by Johanna Lane
It is easy to take her. I had expected the young history teacher to alert someone. But no one stops us as we traipse down the stairs of the girls’ dorms with her suitcase and bedcovers. For the first hour of the journey, I find myself looking in the mirror, as if the school might have called the gardaí, but I catch myself and laugh. Why would they do that? Kate is mine.
She sleeps most of the journey, wrapped in her duvet in the backseat. As we pass through the checkpoint in the North, she wakes briefly when the soldiers peer into the car. They grin at her, the pattern from the seats tattooed into her flushed cheeks. When we’re over the border, she rummages around in the plastic bag at her feet and takes out the sandwiches I’ve brought.
“Which one do you want?” she asks.
“You choose.” She feeds me bites, watching the road in front carefully so that she doesn’t distract me at a dangerous moment, but the car bumps over the cat’s-eyes anyway. Pulling the sandwich back, she says, “Be careful, Mum.”
She falls asleep again, waking only with the thundering of the cattle grid as we cross the threshold between world and home.
The cottage is cold and dark. Kate sits on her bed and chatters her teeth dramatically. “Where’s Dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he not know I was coming home?”
When I don’t answer, she says, “It’s freezing in here.”
“Why not put the kettle on, then?”
I go into the bathroom. Cold air leaks in under the door. He must be back. I wash my hands quickly. But it’s Mrs. Connolly. I pause, unseen, at the threshold of the kitchen.
She asks, “Are you sick, alannah?”
“No.”
“So what is it that brings you home?”
There is silence and I wonder what sort of messages are passing between them. I wait for Mrs. Connolly to leave before I go in. There is a plate on the table with scones covered in cling film. “Did she bring those?” I ask, as I slide them into the bin. We take our tea into Kate’s bedroom. She has managed to pilfer a scone; she gnaws a butterless, jamless corner.
“May I open it?” I kneel down in front of her suitcase, mindful of her new grown-upness. She puts the scone down and opens it herself. Taking out a pile of jeans and t-shirts, she moves towards her chest of drawers. There is no end to how dutiful this child is today. That place has already made her submissive.
“Not your own clothes. You can leave them in.” I reach inside and pull out her uniform, her school shoes. “Just these.” I hang them up in her wardrobe.
“What are you doing, Mum?”
“You’ll see in a sec. Finish your tea.”
She puts her empty teacup down with a flourish, as if to say, Okay, I’m ready.
I close her suitcase and turn it onto its wheels. As we leave, I see Francis watching television in the front room of their cottage. Mary will be busy in the kitchen at the back, making dinner. The Connollys don’t eat the leftovers from the restaurant; it’s not their sort of thing.
The big house is quiet. I pull the letter I’ve written to John out of my pocket and leave it on the hall table. It occurs to me for the first time that he might be in his study; I forgot to ask what his plans were for the day. Did he even notice I was gone? On the stairs, I listen for a late tour group. We haven’t far to go, but it wouldn’t do to run into them. I put Kate’s suitcase down and pull my shoes off. I gesture that she should do the same. If she was sorry to have been taken out of school, she hasn’t complained. If she misses her new friends, she hasn’t said a word. And now, as I lead her away again from what she is used to, she follows. At the end of the landing, I pull the key out of my pocket and open the door to the third floor.
When I have safely locked it behind us, Kate says, “I thought we weren’t allowed up here.”
“Philip the First intended this to be the ballroom, you know.”
“I know, Mum.”
“It’s very unusual to have a ballroom at the top of a house.”
Kate considers this. “Why wasn’t it a ballroom in the end?”
“Philip the First thought God wouldn’t approve. He was a Presbyterian. Presbyterians don’t approve of dancing.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t like to have too much fun.” And then I felt badly for not giving her a proper answer. “To be honest, I’m not sure; it might be because they associate dances with drinking and they don’t drink, or it might be because they think that dancing might lead to sex and they don’t approve of that either. Or it might be a little of both.”
“Oh.”
John would disapprove of me talking to her about sex, but she’s nearly thirteen. It’s about time, and she would have learnt about it in that school sooner rather than later. He probably hadn’t thought of that.
We rest at the top of the stairs. I am proud of the work I’ve done. It will be heaven to wake up here after the darkness of the cottage. I throw open the curtains I’ve made so that the light will stream in tomorrow morning. The movement catches the eye of a groundsman below. He looks up but, thinking he’s mistaken, moves away, grinding a cigarette into the gravel. When I turn, Kate is at the far end of the room, staring at the painting covering the end wall.
“Do you recognize what it is? It’s called a trompe l’oeil.”
She moves a few steps closer. It’s Dulough: lake, forest, hills, hanging valleys, the cirque at the end, even the Connollys’ cottage, small and white, with a plume of smoke curling its way to the heavens. The sky is dark, and clouds roll in from the sea, so real that one can feel the threat of rain. The deer herd is at the edge of the forest and there are wood pigeons in the trees. There is the island and the church, the stained glass window still intact. There is the side avenue and the road to town, and there is the house, dark, overgrown with ivy, its turrets shooting into the wet sky. The whole thing could move at any moment; the deer go into the forest, the rain begins, Mrs. Connolly comes out of her cottage to take in the washing. Kate traces her finger along the edge of the lake; when she takes it away it is stained blue.
“An artist called Geoffrey Roe did this. More than a hundred years ago. Do you like it?”
Kate nods.
I am suddenly happy. I take her hand. “Come on, I’ll teach you how to waltz.”
She reluctantly allows herself to be led in small dancing circles, her feet dragging on the floor, her arms limp.
“Stand up straight.” I hum my own made-up tune. “That’s it, you’re not bad at all.”
We move about the vast room. I hold my one remaining child closer and closer and when I forget to sing, we lose the rhythm of our steps. Soon our dance is only a series of hushed lurches left and right, backwards and forwards, until we stop altogether and stand in the middle of the room, still.
The Spring After
Chapter 2
John has been monastic this winter, speech kept to a bare minimum, usually with Murphy or Mrs. Connolly, and only about the business of opening the estate again for the upcoming season. Marianne is to come home today. She has been in Dublin all winter, where her parents have been looking after her, careful not to make promises about when she might be ready to return to Donegal. Though John has not admitted it to himself until now, he has worried that she might not come back, that she might choose to stay in the city. He has come out to the island for a last morning of solitude, to ready himself for her return. Sitting on the wreckage of the fallen church, he has a view of Philip’s grave and of the hut his son had just finished building when he died.
Marianne’s parents have discouraged John from speaking to her whilst she’s been away. When they do talk, he is careful about the subjects he chooses: her garden, Kate. His wife seems to have accepted that their daughter will stay at boarding school now, where she is happy. Kate has asked if she might bring a friend home for the Easter holidays, which they have taken as a good sign.
The night Marianne was forced down from the ballroom, after John carried h
er downstairs into the watery winter light, slipping her into the back of her parents’ car, Kate had slept on the floor of his bedroom. He hadn’t known what to say to her, so he offered to read her stories, as he had when she was little. She fetched a stack of books, and he read for more than two hours, his voice growing hoarse towards the end, willing her to sleep. But he had been prepared to read all night if that’s what was needed.
For the next few days, they had drifted around the cottage. Kate spent most of her time curled up, reading on her bed, not the books she’d asked him to read that first night, but more grown-up books, with the stamp of the boarding school library on them. John hoped she was trying to keep up with her English class. He was afraid to leave her alone in the cottage, but he longed for his study, where he’d be able to think properly.
On the third day, he had brought Kate into town for lunch. It was a mistake; people stared at them. It was certainly common knowledge what had happened to Philip, but John wondered whether they knew that Marianne had locked herself and Kate in the ballroom and that the police had paid a visit to Dulough. The Connollys wouldn’t have said anything, but it was possible that one of the gardaí had. He finished his food quickly and called for the bill as Kate was beginning the second half of her sandwich.
It was strange bringing her back to Dublin the following Sunday, the boot full of her things, her duvet across the backseat, everything exactly as it was when he’d driven her down the first time. Then, it was the end of the summer, the hedgerows still full of flowers, green after a wet August. When he brought her back the second time, it was the middle of October, and the early snowfall had dulled the countryside. She seemed more nervous than on the first trip; she chewed her fingernails, a new habit, and one he didn’t much like. He tried to make conversation, about friends she was looking forward to seeing again, about whether she would play hockey, about which teachers she liked, but her answers were monosyllabic. It was not behavior his father would have allowed of John when he was the same age.
When they got to the outskirts of Dublin, she spoke for the first time. “Can I go and see Mum this weekend?”
He hoped Kate hadn’t agreed to go back to school only to heighten the possibility of seeing her mother, because he wasn’t at all sure that Marianne would be well enough. He could phone his parents-in-law to ask, but he hadn’t heard from them in the week since they’d taken Marianne, other than a text message from Patrick to say that they had arrived safely after the journey and to try not to worry. John had seen finality in this, a clear message from Patrick and Anna that he should leave their daughter alone for the time being.
“I don’t think this weekend, no,” he told Kate.
She turned away from the window, towards him.
“I think Mum might need a little time to herself,” he said gently. “I’m sure it won’t be too long.”
When they pulled up in front of the dorms, a girl with black hair tied into a neat ponytail came out to meet them. She had obviously been waiting for Kate; he prayed it was her own idea and not the school’s—that his daughter would have at least one good friend here. As he heaved out her duvet and then opened the boot, the house mistress approached. John tried to remember her name as she gave Kate a hug. She smiled at John and took the duvet from him in a manner that suggested that he wasn’t invited into the girls’ dorms now that the semester was in full swing.
“All right,” he said to Kate, and kissed her awkwardly on the top of her head.
“Bye, Dad,” she said, as he got into the car.
She waved until he was out of sight. It was obvious that she was glad to be back. As he drove away from the school, he’d felt relieved, but when he reached Dulough’s gates, he found tears were on his cheeks. He wondered how long they’d been there.
There is no housework for him to do in preparation for Marianne’s return. Though it’s certainly not her job anymore, Mrs. Connolly has made the cottage spick-and-span. He tried to help. He is now adept at washing; he no longer forgets to take in the clothes from the line before they’re whipped away by the wind and go tumbling through the gorse. And he knows how to make himself a decent cooked breakfast. Simple stuff. He understands this, but these tasks fell to Marianne when they moved. It was no longer Mrs. Connolly’s duty to cook and clean for them. And John hadn’t thought to help his wife.
In the ballroom, Marianne had her own private housekeeping. He went up to dismantle their things the day after he returned Kate to school. Mrs. Connolly offered to help, but he had demurred; Marianne wouldn’t have liked it. She wouldn’t have wanted Mrs. Connolly to have such intimate contact with the life she’d created for herself and Kate. When Marianne first arrived at Dulough, she had hated that Mrs. Connolly went into their room, made their bed, put their clothes away. Their first argument as a married couple was when she insisted that he stop this practice, that Mrs. Connolly would clean the common areas of the big house, but that she, Marianne, would make their bed—and later the children’s beds—and take care of washing and ironing the family’s clothes. As he opened the door to the ballroom, he thought he could understand the intimacy of possessions. The moving men had made him feel something of what Marianne had felt in those early days.
He climbed the rough wooden stairs and passed through the space where the second door was before the policeman had demanded that it be taken off its hinges. The air was fresher than it had been a few weeks earlier. He wondered how this was possible; none of the windows opened. It mustn’t have been terribly good for them, all those days of stale air, he thought. He hoped it hadn’t done Kate any damage.
John had never been in the ballroom before the day they’d rescued Kate. He’d barely registered its existence, barely ever thought of it. The door had always been locked and he had always known that the key was in the safe. He and his brother had been told that the floors were unfinished, dangerous, but John was astonished to see that the room was much more complete than he had been led to believe, that there was a stairs one could climb quite easily, that there were two beautiful marble fireplaces. Marianne had been able to make them quite a comfortable apartment up there.
As he paused to get his breath at the top of the stairs, he was confronted with the painting on the end wall. It was Dulough itself, the house in the foreground, taller, much more gothic than in real life but a very close likeness. He bent down to look at the signature in the corner: Geoffrey Roe.
Over the front door, the rose was in bloom, but it didn’t climb as it did now. He looked more closely at the painting: Everything was newer, sharper, younger. It wasn’t just the house; the trees in the forest and at the foot of the garden were still in their infancy, the gardens newly laid out, the original flower bed designs clear, as if they’d just been lifted from the paper on which they’d been drawn. All that remained unchanged was the landscape; the hills were still steep and tall, precisely the same as they were today when he looked out the window in his study, and the lake was as black as he’d ever seen it. Like the scale of the house, the lake’s had been altered; it was larger than it was in real life. He noticed the same obsession with water he’d seen in the Water Women exhibit all those years earlier. The bath in which Olivia Campbell lay had also been elongated and brimming to the point of spilling over, so as to give Roe the opportunity to lavish attention on his presentation of the water itself.
John’s eyes traveled left, to the very edge of the trompe l’oeil, to the sea and to the island on which the church stood, the stained glass window still intact. Here, too, Roe had painted the water as brimming around the island, much further up the rocks than it went in reality. The whole painting gave the impression that Dulough might be engulfed at any moment, the lake rising to envelop the house, the sea covering the island, the land reclaimed, the work of his ancestor obliterated.
He made his way to the far end of the room and pulled the sheets off the bed. They were sour. He would wash them himself rather than allowing Mrs. Connolly to do it; that would please
Marianne. He opened a chest that he recognized as having come from Philip’s old room. Inside, Kate’s and Marianne’s clothes were folded neatly; he took them out and put them in piles on the bed. At the bottom of the trunk, he came across some of Philip’s clothes, a green woolen jumper and blue corduroy trousers. A pair of shoes with the socks tucked neatly inside lay underneath. John sat down on the mattress with Philip’s clothes in his arms. He told himself that it wasn’t very strange, that all his things were still hanging in his cupboard in the cottage—neither he nor Marianne had made any move to change that. But he was disturbed at finding them here, the deliberateness of Marianne’s having chosen them and brought them up with her own things. Had Kate seen them? He hoped not.
On the writing desk, his daughter’s textbooks were lined up in alphabetical order, her copybooks stacked neatly, with each subject printed clearly on the front. He should have thought to bring these down with them to Dublin when he returned her to school yesterday. They would probably put a whole new set of textbooks on his bill, as well as the extra tutelage. He sat at the desk, knees knocking against the top, and opened Kate’s geography copybook. He had been heartened by the fact that Marianne was making sure that Kate did schoolwork, but he realized that much of it was work he’d already finished with the children a year ago. He leafed through Kate’s work. There was a drawing tucked into the back; it was the picture of the valley that Philip had done just after the move. John had returned to the cottage from a meeting with Foyle to find Philip upset about Marianne’s reaction to the gardeners digging up the lawn. John remembers his own anger at his wife for worrying about the garden rather than her son that afternoon.
In the ballroom, he looked at the geography book, at Kate’s copybook, at Philip’s drawing lined up side by side; why had Marianne been repeating work she knew the children had already done?
