by Molly Keane
“Another gadget I’ve just installed,” he went on pleasantly, “are these two-way mirrors. We’re often so busy with our restorations in the backroom, it’s nice to know what’s going on in front.”
A chill numbed May’s hand – that was where she felt the impact of fear. To still panic and restore potency, she opened her handbag, took a cigarette from her case and flicked her lighter with total ease. “Well,” she drew on her cigarette and looked round her, “not very easy to get away with any of this stuff.” She surveyed the Victoriana with a cold eye; then, turning back to him: “And, by the way,” she asked politely, “did your Japanese friend give you a parcel from my sister?”
“A nice bit of Leeds,” he said, “I’ll look after that. And would you let me know when to collect all those ‘baggages’ she rang about. Some day this week? My assistant’s a marvellous packer – clever oriental fingers – but he’s a temperamental little bastard. I’ll come along myself.”
So this was what the delay implied: an opportunity to spy out the possibilities of Durraghglass, a typically unattractive ambition. Jasper would never let him in, and, for once, she was in agreement. “Thank you,” she said, “all her suitcases will be packed and ready in the hall on Thursday. I suppose my sister is paying for the transport? Or would you like it in advance?”
His face darkened. “April’s rather a friend of mine,” he said. “I’m quite glad to be useful.”
“Oh, how kind.” May’s acknowledgement sounded so unreal as to have a pitying quality.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I might be useful to you, too. You’ve forgotten something, haven’t you?”
May drew deeply on her cigarette and looked about her vaguely. A perfectly assumed “silly me” expression superseded all the resolute certainty of a natural decisive briskness. “I don’t think so.” Her memory seemed to hover. “Could I have?”
Smiling again, he opened his hand and laid a scrap of china, no larger than a wren’s egg, on the table between them. “What about this?” he asked. “His nightcap. Rather of the period, wouldn’t you say?”
A different excitement rose in May’s blood, colour crept up her neck. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.” Past any panic in her situation was disgust at her own forgetfulness. Her inadequacy shamed her cruelly; she pushed out her half-smoked cigarette, maimed hand reprimanded on the burning tip. “And now,” she said, “I really must go.”
He picked up the little piece of china and looked at it carefully. “Sorry about the locked doors,” he said, “I didn’t want a scene in the street. April’s quite a friend of mine and she would rather hate this kind of thing.”
First Jasper with his denigrating understanding. Now April’s turn.
“For Heaven’s sake,” she said piteously, “you can’t tell April.”
“No. Let’s keep it to ourselves. And now, if you don’t mind,” he smiled towards her basket, “or perhaps you’ld rather unpack it yourself?” His good manners never slipped.
Pulsating, as before an operation without anaesthetic, May groped in her bag and put the little parcel on the table between them. He undid the wrapping as carefully as she had done, and was about to fit the china cap to the china head, when May let out a scream of protest. “Don’t,” she said, “please, not like that – you’ll chip the edges, you’ll ruin the restoration.”
They looked at each other with a sudden understanding. “Thank you,” he said. “Stupid of me.”
There was a pause. May was shaking now – shock and anguish undelayed. He looked at her with something near interest, and far from sympathy. “You do understand,” he said, “I really must. …” and he tried to take the basket out of her clinging hands. Her last refuge was its rightful possession. “Let go,” she ordered, “at once. Everything in this basket is my own private property.”
“Our ideas on private property don’t quite match up; I don’t want to ring the police,” he sounded quietly considerate.
May loosed her grip on the bag. She bent her head. Her need for a cigarette was beyond endurance. And, at this moment of her greatest need, her hand failed her. Her thumb and finger were shaking so shamefully they were past any obedience; they could not open her cigarette case; it was as if their life was ending. She laid her cramped hand on the edge of the table and stared at it, and touched it with her left hand, inattentive to what Ulick meant to do to her, or say to her. Or say to others.
“Christmas morning, isn’t it?” Ulick said cheerfully, undoing a parcel busily as he spoke. First the tweed picture came to light. He examined it for a full minute. “Hideously good. Quite a gem of its genre. Where did you ‘find’ it?”
May was silent.
“Do say. Tell all.”
“It’s mine.”
“Yes. But whose was it? Before it was yours. It’s perfect tourist stuff.”
“It’s my own work,” she said.
“Mmm.” He didn’t look once at her hand, but she knew he must be thinking of it. If only she could name a reputable witness to confound him. Alys? Nevermore. He put the picture down and started to unwind the candlestick from its paper. “This is really very fine,” he said, “pity you didn’t get the pair. An incredible bit of restoration. I suppose you’ll say you did it. Don’t disappoint me.”
May didn’t answer. Humbled, she waited for the next insult. No tears. All her distress was in her hand, immobile and useless.
Ulick took out his cigarette case. “Let me light one for you,” he said; and still he kept his eyes away from her hand. She took the cigarette from him with her left hand, and drew in a lungful of something strange.
“Perhaps a cup of tea,” Ulick got to his feet. “I’ll ask my man to make us a cup of tea. Perhaps he will.”
“Oh, please,” May said, “will you open the door. I’m late already. It’s my lecture.”
“What’s your subject?” he asked incuriously.
“China restoration and what to do with dead heads.”
“Fancy!” Ulick’s disinterest and disbelief were equally manifest, as he glided away through his furniture.
When she had sat for a few minutes, inhaling the smoke of the cigarette he had given her, the non-importance of the Flower Arrangers Guild invaded and quietened her. Let them wait, she thought. Let them wait for me – che sera sera – right? Of course I’m right.
Ulick came back with two mugs of China tea, milkless. “Had to make this myself,” he said. “He’s packing. He’s really going. Almost gone. A bit worrying. He’s the best I’ve ever known on marquetry – but he’s such a scold.” He put down the mugs and picked up the candlestick.
“Oh, look out!” May screamed again. “Be careful! I only did that this morning. It’s hardly set.” As she spoke her shocked hand flew out to protect her work – its stillness over.
“Am I seeing the truth?” Ulick asked himself, and he kept his eyes from her hand. “I think I am. This too?” he asked her, looking disgustedly at her tweed picture. “You ran up this cottage pie? Very crafty.”
“You don’t have much of an eye for quality, do you?” May said. “Not if you call this canvas ‘craft’.”
Ulick smiled at her, not so unkindly. “Have you ever worked in wood?” he asked.
“No. I’ve always longed to get into marquetry,” May found the discussion of her own subject too tantalising to avoid.
“There’s a little Dutch ruin in the workroom now. Would you like to have a go at it?”
Resistance spent and curiosity awakened, May followed where he led her, through the jungles and labyrinths of furniture and past a door leading into a glass-roofed workroom – a room full of delicate pieces, all in some degree broken or marred, all of wonderful quality. The room was equipped with every possible device for their mending, it was as tidy as a hospital and lighted as expensively as an operating theatre. …
When, an hour later, they came back to the shop together, May and nasty Ulick were hand in glove, and heart to heart – in a manner o
f speaking.
“And that is the best money I can offer you,” Ulick was saying. “Of course, there’ll be a small commission.”
Unaware, uncaring that she was about to accept a wage far beneath her abilities, and half that earned by the Jap she supplanted, May walked through the giant furnishings as though she went through cloud-capped towers and glorious palaces. “Only one thing,” she hesitated. “Jasper can be very selfish and unpleasant about the car.”
“I supply the car,” he said.
May reeled. She sat down. This was past belief. “And the petrol?” she had the good sense to ask.
“Just enough,” his eyes narrowed, “to commute.”
“Jolly good!” May’s own language was reviving. “Ten o’clock to five – Saturdays free.”
“Unless there’s a sale – you wouldn’t mind an occasional rampage in the sale rooms, would you? And they don’t have two-way mirrors at country auctions.” In perfect understanding they both lowered their eyes. For the second time that day May picked up the Malade Imaginaire and re-wrapped him. Ulick took the package gently from her hands.
“I must restore him,” May said. “I’ll do him at home.”
“No, dear. You’ll do him here. And what’s more, he’s going to cost you your first month’s wages.”
“If you get a better offer for him, you won’t take it, will you?”
“I might,” Ulick said. May recognised the careless truthfulness of his tone; and she knew that she had met her match. In a curious way, Ulick felt the same. After the first rampage, however meagre the loot, they would be in each other’s hands.
It was late in the afternoon before May drove home. She knew she had never given so inspired a lecture. And, in her demonstration, her hand had been almost officious in dexterity; each stem, each cartwheel of seedheads took the air, floating their ghostly shapes obedient to her direction. When she had set a piece of white driftwood in front of her creation, May knew that she deserved even more applause and congratulation than she received. The delightful thought: how they are going to miss me, gave power and kindliness to her little speech of resignation as their President.
“Much as I’m going to miss our meetings,” she had said, “and I hope that in my own small way I’ve been a tiny help and a bit of inspiration through my demos, I don’t feel it would be fair, now that I have undertaken such a full-time job in the Antique World. …” Later on, over cups of tea and affectionate protests against her resignation, she had put it to them with quiet practicality: “You do see my point? I could be at a Sotheby sale on the very day I had promised to give you one of my special demonstrations. You get the message? Right? Am I right? Elect your new President, and I promise to come and watch her demonstrate.” Her fixed smile sent a shudder of anticipation through each postulant for Presidency. “So you do see, it’s not goodbye, only au revoir.”
May had parted from her Flower Guild and turned the car for home before she remembered that the suitcases with their dread contents were still in the boot. Flown on the afternoon’s successes she had little doubt of her ability to deal with this last ugly matter, difficult and embarrassing as it could prove. “Pick yourself up,” and “get back on the highwire,” were two principles that had sustained her determination through many a difficult encounter. She parked the car neatly; put Gripper on his lead (“runny-runs for good boys”), and walked towards the cleaners, first suitcase in hand, refusing to admit to any sinking feelings about the nearing moment when its contents would be revealed. The phrases she rehearsed – “Very naughty little dog,” or, perhaps, “some horrible cat,” – seemed every moment less convincing. Although sure, as ever, in the rightness of her actions, May felt almost overwhelmed by the flood of relief that swept through her when she saw that the cleaner’s premises were shut, windows darkened for the night; her awful mission aborted. Back at the car she unclipped Gripper’s lead, replaced the suitcase, and lit a cigarette. As she expelled her first deep inhalation a new resolve, difficult to implement after her long years of loving, sentimental care, rose within her. “Right, am I right? I know I am!” In the garden, in Mummie’s garden, every rag of Mummie’s desecrated clothes would burn to ash on a funeral pyre of rosemary and lavender, apple-wood and sweet geranium. May’s fortune had taken two such strange turns in as many hours: perhaps it was that which provoked the sharp sacrifice of a long sustained dream, and empowered her practical decision for tomorrow. Once taken she put the resolve away – a concluded matter – and allowed her memory to revert pleasantly to the bits of her speech that had particularly pleased her.
The hour was much lighter than it had been when she and April had driven together to find Leda at the end of the day: Leda, the magical nightmare, blind and bereft of all beauty. Leda, who could construe love out of her cruelties. Leda, in whose faithlessness had lain the origins of May’s spectacular afternoon. Thinking like this, May hummed and sang, punching her foot down on the accelerator as if she kicked a lazy horse along. Her mind skipped across the days until there would be a car, her car; to the days of the pay packets and the times for bonus. Those would be the days when she would return to Durraghglass with the week’s shopping, paid for by herself – only the account shown to Jasper, shown to him with a careless: that’s OK I’ve paid. Don’t worry. It would be a way of keeping him in his place. His proper place.
From Jasper and his kitchen came the thought of her garden; of the vegetables she grew with no labour but her own, and a very occasional day stolen from Baby June’s schedules for Christy Lucey. “I shall have my own garden boy,” she told herself, “two days in every week. And he shall never go into the farmyard unless to fetch a load of manure – well-rotted manure. And I shall pay Baby June for that, too,” she decided magnificently. She took a breath of happiness as she passed the bank of primroses, so lavish this evening. Tears for their beauty, or gratitude for her own wild success, filled her eyes; while a frisson for the future shook through her with even finer intensity than the shudder of pleasure and relief earned by any previous escapade.
The evening belonged to May, and May exulted in, and explored the evening. Every sight along the road charmed her, bright with interest and suggestion for her future artistic successes. A quiet old man leading his pony through a stony gap would be in her next picture. Cattle grazing on the side of a hill, steep as a bank, assumed, for her, a primitive quality. The unseen legs must be shorter than those visible. While she noticed everything, no dreaminess overtook her strict road-sense. The memories of scarifying journeys with April came back to her; journeys when April, deaf and immune to all sensible advice, had swerved on her way, regardless. Her departure with Leda today was somehow linked up with those terrible road risks which (so unfairly) never ended in disaster.
Happily relieved by April’s absence from the driving seat, May drew carefully closer to her proper side of the road as she heard the distant sound, a sound uncommon on any road, of a horse galloping; nearer and louder and still unseen, came the thrilling measured spaces of the galloping stride, until a horseman came riding round the bend – on the wrong side of the road, and nearly into the car, before, shouting a wild command, he pulled his horse across, and, laughing in pure delight, rode away.
One of those ghastly tinkers, May thought angrily. I shall have to get after Jasper about that camp. It’s a must. That fellow could have killed me. No control. Good thing April wasn’t driving. The idea that, had April been driving – driving, as usual, on the wrong side of the road – she would have escaped the danger, did not strike May. She drove on, more to the left than before, and ten minutes later she approached the untidy encampment of the people she preferred to call tramps and tinkers, avoiding the vulgarly respectable word: itinerant. She sounded her horn authoritatively at a man who stood by the roadside, raising his hand to slow her down – as though she was the kind of driver to kill a dog, or even a child. Before she could drive on, ignoring his signals, he stepped out into the middle of the road and she saw that
it was Jasper who had caused her to brake so suddenly as to kill her engine. “So like him. Not at all like me,” she thought as she let down her window and waited for him to speak.
It was more than an hour since Jasper had gone running, stooping into the wind, a tall old gentleman, bent forward in dread expectancy – grace gone, age apparent in all its sad inadequacies. He who, to conserve his energies, would avoid crossing the kitchen floor for a tin of mustard, now expended his tired strength in panic hurrying towards a disaster he was too old to mourn. Regret, regret, and a house companionless was all he was able to feel. Beyond regret for Baby June lay the horrid prospect of teasing May without an audience. The boredom of the prospect weighted his stumbling feet on their heron’s legs. Why can’t I be more of a Human Being? he asked himself again. No answer came.
A little boy wearing an expensive anorak was leaning on the handlebars of an expensive little bicycle near the steps of the largest caravan. Occasionally he kicked one of a posse of yearning dogs crowding with lolling tongues and lifted legs round the caravan wheels. Their guarded hostility to each other indicated a bitch on heat within.
“She’s within,” the little boy said, aware of the hour’s drama.
Jasper had a foot on the lowest step, and a hand on the rail, but good manners delayed him.
“May I go in?” he asked.
“My Nana’s with her,” the boy said. He flung his leg across the bicycle and rode away followed by the screaming curses of a little friend, obviously the owner of the bicycle.
There was no reason for further delay and hesitation. Jasper climbed the four steps and, when no answer came to his knock on the door, he pushed the craving dogs aside and opened it. He looked down a warmly heated tunnel of darkness – a darkness broken by the glitter of mirrors, the cut-glass bowls of old oil lamps, and the naive splendours of Staffordshire figures. An old woman with dyed red hair came down the dusky warren to meet him.
