Adam Gould

by Julia O'Faolain

  Adam chose not to disillusion him.

  ***

  ‘The silver lining,’ said Blake, ‘is that my cousin plans to go and live with her sister. The cloud is that the annuity you have to pay her may beggar your estate. Will I top that up?’

  Adam handed him his glass.

  ‘Maybe,’ Blake mused, ‘you should give her a few sticks of furniture in exchange for withholding her annuity for a year or so? Until you can afford the cash? I wouldn’t think she’d want to arrive at her sister’s with one arm as long as the other. She’d want to be seen to be bearing gifts. Making a contribution to the household.’

  ‘I’ll have to take advice,’ Adam told him.

  ‘Do that,’ said Blake.

  Adam looked around him. They were in what was now his house, although he had not yet seen it properly. From discretion, he was still staying with Keogh.

  Things had resolved themselves. His father had died, slipping away quietly for all his tenacity, and the will brought few surprises. It assigned an income for life to Mrs Gould and the residue of the estate to Adam. The funeral had unfolded with the efficiency of a gymnastics display.

  ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ well-wishers had told Adam. ‘We’re great at funerals here. We’re practised.’

  This proved true and his own role slotted in smoothly, as he helped shoulder the coffin to the hearse, then followed it on the two-mile walk to the church. During this, the mood lightened as if, well before seeing the coffin stowed in its vault, the mourners’ image of what was inside had dissolved in a blur of souls gathering for flight on some baroque ceiling. Prayers were in the plural. ‘Eternal rest grant them, O Lord.’ Gary Gould had shed his singular self.

  At the reception, Adam mistook relatives for their fathers. Mrs Gould, too, was being condoled with, so, as he stood with her, they must have looked like mother and son. Faces merged, and he was soon emotionally tipsy.

  Somewhere someone was singing one of those old airs whose appeal is almost embarrassingly direct. Curious, he shouldered his way down a corridor to where a niece of Keogh’s sat at a grand piano accompanying Cait – then on to where he could listen in privacy. His mother had sung that song. In what spirit, he wondered? He hoped there had been irony.

  ‘No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,’ Cait sang,

  ‘But as truly lives on to the close.

  ‘As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

  ‘The same look which she turned when he rose.’

  There was an interruption, a raised voice and a brisk clack as though someone had forcefully closed the piano lid. Then no more singing.

  He got the explanation for this some hours later from Cait herself, who came home with Keogh to share a cold supper and have her feathers smoothed. She was still upset.

  Mrs Gould, she reported, had burst into the music-room, mortified her in front of everyone and said it was disrespectful to sing love songs at a funeral. Which nobody believed. No, the true reason for this scene was that Cait reminded the widow of Adam’s mother, of whose memory she had always been jealous.

  ‘I felt,’ Cait sobbed, ‘like a kicked dog!’

  Adam soothed her, praised her singing, and wondered privately whether his presence could have caused the acrimony. Rousing his stepmother’s fears of being left in poverty, his return after such a long absence could look like revenge from the grave and even a small-scale episode in the land-war. Cait, meanwhile, was saying that, though she had not learned to play the piano, she had always wanted to. Both men assured her that it was not too late. Then Keogh turned the talk to good works. He wanted Adam to help him stimulate cottage industries which, in this soggy pocket of the bog, had hardly started to exist. He meant to install looms for the weaving of homespun.

  ‘The gentry here,’ he told them, ‘are bone idle and the Home Rulers want the economy to stagnate so that they can keep blaming the English.’ Keogh was a dynamo converting hope into plans.

  Adam was stirred. Triggered by the love song, the thought of Danièle had been tormenting him all day. No: it wasn’t a thought! Memory’s irruption was tactile. It was the spill of her breasts; it was the down on her neck puckering his tongue as though he had licked the husk of a green almond. Even the tangy smell of chrysanthemums – church and house had been full of it – had reminded him of the tousled softness of her pubic mound and of his telling her that the Gaelic word for soft was the Russian word for God: bog. ‘Maybe,’ he had argued when she laughed at the useless information, ‘God’s goodness for some tribe which moved west came to mean softness. Mildness! La douceur! That’s not utterly useless, is it? Not if it jogs your mind and makes you wonder about things.’

  ‘So,’ she had asked, ‘are the Irish soft?’

  Well, were they? Mrs Gould? Blake? His father-the-centaur? Keogh? The bishop? Adam’s mother? Thady Quill? No, but sometimes – in songs for instance – they mimicked softness. You admire what you want but perhaps cannot afford, so he had wanted softness to be his and her element, like the swansdown cloak in the fairy tale which made wearers invisible and enabled them to fly. Enticing her into its shelter, he told her, ‘In Gaelic they say “Be soft with the world and it will be soft with you.”’ A half-truth? Perhaps, but half-truths let one off – gave one escape routes, safety valves and ways of having things both ways. He needed these now that Danièle had retreated into a way of thinking which ruled that concern for the returning Philibert rendered her taboo. Even in his mind she had become that, since he could neither let himself think ‘I hope he dies, so that we may marry,’ nor ‘I hope he recovers, so that I may persuade her to go on deceiving him.’ His rational self knew that he should not think of her at all.

  To keep from doing so, he flirted playfully with Cait and made promises about the piano, which were soon to get him into trouble.

  ***

  As soon as the will had been read, he decided that he ought to reassure his father’s widow. Her behaviour to Cait betrayed unhappiness, and it was clear that her married life could not have been made easier by knowing that her predecessor had been a beauty, while she had a reputation for being ‘difficult’. Her cousin didn’t want her. Where could she go now? The least Adam could do – like it or not – was offer to let her stay in what had been her home. Accordingly, he set off to call on her.

  He went on foot and, on his way up the drive, rehearsed ways of soothing and – why not? – charming her. He had been good at this with the patients at Passy. Perhaps he should have brought flowers? But the best ones in this boggy outpost grew in her – now his – garden. So: no. Perhaps he would tell her a joke? He imagined kissing – or better, holding her hand comfortingly in both of his. Impossible to plan. He must trust his instinct.

  However, when he reached the house she was out.

  This was how he came to have his long-postponed drink with Blake, who told him that she was soon to leave for her sister’s place.

  ‘So you won’t have to worry about her,’ said Blake, adding that this was a blessing since what Adam had better worry about was the house. He would see why in two ticks if he let Blake take him on a tour of it. ‘What about now?’

  But Adam didn’t relish the possibility of being caught by Mrs Gould gloating – as she would construe it – over possessions which had been hers. He knew what it was like to be expelled. Sipping his drink, he tasted blood on his lip. The glass was chipped. And the Venetian chandelier above them had lost beads. His eye swooped about, noting further signs of wear and tear. The poorer the objects he took from her – such as crazed dishes or ones with rivets – the more humiliating for them both. He imagined darned, intimate things that might even date back to his mother’s time. For moments he would have liked to see the whole place burned – or to board the next train and go back to France for good.

  ‘Well, take my word for it,’ said the increasingly unbuttoned Blake, ‘this house needs serious injections of cash if it isn’t to collapse altogether. And raising them won�
�t be easy. Insurers are reluctant to lend to Irish landowners.’

  It was then that he proffered the suggestion that his cousin should be allowed to take some furniture.

  ***

  ‘No,’ was Conor Keogh’s reaction. ‘Neither lend nor lease as much as a pincushion. Let the Blakes take a parcel out of the door and you’ll never know what was in it. Nor will you see it again.’

  It was some days since Adam’s chat with Blake, and news had come that a waggon, pulled by two farm horses, had trundled up the Goulds’ drive. At this moment the grand piano, on which Adam had promised Cait should learn to play, had had its legs removed and was being covered with blankets prior to being carted who knew where.

  ‘You said I should have lessons on it,’ Cait reproached. ‘Did you even know it was your mother’s?’

  ‘Possession is nine points of the law,’ warned Mrs Ross, the lady who had her eye on the hunt table. She and Cait had arrived some minutes apart, having been alerted by well-wishers too shy to bring the news themselves. Nobody likes to be seen to tell tales.

  ‘Did you say,’ Adam was asked, ‘that they could take the piano?’

  He said he had not and asked what else was likely to be taken.

  ‘Jimsy Flynn says they’re after moving twenty dining room chairs into the hall.’

  ‘You’d best get up there,’ Keogh advised. ‘Take the trap. Don’t embarrass the Blakes but make sure they unload the waggon. Wait till you see it done.’

  Adam did this. Colluding in a show of good humour saved everyone’s face. He was offered tea, and when it grew clear that he would not leave until he got what he wanted, the furniture was unloaded and restored to its place in the house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Mrs Gould afterwards, ‘that your cousin and I made such a muddle. If there are pieces you especially want, then you must have them. I’m afraid, though, that I can offer neither the piano nor the hunt table.’

  She nodded, then, moving to the piano, which had been freed from its wrappings, sat and began to play. It was something wistful and maestoso which, however, ended bravely and con brio and had, he suspected, been picked to show off her talent. For, though he himself was only moderately musical, he could tell that she had talent and knew it. Glad that she had something vital of her own, he praised it with such persuasiveness that she accepted his invitation to come here to play whenever she chose.

  When he went out to where he had left the trap, Cait was sitting in the front seat. It was now almost dark, and he did not see her until he got close, but she had seen him through the window sitting in the lamplight with Mrs Gould, listening and applauding and turning the pages of her score.

  ‘Well, you’re a double dealer!’

  She was, he could only suppose, jealous, so to calm her, when they had left the Gould house behind, he stopped the trap and took her in his arms.

  Some days later, he moved into the big house and on his first afternoon she and he hid from the servants and made passionate but cautiously inconclusive love. She seemed adept at this.

  IX

  Mayo, Ireland, December 1892

  Dear Dr Blanche,

  Forgive my not reminding you sooner of the bank account which Monseigneur de Belcastel instructed me to open in my name but with his money.

  I enclose particulars so that that money may now be made available to his heirs.

  Please commend me to Madame Blanche and allow me to hope that the sea air in Dieppe has restored both your spirits.

  With esteem and affection,

  Adam Gould

  ***

  For AG to wish him a happy and a holy Christmas: Rennes, December 1892

  Dear Adam,

  Though I once hoped that you would become my brother in Christ, I now pray that you may find fulfilment outside our ministry, which is a bed of thorns. The sharpest are the fault of Catholic politicians who – this has been a shock – despise priests, require us to deliver the vote, but care nothing for our advice. Meanwhile their activities make it difficult to get our flocks to vote for them.

  Think hard before joining us and pray for me as I do for you,

  Your old classmate,

  Jean Barat

  ***

  Paris, 10 March 1893

  My dear Adam,

  I am back in Passy. The bank, on learning of the deception practised on it, informed the police, who have been interrogating me and would like to interrogate you. I have tried to discover what will happen next, and believe the answer may be: nothing. In this election year a ‘Belcastel case’ would profit no one, since the government (weakened by bombs and bribes) needs Catholic support. Police zeal is being discouraged.

  Nonetheless, you and I could be charged with professional misconduct – especially as a will has turned up whereby the monsignor left the money in the account to you. The question arises: was he of sound mind? If it is decided that he was, you may inherit and I be in trouble, since why was a sane man under my care at all? If he was not, you risk being accused of abusing your position.

  So our interests diverge. You had better come for a visit. We need to talk.

  With warm regards,

  Emile Blanche

  ***

  So the doctor was back in Passy – and might have news of Danièle. Curbing his hopes and anxieties, Adam packed his bags, paid a promised visit to Bishop Tobin, then started the slow trek back across a chilly Ireland, England and northern France to the maison de santé where his first encounter was with a monitory letter.

  ***

  Mayo, 18 March 1893

  My dear Adam,

  Do not be alarmed to receive this letter.

  You need to know something which I meant to tell you at the station then funked. Did you wonder why I raced your train down the platform? I had been planning to speak just as it left, but saw, as it picked up speed, that I would have had to shout out news which should only be whispered.

  Unfortunately, even now, there is no way to be tactful.

  The matter, as you will have guessed, is delicate, and I am afraid that learning it is bound to upset you, but there is no help for that, since you ought to know what other people think they know. This is that Cait, from when she was not quite sixteen, was reputed to be your father’s woman. The story is that he hoped to have a child by her and, if he had succeeded, would have cut you out. People said – forgive my telling you this – that he wanted a legitimate heir. You mustn’t hold it against either of them. After all, Adam, you never wrote. The thing is that you should settle something on her. From discretion he chose not to do so in his will. But she is tainted in the minds of possible suitors, and it will take a dowry to efface the taint. He would have wanted you to arrange that.

  I know cash is short, but our hospital, when up and running, may provide a solution. Cait might find a salaried position there as good as a dowry.

  Hurry back and help me deal with priests who don’t like the ‘Protestant doctor’ butting in on their territory. Did you know that they warn their flock against me, and that the flock, when sick, slinks in here after dark?

  You and I must stick together.

  Affectionately,

  Con

  Adam pictured his friend raging at the indelicacy of their situation and steaming with philanthropy. This, though due to his being a generous Protestant in a place where Protestants were privileged, could seem meddlesome – as, to be sure, was this letter.

  Cait?

  How to link her with what he had seen on his father’s deathbed? How could she have got close – how close? – to the mouth Adam had seen simmer like bubbling gruel as it made a last, desperate gulp for life? Gary Gould had died as he lived: reaching for more than his due. With angry pity Adam imagined her lying next to the macchabée.

  Had she really done that though? Almost certainly. Gould Senior would have grabbed her, just as the Cretan Minotaur had grabbed adolescents. That tale had all the air of a truth that could not be plainly told. For surely it must have
been old, frightened men who gave the Greeks the idea for it in the first place? Needy patriarchs, caught in time’s labyrinth and gulping for the breath of youth!

  Had she offered herself from pity?

  Adam tried to expel her from his mind. Emigrate her, he thought wryly, and crumpled the letter, which had reached France before he did, due to his having broken his journey to visit Bishop Tobin.

  It had been waiting for him at the maison de santé when he got out of the fiacre and learned that Dr Blanche, though out, would soon be back and looked forward to seeing Adam at dinner.

  He left his bag with the porter, a new man who didn’t know him.

  ‘And here is a letter for Monsieur.’

  At first he had thought that it might be a summons from the police to come to tell them about Belcastel. Instead, here was this news from another grave.

  He took it into Passy village where sitting in a small, smoky café returned him so effectively to his time here that he imagined he saw Danièle drive past in a cab, wearing her blue hat! The one with osprey feathers! Her cheek was palely pressed against the glass. But she was in Belgium, so it could not be she. He had painted her features on to another face.

  Why, with his mind so full of Cait, had he not imagined her? Poor Cait! Too bad Keogh had shirked telling her story to Adam’s face. His presence would have been soothing. His healer’s flair for drawing a sting was deft, and his assessing eye almost eccentrically cool.

  ‘You,’ he had told Adam once, ‘think of girls as people with whom you might, but mustn’t, go to bed. That thought breeds trouble.’

  He himself, Keogh claimed, thought of them as likely to be more or less helpful with raffles and first aid. ‘When you’ve played hide-and-seek with your sisters’ friends from the age of six, you take a practical approach.’