‘Ah sir them condermints must have jumped off the tray in the kitchen as they were all there just this minute ago.’
One would swear too that her chest was sticking out somewhat further. And still on her freckled face was what one could only describe as a Mona Lisa smile. Which I fear gave her countenance a rather sickly appearance, especially as she was now conspicuously licking her tongue around her lips. And engaging me in what for her was unusually familiar conversation.
‘It’s a better sort of evening sir, this evening now with the stars out.’
O my god, how does one now get a moment of privacy. Previously she seemed to be quivering in fear and couldn’t wait to get out of one’s presence and now one is informed the stars are out.
‘Ah you don’t say Mollie. Pity the shutters are closed.’
‘I’ll open them sir.’
‘No. Please don’t bother. I’ll look at the stars I think later. Thank you very much Mollie.’
Mollie departing and after feasting I was woefully suffering randy pangs conjuring up previous Dublin nights. Of a naked svelte Castanet clacking Lois in her studio. One regretting all her portraits of me were in the nude. Otherwise one could hang one right here. Hammer it in with nails safe from Crooks’ removal. So soothing now to have in my hand a glass of Trockenbeerenauslese. Poured from the very last bottle of this nectar left in the cellar. And to be for chaste distraction perusing my mother’s scrapbooks and about to dig into my first spoonful of rice pudding in which I fully intended to count the raisins. So pretty too to contemplate the strange evening beauty the candle light gives to the wild bog flowers there in their vase so delicate and rare. As if one had never really seen that porcelain before.
Darcy Dancer, legs folded gently in his slippers. Thick white Aran Island stockings warmly on his feet. In air that must be growing chilled in the starry night. Turning to this page of my mother’s memories. O god damn it, a knock on the door, what is it now. It’s altogether too soon to collect my tray. One does lose all one’s savoir faire. And makes one shout in my loudest voice. O god damn it. It will be Dingbats out in the hall squeaking that she is in a hurry to get to bed and has come for my tray. But there seems utter prolonged silence. Yet someone still remains outside lurking. Forcing me, wouldn’t you know it, angrily to get up and see. I’ll drag old smelly Mona Lisa Dingbats in by her latest styled frizzy red hair. Which is perhaps exactly what she wants me to do. My god. My heart stopped in my chest. Leila, here in the hall darkness. Her eyes averting shyly.
‘I’ve come to collect your tray sir.’
‘Please I am sorry I rather shouted, please do come in.’
Leila reaching to close the door to the chill draught blowing in from the hall. Unlike Dingbats who would let the wind blow me out the window. Leila glancing about at the changes Crooks had this very evening wrought. My mother’s firescreen back against and shielding her chaise longue.
‘I’m sorry sir, I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘O no, please, by no means, you didn’t.’
‘But you’re not finished.’
‘O but I am nearly.’
‘I’ll come back.’
The dignified presence of her straight slim shy form standing in the shadows just inside the door. So comforting at a very moment when one was feeling immensely sad. Having transported oneself into the past. Solemn with the sweet strange pain of another’s memories. Pressed tiny flowers of primrose, violet and snowdrops. Between vellum pages affixed with faded photographs. Conjuring up my mother’s face and voice. Her kisses I knew as a child. Upon my face abed in the dark as she returned from hunting. And in these years of her life long before I was ever born. Her parasols. Her beribboned straw hats. Her gentle gaiety and laughter in this house. These pictures of her so gaily posed. On front lawns of great houses. Sporting and carefree at Aix Les Bains in sun and demurely risqué in bathing costume. Her cold mouldering coffin there beyond amid the yew trees. When once there were these chaps in polo tournaments changing horses between chukkas. Be now such old men. Chewing cigars in their clubs. Gout in their joints. When once they swirled and danced attendance upon my mother. Their autographs she collected at parties and hunt balls. Her standing next to a stalwart mounted on a motor bike. Then animated at race meetings. Her smile. Gone from her flesh. Covered purple in the snows that night of my return. And long lain now. Faded in the grin of death. In dust lie quietly. Where all vanity vanishes. Where too my own life will go. Out hunting. As hers did. Flung down from her horse. And placed peacefully. Back into the land she loved.
‘I have intruded, sir.’
‘No. Honestly you haven’t.’
A gust of wind rattling the shutters. A whiff of turf smoke down the chimney. The mirrors of the candle lamp throwing shadows on the walls. How does one make one’s voice sound casual. To ask. Out of one’s deepest loneliness. Join me in a glass of wine. As she steps across the room. Bending to the low table. Pausing. Her dark head turning. To the scrapbook open at a large picture of top hatted gentlemen and frilly frocked ladies at Goodwood week. Another picture beneath of my mother in her long white flouncing skirts ready to play tennis. And on the page opposite her signed dance card at a grand ball in England. Among her friends. In her flowing gown. Her pearls, her tiara, and jewels glittering. And a poem drawn in a rust faded ink in my mother’s large neat hand.
Before wedding bells chime
How I do love this time
Would it could never change
This sweetness of my dream
Of being sweet seventeen.
‘I think the poem and she are so beautiful.’
Still with my glass of wine raised in my hand. And I nearly dropped it. Finding her words spoken as if she were standing inside my soul. Caught so unaware. And speechless. As I was just three previous days ago. When from the main staircase landing where always I pause to look out at the so stately silver boughed grove of beeches. I had just turned from the window to step down the remaining stairs. To see Leila standing on the black and white tiles of the front hall. She seemed suddenly taller. Her well turned slender black stockinged legs. Black hair swept back from her face, her chin raised. And I hardly know any other word one can choose but aristocratic, to describe her at that moment. As she looked up at the painting of my mother’s grand aunt. I froze frightened to move. The seconds dragging on. And still she stood there looking. Desperately not wanting to disturb her, I tried to retreat back up around the landing. Promptly of course kicking and clattering loose a carpet rod with my heel. And startled, she saw me. I felt so mortified to have intruded upon her in her quiet communion. I wanted to say. Please. Do. Go on watching. It’s my favourite painting. But even as she rushed away, I knew, that though we had yet to speak, it was as if we had already spoken. A spiritual language that only ancient friends can speak. And go as silent companions touching in each other’s lives. And there she stands now staring me straight in the eye. The chilblained redness it caused me pain to see in her trembling hands. And nervous as she clearly is, I am even more so. My dressing gown sticking out in an inexplicable randiness so that I must move behind the back of the chair. A cow moaning somewhere in the distance. The thump thump of a chimney cowl spinning. Her face flushed pink in the fire and mirrored candle light. The white skin of her neck a bright red.
‘I should not have taken such a liberty. To say that. But I could not help seeing, open as it was the other day to the page on your dresser. And some might think such a poem trivial but it so clearly came from the heart.’
The precise, confident sound of her voice. Yet so soft and sweet. Her words. Intrude. The word trivial. Coming from her soft moist lips. Leaving me awed that she should have the solemnity of spirit to think them in her mind. Under her thick black hair. Behind the alabaster beauty of her face. Surprising me so much I find my mouth opening and not a word of my own coming out. Clearly now she thinks she has overstepped her position. Before one could reply suitably. Moving her shaking hands behind her b
ack in embarrassment. Watch her fingers move plates to balance the tray and lift it deftly. Her black stockings on her slender but strong legs. How does one deal with disaster that steals so stealthily into one’s life. So at a loss. What does one say. Stay. Put back that tray. Don’t please go towards the door. Speak your beautiful voice again. Don’t avert your eyes. As past me you go. Berry bright luscious lips pressed together as if any moment tears will pour from your eyes. Head bent. Door closing. Your feet. Gone. Leaving me more crushed and dismal now than ever. Offending you. Cruelly bruised your spirit. Nothing seems to go right in this place. Everything becoming like a dirge forever playing in one’s heart. Her words. Said again. Intrude. Trivial. How can I ever find other words to say to you back. And what I could not ever admit. Those previous three days ago. That after watching you in the hall. That later that day. At a water trough. And closing an old iron gate into a low rushy field. My hand on the wall. An evening sun coming over the rising western hills, warming one’s back. And suddenly I felt as if shot. That every energy left in me would burst forth in tears. Your name on my lips. Leila. And again. Leila. And good god it cannot. It must not. It will not. Happen. That I stand here. Tonight. As I did that afternoon. Trying to make you know. I want to touch. Place my fingers against you. Press lips to your hair. Leave them there.
Like the snow lies
On the tree branches bent
To breaking
5
Since the night she spoke of the poem in my mother’s album, nothing could drive the thought of her out of one’s mind. I knew the touch of her hand everywhere. My breeches, stock, jersey, laundered by Edna Annie, now carefully neatly folded and placed on my mother’s dressing room chair. My socks in a symmetrical pyramid on top of my underwear. I stood staring not wanting to move them. To leave them just as her hands had. Wondering where her fingers had rested. Seeing where she creased to make the folds. And then finally lifting the clothes in a sacred bundle, making space and placing them away in a bottom drawer of my mother’s dresser. Where they stay untouched.
I had thought life had so hardened me to have made me free of such wretchedly painful sentimentality. To atone for such lapse these last days before the lawn meet, one brandished out at dawn saddling up to exercise horses before breakfast and again every afternoon before tea time. Still searching for the stallion. But only finding the furrow marks of his hoofs and where he had removed great patches of bark from trees and chewed saplings to the ground.
One abysmally attempted to have the servants’ bell to my mother’s apartments reactivated, the wires and pulleys clearly having been rusted into total disuse. And for one’s trouble one got a twisted ankle, falling in the dark into where the floorboards had been removed. And on that exhausted evening, I ordered an early supper and went to bed. Hoping desperately that Leila would come with my tray. But Dingbats did instead. And wouldn’t you know she would with one bloodcurdling crash, not only fall over the upended floorboards but with her leg plunging through the ceiling below, send my meal over the hall rug for the rats to have a feast.
One did hope for a cheering day to dawn soon. Heading out after breakfast to find, as always, Sexton safe in the warmth of his potting shed. One of the few places one could take refuge. And pass the time of day.
‘Ah how are things in Katmandu this morning Master Darcy.’
Things were certainly not good in Katmandu, especially in the afternoon. With an irate farmer coming thumping a walking stick on the front door. And a family of tinkers found milking half our cows. Dingbats poured a bucket of hot grease down the sink and as it congealed the kitchen was flooded. Crooks attempting to get the dumb waiter to the pantry working once more, had his knuckles crushed for his efforts and Catherine wondering what all the screams were about looked up the shaft to have the dumb waiter come crashing down on her head. I must say, one did just pop out of the maelstrom for a Madeira behind the locked door of the library. No wonder the country houses for miles around were full of their drunken inmates.
One felt quite tipsy saddling up Petunia to ride out. To view land a rather rat faced farmer had bought surrounding a distant choice field to which he said I no longer had a right of way. Suffice to say I rode straight through his feeble fence. And found myself where banks were washed down along the big river and a flood was pushing out across the fields. I was planning to have a gallop across the long meadow joining Andromeda Park to the land of the great castle. And maybe catch a glimpse of the exotic goings on one felt must be in evidence there. Low dark clouds and heavy mist were lowering from the sky. Suddenly the great castle was out of sight as one got lost descending through an ancient oak wood. Too far from roads even for the agent to be bothered stealing. Surrounded by a plantation of gone wild rhododendrons, merging into another wood. Dripping spooky fern. Mushrooms sprouting out of the boggy tangled roots. Nearly dark now. Along the river the bridge is half down. Remains of an old farm road. Rotted trees. Foundation mounds of abandoned cottages. Centuries ago, feet trod and lives were lived here. And something is ahead there. On the little stone bridge. Rein up. There is something. Petunia shaking. So am I. In the white wisps of mist. Like a christening dress. In long flowing veils. Someone is standing on the ruin of the bridge. A figure. Swathed in white. Long dark flowing hair. Her garments move as she stands so still.
Petunia shying, rearing, falling sideways and throwing Darcy Dancer to the ground. His skull crashing back banging the bulging roots of a beech tree. Petunia struggling up shaking her head and with reins slapping loose, galloping away. Darcy Dancer getting to his feet. Stumbling forward on the wet boggy ground. Turning to see Petunia pounding and crashing up through furze, bracken and briars. Abandoning me. If anything a horse hates it’s a ghost. Almost feel cracking my head open is a relief. Sticky on the back of one’s neck. Blood. Not a sign of anyone or anything on the bridge. Amazing how one’s troubles finally drive one into having visions. Just like everyone else mentally unhinged at Andromeda Park.
Darcy Dancer once more catching Petunia’s reins as she stood finally grazing the other side of the hill and halfway across the bog. With the brown chill water filling and spilling out over the tops of one’s boots. Nearly dark and nearly lost. Just shadows on the horizon. Without a sign of any light or life. Except snipe, wings beating as they chirp speeding left and right, away into the sky. Can’t even see the top turret of the great castle. Walk Petunia quietened out on the edge of these wild uncharted lands. Without disappearing forever into a bog hole. Dump the moisture out of one’s boots. Bless oneself like Dingbats does when she sees a ghost. Or my highly exaggerated penis engorged.
Darcy Dancer returning over another two miles. By the forest and around the lake. To at last find one’s way to the parkland meadow. Without a horse between one’s thighs one’s legs would be frozen. Cross the stream. Head up the hill. The house looms darkly with all its shuttered windows. Except one. The whim room. Behind the shiny black panes. A figure standing watching. O god what new strange haunting is afoot.
Following a hot bath I lay shovelling more sherry than was good for me down my throat. And wrapped in blankets on the chaise longue reclined waiting for supper. Imagining that Dingbats had gossiped below stairs about seeing me with a raging erection in the bath. And Leila would think one a shameless debauchee. Returned from wallowing in the fleshpots of Dublin. With ill met dissolute friends. And at the knock on my door. Hoping with all my present indisposition that she would come. I was utterly disconsolate when Norah did instead. Saying it was everyone else’s night off. And a dance in the town. With a brandy I went to bed. And lay practising dying. Somehow muchly preferable to being killed. By the bloody worries here. Even the men taking my mood from the nosegay of a morning. Made one choose to wear a dried purple cornflower. No point in letting them think I’m happy and that the time was ripe to ask for a bit of hay, straw, firewood or extra milk. As one was often asked for anyway. And one did not exactly scowl but I tell you my demeanour was considerably less than
ebullient.
Needless to say in finally tossing and turning to sleep one had a nightmare of a dream. Of being attired in pyjamas in the front lobby of the Royal Hibernian Hotel unable to pay my hotel bill. With Rashers Ronald behind me with his very best British military accent blasting out pretending to be my adjutant and me his general. Rashers demanding to see the manager and rather loudly and pretentiously declaring that I was a man of enormous land holdings. Plus being the Marquis of Delgany and Prince of Kilquade. Who was not about to be insulted by a hotel clerk’s insolence asking for settlement of an account. But somehow in the dream one was insulted. And I think referred to as a chancer. And Rashers Ronald, as he once did when so called by a clerk on a similar occasion, loosed his fly, unreeled his prick, and peed all over the lobby. Of course Rashers was peeing too over one’s heels and it wasn’t till Crooks himself woke me from my thrashings about the bed that I realized it was all a dream. Crooks with his arm in a sling. A limping Dingbats putting a tray by my bedside. Reassuringly set with Meissen. A plate of six sausages, two rashers, and three fried eggs. But somehow even a stack of toasted soda bread and slabs of butter only minus a knife, pepper and salt did not lighten a blackdog depression crushing down upon one. To put a shotgun barrel to one’s head in this loveless life. Condemned. By convention and birth. To the great granite shell of this mansion. To all these prying eyes and ears listening. And who would care if I were found mortally wounded. A few screeches out of Dingbats perhaps at the blood and gore. A message to the victualler in the village. To prepare the body. And in one of our own sycamore coffins I’d be lowered in the ground. Sexton would mind. He would I think be quite sorry to miss our talks. But none other would much give two or more hoots.
Leila Page 5
