Instead, Daisy tried not to imagine what her life would have been like if Mickey weren’t there and she had to live out the war, and an indeterminate period afterward, in the company of old Mrs. Nugent and the maids.
Daisy waited until the end of the week to begin her reforms. The kitchen seemed the obvious place to start. Armed with what she thought of as a preliminary list, starting with a suggestion about the amount of time vegetables need to be cooked, she arrived in the kitchen about an hour and a half after breakfast had been cleared. The cook, Philomena, and the two maids were seated at the kitchen table drinking tea. Daisy recognized elevenses and withdrew, telling them she would come back a little later.
She retreated to the library, the warmest room—other than old Mrs. Nugent’s room, the kitchen, or the linen closet—all, in a sense, out of bounds to her. Already she could feel some of her first enthusiastic energy draining away. Seating herself at the desk, she started a new column of her list, things that needed taking care of around the house. She began with the burned out lightbulbs on the chandelier in the room where she was now sitting, the cobwebs in the corners of the hall ceiling, the tarnished rods that held the carpet in place on the front staircase.
When she returned to the kitchen she found Philomena leaving by the back stairs, carrying a tray, on it a cup of milky tea and a plate of oatmeal biscuits. The cook was still sitting at the kitchen table; she did not rise as Daisy entered. Daisy, who had intended to start as she meant to continue, wondered if she should say something, found herself unable to frame the words for a reproof, and instead, took a seat at the other end of the table.
Mrs. Mulcahy seemed to be about the same age as Daisy’s mother. She was heavy, her breath came in a wheeze, and Daisy imagined her feet gave her trouble. On the table in front of the cook were two slim paperbound notebooks, one older than the other and both stained with kitchen grease.
“The baked apples at lunch yesterday were delicious,” Daisy said. It was not how she had intended to start, but Mrs. Mulcahy’s massive presence unnerved her.
“Herself is partial to a soft baked apple; she wants one for her tea tonight.” When the cook spoke, her whole bosom, covered by a striped and not particularly clean apron, heaved. It seemed even breathing was a conscious and draining exercise for her.
There was a little pause. Daisy had planned to follow her compliment about the baked apples with some gentle but firm amendments to the set weekly menu and a question about the cold beef on Monday tradition having been adhered to even though everyone who might have eaten it hot on Sunday in the dining room had been away for the weekend. Now she could answer the question herself. Corisande had not countermanded the standing order; old Mrs. Nugent was entitled to her roast beef for Sunday lunch whether she knew what day of the week it was or not, and there were the unspoken but always implicit rights of the servants. Daisy also paused before speaking about the overcooked vegetables; it now seemed possible that soft vegetables were an accommodation to Mrs. Nugent’s teeth or digestion. It also occurred to her that the cook was not the person to speak to about lightbulbs and cobwebs. Mrs. Mulcahy broke the silence.
“You’ll be wanting the messages,” she said, pushing the newer of the two notebooks toward Daisy. Her bosom prevented her from reaching even half the length of the table. Daisy rose and took the order book. She had been reading, along with Irish history, for balance and light relief, the works of Somerville and Ross. Now she felt like one of the foolish and ineffectual English characters from their novels. Without voicing a complaint or asking a question—she had, in fact, limited herself to a compliment—she had been bested. No contest; holding the order book, she did not sit down again. But Mrs. Mulcahy had not finished with her.
“There’s one other thing, madam.”
Daisy soon learned that to be addressed as “madam” by anyone who worked for the Nugents was a precursor to a request or demand, rarely unreasonable, for money.
“Miss Corisande didn’t pay the wages before she left last Friday.”
“Oh,” Daisy said faintly.
Mrs. Mulcahy held out the second notebook. Daisy took it; who paid the wages was a question she had not asked herself but had assumed that the grown-up in charge paid the running expenses of the house. It suddenly seemed important not to allow a silence to develop.
“I’ll go to the bank when I go into Cappoquin for the shopping,” she found herself saying. Mrs. Mulcahy nodded, and Daisy, dismissed, left the kitchen.
Lunch was minced beef, with snippets of toast stuck into the top; apart from an overliberal addition of salt, it was unseasoned. Two pounds of minced beef, to feed kitchen and dining room, might be almost priceless in England, but here it was merely unappetizing. And expensive.
Outside it was sunny and cold. Daisy and Mickey sat at a small table beside the dining-room windows. Soon, Daisy thought, it would be time to move the table closer to the fire. Mickey ate his way through lunch with no indication of either pleasure or disappointment.
Shortly afterward, the whole meal having taken no more than twenty minutes, he went outside again. What, Daisy wondered, did he do during the winter? What, for that matter, would she herself do when the weather got colder and the days shorter and darker?
Daisy was about to leave the house when she realized she didn’t have the ration books. Aware that the bank closed before the grocery shop, and with the image of Mrs. Mulcahy’s truculent face before her, Daisy, with an anxiety beginning to border on panic, searched the desk in the library without success. For a moment she considered leaving without them; it would be humiliating as well as inopportune to return without money. Then she thought that returning without tea would be a failure only slightly less unacceptable to the kitchen than leaving the wages unpaid. After a moment of frustration and resentment, reflecting that doing without the odd cup of tea or sugar to sweeten it was far from the worst thing happening to those suffering all over Europe, she went upstairs to look for the ration books in Corisande’s bedroom.
Daisy had only once before entered Corisande’s bedroom, when she packed a suitcase of her sister-in-law’s clothes and possessions to send to Shannig. Now she opened the door, aware that not only was she unlikely to be observed—it was the hour after lunch when Dunmaine seemed as uninhabited as the Marie Celeste—but that the search she was about to engage in was legitimate and necessary. The room had the dead feeling of one that neither fresh air nor a living creature had entered for some time. Crumpled scraps of tissue paper lay on the bed, left there from when she had packed. The wastepaper basket had not been emptied; at the bottom of it lay small wodges of cotton wool, stained with lipstick and nail polish. No maid had entered the bedroom since Daisy had last been in it. No one had dusted, tidied, or changed the sheets on Corisande’s bed. Daisy felt surprised and betrayed; with a glimmer of humor she now understood what her grandmother meant when she complained of being “let down.” But had she been? Was the neglect of Corisande’s bedroom part of a lazy and cynical reaction to a new and inexperienced employer—as Daisy supposed was now her role since she was being held responsible for the wages—or had Nelly, the housemaid with the untreated adenoids, assumed that without instructions no action was expected?
Corisande’s desk was closed and locked. As were the drawers beneath. For a moment Daisy was unsure what to do. She had been brought up in a family where it would be unthinkable that any member would invade the privacy of another. The locked desk made her feel both guilty and insulted; nevertheless there seemed no choice but to persevere. Looking now for both the key and the ration books—not necessarily behind the locked lid of the desk—Daisy sat down at Corisande’s dressing table and opened the drawer. The drawer smelled of Corisande; face powder mingled with scent that had leaked or been spilled from a small, pretty, now empty bottle; there was an open mascara box, worn down in the middle, the brush caked with dried mascara and spittle; a broken eyebrow pencil; the stub of a lipstick in Corisande’s everyday color; all of which se
emed, like the wood of the drawer itself, to have absorbed, and contributed to, the essential smell of Corisande herself.
At first Daisy did not see the key, then she found it concealed by a bottle of solidified nail polish and a crumpled lace handkerchief; she picked it up and closed the drawer, a little uneasy at this unnerving glimpse of her sister-in-law’s toilette.
The inside of the desk was, in contrast, neat and orderly. On one side of a leather-bound blotter with a pristine sheet of blotting paper stood a large box of chocolates, on the other, a framed photograph of Ambrose. No sign of the ration books. Daisy opened the shiny, black chocolate box with the red tassel. Four cups of crenulated dark brown paper in the center of the box were empty. On the inside of the top of the box was an illustrated chart of the contents; Corisande had eaten the ones that contained nuts. Daisy smiled and carefully lifted one edge of the paper separating the layers. Two chocolates were missing from the center of the second layer. After a moment’s hesitation, she took a chocolate filled with marzipan. She picked up Ambrose’s photograph; in it he was wearing a tweed jacket and knickerbockers, one foot on a stile, a game bag over his shoulder and a double-barreled shotgun broken open over his arm. A dog stood beside him, looking up expectantly. Ambrose, a few pounds lighter than he now was, smiled at the photographer.
Thoughtfully, Daisy put the photograph down and opened a drawer. Inside were three packets of nylon stockings. In the second drawer two pairs of unworn gloves, made in soft thin leather. Opening the third—Daisy was beginning to feel like the heroine in a fairy tale—she found the ration books. They were held together with a thick red rubber band. Replacing Corisande’s book in the drawer, Daisy wondered whether Corisande had forgotten that she would need hers or if she had been unable to ask for it since that would entail allowing someone to go through her desk. Daisy had so far uncovered evidence of selfishness, an attachment to a man other than her fiancé, some miscellaneous black market goods; who knew what else might lie in the other drawers?
Daisy helped herself to another chocolate, closed and locked the desk, and returned the key to its place in the dressing-table drawer. As she did so, she heard the pony and trap arriving at the front door and crossed to the window. On the other side of the landing from her own, Corisande’s room looked out not only over the field in front of the house, but a little way down the avenue. Mickey was making his way past the overgrown laurels and rhododendrons to an area where the shrubs were lower and seemed to have been clipped. Leaning her face against the window, Daisy could just see the edge of a small grass clearing. A moment later, Mickey had passed out of her vision.
THAT AFTERNOON WAS the first time Daisy had driven the pony and trap by herself, although she had occasionally taken the reins in Wales when she and Rosemary were going to church or when they, on a warm summer evening, took Sarah for a drive and a dolls’ picnic. The pony, Prudence, simulated terror at the sight of a couple of sheep looking bleakly through a gap in the hedge, but Daisy was in no mood for that kind of carry on. She had done some simple arithmetic with a pencil and paper before she left the house and she was running through the figures again with some alarm. Two pounds for the cook, thirty shillings for the parlormaid, twenty-five shillings for the housemaid, twenty-five shillings for Philomena. Six pounds. Twelve pounds if she were to pay them this week’s wages also. Daisy had fifty pounds—the income for a year and one quarter from her small trust—in the bank at Cappoquin; there seemed something shocking about withdrawing almost a quarter of it to pay two weeks’ wages. She felt worried and resentful. This was a problem that should not have been landed on her. She was uncomfortable about the prospect of telling whoever it was that she was owed twelve pounds and requesting that some more efficient method of weekly wage paying be put into practice. It was only since her father had sent her the trust fund check that she had had a bank account and a checkbook. What would have happened if she had not had her grandmother’s money to borrow for the wages? She wasn’t even quite sure how to find out who was responsible for household finances. It certainly wasn’t Mickey, and she didn’t look forward to extracting the necessary information from him. She supposed, hoped, that vague as he was, he would at least know who was in charge. And if he didn’t, she asked herself, panic rising and then receding as common sense reasserted itself—and if he didn’t, then she would telephone Corisande and have the necessary, if embarrassing, conversation.
Daisy tied the pony’s reins to a telegraph pole; it didn’t seem quite satisfactory but it was what other people were doing, and she could see no alternative. Corisande and Rosemary appeared to have the ability to summon up a small boy who, in return for sixpence, would hold the pony’s bridle until they returned. The men in their families always seemed to have a groom or stable lad close at hand. Just at that moment, Daisy was far from sure she wanted to part with a sixpenny bit and the idea of adding another person, however temporarily, to the Dunmaine payroll made her shudder. She patted Prudence firmly and, she hoped, reassuringly, and went into the grocer’s.
The shop was one of the most cheerful places Daisy had been in since she had come to Ireland. Two large windows onto the main street of Cappoquin let in daylight and the shop was better lit than most houses Daisy had visited. The floorboards were bare, unpolished and uneven; the softer parts of the wood had worn down in the areas most often trodden. A counter ran the length of the shop, on it a cash register and an accumulation of brown paper packages and bags belonging to the other customer, a woman in a brown coat with permed hair. Daisy did not recognize her but thought she might be a schoolmistress or housekeeper for the local parish priest. Mr. Fleming, the grocer, Daisy knew; she had seen him in church. Mr. Fleming took around the plate on Sundays; he had a strong baritone voice and often kept the trickier hymns and duller psalms on track.
“Mr. Fleming, I’m Daisy Nugent, from Dunmaine. My sister-in-law—” Daisy could tell, from Mr. Fleming’s expression of respectful interest, there was little she could tell him about Corisande’s affairs he didn’t already know; all she could add to his complete familiarity with the progress of Corisande’s life and courtship was the party line taken by those of the Nugent family remaining at Dunmaine.
“I’ll be ordering the groceries now that Miss Nugent is getting ready for her wedding.”
Mr. Fleming took the order book and glanced at it.
“I’ll have it ready for you in about fifteen minutes.” He set the book on the counter, pressed it down to encourage it to stay open at the right page, glanced at it again, and started moving up and down behind the counter, taking packages from the shelves and setting them down beside the order book.
At the bank Daisy withdrew twelve pounds in pound notes, ten-shilling notes, and half-crowns. It was more money than she had ever had in cash before.
The grocer was slicing rashers of bacon when she returned. The machine hummed and whooshed back and forth, each return dropping a fatty rasher onto a sheet of thin, white greaseproof paper. When Mr. Fleming had finished, he ripped a sheet of brown paper from a roll beneath the counter and neatly wrapped the bacon in a small flat package.
“That’s it,” he said. “We’ll carry it out for you.”
He picked up the order book from the counter but hesitated a moment before he returned it to her.
“Mrs. Nugent,” he said, and Daisy’s heart sank. Something—the directness of his look, the lack of embarrassment, the respectful tone but concealed irritation in his voice—made it clear this was going to be a demand for overdue payment of an account.
“Yes, Mr. Fleming,” Daisy said brightly, appalled to find herself playing for time, simulating an innocence that had, just a moment before, been genuine. It crossed her mind that she had taken another step toward becoming a member of the Anglo-Irish. In the next two minutes she took two further steps: she made a six-pound payment on a thirty-pound overdue account and, robbing Peter to pay Paul, she did not write a check but took the money from the wages envelope in her handbag.
Minutes later, the boy from Fleming’s loaded the groceries into the trap, and Daisy untied Prudence and set off for home. She had intended to stop at the ironmonger’s—lightbulbs for the chandelier—but thought better of it, fearing a similar confrontation.
AS TIME PASSED Maud experienced less and less difference between being asleep and awake. Between day and night. One hour led to another and light and darkness seemed to alternate more quickly than they used to. Most of her dreams were pleasant and she had, during the past two years, learned to exert a degree of control over them. Tonight she was reliving a summer afternoon in 1890, a hot day during her first pregnancy, and a picnic on the strand at Woodstown. The pony, head down and drowsy under a tree, sandwiches and smoky tea on the plaid rug, the flattened beach grass underneath making small bumps, the perfection of the moment tinged with the beginning of a backache. Charles—long since dead—insisting she should take off enough of her clothing to accompany him into the sea. The ridged sand under her feet, the shallow water warm from a tide that had, as they watched, crept in over a mile of sun-warmed sand. And Maud, her young husband’s hands supporting her, had floated, at first a little embarrassed by her protruding belly, then, with pleasure and relief, feeling weightless and relaxed, happily aware that her hair was wet and the sun and salt water were soaking into her body, refreshing her and, it felt to her, nourishing her child.
The dream started to slip away and memories of uniforms, letters from the front, and—Maud steered her dream, her thoughts to safer and happier memories and they floated, the past and present not being clearly delineated, to that afternoon when a young woman with a pleasant voice had arrived in her room, greeted her warmly in a not overfamiliar manner, and had sat beside the fire and read to her. Evelina—the first chapter. When she had finished, the girl—Maud did not know her name but felt that she lived in the house and seemed to be in some way attached to the family—had sat quietly in the shabby armchair, looking into the glowing, slowly burning turf for a few minutes. Then she had left, announcing she would return the following afternoon. Maud remembered it, without curiosity, as being strange; the present generation was not of much interest to her.
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