by Molly Keane
6
Rediscovery
In every beginning there is a certain tense excitement, a brief time of discovery before all is familiar, to be accepted or discarded. It was like this in the first days of Leda’s return to Durraghglass. Her evocation of a past time was so strong that even the house yielded up its cold poverty as she pulled the past into the present remembering pictures or silver, long ago sold, so vividly that their lost qualities restored themselves, ghostlike, to their empty spaces.
After the first morning, when she had counted the steps of the stairs – three up, three down to the bathroom, twenty-two on the flight to the hall – she refused guidance to the drawing-room or to her usual chair, placed by May at just the right distance from June’s enormous fires.
It was a performance, as she crossed the room and set herself down as confidently and provocatively as though she could see an audience. In these ways she repudiated her blindness, insisting that it should be forgotten. Her hands lay along the chair arms, her feet were crossed with elegance. She leaned a little forward, waiting for entertainment, or ready to give it. She was not a weighty or demanding guest. She could neither read nor sew nor play cards, but she could talk beguilingly and funnily. All the memories of their childhood and youth were easily within her recall. The absurdities and successes and lamentable moments came out like toys from a box, alerting them to young forgotten people: themselves. It was a game, which because of her sightlessness she could play honestly: she had not seen age overtake them. In her approaches April and May were shy and dazzled by turns. It was a silly balm of pleasure to which Jasper was only mildly addicted, his politeness distanced familiarity. His pinched expression of avoidance was invisible to her, but she was aware of the forced kindliness of the hands holding only the outside of her arms, as he helped her to a chair, and of how he took his hands off her arms quickly, in a polite recoil, dull and strange. A moment to accept, an approach to be changed.
Leda spoke English as she had learned it from her mother, the Swift English; but her voice had a lush quality that softened the correct accent. The family voice that she shared with Jasper had no autumnal creak. When she laughed the sound hung on the air – the last note of a wild free song, a celebration. There was glory and sweetness in her laughter. Her silences were pregnant with past considerations and calculations for the present.
It was in the dog rivalries that Leda became an intermediary, fostering jealousies. She soon knew the dogs apart – Tiny was the simplest to identify. Leda’s hands fumbled the big head, patiently waiting its caress. But it was the dreadful smell which told her precisely who it was she praised when June was near, and belittled gently in June’s absence.
“Stinking and senile,” May said, “more than time to put her down. Right?”
“You don’t think she could have a growth, do you?”
“Certain of it. Sheer cruelty keeping her alive – never off heat, either. So upsetting for Gripper.”
“Well, you do have a point.”
“The little fellow can’t get his mind off her – no, Grips. Not Mummie’s knee.”
“He is a virile boy.”
Then, to April it might be: “Lend me Tiger for a bit. I want to warm my hands. Come and be my skater’s muff, sweetie. No nasty habits like Gripper, have you?”
“Yes, Tiny man loves a good gallop.”
However April translated it, Leda felt that she had said her piece and shown a preference.
When Tiny nearly brought her down as she steered her way across the hall she cursed her, but in German. June near, and not near enough, had no suspicion of the sharp kick so nearly suffered by her darling. “You should have shouted, Leda. I was only setting the drawing-room fire.”
“My own silly fault. Come here, darling. Why doesn’t Auntie May like you?”
“Sit, Tiny,” June said, refusing compliance with the stranger.
“And you carry all the wood and turf?”
“When I’ve cut it up with the circular saw,” June stated proudly.
“You clean the grates, too, do you? It’s too much for you, Baby. Why doesn’t Jasper help?”
“Grates aren’t a man’s work, that’s the why.”
With Jasper her true doggie feelings found a proper expression: “Your sisters’ dogs – they do love them. A bit like super nannies with rival babies.”
“Yes. And I have to cook for their babies. All cooks hate the nursery world.”
“Can’t the girls do it? The girls should do it. Why don’t they?”
“No. They’ld cut each other’s throats. Besides, I can’t let them near the Aga. God forbid.”
“Yes. I see. The kitchen is a man’s place. My father’s kitchen was a kingdom. A place for creation. A world for invention. I’m glad he died before. …”
“I’ve never been to Vienna,” Jasper said hastily forestalling any sad reminiscence.
“Don’t go now.” Change and regret sounded in her voice. “I’m glad I can’t see it. I have to forget – I must.” There was a pause. “Do you laugh at the dogs?” she went on, “or are you absolutely maddened?”
“Well,” he felt warmed. Her understanding was on the edge of his acceptance. “One can’t take it all too seriously.”
“The sisters, the dogs, this place – Durraghglass, you can’t laugh it all off your shoulders.” She couldn’t see his face darken. She waited, then let the subject go. “I’ve been meaning to ask you – would you let me have the receipt for the watercress soup you gave us last night? I could take it back to Sister Agnes – it would be so comforting, when I leave you.”
“It’s an old Durraghglass receipt,” he answered with polite uncertainty.
“All right. I’ll exchange it for Papa’s secret – the greatest goulash. It’s written on my heart. His books are lost.” She shuddered, but only just. “Would you allow me in your kitchen? I’ve been there before … but you wouldn’t remember. …”
He saw her, surpliced and tied in a cook’s white apron, sucking her fingers and laughing with the cook while they waited for an Austrian confection to sublimate itself in the oven. The untidy blonde hair was escaping down her neck and over her eyes. He put down the pigeons he had shot and went away. He knew Mummie didn’t welcome any reminders of Viennese restaurants and considered the presence of young ladies in the kitchen unnecessary and in poor taste. After Leda’s departure that torte had been eaten; he remembered it as an insubstantial happening. Avoiding the thought of Leda’s hair then, short and white now, he rather resented the sleight of memory. But the sense of things forbidden rose out of the past. In an odd excitement of fake disobedience he said, “Yes. That would be interesting.”
“Oh, when shall we put our heads together?” she laughed.
Jasper grudged himself any certainty. Decisions were not to be captured and dated. “Oh, some day. You aren’t leaving us just yet,” and he left the room murmuring about something forgotten, a reason for escape.
Alone, Leda bit her lip – the “just” in “just yet” had been disappointing.
As Tuesday merged into Wednesday, then Thursday, and the days past Thursday quickened towards another Tuesday, April and May conspired against each other in their rival love affair with Leda’s needs and care. She leaned on their help lightly, gracious and grateful, distancing herself while retaining the half sexual aura of the most popular girl in the school. It was in April’s bedroom that intimacy quickened and throve in the evening sessions. April, the deaf but sighted one, the one with the money, was happy in this unison with Leda which excluded her virgin family. Once they had whispered and giggled in curiosity and innocence, now their talk matured into the discussion of marriages past and diets present, health-giving exercises for the body, drinks in place of chocolates, and always clothes, lovely clothes to be displayed and felt and discussed with April’s endless knowledge and seeing eye and with Leda’s perfect attention and agreement. The other side of this warm restoration was less agreeable, for April insi
sted, and couldn’t hear no for an answer, on celery seeds and other herbal concoctions, to be swallowed before the vodka bottle came out of the cupboard. There was deep breathing at the open window and stringent exercises to be performed on the floor, and directed with all the vigour of a good games mistress, before Leda was robed in some dark benediction for evening, chosen by April from her treasure house. Then, a vodka martini beside her and a note-book on her knee, Leda would enlarge her tolerance with a good drink and scrawl comments on yesterday, today and tomorrow. Sometimes there was a joke in the wildly scribbled word, even a risqué joke. April would bend close into that muffled distance of hearing she occasionally knew in the tone Leda gave to spoken words, and they would laugh together till tears rolled out under Leda’s blue glasses and she mopped them from her fat cheeks and wrote: “What about another little drinkie, darling? Can’t face Jasper’s sherry.” In such faint tokens of criticism sides were taken and preference shown.
May was the cousin who had least appeal for Leda. May had no wish to overstep into the ring of horror where Leda had suffered, but she could not restrain her curiosity in lesser hardships: the Convent, for instance. Did Leda have her own bathroom? Did she attend Mass? Were the sisters very strict?
Yes, and yes, and Oh, no. They are kind – Leda’s answers echoed her patient acceptance.
“And your daughter Tania – what’s her other name?”
“Same as mine. Unpronounceably German Jewish.”
“Can’t cope with that. She’s not married?”
“She’s a career girl. She has money.”
“And, in America, who paid for who?”
“My friend. She was rich too.”
“Then why did you leave her?”
“I told you, darling. Things got difficult for him – Tania found this convent. It was all her idea.”
“Does she know about us? The Swifts. Does she know you’re here?”
“Yes, vaguely. She’s on one of her big assignments. Some kidnap somewhere, I expect – Germany, perhaps. She doesn’t tell me. I suppose she can’t.”
“Very funny. Rather rum.”
“And now, darling, I think I’ll have a tiny zizz – lunch was far too good.”
Perhaps she closed her eyelids, how could May tell? But in the silence she pondered the “her” and “him” in Leda’s replies. She would have liked to hear more, but time pressed on. She had secured Christy Lucey for half a day’s work in the kitchen garden, so grudged a moment lost in watchfulness over his work or his lassitude.
The kitchen garden and its greenhouses were, for May, filled with the not unhappy presence of her Edwardian mother, always wearing her hat and sometimes neatly veiled. Her mother had none of the present snobbish form of gardening, of balancing and landscaping even a small area. She planted exactly where her plants would do best. From this principle there grew the wandering bows and tidy knots of box edging, gardens within gardens, within gardens – Russian dolls in their spaces – spaces skeleton now but ever containing small treasures, whether they flowered in spring, summer or winter: gentian, double white violets, cyclamen, double primroses, saxifrage, Hose-in-Hose, May could see them still with some of the avid perceptions of childhood.
Pergolas were the thing too, they ran the lengths and richly enclosed the squares of vegetables. Their arches bent and rusted, now barren of the American Beauty that clothed them once. No more Dorothy Perkins either: May could see nothing in those lush drapings of pink to suggest Coarse Gardening – an expression taken by Jasper from Coarse Fishing. She could remember with pleasure the period triumphs of the rock garden with its awesome torrents of aubretia. Like a person in a long dream she re-established the autumn border, peaches and greengages and Comice pears on the hot wall at its back (narrow glass shelves running ludicrously above their heads) and below grew dahlias and Michaelmas daisies and clove carnations, falling out on the path among their dry, jointed stems.
May still lived on in the imbalances the garden had outgrown to be a wilderness. She could never forget the careful sumptuous days of her mother’s gardening – with a head gardener and a helper or two. Her mother’s garden had nothing to do with Jasper’s wild landscaping of wood and river bank. In those Better Days flowers were grown inside the walls of the kitchen garden. There was little or no planting of shrubs round a country house. Instead there were acres of mown grass; a pony, shod in leather, for their mowing; wide dappling of tree shadows smooth on their surfaces. The gravel sweeps were weedless and stone pineapples had not toppled off the pillars of the steps going down to the river. It was definite as any photograph to May. She resented the present overgrowth and hated the ash saplings taking over the tennis courts – like letting in the tinkers, she thought.
The kitchen garden was a different matter – it was enclosed. Ivy might cloak and drag at its walls, docks and nettles invade its distances, but those parts of it maintained by her vigilance were May’s thrust into a conceit of happiness. Every foot of the walled wilderness that could be kept under cultivation was of vital importance to May. It was her province. She fought for its maintenance with all the strength of her immense will. The rotations of peas, beans, spinach; the triumphant hatchings in battered frames of new potatoes for Easter; the continual supplies of parsley, chives, mints (in choice varieties), thymes, oregano and basil were the successes May brought to birth, properly in their seasons or their perpetuities.
The kitchen garden, situated as was usual at a proper distance from the house, had its narrow green door implanted deep and dark in the thickness of the garden wall, a solid cut-stone arch holding it safe from time and neglect. Myrtles reared up giant rusty stems on either side. The lock on the wooden door had a big smooth keyhole and the easily turned key made its own possessive sound as May turned it and went in, like a robin or a fox, to possess her territory.
Gripper hated gardening, but he came along. May brought his bean bag and intended to settle him comfortably in one of the shattered greenhouses before giving her full attention to Christy Lucey. As she expected, Christy Lucey, the unwilling slave, was dreaming over a barrow-load of manure. May looked into the trench he was about to fill. “We must dig that six inches deeper,” she said briskly.
“Excuse me, Miss, but I’m killed from digging,” Christy stated gently.
“Dig deeper, Christy, and don’t fill in the manure until I tell you,” May said before she moved off, a garden trug full of seed packets, slug-tox and small stainless steel tools in her hand, on her own busy concerns.
Christy looked less than gentle as he took up his spade. You couldn’t satisfy that one, he thought and wished that he was out schooling the Wild Man with Miss Baby to instruct and admire him. Even cleaning out the pigs without a vigilant eye on his short rest periods would be preferable to the heavy employment of this long afternoon. As his day was ending May delayed him for help in lifting and replacing the old pierced pots covering the seakale while she gently explored the mounds of leaf mould and shook her head regretfully at the infancy of the violet and white thongs they blanched and nourished. “Give them another week,” she decided and piled the dark mould over them again.
Elated rather than tired by her afternoon spent in today’s work and vain thoughts of other days, May released Christy (not an instant sooner than five-thirty) and walked back to the house and tea. Her garden trug with half-empty seed packets clipped together by clothes pegs hung on her arm, a pot of dark primulas was between her hands, her dog snuffled along, interested and contented, behind her. Before she reached the house April and Leda, walking arm-in-arm, drew near her. Leda’s head was raised and April was bending down, a smile breaking the monotonous beauty of her face – obviously she had heard whatever it was that Leda had said – or thought she had, May commented to herself. She saw Leda stumble into a stray pot-hole. Her weight, pulling away from April who held Tiger in the crook of her other arm very nearly brought them both down. They laughed.
“That was a near one,” May put down
her flower pot and hurried forward to take Leda’s other arm, “if you must go walking so late, I’ll come along too.”
There was a pause, like a silence in a jolly party, and she felt Leda’s arm a little less than receptive.
April said, “We mean to walk for at least half an hour and we should be jogging if we followed the programme properly.” Leda said, “Run home, May, darling, and tell Jasper I shall need a big delicious tea after all that.”
May felt dismissed. If the two mature ladies had still been the best friends of their schooldays, May would not have felt that they distanced her further. When they had gone a little way from her she could hear them laughing again. Then one stopped the other as if suspicious of being overheard. Again alone, her hands, the maimed and the unmaimed clasped round her potted primula, May resumed her walk, heels down, toes out, sense and determination explicit in their action. Behind the propriety of this facade, all the comfortable stuff of her afternoon, the proper work extracted from Christy, the seeded drills, the times remembered, her hand forgotten, lessened in their content of importance, giving place to an old reality: April and Leda were together again. Avoided, she knew, or imagined she knew, that they were laughing at her, or about her, as they had done before. But today April was deaf and Leda was blind. May was the one who should do the laughing or refrain from laughter. She experienced the same need to exert her power in some direction as on the day when she had stolen and buried the little fox. Today she had other means of reclaiming love. She put down her flower pot again, lit a cigarette with sharp rasp on her lighter and turned back to the garden. There would, after all, be seakale for dinner. Her seakale. Jealousy and love go hand in hand.
Again in the drawing-room after her walk with April, her voice at rest from strain and her mind replete with April’s faultless memories and descriptions, going back through decades of fashion, Leda held her one lovely coat round her – there was always an impression in her mind that she was naked under its timeless grace – and waited to hear Jasper’s voice. Hearing him speak she could shudder again in the delight of her remorseless youth. She could feel the tremor of a revival, but as yet no clear way to follow.
