by Molly Keane
When his hands were warmed and limber, Jasper resumed preparation of the pigeon pie. His mind floated forward in inspired construction. … there were a few mushrooms somewhere in a paper bag, and he remembered rashers of streaky bacon, stiffening in age, too salty for breakfast, perfect for pie. Beef? He shook his head to himself. Wait, wait a moment – where had he put them away, those perfect leftovers for the dogs’ dinners? Actually he had put them in the dogs’ dinners. What went in could come out and go under the scullery tap, perhaps. Yes, certainly, why not? A purist in his cooking, he stood out against stock cubes. Black pepper, coriander, bayleaf, hard-boiled eggs – what had Baby June said about her hens going off? Two hard-boiled eggs were a necessity in a pigeon pie. He gritted his teeth at the thought of that idiot, Baby, and her barren hens. He entirely denied to himself his own lapse in leaving the shopping list behind. Blame fell where he wished it to belong. He screwed up the list and threw it away. Neither he nor anyone else was going to read that again.
Far along a driveway the farmyard was held at a distance from the more civilized policies of Durraghglass. The mountainy fields rose quietly outside it towards gorse and heather. Below its nearly slateless cow-sheds and tumbling iron-gated piggeries, a steep slope drained liquids from all ordure down to the pretty river.
Not in the tumbling piggeries, but in a warm corner of a sound old cow-shed, Baby June and Christy Lucey looked with happy satisfaction at Sweetheart, the long white sow, and her eight piglets, safely delivered. Outside the shed spring rain was falling coldly on wild cherry blossom and through the evening songs of birds. Christy Lucey and June had neither eyes nor ears for these other springtime events. Christy Lucey was finishing a short prayer of gratitude to the saint he had been propositioning through the whole affair. Baby June laid the only unsatisfactory member of the litter on sheep’s wool in a shoe-box. She had plans for its survival.
“I’m going up to the house now with this little fellow,” Baby June said. “Keep an eye on Sweetheart for me the way she won’t lie on one of them while I’m away.”
Christy Lucey lifted up his lovely dark head and listened. Not to Miss Baby. “Do I hear the Angelus?” he asked. “Will I make it, I wonder?”
June could never deny Christy the time off for his religious exercises. He was the support and stay of her every farming activity – without him, what should she do? Life would fail her – she would be so deprived the beat of her heart would stop. “Oh, well,” she said, “I expect she’ll do now.”
“She will, so,” he agreed, “she’ll do all right.” He took his bicycle and rode away from June. He would get out onto the mountain road through the farm gateway; its stone archway, crowned with a bell-less belfry, was not quite high enough for present-day lorries and trucks.
June must follow the long drive that ran below a demesne wall and on past the house for a further half mile, skirting the road every yard of the way. Durraghglass had been built at the date when one of the marks of a gentleman’s ownership, dividing his property from the vulgar public, was a long quietness of avenue.
June walked the distance, back and forwards several times a day. She was familiar with its potholes and long, stony depths and she ignored the riot of briars and nettles on its once orderly verges. Close to the back of the house, a different and more precise archway from that of the farmyard led to the stableyard; a now derelict clock in the archway’s face had once told the time. It still looked pretty. The stableyard was built round rather a grand semi-circle. Loose-boxes, weedy cobblestones to their doors, were empty – all but one. June’s brown hens scratched about on the wide central circle of grass round which horses had been ridden and led and walked and jogged, or made to stand as they should, to be admired by afternoon luncheon guests on Sundays.
Pig in hand, June crossed the yard to open the gate of an old dog-kennel. She put down the pig for a moment while she unlocked a small door and called softly. “Tiny,” she called, “Tiny, Tiny.” After a prolonged rumble and shuffle and heavy sighing an enormous, pale Labrador bitch came sadly out. Her back was dipped, her muzzle was silver, but she was still on heat. June knew that anything was possible, at any age. She trusted no one and mistrusted one person in particular where Tiny’s welfare was concerned. “Sorry, love,” she said, “were you lonely?” She clipped a lead to her dog’s collar, picked up the shoe-box and proceeded along the flagged passageway, deserted offices on its right and left sides, which led to the kitchen.
Before she was quite inside the kitchen door Jasper turned from assembling his pie to ask coldly: “Any eggs? I need a couple for this pie.”
“My little hens are all off laying. I asked you to buy some.”
“Too much trouble to write it down?”
“But so I did, Jasper. I did, so I did.”
He could see her childish writing on the list as he answered, “I wonder where? Not on my list.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I did.” He could always make her feel uncertain.
“Too busy with that precious sow to consider anybody? Or remember anything?”
“I’m very sorry – I am, really. Look, Jasper, put this little fellow in the low oven for an hour or two, will you?” She held the shoe-box and the new-born out to him.
Jasper showed no surprise. This often happened. Once she had brought in a premature calf in a tea-chest.
“I most certainly shall not. The low oven is waiting for my pie.”
“And the smoke blowing towards the mountain? You know the old oven wouldn’t warm a plate.”
“Why don’t you let the little misery die? The sow won’t miss him.”
“Sweetheart? Ah, she’ld guess. She’s such an intelligent pig.”
“If you bother me any longer I’ll stick him in the hot oven. Roast suckling-pig – delicious.”
“Look – don’t joke. It’s life and death. Give him an hour in the low oven with the door a crack open – and I’ll tell you what I’ll do – I’ll rake every manger in the place for an egg.”
Jasper was a little mollified by her offer. “Only an hour, remember. He’s not here for the night. I don’t want the kitchen stinking of sour milk and pig shit, do I?”
“Of course not. He’s too young for that in any case,” she knelt down to the oven, solid as a stuffed toy in her Huskies, and pushed the box quietly into the mild heat.
“Eggs now,” Jasper said, “and quick, too, or I’ll put him in the frigidaire.”
She could tell that was only Jasper’s idea of a joke, before she and Tiny went out again into the rain.
2
In the Dining-Room
Late in the evening there came a civilized pause before dinner. Servantless and silent, the house waited for the proper ceremony it had always expected and still, in a measure, experienced. The utter cold of the spring light shrank away from the high paned windows. A steep distance below the house the river gave up an evening daze of fog. A lavatory clattered and shushed. Obedient to its plug and chain the contents went down the perpendicular drain to the open water. Faint pieces of paper floated among the starred weeds and iris leaves of flags. Very fat trout swam there. Once there had been an open, not a covert, drain. Every morning housemaids lifted a grille and sluiced buckets into a sloped stone spout from which the doings of the night flowed down their paved way to the river. Not any more, of course. Those were the days of tin baths in front of bedroom fires, of mahogany commodes containing pos or bidets, commodes with three steps for the ascent to bed – the days of lots of money.
This evening the Swifts were in their bedrooms changing, as they always did, for dinner. Baths they took by turns. The electricity for both bathrooms was a considerable expense. Tonight was April’s bath night. Wrapped in a pale Shetland lace robe she could just feel the elegant tapping of her brocade mules as she went back to her bedroom. Her Floris bath essence and sponge and soap were in a bag, she would not have dreamed of leaving them behind her. She unlocked her bedroom door to the soothing warmth within.
Two bars of the electric fire were not left burning to be spied upon by others. There were many things of a private and personal nature here too – things such as her dividend headings, which were best kept under lock and key. None of the family knew just how much money April had inherited from her husband, Colonel Grange-Gorman. That was part of the married mystique which floated her on a superior cloud above her single sisters and bachelor brother. It was something to balance her deafness – something beside the beauty she clung to and preserved in its tomb of youth. Nothing gave her less satisfaction than for someone to shout in her ear: “Mrs Grange-Gorman, you don’t look a day over sixty.” The fifteen years’ bonus was nearly an insult. She knew her looks to be miraculously unchanged, she willingly endured tortures in their preservation. Her diets, changing down the years, and the difficulties she experienced in persuading Jasper to cook the brown rice, or the seaweed, to hatch the yoghurt or to put the wheat and other germs where they belonged, provided endless argument. To escape their strictures it was no wonder that she slipped off Weight Watchers now and then. A little extra physical exercise would cancel out pigeon pie, she thought, as she took off (“slipped out of” was her phrase for it) her featherweight dressing-gown and put herself through a five minutes’ workout at the open window. In his little basket Tiger shuddered and cuddled lower against the change of temperature. April hated to upset him, but fresh air on the nude body was one of the disciplines. She shut the window, and sighing, lay down on the floor to complete her marathon. After that she stood correctly (as instructed by the directrice of lingerie at Harrods) to pour her tubes of bosoms into the cups provided for them at considerable expense.
Every time April dressed it was a careful robing, a solace. She considered and pushed and moulded every garment to her body’s best advantage. In her middle years the discovery of tights had been a particular pleasure. Her legs had never looked more lovely. When she unlocked the great mahogany wardrobe that filled one side of her bedroom she was implanted at once in an imperishable world of beautiful, cared-for clothes. They hung on padded shoulders. They lay in plastic bags on shelves and in drawers. Stuff was one of the pleasures to her, touching it, folding it into shape, a delight. She loved putting on her clothes. Sometimes she would dress superbly for a party, only to make a last minute excuse and stay at home in the isolation of her deafness. She had her solace: “We’ll have a teeny-weeny wee one,” she would say to Tiger, “we owe it to ourselves, don’t we?” She said it this evening as she took the vodka bottle, the tomato juice, the lemon and the celery salt out of the corner fitting wash-hand-stand with the Sheraton shell on its curved cheek. Learning about drink had been one of the few treats in her marriage with Colonel Grange-Gorman.
At her dressing-table she lit a cigarette and sat on, inhaling and sipping. The minutes went pleasantly by as she leaned towards her reflections in the three-sided mirror, sometimes one profile, then the other. Last and longest, with her drink half-finished, she drowned herself contentedly in the contemplation of her mirrored full-face.
Dressed at last, in darkest wool and wearing gold sandals, April looked round her room. She saw with familiar satisfaction the lavish pink tulle draperies flowing at the bedhead, the close roses on the window curtains and all the Lenare photographs of herself that Colonel Grange-Gorman had paid for. There was no picture of him, nor of darling Mummie. Photographs kept too many memories awake. Before she opened her door April picked Tiger out of his basket, sat him on a head-scarf and then in a knitting bag – so hidden, other dogs and the cats would not provoke his proud aggression. She left her room satisfied, armoured for loneliness, ready for pigeon pie.
* * *
May’s bedroom, a size smaller than April’s and facing east, was as strictly tidy as a private room in an expensive nursing-home. Every object was perfectly in place, every picture hung dead straight on the ivy-trellised wallpaper. Gripper’s bean-bag was covered by a baby’s blue cot blanket – avoiding for him the slightest draught from door or window. His bean-bag didn’t smell of dog – it didn’t smell of anything except for a whiff of mild flea spray on Saturday mornings. Two hot-water bottles in quilted covers hung from hooks on the door. An electric kettle squatted in waiting by the fireplace. The black marble chimneypiece was devoid of ornaments; strangely, considering the plethora of pretty objects made from seashells, snail-shells or any other material her genius could employ, which crowded every table-top in the room. May was the maker of the beautifully composed patchwork quilt covering her bed. One knew that the blankets beneath it must be cornered and tucked-in as though the bed were made under Sister’s eye by the best trainee nurse in a hospital.
Coughing in terrible private luxury, May lit her thirty-first cigarette of the day. For her, cigarettes were as necessary to life as the breathing they interfered with. She inhaled deeply, only laying down her cigarette to pull a white polo-necked sweater over her head. That done, she put the cigarette back in the corner of her mouth and kept it there as she zipped up a long tweed skirt and pushed her feet into a pair of Irish papooties, flat leather slippers sewn by leather thonging to brilliantly patterned socks. The effect was quite daring and interesting in its own way. Still smoking, she brushed up her hair – the same grey as cigarette ash and stained with nicotine like her fingers. But it grew prettily, and sometimes, in the evening, it had the billowing, dissolving quality of smoke. She did nothing about her malleable, cheesy-looking face, which could have responded happily under make-up. She had marvellous eyesight – close or far, pirate’s eyes, piercing distances and alert for any advantage. Her body might have been voluptuous if it had ever been desired. Now it was a robot, programmed and pressured on its consolation track of busy occupations.
For years May had been President of the Flower Arrangers’ Guild. Her lectures to a loyal audience were popular and helpful, and she would have died of shame if her arrangements in floral competitions had not excelled all others. She was faithful in her attendance at meetings of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association where she instructed tirelessly in the art of picture-making from scraps of tweed and wool, sprigs of heather and dead scabious – blue for the sky. And these were only the fringes of her activities. Ceaselessly and usefully occupied, she was far from being unhappy or depressed. Another quality of hers – disapproval – generated in her an unselfish interest and a compulsion to help, and, if possible, improve, what she saw wrong or mistaken in her friends’ lives or behaviour. For their problems, skills, failures, gardens, children, or husbands she had an endless fund of unreliable information and advice.
With May there was a time for everything and never a minute to be lost. She calculated now that there was plenty of time, before Jasper’s pie was cooked to his meticulous standard of perfection, to give herself an infrequent treat: infrequent because repetition stole the essential thrill out of anything.
First, she took the key from her locked door and with a smaller key on the same ring she opened a drawer beneath what auctioneers call a desirable bachelor’s wardrobe. Out of the drawer she took a narrow, hardboard panel. On this had been stuck, with astute realism, short-cropped sandy grasses with narrow paths wandering their ways through them. Even before noticing the lightly varnished rabbit turds, a witness would think immeditely of rabbits. The thought would grow to certainty when, after she had laid the panel along the empty chimney-piece, she placed a second, of similar size and length, upright against the wall behind it. Wonderfully and accurately this panel represented the face of a rabbit warren. Where a labyrinth of exposed tree roots gripped the bank the idea of a sandy warren was suggested with devoted skill. The dry mosses and starved ferns were all there, truly observed and worked with minute dexterity. It was the fulfilment of any child’s fascinated curiosity about the habitats of small wild creatures. It was, somehow, a gross out-doing of Beatrix Potter – except that here was no Peter Rabbit, no Benjamin Bunny.
May considered her handiwork critically. Her masterpiece was never finished or perfect to her
. She tweaked up some tiny grass heads. She took a snail-shell out of a matchbox, but shook her head at its effect. Then, shrugging her shoulders with an artist’s resigned acceptance of the “so much less” that fails the dream, she unlocked the drawer in her writing-desk. The drawer was lined with a sheet of cottonwool on which sat and lay a colony of small china rabbits. Peter Rabbit was here and Benjamin Bunny, too. A pair of native grey rabbits seemed out of place. Two whites shared a carrot. A brown and white buck pushed a mowing-machine. The variety in the colony was endless. May lit another cigarette before handling them dextrously into position here and there around the grassy paths and sandy burrows. She did it all with her cropped right hand, flipping thumb and finger together in a happy gesture derisive of incapacity.
When the last rabbit was in its chosen place May took an object wrapped many times over in bruised tissue paper out of the drawer. This was not a piece of Victorian china sold, long ago, as a fairing. The figurine was that of a nurse, or mother, or rabbit wife in fine china. She stood upright, wore double flowered skirts, and a bodice, finely laced. Her ears came through an important cap, and, beneath the frill, the rabbit face wore an expression of determination and intent. One long forepaw held a blue bottle, in the other a spoon was extended menacingly towards nothing. It was Nurse and Worse. Obviously Nurse lacked her companion piece, the patient.
In the drawing-room the sisters waited for Jasper to announce dinner. He repudiated any offer of assistance – of this they were gratefully aware. They sat and sipped inexpensive, though not the cheapest, sherry and talked to their dogs. There was an inconclusive disagreement between them freezing amity, and even mutual remembrance. Every memory contained its jealousy. If, for instance, as happened tonight, some splendid old dance-tune from the ’thirties blared loud enough from the transistor radio to touch a chord in April’s hearing she might say, “Oh, Roderick took me to the first night of that show, and then. …”
