I Dream Alone

by Gabriel Walsh

  Father Clifford had an easy and warm way about him that made me want to continue talking to him. I knew if I wanted to get his attention I’d have to talk as if I missed the culture and practice of going to Mass in Dublin and the ritual of kneeling down in the confession box. A part of the connection with the priest was something like having played for the same football team in another time in another place. Conversing about the Mother Church in the Mother Country resonated with an authenticity and familiarity that was at the very least comforting if not downright fraternal.

  “Can I confess, Father?” I asked in a foolhardy moment.

  “Sure you can. I can hear a confession anytime, anywhere from anyone. Have you committed any sins? Are there sins you want to confess, son?”

  I admitted to Father Leo, as if he was my confessor, that because I wasn’t in an environment where everybody around me marched off to church every Sunday I didn’t feel the same compulsion to attend. I told him there was no one keeping score or adding up and subtracting the amount of times I attended and didn’t attend Mass. I related to him that I had a girlfriend who was Protestant and I wasn’t sure if she would like or understand my running off to Mass every Sunday and every religious holiday, particularly if we partied late on a Saturday night. I knew for sure that Muriel’s father wouldn’t be in the stands cheering me on when I dressed up in a clean shirt and marched off to church.

  Father Leo responded by asking me if I had shared any part of my religion with Muriel and I told him I took Muriel to Mass one Sunday and showed her what went on inside a Catholic church. The event, or more precisely the experience, didn’t impress her parents. When I sat round the dinner table with Mr. and Mrs.Anderson they looked at me as if they weren’t sure what to make of me. I began to sense an unwelcome and unwanted crusade falling upon me. The ignorance of my action, coupled with aninsensitivity that I wasn’t yet mature enough to acknowledge or apologise for, kept my brain twitching awkwardly for at least a week. It was at least two weeks before Muriel’s father smiled in my presence again. It might have been because he and her mother believed I was a devout dedicated Catholic who was trying to convert Muriel.

  “You took her to Mass?” Father Clifford asked with great incredulity.

  “I did, Father.” I was still behaving in front of the priest as if I was in the confession box and for a moment or two I accepted that I had committed sin and would be obliged to do penance for it.

  Father Clifford went silent and looked up at the ceiling. I thought he was contemplating an instruction, as per his vocation, for me to say a hundred prayers and ask for forgiveness. He brought his head back and rubbed his chin with his right hand.

  “What happened? What happened?” he asked.

  “What happened where, Father?”

  “What happened with the girl?”

  “Muriel?”

  “Yes – Muriel!”

  “Muriel had no problem with coming to Mass with me, Father. It was when I took her home her father asked us where we’d been.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  This question I didn’t want to answer but Father Clifford pursued me.

  “Did she tell her father that you took her to Mass, Gabriel?”

  I leaned back and felt that my confession was coming to an end. “Yes, I told her dad that I took her to Mass, Father.”

  Father Clifford laughed. “What did this child’s father say to you, Gabriel, when you told him that?”

  This question I definitely didn’t want to answer.

  “What did her father say, Gabriel?”

  “Muriel’s father got annoyed. He suggested that Muriel had a lot of homework to do and that I should go home.”

  “You left his house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And on my way back to the castle that day I thought I really had committed a serious sin, Father.”

  Father Clifford was very sympathetic. He said something to the effect that my faith was being tested and that it is much easier to go to church with the entire flock than it is to go on one’s own. He also said that when he got back to Dublin he would tell Maggie that I was growing stronger in my religious beliefs but it would be another matter if she believed it.

  * * *

  Mrs. Axe gave a party for the executives who were on the board of the firm. I was told I could attend if I wanted to. Sometimes it seemed that Mrs. Axe didn’t know what to do with me or how to make me feel at home. Of the social functions I attended at the castle there was never a visitor who was even close to my age. Not once did I ever encounter a family with children, young or old, and definitely none in my age bracket. Essentially just about everyone who came to Axe Castle was a work colleague or a distant and older relative. Mrs. Axe had an older sister who was a professor at a mid-western college. Mr. Axe, as far as I could ascertain had absolutely no living relatives. He was himself a very private person and outside of his relationship with Mrs. Axe and the odd walk I took with him once or twice a week he rarely showed any need for real live human company. There were even times when I thought he was as lonely as I was. However, although his penchant was for spending most of his time in his palatial home he, every so often, reached out to his wife to provide him with company. Parties and social functions took place in the castle only when Mrs. Axe arranged them. On many occasions I heard Mr. Axe inquiring about the social calendar for the castle. When he was informed about persons and dates by Mrs. Axe he’d react like a happy young boy who was given a toy or a present.

  Mrs. Axe spared no expense when she gave a dinner party. When the Axes had just a few guests I helped Pat out, but for a larger event Mrs. Axe brought in temporary help to assist Pat and she oversaw every aspect of the evening. Mr. Axe would choose the wine from his wine collection and there would be plenty of it. When the guests arrived, a woman from the temporary agency, dressed in black with a white apron, would take their coats. Mr. and Mrs. Axe would greet them and show them into the living room where they would be served the most expensive wine in Mr. Axe’s collection. Such events allowed Mr. Axe the opportunity to wax on about his wine collection. He presented five or six types of wine and he explained the history of them from the grape to the glass it was poured in. Acting as his informal assistant I would line up the wineglasses for each guest and make sure their glasses were instantly replenished and would sometimes indulge in a little wine-tasting myself. If Mrs. Axe noticed me imbibing she would quietly suggest I go into the kitchen and help Pat with the task of preparing the food for the buffet table.

  At this particular party one of the guests was Mr. Art Linkletter, the host of the famous and popular television showKids Say the Darndest Things. His presence must have had something to do with the financial world of the Axes. He might have been a candidate for the board of directors or someone who wanted to invest his money with the Axe financial-management firm. Whatever the reason for him being present he was the life of the party. He joked, laughed and told stories about his television show and about how children are spontaneous and innocent when asked questions by an adult.

  I ambled about the big dining room as if I was the house cat. With the guests mostly involved in business talk I might as well have been at a silent movie. I was too shy to introduce myself to anyone in case they’d ask me a question about the Axes’ business. In one corner of the room as I was replacing a bottle of wine on a small table, one gentleman asked me my name and who I was and what I was doing at the party. He jokingly said I was too young to be drinking and I agreed with him. When I offered him the first of the wine from the bottle he nicely asked about my presence at the party. I was able to avoid going into details by telling him he’d have to drink a lot more to understand the reason why I was talking to him. He seemed to get a laugh out of it and introduced himself as Albert Wedemeyer. He looked a bit like Father Clifford, but with a bit more grey in his hair, and he told me he had recently joined the board of directors at the Axe Corporation. After spending a few minute
s in his company I learned from Justin Dunn, a vice president of the company who sometimes supervised me in the office on the odd school holiday that I worked there, that the man I had been talking to was General Albert Wedemeyer, the man who replaced General ‘Vinegar’ Joe Stilwell in the battle of the South China Seas during World War II. The General, Mr. Dunn informed me, was a very important American hero. For a second or two I wondered if I had seen him in the movies. He did look a bit like the actor John Payne. Justin Dunn couldn’t hold back his admiration for the man whose presence dominated the room.

  Stepping back and taking a professorial posture, Mr. Dunn elaborated: “During the Second World War, young fella!”

  Mr. Dunn always called me “young fella” when I sat at a desk near him in the office.

  He continued: “General Albert Wedemeyer was a staff officer to the war-plans division of the United States War Department and was the number one author of the Victory Program that advocated the defeat of Germany’s armies in Europe. He said, or he informed his political bosses in Washington, that this should be America’s first war objective. General Wedemeyer’s plan was endorsed and expanded as the war progressed. Added to that, Wedemeyer helped to plan the Normandy invasion.”

  I thought I was listening to the radio for a minute. Mr. Dunn then went back to his glass of wine and drank its contents as if he was congratulating himself on giving me a lesson in American history.

  I finally noticed Mrs. Axe walking about the room, perfunctorily acknowledging her guests and introducing them to Father Clifford. She seemed happy and cheerful. Father Clifford greeted everyone as if he was standing in front of the church welcoming his observant flock.

  Mrs. Axe spotted me as I was heading for the kitchen. “Gabriel! Gabriel!” she called.

  I stopped in my tracks and saw Father Clifford looking at me with a confused look on his face. I wondered if he had said anything to Mrs. Axe about my flat tyre and my taking Muriel to Mass, or if she had told him about the struggle I was having with my school subjects. I had recently failed Intermediate Algebra and was barely hanging on with Latin. When she caught up with me in the kitchen she didn’t mention anything about school. She was in a good mood and wanted to know if I would do her a favour by driving one of her guests home. I of course agreed and went back to the dining room to meet the guest who had to unexpectedly leave the party. The man was as nice as could be and apologised both to Mr. and Mrs. Axe for having to leave. Mrs. Axe assured him that I was not only a very good driver but I knew exactly where he lived and was very familiar with the route to his place of residence. With a touch of humour, befitting the night, Mrs. Axe reassured the gentleman that I was not a “drinker” and was sober. The man instantly displayed a broad smile of relief.

  Ten minutes later, in Mrs. Axe’s Cadillac, I was on my way to my destination, Tuxedo Park. Tuxedo Park was a recently developed upscale housing estate slightly north of Tarrytown. My passenger, sitting next to me, was a Scotsman with a biting sense of humour who jokingly remarked that one had to be always wearing a tuxedo to live there. When I commented that he wasn’t wearing one he laughingly replied that his was still in the cleaner’s and had been there for the last month. During the course of the drive he asked me about my life and times at the castle and I did my best to tell him about the circumstances that had me there. He said he knew Dublin well and had been to Trinity College a number of times. His voice and tone was very precise and a bit like that of Mr. Axe. He mentioned that Mr. Axe was of Scottish descent but that he himself was an actual born-and-bred Scotsman. He talked about how bright and industrious Mrs. Axe was and how she and Mr. Axe had succeeded in being top in their business.

  As I was about halfway across the Tappan Zee Bridge a news bulletin came over the radio and referred to a plane crash that had taken place somewhere on the east coast of the United States. My engaged passenger reached for the radio volume and turned it up. He seemed to pay an unusual amount of attention to the radio bulletin. As he listened he commented that he thought the pilot of the said plane might not have used his weather instrumentation panel properly. Why he mentioned this was beyond me. It was the next morning when I brought Mrs. Axe her breakfast that she told me the man I had driven home from the party the previous night was Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar.

  * * *

  Sundays more often than not underlined the loneliness and isolation of life at the castle. Apart from the many squirrels and birds that were living in the woods it was rare that anything else moved inside the castle or on the grounds of the estate. There had been Sundays in the past, although not too many, that I actually went to Mass to avoid the emptiness of the Sabbath at the castle.

  A weekend at the castle was like being a resident in an abandoned church that nobody attended or prayed in. The size of the place seemed even bigger when it wasn’t occupied by office workers and functioning as a financial institution. Only the odd sparrow from the garden that had lost its way and entered through one of the large windows gave the place a bit of life. More than once I felt as if I too was a sparrow looking for an open window to fly out of. Outside on the grounds the birds and animals, mainly rabbits and a few deer, were at play as if they were taking advantage of the lack of traffic on the driveway and the absence of cars in the parking lot. In the dark of night or the early hours of the morning I imagined ghosts and spectres walking up and down the stairs wailing and weeping and looking for a place to deposit their undying souls. I envisioned other unearthly and shadow-like creatures carrying their own heads up and down the marble staircase. The interior of the castle on weekends seemed very suited for goblins and fairies. Even the silence of the place had an echo that increased with the passing of time. Books, papers and large files of documents rested on the desks of the absent employees waiting for them to return on Monday morning.

  * * *

  With little to do and no place to go, on what I accepted as the day of emptiness, one Sunday I was standing on the hill in front of the castle when I noticed a car coming through the front gate. Normally Mrs. Axe would have told me if she was expecting visitors on a Sunday and, given that she hadn’t mentioned anything to me, I was intrigued all the more by the sight of a car moving up the driveway. The car was big and black and looked a bit like a hearse, although it wasn’t.

  When the car turned towards the direction of the front entrance I decided to investigate and see who was in it. As it approached the main door a few seconds ahead of me I saw Mrs. Axe standing on the front steps. She had a smile on her face and seemed happy. The driver stepped out of the car, opened the back door and a little woman wearing a black hat and a black dress stepped out of it. Mrs. Axe greeted the woman and led her into the castle. I stood and waited till the car departed before I decided to investigate the surprise Sunday visitor. After waiting a few minutes and not wanting to be noticed, I made my way back to the castle through the back door that led directly to my apartment – when I didn’t want to be seen or noticed by Mr. or Mrs. Axe, or anybody else who might have wondered why I was walking about on my own, it was my way out of and into the house. No more than ten minutes had passed when I walked into the living room and encountered Mrs. Axe with the little woman in black. They were sitting in front of the fireplace drinking cups of tea. Mrs. Axe had apparently prepared the tea in advance of her guest’s arrival. At first sight the diminutive woman looked to me like a hen dressed in black.

  When I approached, both Mrs. Axe and the tiny lady stood up.

  “Oh, this is Gabriel,” Mrs. Axe said but before she got a chance to introduce her guest the petite woman extended her hand and greeted me with a gentle squeak-like voice.

  “I am pleased to meet you,” she said with an accent that I couldn’t immediately identify.

  For a moment I thought it was French but I wasn’t sure. Also the little woman let out a giggle and sat back down on the chair closest to the fireplace.

  “Countess, you should chat with Gabriel sometime but not now,” Mrs. Axe
added and returned to her chair as well.

  I took the words “not now” as a signal for me to move on. It didn’t take more than five seconds for me to realise that I was in the middle of a meeting that I wasn’t invited to. Feeling awkward, I excused myself and beat a retreat.

  As I was about to vanish out the door Mrs. Axe called to me. “Gabriel, take this teapot and heat up some more water, please!” I went back and picked up the teapot from the table.

  Mr. Axe then entered the room.

  Mrs. Axe greeted him with: “You’ve read the stories, Emerson?”

  He instantly responded, “I did indeed.”

  Inside the kitchen I filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove. As I waited for the water to boil Mr. Axe entered and retrieved a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. He had apparently left it there for the occasion that was now taking place in the dining room.

  As he uncorked the bottle he asked me what I thought of the petite woman who was dressed as if she was in mourning.

  I responded by saying she reminded me of a hen. He laughed and said that she was a writer of children’s stories and one or two of her tales had to do with how hens ate their food, and added that the reason for her visit was that a collection of her stories was being published the following week and that the publisher of her books was a client of the Axes. While sitting at the kitchen table I asked Mr. Axe about the name “Countess”. For some reason or other he thought my question bordered on being humorous and, as was his custom and practice, he went on to relate to me in his usual instructive way that the lady liked to be known to anyone and everyone she talked to as “Countess”. The noble appellation applied because in reality she was Count Leo Tolstoy’s last living granddaughter. With a predictable ignorance that Mr. Axe was very used to by now I asked who Count Leo Tolstoy was.

  After pouring a drop of wine into his glass and tasting it Mr. Axe paused and told me that Leo Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina and War and Peace. He said that he would tell me all about those books at a later date if I was interested. He then added that the Countess was also known to some as Vera: a name she relied on for political reason when she fled to Paris from Russia many years ago.