This Cold Country

by Annabel Davis-Goff

  The terms of her employment had never been fully spelled out. She took full charge and responsibility for Maud Nugent, but the Nugents did not imagine she spent every moment in the chair beside the fire. They understood she would delegate the duty to a daughter or even a granddaughter, and no one was surprised if there was a not quite familiar face on the body in the chair. Even Maud thought of her nurse or companion—although she did not think of her by either not quite accurate description—as Philomena or one of Philomena’s daughters. Preoccupied and self-absorbed as she was, Maud did not bestow on any of them an identity other than being an extension of the person of the old nanny.

  ***

  WHEN MICKEY RETURNED—the encyclopedia had been very helpful; it was old and the description and illustration of a motor car was basic, uncomplicated, and assumed no prior knowledge on the part of the reader—he found his sister standing outside the garage.

  Corisande was wearing a light tweed coat and skirt and her hat was small, fashionable, and sported a small wispy veil. Over one shoulder she had her binocular case, tags of different colors and degrees of fadedness attached to one worn, brown side. She looked elegant and very pretty, but Mickey did not for a moment consider telling her so.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, his question, as was so often the case, a play for time. Mickey was not quick thinking—the slowness of his thought caused by neurosis rather than stupidity—but even he had no difficulty in guessing what Corisande, with binoculars and a hat, was doing standing by the motor car.

  A lifetime of being Mickey’s sister, rather than any inherent good nature, stopped Corisande from pointing out that all the evidence of her intentions was before her brother’s eyes. Any interruption to Mickey’s train of thought caused a momentary startled look, followed by his return to the beginning of the conversation or monologue. Sometimes, when Corisande was bored and waspish she would tease him by setting him in motion before sending him back to go. It always took Mickey a while to realize what she was doing; when he did, he would silently leave the room and not be seen until the family reassembled for the next meal.

  “Clonmel,” she said briskly. “Our new sister-in-law is arriving and coincidentally there’s racing this afternoon.”

  Mickey regarded Corisande silently for a moment while he assembled his arguments in order of validity, then effectiveness, self-interest, and moral indignation—the last two overlapping—and eventually he said, “You want me to drive you to Clonmel so that you can go racing?”

  “I’d like you to take me to Clonmel, where I would, in fact, go racing, while you meet what’s-her-name and bring her home. I’ll come to the station with you, if you like.”

  “We don’t have enough petrol,” Mickey said, weakening already at the prospect of Corisande taking the responsibility of welcoming this new and, to him, very unsettling addition to their family. It didn’t mean he had to make it easy for his sister. As he spoke he became aware of a faint smell of petrol and, simultaneously, of the two-gallon can at Corisande’s feet. There was also, he noticed irrelevantly, on the garage floor a small patch of oil, possibly of his own making, and a sprinkle of very old sawdust.

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “Where did you get it?” Mickey asked, his voice rising as it occurred to him that his sister had discovered and raided his tiny stash.

  “You know.”

  “What?”

  Corisande did not repeat herself; she knew, and she knew that Mickey knew. He had heard her. Instead she waited until he had thought her reply through.

  “I borrowed some from the farm,” she then said.

  “Borrowed?”

  Corisande chose not to dignify this quibble with an answer. They both knew that the green-tinted petrol was designated by the government for farm machinery and vehicles.

  Aware that he was all but defeated and suddenly bored by the process, Mickey extended a hand to the petrol can.

  “All right. Just this once.”

  Corisande did not move. She had expected a longer battle of wills with her brother and had budgeted time for it.

  “I said all right. I’ll bring the car round to the hall door when I’m ready.”

  Corisande glanced at him sharply. He had given in too quickly and some piece of information was missing. Then, remembering she had more important things to do than score points off her brother, she smiled and turned to leave.

  “The car is lovely and clean,” she said.

  Mickey said nothing; he was waiting for her to leave so he could substitute the green farm petrol for one of the cans of legal petrol in his secret stash. He couldn’t that moment imagine the circumstances in which he would use the green petrol, but he had no intention of being had up for using the green either on the way to collect his new sister-in-law or, worse still, with her as a witness and without Corisande to charm the garda on the return half of the journey.

  Chapter 11

  DUNMAINE, ALTHOUGH NOT similar to any of the architectural fantasies Daisy had entertained about Bannock House, drew from her the reaction she had anticipated there. This house was smaller, plainer, but a hundred years older. Three floors in gray stone; a small parapet concealing the roof and accentuating the straight lines, the lack of decoration, and, it seemed, the refusal to charm or seduce the eye. A Venetian window on the second floor, over the hall door, widened the proportions, allowing a narrow window on either side of the front door. Inside, the additional light alleviated to some extent the gloom in the center of the large symmetrical hall. The principal reception rooms, the dining room and the drawing room, led off the hall, their windows overlooking a long expanse of meadow sloping away from the house, uninterrupted by any fence, with trees at the bottom. Each room had a gentle bay at the farther end with two windows that overlooked lawns, allowing rather wider views to the east and the west. When Daisy had been shown, fairly briskly, over the house by Corisande, she had not at first realized that the top floor, originally nursery and nursery staff quarters, was accessible only by the back staircase; the front one leading no farther than a large landing, lit by the Venetian window, off which lay the principal bedrooms at the front of the house and, to each side, longer, narrower corridors that led toward the back of the house and additional bedrooms and dressing rooms.

  Daisy had, until that day, thought the gardens at Wallinghurst—the estate that had once included not only Daisy’s father’s rectory but the village on whose outskirts the rectory stood—the ultimate in taste and beauty. Now she compared Wallinghurst’s contrived vistas, gravel walks, clipped hedges and topiaries, to Dunmaine’s overgrown herbaceous borders, neglected lawns, and lazy streams, and found them lacking. At Dunmaine nature had begun to reclaim the work of man. The hidden aspects of the overgrown grounds, of landscaping almost eradicated, made Daisy think of hidden treasure. It excited her, promising surprise and delight.

  And she was—she realized, fingering the silk cord border on the once purple cushion now faded to a tired pink on the equally faded sage green damask slipcovers of the sofa on which she was sitting—thinking in terms of years, of life, and even, she supposed, death. This house seemed her home, not only in the literal sense that she was now the wife of its owner—one of its owners? to whom did Dunmaine actually belong?—but the place she had been, unknown to herself, searching for all her life.

  Sitting on that sofa, in that library, in that house, surrounded by her new family and friends, filled Daisy with delight. The whiskey had something to do with her feeling, she knew, but it seemed as though the simultaneously confusing and clarifying effects of the spirits allowed her to glimpse some distant but profound truth. A truth occasionally dimly apparent when she read poetry whose beauty was strong, intellectual, and unsentimental; recently, she had also felt not far from that truth when she and Patrick had made love.

  There were five of them in the library. A moment—or perhaps an hour—ago there had been six.

  “Where’s Mickey?” Daisy asked, whe
n she realized he had been gone for long enough for her not to seem to be questioning a call of nature.

  Edmund, tall, languid, Corisande’s friend—boyfriend? fiancé?—the man who had returned from Clonmel with her, sat closest to Daisy, and it was to him that Daisy addressed her question. Although Edmund was only informally connected to her new family, Daisy was eagerly gathering any information she could and indiscriminately forming impressions. There would be time later to sort them out, to think about them, to try to fill in some of the gaps.

  Edmund’s suit was similar to that worn by the other men, but his shirt was crisper and newer; although he was not the oldest man in the room, he had an air of authority and confidence. The confidence—and the shirt—made Daisy assume that he was, if not rich, well-off in comparison to his neighbors. Neither clue was necessary to convince her he was wellborn: that was apparent at first glance.

  Edmund answered, but a burst of laughter, Corisande’s, loud, raucous, full of whiskey, cigarettes, lipstick, prevented Daisy from hearing his reply. “Bats” was the only word she caught.

  While she could see that Mickey might thus be described, he was her brother-in-law, and this was her first day as part of the Dunmaine Nugent family. Daisy didn’t feel like concurring with this non-Nugent and, she thought with growing, whiskey-fed indignation, she wasn’t sure she wanted to allow this slur to pass unchallenged. But before she could compose a suitably loyal and chilly reply, Edmund spoke again.

  “Bats,” he said, laughing, “literally.”

  As Daisy opened her mouth to ask Edmund to explain further, she saw Ambrose Sweeney—she had believed him when he had said that evening at the Ritz they would meet again soon, but she had not expected it to be her first evening in Ireland—without interrupting his conversation with Corisande, shake his head at Edmund.

  Bats, Daisy thought, repressing her question but putting the subject on one side for consideration later. The list of things to be considered was long, fascinating, occasionally worrisome—was no one interested in food?—but definitely for later; it was all she could do to keep up with what was going on around her.

  Ambrose, having silenced Edmund, rewarded him with a dollop of whiskey and then turned his attention and decanter toward Daisy. She shook her head and, for insurance and emphasis, put her hand over her glass. While seeing clearly that alcohol would play a large part in not only the social life but in the culture of which she was now part, for a variety of good reasons she had no intention of becoming drunk.

  Ambrose grunted and turned his attention to the silent—dozing or possibly dead—girl in a red dress slumped in a large armchair near Edmund’s end of the sofa. She had, earlier in the evening, when she had first seated herself, sat down heavily in a manner that had scooted the armchair back far enough effectively to separate her from the group. Daisy, herself listening more than talking, had not heard her utter a syllable.

  “How about you, sweetie?” Ambrose asked, pouring a little more into the girl’s empty but securely held glass. The girl, seemingly comatose, did not respond.

  “Are you sure she wants another drink?” Daisy asked nervously, aware her question, like her motives—proprietorial protection of the carpet; of the, in England, virtually unobtainable whiskey; an end-of-a-long-day reluctance to deal with a soddenly drunken girl—was hopelessly bourgeois.

  “Absolutely,” Ambrose said, adjusting slightly the angle of the heavy cut-glass tumbler in the girl’s hand.

  “Literal bats?” Daisy asked, turning back to Edmund, determined to get some satisfaction in her own—her own?—house.

  “Patrick didn’t tell you?”

  “No. What bats?”

  “And what about Granny? Have you met her yet?”

  Granny. Ambrose had asked the same question. Another subject on which Edmund might cast some light. Daisy was not sure, however, that she wanted to put herself in the position of questioning a comparative stranger about her own family. In a general sort of way Daisy tried not to ask questions; she had noticed it was among the less efficient methods of gathering information. To say nothing of it lacking dignity.

  “Bats?”

  “I would have thought Patrick—”

  “Edmund!” Daisy said, attempting the she-who-must-be-obeyed tone she had noticed Corisande from time to time using with Edmund.

  “You’re not afraid of bats, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Daisy said scornfully, and not quite truthfully.

  “The largest colony of long-eared bats in Europe lives at Dunmaine. Mickey rather makes pets of them.”

  How would you go about making a pet of a bat, Daisy wondered. And, rather more important, where does he engage in this pet-making.

  “They live in the attic at the north end of the house. Mickey doesn’t like them to be disturbed. They’re quite rare.”

  “And he’s gone to visit them now?”

  Edmund laughed. “I expect he’s just gone to bed.”

  How would one go about making a pet of a bat? Daisy imagined little saucers of milk balanced on pillars, Mickey climbing a tall stepladder. She stifled a giggle.

  Edmund glanced at her; it was as though her giggle, mild as it was, marked a moment in the evening. He glanced at his watch.

  “Bedtime for me, Partlet,” he observed, putting his glass down on the small round table beside his chair.

  Partlet? Daisy suddenly felt completely exhausted. She, Corisande, and the comatose girl, who had surely been introduced as Agnes, were the only females in the room. She glanced around for a parlormaid—there had been no evidence of domestic staff since they had eaten a light and not quite satisfying supper many hours ago, but—Partlet?

  “Bachelor’s quarters, comme d’habitude?" he appeared to be asking Corisande.

  Simultaneously, Ambrose seemed to become aware of the lateness of the hour. Without looking at the girl in the armchair—her head back, her mouth slightly open, her knees touching but her feet splayed, her now empty glass clutched in a death grip—he patted her shoulder with firm affection.

  “Time to go home, sweetie,” he said.

  The girl—Agnes—without quite opening her eyes, obediently rose to her feet and stood, not quite steadily.

  “All right if she uses the gents’ cloakroom?” he asked Corisande. “I don’t want her roaming about upstairs.”

  Edmund cleared his throat and Corisande, who hadn’t necessarily been about to reply to Ambrose, turned her full attention to him.

  “Your sheets are on the bed from Saturday,” she said, crossing to Edmund, and putting a hand out to him affectionately. Daisy had the impression that the quietly cleared throat was a call to order. “Come with me and we’ll find you a hot-water bottle.”

  They followed Agnes out of the room and Daisy was left alone with Ambrose. He sat heavily on the sofa beside her; she could see one of his eyes was slightly bloodshot and there were small broken veins on the upper parts of his cheeks. Ambrose was not quite as she remembered him from the evening at the Ritz. His clothes seemed to sit a little differently and Daisy noticed that his speech was subtly different. He looked and sounded more Irish.

  “End of your first day at Dunmaine,” he said. “What do you think so far?”

  Daisy’s head was buzzing with fatigue, alcohol, and unanswered questions. How were Ambrose and the drunken girl going to get home? Was Edmund engaged to Corisande? What was the significance of the Granny allusions? Just how large was the largest colony of long-eared bats in Europe?

  “Who or what is Partlet?” she asked.

  “It’s a nickname Edmund has given Corisande. She doesn’t much like it and he knows it.”

  “Partlet?”

  “Canterbury Tales. It’s a Christian name for a hen. I’m not sure she knows that.”

  There was a short silence during which Daisy remembered the exact inflection Patrick had used when he had said, during the night they had spent in the underground station, of Ambrose: “He always has beautiful girlfrien
ds—he takes them to parties and neglects them—other men marry them.” Other men, Daisy reflected, might have a job marrying Agnes; they’d have to wait for her to regain full consciousness first.

  Daisy and Ambrose, at the same moment, became aware it was some time since Agnes had stumbled from the room.

  “I wonder—would you ever—Daisy—”

  “Of course.”

  “You know where the gents’ cloakroom is?”

  Daisy didn’t, but she smiled and nodded her head. Dunmaine was a large house, but it wasn’t Versailles; she was sure she could find the gents’ without directions from one of her own guests.

  She opened the door into a study, and a large, cold, and sparsely furnished billiards room before it occurred to her that all she had to do was to look along the corridor until she saw a crack of light under a door. The light was weaker than she expected and when she tentatively pushed open the door she saw why. She found herself in a large and well-equipped gun room, at the farther end of which was a cubicle of dark brown wood and ridged opaque glass, the door slightly ajar. On the lavatory, fast asleep, sat Ambrose’s girlfriend—if that was what she was—the girl Ambrose had sent her to fetch.

  Daisy cleared her throat. She rapped on the glass panel of the door. She called out to the girl, feeling more than foolish as she did so. Eventually, she shook her gently by one shoulder. There had been no reaction to the sounds she made, but to the touch on her shoulder the girl reacted with a low growl. Daisy stepped back, with a vision of the girl coming out of her reverie—or possibly coma—and leaping for Daisy’s throat with bared teeth.

  “I’m afraid,” Daisy said to Ambrose, on her return to the library, “she’s asleep—I can’t wake her.”