‘I’ll come at once,’ he said.
I switched on whatever lights in the hall were working, and the main light on the staircase, and picked up the worst of the debris of my encounter with the fire irons. A Chinese vase was broken; I wondered if it was valuable, but I didn’t much care, since I could have been broken along with it. I was aware of an anger rising in me, that gradually came to take over from my fright. Damn it, where was Connor?
He was in Lady Maude’s bedroom. I came through Mrs. O’Shea’s room, picking up my cigarettes and lighter on the way. The smell of gas was present, but not strongly. The windows in the bathroom and Lady Maude’s room were open. Connor was bending to pick up something from behind the door. When he straightened I saw what it was. He held a bathmat in his hand which he tossed away from him when he saw me. The gesture was elaborately casual; he aimed for the rim of the bathtub, where the mat usually hung, and missed. It fell to the floor with a soft thud.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he said, pointing towards the cigarettes and lighter in my hand. ‘You might blow us all sky-high.’
I thrust them into the pocket of my gown. Over his pyjamas Connor was wearing a dark blue robe that seemed superlatively luxurious by contrast to the rest of his clothes ‒ cashmere or vicuna, I guessed. It had probably been a gift from Lotti; it bore her stamp, even to the colour. Somehow the sight of it, of Connor himself so collected and casual, made me angrier.
‘How did it all happen?’ I demanded. ‘I didn’t leave the gas fire on.’ I went to the door of Lady Maude’s room where both Annie and Mrs. O’Shea were now hovering over the old lady. I could tell from the way they spoke and acted that Lady Maude was all right. I could hear the thin old voice querulously demanding a cup of tea, and an explanation for the whole household being in her bedroom at this hour. ‘Two o’clock in the morning,’ she said.
‘And none of it would have happened if I’d have been here,’ Mrs. O’Shea said, looking darkly at me. ‘As it was, it was a great mercy I decided to come back when I did ‒ had my nephew Rory drop me off here. Sure the funeral was a wash-out. One of those new parish priests in charge down there who doesn’t believe ‒’ here she mocked his tone ‒ ‘in turning a funeral into a party! So it broke up early and I decided to ride back with Rory. I’ll not be able to face Dr. Donnelly and tell him I’ve let an inexperienced young girl ‒’
‘Will you hold your tongue, woman!’ The demand burst from Lady Maude. ‘There is no harm done. I am perfectly well. I wish everyone to leave me alone, and I want some tea, Annie.’
‘You almost weren’t perfectly well, Lady Maude.’ Connor came to stand beside me. ‘I assume that Maura left the gas fire burning when she finished in the bathroom last night ‒ but of course that would have just gone on burning until the tanks were used up. The trouble was in the gas pipe itself. A connection’s broken ‒ a bad solder job, I suppose. If you’d had too many hours of it, it could have made you very sick!’
‘Might have finished her off,’ came from Mrs. O’Shea, too disturbed to mind her words. ‘I always sleep with my bedroom door open and the door of this room open so that I can hear what is happening to my patient. I would have smelled the gas ‒ but then, the young sleep heavily.’
‘That infernal gadget!’ Lady Maude plucked at the sheets angrily. ‘I wish you to have it removed in the morning, Connor. I hold you responsible for its installation, remember. When these things are done behind my back there’s bound to be trouble. If you have to sneak in to do a job like that in a few hours, what can you expect but poor workmanship?’
Connor shrugged, as if he didn’t care how she criticised him. ‘What I’d better do right now is go down and shut off the tank. There’s no way to stop the flow of gas here because the copper tubing’s come apart. You must have kicked it, or something, last night, Maura. An accident, of course, but unfortunate.’ And then, coolly, he turned and walked out through the bathroom, leaving us four women to stare at each other, or at least the three of them to stare at me, their eyes accusing me of criminal carelessness.
Even against the force of my boiling anger I managed to keep my mouth closed on the words that wanted to come spilling out at Connor. I wanted to run out into the passage and scream after him that it had not been my doing, that I had not even lighted the fire, and had left the door of my room open as Mrs. O’Shea had instructed me. I wanted to demand to know, right there and then, why Connor had been picking up the bath mat which I distinctly remembered having folded over the rim of the tub. I knew, from the position he had been in when he stooped to get it, that it had been bunched up behind the door ‒ that in her haste Mrs. O’Shea had not noticed it there, had simply swept it aside in the dark as she opened my door and called to me.
I wanted, to his face and before Lady Maude, to accuse him of having closed my door and laid the bath mat along the crack at the bottom. The gas then would flow only one way ‒ into Lady Maude’s bedroom. Given enough hours of even that small amount of gas, she might have suffered another attack from lack of oxygen and the increasing struggle for breath. By early morning Connor could have removed the mat and opened my door again. It was a crude and hastily improvised plan, possibly conceived at the moment when he had passed the bathroom and heard my movements, the splashing in the tub. But it might have been fatally effective. Mrs. O’Shea’s early return had not been part of the plan.
But I held back on the accusation. I had learned enough to know that if I said these words now, they would have travelled by Mrs. O’Shea’s tongue to the four corners of Cloncath by tomorrow night. I needed time to think, and I was learning the kind of evil compact that one makes against scandal ‒ the kind that Brendan and Praeger and Connor had made over the death of Lotti. I wasn’t sure then what I would do. I could cry ‘murder’, and pull down the pillars of this house about our heads. Or by my silence I could shore up the outer structure while it continued to rot within. By remaining silent even in these minutes I took the first step into the compact of lies.
IV
‘I’ve given her something so that she will sleep.’ Dr. Donnelly slumped a little in the chair at Connor’s desk as he drank his tea. ‘It’s impossible to determine what damage, if any, has been done without tests. And that means hospital. Lady Maude has never been in hospital in her life. It seems to me more risky to subject her to that ‒’ he gestured, and no more words were necessary because all of us could imagine that determined old woman expending the last of her strength in battles with nurses and hospital routine, ‘‒ than to let her remain here. When she is more rested I will have to take the chance. She could be in and out of hospital in a few days, and then I would know better how to treat her. In the meantime she is to rest. Try not to let anything disturb or worry her.’
He looked around us ‒ Connor, Mrs. O’Shea, Annie and myself, and his gentle gaze was vaguely accusatory, as if demanding to know how we could have let that night’s episode occur. None of us, not even Mrs. O’Shea, had any defence to offer, or we were ashamed to try.
‘With rest … with devoted care, she may recover almost entirely. She could have many years yet.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But the Tyrells are not a strong line, and she is already old …’ He began writing on his prescription pad. ‘Now, Mrs. O’Shea, I want you to send into Cloncath for these, and administer …’
While they engaged in their professional talk my own gaze stayed on Connor. I had been watching him as Dr. Donnelly had said that there might be years yet for Lady Maude; he had made a supreme effort for control, but knowing his face as I had come to know it, I saw that already he was experiencing the long agony of his wait, the years when his youth went from him, but the power to do, to direct and order as he wanted, still denied him. He had longed for the chance to work for Sheridan Glass with all his skill and strength, but as its master, not as the servant of an old woman. I believed that this night he had taken a desperate risk to win that freedom, and he had failed. The knowledge of failure and of what
he must endure in the future seemed written on his face for me to read.
Ten
The few hours until the dawn were slow; after Dr. Donnelly had left all of us went back to our rooms ‒ Mrs. O’Shea, though, I imagined, would be the only one to sleep. This morning there could be no companionable dawn breakfast for Connor and I. I dressed, and I paced the room to keep warm, and at six o’clock, as quietly as I could, I left the house. The engine of the M.G. was cold ‒ it took long, noisy minutes to get it started. Connor must have heard it in that time, but he made no attempt to come and find out where I was going.
Already the countryside was beginning to stir. I met farm lorries with livestock on the way to market; the herds had been milked and were back in their fields, in the labourers’ cottages men got in an hour’s work on their vegetable gardens before it was time to go to work. I was comforted by the sense of the people about me, by the friendly lifting of a finger to acknowledge me, although I was a stranger. The hours since Dr. Donnelly’s departure had been the loneliest I had ever lived through; I drew the friendly presence of these people about me like a warm robe to ease my hurt and fear.
The woman at the South Lodge of Castle Tyrell recognised me. ‘You’re early this morning, Miss,’ she said as she came to open the gates. ‘But sure isn’t Mr. Praeger an early riser too.’
At the Castle, though, I did not cross the bridge, but continued on along the avenue to the North Lodges. The barricades at the remains of the bridge were an ugly reminder of that first conspiracy of silence.
Brendan heard the car and came to the door.
‘You’re early this morning, allanah.’ Almost the words the woman at the lodge had used, but the tone was of concern, not surprise. ‘What troubles you?’
‘I wish I were sure.’ The living-room was stripped. Roped-up boxes stood piled together ready for the movers. Brendan’s bags were packed and waiting near the door. I was aware of a terrible sense of desolation at the sight of them; he was going, and I would be left alone. I had no certainty now, as I had had two days ago, that I could handle whatever came my way.
‘You look terrible,’ he said candidly. ‘Wait a minute …’ The kettle was on the boil, and he went and put instant coffee into two mugs, mixed it with thick cream and sugared it heavily. He carried one mug to me, and I took a sip, winced at the sweetness, but savoured its warmth. He gave me a cigarette and grasped my wrist to steady its trembling as he held the lighter. Then he brought his own mug of coffee and sat down on the sofa beside me. ‘Now tell me,’ he said.
With as much clarity and detachment as I could, I told him what had happened at Meremount in the early hours of that morning. He listened to the end without interrupting. ‘You’re certain you left both doors open?’
‘As certain as anyone can be ‒ it’s confusing when everyone tells you something different, and you begin to ask yourself could you have been mistaken.’
‘And the gas fire ‒ you turned it off?’
‘That’s just the point. I never lit it. I was in such a hurry to be done with my bath that I didn’t take time to let the room warm up ‒ you know, Lady Maude is right next door, and I’m sure she’d think it was frivolous to stay in a bath a second more than was necessary.’
‘And the bathmat?’
‘I know I put it across the bath.’ Suddenly my weariness and the doubts that the intervening hours had allowed to creep in seemed too much for me. I put down the mug and held my hand across my eyes. ‘I’m so afraid now,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid of what all this means. I’m afraid to stay, and yet I can’t leave her alone with him. If I speak out the scandal and fuss may kill her, and I’m not sure anything can be proved. When Mrs. O’Shea goes she’ll be alone with him …’
I heard his movement as he left my side, and then the burr of the telephone dial.
‘Good-morning … O’Keefe? This is Brendan Carroll. Is Mr. Praeger awake? … Good. Would you tell him, please, that I am bringing Miss D’Arcy to the Castle. We’ll be there in about five minutes. Thank you.’
He hung up and turned to me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll both drive. We might need the two cars.’
‘Why are we going to see him?’
He slipped on a sweater over his open-necked shirt. ‘It’s time someone spoke up around here.’
O’Keefe met us as we came up the steps. ‘Good morning, Miss D’Arcy. Good morning, Mr. Carroll.’
‘How are you, Kevin?’ Brendan answered.
‘Grand, sir ‒ just grand, Bren.’ A look of a kind of amused acceptance passed between them. I wondered about it, and then realised that they were about the same age; they had probably sat in the same school-room together. It was likely that O’Keefe remembered Brendan as his own description of himself ‒ little Bren Carroll slogging up the lane in his brother’s gum-boots. It was hard to realise how far-reaching were the ties of this country life, how long were the memories when the threads were not broken by the pace and changes of a city, or of a land upset by war. It helped to explain how Lady Maude, without power, without money, without friends almost, still commanded respect and obedience.
O’Keefe had coffee and a dish of toast kept hot under a silver cover for us. The cups were huge, and we gratefully drank the half and half mixture of coffee and hot milk. ‘How in the world,’ Brendan murmured, crunching into the toast, ‘does Otto Praeger manage to get anyone to make coffee like this in Ireland?’ The decision, whatever had formed it, to come to Otto Praeger seemed to have released him. He did not appear anxious or worried as he sipped his coffee and gazed out over the lake; there was an early, pale sun, and the dew glazed the lawn like frost. But he was watching me also; as I put a cigarette into my mouth I felt his hand gently again on my wrist.
‘Not another one ‒ not yet. You’ll smoke too many before the day’s out, I’ll guarantee you.’
It didn’t seem hard to put it away when his concern urged it.
We heard Otto Praeger’s step and his cane on the stairs. He came towards us slowly, no sign of curiosity at our presence, carefully shaved and dressed, smelling of bay rum.
‘Good-morning,’ he said. His accent seemed heavier than I remembered, as if his tongue had not had enough practice with English this early in the day. He gestured to me and to the coffee-pot. ‘Would you please? ‒ ah, thank you … Now, Mr. Carroll?’
Brendan repeated, more succinctly, what I had told him. It made odd telling ‒ a few facts and more uncertainty. What it wasn’t able to convey was the feeling of fear that had grown upon me, the sense of menace, the conviction that my own will became weaker as Connor’s dominance grew. What it lacked because Brendan did not know of it, was the monstrous coolness of the proposition Connor had made to me in O’Ruairc’s Tower, the kind of strength it had carried because of Connor’s own conviction of the rightness of his claim.
‘There’s much more than that …’ I heard myself saying when Brendan had finished. ‘Things have mounted up … oh, I can’t tell you them all, but enough to make me believe ‒’
‘Yes, enough.’ Praeger waved his hand to finish for me. His face, always pale, seemed now like a flaccid mass of dough; I wondered if he were feeling ill. He raised his head and looked at Brendan.
‘She must be told ‒ yes, yes, I understand why you have come. We each gave an undertaking of silence. But that undertaking did not include the possibility of harm to another person ‒ harm now to Maura through her involvement here. But she will not hear only what we have to say ‒ she will hear all sides of the story. Come, we will go to Meremount.’
II
Annie went upstairs to tell Connor that we were there, and I led Praeger and Brendan to Connor’s office. Annie’s face worked strangely when she saw how it was with me, a nervous twitching of the lips, a swift plucking at her apron. ‘Right away, Miss Maura ‒ I’ll tell him right away.’ Praeger stood for a moment in the door of the office looking back into the hall. I wondered what it was that absorbed him, and it was a shock to realise how,
in less than a week, my own eyes had ceased to be amazed at the sight of the tiers of furniture, had come to take it all for granted; I was even slightly offended by the shake of his head and the click of his tongue.
‘Ach! ‒ it does not change, this place ‒ only more of it!’ Then he added, ‘What a prize ‒ what a prize it is!’
He came and sat heavily in the armchair before the ashes of yesterday’s fire. It was chill in the room; I wandered if Praeger felt it after the perfectly maintained warmth of Castle Tyrell. I said, tentatively, because I wasn’t sure it could be managed, ‘Would you like a fire? There’s turf in the basket there, and I could get some kindling from the kitchen. The only thing ‒’ now I looked at Brendan for help ‘‒ is that I haven’t got the knack yet of lighting a peat fire.’
Brendan shook his head. ‘I hear Connor coming.’
There was a low-toned exchange of words on the stairs, a glimpse of Annie as she passed the door of the office with a quick, nervous jerk of her head, and then Connor himself stood in the doorway.
‘Well, we are all assembled, I see. Good-morning, Mr. Praeger ‒ Meremount hasn’t been honoured with your presence for quite some time. Maura … Brendan … It’s very early in the day, isn’t it, for all this activity? What’s the occasion?’
I felt the thrust once more of his sureness, and of my own doubts. He moved into the room and even the presence of Praeger was made a little less important. He seemed to make his own pace; Brendan waited until Connor had picked up a pack of cigarettes from the mantel, offered one to me, which I refused, and then lighted his own, before he spoke.
‘Maura came to see me this morning, Connor ‒’
‘So I gathered. And woke all of us getting out of here, too.’
‘Blast it, man! ‒ will you shut up and listen! She came to tell me what happened here last night.’
‘Last night? ‒ yes, we had quite an eventful night. Nothing serious, though. Could have been. I’m thinking of suing Leo Dougherty for the bad job his men did in installing that gas fire. Of course, it was done in half an hour, more or less, but still … I suppose I should have noticed the state of it myself, but I never go into that bathroom, and every other thing in the house is falling apart …’
Edge of Glass Page 22
