Every time Pat lifted a spoon or a cup or a pot she made comments about everything and everybody.
Pat had placed a cup of coffee on the table for me. I drank it slowly as I watched an egg boil on the gas range. I waited for Pat to take the egg out of the boiling water and place it on the tray. She then took two slices of whole-wheat bread from the toaster. I picked up the teapot and poured boiling water into it to take away any chill that was in the pot. Maggie would know if I hadn’t heated the pot before pouring the boiling water over the tea leaves. She wanted her tea piping hot andit wouldn’tbe if the water was poured into a cold pot. For a minute or two I might easily have been in the kitchen in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. The panic and the fuss were identical.
Within fifteen minutes of my inauguration in the kitchen I was out the door and walking towards Maggie’s suite with her breakfast, Pat trailing behind me. Unlike in Dublin the tray didn’t have fried kippers on it: since she’d arrived in New York, according to Pat, Maggie had not expressed an interest in having fish for breakfast.
The kitchen had several exits. This time we took the door out of the kitchen that led through the main dining room and on through another room before we emerged into the hall. As we passed through the second room Pat pointed out Mr. Axe’s chess area. She told me he often played chess with himself and that the chessboard was to be considered an altar that I shouldn’t go near. She also mentioned that Mr. Axe was a serious wine collector. He kept a special cellar in the basement filled with wines of different vintages and seasons and was adamant that only he was to retrieve wines from the place. Before ascending the huge wooden staircase Pat pointed to a room that was Mr. Axe’s personal library. Mr. Axe, a Harvard man, appeared to have an insatiable appetite for everything that was published in the arts, commerce, history and just about everything cultural.
* * *
Every meeting I had with Maggie was pretty much the same. She always wanted to know what I had done with myself since she’d seen me last.
My daily routine changed very little as the days and then weeks went by. I’d be out in the garden with Arthur and listening to his complaints about Jim. I’d go to town with Jim and Pat, following them around while they did their shopping. I’d spend time in the office mail room. I’d greet Mrs. Axe when she returned from the city every night and after that I’d either be in my room or watching television in Jim and Pat’s quarters over the kitchen. The television of the fifties was awash with old black-and-white movies and Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy came galloping back into my life. Most of them I had already seen when I lived in Dublin. If Pat and Jim were out for the night I’d get into my car and meet up with Frank Dillon, a man I knew from a bar I had been introduced to by an employee of the Axes.
For weeks on end I had no contact with anyone who didn’t live or work at the castle.
Every week Maggie played some of her old recordings in her room and had me listen to them. When she asked for my opinion I was reluctant to give one. A part of me didn’t want to admit that I actually liked and enjoyed the music. It was as though the serpent of inferiority that I grew up with back in Dublin was still able to consume a large part of my existence. When it came to sharing or even admitting anything about culture or the arts in general, to Maggie or even to Mrs. Axe, I felt that if I put my social evolution on display both of them might retreat from me. On the other hand, the echoes and reverberations of the opera arias I heard in Maggie’s room and downstairs in the Axes’ living room stayed with me and I always looked forward to the experience.
Two Sundays in a row Maggie and I drove, with Mrs. Axe at the wheel, to a convent in Long Island where Maggie knew several nuns – an area where the Axes had a beach house they rarely visited. Although not overtly religious, Mrs. Axe seemed to display affection for religion when it came to accommodating Maggie’s wishes. She even sent one of her drivers to New Jersey to bring Father Leo Clifford, a priest from the order of the Dominicans, to the castle when Maggie requested it. Twice in the last month Father Clifford, who had known Maggie in Dublin and who was now stationed in New Jersey, came to visit her and bestowed his blessing on her – presumably after she confessed her sins to him.Father Clifford had been a friend of Maggie’s for years and was also her confessor. The priest was a charming, handsome man who was well aware of my relationship with Maggie and my personal and domestic situation with the Axes. When I met Father Leo on his visits to the castle he never failed to inquire about my religious practice. I always told him I never missed Mass. I even told him I went to Confession and Communion every week. Lately Maggie had exhibited a greater interest in religion than I had previously witnessed in Dublin and I think because of that she never failed to ask me if I had gone to Mass on Sunday and if I was keeping track of the church holidays. I assured her I went to Mass every Sunday with Pat and Jim (or with one or the other of them if they went separately). That was the kind of reassurance she seemed most content with when it came to asking me about my time in the castle.
* * *
An hour or two after retrieving Maggie’s breakfast tray I’d frequently bump into Mr. Axe who seemed during the course of the day to be unapproachable but on occasion would stop to chat and ask me if I had heard of the author of a book he’d have in his hands or if I knew the composer of the music that was playing on his audio system. Sometimes when I’d stop to listen to him or the music he had playing I’d actually think he was teasing me. He knew I had no knowledge of classical music and I had definitely not heard of the author or the book he had in his hands. Mr. Axe seemed to derive a little pleasure from asking me questions he knew I couldn’t answer. On the other hand he enjoyed answering his own questions for me and explaining the music that he was so enthralled with. Also, throughout the first month of my time in his house, I came to realise that he fancied himself as a bit of an actor and didn’t hesitate not only to quote Shakespeare but to act out the lines of the play he was quoting. He spoke about Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear as if he had been roommates with them at Harvard.
Unhesitatingly and uninvited he’d offer his opinion on characters and events in world history. His fascination with the history of World War I was palpable. He was particularly interested when I told him my father was in it. My father Paddy Walsh rarely spoke of his time in the trenches during the Great War, but whatever bits and pieces of information I had gleaned from him over the years I related to Mr. Axe. Any bit of information unleashed a torrent of statistics on just about everything related to the war. Mr. Axe almost on a daily basis informed me of the details of the war, from its outbreak to its conclusion which ended with the Treaty of Versailles. Mr. Axe had an obsession with politicians and world leaders both past and present, Winston Churchill being his favourite target. According to Mr. Axe, whenChurchill was Lord of the Admiralty he single-handedly was responsible for the greatest military blunder in World War I. This was the Dardanelles which, according to Mr. Axe, was comparable to the fiasco at Dunkirk in World War II with the exception that more soldiers and sailors from the Commonwealth perished on Churchill’s orders to invade the Turkish coast. In Mr. Axe’s mind, Churchill was the architect of many a bad structure.
I was perhaps for him a silent sounding board. I didn’t talk back or voice my opinion on whatever he was espousing and advocating at the time. It was similar to my habit of almost non-response to Maggie when she had me listen to opera and chatted with me afterwards about the human voice and the opera composer. Dropping much of his Harvard idea of education was obviously a pleasing experience for Mr. Axe. He almost never asked if I understood anything he imparted to me. Whether the priority was him talking or me listening I wasn’t always sure. One thing I was sure of and that was I didn’t care if he was talking or if I was listening. Either way suited me fine.
I was convinced, after living under his roof for the best part of three months, that he was as confused about my presence in his world as I was of him in mine.
* * *
I got used to just floating about after Maggie was served breakfast and usually didn’t knowwhat to do with myself for the rest of the day. My time was essentially my own. Sometimes Mrs. Axe would call upon Jim and Arthur and ask them to take me around the estate to help them with collecting fallen branches and mowing the lawn. And often I gave Pat a hand in the kitchen just to fill in time.
Occasionally I’d meet with Maggie when she decided she wanted to eat sometime around midday. Many times we both ate in the kitchen. It was the same with Mrs. Axe. She’d come rushing into the kitchen and find Maggie and me sitting at the kitchen table and would immediately help herself to a sandwich and coffee and sit at the table also. Mr. Axe on the other hand would never be caught eating in the kitchen. He had to sit at the head of the large wooden table in the dining room and be served. Eating alone in the dining room also allowed him to listen to his music and, when not indulging in that, he would want absolute silence when he decided to read a book over his lunch.
For most of the day I lingered about the castle grounds or sat on the wall down by the front gate, talking to the odd person who drove up in a car and wanted to know what went on inside the gates and if the castle was really haunted. My response was always the same. I told the curiosity-seekers that Dracula and Frankenstein lived in the castle and they were not available to visitors. This misinformation always got a laugh. It also encouraged the curious to depart in a hurry.
Whether it was spontaneous or planned I didn’t know but Mrs. Axe, becoming concerned that I wasn’t using my time in a productive way, suggested I spend time in the office where I could occupy myself and maybe even learn a bit about the business. She suggested I visit the office during the week which I did about ten o’clock every morning after I had finished serving Maggie her breakfast. For several weeks the men and women who worked in the office got used to me arriving hours after they had come to work and hanging around. They had been filled in on my connection to Maggie Sheridan and Mrs. Axe. Most office employees were friendly and welcoming. For weeks on end I sat and chatted with the executives who spent most of their time on the phone while scribbling numbers on charts and sheets. I learned how to use an adding machine but I remained a blank page when it came to understanding anything about mutual funds and the world of Wall Street.My knowledge and absorption of sums and numbers and charts was essentially nil.
Half the time I didn’t know what to do with myself. At coffee breaks I was asked about my family and Ireland but lately the connection to both seemed to have receded and was less intense. Instead I talked about American movies and the employees were surprised, even mystified, by my interest in them. I had no knowledge of any other subject that I could impress them with.
Mrs. Axe’s secretary reported back to Mrs. Axe on my progress in business studies but by the way she greeted me every morning I sensed she wasn’t too impressed with me. She moved me from one department to another. Each department had its own function and purpose. All of them had to do with how the stock market was behaving. Not having any visceral sense of what it all meant, I displayed no great interest and was moved from one individual to another. Each made an effort to inform me of their responsibilities and duties but the greater dimension and area of my mind didn’t gravitate towards their vocational ambitions and instruction. My inability to focus on what I was being told didn’t impress many of the executives and for the most part they reached the conclusion that they didn’t know what to do with me.
Mrs. Axe didn’t seem to know what to do with me either. She appeared to have as much knowledge of what do with me as I had of myself.
Eventually I drifted away from sitting at an empty desk and volunteered to help in the mail room, a place where hundreds of envelopes were stamped, addressed and readied for posting by a big machine. Working there didn’t require too much brain power.
When I wasn’t in the mail room I was on occasion driving back and forth to the post office with Tom Walton, who was in charge of the post coming and going to the Axe Corporation. Tom was in his mid-thirties and had lived in Tarrytown all his life. In the course of his driving trips to and from Tarrytown he showed me the town from a local’s point of view. I spent quite a bit of time with him in coffee shops and bars where he stretched his time out between the post office and the castle. Tom liked to drop off at the local tavern and have a beer with friends he had gone to high school with. On my first visit, by the time Tom had finished his second beer I was introduced to many of his friends. Most of them wanted to know how I came to be living up in the castle but rather than go into details I told them I was a friend of a guest who stayed there every so often. The castle was well known by the locals but few knew much about it. Some joked that it was haunted and almost to a man none of them had ever visited the place.
Frank Dillon, a man in his mid-thirties and a permanent patron at the bar, had a talent for mimicking famous people. In particular he was good at pretending he was James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and had an obsession with talking about his time in Hollywood when he was younger. Frank’s talk of Hollywood had a ring to it that suggested he had only read about the place in magazines but nobody questioned the veracity of his Hollywood reminiscences, mainly because he was an attraction for those who came into the wateringhole to drink and forget the reality of their own everyday existences. I listened to Frank because in some ways he nourished in me the fantasies of my own childhood. Trivia passed for intelligent conversation with Frank Dillon and his fellow imbibers.
The first time I met him Frank started to wax on about On the Waterfront, a movie he had seen at the local cinema sometime during the week. He talked about the actor, Marlon Brando, as if he had discovered a new brand of whiskey. Frank identified with Brando’s character in the movie so much he swore to give up drinking and, very much under the influence of the brew, he proclaimed that he would in the nottoofar-off future offer his acting talent to the world. After consuming two beers I sat next to him at the bar and bragged that I would do the same thing. This proclamation of mine nearly sobered Frank and everybody up. The silence that followed was quickly broken by a loud burst of laughter and I timidly withdrew my assertion and declared that I would more than likely become a banker instead.
* * *
One weekend Tom took me to a football game in Tarrytown at Washington Irving High School, the school he graduated from. It was not only the first time I had seen American football but, more importantly (at least to me at the time), I witnessed cheerleaders. Half a dozen beautiful girls dressed in colourful costumes were dancing, twisting and cheering on the local team. Tom at an earlier time in his life had played for the high-school football team and he was somewhat hypnotised by the game he was watching. I was mesmerised by the cheerleaders and for the first time my body, as opposed to my mind, realised it was in America.
When Tom drove me back to the castle that evening I knew I could no longer live isolated on the estate. It was too far from town and the bus that passed the gates came by only every two hours. The experience of the football game at the high school and the cheerleaders was for me a bit like going to a happy movie that I didn’t want to end.
That Sunday, after Pat and Jim brought me back from Mass, I approached Mrs. Axe and asked her if I could get driving lessons and learn how to drive. There were several old cars that belonged to the Axes parked in different areas of the grounds and nobody seemed ever to use them. I asked Jim about the cars and he told me they used to belong to people who were no longer employed by the Axes. Mrs. Axe would provide an employee with a car when they came to work at the castle. The place was so far away from the town that anyone who worked for her had to have transportation. I knew if I could get my driving licence I would be able to borrow one of them.
The following Monday Mrs. Axe arranged for me to take driving lessons every day for three weeks. When I got my driver’s licence she let me have one of the old cars: a 1948 Ford Convertible. It was yellow with a black top and I couldn’t tell whether it was made for me o
r I was made for it. I fell in love with the damn thing and would have slept in it if it had a mattress and a bathroom. Getting my driver’s licence and having my own wheels opened up a path for me to get out and away from the castle.
* * *
One day as I drove up the driveway I passed another car coming in the opposite direction. I had slowed down to give the rightofway when I saw Father Leo Clifford sitting in the back seat. I waved to him but his driver was driving too fast and I don’t think he noticed me. When I got back to the castle Mrs. Axe told me that Miss Sheridan wasn’t feeling well and had asked for the priest to come and visit her. She also asked me to go and say hello.
I made my way up to Maggie’s quarters, knocked on the door and, like so many times before, Maggie’s voice called out, “Come in!” When I entered her room she was standing at the window looking outwards and appeared to be just staring into space. One of her old recordings was playing softly on the portable record player and I was reminded of the first day I met her. The same record was playing now and, even though she wasn’t on the floor looking for a lipstick tube as she had been that day, she did look as if she was looking for something. When she sensed I was close to her she turned around, silenced the record player and told me to sit down, which I obediently did.
“What’s going on with you now?” she asked.
I answered, “Nothing.”
Maggie then walked to her huge travelling trunk that was wide open in the centre of the room. It hadn’t been moved since the day she arrived. With the exception of the clothes she was wearing all her belongings now seemed to be in the massive travelling piece of luggage. She fussed about with the old trunk and rearranged a few items of clothing.
I Dream Alone Page 3