Edge of Glass

by Catherine Gaskin

  I felt my cheeks burning. ‘I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I had to see Brendan ‒ did I need your permission for that? After all, Brendan’s responsible for my being here. Naturally ‒’

  ‘Naturally!’ he broke in. ‘Naturally ‒ yes! Everything comes naturally to Brendan. Women, children, dogs, money, even ‒ God help us ‒ a small slice of fame. There he is, the son of a labourer, sprung out of the bogs, but he’s fortune’s darling. Unscathed, untouched ‒’

  ‘He isn’t untouched. He’s …’ How could I tell Connor what Brendan was? To Connor, Brendan was only one thing. The single certainty I had about Brendan was that the passage of Lotti Praeger through his life had not left him untouched. But that I could never say to Connor.

  ‘And always,’ Connor went on, ‘women to defend him, to help him.’ As I stood there rooted before him, he leaned his head back against the door-frame, stretching his neck as if to ease his weariness. Again I felt the danger of his appeal to both the sympathy and the senses of a woman. He had let go his hold of me, but still I remained, fascinated, compelled. He knew I would stay.

  ‘I sound envious, don’t I? ‒ jealous. Yes, I’m that. Brendan is free now ‒ free to go. He’s free of the Sheridans and of Ireland, and I wish to God I were.’

  Suddenly, with a half-blind, instinctive movement his hands were upon me again, gripping my shoulders, pulling me to himself roughly. I was pinned against him, my face pressed against his sweater. The force of his embrace was frightening, as if I must be the one to bear the weight of his anguish and grief. I tried to pull back, but it was a useless, futile gesture. I felt myself begin to sink under the burden of what each of them here was trying to thrust upon me.

  ‘Is he to have it all, then? Tell me, did you come here because of Brendan? ‒ was he the reason? Not the Cup, not the Sheridans. Has he got you too?’

  I was never meant to answer that. His hand had come under my chin, and he was lifting my face to his; the pressure of his lips on mine was painful, abrasive, burning, as if I were seared by his surge of loneliness, of desire, of regret, as if I must become the instrument of revenge against Brendan. I struggled for breath, no longer even fighting for freedom.

  His lips moved against mine, and the words came, ‘Why shouldn’t I kiss you? Hasn’t he?’ His hand now moved up and down the length of my back, caressing, forcing.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I want the only thing that has grace and beauty in this dead house? You’re …’

  I managed to pull back my face a fraction from his. One word only came. ‘Lotti …’

  His reaction was savage, as if the word had struck and clawed at him. He jerked me away from him violently, so that my head snapped back and struck the door-frame. The pain rocketed through me, and I knew it had been deliberately inflicted; he meant me to suffer with him, to experience some of the intensity of his own feeling.

  ‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘Lotti is dead, and you’re alive. And so am I ‒ so am I!’

  He let go of me, and in the sudden release I nearly lost my balance. I think he wanted me to fall, and there would have been no help for me, no apologies. He didn’t even look at me again, but turned and walked to the desk, standing with his back to me, leaning over it, his hands pressed down on it, waiting for me to go. It was as complete a dismissal as I would ever receive.

  I stumbled twice on the stairs against the small objects that stood in my path; the only light came from the still-open door of the office. At the landing I looked back; his shadow was cast across the floor of the hall, unmoving. I clutched the banister for a moment, dizzy still, and wondered if the time would ever come when I would tell him how nearly I had gone to his arms, willingly, as he stood there hunched over the desk in that stance of despair and anger. And so I rode the wild see-saw of my feeling about Connor.

  At my door Lotti’s cat waited, and when I opened it she ran in and immediately sprang up on the bed, settling into the folds of the eiderdown. I found myself there beside her, face down, the throbbing in my head a physical mark that Connor had left upon me, fatigue and sheer wretchedness combining to make it worse. But in the way of her kind, the cat did not hold my misery against me; she just accepted my presence for what it was worth, young, female, reminding her of her lost mistress. She snuggled against me, and her purr was the cry of pleasure at the easing of her loneliness ‒ as Connor’s would have been.

  Seven

  ‘It’s half eleven, Miss Maura,’ the voice said. I opened my eyes on Mrs. O’Shea’s round starched form, cup of tea in hand, standing beside my bed. ‘I’d have told Annie to let you sleep longer but I thought you’d not be wanting to miss the day entirely, seeing that the sun’s come out.’

  I sat up and gropingly took the tea from her. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs. O’Shea. I should have been up long ago.’ My eyelids were sticky, though the brightness at the windows where she had drawn back the curtains confirmed what she had said about the day. It was a spring day, and half of it was gone. I took a long gulp of the hot, strong tea.

  ‘Sure now, it’s as well to be getting a little rest, and you on the go all the live-long day yesterday.’ She said nothing about the night, but I thought she had probably heard my return, the stumbling on the stairs. She had probably known that Connor had waited for me.

  She stood expectantly at the end of the bed, and I knew she had come to say something, and it wasn’t a complaint, or I would have heard it already.

  ‘Well, it’s not much of a fine spring day for me,’ she began, pulling her mouth down. ‘Didn’t I get the news this morning that Great-Uncle Pat has finally died ‒ him that’s been ready for it these past ten years, God rest his soul. The funeral’s Friday, and a grand affair it’ll be, with Uncle Pat been saving for it so that everyone could raise a glass or two to him in the next world. A very congenial man, my Great-Uncle Pat is. Friday afternoon, and it’s to Wexford I’d have to be going, and if I’m to join in any of the doings after, then I’d have to be spending the night. But there’s Lady Maude, and I’m really only here to oblige Dr. Donnelly …’

  Through my half-sleep I grasped what was required of me, and also the fact that I was expected to stay; that in their minds no one had set a time for my going. ‘I’m sure I could stay with her, Mrs. O’Shea … if you’d just show me what’s to be done.’

  Her mouth lifted. ‘Nothing, and that’s the truth of it. ’Tis me own opinion that the Auld Lady is as strong as a horse and will see many another in the grave. But Dr. Donnelly will not have her left to sleep quite alone this first week. All that would be to do would be just to sleep in my room and leave the doors open so you could hear if she needed anything. But I’d never let it be said that Molly O’Shea went off and left her patient in charge of a servant.’ She gave me a confidential smile as if to say we both understood what servants were; then she left me ‘to finish your tea in peace and get your eyes open,’ sounding as if I needed her permission for both.

  But before I had finished the tea Bridget had come, sent by Annie to enquire if I would like her to start my bath running. ‘Annie says would ye be having it in Lady Maude’s bathroom since there’s a heater there.’ I couldn’t imagine enjoying a bath that close to Lady Maude, so I declined and took it as usual, shivering, in the unheated bathroom on my own side of the hall. I noticed that there had been no move to offer me Lotti’s bathroom. When I returned Annie had already arrived with the breakfast tray of sausage, bacon and toast, all of it only slightly burned. ‘I thought you’d like to take it aisy now,’ and she fussed a little over my clothes while I ate. ‘I used to do a bit for Mrs. Sheridan ‒ sure didn’t she say having two lady’s maids from Paris, and neither of them would stay for a minute. Not able to speak a word of English between them, ignorant creatures they were.’

  They were all paying too much attention to me, and it made me nervous. I wondered if they had decided that I, and not Connor, was to be the new order of things; did they sense the old customs slipping and the new taking o
ver? But if that was what they thought, I was convinced they were wrong when I paid a morning call on Lady Maude. I stood at the foot of the big four-poster, awkward, like a child, and she looked strong and almost well; her voice was firm when she spoke. ‘Tomorrow I shall not stay in bed.’

  I saw a few of the things Molly O’Shea had ordered from the room had found their way back again, and somehow this small victory pleased me immensely. It was also the sign of Lady Maude’s returning strength, and the beginning of my release.

  Beyond my enquiry about her health, I had nothing to say. In desperation I offered to read the morning newspaper to her; she waved aside the suggestion. ‘I stopped being interested in what went on in the world when Winston Churchill retired. When he died, it was the end of an age. I don’t care to know about the new one.’

  I swallowed, and commented on the beauty of the day.

  ‘You must get out into the sun,’ she said. ‘You are pale ‒ London pale.’ She spoke as if my paleness were a disease. ‘Do you ride ‒ ah, but we keep no horses these days.’

  ‘I don’t ride,’ I said.

  ‘All ladies should learn to ride,’ she answered severely. Obviously, I was poorly educated.

  It was oddly reassuring to be lectured by her, but I did not stay to try her tolerance too far; she now accepted my presence in the house, even demanded it, but the balance of feeling was delicate. I was her only grandchild, but I was also Blanche’s daughter. I needed forgiveness for that, and she wasn’t quite ready; for my part I wondered if I wanted to wait here at Meremount for the doubtful privilege of receiving it.

  I went downstairs and cooked a lunch of breaded cutlets and fresh asparagus which Michael Sweeney’s cousin had grown and sent for Lady Maude. She ate almost none of it; because of her diet, I had to send it without the hollandaise. Annie hovered over me during the cooking, but I was rewarded by the faint light of wonder at the results that dawned on her face, and the respectful silence that accompanied her eating it. Mrs. O’Shea condescended to come and eat at the kitchen table. ‘Sure Molly O’Shea has never been the one to stand on her dignity when there’s no need for it.’

  When the dishes were washed I left the house by way of the kitchen garden. The sight of the empty, cleared beds depressed me; weeds were starting to come back, soon there would be no sign that any work had been done. Perhaps it would be easier for everyone when that happened. The cat was suddenly there on the brick walk ahead of me, long crinkly blue tail held high. She made her yowling talk as she skipped ahead of me towards the neglected herb garden. I sat for a while in the sun on the stone bench smoking a cigarette while she played hide and seek with herself among the tall lavender. I thought of Blanche as a girl among the herbs here, pinching, smelling, tasting, finding out the particular subtle alteration each could make in food. I wondered about my grandfather, Lady Maude’s despised husband. He must have taught things to Blanche ‒ like glass and herbs. Who had given her the urge to cook? ‒ perhaps that belonged to my own father. I had found a rusty garden fork thrust into the soil under the bench. I toyed with it as I smoked, and then found myself squatting before a clump of lavender, cigarette in mouth, working the soil, tentatively at first, then more boldly as confidence and enjoyment grew. The activity excited Sapphire; she dashed and made pounces on the fork, getting a little frenzied as if she had had no play for a long time. I must have stayed like that for a long time, the sun warm on my shoulders, the scent of the damp earth vaguely heady, before I paused to wonder what I was doing working Lotti Sheridan’s garden and playing with her cat. It wasn’t my garden; it never would be.

  The cat called after me disconsolately as I tossed the fork under the bench and went back to the house to get the car keys.

  II

  Otto Praeger was at home; he must have heard my voice in the hall as I answered O’Keefe’s detailed enquiries after Lady Maude, because he came out of his study, walking as quickly as his limp and cane would permit.

  ‘So ‒ you have come! It is good I am here. This week I do not go to Frankfurt after all. A holiday ‒ because next week I am in New York. Come, come ‒ you have had lunch?’

  ‘Yes ‒ I came to thank you for …’

  ‘Ach! It is nothing.’ He took me by the arm. ‘All the food I have here no one could eat! Fräulein Schmidt and myself, we are both already too fat. But the food is here, nevertheless ‒ needed or not. Hunger and war leave strange legacies, Miss D’Arcy. Come … come, I will show you.’ I discovered then that Otto Praeger was shy and somewhat nervous when he had to do with something that was not business. This time I had nothing to ask of him, he could make no arrangements on my behalf, had no favour to give, no deal to make ‒ and he didn’t know what to do for lack of it. He toured me through the long rooms that faced the lake, each opening with immense double doors one into the other, at a pace that for him, with his disability, must have seemed like a gallop. Everywhere was the conventional furniture of a well-to-do country house ‒ the chintz sofas and deep chairs set on Persian and sometimes a marvellous Aubusson rug; the modern parquet ‒ I had to keep remembering that this had all been a burnt-out shell ‒ was polished, the windows framed in the usual formal brocades and silks and velvets. The effect was somewhat heavy and Germanic. The walls facing the windows, the fireplace wall in each room, were, by contrast, shockingly bare. Plain, white, untrimmed and unpanelled, on them in barbaric, unchallenged splendour, hung Otto Praeger’s paintings.

  ‘You know painting?’ he said to me. ‘Sometimes the young know much about these things, and the old make themselves foolish with their explanations.’

  ‘I know a few names, a few typical examples ‒ that’s all. You can tell me anything you want to. I probably won’t have heard it before.’

  But he said almost nothing. Just pointed his cane as he marched me past. ‘Leger … Monet … Rouault. You can come back alone and take your time to look if it interests you. De Kooning … Pollock … Kandinsky … Miró.’ He seemed afraid to thrust any of his enthusiasms on me; I wondered if he thought I would be bored and if it had been Lotti who had made him so afraid to trouble others with what lay close to his heart. As we moved through these long, quiet rooms I was struck again by how alone he seemed to be ‒ there were no guests here, no children, no grandchildren; there was no one to meet and talk with at lunch or dinner unless he ate with his lumpy Fräulein. Perhaps he had no taste for company; did the crowding of the concentration camp leave one forever with the craving for space and solitude? But the rich were able to command guests for their own entertainment, and the spaces of this great house would absorb them without strain. There were always those who needed something from the rich and were prepared to pay the price by dancing attendance. Was it simply that Otto Praeger did not care to call the tune, so had no need to pay the piper?

  ‘And this,’ he was saying, ‘is the real heart of Tyrell.’ We had reached the end of the long gallery-rooms, and had come to an oak door, new but massive, fitted to a curved arch. ‘No one uses it ‒ I was never able to achieve a satisfactory level of heat in here, and you will see why.’

  The door opened into a large, nearly square, stone hall, with three great fireplaces and a broad stone staircase without balustrade leading to higher floors that had long ago collapsed. A new beamed room had had leaded glass set into it at intervals; the light filtered down to us, I guessed, a hundred feet. Electric sconces like flares had come to life on the walls as Praeger touched a switch. A few pieces of furniture stood about, oak tables and benches, two carved armchairs, leather stools. The walls were hung with tapestries and battle arms from antiquity. Praeger pointed out the narrow entrances to two spiral staircases within the thickness of the walls that led to the battlements. Neither the heat in the copper pipes along the floor, nor the warmth of the afternoon sun which shafted the slit windows no wider than a bowman’s arm required, did anything to warm the high, dim spaces; I shivered. Despite the renovation, there was the smell of age.

  ‘O’Ruairc’
s Tower,’ Praeger said. ‘More ancient than memory. Far older than the Tyrell family to whom it was given by grant of Queen Elizabeth the First. From the battlements the ancients watched for the beacon fires at Cloncath to warn them of the Viking raids, and then, later of the English. Come,’ he added, ‘it is chill here. You will come back, I think, and climb to the battlements and see the demesne of the Lords of Tyrell. I myself have never been able to do that.’

  He motioned me to the door and closed it carefully behind him. ‘No one uses it?’ I said, more depressed than excited by what I had seen. ‘But you have restored it, and you maintain it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Why not? They say it is among the oldest of structures in Ireland. Will I let it fall down?’

  ‘But if no one sees it …’

  ‘What use is it?’ he finished for me. ‘Ah ‒ for that they will have to wait. They must wait until I am dead before the coaches drive up, and they pay their two shillings. Then O’Ruairc’s Tower will be returned to the keeping of the Irish people, and the house and the pictures will be my gift to them. Foreigners have plundered Ireland for too many centuries. It is time something was given back to them. Sometimes, I wonder, though, what they will make of the pictures. Come ‒ it is time for tea.’

  After Praeger had rung for tea, he led me to a small room that opened off the main hall ‒ barely more than a large cupboard. The window had been darkened so that it needed the lighting within the display cabinets that lined its walls to reveal the collection of glass. ‘An old hobby of mine,’ he said. ‘Many generations ago my family were glassmakers ‒ which is why I grew interested in optics when I was starting out. I lost the family glass collection, though, during the war. Some of these things here ‒ the less costly ones ‒ were the first little treasures I permitted myself to buy when there was some money that did not absolutely have to be spent on something more useful.’ He made his way heavily round the small room wearing a pleased little smile that his fabulous pictures had not been able to win from him. ‘Here,’ pointing to a necklace, ‘one of my favourites ‒ Egyptian, probably before fifteen hundred B.C. This ‒ Alexandria. This cameo bowl ‒ Roman, first century. And here, the Venetian glass. But of course this does not compare with Thomas Sheridan’s collection of Venetian glass ‒ so far as I know there is no collection to touch that one. But you have already seen it …’