‘Not a penny. It’s a very reputable magazine. The editor likes the poem very much and wants to see what else you’ve written. It may be the beginning of something. Poetry’s as hard a way to win fame and fortune as busking outside the chip shop with a harmonica but keep writing.’
She kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you.’
Eugene came in then and I saw Constance hesitate, then put the booklet behind a cushion. I wondered if she wished to show it to him when they were alone or whether she was afraid of making him jealous.
‘It was so good of you to do that,’ I said to Kit in a low voice. ‘To send it to the magazine. It ought to do wonders for Constance’s morale.’
‘It was a little thing.’ Kit took back the tray, put it on the table and filled the glasses. ‘But if it pleases you, I’m glad.’
I felt I really loved him at that moment. ‘Would you do one more thing for me? Usually I ask Eugene but so often he gets as far as the landing, then forgets what he’s supposed to be doing and goes off to his room. Would you bring Violet down? She hates being shut away from all the excitement. Then we can spend a pleasant hour or so congratulating ourselves.’
‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Constance threw herself on to a sofa in the drawing room. ‘I have never ever in my entire life felt so thoroughly undone! And it was only part of an afternoon and two tours! What will it be like tomorrow?’
‘It’s because it’s all new to us, that’s all. Naturally we’ve felt anxious and there’s nothing more tiring. But, joy, oh joy! It was a triumph! They absolutely loved it!’
‘They did! I’m blessed if I know why.’ Constance grasped the glass I held out to her. ‘Despite Osgar taking a shine to that woman’s mink-lined mackintosh. Thank goodness Kit was here!’
I took out my jotting pad, already covered with notes. ‘Tonight Eugene must make a notice to put by the front door, inviting all women to leave their furs under lock and key in the cloakroom.’
‘Won’t they think it odd?’
‘It’ll be part of the eccentricity. It seems that’s the appeal.’
‘It’s true.’ Constance looked puzzled. ‘When I explained about the tradition of keeping a black dog tethered on the front-door step and how we’d decided it was time to break with custom in the interests of animal welfare but we were still trying to teach him acceptable manners, they all melted, including the owner of the coat. They took photographs of Osgar and the English visitors tried to give him mints and toffees when they thought I wasn’t looking.’
‘You must be sure to include the story in every tour from now on. We’ll have to do something about the chain in the kitchen passage.’ The fact that it had escaped its moorings and returned to dangle at head height had been unnoticed by Constance who had continued to dodge it instinctively. ‘It gives a new meaning to the word brow-beaten. Several people came out looking rather bruised and that poor bald man was running with blood.’
‘Perhaps Timsy could take it down?’
I began to scribble busily. ‘I think it would be better to fix a large notice to it and you can explain what it was for and how you’re all used to dodging it. More local colour. What was the story you told that made all the men laugh? I heard them chortling when I took Maud and Violet some tea.’
‘I’m sure it’s apocryphal and does the rounds of all the old Irish houses. I don’t think I’d have risked it if I hadn’t had the poteen. In the old days the master of the house was in the habit of choosing one of the maids to warm his bed each night. I’m sure that much is true. Apparently one night the girl smelt so strongly of tallow and armpits that he got up in the dark, took a bottle of cologne from his dressing table and sprinkled it all over her. In the morning he found the poor girl covered with ink.’
‘What are you – laughing – ab-b-bout?’ asked Violet, clinging to Kit’s neck as he carried her in, followed a few minutes later by Maud. ‘How many – people – c-c-came? Did it go – well?’ Maud had been persuaded to allow the speech therapist back and during the last few weeks Violet had made tremendous progress. She still spoke slowly, slurred her words and often forgot them altogether but it was now possible to have proper conversations with her. Though she still sometimes wept with frustration she tried to be patient and was always sweet-tempered with me. I had grown really fond of her.
‘Rubbish!’ said Maud, when the story about the ink was repeated. ‘Of course they all reeked of sweat and horses and the pox, he probably worse than she. This modern coyness is all of a piece with the current passion for tasteless and misleading euphemisms. A man had the effrontery to open my bedroom door and ask for a rest room. I instructed him on no account to get on the beds but to lie down in the garden if he was tired. Violet says he was asking for a lavatory. What, I should like to know, is restful about excretion? Violet, you’re slouching. Sit up!’
Violet had been leaning on the arm of the sofa looking at the latest copy of Vogue which had arrived that morning. Apart from Finn coming home, it was the event she most looked forward to.
I made another note. Sign for lav on landing.
Flavia came running in and went at once to kiss her mother. ‘Did anyone come? What happened?’ She sat beside Violet and took her mother’s crippled right hand on her knee, stroking it gently because she knew the splint made it ache. ‘It’s taken us ages to get home!’
Constance had arranged that Sam O’Kelly would do the school run in return for an appropriate fee. He and Larkie were still kicking their heels in Kilmuree, lacking the funds to return to America.
‘I gave him strict orders not to go faster than forty,’ said Constance. ‘The Morris won’t take the strain of high speeds and we must have the Land-Rover here in case of emergencies. It’s all been very exciting and, to put it conservatively, a howling success. But you’ll see for yourselves on Saturday. In fact I’m hoping you’ll all lend a hand.’
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Flavia. ‘What can I do?’
‘Do you think you and Liddy could be waitresses?’ I asked. ‘Pegeen and Katty were rushed off their feet.’
‘I’d adore it!’ said Flavia. ‘I could have a little book to write things down in and I’d be very careful not to slop the tea in the saucers. Mummy gets so cross about that, don’t you?’ She rested her head against her mother’s shoulder.
‘I’m never cross with you – my sweet – b-baby.’ Violet caressed Flavia’s hair with her good hand. The smile faded almost immediately from her face as she turned back to Vogue, keeping her place with her finger as she struggled to read the words.
‘Where is Liddy?’ asked Constance.
‘She’s gone to the kitchen to find something to eat,’ said Flavia.
Liddy seemed to be eating more sensibly these days, though it was too soon to be sure that the starving and bingeing were things of the past. I would have liked to have put this improvement down to Liddy’s satisfaction at having her mother restored to her but the truth was that though she and Violet shared a passion for clothes and the fashionable world Liddy frequently found her mother’s presence an irritant. She was impatient of the time it took Violet to express herself. Seventeen, I remembered from my own relationship with my mother, was a supremely ungracious age and there was more than a little of Maud in Liddy’s character.
Just as I was thinking this, Liddy put her head round the door.
‘Do you want the ham that’s in the fridge?’ she asked me, ignoring everyone else.
‘Do you see that Kit’s here?’ said Constance crossly. ‘If you can’t be bothered to say hello to the rest of us you might at least have the courtesy to acknowledge his presence.’
‘Sorry. Hello, Kit, how are you?’ Without waiting for his reply she switched her attention back to me. At least she had got over her infatuation, I was thankful to see.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do want it. But there are scones left over from the visitors’ teas and some jam and cream. You can finish them if you like. They have to be made fresh every day or they taste li
ke cardboard—’
‘Bags I!’ yelled Flavia and the two girls raced each other for the door.
‘What about you, Flurry?’ asked Constance. ‘Would you be able to help us on Saturday? You could take the coats and umbrellas and put tickets on them.’
‘I’ve got to get on with the railway if I’m to finish it by the summer,’ said Flurry. ‘Besides’ – he pulled down his mouth – ‘I don’t much like strangers.’
‘I thought I didn’t, either,’ said Eugene, returning from a prolonged session in the kitchen with the Dabitoff. A spot of ink had fallen on his trousers. ‘But they were all so polite and complimentary that I rather enjoyed myself.’
Eugene’s silhouettes had been a succès fou. We had stationed him and his easel near the staircase where the visitors debouched from the kitchen at the end of the tour. Having seen how elegant the silhouettes looked in the drawing room people liked the idea of giving their own houses a dash of country-house style. A queue had formed which interfered with the progress of new arrivals so Kit introduced a system of tickets for the portrait sittings. This meant the visitors could wait their turn in the garden or spend more money in the tea-room, where they were entertained by Pegeen and Katty who were as good as Laurel and Hardy with the trays of tea and cakes. There had been a number of breakages but it was to be hoped that from now on they would be too busy to have time for more than an occasional ‘supeen’ to keep up their strengths.
‘One knows one ought to resist the idea of racial stereotypes,’ said Constance, ‘but superficially there are characteristics that seem to run through. The Americans were the friendliest. They asked questions about everything.’ She sipped her champagne with a happy smile of recollection. ‘And they gave the biggest tips. I haven’t counted yet but I think there’s something like twenty-five pounds. The Japanese were very polite and extremely serious. They wrote down practically every word I said and didn’t laugh at my jokes. I expect they thought I was mad. The French and the Germans were more inclined to be snooty about the crumbling state of things. But they were the best informed about the art and architecture. The English spoke in hushed voices as though they felt they oughtn’t to be in someone else’s house and didn’t tip at all. But they came into their own in the garden. They cross-questioned me about propagation and pruning and soil types and I felt a complete fool not knowing.’
‘I met a delightful couple who’d just flown in from Colorado.’ Kit poured himself another glass of champagne. ‘Irish-Americans in search of their roots. They want to buy a romantic old wreck of a Georgian house and do it up. They asked me if it was true that it rained a lot in Ireland. I hardly knew what to say. On one hand it would have been cruel to mislead them. On the other, there’s so much wonderful architecture here that needs to be saved by philanthropic foreigners as the Irish themselves are so indifferent to it.’
Maud threw down a glass of usquebaugh in one draught. ‘Why parvenus think it romantic to live in a gloomy ruin with donkeys for neighbours, hysterics for servants and the constant drip, drip, drip of things decaying all around them I shall never understand.’
‘What did you say to them?’ I asked Kit.
‘I confessed that it did rain rather frequently but asked them if they didn’t agree that romance requires fitful beams, lowering skies and muted shades?’
‘A very good answer.’ I held up my glass and smiled as he brought the bottle over to me. ‘Thank you for coming today. We should never have managed without you. I had no idea you could drive a horse and cart so expertly.’
He sat down beside me and put his arm along the back of the sofa, resting his hand on my shoulder, and said softly, ‘We don’t know everything about each other yet, by any means. By the way.’ He tugged gently at a lock of my hair. ‘I’ve just been into the dining room. I take back everything I said about the colour. Now it’s finished and hung with pictures it looks superb. So who’s a clever girl then?’
‘Speak up, you two,’ said Maud. ‘This is not a bedroom.’
During dinner, as everyone else was inclined to be noisy and jubilant, I allowed myself to become reflective. I had made my weekly call to Cutham an hour before. Oliver had been walking past the telephone. He had been unusually forthcoming. My mother was allowing Ruby to wheel her about the house. She and Ruby planned to make sorties into the garden when the weather became mild enough. My father had put on a huge amount of weight and his mood was uncharacteristically mellow. Oliver and Sherilee were thinking of taking on the lease of the pub. His novel had been shelved for the time being. When questioned he admitted he had not written a word during the nine months of my absence. No, there was no need for me to come home. Everything was ticking over nicely. Sherilee was a girl in a million. She was the only woman he knew who could drink a pint of beer in ten seconds flat and who could burp the entire chorus of ‘Land of My Fathers’. Her mother happened to be Welsh.
As I served the crème de riz à la Connaught – in this case rice pudding with dried apricots so old they had required soaking for two days and a dash of poteen instead of kirsch – I acknowledged that where my brother was concerned, as with so many things, I had made a mistake. My zeal for reform, my seeming uncontrollable impulse to meddle had blinded me to the fact that darling Oliver was not cut out to be a novelist. He had obligingly gone along with my demands because he was lonely and grateful for my attention. But he had not the will to succeed. This misreading of character made me angry with myself. But I hoped I had learned my lesson.
I looked down the table to where Violet sat. She was talking to Kit, looking up at him with a coquettish smile, her drooping eyelid and lopsided mouth hardly noticeable by candlelight. True, she could not yet walk and she was entirely dependent on others. But the chances were that she would continue to improve. It had to be better than that long sleep of groans and mutters and dimly perceived dreams, didn’t it?
She had told us that during the first part of her illness she had often been awake and could hear people whispering but it was like rolling about under water. She could not get her head above the surface to make sense of anything. Later when we had talked to her and tried to get her to respond she had begun to have moments of clarity when she understood perfectly well what we were saying but answers had slipped away from her before she could quite grasp them. That had been the worst time and she had almost been driven mad by frustration until the fateful day when she had managed to say my name. By comparison with the feeling then of abject helplessness the annoyance now of sometimes not being able to find the right words was as nothing.
This was all extremely satisfactory. But what was it about Violet that made one anxious? She was restless, which was natural in the circumstances. Maud had her so fiercely in thrall that there was bound to be rebellion before much longer. And once I had gone, Finn might spend more time at home … Oh, the guilt! I must stop thinking about that.
I pushed grains of rice about my plate, waiting for the others to finish. As soon as things were ticking over steadily with the visitors I must return to London and find a job. I could work for an auction house again, or do something with historic buildings. There were so many possibilities. I was twenty-seven. Old enough to know my weaknesses and young enough to do something about them. This sense of deprivation, of longing, that I carried permanently about with me must be uprooted and shut out.
I looked again at Kit and Violet. He had said something to make her laugh. Tenderly he patted the right-hand corner of her mouth with his napkin. It was a curiously intimate gesture. Maud, who was sitting opposite them, glared at her daughter and rapped on the table with her fork. Violet laughed again, her beautiful eyes brilliant. Kit sent Maud a look that was more flirtatious than contrite.
So he liked women. That must be in his favour. It was kind of him to try to entertain Violet. He could be relied upon to do the right thing. Kit and I were perfectly matched. We had similar backgrounds, tastes in common and found the same things amusing. We were both unattached – that
is, single. We saw each other clearly without the distorting glass of illicit love that makes passion so exquisite and tormenting.
I got up to make the coffee. I shook my head, smiling, when Kit offered to help me.
‘I want to go to bed,’ said Violet, in the little-girl voice she sometimes adopted. ‘Carry me up, K-Kit.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Maud. ‘It’s only five to ten. You’re not ill.’
‘It’s all that – beastly – walking you made me do. I’m sleepy.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Maud again, as though Violet were a child instead of a woman of thirty-seven.
I left them arguing. It was peaceful in the kitchen. Pegeen, Katty and Timsy lay like logs on the hearth, the extra ration of poteen having taken its toll. The two dogs slept beside them, Osgar’s chin on Timsy’s rising and falling stomach. All around them pieces of paper fluttered in the draught from the chimney. I picked up a handful. They were covered with drawings of gallows and stickmen. I made the coffee, took the tray into the drawing room and revived the dying fire. Then I took a bucket of turves and some shortbread fans upstairs to stoke up Violet’s and Maud’s fires and replenish their biscuit jars. Pegeen and Katty had been too busy or too excited to make their beds. It was the work of moments to tidy Violet’s bed but Maud’s top sheet was stained with what looked like tea. It frequently happened that her hands were too stiff and weak to manage her breakfast tray. I took off the sheet and went to the linen cupboards. As I searched through the piles of linen for those with Maud’s initials stitched in red on the corners I heard voices coming from below.
‘You’re a b-b-bad – boy.’ Violet giggled as Kit carried her slowly up the stairs. ‘I’m a married – woman. You shouldn’t – s-say those things.’
They were clearly visible in the light cast by the brass lantern that hung above the stairwell but the linen cupboards, which lined a recess leading to the kitchen stairs, were dimly lit. I had no wish to spoil Violet’s fun, so I stepped back into the shadows.
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