Julia in Ireland

by Ann Bridge

  Mrs. Reeder of course raised no objection, and the pair went straight out into the cool evening air, where the strong glow from the west did indeed give the primroses, massed under the sycamores on either side of the drive, an unusual depth of colour. “It is a lovely place” the man said, linking his arm through hers as they passed out of sight of the house.

  “Yes, isn’t it? I knew you’d like it. But now, Gerald”—she stopped and faced him, gently releasing her arm—“You see what I mean about the Philipino? It’s frightening when he goes off the deep end like that—taking his mallet to Edina! What will he be like when he’s older?”

  “Perfectly normal, I should say,” he answered, putting his arm round her and drawing her to one of the wooden seats that stood a little set back from the drive-way. “Sit” he said. “Oh my poor darling, you’re all upset; but I don’t think it’s frightening in the least. Spirited healthy little boys do go on like that. The only thing it showed me, beyond what I’d expect, is how desperately he loves you, and how much he’s missed you.”

  “But what ought I to do about it? One can’t just let a thing like that pass.”

  “Oh, can’t one? I think one could and should.”

  “Would you still say that if we were married, and you were his step-father, with real authority and responsibility where he was concerned?” she pressed him—she was quite wrought up.

  He considered.

  “No, I think if I had been in that position for a couple of years, and he knew me and trusted me, I should probably have given him a light Ohrfeig, there and then” he said at length. “I’m rather a believer in the prompt slap, or a good leathering when they’re older; I think physical punishment, if it can be given immediately, is one of the wholesomest forms of discipline for all young creatures. But never anything delayed, or psychological, God help us!—no remonstrances, or ‘What would your Mother think of you?’ wretchedness.”

  “Nannie will have been remonstrating like mad, I expect,” Julia said, beginning to giggle a little.

  “Oh, that would not matter—he wouldn’t pay any attention to that” O’Brien said cheerfully. “No emotional attention, I mean.”

  She stared at him.

  “But you’ve thought all this out, Gerald!” she said in surprise. “One would think you’d spent half your time bringing up children.”

  “I’ve spent a good part of it training horses and dogs, and that’s very much the same thing” he said gaily. “They’re all young animals, and what they all like is to know where they are. Discipline makes them feel safe and comfortable; it’s all rubbish to pretend that any of them resent a good walloping! I bet you the psycho boys who pour out all this stuff about physical punishment damaging a child’s ego have never trained a dog to the gun—if they had they’d know better! But sweetheart” he said in an altered tone, “you asked me a question just now, a question with an ‘if’ in it. Does that mean you’ve got any nearer to reaching a decision?”

  She considered in her turn.

  “No” she said after a moment—“Not nearer to a decision, only nearer to the problem! In fact you may say we’re at it— and having my nose rubbed in it like that, all at once, made me think what it might be like in actual fact. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to start all that up again.”

  “Don’t be sorry; you haven’t re-started anything—with me it never stops!” he said, with a comical grin that was oddly allied to the tenderness of the pressure of his hand on hers.

  “Oh Gerald, you are a darling!” she exclaimed, almost in tears.

  “Ah well, so much the better!” he said. “Don’t fret, sweetheart; we’ll stick to our full programme and you shall come and see Rossbeg and all. I won’t hurry you.” He glanced at his watch. “Yes I will, though—hadn’t we better be getting back? T’is nearly half-five.”

  As they walked down the drive to the house Julia was half-aware that in fact this conversation with Gerald had brought her nearer to a decision. His extremely firm, not to say tough views on bringing up children—so strangely in contrast with the very low soft voice in which he pronounced them—had startled her; but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her that a marriage with Gerald might not only be “a good thing” for small Philip—it was largely in that light that she had always considered it—but the answer, the best possible answer, for him and for herself as well.

  The after-tea appearance of the nursery party usually took place in the hall, leaving the library as a place of refuge for the master of the house and anyone else who had no taste for an hour of games, noise, toys and general hullabaloo. This was all in full swing when they walked in; the table had been cleared and pushed to one side, and the elder children were doing jigsaw puzzles at it; the smaller ones were building with blocks on the floor—Edina and Mrs. Hathaway looked on from seats by the fire.

  “Oh, we are late, after all” Julia said, sitting down too. “I’m sorry, Edina.”

  “No harm—they were unusually quick today” Mrs. Reeder responded.

  At this point small Philip came up to the group by the fire, leading a slightly bigger girl by the hand.

  “Will the gentleman laugh for Rosina?” he enquired of his mother, indicating O’Brien, who was perched on the fender.

  “You’d better ask him.”

  “Please, would you laugh for Rosina, because I pulled up her plant” the little boy said earnestly.

  “Will I sing for her? That lasts longer” O’Brien said easily. He got up as he spoke. “Come over here” he said, taking the child’s other hand, and led them across to a long leather-covered seat under the window. “There—one on each side; that’s right.” And without any hesitation he broke into a sort of recitative, half sung, half spoken.

  “Old Mother Duck has hatched a brood

  Of ducklings, small and callow

  Their little beaks are gold, their down

  Is mottled grey and yellow.

  One peeped out from beneath her wing

  One stood upon her back.

  “That’s very rude” said old Dame Duck—

  “Get down! Quack-quack! Quack-quack!”

  “Why was it rude to get on the mother duck’s back?” small Philip interrupted.

  “I expect it tickled. Anyhow, you don’t generally stand on your mother’s back, do you?”

  “No—but I’m heavier than a baby duck.”

  “Oh do let him go on!” Rosina said impatiently.

  “Well now, I’ve forgotten the next verse, but—”

  “Why have you forgotten the next verse?” Philip asked.

  “I should think because you interrupted him!” Rosina said. “Do shut up, Pino, and listen. Please go on” she said to O’Brien.

  He resumed.

  “Now when you reach the poultry-yard

  The hen-wife, Mollie Head

  Will feed you with the other fowls

  On bran and mashed-up bread.

  I should get right inside the dish

  Unless it is too small;

  In that case I should use my foot

  And over-turn it all.”

  The ducklings did as they were told

  And found the plan so good

  That from that day the other fowls

  Got hardly any food.

  At this unexpected dénouement Philip clapped his hands. “The other fowls got hardly any food!” he repeated joyfully.

  “Oh really, Gerald, what a terribly subversive thing to teach them!” Julia exclaimed. “Where on earth did you get hold of it?”

  “It was an old Auntie of mine had it from her Scotch nurse.”

  “That’s curious—my old Scottish Nannie used to tell it to me,” Mrs. Hathaway said.

  “Sing it again, sing it again!” Philip urged.

  “No, we’ll have something else” Gerald said. He went over to Mrs. Hathaway.

  “It must be Scotch in origin, if you had it from a Scotswoman too” he said.

  “I wonder if Nannie Mack
knows it?” Edina speculated.

  “Something else! Sing the something else!” Philip urged, tugging at Gerald’s hand to pull him towards the window.

  “Right you be—but there’s no rush” the man said good-temperedly. Again settled on the window-seat he began to sing.

  The others gradually drifted over to listen too, as he went on from one song to another—there were loud protests from all the children when the two Nannies came to shepherd their charges upstairs—“It can’t be time yet!”

  “Oh yes it is, and past” O’Brien said. “Now, put up your blocks, Peanut. Is this the box? And you, Rosina.” He went over towards the big table. “But what about the puzzles? Ah, I see you have them on trays—that’s a great idea! But where do they go?”

  “In the press here” he was told, and he helped to stack them in a solid oak press opposite the window. As good-nights were being said to the mothers and Mrs. Hathaway— “Will you sing to us tomorrow?” Rosina and Philip asked.

  “For sure I will—if you go quickly now.”

  When the rising generation had all trooped out—“Oh, we forgot to ask Nannie Mack about Old Mother Duck” Edina said.

  “So we did. We must do that tomorrow” Mrs. Hathaway said. “And Nurse Baird too.” They were still talking by the fire when from the outer hall Philip Reeder came in.

  “Good Lord, are you all down here still?”

  “Yes, we were listening to Mr. O’Brien singing to the children, and then we just sat on. Mr. O’Brien, this is my husband, Philip Reeder.” The men shook hands. “But let’s go up now. Have you had tea, Philip?”

  “Yes, I took it off the Halls.”

  Upstairs, rather to his wife’s surprise Philip Reeder took the fresh guest off to his study for a drink; generally everyone sat together in the library, to which the women now repaired. When, summoned by the dressing-gong, they emerged into the passage they heard peals of Gerald’s treble laughter, and Philip’s deep guffaws, coming from the study.

  “They seem to be getting on all right, anyhow” Edina said.

  This was confirmed when the master of the house came into his wife’s room a few minutes later.

  “That chum of Julia’s is a most comical fellow” he said, sitting down and taking off his shoes. “You never heard such stories! And the way he tells them!—he’s a born actor.”

  “He’s a beautiful singer, too” Edina said. “But what do you make of him otherwise, Philip?”

  “Oh, he’s as sharp as a razor—no doubt about his wits. And he seems to have quite a good practice, too.”

  “Practice? Is he a doctor, then?”

  “No, no—a lawyer, in some country town down there in the West, as he calls it. I asked him if he never thought of shifting to Dublin, but he said No, a small frog does better in a small pool.” He laughed again at the recollection. “Actually I think he’d make his way anywhere,” Reeder went on, “but of course he has his place there, and these horses that he’s mad about.”

  “What sort of a place?” his wife asked, thinking, not for the first time, how much more fruitful men’s conversations seemed to be than those in mixed company.

  “Oh, two or three hundred acres, I think. He doesn’t really farm—just hay for the horses and a few cows for the house; he has a man he calls a ‘herd’ who manages all that for him. And it seems he’s a fanatic about his garden, too.”

  “Julia will like that.”

  “She’ll never have a dull moment, anyhow, if she does marry him” Reeder said. “He’s a most comical fellow” he repeated.

  “What does he do with the horses? Hunt?” Edina asked.

  “No, I don’t think so; shoots and fishes, mostly. He breeds the horses and sells them. He seems to have some tremendous woodcock and snipe shooting; I shouldn’t mind putting in a week over there myself. And you can take carp in the lake—I’ve never caught a carp.” He went off to his dressing-room to wash, leaving Edina wondering a little what breeding horses and shooting woodcock would say to Julia, apart from amusing the guests that she would doubtless be eager to lure to Ireland.

  In the library after dinner Reeder turned suddenly to his new guest with—“Now, what about a song, eh? My Missus says you’re a great singer.”

  “No, quite a small one—but willing!” O’Brien said. He sat a little forward in his chair and moved his right hand gently to and fro in front of him; Julia wondered what he would choose for this party of strangers. He began with a song she had never heard from him yet, “Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green”—in fact it was well chosen. As the light baritone voice wound through the song with its gay air, every word enunciated with beautiful clarity, Mrs. Hathaway involuntarily began to smile, and Philip to beat time with his hand. O’Brien came to the last verse:

  Soon afterwards she married, this hard-hearted girl

  And it was not a Wiscount, and it was not a Hearl,

  It was not a Barrynight, but a shade or two wuss

  T’was the bow-legged conductor of a tuppenny bus!”

  Reeder burst out laughing. “Capital! Let’s have another” he said. O’Brien immediately obliged with “Green Broom,” and then went on to some of Percy French’s Irish songs— the Irish as seen through the eyes of the Ascendancy, that is: “The Ballad of the Mary Anne McHugh,” “The Girl from the County Clare,” and so on; his voice brought out the mixture of the ironic and the lyrical which is in most of them perfectly. Philip Reeder laughed a great deal, and went on saying “Capital!” at intervals.

  Next day he took his Irish guest out with him in the Land-rover. He had recently let one of the hill farms to a new tenant, and wanted to pay him a visit; and there was some new forestry planting to be inspected. Gerald continued to be impressed by the clean-ness and tidiness of everything. “Your new farmer keeps his haggard like a drawing-room!” he said as they drove away.

  “His haggard?” Philip was puzzled.

  “Where the cowsheds are.”

  “Oh, the shippon! Yes, I think he’ll do. Must keep a place decent.” After leaving the fresh plantings—“Is there much forestry done round you?” Reeder asked.

  “Not close by—the Forestry Commission is doing a good bit up in the mountains behind Oldport.”

  “The private owners don’t go in for it?”

  “Not many; trees need too much capital, and tie it up for too long! Some of the landlords, who have spare capital, do plant a bit.”

  Philip was puzzled again. “The landlords! Aren’t you a landlord?”

  “Not really, no—I’m a native! What we mean by landlords in Ireland are the Anglo-Irish, who own large properties, and become officers in the British Army, and send their boys to Winchester or Wellington.” He spoke quite without rancour—rather amusedly.

  That evening there was not so much singing—Philip Reeder wanted to talk with his lively guest. But at last Mrs. Hathaway pleaded so earnestly that Philip gave in—“Yes, right-oh. I’d like some songs too.”

  “Do you know any Scotch songs?” the old lady asked.

  “One or two. Would you like ‘The Bonnie Earl o’Mo-ray?’ ”

  “Indeed I would”—and Gerald sang that, and two or three of Burns’ better-known ones like “Ay Fond Kiss.” At last he embarked on—“There were twa sisters sat in a bower,” with its curious recurring refrains of the names of Scotch cities. This is rather a test of any singer, and Gerald met it beautifully, keeping the refrain somehow separate from the song itself by singing it with a sort of dreamy expressionless remoteness, as if it were an accompaniment—as indeed it is—completely detached from the dramatic intensity of the verses. He came to the last one:

  When next the harp began to sing …

  Edinbro’, Edinbro’,

  T’was “Farewell sweetheart” sang the string

  Stirlin’ for aye.

  And then as plain as plain could be …

  “There stands ma sister, that drooned me.”

  Bonny St. Johnstone stands on Tay.r />
  “Goodness, it is frightening, the way you sing it!” Edina exclaimed.

  “It’s a frightening song” O’Brien said. “I always think nothing shows the difference between the Scottish and the English characters more clearly than their treatment of precisely the same story, of the jealous elder sister drowning the preferred younger one, in this song and in ‘The Berkshire Tragedy.’ That is practically opera-bouffe, with its jaunty tune and refrain, and the off-hand, almost comical, ending— ‘The Crowner he came, and the Justice too, With a hue and a cry and a hullabaloo!’—tolerantly turning a tragedy into a joke.”

  “That is very interesting” Mrs. Hathaway said. “I never thought of it like that before.”

  Reeder asked for “The Berkshire Tragedy”—“I’ve quite forgotten it. It’s years since I heard it.”

  “Philip, he can’t!” Julia protested. “It’s got fifteen verses, and he’s been singing quite a lot already.”

  “Ah, quite right. Sorry, O’Brien. Have a drink.”

  Gerald had a whisky and soda, and promised to sing “The Berkshire Tragedy” first thing the following evening. Edina, over their drinks, asked him where he had had his voice trained.

  “It never did have any real training” he told her. “More a lot of practice, really. I sang in the choir at school, and of course the organist, who acted as choir-master, told us to drop our chins, and get our consonants out clearly. But I always had any song firm, once I’d heard the words and the music three or four times, so I got put onto a lot of solos and anthems. And at college when we had musical shows I was usually roped in for a part.”

  “Don’t wonder” Reeder said bluntly. “A memory like that for words and tunes must be a gift to anyone producing a concert or a show.”

  Presently Mrs. Hathaway said—“I don’t want to be greedy, but could we perhaps have just one more, something gentler, to go to sleep on.”

  “But of course” O’Brien said; he thought for a moment, and then began to sing “Plaisir d’Amour,” very low and quietly. When he had finished Mrs. Hathaway thanked him.