I turned up the volume a little and we both studied Violet’s left hand.
‘What’s going on?’ Because of the music we had not heard the door open. Mr Macchuin looked annoyed. ‘I can hear this racket from the floor below.’
‘Hello, Daddy.’ Flavia put down the strawberries and went to take his hand. ‘It’s Mummy’s favourite record. We’re trying to wake her up. It was Bobbie’s idea. That’s why we’ve moved the bed, so she can feel the fresh air on her face. And look how much prettier she is now we’re washing her properly.’ She pulled him towards the bed. ‘We put Bobbie’s Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream on her every night and lipstick every morning. Liddy found it in her drawer. It’s called Red Ice. It’s a nice bright colour, isn’t it?’
I winced inwardly to hear this frequent mention of my name. I had moved away from the bed and was busying myself with the spirit kettle, boiling water for Violet’s coffee. Now I decided to turn it off and go downstairs but in my haste to get out of the room I knocked over the milk jug.
‘Feel how soft her skin is now,’ Flavia pleaded while I tried to mop up the milk.
A regrettable curiosity drew my eyes irresistibly to the scene.
Mr Macchuin stroked Violet’s cheek with a forefinger. ‘Very soft.’
An indecipherable emotion, a mixture of pity and tenderness – or it could have been anguish? – showed briefly on his face. For the first time I felt the pull of sympathy towards my employer. Seeing them together, he healthy and vigorous, she torpid and insensible, I thought I understood why he spent so much time away from home. It must be like tearing open a slowly healing wound to see someone you loved in this perpetual sleep that might as well be death. Nor was it hard to understand why he had succumbed to the warmth of Sissy’s embrace. Misery makes one vulnerable to temptations one might ordinarily resist, as I knew only too well. In judging him I had been hypocritical.
‘See how much better she is,’ persisted Flavia. ‘I used to be able to make my thumb and middle finger meet round her wrist. Now look.’ She demonstrated that this was no longer possible. ‘Bobbie makes her nice things to eat. You can’t see her ribs now. And Bobbie cleans her teeth twice a day. And we talk to her about what we’ve been doing. I know she can hear me. She can’t say anything yet but she will soon.’
Flavia stared at her father with large, anxious eyes.
‘Darling.’ Mr Macchuin put his hand on his daughter’s head and stroked her hair. ‘It might be that the area of Mummy’s brain that’s necessary for thinking has been harmed beyond repair. You mustn’t hope for too much. We must go on loving her just as she is and be thankful that we still have a part of her. Believe me, darling,’ he added as Flavia backed away from him, shaking her head, ‘life doesn’t always turn out as we want it to. We have to learn to make the best of it—’
‘No! I’m not going to give up! Don’t you see, there won’t be a miracle if we don’t go on hoping and praying and believing? That’s what we were doing wrong before Bobbie came. We’d just given up.’ Flavia looked at the shrine. Candles, their flames pale now in the bright light of day, burned between two egg-cups of wild flowers before the statue of the Virgin Mary. ‘For the last week I’ve been coming up here every night at bedtime to pray to the Blessed Virgin to help Mummy to come back to us. I wasn’t going to say anything about it because I thought you’d all tease me but you’ve got to believe. Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you something very, very important?’
Mr Macchuin sighed, then smiled, rather perfunctorily. ‘I promise.’
‘And do you promise, Bobbie?’
‘Yes, I promise.’
Flavia’s expression became tense with emotion and she lowered her voice almost to a whisper. ‘Two nights ago the Blessed Virgin cried. Her cheeks were wet. I could see them winking in the candlelight. Honestly, Daddy, it was a miracle! And I know what it means! I know Mummy’s going to get better.’
‘Sweetheart.’ Mr Macchuin took her by the shoulder and spoke seriously. ‘What we call miracles are just happenings that we can’t explain in scientific terms. You mustn’t believe everything that the nuns tell you. They’re good women, most of them, but simple-minded and superstitious. Why should God choose just to make Mummy better? Why not cure all the people in the world that are crippled or sick? What you saw on the statue’s cheeks was probably condensation. The warmth of the fire reaching the cold of her china face. She’s just a piece of clay, darling, nothing more—’
‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me!’ Flavia’s eyes were welling and her lips were quivering. ‘I know you think it’s all bunkum, Daddy, but you’ll see I’m right – and never mind that you don’t believe because I’m going to believe enough for both of us, and then you’ll see – you’ll see …’
Flavia was made speechless by weeping and ran from the room.
Mr Macchuin sighed and pressed his hands to his forehead. I felt despair. I knew the blame for this would be laid at my door and also, which was worse, that I deserved it. He dropped his hands to his sides and stared at the vase of wild white butterfly orchids beside his wife’s bed and at the photographs of the three children we had pinned up on the walls, before turning to give me a long look through narrowed eyes.
‘I suppose’ – he cleared his throat and thrust his hands into his pockets – ‘to be fair, I must assume that this meddling was begun with good intentions, Miss Norton, however ill conceived the plan.’
How prosy this man was! Not for him plain words like ‘I expect you meant well’ or ‘Probably you thought you were doing the right thing’. He spoke in fluent rounded periods, like a mayor addressing his corporation. I was to be rebuked. And because he was paying me I was supposed to submit. I was damned if I would.
‘Yes, you should assume that. What other motive could I possibly have?’ I spoke calmly and mopped the wet table-top energetically to avoid looking at him. ‘It would have been far less trouble to continue to feed Mrs Macchuin gruel and cold water and to ignore all but her most basic needs.’
I glanced up to see a gleam of anger on his face like a crack in the wall of a volcano. He pressed his lips together before speaking. ‘You are no doubt unaware of the advice of the consultant in whose care my wife was placed after she became ill.’ This was half-question, half-statement. ‘In his experience the severity of the haemorrhage, combined with her comparative youth, led him to think that a second stroke would be fatal. He advised us to give her palliative care only.’
‘Constance did tell me that, actually.’ I went to the basin to rinse out the milky cloth.
‘But, despite that, you could not restrain yourself from interfering?’
‘Look at her. Can you deny that she has made a remarkable physical improvement?’
He turned again to stare at his wife. ‘I suppose she does look a little better.’
‘A little better?’ I was incensed by the meanness of this. ‘When I first saw her she was undernourished, dirty, neglected—’
‘Don’t dare to suggest’ – he removed one hand from his pocket to point a finger at me – ‘that I have in any way failed to provide Violet with proper care.’ His expression was a grimace of painfully suppressed rage.
‘I do dare.’ I threw down the cloth. ‘She was unkempt and starving! Left to lie in the dark in her own urine and – and worse. And quite apart from the physical ghastliness, her life must have been a purgatory of loneliness and boredom. I’ve no idea how much she understands, how much she hears or feels. But if you’re capable of imagining what it must be like, if she’s even vaguely conscious, to be paralysed and left to the care of two drunken, incompetent women, you might be able to understand why I wanted to change things. Now, at least, she’s well fed and properly looked after by, among others, her own children in surroundings that are clean and cheerful. What can possibly be wrong with that?’ I was no longer calm. I was breathing hard and prickles of heat ran up and down my body.
‘The only thing wrong with that is that it might ha
ve killed her!’ he shouted. ‘Did that ever occur to you, Miss Norton?’
‘Yes!’ I shouted back. ‘But if it were me I’d prefer to be dead than living in hell!’
Mr Macchuin’s eyes grew wide and he actually snarled. He clenched his fists, then folded his arms tightly across his chest as though to restrain himself from hitting me.
‘You’d prefer! What gives you the right—how dare you presume—’
‘It’s not a question of right but of obligation!’ I yelled. ‘You don’t step over someone dying in the street because you haven’t been introduced. You were all too afraid to take the responsibility—’
‘That does it! That does it!’ He walked round in a circle, his eyes closed as though the sight of me would be too much for his self-control. ‘You’re like all women! You’re incapable of minding your own business! You’ve turned my house upside down, taken over my children, bewitched my sister into thinking you’re divinely omniscient; you’ve got all the men in the district slavering like dogs and you’ve probably got Maria pregnant into the bargain—’
The imputation that I was a female temptress was like a blow in the face. I hated him at that moment. But it served to restore my self-command. ‘If she is,’ I said freezingly, ‘I think you will find that Osgar is responsible.’
‘And now,’ he panted, ‘you’re trying to murder my wife!’
I bowed my head coldly. ‘Oh yes, in my moments of leisure. You, of course, being a man, have been attending to much more important business. While your sister and I have been struggling to look after your house, your three children, your wife, your mother-in-law and your mistress, you have been preoccupied by things that really matter.’
‘How I spend my time is absolutely no concern—’
‘What do you think, Bobbie?’ Liddy waltzed in to her mother’s room as though in the arms of an imaginary man. She was wearing a black lace ballgown of tremendous elegance. ‘It fits me perfectly—Oh! hello, Daddy. I didn’t know you were here.’
She stopped twirling and looked self-conscious. He stared at her and then at me, his expression changing from disbelief to fury and finally settling into contempt.
‘So this is the way you spend your extraordinarily valuable time. Liddy, you look like a high-class courtesan. It’s much too old for you. Take the wretched thing off.’
‘You pig, Daddy! It’s a beautiful dress. You don’t like it because it’s Mummy’s and you can’t bear—’
‘Shut up, Liddy. I’ve heard enough female voices raised in accusation today to make me sorry I came home.’
‘It was a lot nicer without you!’ Liddy flung back before exiting with her head in the air.
He sent me a look of concentrated loathing. ‘I just – hope – you’re – satisfied,’ he spat out before following her from the room.
Satisfaction was the last thing I felt. I was furious. He was a bad-tempered, domineering chauvinist; idle, profligate, irresponsible and no doubt worse things besides. I hated him. I despised him. But it was his house and they were his family. If Curraghcourt was travelling rapidly to hell in a handcart it was not my business to try to stop it. In addition to rage and exasperation I felt – though it nearly killed me to admit it – something like remorse.
‘I’m sorry, Violet.’ I lifted the sheet at the end of her bed to check that the hot-water bottle against her feet was still warm. ‘I’m going to have to go away. It’s impossible, I just can’t live in the same house with your husband. I’ll try and get Constance and Flavia to—My God!’
This last exclamation was forced from me as I glanced at her face. Her eyes were remarkable, the colour of stormclouds touched with amethyst. I knew this because they were open and staring at me.
THIRTY
I went downstairs, in a state of high excitement, longing to tell someone what I had just seen. But by the time I reached the hall I had changed my mind. I decided to say nothing about Violet to anyone. After staring at me for several seconds she had closed her eyes. They had remained closed despite my coaxing and pleading. Supposing I got everyone’s hopes up and it never happened again? It would be better to wait and let one of her own family make the discovery. But there had been such meaning in that look! I felt almost certain there had been a mind behind those eyes, conscious and thinking.
What was I to do now? Constance would be unhappy if I left Curraghcourt. Her brother would be unhappy if I stayed. I cared only about her happiness but presumably his were the feelings that counted. Whatever the decision I ought to finish preparing dinner for everyone else even if my own turned out to be a sandwich at the nearest railway station.
Katty and Pegeen were busy at the table, the former laboriously cleaning silver at the rate of one teaspoon every five minutes, the latter peeling potatoes. Together they were grinding out a sentimental song in cracked voices, something about Ireland being a little bit of heaven. Maria and Osgar sprawled at their feet. Osgar had won his freedom by howling non-stop whenever he was put on his chain. He did not seem in the least grateful for liberty and an improved diet, slinking away whenever Flavia and I tried to pet him. He lived only for Maria, whom he followed slavishly about, but it was enough for me that I no longer felt miserable on his behalf.
Constance was standing at the sink, washing something in a bowl. I went over to see.
‘Hello, Bobbie.’ She threw me a smile over her shoulder. ‘It’s Eugene’s shirt. I have to be awfully careful with it. The lace is falling apart after two years of wearing it every day. I expect it’ll need a few more stitches. There are places where it’s all darn. Goodness knows what’ll happen when it’s too bad to mend.’
I began to push cooked carrots through a sieve to make soup. ‘What’s Eugene wearing now?’
‘He’s shut up in his room in his dressing-gown.’
‘If he can take it off to have it washed without being metamorphosed into a cockroach or a pillar of salt I don’t see why the shirt shouldn’t be thrown away like any other piece of clothing that’s finished its useful life.’
‘Ah, but don’t you see,’ she said in a low voice so Katty and Pegeen could not hear, ‘it has symbolic meaning.’
‘Symbolic of what, exactly?’
‘Of … um, I don’t know.’ Constance stopped stroking and patting the shirt to think, unaware that a blob of foam was clinging to one eyebrow. She pushed her hair out of her eyes transferring foam to the other eyebrow. ‘A broken heart, I suppose.’
‘If anyone else mooned about for two years, flaunting their grief before all the world, you’d think they were being ridiculously self-indulgent.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘You would.’
‘Yes, I would. But Eugene’s suffering has been exceptional.’
‘I don’t think so. Everyone has to suffer. Think of Maud with her arthritis. Think what the children have gone through because of Violet. Your brother,’ I added a little coldly. ‘Every day people are enduring bereavement, sickness, bankruptcy, bad luck and unhappy love affairs. While they try to come to terms with their misery the least they can do is change their clothes. Besides, I don’t believe Eugene is suffering. Actually, now I think of it, he’s probably the happiest person at Curraghcourt.’
‘Oh, Bobbie!’ Constance’s face with her Father Christmas eyebrows was a charming picture of contrition. ‘How awful of me! I’d forgotten for the moment your own situation. That’s because you always seem so cheerful even though your heart is breaking.’
‘Do I?’ My spirits rose on hearing this. ‘It’s not as bad as that. In fact, often I’m too busy to think about it. And much of the time these days I’m more angry than sad.’
‘And so you should be. He must have been crazy to go back to his wife.’
I shook my head. ‘The thing was, Constance, he’d never really left her. I’m not angry with him particularly, but I’m furious with myself. Everyone knows politicians have egos like phagocytes and that their bodies are vats of testosterone. Power and sex are t
he only things that matter to them. After all, it’s necessary for their careers to be adept at lying and deceiving.’ As I said this I realized that my vehemence betrayed a still smarting wound. But I had no desire to burst into tears. Thanks to time and hard work I had moved on a stage from absolute wretchedness. Slowly, steadily, I was unravelling the ties of love and desire that held me to Burgo.
‘I expect you’re right,’ said Constance.
‘I know I am. But never mind all that. Eugene should have told himself ages ago that Larkie what’s-her-name was nothing better than a designing jilt and not worth shedding a tear over.’
‘I suppose I have to agree.’ Constance looked at the shirt, a sodden mass in the bowl. ‘But at least he’s not like other men. You must admit it’s remarkable that after all this time, nearly two years, he’s refused to look at another woman.’
‘He’s been looking at you.’
‘Me?’ Even in the poor light of the kitchen I could see that Constance had turned the colour of the soup I was making. ‘Oh no, Bobbie, you’re mistaken. He thinks of me as a sister.’
‘Men never think of women as sisters. Unless they actually are, of course. Does he behave towards you in any way like your brother?’
‘Like Finn? Not at all. There’s no one like Finn if you’re ill or in trouble but otherwise, if you don’t really need him, you might as well be invisible. But Eugene’s not like other men.’
‘So you said.’ I allowed myself to look sceptical.
‘Well.’ Constance began to be flustered. ‘I should be sorry if he were interested in me – it would be dreadful for him to be disappointed twice – though I know you’re quite wrong and he never thinks about me at all in that way—’
‘Constance. Dear Constance.’ I stopped sieving, folded my arms and looked at her. ‘I think you ought to examine your own feelings a little more closely.’
‘What? You mean … Oh, no! You think I’m in love with Eugene?’ Constance laughed as she squeezed unappetizingly grey water from his shirt. ‘Because of our common interest in poetry we spend a lot of time together, and we like the same kind of things. And’ – her tone became defensive – ‘I enjoy doing things for him, to make him happy. Honestly, would you call that being “in love”? I wouldn’t. It’s just being good friends. When I’m low, being with Eugene cheers me up. And when I’m happy he sympathizes so well with my mood that I feel twice as good. And when I see him hurt it’s like being cut to pieces. I feel it here.’ She clutched the wet shirt to her heart with rubber-gloved hands. ‘I know people sometimes laugh at him and I want to kill them! That’s all it is, Bobbie, just friendship.’
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