From the previous glasses and the empty bottle of whisky in the library, one could tell there had been much and continuous imbibing. Rashers totally at home by the way he sits smiling, and not even bothering to announce me.
‘Ah my dear Darcy I’ve just been discussing fingerprinting with these good gentlemen of law enforcement, and other of the most up to date inventions in the detection of crime. In turn I’ve been treated to a lurid tale of rural murder. And I took the liberty of telling a tall tale or two myself about the underworld of Dublin. They were just departing.’
‘Ah sir, Mr Kildare, we’ve got the facts and we’ll have the culprit or culprits soon. Questioned the whole staff we have. As of this time we are keeping an open mind. But a suspicious character was reported seen struggling with two leather suitcases shortly after dawn and disappearing in a westerly direction. I’m sure under the mistaken misapprehension he was going east. For west he’ll get nothing but up to his oxters in bog. Just back over there beyond the orchard this silver spoon was found in the vicinity of the wall which we here produce to you for an accurate identification. Do you recognize any identifying marks.’
‘Yes I do. The Thormond crest. It is my spoon.’
‘Ah you might say now you were born with it in your mouth, would that be a fact.’
‘Yes possibly.’
‘Proof enough then of ownership. Well the blackguard won’t get far now, take it from me, I’m telling you. Not heading west he won’t. But bedad we’d best now get after him, he could sink the lot plus himself in a bog hole. Good day now to you sir. We’re about to be in a hurry about our serious business.’
Darcy Dancer ushering the Guards out into the hall, following in their wafting aromas of Irish whisky. The two giant gentlemen pausing and turning round craning their necks peering at paintings, pilasters and pendentives, not to mention the numerous chipped, cracked and broken objets d’art. And hard to know if, as connoisseurs, they are admiring the art or like most neighbouring farmers who have got a foot in the door, are thinking what a grand place to winter a hundred head of cattle.
‘Ah I’d venture to say it would be a thieves’ paradise here. But not your worry Mr Kildare. We’ll get the light fingers whoever he is. And we are not discounting the possibilities of a female being involved. As accessory before, during or by god even beyond the fact. Your friend, the interesting gentleman inside, has given us sufficient solid information to lead us to pursue a certain line of inquiry. And we hope it won’t be long now till your silver cutlery is slipping the peas and carrots, never mind the caviar, back in again between your guests’ lips. Crime detection these days is scientifically advanced. Sure I’ve heard tell of a theory now proving there is more room in a circle than in a square of the same area. And I’m not giving you statistics now. I’m giving you facts. As sure as Ireland is one nation, north and south.’
‘Well Guards, one might then say up the Republic. Sorry. Perhaps that should be up the whole Republic. Or even way up. In every geographical direction. And down too perhaps with crime. As well as in that general genealogical and geological direction.’
‘Ah now you’ve said it and as Aloysius Sexton, sir, your gardener out there with the Latin would say, it’s all a matter of them semantics.’
Darcy Dancer watching from the parlour window. Rashers at his shoulder. The Guards standing on the drive, brushing back their hair and putting on their caps. And mounting their cycles. Waving back at us as they unsteadily pedal over the gravel and knock off the edges of the grass verges as they weave and wobble away down the drive. They’ll be lucky to get to the front gates, never mind leap frogging across a treacherous bog.
‘Ah Darcy, my dear boy, what a pretty sight it is out there. That all of that is yours, as far as the eye can see. Cattle grazing among your ancient trees. Where you may take your spiritual ease without being disturbed by an interloper in the pursuit of your comfortable habits. And without some awful gurrier presuming upon one’s presence. As in the case of my regrettable condition, to be endured back in Dublin. You wouldn’t mind, would you my dear boy, if I just sort of catch my breath a day or two more before returning to town to face the flotsam and jetsam of human kind. Of course you know, disaster if it doesn’t at first finish you, always then, goads one on. To tempt it again to do to one its utter worst. And then, what is appalling, it always does.’
It was clear as one looked downwards, that Rashers had already made himself enough at home to commandeer a new and bigger pair of shoes. And I suppose if I told him he was no longer welcome, he would merely get up on his hind legs and sing a heart stopping aria. To reduce me to tears. And beg him not to go.
‘Rashers but of course you may. Do please stay.’
One’s sisters appeared for lunch. Arriving in the library in tweeds and wrapped up with silk scarves at the throat. And very much sniffling, coughing and blowing their noses when they weren’t very much daintily sipping at their sherries. Cross examining me for the umpteenth time on the Marquis. His ancestry, his entitlements, his ablution rooms, his horses, and the number of acres they grazed upon. Christabel especially. And very much pretending to be off hand.
‘His father, the Duke has rather a lot of English and foreign estates, hasn’t he.’
Rashers wearing his most pleased grin exaggerating to the ladies about something he knew naught about. Volunteering to describe the Duke’s chateaux in France and ranches in Canada. Crooks, as he came and went, being very hangdog subdued. My sisters, so expert at it, ignoring him as he served them. And returning from the water closet I came upon him, just outside the door in the hall, his head hanging forward one hand pressed up against the wall. Putting a nicely etched handprint thereon and obviously making a remark meant for me to overhear.
‘To spare you a bit of attention for merely a moment, a man has to go hang himself before they’d know you’d exist at all in this house.’
Throughout lunch, Dingbats, blatantly staring at me from the sideboard, did manage to put one off one’s feed. And despite the fact that Foxy’s brother was wrestling with her in the hay, the rumour was going round reported to Sexton by Crooks, that she was planning to marry me. And obviously now had no time for the lovesick male staff who were moaning, I love thee Mollie, up the servants’ stairwell. Must say her reastiness and fustiness which one found previously stimulating is, in the warmth of the blazing fire, reaching a most disagreeable pitch. As she leans in close, serving the cabbage, her armpit yawning near one’s nose. And she has Lavinia and Christabel wincing in their turn. But one does admit it, that one did, more than betimes want to let her have it deep in the bifurcation. And now dear me wouldn’t you know, there’s Crooks, in the hall doorway. Good god. His fly is open. The big black buttons undone. And revealing not only a pink satiny fabric but the most particular darker pink part of his private as well.
‘Sir, coffee is in the library whenever you are.’
There was a small gasp from Kitty and she nearly did drop the seconds plate of mutton for Rashers but thank god no one else turned to notice. And one was much relieved to take a change of air in another room. While Lavinia was getting some ancient horse scrapbooks out for Rashers, I managed behind Christabel’s back to indicate to Crooks’ crossed eyes the need to attend to his dress. But then when casting his eyes downwards, and in the panicked effort to fish back in the exhibited portion of himself, he also managed quite promptly to spill the serving tray of coffee, sugar and cream straight over Christabel’s knees.
‘He did that deliberately, I know he did.’
Crooks rushed from the room. Penis back in his trousers, head in his hands. Rashers jumping up, thought it all just too damn funny, and was much prolonged collecting up the crystals of sugar and dabbing up the moisture absorbed in the area of Christabel’s thighs. When first they were all getting on so famously, how was one to know amid so many other domestic hostilities that such ill feeling had now developed between my sisters and the staff. Although one knew Leila refused even
to be in the same room with them. Of course, when growing up, until I learned to bite them, they trounced me unmercifully. I later added a growl to my bite, which former often sufficed instead for having to sink my actual teeth into them. And a couple of roars from me would send them screaming running for their lives. They soon learned to stop tearing toys out of my hands, I can tell you. Of course I had to go and find Crooks, searching all over, down the cellars and parlours until finally finding him in the hall outside the ballroom doorway, crying beneath the portrait of my mother.
‘O my dear Antoinette Delia Darcy Darcy Thormond, vouchsafe I implore thee to let me join thee out beyond the slabs far from the unkindnesses, and humbly lie by thy side to serve thee all our days in the eternal next world.’
‘Crooks, Crooks please, you mustn’t be so upset. Christabel was simply momentarily disconcerted.’
‘Spoke of me as she would a dog.’
‘Now now Crooks come with me. In here. Let’s get you sitting down for a start. There, there.’
‘She could have at least sir, directed her remark directly at me. Such behaviour never has and never would come from you sir. You are a compassionate man. A kind man. A feeling man. Like your mother was before you. Leave the door open. So I may see her. There she is. The most precious, beautiful and noble woman.’
Of course in the ballroom, one ended up opening a shutter and taking the dust cloth off a settee. Beseating Crooks with his feet up and bringing him a large brandy. Poor old stick, clearly would like to be a raving transvestite. And meanwhile he certainly does know how to acquit himself to be waited upon hand and foot, a pillow under his ankles, his collar open. I nearly was tempted to get him a cigar. But in spite of my alleged compassion one did think it would be going a little bit too far. Back in the library Christabel was now giving Rashers sidelong glances as he sat puffing his own cigar and twirling his own very large brandy. My, how he can, at the drop of someone else’s peacock feathered hat, so thoroughly enjoy life. Totally transforming the gloom. The pleased grin of his rabbit teeth flashing out under his moustache. One has never downright thought this before but he is quite a dashing figure. Sits there stretched out without rancour, regaling the ladies sipping their Drambuie, with risqué tales of last year’s Galway Races, Puck Fair, and Dublin’s night life. Hinting at the inhuman outrage committed down the depths of what appears to be a, by invitation only, midnight to midnight gathering in caves, cellars and tunnels located somewhere beneath one of the city’s most exclusive and elegant thoroughfares. And it would appear, so aptly called the catacombs. Christabel pretending not to want to hear of such bestial shenanigans but clearly in her faint protest, perking her ears eager for more.
‘You do don’t you, Ronald, seem to know so many wild and unruly characters, quite putting off to normal people. Doing such appalling things. What do you suppose, apropos of common decency, makes them behave like that.’
‘Ah my dear ladies because they are, in a word, simply dreadfully disgusting. Illbred by moonlight or any light. Castigators of the good. Worshippers of evil. But you see that’s the trouble with racing circles these days, embracing as they do rather too broad a class of jockeys, punters and owners.’
One sensed the moment to be gone. And one’s heart instantly beginning to pound walking down the parkland. Soft mist of rain from clouds tumbling out of the west. One’s silent voice already growing tight in one’s throat. Hidden by the deep grass, the little stream growing deeper and wider from other streams as it flows down through this valley of tall trees. Breath blows white in the air. Along this long unused path. Boots breaking through the thick crust of frost. No sign of her feet. That one so hopes have preceded me. In bed with another, and dreaming it were her flesh I held. Her swelling smaller quarters I pressed against. Her slenderer throat I kissed. Her spine I felt. That she alone was the true lady of my dreams. Servant though she is. And if only she were an aristocrat like Miss von B, she could, with the merest of schooling, then so naturally fit into one’s life. She does at least already have acceptable Christian names. Not that caste or status really matters. Even though it really desperately does. Due prominent ranking in the parish calls for disporting oneself with the dignity befitting the wife of a large landowner. As well as when up in Dublin, to keep up proper appearances as one enters say, up the steps and past the carved little monkeys on the sills of the Kildare Street Club. Of course such as my grandfather a life long member, never even entered the Club, not wanting to appear gauche and unknowledgeable, having to ask of the location of the latrine. And if one were passing through the lobbies of the Shelbourne or Hibernian, one would want to very much appear to be at home. Or having returned from a day’s racing, to suitably arrive descending the stair into the piquancies of sauces wafting about the main dining room of Jammet’s its hearth blazing. People knowing at the merest flick of a glance at the back or front of you, exactly who you are. Where you have come from and where you continue to go. Which are only to the most acceptable places. Even though one is not titled I am at least a minor major among the landed Irish gentry. Of course one might occasionally go to unacceptable places after dark. Although certainly for the sake of having a title, I should damn well not like to end up like the Marquis’ father, the Duke. And having in Dublin to summon large fish from McCabe’s the fishmonger in Chatham Street. Which anyway is closed in the dead of night. And then disagreeably and awfully smelly, have to belt the insolence out of a difficult lady. Swish, splat, smack. But then when one thinks of it a bit, why not. If such fishy corrective measures are deserved. It also could be such jolly peculiar excitement. The Marquis did say that the benefit of occasional chastisement served upon oneself was equally well served upon ladies. He had personally found that one should, while suffering what one thinks are the temporary blows of some women, attempt to rest comfortably, husbanding one’s reserves of fortitude, for that same woman is usually planning, later on, something even far far worse. Dear me, he does paint an unpretty picture of scheming ladies who hold sway out in the stylish world. Ah but I shall upon my arrival in London avoid such femmes fatales. Or further afield. As my dear Mr Arland advised me go. To hear the great organs in the great churches. Of Chartres and St Sulpice. When you are of age Kildare you must go to Vienna for opera. Moscow for ballet. And Sexton is quite right. One should sample the very latest philosophies being propounded in the cafés of the continental capital cities. Of course Mr Arland knew of whence he spoke but Sexton has never been to one of these places. Yet with both feet firmly in his potting shed he still unhesitatingly raves on about them as if he were there just yesterday. Master Darcy, ah by god you’ll have about your ears such incredible intellectual delights. Sure the Prado will knock you sideways. And if I do ever reach such foreign parts I know the first damn thing such as Miss von B will say to me, is that I am trying to shake from one’s heels the mud of the bog. Dear me, just murmuring Moscow, London, Vienna, Paris, Budapest. One feels a clutching thrill. Of course Miss von B made much of being a young lady in Vienna. Wearing her tiara and gown on the grand staircase of the Opera House, and betrothed to the grandest Count in the land. Waltzing her nights away under the chandeliers of only the very best palaces and castles from Linz to Klagenfurt. Of course I will ably demonstrate soon my own ball in my own ballroom to make her previous grand evenings look like the awfully trumped up occasions they probably really were. Heavens. A nasty pigeon has just deposited on me. A most stupendous long white load straight down my lapel and even, bloody hell on to my knee. Shows you, in the moments when one is tempted to be at one’s most eminent one is then most likely to be promptly besmirched. Of course, such shit does remind one that these foreign capitals are possessed of their debaucheries too. As are often required to sate one’s pent up desires. Leaving one able to return with an equanimity of spirit, to Andromeda Park and not be feverishly desperate to put it up one’s present or former domestic personnel. Ouch. What’s this. A damn snare. Hidden in the middle of the footpath. God, one would so li
ke for some prolonged moments not to suffer yet another bloody damn nuisance. While one has already enough with the seethings of staff plots, hangings, seditions, and the scheming craftiness of neighbouring farmers encroaching fences, plus the ruddy wiles of guests, and mad stallions. Not to mention now grand theft.
Darcy Dancer casting the snare away and striding near the deep channel of the brook. Now in spate from all the melting snows. Its racing current babbling beneath the thickets of fern in the darkness of the pine trees and the bare cold bark of great old elms soaring out into the sky. The stream slowed now from its winding way all through the wood, widening as it flowed into the lake. The little old wooden bridge which crossed it, now with its piers collapsed. Must take a jump.
Darcy Dancer stepping back into the ferns and running, leaping from the bank. One foot reaching the other side and one not. And sinking into the mud. Right over the top of my boot. And water damn it. Filling it up like a drain. As I grab plunging both fists and cuffs deep into the tufts of turf to pull myself out.
Darcy Dancer balancing on one foot, yanking off his boot. Spilling out the water. Wiping the mud from wrists. Straighten one’s cap. Now just as it begins to pour rain. How appropriate, dreaming of my grand ball, that one has all the worst appearances of a drowned rat. Ah. The sound of the whirl and whirr of wings out over the lake. Two swans. Gleaming white against a dark sky. At least that is an uncontaminated splendour. Gliding down, ploughing up their silvery paths across the blackness of the lake. O god. The great old oak tree uprooted. And crashed to the ground. Mouldering in decay. Up in those massive branches. Once was our tree house. Built for my sisters. And where they said I should, blindfolded, merely pretend to walk the plank out over the lake and merely pretend to plunge to my doom. But then they suddenly pushed me from behind and as I held on struggling screaming as they were trying to bloody well throw me down into the water, I got my teeth sunk deep into Lavinia’s arm. And I’m happy to say, in place of the chunk I nearly took out of it, there still remains to this day the little indentations of my fangs, pearly white scars like a bracelet on her skin. Badgers walk here at night. Rolling forward sniffing on their stumpy legs. All through these ancient trees. Owls hoot. Grab up the mice and rats. Hawks descend. Tear open the backs of pigeons. A bird house, put there by one of the men, was nestled up in the fork of that tree. So strange that little wooden house had been the most important thing in the world. Lying abed on stormy nights thinking I was a bird with a safe place to be. And will she be. There waiting. O god now even heavier rain beginning to fall. Run for it. Cold drops stinging my face. And she hasn’t come. Couldn’t have got here anyway. And will never be there. The soft satiny cheeks of her face. I so want to take between my hands and kiss. And kiss. Not that I bloody well am becoming suddenly religious. But Lord why doth thou so confound to send into my life such beauty. And yet keep it so untouchably far away.
Leila Page 24