A succession of dutiful agents occupied the grounds, but not the castle itself, which remained empty for fear of the promised explosion. They lived high on the hog, with a full complement of henchmen available for the humiliations and whippings known to be a source of imperial enjoyments. The lordly line, over time, became confused by several bastard claims, and the ownership of the castle passed into a maze of litigations from which a single survivor had only now emerged to make his case. One issue, however, had yet to be resolved. Thanks to the unyielding ruthlessness of Kitty McCloud and the machinations (which she preferred to negotiations) of her even more ruthless solicitor, Debra McAlevey, the deed of ownership had devolved into the sure hand of Ms. McCloud, who took proud possession, curse or no curse, gunpowder or no gunpowder. She considered it a return of stolen property, since she’d been told from infancy that she was descended on her mother’s side from a kingly line, dispossessed and long since dispersed to lands ignorant of their nobility and indifferent to the calamities. Here in this castle would she flourish, here would she indulge her impulse for intimacy in the company of her beloved husband, Kieran Sweeney, himself descended from kings of equally obscure origin.
But now, under a cloudless sky the color of Our Lady’s mantle, the present Lord Shaftoe—George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe—drove up in his whale-sized SUV, emerged, and unloosed from the vehicle’s capacious rear compartment an evil looking Rottweiler. While the hound, drawn by the scent of the cows, went howling down the hill toward the stream, Lord Shaftoe crossed the drive, opened unaided and unwelcomed the massive door, entered the great hall, and shouted in a voice fully supported by a native arrogance and disdain, “Miss McCloud? I’ve come to see a Miss McCloud! Hello? Miss McCloud?”
Kitty, having wrested herself from her computer before the summons could be repeated—or Maggie and Tom and Stephen drowned—appeared at the railing of the gallery and said, “If that’s your dog, I suggest you fetch it before I start shooting.”
“Miss McCloud!” Lord Shaftoe raised his right hand in limp salute. He was wearing tan slacks of the kind Kitty gave to male characters she would eventually reveal to be inordinately vain, and the obligatory expensive tweed jacket complete with sleeves patched with the unneeded leather. “I’m Lord Shaftoe. No doubt you’ve heard of me. George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe.”
“Do you call your dog or do I get my gun?”
“Don’t be alarmed. He’s harmless. And allow me to say I’ve looked forward to this moment, to meeting you. I’ve read your books.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“My Dream of You. Lovely.”
“My Dream of You was written by Nuala O’Faolain.”
“You’re sure?”
“Reasonably. And we were talking about your dog.”
“I repeat: harmless. Unless you have chickens or a cat. Or maybe another dog. She tends to be territorial.”
His Lordship was tall and graying, with what could have been a craggy face had not gravity pulled it earthward. The entire man seemed to sag and droop as if the effort to keep the skin attached securely to the bone had proved beyond his interest. Even his eyes slanted downward and his near lipless mouth had curved itself into a perpetual frown, relieving him of the need to rearrange his features when displeasure was being expressed.
Kitty didn’t doubt that, beneath his well-cut clothing, the pectorals and the abs, the belly and the buttocks were all descending in a flow similar to the meltings of a waxen effigy. His ears were small, even tiny, well on their way to becoming vestigial, an evolutionary phenomenon possibly influenced by a longtime disdain for listening to whatever was being said. His Lordship did, however, possess sufficient wisdom to surrender himself to a first-rate tailor—the first refuge of the hopelessly unappealing—who had provided a tasteful sartorial display to distract the viewer from the unprepossessing anatomy mercifully hidden from sight. Kitty came resolutely down the stone stair, walked past his lordship, out the door, around the side of the castle and down the slope toward the mire. The complaints of the cows could be heard over the barking, a cacophony announcing the arrival of the dog. Kitty was relieved to remember that Sly was with Kieran in Tralee for the afternoon. So determined was her stride that George Noel had to half run to catch up, then hop a little between steps to keep himself at her side. “May I assume you didn’t get the letter from your solicitor—or from mine? Or perhaps an e-mail? Or even a phone call? A message on your machine?”
“I accept no communications when I’m working. And I work all the time.”
“You weren’t expecting me?”
“Call your dog.”
“Then you know nothing of what’s to become of you?”
“I know of what’s to become of your dog if you don’t call it off.”
“This is most awkward.”
Three panicked cows came crashing through the brush that hedged the bog, the dog nipping and snarling at one, then another. Kitty quickly turned, grabbed the front of this lordship’s tweed and twisted the cloth clockwise to bring his face closer to hers. “Listen,” she said, “I’m a woman of infinite patience, but infinity has just run out. You’re trespassing. Your dog is menacing my cows, and if you aren’t gone by the count of one I’ll sue the shirt right off your back.”
“I think you might want to let go of me.”
A great squeal and a shriek sounded from the brush, and the dog, pig in pursuit, came galloping up the hill, then off to the side, then down, then up again. Now the pig charged the dog directly, and, stunned by the audacity of the challenge, the animal stopped dead in its tracks, silenced itself for what could have been two seconds, then retreated behind his lordship’s leg. Up the hill came the pig, straight toward both dog and master. Without pause it forced itself in between the legs of the tan slacks and the denim of the jeans Kitty was wearing. The dog made one thrust toward the pig, teeth bared, snout twitching. Kitty twisted the jacket lapels still tighter until her nose and the nose of his lordship were near to touching. She, George Noel Gordon, the dog, and the pig froze each in his, her, or its separate attitude.
His lordship, speaking into Kitty’s clenched lips, said calmly, “Could you call off your pig? It’s soiling my trousers.”
And so the episode ended. Kitty released his lordship’s tweeds, allowing both of them to step back from the rubbings of the pig against their legs. The dog was returned to the SUV. The pig disturbed the grass.
“I hadn’t,” said his lordship, smoothing his jacket against his hollow chest, “I hadn’t expected anything so unseemly.”
“Well,” said Kitty, “now you know. I seldom entertain in the afternoon.”
“But I was hoping—as was said in the e-mail and the phone message—that we could discuss arrangements.” He was scratching a bit of still damp pig saliva from the left knee of his slacks.
“Arrangements?”
“But you’ve heard of what’s happened.”
“I think enough has happened for one day.”
“I own the castle.”
Their eyes met. His were pale blue. Hers, she knew, were blue as well, but deeper, darker. She also knew—immediately—that she and this man were met in combat, that a contest had begun and that one would win and the other lose.
Not for a moment did she doubt the outcome. It was determined by the color of their eyes. His were too pale, too watery. Hers were just the right shade, just the right depth. The poor man would be bested, about that there could be no mistake. There remained only the deployment of forces, the strategies, all cunning and clever, the feints and parries and, in the end, Kitty’s triumph, while George Noel Gordon was left feasting on dust. That having been decided to Kitty’s satisfaction, she became willing to apply condescensions appropriate to the occasion. “Maybe I don’t entertain in the afternoons, but that doesn’t mean I’m unwilling to be entertained myself. Suppose you come inside and tell me what this might be about.”
“Willingly. If you’ll pardon my appearance. Somehow my
tie is far from presentable.”
“For a lord, one always makes allowances.”
And with that, Lord Shaftoe followed Kitty into the great hall. Too restless to merely sit and listen, Kitty suggested a stroll through some of the castle while his lordship spoke his piece. Presented here is Kitty’s version as she would always remember it.
His lordship’s grandfather, great-grandson of the first Lord Shaftoe to have expected to take up residence in Castle Kissane after generations of absentee landholders, had, in his Majesty’s service, been sent to Australia with the distinct command that he school the transported felons colonizing the continent in disciplines duplicating the family’s Irish experiments. The Crown considered Ireland the prime training ground for a more perfect form of tyranny and felt compelled to draw upon the Shaftoe expertise so famously evolved in the complete subjection of that portion of County Kerry the Cromwellian marauder had committed to the Shaftoe family’s care.
Apparently it was an accepted fact that greed and bloodlust were genetically transmitted, that cruelty and arrogance were properties of primogeniture and would, in nature’s course, be passed from generation to generation in the male line. True, his grandfather had been murdered in his garden outhouse; true, he had, previous to the event, sired several bastards by the wantons sent to Australia from Mother England in that country’s failed attempts at moral cleansing. True, the bastards made claims, no doubt at their wanton mothers’ instigations. True, at least two of the wantons had produced marriage certificates. True, Lady Shaftoe was long considered the outhouse murderer, but the blood on her clothing was repeatedly declared by all the authorities to be spatterings from a sheep she’d slaughtered that morning, even though the same knife was found in his lordship’s left ventricle.
Primogeniture, however, still prevailed, as proved by the court proceedings that were soon initiated, when the legitimate George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe, father of the present lord, was recognized as the long-lost inheritor of Castle Kissane and all the territories not yet returned to the families from which they had been so rudely appropriated long centuries since. And now the son had come to claim his inheritance.
All this had been clarified in letters not yet read by Ms. McCloud. But his lordship was now on the premises to arrange an amiable transfer, whereupon Ms. McCloud would be removed and his lordship installed in the family seat left unwarmed from the time of the thwarted gunpowder plot.
The recital was, in its course, interspersed with amused asides from his lordship such as “You can imagine my surprise … ,” and “You can imagine my concern for your disappointment … ,” and “You can imagine my relief when told that you’d be fully compensated—after, of course, the legal fees have been paid.”
For her part, Kitty imagined nothing. As far as she was concerned, she was indulging the man in his absurdities, allowing these moments of presumption, encouraging him even to expand and expatiate on his expectations. She herself would say next to nothing. She would be attentive, in the same way she would—out of pity—be all ears to the babblings of a demented tinker. What did amuse Kitty, however, was his lordship’s blithe wanderings through parts of the castle during the delivery of his revisionist histories. Not content with his survey of the great hall, he opened doors leading into a storage room converted to a washroom and into the dining room complete with Ping-Pong table; then he strode up the spiral stair to the gallery, onto and into uninhabited spaces, looking up chimneys and testing the solidity of the stone work as he went.
When they reached the bedroom Kitty shared with her husband, she simply closed the door she’d left open, allowing his lordship only the slightest glimpse of the massive bed with the tangled sheets and thrown blankets, the tossed pillows, all suggesting a riot recently not so much quelled as recessed until its forces could regroup for further rambunctions. Raising only one eyebrow in recognition of what he’d seen, his lordship felt free to open and close the rest of the doors along the hallway, expressing with a stifled “ah!” his surprise and his approval of the newly renovated bathroom, where he took the time to congratulate Kitty on the cleanliness he’d observed. Kitty, a few paces behind, responded by sticking out her tongue.
“I think,” said Kitty, “that you’ve persuaded yourself that all is in order here and that further inspection at this time is unnecessary.”
His lordship put his right foot onto the bottom step of the stair. “This leads to the top of the tower?”
Kitty figured she’d practiced enough condescension for one day. “The room where I work, where I write, is up there,” she said. “No one passes this point but me. I’m sure you understand.” What she was really protecting, however, was not her sacred space but what she referred to in her mind as the Loom Room. To her, that space was more sacred even than where she plied her trade. That this man might defile her work space with his mere presence, or his simple passage through the turret room, was something from which she and her artistry could recover. But the very thought of his setting foot into the high sanctuary where Brid worked her unthreaded loom, weaving eternally the mysteries into which she and Taddy had been so unjustly condemned, engendered throughout Kitty’s being a rage that could find no boundary.
That a Shaftoe might pass them by, unseeing—without knowledge or without horror of the Shaftoe crimes committed against their youthful persons—was more than Kitty was willing to endure.
But before the gorge could rise to the point where it would take possession of her words, she had another thought. Perhaps he would see them. He would step into the room. Brid and Taddy would turn and look at him, their sorrow, their bewilderments there for him to see. She would tell him who they were and who they are and why they were there, their necks unhealed from the rude rope, their souls far off— they knew not where—waiting for some act of justice or mercy that would reunite them to themselves, whether in heaven or in hell. Now George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe would see them with his own bleared eyes. And the sight would summon from the mists of time the Furies of old that would seize him and send him to torments beyond naming. Kitty lusted for the event.
“But then, of course,” she said, continuing almost without pause her previous phrase, “you’ve been so kind as to have read my books. So I really shouldn’t be so selfish. Yes, please, go right ahead. But careful. Some of the stones might be loose. I certainly wouldn’t want you to break your neck.” She was unable not to laugh at the thought, a laugh she hoped didn’t sound to him as it did to her: like a witch’s cackle, infused with an evil glee.
“I’m honored.” Naturally enough he was nothing of the kind. He was being granted no less than his due. He was descended from Shaftoes. He was himself a Shaftoe. And being a Shaftoe was not, as an irreverent acquaintance once put it, a stack of shit. What door could remain unopened at the sound of that name? And so his lordship began the ascent.
“So here is where you perform your miracles.” This he said with a smug smile.
“You’re too kind,” said Kitty.
His lordship allowed his nose and lips to emit a humming sound, indicating to Kitty that he was in complete agreement. “I suppose I’m not allowed to ask what you’re working on now.”
“A book,” Kitty said.
“Well, I won’t complain about that.” He went quickly to the narrower stair that would lead to Brid and Taddy.
Before beginning to mount, he asked, “Will the book be as good as your In the Forest?”
Her face frozen, Kitty answered, “In the Forest is by Edna O’Brien.”
“Really? Fancy that.” He started up the stair. “Does this take us to the top of the tower? I want to observe the view. I’m sure you understand.”
Kitty did. He wanted to stand at the parapet and proclaim himself master of all he surveyed. This, she felt, should be permitted, to prepare him for every disappointment possible when it would be revealed that, Shaftoe though he might be, the castle was Kitty’s and would be Kitty’s until she would consign her spent remains
to the soil from which she’d sprung. Yes, he must take in the full view. But first, Taddy and Brid.
Kitty should have known. There they were, he with the harp, she at the loom. But only she and Kieran were to be granted the dispensation to see with mortal eyes the corporeal spirits that hovered and had their being. And clearly she had wronged her ghostly friends. By the time Kitty had fully entered the room, both Brid and Taddy had left their stations and were huddled in the far corner, Taddy’s arm around a trembling Brid, whose hands were covering her neck as if to shield her wounds from the man passing through. They seemed helpless, unable to find refuge in shadow or in a mist.
“Forgive me,” Kitty said in Irish, intending her words for the ghosts. “I thought this would be different.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” she said, in English. “I mean—don’t bother. I usually speak in my native tongue. Rude, of course, in the presence of the unschooled.”
His lordship raised both eyebrows and made the humming sound, accepting her admission of incivility if not her insult, and went with a newly determined step toward the stones that would lead him to the parapet.
Brid had stopped her trembling and Taddy had released his hold. Side by side they stood, with all the dignity of their sufferings stiffening their shadowed selves as the man passed them by, as unseeing as had been his ancestors whenever no service was needed or humiliations required.
Kitty considered herself monumentally stupid to have hoped that some susceptibility to guilt or remorse or even fear was possible for George Noel Gordon. Instead of guilt, the remorse, the fear were hers—and with some justice. New sufferings had she inflicted. Ancient wrongs had been made present again through an act of hers, but with no effect whatsoever on the man most deserving of their infliction, the Lord of the Castle, the Lord of the Land. The Landlord. Only Kitty and Brid and Taddy, descended from kings deposed, rightful heirs of lords and laborers, of those who had worked the land and fished the sea, only they were made to feel the ancient pain. And it was ever so.
The Pig Comes to Dinner Page 10
