by Molly Keane
“Tell me about your flower club party. When is it? Next week?”
“Yes. You know, I’m their President?”
“Really? Are you?”
“Yes. They insisted. So I had to agree. Don’t you think I was right?”
“Of course. Marvellous.”
“Basically, I do feel it’s worth while.”
“What flowers do you give them for the party?”
“Forsythia and daffs. And we have a show of our hand work. I’m lending my two best pictures and my greatest example of porcelain repair – a very early candlestick I’m doing for Alys.”
“I wish I could see your picture.”
“I wish you could. I think I’ve really got something – a ruined tower by a lake worked in grey frieze scraps and – I am quite pleased with this idea – blue jays’ feathers woven in for the sky, seen through slit windows of the tower, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Then, tiny snail shells stuck on, for boulders by the lake.”
“And the lake?”
“Well, perhaps a bit of a cheat here, but you have to let go somewhere. …”
“Tell me more,” Leda said, leaning back and shutting her eyes behind her blue spectacles.
In May’s bedroom there was no drink, only a long hour of listening and waiting for some hint or confidence that could be a little dangerous, provoking curiosity or excitement. Leda might have been wanting to write a book about her cousins, but all she wished for was a power over each against each, and to steal even the secrets they didn’t know they kept.
“Ah,” she said, when May went on to complain of the unfair amount of Christy Lucey’s time that Jasper demanded for his wood garden, “does Jasper think he can tame the mountain? What a dream.”
“Dream is right, jolly well right. Jasper’s not a worker. He spends half his time talking to that young monk, Brother Whosit, I can’t remember his holy name. Brother Anselm. Anselm, I ask you!”
“What are you asking me?”
“Well, isn’t it a bit unhealthy, really, basically, encouraging these so-called ascetics? All they think about now is grabbing land and making money, and the B.V.M. and all that lot are down the course.”
“One can’t see why he has much in common with them,” Leda said carefully.
“Exactly, how right you are, it’s just what I said, and Jasper asked me if I thought Brother Anselm was pretty. ‘Pretty’, rather a funny word, don’t you think?”
“Very funny.” They both laughed. Leda postponed the discussion. No shadowy suggestion of a homosexual involvement had ever deterred her purposes. “Be a love and fill up a hot-water bottle, my back is rather cold. May? What are you doing?”
“Hottie coming up – just a minute.”
Again there came the unexplained pause, a secret diligence in process. Leda heard a breath drawn in, and at the sound her curiosity grew as to the importance of May’s absorption. If May was not going to tell it was better to show lack of interest. “What’s the time? I think I’ll nip along to April. It’s warm in there. And she’s quite rivetting on her own. Colonel Grange-Gorman must have been a beast – the adventures. …”
Leda was gone. May stood almost a minute, the round china back of a rabbit warming in her hand. A longing to tell, a shaft of temptation, had pierced her secrecies again, but she still held them close, her own.
It was for Jasper and for Durraghglass, that invisible haven staffed by invisible slaves, that Leda waited, planning her moves with daily increasing interest and optimism. Her bed was soft at Durraghglass, the food delicious; she could see nothing of the damp and decay and age, all mumbling towards their ends around her. In the same way she had not seen her beauty go, and so maintained without diffidence the manners of a beauty, the gestures and tones of youth undefeated. Through the medium of Jasper’s voice she was back in the time of her young rapacious loving. Now, calmly, preposterously sure of success, she enjoyed every moment spent towards its achievement.
Jasper enjoyed the game of capturing her attention from the girls. He allowed the kitchen to become their play-ground. She could find her own way down the stairs now and it amused him to stay her hunger, the result of April’s dieting, on delicious scraps, it pleased him to feed her like an animal and so undo all April’s ruling. Her company did not distract him. As she could not see his methods he was free to construct a dish and cook it as he liked. There was no embarrassment under a critical eye when he sucked a spoon clean, wiped butter off a palette knife with his thumb and forefinger, greased paper with the palm of his hand or rescued the fifth pork chop from Mr Minkles. One prevarication of the awful truths in his kitchen he allowed himself. He slipped the replaced bay leaves onto the low ring of the Aga so that the smoke from their curled blackening leaves might quell other smells. He sniggered a little at such weak-mindedness and let himself call it politeness. Her company enlivened him as she meant it should. While he still avoided any hint inside the edge of flirtation he found this brink, though absurd, rather enchanting. Together with this acceptance of a new sparkle in daily life went his gratitude for her total reticence over the horrors she had outlived. He was too reticent himself, and too idle, to give sympathy or understanding to events that had been and gone, leaving this interesting survivor in their wake.
Cooking was the link he admitted between them. Today it was particularly close, for she held in her head the receipt and method for a classical Austrian cake, a delight from other days. Between them the marvel would be brought to its perfection. Six day-old eggs had been yielded by June’s hens, their proper age a prime factor. The right liqueur, the right dark chocolate had been procured, everything was set – even the electric mixer was forbidden, all must be done with an old wire whisk.
“How long do we beat it?” he asked.
“For twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be dead by then.”
“No. Not you,” she laughed. He didn’t look at her when she laughed, not wishing to spoil his enjoyment.
“You have everything assembled? Quite sure? Delay is ruin.”
“Must you be so fussy?” He enjoyed her serious outlook.
“And our oven,” she stood up, a blind bird turning its head this way and that, “let me feel the heat, please.”
He led her to the Aga and guided her hand into the oven’s mouth, holding her wrist level between the hot shelves.
“Oh, good,” she said, and he took her hand out carefully. “Well, perhaps,” she delayed, “the lower shelf would be a softer heat.”
He had to catch her hand again and felt it unchanged by work, as his own and his sisters’ were changed. Slightly arthritic, tough nailed, double knuckled. This was a young foreign hand he saved from burning. Once more, as usual, he avoided thoughts of prison camps or gas chambers.
“No. I still think the top oven is right.” She took her hand away gently, he forgot how long he had been holding it. Sad that, unlike her other looks, it matched the youth in her voice.
“Oh, hell,” he shouted as they turned away from the Aga, “Mister Minkles!”
“Is it the butter? Oh, the scoundrel! Give him to me.” He put them together in a chair and looked away from her hands exploring the fierce cat’s fur.
“Now, we’ll start,” a schoolmistress tone came into her voice. “We reduce the butter to a cream. …” While he creamed and beat she talked to Mister Minkles, sometimes a German word. The air of the kitchen swam in their warm accord. All the material assembled to her orders on the table was a pattern of the familiarity growing between them. To each, cooking was a matter of serious skill leading to brief delight – neither of them despised or under-estimated their greed.
It was when the fifth egg was being incorporated – “Care! Gently! I can hear you’re going too fast – you’ll splinter the butter” – that the interruption came and the ceremony was desecrated by May’s determined entrance.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting anything. Hold on to that cat, Leda.”
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“You hold on to your beastly dog,” Jasper sounded more fierce than exasperated, “and whoever wants me, I’m busy. They can wait.”
“It happens to be a visitor for Leda,” May said with quiet triumph. Then, her voice hushed to reverence. “It’s Alys,” she said.
“Alys? Who is Alys?”
“You don’t remember Alys? Alys remembers you. What about the dancing classes at Ballynunty? You can’t have forgotten.”
“No. I do remember something. I know – Alys and I won the prize for our waltz. God, how long ago?”
“Alys says you were her star partner,” May passed on the commendation with respect.
“I danced man,” Leda shouted with laughter. “We must meet again, did you say she was here?” She was on her feet, Mister Minkles springing with all his wounded feelings back onto the table. “Jasper, you’ve got the idea now. Just take it quietly. Don’t panic.”
Although she lumbered heavily out of the kitchen, Jasper again felt himself left in the wake of a whirling dance. Today, vengeful of her desertion and disobedient to instruction, he tipped the exotic cake’s preparation wholesale into the electric mixer. Even so, the practical rapid note of its efficiency failed to obliterate that time of the dancing classes just recalled: when he was seven. When he first fell in love with Leda.
It happened to him on one of the purgatorial Wednesday afternoons that gathered only the upper-class children of the neighbourhood together for a dancing class held at Ballynunty where Alys still lived. A dancing master, Mr Leggat-Byrne, came from Dublin to instruct. That afternoon Jasper wore, as usual, his blue velvet party suit with the frilled shirt, longish blue velvet shorts, white socks gartered below the knees, black strapped shoes, patent leather. Very well dressed he felt when Mummie kissed him goodbye in the hall. His heart only began to sink as the side-car rattled away from Durraghglass. April and Leda sat on one side of the car, he and May on the other, overcoats buttoned high, separate rugs round their knees. Kelleher, wearing his bowler hat, drove from the box seat.
Much later in the afternoon five little boys sulked speechless at the back of the ballroom and twelve little girls chattered together, commenting on each other’s dresses. They wore velvet dresses; dresses with accordion pleats floating out from high cut yokes; India muslins, inset with real lace, stiff blue or pink foundations showing their muted colours through the transparencies. They formed into lines, lines of thin legs in black stockings with lacy front panels.
Now, the schottische. Pointed bronze dancing sandals were raised up to the knees, right arms held above heads as “Weel May the Keel Row” barked out from the piano.
Jasper was all right in the back row, hopping about – a laborious blue frog. Then it was: take your partners for a waltz, and each girl flew to her best friend. The boys scowled and delayed before they took the floor together. Jasper and the last little boy faced each other, holding hands. Then Leda, her partner in trouble with the elastic on her sandal, came between them. “Come and dance with me, little Blue,” she said. “I’ll be man,” she said. In her steel-strong arms rhythm became articulate. One-two-three, one-two-three. She led, he followed, they swirled to the music. It was ecstasy – only comparable to his first success on his bicycle. The waltz was over. A gavotte followed. Then it was a polka. He ran to her side. “Dance with me, Leda.” Chin held high, smiling up into the air, she avoided him. “Sorry, I’m engaged,” she said in a worldly voice and away she went with Alys. “Come along, come along, find a partner,” Mr Leggat-Byrne said and slapped the gloves he held in his hand in time to the music.
Going home Leda sat on his side of the car. Distanced and bound in her separate rug she paid him no attention. She sang. The coachman sang with her. Then they all sang, in and out of tune, under the stars, all heartless and unaware of him. They sang: “Waltz me around again, Willy, around, around, around. …” Then a vulgar one from Kelleher: “Sit beside me, don’t deny me, Play with the chain of my watch.” After that Leda was singing alone, a song about a Miller’s Daughter: “don’t be cross, dear one, to me. …” Jasper, huddled in his overcoat with the otter skin collar, choked on his own silence. Still singing, Leda explored slowly under his rug and held his hand. They both wore knitted gloves.
She’s always been a bad fairy, Jasper thought sourly. There was no poetry in the cake-making now. Magic had stolen away. He shovelled the raw mixture together, and shut the oven door gently (gently from habit only) on the work that had been so amusing, done together. Then he put on his wellingtons and picked up his secateurs before setting out on the useful solace of brambling and, perhaps, a conference with Brother Anselm. Poor hungry young soul, he thought, living on Lenten air and prayer in the monastery. He delayed to construct a large beef sandwich. Brother Anselm liked a little chutney, but no mustard.
Quick in vibrant interest, light in betrayals, long in memory, Leda set about another capture from her expended youth: Alys. Alys refused to come into the drawing-room for a cup of coffee or a glass of sherry. She meant to make her escape as soon as May delivered the Meissen candlestick she had kept, far too long, for restoration. Now May, her heart racing happily in expectation of comment and praise, had gone upstairs to fetch and display her work, finished and perfect.
“We waltzed?” Alys said to Leda. She was not attracted by the idea. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it?” She contracted her small stomach’s muscles and pulled back her shoulders, grateful for the contrast between her own tidy shape and Leda’s flourishing bulk – of the two, it was Leda with her rich sweet laugh and her ageless gestures who was the nearer to those lost springs in time.
“We did,” she said. “Fancy! Our first waltzes – were we eleven? You had the sense to admire my dirndl dress. Mummie knew it suited me but Aunt Violet disapproved and all the children laughed.”
Alys only remembered her own party dress, absolutely perfect, and straight from Debenham’s. “I knew you could waltz,” she said, looking at Leda now with more tolerant interest, even curiosity.
“Your voice is just the same as when we were eleven,” Leda said, “and I’m no more sensible now than I was then. Are you?”
“No,” Alys said, suddenly remembering her first perfect hunter belonging to the fearless years – the years when strawberries tasted as good as they looked and cream was not forbidden. Briefly the idea of her own well-guided life with its proper accepted rules and luxuries failed in importance. It was due to Leda’s gift for raising the temperature of the hour that a sudden wish to run off and gossip and be girls together came to her. Looking through the open hall door she saw the day had changed, it was now a morning without clouds, clear-shining after rain. “Come back to luncheon,” she said.
“Oh, yes – what a rampage.”
“Come on. Let’s get off before we have to bring poor May.”
“Oh, poor May!” Leda burst into her most beautiful laugh.
“Are you all right? Don’t you want a hand down the steps?”
“No. Yes, I do. Yes, please.”
“Why can’t Jasper do something about his drive?” Alys whined, as her car battered through pot-holes and fissures.
“Born idle, that’s why,” Leda said. “Good about food, though,” she added kindly.
“Food yes. But all that cooking is a bit – what’s the word?”
“I don’t think he’s queer. Do you?”
“Hippo never liked Jasper much. Baby June for him every time. Now, isn’t this maddening?”
“What?”
“A farm tractor across the gate. Dotty Baby, I suppose. And that ruined gate lodge – too ghastly.” The car came to a halt and the expensive horn sounded on both its notes.
“Pardon the delay,” Leda heard a man’s voice say. “I am just leaving these few willow hurdles I promised Mr Swift for his wind-breaks.”
“Who’s that?” Leda asked. There was a pause in which she could feel Alys’s attention fixed unwavering and away from her.
“Maybe you woul
d let Mr Swift know I’ll be around again,” the voice went on, and then the engine of the tractor broke into terrible life.
“Who?” Leda asked again.
“The most beautiful young monk.” Alys let the clutch in smoothly and the new car whispered away. “Queer from the cradle by the look of him.”
After a pause Leda discarded the idea, although it had an appropriate link with what had been said before. “What do you make of May-Blossom?” It was a change of subject.
“Blossom? Why Blossom?”
“Didn’t you know? Aunt Violet christened them – April-Gaye, May-Blossom, June-Rose.”
“Oh, no. What’s Jasper’s?”
“She could only find Julius for the July baby. She crippled them all with awful old love.”
“Well, they were all rather crippled for a start. Odd, when their father was such a beauty.”
“Uncle Valentine, was he? I expect I was too young to notice.” Leda was hungry for some explicit description, but none came.
“I think May’s hand is almost the worst and she smothers it with her industries – oh, those tweed pictures. …”
“I’m rather glad I can’t see them, but it’s almost worse, listening about every thread in their construction.”
“That’s nothing to the Flower Arrangers’ Guild. ‘My flower people.’ ‘I’m their President, you know.’” Alys did a very poor imitation of May’s trampling voice. “And she lives on the flower club ladies’ worship. If she only knew – they’re just watching the drama of that gruesome little hand not dropping anything.”
“Of course. Why are we slowing down again?”
“It’s this beastly tinker encampment and a chap rather in trouble with a young horse. Ooh! I thought he’d gone that time. No, he’s still there – quite a tidy jockey.” Alys switched off her engine and waited with knowledgeable patience for horse and rider to go by.
“I suppose those were Baby June’s two treasures,” Leda sighed. “Poor Jasper, he can’t make up his mind to get rid of them.”
