Leila

by J. P. Donleavy

  ‘Master Reginald, when you’re ready, supper is served.’

  ‘Ah indeed. Thank you Crooks, I am in fact quite ready.’

  The shutters closed. A fire at least taking the chill off the dining room. Crooks equally at the ready with my chair. Something to be said for having dear old servants surrounding one who although frequently forgetting, do occasionally at least try to acquit themselves agreeably. Having been such a deliberately appallingly bad servant oneself, one of course knew of the endless opportunities a servant could find for making life utterly miserable for his employer.

  Cabbage soup. Boiled potatoes. And stew with carrots and turnips. Not awfully exciting. But so starved am I one simply can’t mind at the moment, having all I can do to not dive grabbing into the food like a pig famished.

  ‘The likes of youse is no use at all when youse won’t learn left from right when youse is tolt.’

  I was surprised to overhear Crooks mimicking in the guttural overtones of a Dublin accent as he grumpily ordered Leila about in the pantry. One could not help feel that there was just a touch of jealousy at this new girl’s albeit nervous efficiency. As she stood behind Crooks with Brussels sprouts one attempted to observe her but could only discreetly just catch sight of red swollen hands shaking gripped tight on the steaming heaped bowl, and the serving spoon banging. Crooks as he finished pouring wine at my right, snapping his fingers for her to come around to my left side. And just to casually lighten the atmosphere I pointed to the stained and soaked seat of one of the dining room chairs against the wall.

  ‘Crooks what befell that chair.’

  ‘Ah more than a sup of rain has made a recent habit of coming through the ceiling. The chamber above is getting a spill from the chamber yet above again. Poor old Chippendale. When the snow melts Master Reginald you’d want to be dining here in a tent.’

  Unable to dance his attendance on his toes, Crooks holding his chin awfully high, and behaving with an autocratic attempt at efficiency one had never witnessed before. Announcing in sepulchral tones the year of vintage as he poured the decanted premier grand cru Margaux with its bouquet shrinking back in the glass from the cold. He was also very voluble indeed. Especially with his elaborate excuses over the more noticeable dilapidations of the house. And once such great bitter enemies, it was enthralling to now hear Crooks recall our previous housekeeper, Miss von B, in glowing terms. Elevating her from that regrettable bitch to Princess, and tossing in her Royal Highness when invoking her name. And as he waved Leila to collect my plate he then stopped by the sideboard, placed his towel dramatically over his arm, and then took a Napoleonic stance to stare vacantly up at the ceiling.

  ‘Ah isolated in these lonely hills. If only her Royal Highness, the Princess, was here. Magnificent seamstress. Ah she could sew. Mends in the heels of socks like sparkling jewels. Linen folded with such perfection, would bring tears to the eyes.’

  And last night in Dublin I had a dream that Miss von B had come galloping on her horse, back to Andromeda Park. Coming up the front park lawn and jumping the fence to the drive. Dismounting and striding up the front steps to march into the front hall. Confronting me there in her rather severely styled fox hunting raiment, as a massive military band ceremoniously played outside. Trumpeters sounding, drums beating. Her blonde hair snugly netted gleaming, her velvety cheeks pinkly glowing. The front hall suddenly silent as a church. Then a soft music playing a lament. I trembled and trembled and shook and shook. Waking and staring about my hotel bedroom in the dark. A milkman passing, his horse faintly clip clopping up Dawson Street.

  ‘Master Reginald, we’ve gone short of the d’Yquem that you and her Royal Highness so esteemed. There were great calls on it these past months. Decant a little port perhaps.’

  ‘Please don’t bother Crooks.’

  ‘Not a bit of bother, not a bit. Port.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘Then port it shall be. Now I’d have the blue parlour fire going but for the jackdaws with a nest halfway down the chimney. I’ve had a chair put in front of the fire in the front hall.’

  I was quite surprised at my twinge of thoughtfulness concerning the staff’s need to get off to bed. And pouring cream on top of the whipped cream of my second helping of trifle, I did not go on to have three helpings. Somehow too, the new girl’s thinness gave one the uncomfortable feeling that it was inappropriate to gorge myself any further.

  Darcy Dancer crossing the front hall towards the new girl mending the fire, which out of the shadows sent its dancing licking flame of colour up to the ceiling. And was doing it properly too, putting logs on from the sides and one across the back at the top, leaving the middle with embers to glow out. I pretended to examine the guest book on the hall table, my mind aflood with questions conjured up to ask her. All sounding so damn stupid and foolish. Like I understand young lady you are a lonely abandoned orphan who now works here. And how do you like it. But even as I thanked her she just cast me a nervous glance and hurried away. At least one was saved sounding like a patronizing ass.

  I did enjoy the jolly good port. Sipping as one stared into the crackling spitting flames beaming warmly against the feet, hands and face. And except for its being like sitting in Amiens Street Station back in Dublin one enjoyed the ear ringing silence. Which suddenly was rent by a shout.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they’re at me. They’re at me.’

  The sound of pounding running feet somewhere upstairs. Now other feet and doors slamming. And ten minutes later. Crooks with a candelabrum crossing to me.

  ‘Forgive the upstairs intrusion Master Darcy. But that one Dingbats said a rat big as a fox jumped up on her in bed. Sure now if there was a rat it would be very surprising he didn’t take a good bite out of her being as she’s got a body on her like a boneless shoulder of pork.’

  One did at this moment find it physically painful to have one’s quiet reverie and privacy so invaded. Perhaps a beam next would bounce down on my head. Or the assembled staff come lurching in, bottles to their lips, quaffing back, having been in the wine cellar. But this tonight is home. In all its hopeless insanity and crumbling dilapidation. Mine. Its land I do so love. Marked up and down and over hills with its mossy stone walls. Where I ran and rode. With sunshine joy, swinging in the lichen grey apple trees. My sisters chasing me. Peeking round the strong sinewed ancient trunks of beech, oak and chestnut. Streams and lakes streaking with trout. Emerald meadows of softest velvet. No footsteps heard. Lonely walks dreaming beyond these halls and rooms. Where I was born. And in such bygone pain. Saw my mother die. And what sadness now. Lies before my feet. Tongue of a vixen. Out there. Screeching. Across the white frosty night. An owl. Calls. Out of a sorrow cold and old. Who doth it be who hoots. And I must. Fight as I have never fought. Never give up. Someone must preserve the architecture. Someone must cherish the porcelain, paintings and silver. Someone must care about the trees, the flowers and butterflies. Someone must love again. The air, the waters and grasses.

  To keep

  Safe embraced

  A moment longer

  The jewels

  Of life

  3

  The moonlight gone. And a cock crowing waking me. A wind. My mind aswirl with the most indiscreet of dreams. Dressed as a bishop I was having it off with Lois attired as a nun back in her Dublin studio clacking her castanets. Reached into my side table for my piss pot. Kneel in bed to avoid freezing. And then freezing as one waited for one’s fierce engorgement to subside. What bliss to take a long and most relieving pee. But good almighty grief, feel my knees growing wetly cold. Dear god in the very worst of worst horrors. One’s warm piss is flooding out a crack in the bottom of this bloody pot to soak frigidly into one’s mattress.

  Of course frozen out of my wits, Crooks woke me just after dawn. From my nightmare of an arctic mid Atlantic ocean sinking. I had not the heart to tell him to bugger off and let me sleep. Until I was sorely tempted to do just that as the wet paper and sticks he attem
pted to light smoked up through the soggy turf in the fireplace. Crooks pumping the bellows, puffing out massive clouds of smoke, which joining the billows gusting back down the cold chimney, one could hardly breathe or see across the room.

  ‘Breakfast’s on the way and have this alight blazing now any second Master Reginald.’

  ‘O god Crooks, do please leave it. I’ll go down to breakfast. And do please dispose of this cracked chamber pot.’

  ‘It would be that one Dingbats again.’

  ‘You must I think Crooks please see she is more careful.’

  ‘I’ve done everything in my power to train that one up. She’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that the pot wasn’t cracked when she put it there. Set this fire as well so that the devil having a barbecue in hell wouldn’t get it alight.’

  It was always hard to estimate the degree of madness any individual staff inmate had reached, being as they were all going mad together. The one true cooperation they genuinely shared. And the only sane consistent thing one could depend upon. But with the future prospects for Andromeda Park already so bleak the addition of the likes of Dingbats made it look dispiritingly quite uncomfortable indeed.

  Darcy Dancer dressed. A thick herringbone tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers. A thick cotton cricket shirt, two layers of woollen underwear. Tiptoe now out in the hall. Avoid alerting a new disaster. Only barely escaping this morning’s asphyxiation. And the frostbite while the windows were wide open for my room to clear of smoke. Good god who’s that. That voice. Crooks mumbling down the hall around the turning to my mother’s apartments.

  ‘Yes my dear Delia, your royalness, my true and only blessed virgin, I shall be back shortly, madam, with the hot towels, to dry your back.’

  My god Crooks is now taking the most diabolical risqué liberties in his ravings. As in the same way, having detested the sight and sound of Miss von B while she was here, raising her to beatified and saintly social heights while apparently demoting the memory of my mother to something regrettably verging on the lascivious.

  My breakfast tray brought upstairs by Dingbats left abandoned on the landing. For a host of rats to eat, no doubt. The fire mercifully at my back in the dining room.

  Sun glowing faint gold across the whitened landscape. A magpie, feathers shiny black and white, dancing up and down the branches of an orchard apple tree. Pigeons about. Await breakfast. Cold stiff fingered. Write out my purposes in my old blue clasp book. To inspect the horses, the farmyard, garden, old saw mill, the grove of beeches. As one hopes to see the mate of the magpie out in the orchard to avoid any ill luck of seeing only one. Some cheer to find Sexton’s selection of nosegays laid out at my place. Choose the tiny braided bouquet of snowdrops. But it has already occurred to me even before the day has hardly begun that I shall have to find a very rich, preferably from brewing, heiress to marry. To pay for the repairs to floors, ceilings, halls, roof, never mind the plumbing, or replacement of the long disused electric wiring. Which latter at least, one is relieved to know, will still mercifully long remain unconnected to any supply. Otherwise instead of widespread light at one’s fingertips there would be wholesale electrocution.

  Darcy Dancer attempting to catch larger sight of Leila who held back nearly an arm’s length as she served. The lace at the wrist of her uniform quite soiled. And upon her hand there seemed two words written with numerals in indelible pencil. When I said good morning upon entering she made no reply. Keeps constantly behind my back. And I must say Crooks snapping his fingers at her did irritate one. But then as she chose a moment as I was turned looking out the window to lift a platter from the sideboard, I found, as I suddenly turned back, that she was staring at me. Her face flushing crimson as she turned away and hurried pantrywards. It could have been that with copious cups of tea, I embarrassingly devoured four eggs, six slices of bacon, several slices of toast and marmalade, one jug of cream, all preceded by a quart of apple juice and large bowl of porridge. As any sensible person in his right mind would, in present conditions and circumstances. But she could think me unreasonably greedy. And now with Crooks growling out to her in the pantry.

  ‘More toast, more toast, more toast.’

  In his own trembling inadequacy Crooks in pouring my tea put a good bit of it in my saucer and on the table. Which he ordered the poor new girl to mop up.

  ‘Forgive me Master Reginald, it’s been a bit of a night with hunting rats high and low, but tomorrow will have us right.’

  Leila returning with a rack of perfectly browned toast to my side, in murmuring my thank you I deliberately turned to look up at her. The brightness of the snow outside revealed her astonishing flashing eyes. The strange quiet beauty of their oriental cast beneath her brows. The iris around the pupil instead of appearing black as it first seemed, was a glowing deep mossy green flecked with blue. And the longest black lashes I’ve ever seen. Her forehead and cheeks of the whitest smoothest skin. Her soft, full but unsmiling lips. Her slenderness. And in her black uniform she did seem so hungry and cold and even, god forbid, consumptive.

  A malodorous sewer smell in the basement hall. Edna Annie tried to get up to bow as I entered her warm little room and I had to hold her and help her back into her chair but up again she stood, her white hair with a red ribbon coiffed and brushed up from her birdlike skull. Her gnarled fingers busy as ever knitting and grabbing me strongly by the arm. Making this supreme effort to leave her bedridden bed. Hugging me, the tears were welling and dropping from her old pale blue eyes.

  ‘Ah Master Darcy you’re hitting the ceiling with your head now. A gossoon no more, god love you. Sure I haven’t been able to make soap now. My days are numbered. Out there soon under the sod.’

  ‘Nonsense, you look so marvellous.’

  ‘Ah flattery will get you somewhere.’

  Taking a peek in the kitchen a hot breeze blew at me out the door. The nervously collected snugly comfortable staff jumping to their feet at the snap of Crooks’ fingers. Dingbats with her cheeks bulging out with cake. The rats had not upset her appetite. One could see the wooden backs and seats of the chairs shining with the months and months of polishing from so many human bottoms and shoulders. Table centre, large pots of tea, plates stacked with biscuits, cake, barmbrack. Mounds of golden butter. Pots of jams. Clearly no deprivation or starvation was going on below stairs. Kettles steaming on the stove. Blazing fire in the fireplace. Mouths chewing. Awful smell of cigarettes. Frankly it looked like a feast was going on.

  Climbing back up the servants’ stairs. Damp everywhere one looked. To push open this mahogany door to the old schoolroom. To step inside. My books as I opened them, their pages softened by moisture, nearly fell apart. The cobwebbed maps peeling down from the wall. Abandoned crayons and pencils. So many hours spent here. My dear Mr Arland. His sad yet noble life. The only man aside from Sexton and Uncle Willie upon whom I ever felt I could depend. Young as he must have been as my tutor, he so ably yet so gently led me into the old ways of the world.

  As I departed in the front hall, I passed Leila, the only one not at the feast, on her knees cleaning ash out of the grate. One is now even more frightened of speaking than she must be of being spoken to. God one must get on. Sympathy for others in a household has a way of depriving one of convenience. My cap and scarf still miraculously where I last left them with my boots in the small vestibule inside the door. Shake off the dust and push my feet into my father’s Wellingtons. Take a walking stick. Go out.

  Darcy Dancer, blowing his clouds of breath out in the crisp cold air and kicking his feet through the snow. Stand looking out across the whitened parkland. The river flowing darkly between its banks. The woods beyond up the hill. How can it continue. The massive roof to stay atop this house. One’s spirit did crash down as one saw a new crack in the front hall and the plaster crumbling. Rain stains on the front hall tiles. The food pours down all these throats. The worst that can happen is I die. At least there is no shortage of graves. Lie next to my mother. But I did take
heart again at the brief sight of Leila at the grate. Was tempted to summon her to the estate office. Mention the subject of a medical consultation with Dr Wellbeing in the town. And ask her. Would you please smile so that I can see your teeth.

  Go now making a fresh path of footsteps towards the orchard. The snow dry and ice patches crackling underfoot. I would in Dublin be at this moment taking a mid morning coffee in the lounge of the Hibernian Hotel waiting for the likes of Rashers Ronald to come eagerly sauntering in. With some new plan for making a fortune or at least a fiver by lunchtime. And to dissect the previous night’s partying. And hear his very English voice say bash on regardless. His face flushed with new further and better particulars of plans to marry a rich widow. And then his octaves dropping to his confidential whisper as he inevitably wanted the loan of a fiver till teatime. He would I’m sure tell me to pawn Andromeda Park, land, stock and chattels. And one supposes he would be right.

  Push open this barred squealing iron gate. The apple tree branches weighted down. There ahead the potting shed. Smoke rising out of Sexton’s tiny chimney jutting above the wall. The world I left here. Cows gobbling up the juicy autumn apples. Chasing to catch fat frisky lambs as they would run for their tiny tail twitching lives. This old green door, brass handle worn so shiny. Well oiled hinges. The comfort inside of ancient smells. His Latin lists pinned upon the walls. This place in which Sexton offers up the toil of his life to beget beauty, bent at his bench whistling happily, gently lovingly packing his plant roots in turf mould.