The Judge's Wife

by Ann O'Loughlin

  “Quietly, Emma, quietly.”

  The tears gushed down her face and she could not articulate her hurt. Relief flooded her as he rose from his desk and walked to her. He reached down. Gratefully, she moved towards him, only to find him placing his hands on her shoulders and twisting her back towards the door.

  “I am not to be disturbed when I am working. The sooner you realise that, little lady, the better.”

  Too young to detect the firmness in his voice, she protested, and he called for Aunt Violet, who ushered her away, whispering fiercely in her ear. “Don’t bother the judge. Toughen up.”

  Now, Emma paced along the straight line of the shelves, picking with her nails at the books, pinching at the spines until the first, heavy, navy book with gold lettering gave way, toppling to the ground. On a roll, she plucked the others, making them fall like thudding dominoes, the dust rising in bulging clouds around her.

  Bundling a pile of books from the top shelf into her arms, she made for the front door. Three doors down, the skip outside a house being refurbished was already full. Emma walked smartly over and tipped five law books in on top of worn-out kitchen cabinets.

  She had gone back for a second pile when there was a polite knock on the open front door.

  “Miss, I saw what you did. You know, we had to pay good money for that skip. I hope you are not going to dump anything else in there.”

  The elderly man looked harassed. His wife was standing at their front door, her ears open to hear every word of the exchange.

  “I am sorry, I acted on impulse. I want to get rid of the books.”

  “How many have you? If it is only a few more volumes you are all right, but . . .” He peered down the hallway to the library. “Jaysus, you are not thinking of clearing the room into our skip, are you?”

  “Tom Harty, don’t be fretting. Emma here is just sorting a few things out. It is a hard time for her.”

  He turned around to Angie Hannon. “That may be, but not into our skip, please. Somebody would pay good money for the judge’s law books: you should flog them,” he said to Emma.

  She came out onto the steps. “I am sorry, I got a bit carried away.”

  Tom Harty put out his hand. “We can put it behind us?”

  Emma nodded at Tom, and he walked back to his house. Angie Hannon clapped her hands.

  “Don’t you want to keep the judge’s library? It was his life,” Angie said.

  “Maybe that is why I want to get rid.”

  “I am sure we can find a library to take them off your hands. I will make a few calls for you in the morning.”

  Emma made to turn back to the hall, but Angie called her softly. “Time for a drink, I think.”

  She walked past Emma to the library, tapping her on the shoulder to follow.

  “Must let you in on one of the judge’s best-kept secrets.”

  Leading the way, she neatly stepped over the bound law reports and the heavy books on constitutional law. Reaching up to the third shelf, she fingered along until she reached Salmond’s Law of Torts. Shifting the book to the side, she stretched into the darkness behind, pulling out a silver tray. A bottle of cognac was half full, the tumblers beside it cut crystal.

  “Welcome to the judge’s private bar.”

  “My father did not drink.”

  “There are lots of things you don’t know about the judge, my girl. Drinking late at night is one of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like a fish in the early hours. A cigar in one hand, a brandy in the other.”

  “I never saw him even have a glass of wine with dinner.”

  Angie guffawed out loud as she poured the brandy into the glasses. “Judge Moran was an expert at giving off the right aura.”

  “How come I did not know this?”

  “He certainly appreciated the finer things in life,” Angie said, raising her glass, letting the light glint through the crystal. “To the judge.” She reached over and clinked Emma’s glass loudly. “Surely you can wish him well.”

  “Maybe,” Emma said, sitting down on the chaise longue. “I did not say anything at the funeral.”

  “I noticed.”

  Emma took the brandy bottle and lobbed more into her glass. “They say if you have nothing good to say, say nothing.”

  “Emma, the judge had a lot on his plate, maybe you need to get to know him better.”

  “I lived with him for nineteen years and that was enough. Anyway, it is too late now.”

  “Never too late, Emma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There can be a lot of things that make up a person.”

  “No offence, but I don’t need a lecture.”

  Angie stood up. “I wouldn’t dream of it. We will have to know each other a bit better for that.”

  “I never knew you when I lived here.”

  “I have only been on the square ten years. You were gone for twelve.”

  “You don’t think I should throw away his law books.”

  “It is not for me to say. They might be worth a lot. Wouldn’t you be interested in having the collection valued?”

  “I just want rid.”

  “Stay at mine tonight? It might be better than staying in this big old house on your own.”

  Emma shook her head. “I am not going to let this place defeat me. Not now he is gone.”

  Angie put her glass down on the desk. “You know where I am if you need me.” She leaned down to pick up volumes of the Irish Law Reports.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “I just thought . . .”

  “Please, you don’t know anything, Angie. He loved the law, there was no room for anything else.”

  “I did not mean to upset you.”

  “I am not bloody upset, I am just tired of everybody telling me what a fine man and judge my father was.”

  “It is a hard time, but it will get better.”

  “No doubt the old man will have cut me off and left it all to the gentlemen’s club on Stephen’s Green.”

  “I don’t think your father would do that. This is your home.” Angie patted Emma on the head. “I can let myself out.”

  Emma didn’t answer but poured the dregs from the bottle into her glass and sat at the desk.

  Slumping beside the brown case, she picked everything out one by one, rolling each item across her hands before laying it down carefully on the desk. She shook out the second ruched linen skirt, marvelling that the tiny pleats, pinched and creased, remained in horizontal lines. Holding it up to her waist, she found it was almost exactly her size. The lining was feathery soft. Inside the waistband at the back was the designer’s name: Sybil Connolly, Dublin. A white blouse with a lace insert had the same label, along with a short black jacket. Quickly, Emma pulled off her clothes. Pulling up the skirt, she almost snagged a line of pleats with the bulk of her engagement ring. Splaying her hand out, she took it in: the big blue rock they had bought on a weekend trip to Sydney, and the small gold band he had first pushed on her finger as they sat looking across at the Three Sisters. She pulled at the gold rings now, slipping them off, not really knowing what to do with them, only that she could not bear the weight of them. She opened the first drawer in the judge’s desk and dropped them into a green marble ashtray.

  The covered buttons on the blouse were fiddly, the jacket a soft wool. The outfit needed jewellery, quality pieces: not even her rings would have been good enough. Reaching for the small bottle of perfume that had been wedged between a pair of slippers, she read the label: Evening in Paris.

  Unscrewing the top, the sweet floral aroma with a hint of apricot floated past her, as if the ghost of her mother had entered the room. This was all she had of her. Was it enough: the clothes, the perfume, the echo of another life lived? Emma slumped into her father’s leather chair, her shoulders hunched as shivers of tears pumped through her. She should have gone to a hotel, she thought, but instead she climbed the stairs to her old bedroom, wh
ere the mattress was bare and stickily damp, the air musty. Huddling under an old school coat, she was too exhausted to worry about sleeping in this big old house on her own.

  6

  Bangalore, India, March 1984

  Vikram stretched out on the balcony, waiting. Soon Rhya would send his coffee. He closed his eyes, listening to the city breathing. The sweeper families on the street called to each other as they readied for the day, their chat wafting slowly upwards from a canvas overhang thrown between two trees for shade. The lilt and softness of the talk of the younger ones and the rasping pitch of the grandmother weaved their way to him, their words distorted on the journey. The fish seller lingered, singing out his wares, waiting for the women to send down their baskets. The watchful caretaker hovered, ready to shoo the man and his basket of fish away.

  The rising clamour of the city encircled Vikram, sapping his energy. How he longed to be back in Chikmagalur, where the air was heavy with stillness and workers concentrating stooped low; where the mountains, high and strong, held up blue umbrellas of mist to the sky. The orange flash of a rat snake flitting across a path, the sound of chopping and pans on the fire in the kitchen as the cook prepared the food for the day, the low, far-off hum of conversation from the line of stone dwellings where the workers lived.

  The family estate house was old and battered-looking, with stone walls and floors over which rugs were strewn to take away the sharpness of the cold in winter. Built to service the hectares of the coffee estate, it had changed little over the decades. The only obvious luxury was the early-morning coffee ceremony, after Vikram had gathered his workers and sent them off for the day, his instructions ringing in their ears. Thick black coffee and steaming-hot milk were poured into small china cups from tall silver coffee pots. Vikram’s father had insisted on this ritual and his son saw no reason to change it. The china cups, first brought to the house by his mother, had seen better days and were chipped in places, but Vikram never had the heart to throw them out. Instead, he ordered his servants to handle with care, and they did, because nobody wanted to upset the boss.

  How he wanted to be in his big old chair on the covered porch at Chikmagalur, where he could look out over the drying grounds and terraces, past the tall trees giving pools of shade, to watch the hills and clouds fight for the sky. This was where peace dropped slow. Whether the sun baked the ground or the monsoon rain spattered or tore down on top of them, Chikmagalur was his place apart.

  His favourite spot in the bungalow was the sitting room, where he could sit quietly, the green hills on guard. The furniture was dowdy, the circular brass table in the middle gone green in places from old coffee stains, where he had spilled his cup too many times as he reached across for his newspaper. In one corner was a stack of weeks-old newspapers about a foot high, on the walls were photographs, worn, creased in places and sepia-brown.

  He wanted to be there when the white flowers in the Robusta coffee plants unfurled, putting on a show, breaking into the mist, which clung in gossamer swirls to the trees. There was nothing as lovely as when the first blossom revealed itself: a reminder of the frail beauty of life, before the monsoon rains battered the hills, flooded the roads and cut off the mountains from each other.

  “Uncle, your coffee.”

  Rosa stood in the doorway holding a tray with a steel beaker, steam curling away from it.

  “You were deep in thought?”

  “I was thinking of the flowers in bloom at Chikmagalur. I long to breathe them in, fill my nostrils with their heavy scent. You never liked it there, my Rosa.”

  “Uncle, there was nothing to do.”

  Vikram settled himself deeper in his chair. “Boredom, the affliction of the young. Loneliness, the affliction of the old.” Blowing on his coffee, he paused for a few seconds before noisily slurping it.

  “I have definitely decided I will go with you.” She fiddled with a stray piece of wood and let out a nervous laugh.

  He took in her dark eyes, black hair and the delicate features that came from her mother. The way she pushed back her hair from her shoulders, her laugh tinkling until it had faded like a fog on a summer morning: so like her mother.

  “Let me tell you about Grace.”

  Twisting her long hair into a bun, she sat back to listen. Vikram gulped his coffee.

  “Not even death could stop me loving Grace . . .”

  He went quiet as the servant, bending low, pushed a broom under their chairs, before moving away further down the balcony, sweeping her pile of dust as she crouched.

  “She died. It was too painful.”

  “Uncle, I am beginning to feel I don’t know you at all.”

  Vikram’s face softened. “You know me best of all: only this part of me, I kept secret until now.”

  Taking a slow, deep breath, he began again.

  “Grace was beautiful in every way. When I met her it was in such an ordinary, routine way. Who could have predicted that she would capture my heart for ever?”

  “Uncle, this is too much.” She frowned, making Vikram smile.

  “I was a young doctor in a big hospital in Dublin. Grace accompanied her aunt Violet there, a cranky, stubborn woman. Violet was in severe pain, she had slipped on the stairs and sprained her ankle badly, but the crotchety woman would not even let me examine her. ‘I am not letting any foreigner put a finger on me. How do I know his hands are clean? Get me a home doctor, please,’ she shouted at the top of her voice.

  “Grace was very embarrassed and tried to placate the woman, but she was having none of it. In truth I was quite used to it. I smiled, bowed and retreated. Every hospital there in those days had at least one Indian doctor. They did not have enough people themselves with such a high qualification, but try explaining that to Violet McNally. The matron calmed her down and left her for quite a time in excruciating pain, until Dr O’Connell could see her himself.

  “I was writing up reports when Grace approached the desk.

  “‘I wanted to apologise for my aunt; she really is up the walls over what happened.’

  “‘Up the wall?’

  “Her laugh tinkled like the bells at a temple.

  “‘High with stress. She is due to visit some gardens in Wicklow on Sunday and is afraid she won’t be able to walk.’

  “‘I doubt if it is that serious. A few days’ rest only.’

  “Her eyes twinkled. ‘Maybe it is best that you did not see her. Do you think it would be dreadful of me if I left the price of my aunt’s taxi home with the nurse? I have to be at a fitting with Sybil Connolly in ten minutes’ time.’

  “‘Sybil Connolly?’

  “She rapped me lightly on the knuckles. ‘Sybil Connolly: only the best dress designer in the country and, someday soon, the world.’

  “I laughed. ‘A ballgown, is it?’

  “‘Good lord, no: a linen day dress, quite simple.’”

  Vikram turned to Rosa.

  “I thought I would never see her again. Her warm laughter haunted me. It was only a week later when we literally bumped into each other. I had taken to wandering through St Stephen’s Green during my break. I loved the way the wind wheezed in the trees; it reminded me of Chikmagalur. I saw her sitting alone on a bench. I was not sure if I should disturb her. I decided to walk by and greet her only.”

  *

  When Grace looked up and smiled, he noticed she had been crying.

  “Doctor, how nice to see you.”

  He paused in front of her, not quite sure what to say next.

  “You like this quiet section of the park as well,” she said.

  “It reminds me a little of the coffee estate back home: the tall trees, the thick vegetation.”

  She laughed. “I think I would rather be in India than damp old Dublin.” Getting up from her seat, she stood beside him.

  He noticed a black smudge under her right eye and he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, pointing to the mark as he handed it to her. Slightly embarrassed, she accepte
d it and wiped the smudge away.

  “So kind of you, doctor. I am so sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “Dr Vikram Fernandes, Bangalore, at your service.”

  “Grace. Grace Moran,” she said, stretching out her hand.

  He took her hand tightly. It was as light as a feather and he bowed again before her.

  “I hope you made your dress fitting.”

  “How kind of you to remember. Yes, in fact I am wearing it today. I am due to meet one of the judge’s wives for tea in the Shelbourne.”

  She pointed to where her coat was open and he saw a flash of turquoise linen.

  “Most beautiful. A brightness of colour more associated with my side of the world, I think.”

  She giggled, nervously twiddling with the buttons on her coat, and he felt himself wanting to stay there, beside her on this damp pathway through a park.

  “How long have you got in Ireland, Dr Fernandes?”

  “One year. I am from Bangalore, in the south of India.”

  “You are so far from home! We must do everything to brighten up your days. We are having a drinks party on Friday evening. My husband, twice a year, likes to open up the house and invite all his friends. I am sure everybody would love to meet you. Please come along.”

  Vikram smiled, but, noticing a sparkle in her eyes, was not sure how to answer.

  “I will send around an invitation to the hospital tomorrow,” she said, gently touching his arm.

  “That is most kind, I will look forward to it.”

  “I have to go. It was lovely meeting you, and please come on Friday,” she said before scurrying off for her appointment.

  Halfway up the path, as if she knew he was watching, she turned around and waved, and he felt a sense of belonging to her, a fact that made him intensely happy.

  *

  Vikram stopped for a moment, swirling the dregs of the coffee in the beaker.