‘Lady Maude …?’ I had never heard his tone so tender.
Praeger pushed past us. ‘Let me, please, I have dealt with many sick people …’ Clumsily, he also lowered himself to his knees, accepting help from Brendan without demur. I thought of all the people, sick and dead, that he must have handled in the years in the concentration camp when I saw the way his fingers reached expertly for the pulse, the way he bent to listen for breath, the way he pulled the purple robe aside and laid his ear against the thin old chest in its shrunken flannel gown. I was glad that he did not open the neck of the gown; for Lady Maude that would have been the ultimate indignity.
At last he straightened and raised his head. He twisted until he looked, not at Connor, but at me.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that Lady Maude is dead.’
It was Connor, then, whose fingers stroked the eyelids closed. He looked at the face for a time, unsoftened still in death, as if even in that final moment, she had never been able to let go; then he also looked up at me.
‘If this had happened a week ago you need never have had to go through all this. You need not have been dragged into all that you saw and heard today. But now she’s dead, and maybe she’s almost the last of her kind. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing, after all, to have known her.’ From the way he spoke it could have been possible to believe that he was sorry she was gone.
Then he added, ‘She was a mad old woman ‒ madder than any of us knew until the night Lotti died. She never did tell me, you know, about the bridge.’
He was safe. The dead lips would not move to deny what he had said. He was the only person who knew with certainty, now, what was the truth.
Eleven
Mrs. O’Shea was wakened. Dr. Donnelly arrived and confirmed what Otto Praeger had said.
‘Impossible to say which came first ‒ the fall or the heart failure. She has no serious injuries so I can safely write the certificate for heart failure, and you’ll have no trouble about an autopsy. Well, it had to come, didn’t it? ‒ she’ll be missed around here. No one ever saw much of her, except at auctions, and even then she didn’t mix very much ‒ but she was someone to point out and talk about. Ah, well, the world’s getting to be a terribly dull place with all the real characters leaving us. Will you be staying on now, Miss D’Arcy?’
‘No, I won’t be staying.’
‘You’ll be closing the glassworks, then?’
‘I have nothing to do with the glassworks, Dr. Donnelly. They don’t belong to me.’
He shook his head, and I saw that he didn’t believe me.
The last moment of comparative calm that day came when Connor had carried Lady Maude’s body back to her bed, and left her to Mrs. O’Shea’s ministrations. Until then, Otto Praeger had sat quietly in Connor’s office; waiting for Dr. Donnelly to be finished with the formalities, being served abominable coffee by Annie who was weeping with a kind of hiccuping sob, but who refused to give up her tasks.
‘You’ll not be sendin’ me to me room, Miss Maura? ‒ sure that would be hard. I’ll sit with her ladyship for a while when Mrs. O’Shea has her ready, and say a Rosary for her, although she’d not thank me for such Popish practices, as she used to call them. But I’ve served Tyrells all me life, and I’m of more help down here than up in my room lamentin’.’
After Dr. Donnelly had left, Praeger settled at the telephone, and from then on there was little time for anyone to sit alone, or to weep. ‘You will let me help you?’ he asked, more of me than of Connor. ‘We had many differences, Lady Maude and I, but an old enemy is almost as well known as an old friend. My generation is perhaps better attuned to the ritual of death than yours.’
‘Of course, whatever you want to do … and Connor thinks best. But will there be so much formality?’
‘Many people will come ‒ older people who will expect certain things. Do you not agree with that, Connor?’
He shrugged. ‘There’ll be a lot of curiosity ‒ especially since Maura is here. And there’ll be a few who are genuinely sorry ‒ not about Lady Maude, because she had no friends that I knew of, only people who were afraid of her. But for some of them her going will really mean the very last of the old days gone too, and they’ll be sorry about that. For herself ‒’ he shrugged again. ‘Yes, I suppose it might please her if the formalities were observed.’
Praeger now regarded himself as being in charge. He sent to Castle Tyrell for Fräulein Schmidt and O’Keefe. They conferred together in Connor’s office, and then O’Keefe left again, a list from Fräulein Schmidt in his hand. Already the first of the farm workers from Castle Tyrell were arriving. They came and spoke to myself and Connor, caps in hand, before going to Praeger. ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ they said. ‘God rest her soul.’ And then they listened to Praeger’s instructions; it was Saturday, and a free day for many of them, but the planned trip to town did not compare with the interest of having a hand in the preparations for the funeral of Lady Maude Sheridan. ‘It’s going to be a decent old-fashioned send-off, so it is,’ I heard one of them say approvingly. There was a kind of stunned wonder among them at the piles of furniture in the hall and the dining-room, which they had had to walk through to go to see Praeger, and then a kind of antic enjoyment in carrying most of it out to the lorries that were coming from Praeger’s estate and from a mover in Cloncath whom he had already engaged. ‘Just so there will be a little space,’ Praeger pleaded. ‘Everything will be returned immediately after the funeral. See, Fräulein Schmidt is taking an inventory as each piece leaves. We will try to create a little order before the first callers arrive.’
‘Just so long as the glassworks doesn’t get the bill,’ Connor said. Praeger nodded briefly, and went off to check what was being done in the dining-room.
‘Isn’t this a little too much?’ I said to Connor. ‘Lady Maude wouldn’t have liked all this fuss, I think.’
‘She wouldn’t have liked the expense of it ‒ but yes, I think she might have liked the fuss. Befitting a Tyrell would have been her sentiment, I think. But, of course, she couldn’t have expected to command the services of a genius at organisation, as Praeger undoubtedly is. Let him have his way ‒ whatever he does will be superbly done, and done three times as efficiently as anyone else could manage it. After a fashion, I suppose he’s enjoying himself. He’ll organise a funeral for Lady Maude that he’d like to have for himself ‒ except that when he dies he won’t have four hundred years of history to follow him to the grave.’ By late afternoon, Praeger was very tired; I could see it in the slowness of his movements, the efforts to stem the fatigue with the endless cups of coffee that O’Keefe now made and brought to him. He still talked on the telephone, and he still gave his orders crisply. And he had wrought a transformation.
Six gardeners from Tyrell had weeded the gravel sweep before the house, mown the grass and tidied the beds; pot plants had been brought to place at the bottom of the steps, the long grass on the sides of the avenue had been scythed to make more space for parking. The hall was almost empty of furniture, except those chairs in the best state of repair. For the first time I saw revealed the splendid proportions of the room, the beauty of the Adam mantels, the long empty sweep to the staircase. The Sheridan chandeliers had been taken down and washed, and four electricians were attempting to make as many of the lights work as possible. It seemed to me that the whole staff from Tyrell was there. O’Keefe presided over a strangely bare dining-room ‒ the four sideboards had remained, and one long table; the chairs were set in groups about the rooms. The tables and buffets were laid with fine white damask, and shining silver ‒ Meremount’s or Castle Tyrell’s I didn’t know. The coffee and tea urns waited, and out in Lotti’s unfinished kitchen, the cases of whiskey and sherry were unpacked.
‘How can you let him?’ I said to Connor. ‘If he weren’t here to provide all these things, would you do it?’
‘Of course not. Lady Maude’s estate can’t afford it ‒ nor can I. But he can, and he wants to. I ha
ve no false pride, Maura. I leave that to the Tyrells. If you want to stop it, you do it. After all, you’re the closest relative.’
I didn’t stop it, though. It had taken on a momentum of its own, and Connor had touched the heart of it in saying that Praeger was doing it for himself. Somehow I also had been caught up in Praeger’s idea; I didn’t want the house, with its strange jumble of contents to be exclaimed and laughed over; I didn’t want to hear the sharp-pointed comments which came so readily to these tongues; I did not want Lady Maude to go meanly, without notice.
Finally, the hothouses of Castle Tyrell were emptied to deck the drawing-room where the simple coffin now stood. Praeger’s staff now withdrew, all save those who were to help in the kitchen; Lotti’s bedroom and bathroom had been opened for the ladies, and the stairs were at last clear of
their accumulation of hazards. Revealed now, throughout the house, were the threadbare carpets, the peeling paint, the long cracks in the walls, but all of it softened by Praeger’s flowers. With the departure of the Castle Tyrell staff, the house was strangely quiet; it was bare and beautiful. Praeger
walked at last through the empty quiet rooms with me, pridefully. ‘Ach, how it can look, this house! The Old Lady does not go off unworthily. Look, already the first cars come … I will go home. I will come on Monday.’
‘Monday? Why won’t you be here tomorrow? ‒ after all you have done for us you should …’
‘Tomorrow is for the Tyrells and the Sheridans ‒ and the Irish. Not for foreigners. O’Keefe has instructions to send for anything further he requires. On Monday I will be at the funeral. You have O’Keefe to help you ‒ and Connor.’
The emptiness had been more than just the strange new bareness of the house. ‘Where is Brendan?’
‘Brendan? Brendan left a few hours ago ‒ to get a plane to Manchester. He goes to Bristol, I think. You were upstairs. He asked me to say good-bye.’
Praeger watched my face for a few seconds; I didn’t know what it showed him; I didn’t know what I felt. O’Keefe appeared to see Praeger to his car, and Connor joined me in the hall, wearing a dark suit. I had on the black skirt and sweater that Praeger had telephoned for from Cloncath, the tucks in the skirt hastily sewn by Mrs. O’Shea, who had welcomed the excuse to stay a few hours longer; the hem of the skirt decently came to mid-knee. We were as ready as Praeger’s genius and money could make us in a few hours. Connor pronounced the names of the first people to arrive to me, and in their gaze, as they made their formal condolences, I could already see the speculations grow.
I heard it spoken plainly enough when I went upstairs later for a few minutes’ break from the flow of people. The voice that came from Lotti’s bedroom was clear and carrying. ‘Which one, do you think, did the Old Lady leave everything to? But perhaps, then, Connor is clever enough to snare the second one ‒ keep it in the family, you might say.’ And Brendan ‒ Brendan had left me to it. As I stood before the mirror in my room to put fresh powder on my face I saw the sudden welling of tears that had nothing to do with Lady Maude.
II
All day on Sunday the people came and went. I fell into the rhythm of it; the names spoken by Connor, or, because they belonged to Lady Maude’s early years and were unknown to him, speaking their own names ‒ so many of them, and only a few was I ever able to recall along with the face; the acceptance of the condolences, ‘Sad ‒ and you so recently here’; the appraisals, ‘So you are Blanche’s girl …?’ From a few I received disapproval, the sense that Blanche had done the unforgivable and that I must forever share the blame ‒ as from the old man, thin as a rail and taller still than most men present, who peered at me but didn’t offer his hand. ‘It’s a damn’ shame,’ he said, ‘that you left it so late to come ‒ Maude Tyrell has spent too many years alone.’ His name was John Carew, and afterwards I remembered his face very well. I accepted the burden of blame from him and those who thought as he did, though it wasn’t mine; it was something I did now for Blanche with more will and understanding than I would have been capable of a week ago. I was haunted by the memory of Lady Maude’s slow ascent of the stairs, the infinite loneliness of the action, with her words still hanging on the air, ‘You gave me nothing. I owe you nothing.’ I was now a little frantic to begin to make some deposit against my own future.
The hall and dining-room were filled with the low murmur of voices, the discreet clinking of tea cups and glasses. People paused briefly in the drawing-room; there was the heavy smell of too many flowers, and the smell of rain-damp clothes, for it rained all day. A fire burned in the dining-room and in the two fireplaces in the hall. A fire burned also in the drawing-room, but neither it nor the masses of flowers did much to relieve the deep sense of austerity and aloofness conveyed by that plain coffin in the midst of the luxuries Praeger had provided. Through the long day his staff attended to what had to be done with astonishing smoothness ‒ only one ripple disturbed the afternoon ‒ at the moment when Lotti’s Sapphire, perched on the mantel in the dining-room, reached out with an inquisitive paw towards a shining ornament on a woman’s hat. There was a shriek and a glass was dropped, but even that excitement dropped back quickly into the general low-level murmur. Annie, wearing her good black dress, but insisting on retaining her apron ‘‒I know my place, Miss Maura’ ‒ had nothing to do but sit in a corner of the drawing-room, counting the people as they came and went, the rosary slipping endlessly through her fingers. And through the whole day Connor was there beside me, speaking names, smoothing my way, insisting that I come into the office occasionally to sit by the fire there, pouring me a brandy or bringing me tea and guarding the door so that I could have a few minutes of quiet. I wished that I could have drawn some comfort from him, but I didn’t. It was a lonely and bewildering place I dwelt in that day.
They went at last, all the people whose names and faces I never would remember, leaving me with the numbness that was as much of spirit as of body, the feeling that I was participating in a ritual as a stand-in for someone else ‒ not for Blanche, because Blanche had rejected the role ‒ but for the person I might have been, and the person Lady Maude might have been to me, if I had come to this many years ago. But I was not the beloved granddaughter to whom the proffered sympathy would have been appropriate, but the stranger of her accusation. That it had not been of my choice seemed to make little difference. We had been strangers, alien and in the end, hostile. It was for this fact, not for death, that I grieved.
Almost the last one to leave was the Reverend Stanton; he had not shaken my first instinctive liking for him by offering any of the conventional phrases; rather, during the afternoon, he had helped me out sometimes when talk became difficult, knowing and easing my ignorance of things local and Irish. Now he said simply, ‘So I shall be seeing you in church after all. But the Lord has chosen a hard way to bring you there.’
Most of the lights were out, the fires dying; O’Keefe and the rest of Praeger’s people had left. Annie wanted to sit up in the drawing-room with Bridget to keep her company. ‘Sure, I’ll not sleep in any case, Miss Maura,’ As I went up the stairs the cat brushed against my ankle, giving its low, keening cry; I gathered her up in my aims. Then, as I reached the first landing, Connor’s voice came from below.
‘Good-night, Maura.’ He stood with one hand on the newel post, making no move to come up; he did not show the strain of the long day, nor of the waiting he had to endure. James O’Neil, Lady Maude’s solicitor, had spoken to us today; tomorrow, after the funeral, he would open and read to us Lady Maude’s will.
‘Good-night,’ I replied, faintly, and turned to start up the next flight.
‘Maura?’
I looked back. He was darkly handsome, a strong man who did not reveal his strain, and who did not lose sight of his desires, his purpose. ‘Yes?’
‘You did very well, today. Far better than anyone could have expected. You see, it isn’t so difficult to fit in ‒ not such a bad thing to be a Sheridan, and a Tyrell.’
The cat moved restively in my arms. ‘It’s too late, Connor,’ I said. ‘It’s far too late.’
III
It was a joyous spring day, and the sombre black of the people who came to Meremount seemed out of place; warm sun bathed the sparkling green of the fields and the trees, the song of a hundred birds was a loud and exultant anthem as the coffin was carried from the house between the two rows of people who clustered on the steps and out on the gravel circle. Somewhere Praeger had found a horse-drawn hearse; it waited now behind a pair of matched blacks, black-plumed, their coats the glossy hue of a raven in the sunlight. Most of the people who had gathered at Meremount, Connor and I among them, walked the mile to the village of Fermoyle; here was the parish church of the Tyrells, the church which Tyrell money had built too big and too grand. Sheridan Glass was closed for the day, and there was no work on Praeger’s estate; I saw many of the faces I remembered from the works among the crowd, and every last one of Praeger’s people had turned out. Women came from the cottages along the way, blessing themselves; the murmur ‘God rest her soul,’ ran like a refrain from one cottage to another. In Fermoyle the shops were shuttered as the procession moved through; the doorways and windows were filled with faces, some sympathetic, some merely curious. At the church many more people waited; the churchyard and side streets of the village were filled with cars. At the church itself the ancient division of Ireland became apparent. The Catholics remained outside. But for once Mr. Stanton had his church filled. They were mostly of Lady Maude’s generation, old people, the remnants of the Protestant Ascendancy, people who no longer mattered very much in Irish life except as a reminder of what used to be. Many of them had come, Connor whispered to me, half-way across Ireland to see Maude Tyrell buried. In death she went back to the Tyrells, where she had always belonged. The Sheridans, Connor said, were mostly buried in Cloncath.
Across the grave, as Mr. Stanton read the prayers, looking up I was shocked by the intensity of the gaze of an elderly woman, a stare both devouring and hostile; as our eyes met she turned her head with great deliberation, her lips set in a tight line of anger and old bitterness. I leaned close to Connor and whispered, ‘Who is …?’ He had seen the exchange. ‘Mrs. Geraldine Findlay ‒ the mother of the man Blanche Sheridan was married to. I think she and Lady Maude used to be close friends before it happened …’
Edge of Glass Page 25
