The Fox's Walk

by Annabel Davis-Goff

  I do not know what Grandmother and Aunt Katie expected, although I am afraid there was an underlying hope—probably not articulated—that Major Somerville would suggest that Uncle Sainthill might not actually be dead: that he was missing in action, the chances that he might still be alive so slight that his commanding officer had decided not to foster false hope. Or maybe Somerville would bring a last message, even though Grandmother had been told that her son had died instantly, killed by a piece of flying shrapnel.

  Although I was as bored and curious as ever, and, as always, seeking information to help understand the rules and reasons of my new life, I would have preferred to have been—to use one of Aunt Katie’s expressions—a fly on the wall rather than to be briefly and silently present when Major Somerville arrived.

  Poor man! How he must have dreaded the visit. It is possible that this was not the only one of its kind he made during his leave: two stricken women in mourning, a pale and apparently orphaned child in a silent gloomy house, a Christmas tree in a corner of the dark hall adding an unnecessary touch of irony to his task. And the pathos of the possessions he returned: a fountain pen, a wallet, an address book, some letters, a photograph or two, and the cigarette case. He must have been grateful for Uncle William’s presence and for the courage of both the women, courage that did not allow them to break down or show emotion until after he had left; each spent the remainder of the day and evening in her room.

  The next morning, when I came downstairs, the cigarette case was in the glass-topped cabinet in the drawing room. Neither Grandmother nor Aunt Katie had come downstairs for breakfast so, after a moment or two, I turned the small dark brass key and carefully lifted the lid of the cabinet. Beside the silver cigarette case lay Uncle Sainthills Military Cross, its brightly striped ribbon flat above it. The cabinet also contained other, to me meaningless, mementos of family history: three other medals, older than the Military Cross; a miniature of a cardinal; a mother of pearl case for visiting cards; a small, leather-bound prayer book with gold-edged pages and a silk ribbon book mark; and a large, old-fashioned gold watch. There was also a small rough flint arrowhead and the heavy crude head of a Stone Age axe; both had been found late in the previous century when the path through the Ballydavid woods had been cleared and landscaped.

  I listened for footsteps in the hall before picking up the cigarette case, but there was only silence. Uncle Sainthills regimental crest was in raised silver on the front lid; I ran my fingers over its rough outlines before I pressed the catch to open the case. On the right-hand side an elasticated tape stretched from top to bottom, and there was still a flake or two of tobacco from the cigarettes the tape had once held in place. On the left was inscribed, in Aunt Katies handwriting: S.F.B., below it, 9.9.1914., and her initials, K.A.M. Aunt Katie had given the cigarette case to Uncle Sainthill on his twenty-first birthday, just before he left for France.

  Grandmother and Aunt Katie came downstairs in the late morning. During the course of the day—it was wet and windy and I spent much of it in the library with them—they talked about Major Somervilles visit. They seemed to take some comfort from the conventional words he had used to describe the respect and affection Uncle Sainthill had inspired in the regiment. They used also, I remember, to refer to the stock phrases in the letter Grandmother had received from his commanding officer. Imagining the words that he must have written, time and again, to bereaved parents, to have been inspired by my uncle’s unique qualities.

  I think sometimes of Major Somerville: He epitomized those inarticulate men whose courage lay not only in their deeds but in their silence. Probably not even Uncle William, who had himself been a soldier, could accurately imagine the conditions that Major Somerville had chosen not to describe—how Uncle Sainthill had lived and died, what he himself would return to, and where he, too, would in all probability die.

  The winter passed slowly. The days became shorter, and the time I spent indoors trying, not always successfully, to amuse myself became longer. It froze during most of January that year, but February was warmer, and on the second Wednesday of the month, the hounds met a little less than three miles from Ballydavid. It was decided that O’Neill should take me and Patience to the meet.

  I hardly slept the night before, my excitement equal parts fear and eager anticipation. I was afraid of getting hurt, making a fool of myself, or of incurring O’Neill’s wrath. I was well aware that these disasters were not mutually exclusive. Hunting was a privilege, one of the pleasures of growing up, and I was eager to claim it. There was no prestige attached to attending a meet on a leading rein, rather the reverse, but if all went well—if I didn’t fall off, if Patience didn’t kick a hound, if I sat up straight and looked neat—there was a possibility that the next time the hounds met close to Ballydavid I would be allowed half a days closely supervised hunting.

  I was dressed as smartly as though I were to accompany the hounds to the first covert. My new jacket and the small bowler hat had been Christmas presents from Grandmother and Aunt Katie. O’Neill, riding Mother’s hunter, held Patience on a leading rein. We set off down the avenue and onto the main road. Both horses danced nervously, overfed and anticipating the excitements of the field. I was unhappily aware that the road below me was considerably harder than the ground of the paddock where Patience usually deposited me. I was frightened, and both the animals simulated fear at whitewashed gates, farmyard geese, and passing bicyclists. O’Neill cursed and threatened them as they tossed their heads and tried to shy. I remained quiet and hung on tightly.

  The hounds were already in front of the pub at Herald’s Cross when we arrived. I could feel Patience’s excitement; her hooves touched the ground as though there were springs in them, and her nostrils flared. When we arrived at the meet, she and Benedict became even more excited, but they behaved in a disciplined manner as though they understood the importance of the occasion and were proud to be part of it.

  The pub at Herald’s Cross—a side road came over the brow of the hill opposite the pub to cross the main road, its continuation the thinly gravelled area where the horses and hounds were now gathered—was a low whitewashed building with small deeply set windows and a thatched roof. Above the door, in white on the dark brown lintel, was painted in neat National School handwriting the words: Patrick Horan, Licensed to Sell Wines, Spirits and Tobacco. There was a small tin sign outside the front door that also identified the pub as a sub-post office.

  The Gaultier Harriers was not a smart hunt. I had hoped for pink coats and ladies in elegant habits on perfectly turned-out horses. In the album at Ballydavid I had seen a photograph of Grandmother as a young woman thus attired. She was wearing a silk hat with a veil, and I could see that she had once been beautiful. The members of the Gaultier hunt were disappointingly ordinary. An older sister of Jarvis’s, on a skittish bay mare, conversed with one of two young English officers from the garrison at Waterford. These young soldiers had drawn one of the more enviable tours of duty, a season’s hunting and shooting in Ireland before they were inevitably posted to France. But I did not reflect on the nature of their reprieve; I was too young to have much sense of the future. Perhaps they were too. Instead I noticed how Jarvis’s sister sat on her mare and admired the neat and attractive way her hair was pinned into a glossy coil below the rim of her bowler hat.

  I was pleased and proud to be well turned-out and present at a meet, but there seemed to be no further pleasures or benefits. I wasn’t admired or made a fuss of; I evoked no curiosity and was offered no hospitality. The meet seemed to have much in common with tea with Grandmother and Aunt Katie; I should be seen and not heard, sit up straight and not fidget. Even though the sun was shining, it was a February morning and I could see the breath of the horses in the bright chilly air. My hands and feet were becoming increasingly cold.

  Only a few of the men and women dressed to hunt were on horseback; grooms held horses while the owners mingled outside the pub drinking and talking. Some of the men—farme
rs, I thought—held their own mounts casually by the reins as they stood around; there was the sound of masculine banter and laughter, the yipping of hounds, the pawing hooves of horses.

  O’Neill had dismounted and, no longer looking in my direction, was holding in one hand Benedict’s reins and Patience’s lead; in the other, he held a glass. The glass was, I now think, more a statement of status than refreshment. Farmers held glasses in their hands, grooms did not; whether the grooms would take a drink after the hunt moved off and before they followed with replacement horses was another matter.

  I had, I suppose, hoped there would be other children there. By now, even more than missing my family, I missed having someone to play with, someone to talk to, someone to discuss the mysterious ways of adults, or even someone more conversant with the rules to explain some of the nuances. There were two other children at the meet, but both were older than I was, and they handled their ponies with casual efficiency. Not a leading rein in sight.

  After twenty minutes, during which O’Neill walked about talking to neighbours and I alternated between boredom, fear, and self-consciousness, there was, without any visible signal, a general movement toward horses, mounting, and a greater sense of anticipation and excitement. It seemed as though my first exposure to the pleasures of foxhunting was almost over. I had experienced cold and fear; it didn’t seem quite enough.

  But there was still time for something to happen, and two things did; neither would have been of much interest to a modern child nor, indeed, to any of my contemporaries less isolated in an adult world than I was. I had expected to see at least one person whom I recognized—not with an expectation of conversation or even necessarily of acknowledgment, but in order to put hunting in context and to connect it to my life at Ballydavid.

  As the hounds, now beside themselves with excitement, began to move onto the road, Nicholas Rowe came out of the pub, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. As he passed O’Neill, he acknowledged him; a word or two may have been exchanged, but the lack of expression on his face gave the impression of powerful adversaries meeting on neutral territory. I watched to see, when O’Neill turned again toward me, if there was any further clue. But when he turned, so did I, our attention—and that of the horses—drawn to a motorcar braking and stopping noisily on the other side of the road.

  Motorcars were no longer a novelty; this was, after all, 1916, and Uncle William, for instance, had owned a series of them during the past ten years. But this car was large and stately and in every way superior to the Sunbeam. It was the kind of vehicle from which royalty might have emerged. Instead, a woman carrying a riding whip stepped out into the road. She was wearing riding clothes, but, unlike Jarvis’s sister whose riding habit skirt covered her boots, this woman wore what appeared to be men’s riding britches, although they were largely concealed by a long-skirted coat which came to the top of her boots. This was the sort of person I had hoped to see at the meet. Unfortunately, Patience, her controlled excitement getting the better of her, danced sideways into a sturdy brown cob.

  “Careful, he kicks,” the middle-aged man on the horse’s back said, not unkindly. I recognized him as the Resident Magistrate. A less temporary representative of the Crown than the young officers, Major Spenser was responsible for overseeing the rural courts in his district. The perennially popular stories of Somerville and Ross made it inevitable that an element of the ridiculous was associated with his position. There was a small red ribbon attached to the top of his horse’s tail. I yanked Patience’s mouth in the direction we had come from and saw with relief that O’Neill had returned.

  The woman, who was wearing dark red lipstick, crossed the road to where a groom was standing with her horse. No words were exchanged as he gave her a leg up and she struggled onto the back of a solid gray hunter. Everyone knew that a Master of Foxhounds in County Cork had, not so long before, taken his hounds home rather than allow a woman who rode astride to hunt with his pack. The groom then retreated to stand beside the car parked carelessly on the road. He lit a cigarette and watched, expressionless. O’Neill, too, was expressionless, not acknowledging this last minute arrival.

  The horse danced around as the woman turned to follow the hounds.

  “Stop that, damn you,” she said. It was the first time I had heard a woman curse; I was very shocked. I didn’t recognize her accent; it was neither English nor Irish. The old ladies within earshot had pursed lips and disapproving eyes; I couldn’t tell whether they were more shocked by her words or her painted face. Every man at the meet, whether looking at this strange woman or not, was expressionless, and I knew she had their full attention.

  “Who is that—lady?” I asked O’Neill.

  “That’s Mrs. Hitchcock, miss,” he said, and added after a telling pause, “She’s an American.”

  It was the first time O’Neill had called me “miss,” and it was the first coded exchange between us. The horses and hounds were moving off, and we watched as they streamed along the stony dirt road leading up the hill to the first covert. Soon they were out of sight and we turned for home. From time to time, we could hear the huntsman’s horn and the baying and crying of hounds; Benedict and Patience were reluctant to leave them as was, I think, O’Neill. He was short-tempered with them and impatient with me all the way back to Ballydavid.

  Mrs. O’Neill was waiting in the stable yard. It had started to drizzle, and she was sheltering in the whitewashed archway outside her house. Her hands were worrying the apron she wore over her black dress, clasping and unclasping the crumpled, worn material. She did not step into the yard, but both O’Neill and I were aware that she had something important to tell him.

  “You run along now, Miss Alice,” he said. “I’ll see to Patience.” I was curious, but I was very cold. My string gloves were damp and my fingers were stiff and sore from holding the reins; Patience had become suddenly enthusiastic about going home when we reached the front gates of Ballydavid. I dismounted and stretched my aching legs. O’Neill took the ring of Patience’s bit, and I walked stiffly through the passageway into the kitchen courtyard. The dairy and the laundry were both sources of familiar and not entirely pleasant odors. It was now just after midday, and the predominating smell was that of carbolic soap and the heavy cooling damp of the mornings wash.

  Using the scraper and mat outside the kitchen door, I cleaned as much of the stableyard mud as I could off my boots and went into the warm and welcoming kitchen. At first it was hard to see, the overcast day outside far brighter than the large room lit only by small windows and the glow of the kitchen fire. I glanced up at the drying rack held overhead by two stout cords. On it were sheets and pillowcases, and among the jumble of household wash I could see one of my night dresses.

  “Run along, Alice, your Uncle William’s come for lunch and it’s ready to set on the table.”

  Bridie was ladling steaming potatoes out of the pot into a serving bowl. I hurried up the back stairs, wondering why I should be Miss Alice outdoors, presumably on the grounds of one very slight exposure to hunting, but indoors still addressed as a small child.

  I changed my clothes quickly, brushed my hair, washed my hands and face, and was in the drawing room five minutes later. My fingers and toes were still cold and, since I had forgotten my handkerchief, I sniffed surreptitiously to keep my cold nose from dripping. But I did not place myself in front of the smouldering turf fire. Instead I kissed Uncle William, avoiding as best I could his prickly gray moustache.

  Grandmother, having noticed that I had changed properly and was in time for lunch, gave me a small nod. She did not ask how I had enjoyed the meet or even if I had managed not to disgrace the family. I perched on the edge of a chair and waited for the grown-ups to continue with their conversation.

  There was the short silence that told me my arrival had necessitated a change of subject. I looked sideways and saw the suggestion of an enquiry on my uncle’s face, and then in the other direction to witness an even slighter shake of m
y grandmother’s head.

  Uncle William turned to me and smiled; I knew then that whatever they had been talking about pertained to me, rather than it having been one of the myriad largely innocuous subjects that were either none of my business or from which I had to be sheltered.

  “Not blooded yet?” he asked; it was a rhetorical question.

  I shook my head shyly, thinking that the previous subject was less likely to upset me than was the reminder of the ritualistic smearing of fox’s blood on my face that would take place the first time I had ridden well enough to keep up with the hounds and be in at the kill. I preferred not to think about the blood-spilling aspects of blood sports and reminded myself that it would take some time and many riding lessons to gain the proficiency that would bring me to the point of that disgusting ritual. To change the just-changed subject I offered a small piece of news of my own.

  “Mrs. O’Neill was waiting for O’Neill when we got back.” I knew what I had seen held a significance that I would not be able to work out for myself.

  The short silence was broken by Aunt Katie when she realized that neither her sister nor her stepson, to both of whom she was in the habit of deferring, was going to comment or explain.

  “Tom O’Neill has been wounded,” Aunt Katie said. “Mrs. O’Neill got a letter while O’Neill was at the meet.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised and confused.

  Again no one spoke for a little while. Straining to remember, I thought that the last time I had seen Tom O’Neill had been when I’d seen Oonagh on the avenue and described her as a tiger. My memories of him were clear but limited. I knew that, while Grandmother and Aunt Katie wished the O’Neill family no misfortune, they were imagining a life in which my uncle Sainthill had been wounded, rather than killed.