The advent of a physiotherapist improved things further. Miss O’Rourke’s large frame and round face with upturned nose and large nostrils appeared to fascinate Violet. When Violet threw a tantrum and screamed, ‘Bad pig!’, Miss O’Rourke, who soon became known to us as Rosie, said, ‘If it’s wickedness you’re in the mood for I’ll go off and have my lunch. Maybe I’ll look in later to see how you are. And maybe I won’t.’
She once left Violet alone for two hours and instructed the rest of us to do the same. To my surprise when the time was up it was a chastened, conciliatory Violet who greeted us. We had been in the habit of treating Violet as though she were a cross between a sickly princess and a genocidal dictator.
‘And we’ll have none of this weakly lying about,’ Rosie insisted. ‘Pillows and more pillows. We’ll sit you up so you can have a view of the world instead of that crack in the ceiling. Then in a while we’ll swing you round so you can put your legs down and get the feel of a good solid floor beneath your feet. After that you’ll be sitting in a chair in the blink of an eye.’
Rosie believed in the power of music to override blocked pathways in the brain. She had Violet shaking a maraca with her good hand, pressing keys on a toy piano, and hitting a gong in time to Frank Sinatra and Mel Tormé. She bullied Violet, shouted at her, once even smacked her, but Violet’s face always brightened when Rosie walked in. Recognizing Rosie’s worth we paid for a supplementary session of physiotherapy each week with money from the poteen fund, which was mounting steadily.
‘The poteen’s earned us more than a hundred pounds this week already.’ I was painting the cloakroom floor with red cardinal to hide the white blotches caused by damp coming up between the tiles. Constance was sorting through a large chest that stood in one corner. ‘What I find astonishing is people’s unlimited capacity for alcohol. I see the same faces coming up to the stable yard three or four times a week. And sometimes the apple store vibrates with voices raised in argument. But you’ve got to hand it to Timsy. He’s a natural venture capitalist. He was trying this morning to renegotiate the terms of our agreement so he could lend us money at a favourable interest rate—’
‘Look! These gloves were Finn’s when he was a little boy.’ Constance had not been listening. ‘I always admired them because they were such a lovely red. And this scarf was Granny’s. Now who could have worn these?’ She held up a pair of black lace mittens. ‘I don’t believe anyone’s turned out this chest for centuries. It’s like an archaeological site, layers of people’s lives … Oh!’ She took out an army cap, khaki with a peak. ‘The Irish Fusiliers. It must be Daddy’s. I’d no idea it was here.’ She ran her fingers over the badge, her eyes dark, her voice a little tremulous. ‘To think it’s been here all these years.’ She turned it between her hands, brushed the dust from the crown and stroked the leather band. ‘Still, what use is it? I mustn’t be sentimental.’
‘Don’t put it back,’ I said as her hand moved towards the chest. ‘We’ll put it on display beneath that drawing of him on the landing. It’s part of the history of the house.’
‘Could we? You can’t imagine what it would mean to me.’
Looking at her face I thought I had an inkling.
The automatic washing machine had arrived. The day it was installed Constance and I shared a bottle of good Mâcon Blanc from the cellar as we watched the weekly load of fifteen white school shirts whirl in the drum. Predictably, Pegeen and Katty refused to use it. This was crafty of them as it meant that we took over the washing of practically everything but their clothes. But it was worth it for ease and speed and dry floors. Now we had our sights set on a tumble-dryer.
The rain kept up pretty steadily throughout the autumn but there came a time, three-quarters of the way through December, when the temperature dropped from the high fifties to the low thirties and in the mornings a light glaze of frost lay over the ground beneath a brilliant cloudless sky. At Cutham I had cursed the ancient radiators which were inclined to sulk in a barely lukewarm state because their circling waters were choked with particles of rust. But if you have never lived without central heating you can have no idea of the intensity of the cold that dogs you between fireplaces and crackles in every cubic inch of the bathroom, which is densely befogged the second you run the hot tap. I must have been less hardy than the others for I was the only one to get chilblains on my fingers and toes despite wearing gloves and several pairs of socks even in bed.
During the days of frost it seemed warmer out than in and I was glad of any opportunity for exercise which might improve my circulation. The ground in the walled garden was too hard to work and we had stopped cutting the yews for fear of frost damage but on the terrace below the canals was a wilderness of hornbeam surrounding a round, debris-filled pool, perhaps thirty feet in diameter. The photographs showed that the hornbeams had once been tightly clipped into a circular stilt hedge. The Golden Treasury of Trees and Shrubs having approved their pruning during the dormant period, I went most afternoons with a saw and a pair of secateurs to cut the lowest branches back to the main trunk.
Maria and Osgar accompanied me on these occasions. Osgar was now unrecognizable as the savage, ill-conditioned creature who had tried to take a piece out of my ankle on my arrival at Curraghcourt. Good food had made his coat shine and his eyes bright, and chasing Maria about the house and garden had built up his physique. He had several bad habits, the most tiresome of which was to clamp his jaws on any item of clothing or furnishing to which he had taken a sudden and unpredictable liking. He would salivate like a rabid animal and refuse to let it go no matter how much we cajoled or threatened until we put a plate of raw meat under his nose. Father Deglan’s soutane was peculiarly attractive to Osgar and Constance had to spend more than one evening darning the rents made by his teeth. Osgar ignored my efforts to make friends with him but I was fond of him as of a protégé who had, more or less, made good.
On one particular afternoon not long before Christmas I went down to the pool, carrying a tall stepladder. I had already finished the stilt part of the hornbeam hedge by exposing the trunks to a height of six feet all the way round the circle. Now I wanted to tame the upper parts to restore the disciplined shape of the original pleaching. I was standing, saw in hand, on tiptoe on the very top of the stepladder when Osgar bounded past and knocked it over.
I had felt it rocking beneath me before it actually fell so I had time to cling to the stoutest branch within reach. I found secure places for my feet and peered down through the leaves. The ladder lay on its side. The distance to the ground was a mere ten or twelve feet but the tangle of intervening branches made the descent tricky and the naked trunk offered neither handholds nor footholds.
‘Hello!’ I shouted. ‘Is anyone about? Could somebody put up my ladder?’ I was hoping to attract the attention of one of Timsy’s customers who might be on his way to or from the apple store. I heard a rustling of leaves as the dogs romped in the undergrowth with heartless indifference. Then they dashed, barking, away. ‘Hello!’ I called again, feeling foolish. ‘I’m stuck! Is anyone there?’ No answer. I decided to climb down as far as I could and then jump. Hornbeam limbs grow close together and they are whippy. By the time I had wriggled down a little way my face was scratched and the secateurs in my pocket had sprung open and stabbed me viciously in the knee.
‘Bloody hell!’ I said aloud. ‘Osgar, you’re an ungrateful beast!’ Without warning the spur on which I was standing snapped beneath my weight. For a few seconds I hung from a bough curved like a long bow under high tension. As I was preparing to let go I heard footsteps and a voice from below said, ‘Hang on! I’ll put the ladder up.’
I hung on for all the good it did me. There was a terrific crack and the outer end of the treacherous branch plummeted with me on to something yielding that partly cushioned my fall.
‘You’ve killed him!’ Sissy burst from the bushes and pushed me off the prostrate body of Senator Macchuin.
‘I haven’t.’ I go
t to my knees and bent over him anxiously. ‘He’s just winded. Give him a minute, Sissy. How can he breathe if you keep kissing him?’
We watched with concern as he panted and grimaced and clutched his diaphragm. After a while he was able to draw enough breath to swear expressively.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help myself.’
He sat up. ‘What – were you doing – up – the damn tree – in the – first place?’
‘I’m pruning it into a stilt hedge. I hope you’re not much hurt?’
‘I hope not too. Stop that, Sissy. I’m all right.’
Sissy narrowed her eyes at me and displayed her bottom row of teeth.
‘Let me help you.’ I took hold of his arm. Sissy immediately grasped the other one.
‘Thank you, I can manage,’ he said grumpily, shaking us both off and scrambling up. He brushed dirt and leaves from his suit, felt his jaw tenderly and moved it experimentally from side to side. ‘Nothing broken, no thanks to you.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got a cut on your cheek.’ I offered my handkerchief, streaked with black from the secateurs, which I had oiled that morning.
He pulled out his own much cleaner handkerchief and wiped his face. Then he looked at me. ‘For once the gods have been just. You have several. You’d better have this.’ He gave me his handkerchief and stood frowning while I dabbed carefully. ‘Does it hurt much?’
‘It stings a bit.’ Actually my right cheek was throbbing as though on fire.
‘Good.’ He looked at me, his expression grim. ‘A stilt hedge? Well, I’d hate to have had my back broken for a trivial cause.’
‘Aren’t you making rather a fuss about a slight winding?’ I spoke coldly.
He continued to look at me without saying anything until Sissy made a growling sound.
‘Let’s go up to the house,’ he said. ‘I’ve had an appalling journey. The clutch went on the Peugeot just outside Dublin. Every train was late. And the taxi had to drop me outside the walled garden. Some damned fool’s padlocked the gates.’
‘I’m the damned fool,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you make him follow the proper drive that runs through the woods?’
‘Because another damned fool’s left a pile of planks right across it. Not you, I don’t suppose?’
‘They’re the new floorboards for the corner of the drawing room. I suppose the delivery man didn’t know – we’ll have to put up a sign – oh, bother! Now I’ll have to fetch them myself in the Land-Rover.’
‘Can’t Timsy go?’
I looked at my watch. It was half past three. Between four and six was Timsy’s busiest time when his customers needed fortifying after a day’s work. ‘I’ll go down and wait for Constance and the children. They’ll give me a hand to load them. It’ll be dark in an hour. I’d better hurry.’
But when I took my first step, my right ankle, which had been throbbing in a background sort of way, protested. A pain like a nail being hammered into my leg ran up to my knee.
‘I can hop.’ I gave an experimental skip. Each jump forward was agonizing but I knew better than to seek sympathy. I reached the steps that led up to the canals but then my good, hopping leg gave out completely. Sissy, who had been walking backwards in front of me to watch my progress, threw back her head and gave a crow of delight.
‘Give me your hands, Sissy,’ said Finn. ‘We’ll make a chair to carry her.’
But Sissy shook her head and bounded away across the grass like a springbok, laughing gleefully.
‘Fortunately I never try to understand women,’ said the senator, with a great weight of meaning. ‘That way madness lies.’
‘Besides,’ I said, with awful irony, ‘as long as they continue to look after your children, clean your house, cook your meals and launder your clothes, why bother?’ I wanted to include wife and mistress with the children but I did not quite dare.
‘What a sadly splenetic nature you have. But isn’t it ill advised, seeing as I’m the only means you have of getting to the house? And, if I’m not mistaken, it’s starting to rain.’
I looked up. A grey cloud hovered overhead. Several drips landed on my upturned face.
‘This is no time to stand on ceremony. I’ll give you a piggyback.’ Finn took off his tie, stuffed it in his pocket and undid the top button of his shirt. Then he turned round and bent gracefully at the knees.
‘Won’t I be too heavy? I don’t want to get mud on your clothes …’
‘Stop fussing and hurry up. I’m getting wet.’
I put my arms round his neck and jumped up clumsily, hurting my ankle very much in the process. The senator started off well, at a brisk pace. Halfway up the steps he began to pant a little.
‘You might think … of giving up that extra … slice of toast.’
‘I weighed myself yesterday as it happens. I’m eight and a half stone. No one could call that heavy.’
‘We … must have those … scales checked.’
The rain came down in cataracts. I began to laugh.
‘I’m glad you’re … amused.’
‘I’m sorry. But we must look so ridiculous.’
‘You may. I refuse … to believe I look anything … other than my usual dignified … self. My God! What’s happened to the yews?’ He paused for a moment and lifted his head to look to left and right.
‘Constance and I have been clipping them. It’s how they used to look. Before the war – the Emergency, I mean. I hope you like the result?’
He shifted my weight higher on his back and staggered forward between them. ‘Is there no end to … your appetite for improvement? As it happens … and luckily for you … I do … like it.’
Not surprisingly, I had not ridden piggyback since I was a child. In those days it had never struck me as a particularly intimate method of travel. Now I was very aware of his dark hair inches from my face, of my hands clasped beneath his chin and of my legs fastened round his waist. Rain trickled down my neck and face.
‘Stop kicking!’
‘Sorry.’ I was by now convulsed with laughter.
‘I’d like … to know … what’s so funny.’
‘Can’t … tell you.’
‘You’re hysterical.’
‘I think I am.’
‘If you could … manage to remain … in possession of your … senses for the last … fifty yards … we’ll have … done it.’
He completed the last bit at a run and dropped me without ceremony by the drawing-room French windows. He opened the doors and I hopped inside. He flexed his arms and arched his back and then mopped the rain from his face.
‘Thank you.’ I tried to subdue the fou rire that had overwhelmed me. ‘I’m really sorry to have put you to … so much trouble.’
‘I’ve rarely seen anyone look more penitent.’ He handed me his handkerchief again, now wet as well as bloody. ‘I know how Sinbad felt, poor devil!’
‘If you’re comparing me with the Old Man of the Sea I call that insulting.’
‘It is rather,’ he smiled. ‘And unjust since you’ve climbed down of your own accord. You remember how Sinbad got rid of him, finally?’
‘He made him drunk.’
‘Exactly so. For the sake of the legend we’ll have a bottle of something decent while we lick our wounds.’
‘Daddy!’ Flavia raced into the drawing room and flung herself into her father’s arms. ‘I didn’t know you were coming today. Darling, darling Daddy! I’ve missed you so much. You’ve got to come upstairs with me at once and see Mummy. We’ve got a surprise for you …’ She drew back to look at him. ‘What have you been doing? Your face is bleeding and you’re all wet.’
‘Finn! How wonderful it is to see you!’ Constance came in, followed by Flurry. ‘Goodness, what’s been happening here? You look as though you’ve both been in an accident. Bobbie, your face!’
Flurry examined us with interest. ‘Have you been fighting each other?’
‘Not quite.’ Finn kissed the
top of his son’s head. ‘I’ve never actually hit a girl though I’ve often wanted to. Apart from your aunt, but I don’t count that because we were very young at the time.’
‘I sprained my ankle falling out of a tree,’ I explained. ‘Your father was kind enough to carry me back.’
‘It’s lucky you weren’t badly hurt.’ Constance stripped off her hat and gloves to embrace her brother. ‘There’s a poem about the Countess of Desmond who was killed falling from a cherry tree. Mind you, she was a hundred and forty years old at the time. Apparently she renewed all her teeth twice.’
‘Some people will do anything to be original,’ said Finn.
‘I’ll get the children’s tea.’ I put my weight gingerly on my right foot. The pain was intense. Constance helped me to a chair close to the fire. She bathed my scratched face and brought a bag of frozen peas to strap to my ankle.
‘Shall I take the leaves out of your hair?’ she asked tenderly. ‘Though they’re really rather becoming.’
‘I believe it’s a look she deliberately cultivates,’ Finn said on his way to the cellar.
The next morning the swelling had gone down a little and I found that by binding my ankle tightly I could bear to put weight on the toe. Being obliged to hobble meant that it took me much longer to do things but fortunately it was Saturday when we always had breakfast later. I had planned to ask Timsy to drive me down to the walled garden to pick up the floorboards but to my surprise I found Finn and Flurry had already brought them up and stacked them in the kitchen corridor.
‘It’s good to be home,’ the senator said, apropos of nothing in particular as we lingered over toast and marmalade at the table. He looked around. ‘Everywhere looks unusually clean and tidy. And this coffee is quite drinkable. In fact, it’s excellent.’
‘Bobbie orders it from Dublin,’ Constance said immediately.
He frowned, then made an obvious effort to smile as he glanced in my direction. ‘I’m grateful for all the trouble you’ve taken.’ He did not see Sissy, who was standing behind him, make the sign of the evil eye in my direction. In Ireland this is called the Droch Hool.
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