by Molly Keane
At the hall door April sat in the car, revving the engine deafeningly. She smiled in a world detached from him. As he clasped her hand Tiger flew at him, screaming. “Proper little savage, that’s the way to have them. Come along in and have a drink, my dear.”
“Tell my silly sister I’m waiting,” she answered. A scarf, patterned in pale leopard-skin, was tied loosely, perfectly over her grey hair. Her hair could have become yellow fur. Her great eyes surveyed him as distantly as the Mona Lisa’s.
“Alys is longing to see you,” he said, “do come in.”
“Tell her I shall go home without her if she doesn’t hurry,” April blew the horn.
“Do you good, my dear, a little drink. It’s a long way to Durraghglass.”
“No, it’s not. It’s Thursday,” April rejoined brightly and blew the horn again.
“No good,” he said as he met May in the hall, Alys having wavered away to her bath. “She simply won’t. A bit hard of hearing now, perhaps. Such a shame. Lovely girl. Still lovely,” he said it sadly. “Well, goodbye, my dear. Loved seeing you. Come again soon. Thank you for those beautiful flowers – and if I hadn’t made such an old fool of myself losing that fish I’ld have given you a bit. … Next time. … Let’s hope. … well, bless you. …”
All the way home May played little games with the marble in her pocket. In her happy repose of mind, she nearly invited Tiger to sit on her knee. April was happy too. The money in her purse promised blissful hours to be spent choosing and abandoning and re-selecting – money no object. And there was something else in her bag, ten cigarettes, hand-rolled by Ulick and put in a Player’s packet. Only ten, she could snip them in half. Half was enough, almost. Perhaps, before she had got to the end of the supply she would talk to him again about the Leeds teapot. Nothing definite, just trail the idea.
Happy though they were in their separate achievements, there was no break in the monotony of their mutual dislike as they sat close together driving through the cold spring evening. Hunched, and hissing nervously in the exercise of double driving, May’s disapproval asserted itself on every given opportunity. There were quite a few opportunities on the main road they travelled before turning into the smaller inter-locking roads going their distracted ways towards Durraghglass and the mountain. Everything on the way home was so familiar as to be unremarkable.
It was partly a deliberate avoidance of contact that held the sisters separate, their usual displeasures, each with each, an irritation as unendurable as that felt by the arm trapped in the wrinkling folds of a sleeve within a tighter sleeve. They took no remedy for the situation between them, although occasionally there came an opportunity for agreement.
Such a moment came and went when together they saw, snuggled into the slits of a stony bank and spread across the roadside verge below, primroses – the first scanty primroses, their pale determination lightening the dusk of the cold evening. “Ah, primroses,” they both said it, pleasure hurrying their pulses together, the snuff and honey of primrose scent in their minds. But, because they feared a trite or sweet comment they turned their heads coldly aside from one another. Because neither spoke again, the faint thread between them failed of any purpose.
As they came back to the gates of Durraghglass the headlights of the grumbling little car shone a brief light into the lozenge window panes of the gate lodge, no lamp light behind them. The empty house was like a pretty, neglected animal that had crouched and died at the gate. As they drove on, under the dark trees and over the broken surface of the drive, they both looked forward with pleasant assurance: April, to her warm bedroom, her careful disciplines, and her little drink; May, to a reunion with Gripper, to the proper placing of marble with rabbits, and to Jasper’s dinner. They stepped out of the car, stiffly and gratefully, as elderly ladies do, and went into the house
Strangely, as though a dinner party was to take place, the hall was warmer than it had been all winter. A perceptible foggy breath hovered over the electric radiators as they drew damp out from the walls. All the lamps in the hall were lighting too. Lights glowed under the red shades of two tall standards; lights glimmered in groups of three from the gilt wall brackets. An air of celebration was puzzlingly evident.
“Doesn’t it look festive?” April stood still, smiling in the unusual glamour. May smiled too – a satisfied smile. “All these lights left on, Jasper will be furious,” she said.
5
The Revenant
In his wild-wood garden Jasper stayed late that evening, subduing and cutting into the thickets of encroaching briars. He very much enjoyed the work: delightful to slice below the woody knot from which the felons sprouted. It was a destruction of personal dislikes, and at the same time a ransom for objects he considered precious. In gardening, and in cooking, Jasper expended all the carefulness or wish to cherish that was in his nature. When alone he cooked with care and affection – the least audience sent him off his head from nerves. In his garden it was different – his spring fever subdued itself happily and expanded his dreams; he could see himself as an explorer, or plant collector in North China. He planned for, and planted, rare subjects that he might never see mature – just as well perhaps, disappointments were the only certainty he acknowledged.
By seven o’clock, as the long cold light lowered and familiar plants and places turned changeling and apart towards the night, he pulled up his last long swathe of briar, three times rooted lightly in the compost round an ailing camellia, cut it in three with his secateurs, took off his brambling gloves and turned his mind towards the composition of dinner. It was too late for that chicken à l’estragon. Let them eat kedgeree, he decided in a school-mistress mood, although he was thinking of Marie Antoinette. Yes. Although properly a breakfast, or, possibly a lunch-time dish, it would do very well – two ageing kippers in the back of the Frigidaire and a small tin of tuna fish he had found sneaking a hiding place at the back of the sock drawer in his dressing-table would lay the foundations for four hard boiled eggs (yolks and whites chopped separately). Not too much rice, he decided, but plenty of butter, cream and Worcester sauce, all under a lavish shower of parsley – one of the good things May grew with unfailing success in the kitchen garden. Then there was the faithful tin of Campbell’s consommé, watered to size from the tap or the stock-pot, enhanced by dried tarragon in a filter-spoon and enlivened by a little sherry.
But now, before changing to domesticity, he was still the lone adventurer, warm in the cold evening, pleased with his work and charmed by the sudden thriving of a forgotten treasure – growth and the new year were together at last. He stood in enjoyment of the moment, filled by an after-work peace of mind among his solitary pleasures – the girls were ignorant outsiders, a small tribe to feed and tease.
The idea for a new tease came to him as he heard a car turn in at the gates and advance glumly through and over the potholes and ruts of the driveway – April and May home again after their day out. He shut his mind almost completely towards their interests or occupations, except when he could be disruptive or destructive about them: he had to allow himself a little fun.
Now as he delayed (he was not prepared to help with baskets and parcels) he heard the car pause and wait at the house, its engine running, then turn on the gravel sweep and go down the drive, instead of to its garage in the stableyard. What had those women forgotten? And what were they doing about it? The unthinkable wastage of petrol really hurt him. There would be more to say about this and less sherry in the soup to compensate for petrol losses. Then, as he walked up the familiar broken steps – even in the dark he could have avoided any unplaced stones – the idea that it was perhaps a caller, arriving and leaving, occurred to him. Thank God, he thought, crossing the gravel – one of May’s Irish Country Women’s Association most likely; or, worse still, an enthusiast from the Flower Arrangers’ Guild. What an escape he had had.
It was then that he saw the woman in the long dark coat leaning against the door, her arms stretched out as though
searching again some unfulfilled embrace. An expensive-looking suitcase perked itself up aggressively on the door-step.
“Good evening. Did you want to see one of my sisters?” Jasper’s voice, no matter how petulant he might feel, could never be other than alluring: an inherited voice, unquestioningly confident. There was no warmth but the music in its tone was undeniable.
The woman dropped her arms and turned from her curious posture against the door. She stood silent beside her suitcase. It seemed as though she was part of the cold, delaying spring and the excitement in its roots, as she waited, and before she said: “Who is it? Is it Jasper?”
“Jasper Swift.” He spoke as if it was an introduction.
“Jasper – I’m back. I’m Leda.”
Her voice had no more changed to him than his had to her. If anything it was fuller, sweeter, exciting like a whistle in the night. It displaced all the present anxieties, the importances of his accustomed ways. She put her hands out as if sure of hands to take them. Her hands moved uncertainly – then she let them fall into the folds of her coat.
Jasper was not one for shaking hands. To replace forgotten Leda with this woman was beyond him. A girl who had laughed and given delight, and laughed and taken it back, who had cruelly disturbed his childhood and mortified his agonising boyhood, was back again after the long years of banishment. It was impossible. Yesterday she was only a shadow, a stammer in the mind that halts over a word. This evening the stammer dissolved and the shadow lengthened to present reality.
“Leda?” He said her name with a question mark, putting himself aside from the warmth of her approach.
“The Jewish cousin.” She laughed without derision.
“Yes. But the war. Those camps – we supposed … we thought. …” He hated speaking about such embarrassing places. Places he refused even now to envisage. She answered as if remembering unpleasant schooldays: “Oh, I was the unpopular girl. The women all hated me – and you know, my husband died, he was never very strong.”
She spoke carelessly and Jasper felt grateful for her lack of emotion. “Rather a long time ago,” he said.
“Yes. Everything is so long ago. I’ve been in America with my friend.”
“Is your friend here too?” Jasper looked about him apprehensively.
“Oh no. He’s in South America.” Her voice went delicately, light as cats’ feet. “Things got difficult, so then my daughter –”
“You live with your daughter?”
“Oh no. How could I? She’s a high-powered journalist. Have you ever heard of a low-powered journalist?”
“A strong-minded girl.” Jasper spoke with distaste.
“Wonderfully strong and so much lovely money,” Leda seemed reluctantly grateful. “She arranged for me to live in this beautiful Irish convent, where the nuns look after me. It’s so peaceful. They give me so much love and care – I’m so grateful.” She seemed resigned but resentful.
“You look very well.” Perhaps she did, for an old woman.
“Jasper? I’m blind.”
The quietness of her voice made every other word she had spoken into a half-truth. How much had she forgotten? As she had been so long forgotten by them. The clearest memory Jasper had of Leda, a memory put far aside, was of that moment, bribed from him by a hand in a hand, when she had asked to look into the empty eye-socket, the small hidden space that had meant for him all the embarrassments and grudges of his half-childhood, half-youth. Aware now of the reason for those enormous ski-ing glasses she wore, light shuttered out, or dead fish’s eyes shuttered in, behind curving blue-tinted glass, edged light-heartedly by a ribbon of glitter – he felt no more than a curiosity (with an affinity he did not acknowledge) to look her over and appraise what age had done to teeth and neck and legs that had charmed him once and had no successors. He felt pleased after his slow reconnoitre, so savagely rude if she could have seen it, at his unimportant distaste at recognising in an old woman only a travesty of his half-enchanted, half-forbidden memories. It was as though an uninteresting ghost had risen from a dead, absurd romance.
“Oh, Leda,” he had to say something, “what a pity. Can’t they do anything about it?”
“Nothing at all. I don’t care. I can manage. It’s an adventure. Tell me about you. Tell me more. Go on – you’re not the handsome boy any more, are you? Who did you marry? Will she like me?”
She needed to hear Jasper’s voice – sweet as a flute, an uncle’s voice. The air was filled by echoes. Blind, she could hear and live the past in his voice.
“No, oh, no. I live with my sisters,” Jasper laughed. “You remember?”
“April, May and Baby June.” She laughed too. Their laughter had the same musical cadences – a family laugh and voice. But hers was the more interesting, lapsing sometimes into an American way of speech, a quickening towards some other language at the back of her excellent English.
“Won’t you come in and have a drink?” he said.
“Yes, of course. But, oh, where did that man put my suitcase?” She sounded bereft. “I thought I might stay,” she said, “for a night or two.”
Late that afternoon June was alone in the farmyard. Christy Lucey was following a single hen suspected of stealing her nest away in the near wilderness of briars, forgotten currant bushes and rubbish dumps outside the yard. While he searched June turned the heavy handle of an old machine that chopped mangolds for the two milking cows. There would be crushed oats with the mangolds, nothing could be less economical than June’s farming methods. Her present contentment was evident in her rhythmic unhurrying movement as she turned the handle through its circuit and saw the slices of mangold fall into the zinc bucket beneath it.
She and Christy had spent a satisfactory afternoon schooling the Wild Man. They had asked him a few big questions, notably one concerning a stone-faced bank. … “and Miss Baby, did you see the mistake he made? And the lad to recover and I to stay with him at the same time, did you see that?” Christy had been exuberantly pleased with self and horse.
“Jesus Christ, child,” June said, “I shut my eyes.” It was a proper tribute to the chance and drama of such a moment. She had known many like it in her time, when there was only a breath between disaster and survival. She gave him credit now for the nerve he had, and she had lost. Now, in the still of the cold evening, happy and not even tired, she did his work for him and waited his return.
Here, in the half ruin of the yard there was no presage of spring as there had been in Jasper’s tangled glades. Manure steamed into the air. A white hen made noises not indicative of egg-laying. “Useless old bitch – you’re for the chop,” June thought without malevolence. She left the machine and the open shed to take a look at Sweetheart, heaving a little in fulfilment as she suckled her family. Even the runt of the litter, that yesterday the Aga had sheltered, was fighting his turn, June noticed with approval. She leant over the half door, her eyes shut, as she calculated possible profits – monies to come from the happy family. If one pig made so much, how much would seven make? The sum was agonizingly beyond her. She put the whole pleasant question aside as she watched Christy coming towards her.
Christy was crossing the yard slowly. One hand supported the wrist of the other, cupped and stretched in front of his advancing steps. It was as though he approached a temple with an offering. June waited, silent in a lull of idleness, until he came nearer and she saw, arranged on his upturned palm, three white eggs, misted in their own freshness.
Christy lifted his eyes from the eggs to June. “The pullet, God bless her,” he said, “within in the nettles.”
“Good man yourself,” June commended him. The practical reality of three unexpected eggs for Jasper gave her a feeling of hope and pleasure. She looked at the eggs with as much satisfaction as if she had laid them herself.
“The thistles and the nettles would go through you and through you.” Christy made far more fuss over his latest efforts than he had about the dangers of the afternoon.
&
nbsp; “There’s nothing worse,” June agreed, “only the honey bees.”
“My mother says there’s a great cure in nettles, you should eat them in the springtime.”
“Whenever that is,” June put the eggs in a tin basin, sticky with hen food, and went back to her work.
“When I was going to school she’ld give them to me with my tea and a duck egg along with them. In the springtime.” He repeated “in the springtime” as if the words were part of a rune.
Looking distantly at his legs, so long and useful on a horse and then at his wide shoulders and light hips June felt a faint jealousy in the admission that his horrid mother was responsible for this gracious maturity. But it was she, June, who had turned an ignorant boy into an able and knowing horseman. He was the inheritor of June’s past skills and past courage. She could translate them for him. They had the same use of words. There was an equality between them. She watched him going across the yard with the tea-time treats for her two cows and wondered how she could ever get through her days without his presence in them. “Come on, Tiny,” she said, “till we shut up the hens. The fox, you know, Tiny, the old fox.” She too set out across the wet yard, Tiny paddling step for step behind her.
Before she reached the cavern that housed her poultry Christy overtook her, wheeling his bicycle. “I have all done now, Miss Baby,” he said, “and my mother has a visitor tonight, so I’ll have to be off. I’m to call to the Post Office for biscuits.”
June was disappointed at his going. “What kind of biscuits?” she asked, only to delay him a moment longer.
“Choc fingers.”
“Why? Is your mother’s visitor bringing her baby?”
Christy looked confused, even shocked, at the idea of a baby: “I wouldn’t say so,” he said.
Remembering their afternoon together, June refrained from reminding him that it was hardly yet six o’clock. She knew he was in greater fear of his mother than he was of any living horse. She let him go.
