Despite the novelty of the Lancia, Jarvis remained the center of my attention. It seemed unlikely, though possible, that he would spend the afternoon inspecting the motorcar. I feared that he would jump into the driver’s seat and simulate driving it; fortunately these were the days before the self-starter, so there was no question of Jarvis making a sudden Mr. Toad-like move and the Lancia disappearing into the Ballydavid woods, leaving me to explain. I began to remember that, however heroic Jarvis seemed to me, being responsible for him was exhausting.
After a minute or so, Jarvis having done nothing more provocative than stroll around the Lancia and kick its tires, I again became aware of the progress of the party behind me. The first set was finished, and Grandmother was organizing Inez and Rosamund to play in the second match. Rosamund Gwynne was—if she were indeed to marry into our family—rather too much the center of attention. The noisy arrival of the car, her companion, her loud and unattractive laughter now followed by the demand that Captain Blaine should be her doubles partner, were earning her disapproving looks from the old ladies. Inez, well able to take care of herself and better acquainted with the conventions of provincial Irish life, summoned the Resident Magistrate—a middle-aged bachelor whom I recognized from the meet at Herald’s Cross, the owner of the horse with the red ribbon on its tail—from the shade in which he was standing with some other men, smoking to keep away the midges. He arrived at Inez’s side as Grandmother glanced around randomly for a partner for her, and a moment or two later all four were on the court.
Grandmother was now free to greet Mrs. Coughlan, to whom she had not spoken a word since the day I had run away from Ballydavid and found myself a favored guest in her house. Mrs. Coughlan was dramatically dressed, but as I remember it, not in a contemporary fashion. There was always a suggestion of a costume party in her choice of clothing; it seems to me now that at some point in her life—most likely before Major Coughlan married her and brought her home to Ireland—she had admired a picture of an eighteenth-century portrait in an illustrated paper and decided that, if she ever found herself in a position to dress in such a manner, she would. Which is not to say that, when the opportunity presented itself, she abandoned such other dramatic possibilities as her crimson mourning dress or the widow’s weeds she had worn for Kitchener.
I wondered if I should say how-do-you-do to Mrs. Coughlan, but guests were arriving all at once, among them the Bryces. Aunt Katie indicated my presence to Clodagh, and she and Miss Kingsley came to join Jarvis and me beside the Lancia.
Clodagh and I greeted each other with tepid enthusiasm—moral cowardice on my part and, I think, an already ingrained conventional streak on hers. Jarvis glanced at her and said nothing, although he answered some question Miss Kingsley asked him about the car politely enough.
“Mrs. Martyn said we should go and play rounders on the other lawn,” Clodagh said. Her voice seemed unenthusiastic, and I remembered how deliberately she could refuse to be entertained.
“Did she say we had to?” Jarvis asked.
“No.” Clodagh was startled. “She thought we might like to.”
“Well,” Jarvis said, “then I’ll just stay here and watch my sister win the Brits.”
“‘Beat’, I think you mean, Jarvis,” Miss Kingsley said. “One wins a race, one beats one’s opponent.”
I glanced at Miss Kingsley and saw she was going to correct only Jarvis’s choice of words. She sat down beside Jarvis on the grass at the top of the incline that enclosed the tennis court and the area in which the spectators were sitting. We had the equivalent of balcony seats and the advantage of a cool breeze.
For the first time in the annals of the Ballydavid tennis party, the attention of the guests was completely focused on the game. The symbolic aspects of the match were apparent to everyone, although what it symbolized may have varied slightly, depending on the spectator. From where we were sitting, it seemed clear enough. The brash, unquestioningly self-confident interlopers were being challenged by a member of a no longer powerful old Irish Catholic family whose children showed a tendency to revert to a former primitive natural state, and by a representative of the Crown who, although charged with upholding the law and supervising the dispensation of justice, understood his place in the subtle hierarchy of Irish society. Major Spenser, the RM, lived a quiet life, largely devoted to sport, in a plain, gray, famously cold house on the Dungarvan road. He was a good fifteen years older than Captain Blaine, but he had kept fit and knew how to pace himself.
Rosamund Gwynne played well; I was surprised how well. I had expected her to be less physical. I had, I suppose, thought her strength to be that of the will. We watched the game silently. Clodagh, I assume, was on the side of Rosamund—her mothers friend, a woman who made no bones of preferring her to me—and her partner, upholders of the standards in which she believed and which, if they lasted, would benefit her. Jarvis, of course, supported his sister, but with an intensity I would not have expected. Miss Kingsley and Mother, who drifted over during the second game, remained on the surface neutral, applauding volleys and the better shots of both sides, but I knew they wanted Inez and the RM to win and, even more, for Rosamund Gwynne to lose.
In Mother’s wake came Noreen, sent by Aunt Katie with a rug for us to sit on, although it had been a good week since the grass had last approached dampness, and, soon after refreshments had been served to the more formally seated spectators below us, Bridie brought us a tray loaded with tomato sandwiches, cake, and lemonade. I remember the next hour and a half, sitting on the rug in the sun with Mother and Jarvis, watching the match, as one of my life’s moments of pure uncomplicated happiness. I was comfortable beside my gentle mother and happy in Jarvis’s unspoken approbation—happy with the picnic and the warm summer afternoon and the excitement of being part of a festive grown-up party. I was proud of Ballydavid at a moment when the house and household was shown at its old-fashioned hospitable finest.
This memory marks for me the beginning of loss: an hour or two on a sunny afternoon of pure happiness of a kind we would never again find. I am not yet sixty years old, but of that afternoon Clodagh is the only one that I know still to be alive; we, perhaps because of that, still exchange unenthusiastic Christmas cards. The happiness of the moment is not even an entirely accurate memory; much had already been lost. Although I remember Grandmother and Mother both taking pleasure in the party, they had already lost my uncle Sainthill and pure happiness could never again exist for them. The Great War had taken him; when it ended—a little more than two years after that August afternoon—the way we lived would change forever with the Anglo-Irish War, a time popularly and euphemistically referred to as the Troubles, a time of assassination and the burning of houses. Then would come the Civil War. There was already a foreshadowing of these unhappy times in the isolated incidents of violence—or the threats of violence—that occurred in the wake of the Rising. Even if all that had not lain before us, even without a second great world war to slaughter the finest of another generation of young men, the best it seems to me we can, even in the happiest of times, hope for is gradual loss.
Inez and the RM prevailed. It was a popular victory, although, apart from Jarvis, the spectators were too polite to appear partisan. I don’t think that Rosamund and her partner were beaten only by their opponents’ greater experience of the uneven local court. The two couples were more evenly matched than was usually the case at Grandmother’s tennis parties. Rosamund may also have become gradually aware, as the excitement of the drive from Waterford in the open Lancia wore off, that her appearance on the court with the dashing young officer was not admired by the intolerant and judgmental old cats who were watching. Her tennis dress, the height of fashion in England and even perhaps in closer Dublin, was shorter and more revealing of the outlines of her attractive young figure than County Waterford was used to; it seemed immodest beside that of Inez, by local standards a modern young woman, who wore a skirt long enough to reveal only her slim ankles and
buckskin shoes. The old ladies thought Rosamund fast. I now think she was, instead, arrogant and had seen no reason to sacrifice the fun of flirtation and attention to make a good impression on a bunch of shabby old ladies. Rosamund was from a good family, but a good English family. It cut less ice in County Waterford than she supposed.
She didn’t, I think, imagine that the old ladies’ opinion would make any difference to her life, and, as it turned out, she was right. But it makes me wonder how much she really cared for my Uncle Hubert. Was her less than discreet behavior that afternoon merely the manifestation of high spirits? Or was she, without Uncle Hubert completely hooked, prepared to entertain the possibility of another choice? Or was she merely flirting?
Inez and her partner thanked each other and separated after they left the court. Captain Blaine fetched a glass of lemonade for Rosamund; I saw a silent moment between them before they became part of a larger group that almost immediately dispersed as the new game, of a staid and known middle-aged quantity, began. There was a general movement, further refreshments were offered, and some of the guests wandered toward the garden.
Major Spenser, still tightening the screws on the press of his racquet, came over to greet my mother who congratulated him on his game. Clodagh, discontented, went to look for her mother; Miss Kingsley did not rise to accompany her. Instead, she and I lazily picked daisies from the less recently mown grass behind us, and she made them into a chain she draped around my neck. She was, I could see, aware of Major Spenser’s presence.
“Cubbing begins next week,” Major Spenser said to my mother. “I hope you’re planning to come out with us.”
I glanced up at Mother. The question was of some interest to me and I wanted to read her expression as well as hear her reply. Cubbing began the following week; my birthday was the week after. So was the beginning of the new school term. I didn’t know whether I—wc—would still be in Ireland for my birthday. If we were, I hoped that in recognition of my greater maturity and as part of my birthday celebrations, I would be allowed to go cubbing.
Mother laughed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “O’Neill has clipped my hunter and the pony, but they’re both a long way from being fit.”
I was trying to pluck up courage to add my voice to that of Major Spenser’s when I became aware of Mrs. Coughlan’s approach. She was carrying a lovely pink parasol. I stood up to greet her.
“My little girl,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I last saw you. Wherever have you been?”
“Hello, Mrs. Coughlan,” I said breathlessly. I had not seen Mrs. Coughlan since my birthday party, and I was not sure of the current state of relations between her and my grandmother. Jarvis slid silently past me; he seemed to be going in the direction of the front door.
“Let us go for a little walk,” she said, twirling her lowered parasol so that I could admire it. The pink silk was covered with white embroidered rosettes; I wondered where she had come by it. “You can tell me all about what is going on in London. Have you seen any good plays?”
I experienced my usual mixture of flattered delight and confused alarm at Mrs. Coughlan’s assumption that she and I would converse on equal terms; after a moment I remembered that my part of the conversation, not a significant one, was largely ignored by her. Instead of being forced to admit that we hadn’t seen each other for almost a year not because I had been leading a busy social life in London but because Grandmother had not considered herself to be on speaking terms with Mrs. Coughlan, I was, a moment later, listening to an account of a concert at which she herself had sung and after which attention had been paid to her by a duke. I longed to ask where—in a drawing room or at Wigmore Hall? Waterford or St. Petersburg? They all seemed equally probable. And when? A week ago or when she was a girl? And if the latter, how long ago was that? Then we were interrupted by Captain Blaine.
“Seraphina,” he said, kissing the back of her lace-gloved hand. “How enchanting and cool you look. Who is your little friend?”
“My name is Alice,” I said quickly, in case she hadn’t remembered.
“The last time we met,” Mrs. Coughlan said, “you promised to take me for a ride in your motorcar.”
“So I did,” said Captain Blaine. “Why don’t we go for a spin now? We’ll take—Alice as a chaperone.”
Mrs. Coughlan’s cries of girlish laughter—I wonder now how old she was; maybe she was still young enough to have been attractive to Blaine—were interrupted by the arrival of Rosamund. She was red in the face and her hair was damp and frizzy. Her expression told me she was still suffering from defeat, and she looked more determined than usual.
“Good afternoon, Miss Gwynne,” I piped up politely, but, when she seemed not to hear me, I added, not quite so innocently, “I am sorry you were beaten.”
She glanced at me briefly, her expression more one of distraction than dislike.
“And Rosamund, of course,” Blaine said.
Introductions took place; it seemed the Bryces and the Coughlans did not know each other socially. I took note of that fact and of Mrs. Coughlan’s first name and that Captain Blaine had addressed her by it and stored it at the back of my mind for consideration later. Then we all strolled toward the Lancia.
There was a pause, slightly awkward, while Blaine decided how to accommodate two large egos and a superfluous little girl in his motorcar.
“You,” Captain Blaine said to Mrs. Coughlan, “will sit here”—he indicated the back seat—“like the Vicereine. Alice will sit beside you. Rosamund, you sit next to me.”
He opened the doors and a moment later we were all seated. Despite the heat, Rosamund allowed him to drape his khaki greatcoat over her shoulders so that she should not catch a chill after her exertions. While Captain Blaine went round to the front of the car to start it, Rosamund turned the collar of the coat up and put on his uniform cap, adjusting it to a saucy angle. She looked very fetching in a boyish way, but I knew her action would earn her a couple more black marks from the critical eyes of the old ladies. It was not until Blaine had swung the starting handle vigorously a couple of times that anyone seemed to notice what we were doing. He leapt into the car as the engine caught, found the gear, and the car lurched forward; all eyes turned to us as he drove across the gravel. I saw O’Neill and Jarvis just outside the hall door, O’Neill’s expression stern as he addressed Jarvis. A moment later, Jarvis launched himself across the gravel and, like a monkey, gripped the canvas of the folded down roof of the Lancia, and, with a foot on the fender, attached himself to the back of the vehicle before it gathered speed. As we swung onto the slope of the avenue, I saw Miss Kingsley still sitting on the rug with Major Spenser beside her.
Patience and Mother’s hunter, grazing in the field by the avenue, raised their heads for a startled moment before turning and dashing to the far end of the pasture; I imagined O’Neill would have something to say on that subject when we came home. I wondered how far we were going and for a nervous moment whether Captain Blaine was planning to return. Perhaps he would leave me with Mrs. Coughlan at her house, while he and Rosamund Gwynne, sulky from their defeat, returned to the garrison in Waterford. Maybe Grandmother and my mother would again have to come and take me home.
We passed out of sunshine into the shade of the avenue as we turned the bend and drove out of sight of the house. The speed was exhilarating, but the noise of the motorcar and the lack of any barrier between me and outside made me afraid; that Jarvis was insecurely attached to the back also terrified me. I sensed, when we came out onto the road, that Captain Blaine would drive faster and that his other two companions, competing with each other, would encourage him to show off. I began to wish I had stayed at home.
Rosamund Gwynne laughed and with one hand held her military cap in place. Mrs. Coughlan, upright, towered above me; she had taken Blaine’s reference to the Vicereine to heart. I turned to look at Jarvis, unsure whether it would be more dangerous for him to try to clamber over the back into
the seat with me and Mrs. Coughlan or to continue hanging onto the back while Blaine gathered speed. That the folded canvas projected more than a foot from the back of the Lancia made his position more vulnerable and less easy to negotiate.
My head was turned toward him when the first shot was fired. It didn’t have an immediate significance for me; it seemed one more loud noise emanating from the engine of the Lancia. I felt the car swerve and saw that we were not going to clear the gateposts that marked the end of the avenue, behind which lay the Waterford-Woodstown road. I huddled down instinctively for protection and found my face in the lace of Mrs. Cochlan’s dress as I heard the second, third, and fourth shots.
WHEN I BECAME conscious again, I was lying on the grass verge that Pat had so carefully mown the day before. Since I could see the greater part of the tennis party streaming down the avenue—only three or four men, two of them in uniform, and Inez de Courcy were already with us—I knew that very little time had passed. I was most aware that sound had begun to come back into the summer afternoon. After the car had bounced off the open wrought iron gate, it skidded across the stony packed earth of the avenue before hitting the opposite gatepost and turning on its side. And after the crash there was silence; only a hiss of what might have been steam escaping from the damaged engine filled the silent afternoon, taking the place of the usual, hardly noticed sounds of birds and the countryside. I felt an intense awareness of every detail of my surroundings; of every passing moment, which seemed to take place at half the speed of normal time, before I floated away into the feeling of a slow, calm dream.
I was lying on the grass, a man’s jacket over my legs. I could hear Jarvis’s voice close by. Although the words he was speaking did not at first arrange themselves to have much significance, I knew—long before I understood what he was saying—that Mrs. Coughlan, Captain Blaine, and Rosamund Gwynne were dead.
The Fox's Walk Page 29
