Cold Pastoral

by Margaret Duley

  “Now, Mr. Keilly,” said the sergeant, straightening. “We’ve had our orders. When you called us in I was instructed to find her, and if she needed attention beyond the scope of this village to transport her to town. The quickest way would be by boat across the Bay, and then by catamaran to the railway. Your consent is necessary, but you can see for yourself the state of her hands and feet. Extreme danger from gangrene if she gets the wrong attention.”

  “The skiff!” said Benedict. “I’ll go ahead and get her ready.”

  It was his only answer. What help he had went into action.

  While they were stooping to lift Mary Immaculate from the ground Josephine scrunched to the bundle of blankets. “Wait a minute,” she commanded.

  She had stopped crying and her voice was calm. The sergeant made way for her while she parted the hood over her child’s face. Knowing only its constitutional health and the warm tints of its skin she was appalled by the blue shade suggesting dissolution. Mary Immaculate was dead! Dead without need of her mother’s hands to compose her last sleep! That frozen coma could not belong to childhood, nor suggest any assurance of survival. Lightness, gaiety, colour, pink and blue wool and the coming and going of a pale gold head were all gone! It was the will of God! Her daughter had been lent to her as a lovely plaything. Josephine would go on, with heavy clod-hoppering men, eating silently and sleeping the sleep of rest from the sea. This remnant of her child was not survival! Exaltation had not been justified.

  “Now, ma’am,”said the sergeant. His voice was kind but firm.

  “Yes, yes,” said Josephine respectfully, scrunching away on her knees.

  As light as a frozen ghost, Mary Immaculate was carried away. Molly Conway pulled at her shawl, following without a backward glance. Josephine was left with her torment. She had the wish to lie down in the snow and dwindle to the frozen shape of her daughter. For a few minutes she indulged herself in sobbing inertia, until she saw the procession disappearing into the trees.

  “Benedict? Dalmatius? Ignatius…”

  Shivering, she rose to her feet and crunched through the snow. The distance between herself and her daughter was widening, and she could not catch up. Hurrying as fast as her legs would permit she could only keep her in sight.

  Mary Immaculate was going to town!

  FIVE

  “SAILS RIPPED, SEAMS OPENING WIDE AND COMPASS LOST.”

  The little girl had been found! Mary Immaculate was a story!

  In the throb of a day’s news, she signified an unbelievable survival of folk-lore: a manifestation of its spirit. In dispatches she made colour between armaments and disasters. In longer columns her story was elaborated, and the superstitions of her Cove magnified to fantastic proportions. She was a stir to imagination and a jolt to reason. Everything about her compelled interest: her birth in a skiff; her name; the slice of bread under her feet; and the incredible fact that she could deny her hunger to placate the Little People. Over the cable it went to build up a story. The words she had used when she was found shook the most rational. “The Little People stayed by me. When I was hungry I ate snow. I slept when ’twas dark, and woke when ’twas light.” The stark reduction of three days’ exposure defied classification. It suggested a simplicity past comprehension, or the imperviousness of under-privileged classes. Either from exposure or terror she should have died! The press said she was in hospital, suffering from frostbite. It seemed her one link with normality. In momentary interest the thoughts of countless people were projected to her bedside.

  Pity she should die!

  Better she were dead!

  She was tossed on the imagination and dismissed.

  Some of the repercussions had far-reaching results.

  A New Yark philanthropist read about her over a pile of begging letters.

  Coming from print as youth, colour and adventure, he experienced a resurgence of Celtic feeling. Leprechauns and fairies, charms and talismans, roods and banners had animated the atmosphere of his youth. The little girl must have invaded a “gentle place” and been unable to run home. Convinced that she had been held he abandoned his channels of charity and started an interchange of expensive cables. At the end of a day Philip Fitz Henry found himself the custodian of two thousand dollars towards the preservation of the little lost girl.

  Mary Immaculate was a trust!

  Spectacular gesture died, leaving her restoration to the tenacity of her doctor and interested nurses.

  In the hospital her door held a magnetic attraction. Those of authority were permitted a professional peep. None saw her without a quick regret. In her waxen immobility she was condemned to a narrower bed than the one she occupied. She seemed two-dimensional, except for the neat head and the high planes of the face starvation and exposure had reduced to bones. Nostrils looked insufficient channels for air, and eye-sockets evident through dwindled flesh. Lids were flower thin and closed with a burden of lashes. What remained of her seemed too frail a container for replenishment. Doctors and nurses departed with mute gestures of pity and regret.

  In her world life was as unsubstantial as a white sea-fog.

  It was light and warm, in a room without a stove. Outside she had lost the waterfall and the strong suck of the sea. Swishes and slushes entered from wheels she did not know. Several times there was a quiet voice and smells she could not recognise. The voice belonged to hands imparting a glimmer of sense. Once, in lifting her, they seemed to hold her whole body. Rescuing her from her clouded world, she returned when they let her go. She felt as light as a puff-ball until she changed to feet and hands.

  The room was different then! Dark and warm, with one white moon on the floor. Outside there was a dead calm, but the restlessness of the sea had entered her body, making her roll in waves of pain. By her head she could hear an occasional crack of starch, like Uncle Rich’s dicky, in Mass on Sunday mornings. Then she kept meeting the rim of a spoon.

  Delirium was intermittent. She was lifted, floated, grounded, while seaweed hair streamed back from her face. Momentarily cool, it was washed by the sea. A lucid interval told her she was wrong. Somebody held her in containing hands while another wiped her face with a cloth. She could hear a quiet voice close to her ears.

  “Don’t bother her with the powder any more, Sister. I’m afraid it must be the needle. She’s wearing herself out. The circulation is returning and there’s inflammation. Try and keep the blood back by elevating the feet. Has she been delirious all evening?”

  “Nearly all the time, sir. She thinks she’s a wave, leaping up the beach.”

  The remnant of Mary Immaculate’s mind resented the slur on her identity.

  “I’m not a wave,” she said weakly. “I’m in Purgatory, with hands and feet.”

  “No, you’re not,” said the voice close to her ears, while hands under her shoulders settled her. Something safe had come between her and that floating fog. Could she dare think she had skipped Purgatory?

  “I’m in Heaven,” she sighed. “In the hands of St. Joseph.”

  “You’re neither,” said the voice, as if the idea was absurd. “You’re in hospital because your feet and hands are frost bitten. It’s very simple and natural.”

  It seemed so, then. She let her head fall against somebody’s arm, but tired and dispirited as she was she had to look. In a momentary glimpse she retained a memory of a high white forehead, brown eyes and a nose as carved as the edge of a shell. She would have liked to look longer, but a weight of exhaustion lay on her lids.

  Once she could have been so interested. For the time being she was cured of zest. She was lying in bed because of her own leap after romance. Nothing of that silver day remained, nor could she recapture any of its beauty. There was no aftermath of diamond dust, crystal trees, or wings skimming over the snow She was conscious of consequences and the effect of her own misdeeds. Her body had trespassed on her mind, and imagination was subdued to the throb of hands and feet. The Little People had not come with her to hospital,
nor did she think she could find them there. What place could they have in this clean new world where doors had no rings and windows could be opened without the protection of the Sacred Heart?

  When her shoulders were released she went whirling away in the fog.

  “This won’t do,” said the voice. Waves washed over sound and leaped over a pin she felt in her arm.

  Black flakes were filling the room, down to the moon on the floor. They cooled her body, ran over her hands making a recession of pain.

  Down she went!

  She was running on a winter’s day when the blue was weak in the sky. The valley was deserted and the houses looked empty outside. Her feet were racing by the river, straining to reach the waterfall. The current ran one way and she ran the other, and she didn’t seem to get on. Behind, came the sound of hoofs, and each clippety-clop fell nearer to her ears. Looking behind she saw a black horse, with a rider low on its neck. There were two red lamps and a long streak of fire. When the horse got nearer she saw the lamps were its eyes and the fire its breath. It was almost on her, and her neck felt a wave of heat. Wildly she strained, looking at the steep ascent of land! If she could reach it she could clamber up by the waterfall and get away from the horse. Then she tripped! Her body sprawled on the ground, while the horse leaped over her, scorching her as it went. She was burning against ice! Flattened, she waited unknown destruction. The clippety-clop grounded and the heat came down from above.

  “Look up,” said the rider.

  She looked up into lamps that were eyes and saw the coat of the horse gleaming in the sun. The rider wore a white shirt swollen with wind.

  “This is the horse that gets you!”

  Then she saw teeth.

  “Only one thing can save you!”

  Her voice had curdled in her throat and she couldn’t ask, “What?”

  Leaning out of the saddle the rider held out his hand.

  “The horse can’t get you until he brings back this ball. You can run while he finds it. Throw it as far as you can.”

  The ball was brown and made of iron. Leaping to her feet the rider dropped it in her hand. Her palm sagged with its weight. Laughing, she knew she was saved. The ball was so heavy it could be thrown a long way. With her eyes measuring the distance to the waterfall she swung her arm in a curve. Before she could fling, her hand went light as a feather. Opening her fist, she saw it held a puff-ball….

  Struggling and screaming, she was the core of terror.

  She had lost her bearings. The Cove had been cosy, a circle of sea and sky and a cleft in the heads for a valley. Its spectres were clearly defined in the toll of the sea and the lure of the Little People on the land. Now she spun in a world containing dementia.

  The quiet voice was back, and hands snatched her back from unreason.

  “Hush, my dear child! You’ve had a bad dream. Don’t struggle so and I’ll tell you about it. I had to give you morphia for the pain, and to make you sleep. Sometimes it gives dreams—”

  “The horse,” she wailed; “and the weight that was only a puff-ball. Oh, oh, oh—”

  “Stop,” he commanded, in a voice that was one to obey.

  It was quiet but it held a fall of frost on hysteria. She stopped, shivering in his hands.

  “Now,” he said soothingly, “you’re going to sleep, and if you dream you’re to remember it’s a dream. You must be patient and sensible, and very soon you’ll be well again. You’re very safe and protected. Do you hear me, Mary? There’s nothing to be afraid of—”

  “I’m not a coward,” she chattered. “Dalmatius is afraid of his shadow—”

  “No, of course you’re not a coward. You were very brave when you were lost—”

  “I was held! I was held! Was I held? Was I lost? Nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows—”

  Her voice shrilled on a rising panic.

  “Stop,” he said in the frosty voice. “There, that’s better. Now I’ll stay with you until you go to sleep. Think of how nice it will be to see the town when you’re better, and if you’re good I’ll take you for a ride in my car. You’ve never been in a car have you? It goes much faster than the train you came in on—”

  “I was on a train and I never knew. Oh, oh, oh,” she wailed like a person obsessed with major tragedy.

  “Shushhhh, there are lots more trains if you’ll go to sleep. We’re going to buy you some new clothes—”

  “Blue?” she asked faintly.

  “Any colour you like.”

  “Could I have something not made of wool?”

  “Yes, yes, whatever you want. Do you feel sleepy?”

  “Yes,” she sighed; “if you won’t let me go.”

  “No, I won’t let you go until you’re asleep, and when I go there’s a nice nurse to look after you. Don’t talk, don’t talk…”

  Later, years later it seemed, the centre of her blackness was pierced by a throb. Like a pebble dropped into a pool it went widening away in painful extension. At first it beat in her mind until there was a hot report from her hands and feet. This time she did not cry out. She was sick but sane and capable of endurance. Once or twice she opened her eyes to try and identify her surroundings. Finding she was indifferent, she shut out the pool of light, the blur of the dressing-table and the dim square of the window. Where was the man with the cold quiet voice, and the women in white robes? She wished she had a drink. Where did they keep the bucket in the hospital? How silly she was! Here they had taps and deep white baths and basins. Her mother had told her about them. What was she hearing? Whispers by her door.

  “…fairies. They say she’s fey.”

  “Pure Irish, I’d say, by the sound of her. I know the Shore she comes from. I was there once, and it took me back to Grimm. Heard about the money?”

  “Yes, imagine! Rags to riches, and all for a little Bay Noddy. I suppose she’s as common as bog-water.”

  “Not a bit of it. Very appealing, with a beautiful face and a lovely little body. Her people must have been decent. Dr. Fitz Henry says there’s no malnutrition beyond exposure and starvation.”

  “He’s all burned up about her.”

  “And how! I’ve never seen him like it before. When he gave her the hypo he waited to see how it would react.Then we sat like a pair of dummies until she woke up with a dreadful screech—”

  “I heard it! It woke number nine.”

  “He talked to her like an angel and held her in his arms until she went to sleep. I was as much use as an extra degree of fever. If she was older I’d say it was hearts and flowers for doctor.”

  “If it is, it’s his first crush. They say he’s more in love with that old barracks of his—”

  “It’s not his barracks. It’s Lady FitzHenry’s.He gets it at her death.

  They passed over the eldest son. He got a wad from a maiden aunt.”

  “They’re as poor as rats, since the war.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind being as poor as they are. She got a cold hundred thousand insurance, even though the business failed.”

  “That’s poor for the Place. They say the coal bill is a thousand a year. My father often speaks of their grand days when the gates were flung open to let her ride out. And now she walks.”

  “But how she walks—shush, there’s the bell….”

  The whispers ceased. It sounded like a Cinderella story: coaches and horses, rags to riches. Was she Cinderella? She had no ugly sisters, but she had many ugly brothers. How pleasant it would be to live with men who had voices and hands like the man of last night.

  A dim white figure stooped over her bed, and a nurse found herself staring into glazed yellow eyes.

  “My dear, why didn’t you call?” she said kindly. “I was only at the door.”

  “Could I have a drink?” she whispered.

  Ministrations helped her towards the morning. It seemed an infinity of time, an endlessness she’d never known before. The three days in the woods had been timeless, past weight or weariness in the
light frost of her mind. Dozing fitfully, she woke to another face.

  Outside the sun was shining and the world sounded very big. Once the unfamiliar noises would have wooed her to exploration, and she would have had to follow the richness of bells and blasts of whistles and horns.

  “Are you awake, Mary?”

  “Yes,” she said unhappily, opening her eyes on a girl with waved hair under a starched cap so far on the back of her head that it seemed to rest by the will of God.

  “How do you keep your cap on?” she asked with faint interest.

  The nurse was young with blue eyes, brown lashes and a plump face. When she smiled Mary Immaculate felt a little better.

  “With a very little pin,” she whispered.

  “It’s very pretty.”

  The nurse laughed and smoothed her patient’s hair. “Now I’m going to make your bed, give you a bath and feed you like a little baby.”

  “I was bathed yesterday,” she said politely.

  There was a laugh, gay but not loud. “So you were, Mary, but here we do it every day and sometimes twice.”

  Mary Immaculate felt shocked.

  “You must be very dirty people.”

  The laugh was louder, but it did not hurt her with its quality or vigour.

  “You’re in hospital, my dear, and hospitals are very clean places.”

  With closed eyes she endured a hospital routine, and only opened them once to say reproachfully: “You do queer things to me.” It was the dismay of a body that had always been well. The nurse was soothing.

  “Don’t mind, Mary. Just relax and leave everything to me.”

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked without interest.

  “At home and very glad, I expect, to think you’re so well looked after. I know Dr. Fitz Henry will let her know how you are. You’ve got the youngest doctor in town.”

  “Have I?” she asked, not sure of her blessings. “Is he the man with the barracks and the mother that’s a Lady instead of a woman?”

  “You’ll find out in time, dear. Don’t talk. I want you to save your strength.”