the account books, where they are and what they contain. ‘I would wish you to read them when I have gone,’ she instructs. ‘I promised Mrs Rolleston once.’
Carriglas, May 1st, 1908. ‘Hugh’s sister, are you?’ the man enquired, greeting me on the platform of the railway station, and I knew at once that he was Haverty. He had the lean, narrow look of a greyhound, exactly as Hugh has described him.
How long ago it seems, even though it was only this afternoon! The train slowing, the gathering together of my belongings, the weight of the suitcases as I lifted them from the luggage rack, the narrow-faced man opening the door of the carriage. Not waiting for my answer to his question, he told me to take care. ‘Yes, I’m Hugh’s sister,’ I said.
He called my brother Hugh because Hugh is still a child, I suppose. He observed that were it later in the summer Hugh would have been there to greet me himself, and I replied that my brother began another term at Bandon Grammar School yesterday, the Easter holidays having ended.
‘You’re welcome, Miss Pollexfen,’ Haverty said. He carried my suitcases through the town. It was a fair step down to the quays, he said; we’d take it easy. We walked by bleak façades, through streets in which shawled women begged and children in filthy clothes ran barefoot. Men played pitch and toss, or sullenly muttered, taking no notice as we went by. When we arrived on the quays Haverty pointed across at the island—stone-walled fields above a sandy shore, bright splashes of gorse, a house looming among trees.
He rowed me across in a green boat, and when we arrived at a pier on the other side there was a horse and dog-cart waiting there, the horse’s reins untied. At a quarter past seven I’d had a boiled egg in the rectory kitchen and then Father drove me in the trap the eleven miles to Bandon railway station. Later I’d had to wait three hours in Cork for another train, which had then been tediously slow. ‘Oh, very pleasant,’ I replied when Haverty asked me what this journey had been like.
The horse was allowed to pick its own way over scrubby grass to a road whitened by dust. ‘You can take the boat in nearer to the house,’ Haverty said, ‘only the old landing-stage isn’t to be trusted. There’s a ferryboat crosses to the pier these days.’
We passed between fuchsia hedges; skylarks and swallows darted high above our heads, and I wondered if there was a cuckoo on the island. ‘Cuckoo?’ Haverty repeated. I blushed, thinking suddenly that perhaps there never were cuckoos on small islands or in this particular region of the coast. ‘Come on out of that,’ Haverty called out to the horse, which had not changed pace and did not do so now. ‘We have martins that arrive up at the house,’ he remarked a moment later. ‘Terrible damn pests.’
The high white gates which Hugh had anticipated for me stood open at the head of a sunless avenue, with a gate-lodge on the left. Moss and cropped grass softened the surface beneath the horse’s hooves, making our journey eerily soundless. Beech trees curved their branches overhead. The shiny leaves of rhododendrons were part of a pervading greenness.
‘Did you know the Carriglas rhododendron is famous?’ Haverty said.
I shook my head.
‘The length and breadth of Ireland, miss.’
We came upon a house that had a gravel sweep in front of it, running into lawns on either side. On one of these stood the monkey puzzle, on the other three strawberry trees had long ago been planted to form a grove, which now contained ornamental seats and a table, in white-painted ironwork. The grey façade of the house was touched with white also: the front door, the woodwork of eaves and windows. Steps and pillars introduced a dwelling that was solidly matter-of-fact, with a defiantly uncompromising note about it as though some point was being established about the durability of its stone. I remembered Mamma saying she’d always thought Carriglas would look better with Virginia creeper over it.
An elderly woman and a child came down the steps to greet me, the woman in black, her grey hair tidily drawn into a bun, the child in a red dress. Blonde plaits hung down the child’s back; her eyes were so sharply blue as to seem extraordinary. Haverty shouted at the horse again, telling it to stand still, although it had already done so. Mrs Rolleston held out her hand.
‘Sarah, what a wretched journey you’ve had! Now, please come in. This is Villana.’
Rising gently, a staircase ran around a circular hall, off which there were arched passages to left and right. A table curved with the wall that faced the hall-door, and bore a silver-framed family photograph among vases of roses. The floor was flagged; the walls were a faded green, the ornamental niches of the stairway picked out in white. Gilt-framed portraits hung above chairs with tattered covers, and on the stairway wall.
‘Sherry,’ Mrs Rolleston insisted. ‘Before you drop down of exhaustion.’
Her hospitable manner hardly compensated for the continuing directness of her grandchild’s scrutiny. The strangely intense eyes were fixed on my hat, which was grey and low in the crown. They proceeded slowly downwards to my face, lingered without interest, and then passed over my grey tweed coat. The distant cousin who had come to be a governess was poorly attired and plain, her manner affected by a diffidence that stifled charm, quite unlike her brother: unwavering in their stare, the eyes alertly reflected all they saw.
‘It’s awfully good of you to agree to this,’ Mrs Rolleston said.
In the drawing-room there were further family portraits, and inlaid cabinets, armchairs and sofas, a gold-faced clock in the centre of a marble mantelpiece, a grand piano, and two chandeliers. Tall French windows were open to the garden, where another lawn stretched grandly, bounded by long flowerbeds. Wistaria trailed along a wall, flagstones were set around a sundial.
‘My son,’ Mrs Rolleston said. ‘The children’s father.’
My hand was shaken by a man so tall he had to stoop considerably to reach it. His face and forehead, and those parts of his head on which his fair hair had ceased to grow, were t
anned and freckled. The grip that engaged my hand left it tingling afterwards.
‘Welcome to Carriglas,’ Colonel Rolleston said.
I wished I had been given a chance to tidy myself. I could feel grime on my palms and between my fingers. The sea wind had disturbed my hair, which I had done my best with on the train. I always have to be careful about my hair.
‘Hugh,’ Colonel Rolleston said. ‘Is Hugh well? And your father, Sarah? Your mother?’
I said they were all well. Colonel Rolleston poured himself a drink from a decanter next to the one that contained sherry. He raised his glass, welcoming me to Carriglas again. Villana had taken a chair by one of the French windows and was swinging her legs.
‘D’you remember Miss Delafinaghy?’ Colonel Rolleston remarked to his mother and then he turned to me and said that Miss Delafinaghy had been a governess at Carriglas who had refused to consume fish in any shape or form, or eggs, or certain vegetables, a difficult customer all round.
‘It is the privilege of governesses and nursemaids to be fussy,’ Mrs Rolleston suggested. ‘So you must be if you wish, Sarah. Now, I think it would be nice if you showed Sarah to her room, Villana.’
Obediently, Villana set off, crossing the drawing-room at so rapid a pace that her father told her to slow down. We passed through the inner hall, pausing only once. ‘This is my father’s study,’ Villana said, directing me into a tiny room with fishing-rods huddled in a corner, and fish in glass cases decorating its dark walls, and a shotgun hanging on its own. A stained velvet cloth, a shade of ochre, covered an oval table and in turn was covered with a bric-à-brac of broken ornaments and teacups, two tubes of Seccotine, cartridge cases, shoelaces, a tarnished silver plate, clothes-pegs and safety-pins, two paraffin lamps. ‘He sits here,’ Villana said, ‘reading the Irish Times. ’
Penetrating deeper into the house, we ascended a back stairway that had nothing of the grandeur of the front one about it, being steeply pitched and narrow, uncarpeted and with a green-painted handrail. ‘The servants sleep there,’ Villana announced, pointing to doors that led off a small landing, uncarpeted also. Having climbed another flight of stairs, we crossed back into the main part of the house, through an archway and down some steps. In what Villana called the nursery-schoolroom two rocking horses stood side by side in the window space, and a shelf of dolls, like a women’s regiment, stretched along one wall. A speckled grey hen regarded us beadily from a cardboard box in a corner. It made a clucking sound when Villana stroked its head. She did not comment on its presence.
‘And this is your own little place,’ she said instead, showing me into a pink-distempered room next door. A single window looked down into a cobbled yard, across which a boy now passed with a bunch of carrots. There were stables in the yard, but no sign of horses. Chickens pecked in a corner, and in another a spaniel lay where the last patch of evening sunshine lingered.
‘Thank you, Villana.’ I turned away from the window as I spoke, but Villana was no longer in the room. Through the open door I could still hear the clucking of the hen. I closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed, allowing myself to feel weary now that I was alone. Soon after that a gong sounded.
The boy who had been in the yard was Lionel. When I arrived in the hall he was closing the entrance doors, for a moment unaware of my presence as I hesitated on the last step of the stairs. ‘Ah,’ he said when he turned round. Fair-haired like his father, and seeming frail, he softly introduced himself. He appeared to be as shy as I was myself.
‘How are things in Dunadry?’ another voice said: smiling on the stairs behind me, an older, more confident boy stood. He bowed and held his hand out. ‘You’re Hugh’s sister,’ he said. ‘I’m John James.’ It was he who led the way to the dining-room, saying as we went: ‘Hugh’s told us about Dunadry. Do you know if Bandon means the place of the pointed hills?’
I walked beside Lionel along one of the arched corridors and through the inner hall. I was confused because I did not know the answer to John James’s question. He asked it again in the dining-room. ‘It’s Banagher, I think,’ his grandmother said, ‘that has to do with pointed hills.’
A butler placed a plate of curry soup in front of me, and later filled my water glass. The conversation about places and their naming continued: Carriglas meant green rock, which was what the island in certain lights resembled when seen from the mainland. A deceptive image, Colonel Rolleston pointed out, for in fact the island was fertile. Dunadry meant the place of the middle fort, Cork meant marsh. John James politely informed me that if I walked around the island I would come to a bay known as Elador’s Bay, called after one of the first Rollestons. The soup-plates were removed; chops, offered with cabbage and potatoes, replaced them.
‘Sarah,’ Colonel Rolleston enquired, ‘do you know a Mrs Trass in Bandon?’
I shook my head. My repeated ignorance embarrassed me. I felt the colour again in my face.
‘Hugh didn’t either,’ Colonel Rolleston said. ‘When I knew Mrs Trass thirty years ago she slept with corks in her pillowslip. I was only wondering if she still did.’
‘Why corks?’ Villana asked.
‘A protection against cramp in the night. English people go in for measures like that. Mrs Trass was originally of Surrey.’
‘One of the masters at school eats the shell of an egg,’ John James said. ‘On the grounds that it’s good for his bones.’
‘Does he come from Surrey?’ Villana asked.
‘Lincolnshire, I think. Harterblow he’s called.’
‘What a peculiar name!’
‘English people often have peculiar names.’
There were family resemblances. The faces were spare; there was a family way of smiling. But Villana’s dazzling eyes were only faintly reflected in her brothers’, and the eyes of Mrs Rolleston and her son were dark and almost brooding. The children frightened me a little, even Lionel, who was so silent. ‘Their mother died giving birth to Villana,’ I remembered Mamma saying. ‘Fortunately there was a grandmother to call upon.’
‘You’ll sleep well, Sarah,’ Mrs Rolleston predicted after dinner. ‘Everyone sleeps well at Carriglas.’
But Villana didn’t want me to go to bed immediately. She led the way to the kitchen, where the butler who’d been silent in the drawing-room welcomed me gregariously. I saw him properly now: sallow-faced, black-haired, an angular, good-looking man. ‘Linchy,’ Villana said by way of introduction. ‘Daddy stole him from a hotel in Dublin.’ The butler gave his head a sideways wag and did not deny that. ‘The cellars are through there,’ Villana said, pointing at a door, ‘but don’t ever go in. They’re full of bats.’ Two maids were in the kitchen, one of them sewing at the table, the other looking for something in the dresser drawers. ‘A bat is harmless,’ Linchy said. ‘A creature of high intelligence.’ At this there was a shrill protest from the maid who was sewing, an insistence that a bat would have your eyes out. An older woman—who Villana said afterwards was the cook—entered the kitchen at that moment. ‘Cease that dreadful noise,’ she testily ordered. The maid who was opening and closing the dresser drawers shook her head and abandoned her search. Brigid her name was, Villana said when we had left the kitchen. The cook’s name was Mrs Gerrity, the maid who’d shrieked was Kathleen Quigley.
We crossed the cobbled yard, Villana leading me to an ice-house and then through a shrubbery to the kitchen garden, where peaches ripened on brick-lined walls. We passed among apple trees to a secluded tennis-court, and continued on a path that skirted the grounds, eventually arriving at the inlet where the island’s river flowed into the sea. Rhododendrons were clumped along the riverbank, a path led to the pebbled shore where a boathouse and the landing-stage referred to by Haverty were, both of them disused. In gathering twilight we reached the ruined abbey at the heart of the island, and then climbed up to the standing stones that marked a burial ground on the hill above it. Later we stood on the edge of black-rock cliffs, where there was a view of only sea and s
ky, darkness claiming both before we turned away. These were her favourite places, Villana said, the abbey and the standing stones and the cliffs. ‘I’m looking after that hen,’ she explained as we walked back to the house. ‘The poor creature’s far from well.’
Carriglas, May 2nd, 1908. When I came down to breakfast John James and Lionel had already begun their journey back to school in England. The places were re-arranged around the dining-room table, Colonel Rolleston and his mother at either end, Villana and I side by side. In the nursery-schoolroom the first information I imparted to Villana was that the Romans, with their straight roads and sophisticated ways, never came to Ireland: she didn’t listen. The hen gazed at us from its sick-bed and at eleven o’clock Linchy knocked on the door before entering with a tray of tea and pink wafer biscuits. Our afternoon lessons were conducted beneath the strawberry trees because Colonel Rolleston believes in fresh air.
Carriglas, June 16th, 1908. I feel less nervous now, even of Villana.
Touched in places with damp or mildew, the unadorned handwriting throws out affectionate images from the pages of the account books. The straight, tall figure of Colonel Rolleston returns from the pier with the Irish Times, which every morning the ferryman places in a niche of the pier wall. Sun streams through the open hall-door, rousing the Colonel’s spaniel to seek the shade of the strawberry trees. Haverty stands by the dog-cart at the pier, awaiting Mrs Rolleston’s return from her mainland shopping. Autumn mist lingers on the morning cobwebs in the garden. The first frost whitens the delphinium lawn.
Every year, on Villana’s birthday, the children’s mother is mourned, the only time Colonel Rolleston ever closes his study door. Every year there is the summer party, when croquet and tennis are played, and there is a paper-chase for the children. Four gardeners at Carriglas tend the flowerbeds and the shrubberies, and keep the avenue weeded, and the kitchen supplied. Villana’s hen is buried. Letters arrive from Dunadry Rectory. There are leisurely walks to Elador’s Bay and to the standing stones, and the abbey ruins. In summer Sarah’s brother arrives.
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