The Silence in the Garden

by William Trevor

  Finnamore Balt wondered about the fate of his cat and his maid. The cat—resembling a white fluffball—had become so used to sitting on the wide windowsill of the hallway, between the lace curtains and the window-panes, that the deprivation of this simple pleasure seemed a cruelty. There was a certain haughtiness about the animal, disdain in the green eyes that observed the citizens of the town and the summer visitors passing to and fro all day long, yet it led a quiet life and did not deserve arbitrary punishment. ‘I am really awfully sorry,’ Villana had explained, ‘but I cannot have a cat about me.’ Finnamore’s maid—a raw-boned woman who had been his parents’ maid in their lifetime—was apparently not welcome at Carriglas either. ‘I think,’ he had replied with carefully judged energy as they stood waiting for the ferry the evening before, ‘that is just a little unreasonable.’ But Villana, smiling and slightly shaking her head, had been reluctant to pursue the conversation.

  In his office, among mahogany filing-cabinets and stacks of books recording legal precedent, Finnamore Balt sighed. He could not think what he might possibly say to his maid, who’d been loyal for so long; he could think of no home for a cat that had been, and still was, a comfort to him. These thoughts were interrupted by knuckles rapping discreetly on a panel of the door; when he called out, his clerk entered with a document he had asked him to find. Eugene Prille was oval-shaped, no taller than a child and with a child’s complexion, yet was sagacious to a degree. Finnamore knew that before the week was out he would consult him about his twin worries. He would continue to wrestle with them himself, he would lose sleep over them, he would again bring them up at Carriglas, but in the end it would fall to Eugene Prille to provide a solution.

  ‘Thank you, Eugene,’ he said, grateful in another connection. ‘You have been swift over that.’

  ‘There were but two places to search, Mr Balt.’

  The clerk soundlessly retreated; Finnamore returned to his meditations. Marriage was bound to bring awkwardness; you could not expect otherwise, especially when one of the parties was set in his ways, and that he himself was he did not deny for a moment. Human nature was human nature, as changeable and extraordinary as all the landscape of the world might seem if encompassed and contained in one single lump. A solicitor saw human nature in such miraculous variety, and if there was a single conclusion to be reached it was that in matters governed by human vagaries and weaknesses the law could not be dispensed with. Disputes concerning boundaries and the ownership of land, concerning inheritance and agreements entered into without a solicitor’s advice, concerning breach of promise, slanderous statements, imputations, the casting of aspersions, legacies, mortgages, wandering animals, concerning the realm of bankruptcy, the realm of leases and rents, the drawing up of wills, the proving of wills, the questioning of wills—all threaded their way back to vagaries and weaknesses. For five generations Harbinson and Balt, in these same offices, had stood by victim or miscreant, wielding the letter of the law as their single weapon.

  As was proper in a solicitor, Finnamore revered the law. Through the law he looked out at the world, judged greed and foolishness and decency and wisdom. The law it was that allowed him his knowledge of the neighbourhood he lived in, and its people: family histories and family origins filled the mahogany filing-cabinets, filled drawers and desks and forgotten deed boxes. Changes in fortune, decline, decay, the journey into exile, rescue by dowry, wealth lost or wealth regained: in documents that were browning or pristine fresh such human variation was recorded in language that Finnamore, after nearly forty years’ experience, no longer found difficult. That the Ganters of Boherboy were the cousins of the Uniaches of Enniskeen, that the Clonmel Breretons were attached to the Charleville Frenches, that the Nallens had too often married the Knightlys, was random fruit from an orchard of genealogical trees. The Rollestons’ connection with the Pollexfens, and with the Camiers and the Ennises, was present in Finnamore’s office; and even, passingly, the fact that the Rollestons, arriving in the wake of Oliver Cromwell, had dispossessed the Cantillons of their island and sent them on their way to the stony wilderness of Mayo. Big houses and small farms rubbed shoulders in the drawers and cabinets of Harbinson and Balt; the past lay down with what the present offered.

  Yet, aware as he was of the humanity that fed his profession, and the facts it threw up for his scrutiny, Finnamore had all his life failed to perceive it clearly. He did not understand it as he understood the law. He recognised its crude mass; he treated it with respect, since he also sensed its power. But neither in himself nor in others did he appreciate mystery and subtlety, or the grey shadows of contradiction, or unreason. The world he looked out at was positive and negative, black and white.

  In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Finnamore lived with a dream. It had been part of him since he was a younger man, just turned twenty-nine. ‘You’ll need to attend to that in person,’ his father had said. ‘It’s what they like.’ And for the first time Finnamore had made the journey to Carriglas, to draw up an agreement about the selling of a larch wood. Villana, still a child, had enchanted him in a way he would not have believed possible. He had never found himself drawn towards the Protestant girls he met at parties in the neighbourhood, or the Catholic girls of the shops; he had been conscious of no desire. But he returned from Carriglas that day feeling elated and lightheaded, and in church on Sundays his eyes afterwards strayed endlessly to the fair-haired child. His dream began then: it was that his own advice and expertise should be responsible for restoring the family fortunes of the Rollestons, and the Carriglas estate, to their former grandeur. It did not for a second occur to him that one day he might find himself marrying Villana Rolleston, only that, in his work, he might often visit the family and that she would be there. He learnt the house’s history and related it in the Rollestons’ drawing-room, for they did not appear to be fully familiar with it. He told them how the house had been built on the site of the Cantillons’ castle when the first Rollestons grew tired of living in the castle itself, how the stone had been re-cut and dressed by Jeremiah O’Toole of Cork, how an Italian called Martelli, of Dublin, had been commissioned for the plasterwork of the dining-room and the inner hall. Bars had been incorporated in the nursery windows at the wish of the wife of the John Rolleston of that particular time. The architect who’d decided on concave walls and had created so spectacular an effect with the French windows of the southern façade had been a Mr Forbes, and he it was who had also designed the Carriglas gardens. In the drawing-room Finnamore spoke of a Rolleston of the eighteenth century who had attempted to grow bananas in the conservatory, and of a later Rolleston who had attempted to swim to the next island, no more than a rock, along the coast. A bonfire had burned all night among the standing stones, celebrating the victory at Waterloo. He spoke of another John Rolleston, who had married Catherine Esmond of Ninemilecross, the couple later known as the Famine Rollestons because of their compassion at that time. As best they could, they found work for their tenants so that they might be protected from starvation by being paid in kind. The Carriglas gardens were kept up as never before; more stabling was built; a second avenue, long since grown over, was surfaced; the cliff walk round the island was cleared. The big pier was built at that time, but still some kind of guilt persisted in John and Catherine Rolleston. The famine had scattered death and suffering so generously that even after the new potato crop succeeded the survivors on the island spoke of walking to the exile ships of Cork. The hunger there had been, pressing hard upon centuries of poverty, had left them without heart, and it was then that the Rollestons waived their rents and their tithes in favour of the families who remained. John Rolleston was convinced that this reduction in the estate’s income could somehow be made up in other ways. ‘Unhappily,’ Finnamore had reminded his listeners in the drawing-room, ‘he was wrong.’

  That was the crux of it. The waived monies had never been collected since, title to land had been lost through neglect. For nearly twenty years Finna
more had been studying precedents in other parts of the country, testing his arguments with all the legal vigour he possessed, establishing that their strength would hold in a court of law. No suit must be lost once it was entered upon; it was unthinkable that the Rollestons should end up with only the expense of failure. ‘Haste is the enemy,’ he had said more than once in the drawing-room.

  Finnamore had not experienced jealousy when, in the midst of all this, Villana became engaged to Hugh Pollexfen—only distressed that Hugh Pollexfen might take her away from Carriglas. Hugh Pollexfen was an army officer, as her father had been and as John James at one time had aspired to be; but as a suitor, he possessed no property, being the son of a penurious clergyman. After the first anxious months of that engagement it became clear that because of these circumstances Villana’s husband would not be taking her far, since there was nowhere to take her to. Rather, it seemed, Hugh Pollexfen would join the family at Carriglas, and help to farm the land.

  In his office, which was a place of consolation and tranquillity, Finnamore recalled how he had envisaged the future. He had thought to admire Villana’s beauty from a distance, she married to the man she had chosen, he himself still visiting the drawing-room to talk about the family and the house. More times than he could count, he had observed the Sunday procession of the Rollestons from the quays to church: the old woman walking slowly between her two sons, John James smartly turned out, Lionel not at all so, Villana coming a little behind them. But it was Sarah Pollexfen, not her brother, who had returned to walk with them now, opening an umbrella when it rained. ‘We might issue seizures,’ he had pressed in the drawing-room a year ago, but to his considerable astonishment he had received no encouragement. ‘You must come more often,’ Villana said instead, having invited him to accompany her on a walk. Later their conversations acquired a different form. ‘I am not the marrying kind,’ he honestly pointed out, knowing he was not. ‘And yet you love me,’ she replied. ‘You have loved me for all my life nearly.’ Never once had he guessed she knew. ‘Marriage would not mean children,’ she had softly promised, as if to reassure him. ‘I do not wish for children, Finny.’

  Four o’clock struck in the inner hall, a disturbance heralded by mechanical wheezing and followed by the lingering echo of vibration. Mrs Rolleston heard the sounds in the conservatory and was pleased: she took pride in the fact that neither her hearing nor her sight had deteriorated to an uncomfortable degree. She had been thinking that the conservatory could do with a coat of paint and wondering if Mr Keevan would have to come over from the town.

  ‘There’s tea,’ Villana called out from the door that led to the house. She was dressed in green, a tweed skirt and blouse, a cameo brooch at her throat. When she spoke she did not raise her voice but projected it through the warm foliage, over pots and ornamental urns. Her looks were certainly striking now, Mrs Rolleston reflected, her skin like porcelain, her pale hair silky, her eyes as they had ever been.

  ‘It has suddenly occurred to me, Villana, that they will say you are marrying for money. No doubt they are saying it already.’

  They walked together to the drawing-room. Tea and madeira cake were on a table close to where Villana sat. She poured two cups and cut two slices.

  ‘In fact, it isn’t true.’ Villana shook her head, lending emphasis to her denial and then dismissing the suspicions by advancing the conversation in a different direction. ‘There is something more to the point,’ she said, and went on to reveal that she had at last been permitted to reject the house near the promenade which her fiancé had inherited on his parents’ death.

  ‘So Finnamore will live among us?’

  ‘I am suggesting it.’

  Mrs Rolleston’s query had been vague; she was thinking of something else. If the regiment had not rejected Lionel as unfit for the war he would not have come back, or else would have come back more knocked about than his brother. She knew that in her bones: it was the bright side. She had lost a son and a husband in foolish wars but at least her grandsons had been spared, with only a shattered leg between them. Hugh, of course, had come back also. Hugh had apparently married a girl in Colchester, wherever that was.

  ‘Finny will pay something,’ Villana said. ‘That’s only fair.’ She knocked a cigarette from a packet with a black cat on it. ‘The wedding date we thought of is towards the end of August, Grandmamma.’ She lit the cigarette. ‘The twenty-sixth. A Wednesday.’

  ‘I see.’

  She had known Finnamore Balt for a lifetime and had never in all those years guessed that his uncomfortable hatchet of a face would one day come to be there at every mealtime. Villana didn’t love him any more than John James loved his promenade woman or Lionel loved anyone at all. You never tell me how your grandchildren are getting on these days: the post that morning had brought the letter she had wondered about when she first awoke. I often think about your grandchildren. I wish you’d tell me, the looped handwriting had chided.

  ‘And then we are to honeymoon at the Killarney lakes.’

  More tea was poured. Once she had been to the Killarney lakes herself. Famous poets had apparently been inspired there. The surrounding mountains echoed strangely.

  ‘Finny is kind, you know.’

  ‘I did not think otherwise. Am I confused, or is there dance music playing somewhere?’

  ‘Actually there is.’ Villana had heard the music on her walk, drifting over from the town. She’d remarked on it to Mrs Haverty, who’d said that a couple calling themselves the Zodiacs had arrived in the town that morning, a man who threw knives at his wife. Mrs Haverty had explained that you could hear the music because it was being relayed through a loudspeaker as an advertisement for the entertainment.

  ‘I wonder it’s allowed,’ Mrs Rolleston said.

  ‘Well, I’ve told you, Grandmamma,’ Villana concluded. ‘And now I’m going to tell Lionel. If anyone objects to Finny coming here it has only to be said.’ She gathered up her cigarettes and lighter, and her novel from the convent library. ‘Would Miss Laffey make something for me?’ She turned to her grandmother before she left the drawingroom. ‘Nothing frilly, quite without elaboration. Miss Laffey should be up to that. Shall I write a note for Brigid’s child to take?’

  ‘If that seems appropriate to you.’

  ‘I shall not have bridesmaids.’

  Soon after Villana’s departure from the drawing-room Mrs Rolleston made her way to the kitchen. The letter was in the drawer of her dressing-table, the stamp fitted as snugly as possible into the envelope’s corner, the two ruled lines beneath the careful Private. She carried the image with her to the kitchen, and thankfully lost it when another conversation began.

  ‘The beef’s poor, ma’am,’ Brigid complained. ‘Broderick’s sending over scandalous stuff these days.’ As she spoke she lifted a web of suet from the offending joint and exposed the meat’s shortcomings to the old woman’s gaze. ‘Neither hung nor lean, ma’am. I’ve put it to Miss Pollexfen.’

  Mrs Rolleston nodded. She tried to think about the meat, but found herself dwelling instead on the fact that one of the kitchen windows was slightly open. There’d been a time when these windows were always kept closed because of flies and bluebottles. The men would unharness the carts in the yard and then the horses would be led to the paddock, leaving the flies behind.

  ‘What’s the matter with Broderick?’ she said, making an effort. ‘Is he drinking?’

  She still liked coming down to the kitchen. In a way she liked it better than poking about the conservatory, or being in the drawing-room or dining-room. The kitchen was somehow more a place to linger in, or had become so. The vast oak dresser, standing an inch or so free, of a pink-distempered surface, was reassuring. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would wonder if it was still there and then go down to make certain that it was, not later revealing to anyone the doubt she’d been subjected to. Alone in the kitchen’s spaciousness, she would admire the windows and wall-cupboards that so gracefully accommoda
ted the faint concavity of the walls. The range and the long, scrubbed table formed a trinity with the dresser, the range the kitchen’s heart, as the kitchen was the household’s. When she stood there in the night that was how she thought of it.

  ‘I hadn’t heard he was drinking, ma’am,’ Brigid said.

  Whenever his wife became pregnant Broderick haunted the public houses. He was a man brought low by small misfortunes.

  ‘Ask Miss Pollexfen to send over a note,’ she advised. ‘Ask if he could manage an improvement.’

  The new maid, Patty, freckles all over her cheeks and nose and forehead, incredulous about the eyes, sat at the long table in her afternoon black, her lace-trimmed cap and apron crisply white. Mrs Rolleston’s arrival had caused her to rise to her feet, but she had been motioned to sit down again. Her broad, plump hands were still awkward with cutlery and plates, her brown hair forever escaping from the pins that tugged it into place beneath her cap. She would never learn, she had privately confided to Brigid, but Brigid told her not to sound like a fool.

  Mrs Rolleston watched while the unsatisfactory beef was placed in the oven. ‘There’s potatoes in the scullery that want skinning,’ Brigid said, sharply, to the maid. ‘And carrots that want cleaning with a scrubbing-brush. Take off that apron and put on an overall.’

  Patty rose in a hurry to do as she was bidden. Mrs Rolleston lingered, and when the sound of running water began in the distant scullery she said:

  ‘Is that child content, Brigid?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be, ma’am? Isn’t it a great chance for her?’

  ‘Has she stopped crying, though? Is she lonesome still?’

  Brigid sniffed. She folded her arms, on which the sleeves of the jumper she wore beneath her overall were rolled up beyond her elbows. The girl was best kept busy, she declared. When a girl like that was cutting kindling or skimming milk, where was the time for tears?