‘May I help you in any way, sister?’ she had enquired, but Sister Mary Immaculate had just continued to sigh and so the telephone call, which might have exasperated the Reverend Mother normally, was greeted with alacrity.
‘And how are you on this fine day, Mrs Murphy,’ she enquired and heard Lucy’s chuckle on the other end of the wire.
‘I’m going to take you for a drive, Reverend Mother,’ she announced. ‘Rupert has fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fire, buried under the Sunday newspapers, so you and I are going for a little drive, and perhaps get away from this awful rain. I’ll call for you in twenty minutes, so get on your best bib and tucker.’
‘Where are we going?’ enquired the Reverend Mother. She should, she knew, say that she was too busy, but the temptation was too great.
‘South of France,’ said Lucy and rang off instantly.
Doesn’t want the ladies in the telephone exchange to know, thought the Reverend Mother. She gave a quick glance at the monotonous drizzle that filmed the windowpanes. South of France would be very nice. Poverty, she had decided some time ago, was made infinitely worse by climate. Imagine the poor of the south parish in the South of France, living in dry houses, used mainly to shelter from the heat of the sun, always warm, no expensive turf or coal, no urgent need for starchy foods. No damp, no patches of mould, no problems with washing clothes. ‘They could at least keep themselves clean,’ she had heard a St Vincent de Paul worker remark and wondered how clean that charitable lady would be if she had no money to buy firewood or even turf to heat water for washing clothes or bodies. And not even a garden to hang out the wet garments for the odd hour of wind and sunshine.
‘I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you to return to the recreation room as I am going out in a quarter of an hour, Sister Mary Immaculate,’ she said. It was an unbreakable rule that her room was always locked while she was not there herself. There were too many confidential reports and records about children and members of the community in desk drawers and boxes for her to run the risk of inquisitive eyes seeing them.
‘I’d better go then, Reverend Mother,’ she said in a martyred fashion. ‘I would not like to spoil your outing. Goodness knows; you work very hard! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. “Don’t bother the Reverend Mother; she’s a very busy woman.” That’s what I say to the young sisters. I like to think that I save you quite a lot of annoyance in that way, Reverend Mother. You’re going out with Mrs Murphy, I suppose. And I wouldn’t like in any way to interfere with your pleasures.’
She makes it sound as if I were off to the Folies Bergère, thought the Reverend Mother. Aloud she said, ‘You are very good, though please bear in mind that I would always wish to be available if any sister desires to speak with me.’ She stayed still and presented an inviting, she hoped, countenance towards her deputy for another few long moments. But as there was nothing said, no sound except the occasional sign, and as she had, surreptitiously, managed to finish sorting her bills, she hazarded, ‘But, of course, sister, you yourself, are wise enough to know that the best possible recourse, if one is troubled, is one’s confessor.’ With that, she, also, rose to her feet and went towards the door where her outdoor cloak hung. It was still damp since early-morning mass when the chaplain had detained her outside the church door. His action of holding the umbrella over her head had been well meant, but it had resulted in a cascade of drops spilling down the back of her serge cloak. Still, the back seat of Lucy’s car was always piled high with luxurious rugs and frequently a couple of stoneware hot water bottles were placed at the passengers’ feet. She fished out her keys and stood with them in her hand.
‘I suppose that you won’t want to keep the chauffeur waiting,’ said Sister Mary Immaculate. She slid past the Reverend Mother and went in the direction of the recreation room. Just as well, perhaps, as the elderly chaplain liked an after-dinner nap. There were peals of laughter coming from the recreation room and the sound of young children’s voices, high and excited. There was a toddler there, too, judging by the sound of running footsteps. Fascinated by that large expanse of shiny floor around the central table and trotting like a little horse, like all small children who visited the convent. There was something very attractive to them about being allowed to run and run around the long table and skid on the well-polished floor. For a moment, the Reverend Mother felt a little ashamed to be releasing Sister Mary Immaculate to spoil the fun, but luckily at the last moment, the nun began to climb the stairs to the dormitories. Perhaps she had failed in the past to impose her authority on a two-year-old and didn’t feel up to a tussle. In any case she had been complaining of a headache for the last few days and going to bed on Sunday afternoon would reinforce her complaints.
‘Mrs Murphy’s car is just coming down the street.’ Sister Bernadette came flying out of the kitchen and hastened to open the front door. ‘Isn’t it great the way the streets are so empty on a Sunday.’
‘Thank you, sister.’ The Reverend Mother tried not to rush furtively down the path. She had a feeling of escape. She was, she had to admit, looking forward immensely to an afternoon in the company of her cousin. Lucy and she had always been close and after the death of Lucy’s parents, they had been brought up together. Perhaps this accounted for the fact that, though very different in every way, and leading extremely different lives, their minds were always in tune. She had to school herself to wait impassively while the chauffeur jumped out of the car, threw open the back door, and carefully handed her in.
‘Oh, a hot water jar, what luxury,’ she sighed. The ceramic container, shaped like half a little barrel, had a flat bottom, a rounded top and a chimney-like little spout right in the centre. She placed her cold feet on either side of the spout, curling them over the curved surface of the heater.
‘You look tired, you’re very pale. Let me tuck the rug around your knees. What dreadful weather for June!’ With one hand, Lucy flicked closed the partition between the back seat and the chauffeur and then placed a cosy rug upon her cousin’s knees. The Reverend Mother leaned back against the cushions and sighed a sigh of guilty relief.
‘You’ll never guess where we’re going,’ said Lucy as the big car slid away down the wet street.
‘Not the South of France, then. Oh, what a shame!’ murmured the Reverend Mother, savouring the warmth of the comforting heater at her feet.
‘No, we’re going to see the Abernethys, or at least, Marigold Abernethy. Her husband died last year.’
‘I know. I wrote to her.’ How many of those letters of condolence had she written during the last few years? The ranks of the moneyed friends of her youth who had frolicked in the big houses around the county of Cork had thinned drastically during the last five or six years. So many of those splendid houses had burned down. And then death or emigration, which was a kind of death, had accounted for most of the people that she and Lucy had known so well during their girlhood.
‘And why are we going to see Marigold Abernethy?’ she asked.
‘We’re not,’ said Lucy. ‘Well, we are, but in reality we are going to see her cook. It just suddenly came to me. You know how Marigold Abernethy talks, it all flows out in that strange accent of hers, that weird mixture of an English accent and a strong west Cork accent, and when you go home all sort of things that she says echo in your mind. And one of them just came back to me this morning. Rupert was reading out an advertisement for a cook at the Imperial Hotel. It was saying that they wanted a cook who was proficient in French cooking, and Rupert said, “Let’s hope that he or she can cook good Irish sausages and potatoes, and that would be a change.”’
‘And the Abernethy’s cook?’ queried the Reverend Mother.
‘I’m coming to that,’ said Lucy. ‘You see, Rupert is very fussy about his food. I couldn’t get him to like visiting the Abernethys. He didn’t mind “him” so much and “she” amused him, but the food was always awful, but then when she said, one day a few months ago, just as we were
leaving, “Oh, my dears, I’ve engaged the Woods’ cook …” well, that’s what came back to me. Because when Rupert was talking about a new cook for the Imperial Hotel, well, I suddenly thought of Marigold Abernethy and her new cook. When we were coming home in the car, he said to me, “Well, I won’t mind going there again if she really does engage the Woods’ cook. I’ve had some great meals there, poor things.”’
‘And did she? Did Marigold Abernethy engage the Woods’ cook?’
‘Yes, indeed she did. And, you know, it’s a strange thing, but when we next went to dinner at the Abernethy house, it was just exactly as though we had been dining in Shanbally House. Everything the same, even the gravy. She’s a really good cook, perhaps a bit monotonous if you live in the house, but truly excellent if you only visit a few times a year.’
‘And you thought that I would appreciate this paragon; what does she serve for afternoon tea?’
‘The usual cakes,’ said Lucy with a deep-throated chuckle. ‘But I’m sure that you will find something to admire. It’s an old-fashioned idea,’ she said staring straight at a point midway on her chauffeur’s back, ‘yes, I suppose that it is an old-fashioned idea, but I rather like doing it, popping into a kitchen just to say how much one enjoyed the cooking.’
‘How very right you are, my dear Lucy,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘If I do enjoy the scone and the cakes, then I shall certainly make a point of saying so.’
‘You do the cake and I’ll do the scones,’ said Lucy thoughtfully. ‘I feel that I can do justice to the scones. “It needs a light hand”, do you remember that your father’s cook used to say that. It’s stuck in my mind. Even your father managed to memorize that. Do you remember him going down to the kitchen? You and I used to giggle on the stairway when we heard him say, “You have a very light hand, God bless you, Mrs O’Hara!” and whenever we went out for afternoon tea, he used to say to whatever hostess we had, “Your cook has a very light hand with the scones; scones take skill.” We used to laugh a lot about that,’ said Lucy.
‘I remember,’ said the Reverend Mother. She thought about this cook, now employed by the Abernethy family, but previously in the service of the Woods. And very, very pleased to be back cooking in a nice house rather than a back-street bakery, according to Lucy. A wasted talent. No one thought much about the servants when these big houses were burned down. Pity was always poured out for the sad fate of the owners, but the servants suffered also. Their fear and shock were almost as much, they invariably lost their job and their place to live and they had no background of money, no relations in England, to cushion the shock. She wondered whether the Republicans considered this matter when their lorries roared up to these unprotected houses.
Marigold Abernethy was touchingly pleased to see the Reverend Mother. There was a glowing fire on both ends of the long drawing room and an exquisite Regency table already placed between the two sofas. A lace-trimmed linen tea cloth lay folded upon it and Marigold had nodded at a parlourmaid who had come in about ten minutes after their arrival.
‘Of course, there are so few of us left now.’ Marigold was talking about a ball held long ago at the Imperial Hotel. The Reverend Mother listened with seeming attention, but allowed her eyes to wander over silver candlesticks, velvet curtains, two-hundred-year-old pieces of elegantly carved furniture, an exquisite pair of glass chandeliers, an oval Adam mirror, a shelf of beautiful Belleek china. Could all of these items be spotted in the short interval of time before the house was set on fire, or was there, perhaps, a preliminary visit, a scouting operation to make sure that the pickings were worth the risk?
‘She married young Gamble, you know, and a very good match it was for him, too,’ Lucy was saying and then laughed at herself. ‘What am I saying! Young Gamble. He’s a judge these days, of course, and as grey as a badger.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen him. He brought along his two and a friend from England, one of the Powers from South Tipperary. A very nice young man. A great admirer of my furniture. It’s been here forever, I said to him. The English like things new, of course, but this young fellow wasn’t like that. He told me that his grandmother had often talked about the beautiful walnut table she used to own and he thought that it must have been quite like that one over there. Queen Anne, that’s what he said. But you’ll never guess what he admired most of all. Excuse me, Reverend Mother, if I just reach past you.’
Marigold took from the ledge of a bookcase a couple of large silver rings, lined with cobalt glass.
‘You’ll never guess what they are,’ she said, looking from one to another. ‘My grandmother used to have a dozen of them. She gave them to my mother when she married, but you know what it’s like with a big family of boys! Only those two are left.’
‘Napkin rings,’ hazarded Lucy. ‘No, they couldn’t be – too large, aren’t they?’
‘No, they’re not for napkins. You’ll never guess unless I tell you.’ Marigold looked from one to the other triumphantly. ‘They’re potato rings. The parlourmaid used to put a linen napkin in them and then pop the potato into the ring. It stood inside the ring and the napkin kept it piping hot. I remember them well when I was young; I remember at least six of them. And we have some matching salt cellars to go with them.’
Made in the days when potatoes were valued as rare and exotic, thought the Reverend Mother. She was no expert, but thought that the silver and cobalt potato rings might well date back to the seventeenth century. She opened her mouth to ask a question and then closed it as there was a tap on the door and the well-starched parlourmaid appeared pushing a laden trolley.
‘Tea!’ exclaimed Lucy, with a nice note of surprise and pleasure in her voice. ‘Oh, how lovely! You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. Oh, scones! I just love scones.’
Dr Scher would have liked the tea set, thought the Reverend Mother as she accepted a cup poured from the thin spout of a pot that looked very like the one that he had described to her from Morrison’s Island Antiques Shop. There was thick yellow cream in a matching jug and the set was finished off by a bowl where the sugar had been carefully carved into neat lumps, to be lifted out by a matching pair of silver tongs. A forgotten era, she thought, as she looked at the delicate china, the well-polished, beautifully shaped silver, the wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches, the hot scones carefully wrapped in a linen napkin. Someone had even gone to the trouble of shaping the butter into elaborately patterned ball shapes and arranging them in neat lines on a grooved wooden platter.
‘You don’t worry about living here on your own, Mrs Abernethy, do you?’ she asked when the parlourmaid had withdrawn from the room.
A slight shadow passed across their hostess’s face, but she answered briskly. ‘Not at all,’ she said with emphasis, her voice going up like a musical scale. ‘One can’t live one’s life waiting for a catastrophe. I never even think about it, Reverend Mother. Mind you, the gardener always locks the gates before he goes home in the evening. No point in making things easy for them.’
No need to ask what this indomitable elderly woman meant by ‘them’. This burning down of houses was an appalling business. A crime even if it were done for political reasons; purely to make money, well that rendered it even more despicable. Once again the Reverend Mother’s gaze swept the room, one among many in this house, she knew, to be stuffed with Queen Anne, Georgian or Regency treasures. She imagined a greedy glance, masked by an air of polite interest, valuing its contents. Imagined the planning. And then the raid. Not too difficult to intimidate the elderly butler; the gardener lived in the village, and probably the gardener’s boys, also. There might be a boy or two living in in order to work in the scullery or to replenish the fires, and five or six elderly women servants. That would be the only opposition that tough young men, masked and carrying rifles and cans of petrol, would face.
She examined the elaborate scrolls of the silver cake server. She had never seen a cake server quite like this. The blade had been perforated to form an eight-point sun and aro
und it was a carefully incised garland of flowers. The hallmark was on the lifter mechanism, above the handle and she thought that she could see the Cork silver hallmark with its ship and two towers. Dr Scher would be interested in that.
‘I must just go and powder my nose,’ said Lucy rising and seizing her handbag. ‘And dear Mrs Abernethy, please do allow me to pop into the kitchen and congratulate your cook on her scones.’
‘And do tell her how much I enjoyed that feather-light sponge cake,’ put in the Reverend Mother as a glance and a smile was passed between mistress and parlourmaid. No doubt, by the time that her cousin descended upon the kitchen, the cook would be ready in a clean apron and with, perhaps, a box of those delicious scones sitting on the table ready to be taken home to Rupert. Lucy would make a better job of talking to the cook – she had a way of being informal and chatty. The woman would be more reserved, and perhaps even a little overawed with someone like the Reverend Mother.
In any case, she wanted to have a chat with her hostess about this visit paid by Judge Gamble to an old friend of his long-deceased wife.
‘Well, the cook was full of information,’ said Lucy as soon as they got back into the privacy of the Reverend Mother’s room. Nothing had been said in the car and that seemed to be a good sign that valuable information had been garnered. ‘And, you know, this is interesting. There were just five of them, five blackguards, according to the cook.’
Beyond Absolution Page 10