“Hiya, Sheila,” one of the men said offhandedly. He was leading a gleaming chestnut horse over to us. The animal’s shoulder was as tall as my face, and its muscles flicked and rippled under its skin. Its hooves thudded heavily on the well-packed dirt, belying the fact that it weighed a ton and could easily crush me.
Don’t ever get behind a horse, a voice echoed in my head. I had no memory of where I’d heard that, but I vaguely recalled a tale of someone doing just that and having his skull kicked at the soft part of his temple. Maybe.
Behind me, the thundering of hooves closed in. I whipped around in terror to see a black horse with flaring nostrils bearing down on us. I squealed. Realizing I’d turned my back on the first horse I jumped back and forth, trying to position myself away from any beast’s hind legs. The black horse slowed to a stop about a foot from my face. It whinnied and blew a hot blast of air from between its lips, spraying me. I squealed again.
“Keep your voice down,” the man on the ground chided me. “You’ll spook ‘em.” I clamped my mouth shut. The rider dismounted and held the reins out for me to take. “Go grab a sweat scraper and a rubber curry and take care of Demon, here.” Sweat scraper? Rubber what?
“On second thought, we’ll save the stables for another day. Sorry lads. We’ll leave you to it.”
Without a word, I followed Mrs. O’Grady. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Was she going to march me to Mary and tell her to have security escort me off the estate? As we passed one of the central fountains, Danny the gardener popped out from behind a bush, holding a giant pair of hedge trimmers.
“Mornin’ Danny,” Mrs. O’Grady said. “Those box woods are looking fine. I love the smell of ‘em.” She looked at Danny, then looked at me. “I don’t suppose…”
I shook my head, then hung it in shame. What was the point in pretending I could garden? They’d probably sit me up on a backhoe and tell me to devise an irrigation system. “You wouldn’t be headed to the church, would you?” Danny asked.
A light bulb went off for Mrs. O’Grady. “That’s a grand idea!”
“Could I trouble you to take over a few armfuls of flowers? One of the boys set some aside for the grottoes and altar decorations. They’re just here in the glasshouse…”
After a long, silent walk, Mrs. O’Grady and I ducked out of the sunlight and into the dark, cool stone church, arms laden with giant bouquets of cut stems. I wondered what she had in mind for me. She laid her blooms on a long, wide wooden table at the back and I followed suit. She dipped her fingertips in a marble font of water and deftly dipped to the floor on one knee, crossing herself. She moved to a kneeling bench and bowed her head in prayer. I felt awkward. I didn’t want to do anything disrespectful. The little Dutch Reformed church to which my grandparents belonged was a simple wooden affair. This felt more like a museum to me.
At the front of the church was a carved, wooden life-sized crucifix. The altar, set up three stone steps from the floor, was covered in a white silk cloth, embroidered with green and gold thread. Everywhere I looked, there were friezes and Celtic crosses and statues of every type of wood and stone you could imagine. The simplicity of the exterior of the stone building didn’t begin to hint at the splendor within its walls. The pews looked to be carved from cherry, and though the floor in the entrance and back of the church were slate and stone, the areas under the pews and toward the front were gleaming oak.
A priest came out of one of the several doors along the back side, near a glimmering bank of votive candles. He nodded to me solemnly and headed in my direction.
“Would you like to make confession?” He wrung his hands as he stood there.
My mind raced. If they knew, they knew. Mentally I calculated whether I had enough material to finish the book. For a second I wondered about priest-client confidentiality. If I told him I wasn’t Sheila Doyle, did he have to keep it to himself?
“My child?” he probed. “Ah, Maeve,” he said, looking over my shoulder. I exhaled in relief. “Are you here to make confession?”
“I’ll do that on Saturday, before Mass,” she said. “We’re here to clean. Father, I’d like you to know Sheila Doyle. Sheila, Father Walsh.”
“Hello Sheila. Are you a Catholic?”
“No,” I admitted. I hated to be a disappointment.
“No worries. All are welcome, any time. Ladies,” he said nodding and hurrying to the back, and out one of the many doors there.
“I’ll just get you set up. Broom closet’s that way. There’s a mop and floor wax. After the floor, you can polish the brass and clean the pews with oil soap. You’ll find a chamois on the shelf.”
Oh man.
Mrs. O’Grady busied herself with unwrapping flowers from the brown paper they were bound in. Nervous, I went to the supply closet and looked at the bottle and cans of cleaning agents. How was I supposed to say I’d never even held a string mop in my hands? We only ever used a Swiffer. I chose a roll of paper towels and a bottle of electric-blue spray cleaner. Exuding confidence, I sprayed a bit on the very back pew and swiped a paper towel back and forth.
“Sheila! No.” Mrs. O’Grady shouted.
I froze. As she marched toward me, I took her in. The solid Irish woman in her sensible wool cardigan and work boots would scorn me if I told her I didn’t know how to do housework; that two able-bodied young women like Maggie and I availed ourselves of a cleaner every two weeks. She must think I’m useless. The lower part of my gut felt hollow. There was nothing to anchor my breath. She’s right to think that. The closer the capable woman got, the more numb my fingertips felt. I was useless at my job. Again. Matty proved that to Lizbeth in short order. Brenda had no use for me as a writer. She only threw me a bone to get in Hank’s good graces. And Hank, what Hank really wanted was a son who’d drink scotch with him, and chase women, and write about it, Hemingway-style for manly publications. And as a friend, I was utterly and completely useless. I made a mental note to tell Maggie to pick someone else as maid of honor. She deserved someone who knew how to do things, practical things.
Mrs. O’Grady closed in on me. I turned my back on her, and sprayed polish on the back of the pew until it pooled and trickled down onto the seat.
“Stop. You’ll ruin the wood! Honestly girl, did your mother teach you nothing?”
“Obviously not!” I answered, exasperated. “There wasn’t enough time.”
That did it. I started crying full tilt, with no warm-up or warning. It made me feel even worse about myself. Women like Mrs. O’Grady had faced centuries of wars, famines, and other hardship. You didn’t see Irish women collapsing into heaps and weeping. They faced their troubles and got on with it.
I was surprised when she folded me into her arms and pulled my head onto her strong shoulder. “Oh, my darling girl,” she said, swaying slowly back and forth. “I didn’t know. Ah, bless.” She held me even when I tried to pull away, cooing vowels into my ear and murmuring “shh.”
I cried because I missed my mother. I cried because I had no relationship with my father. I cried because Brenda didn’t value me or my writing. I cried because Maggie got a book deal and I didn’t. I cried because I didn’t know how to wax a floor. I cried because Tom O’Grady didn’t know who the real me was.
Mrs. O’Grady eased me onto the bench of a pew and sat with her arm around my shoulders as my sobbing faded to hiccups, and my hiccups faded to heavy breathing. Eventually, I was cleansed. No more tears came. We sat together in silence, with me gathered in to her breast, enveloped in the stillness and beauty of the church.
Finally, she spoke. “I think we’ve done enough work for one day. Let’s skive off to mine and have a pot of tea.”
Dear Maggie,
I know I could be writing this to you via email so that you’d actually get to read it this century, but I can’t bring myself to type. The sound of the clacking keys reminds me of HPC, and of Brenda. Everything I do here is done at half-speed, and that seems to be working for me. My thoughts can’t keep up
with my fingers when I type these days. It feels more right to pull a pen across sheets of paper. I’m relaxing in Mrs. O’Grady’s backyard, letting the sun warm my bones. That’s right, I said relaxing. You’d hardly recognize me. To be fair, I am writing in my journal but that’s pleasure, not business. The pleasure is bittersweet as I’m thinking about my mother today. I never said this before, but she would have loved you, Mags. She’d have picked us up on 43rd Street in her Volvo wagon, driven us up to Rhinebeck and listened to your spunky stories the whole weekend through. She’d have sat you on the comfy sofa, poured you a glass of the burgundy she loved, and just listened. My mom knew how to relax, and she knew how to listen. She loved my stories, Maggie. Maybe that’s why I became a writer.
I spent the morning telling Mrs. O’Grady all about my mom. Talking about her hurt a little, I won’t lie. This time, though, I saw the possibility of joy replacing the former darkness that threatened to diminish me. The grief used to make me small. Today, there was an unclenching inside me. Now I can have my mother here with me without…without what? Without fear, maybe. Mrs. O’Grady says my mother was always here, watching over me. I don’t quite believe it the way she does. I can’t picture guardian angels. But maybe in some way my mom is just beside me. Before, thinking about her pulled me into the past or the future; I was untethered to the earth. Today, I feel like a grown woman. Maybe Brenda was right not to consider my book. Maybe it wasn’t finished because I wasn’t an adult yet.
It’s weird to say this Mags, but I don’t really care about that book anymore.
More later… Love Shay xx
Fragrant steam bathed my face as I stood at Mrs. O’Grady’s funny little stove stirring the pot of soup I’d spent the afternoon making. The morning had been whiled away in conversation over her tidy little kitchen table. She’d coaxed the story of my mother’s diagnosis, illness, and death out of me using a combination of sensitivity and matter-of-factness born refined by her own suffering. After all the years of skirting the issue so as not to upset Hank, or the aunts who advised him about my upbringing, the lock on my heart had been picked. It was like taking off a corset, and putting on a flowing silk nightgown. I was floating.
Mrs. O’Grady, with her typical dry Irish humor, had asked me at one point, “If you can’t milk cows, tend hens, groom horses, or clean a house, what can you do?” and we’d laughed until a different kind of tears streamed down my cheeks. I told her I could write, and that I was very, very good at it. And I told her I could make chicken soup.
“That’s one thing my mother taught me to do,” I said fondly.
“Then make me a pot of soup, why don’t you? I’ve nothing for my tea this evening, so.” She ducked up to the castle at the kitchen to fetch parsley, carrots, dill, and the rest of the ingredients, and left me drinking tea in her sunny garden, scratching Nap the collie behind the ears and throwing him the odd stick or two to fetch.
“Oh, look, Mrs. O’Grady,” I called up the stairs. I gave the soup a final stir and put the lid on the pot. “Here comes His Lordship!” This was perfect. He’d been so kind at tea, sharing about his wife, listening about my mother. I longed to be surrounded by people around whom I could be myself.
I could see him out the kitchen window, walking the side path that led to the O’Grady cottage. The waning sun was behind him. He was dressed in riding clothes and walked with a thick walking stick.
“Mrs. O’Grady?” I called up again. She didn’t answer.
I walked out the front door. Nap was standing on the table under the window, dancing and whining. I shared Nap’s enthusiasm. When I opened the gate, he jumped down and shot out toward the Earl. He leaped up and banked his front paws off the old man’s chest, doing a backflip.
“Nap!” I hollered. “Be careful!”
“Not to worry,” he said, “It’s a trick we perfected when he was a pup. We’ll join the circus yet, won’t we laddie?” He bent down and gave the dog a scratch. “You’re looking well, Sheila. I didn’t expect you here.”
“Mrs. O’Grady should be down in just a second. Why don’t you come in and wait? I could make tea.” It wasn’t my place to host, but I didn’t think Mrs. O’Grady would mind. I didn’t want to go back to my cell; I needed connection.
“I’ve just come to say hello to Nap, here. He hasn’t been to see me in a few days. I wanted to make sure he was staying out of trouble.”
“You’ve walked all this way, don’t you want to rest for a few minutes before you head back?” I urged. He didn’t answer, focusing on patting Nap instead. I’d never seen him look uncomfortable before but I could tell he was at a loss for words. Mrs. O’Grady came to the front door.
“Hello, Your Lordship,” she called. Lordship? That’s weird, when I call him Tony.
“Maeve,” he said, seeming to savor the sound of the word. “Lovely to see you.” Nap ran in circles around the man. We all stood there for a while, saying nothing, until I remembered I had soup on the stove.
“I was just telling Tony he should come in and sit down for a minute before he heads back.” I really wanted company. The thought of going to the worker’s pub didn’t appeal. I was too raw for all the flirting and banter.
“I made soup, Tony. It would be rude to refuse a bowl, wouldn’t it?” I urged.
Mrs. O’Grady’s face drained of its color.
“Yes, soup,” she said. “Won’t you come through?”
“I, well, should probably be getting back to the…thingy.”
“Please?”
“If you insist,” he said. We all went in and I took Tony’s walking stick, which I noticed was an elaborately carved trio of snakes topped off with a crown, and got him settled at the table. Nap was standing on the table outside the window, nose pressed to the glass.
“Your Lordship, would you care for a brandy?” Mrs. O’Grady asked.
“That would go down a treat,” he replied, sitting tall in his chair.
In the kitchen, Mrs. O’Grady carefully placed three crystal glasses on a tray. “Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph,” she said. “Company in the lounge, and me in an old housedress.” She poured, emptying a bottle.
“It’s just Tony.” I washed my hands with the chunky bar of sage soap in the wooden dish at the sink. “Do you usually get dressed up when he comes over?”
“He’s never been here.”
“You have got to be kidding,” I said, drying my hands on the dishtowel. How long had she lived here? Forty years? More? “Not even when his wife was alive?”
“Lady Helen was brought up to stand on manners and tradition. It goes without saying she was highborn. It just wasn’t done.”
“Because of her title?”
“Yes, that and more. If you haven’t lived it, you might not understand. And it was a different time. There was no internet. People didn’t have telly. Things were done a certain way, and that’s that.”
“But after she died?”
A flush ran up from the neckline of her cotton dress and landed in her cheeks. “An unmarried man and a widow having tea. This isn’t America, you know.”
She liked him. Liked him liked him. I was ashamed that I didn’t think of it before. Just because she had gray in her hair didn’t mean she was dead inside.
“Right, now that you’ve explained it, I see,” I said. “But I’m here, right? So even Father Walsh couldn’t complain. Go in, sit. Keep him company. I’ll bring this.”
On the way out, she glanced at herself in a mirror whose glass was nearly obscured by all the prayer cards tucked under the wood, and cleared her throat.
“Sheila’s bringing the drinks,” I heard her say in a voice two octaves above her own. “Won’t be a moment.”
I opened the liquor cabinet from which she’d gotten the brandy and checked inside. I wished Hank could have found someone like Maeve O’Grady. I suppose he could have, but he’d chosen a series of gold diggers, dimwits, star fuckers, and floozies instead. Around my thirteenth birthday, I asked if he th
ought about remarrying. “Your mother was the only one,” was his answer and we never discussed it again.
I heard laughter coming from the other room and Mrs. O’Grady’s voice returned to the lilting alto that had soothed me in the church. The soup could wait until dinnertime.
There was another half bottle of brandy in the cabinet, plus some whiskey and a full bottle of claret. I put it all on the tray and carried it through.
Chapter Fifteen
“Morning, ladies!”
A little shiver ran through me as I crossed the threshold of the hen house. The May sun was so warm, I’d shed my field jacket almost as soon as I’d put it on. Now in the cool dampness, I could use the long sleeves.
I grabbed a wire basket and began filling it with eggs. After many run-throughs with Mrs. O’Grady, I was finally capable of a firm hand with the birds. A leaf-green inchworm was making its way across the chore sheet. I paused my work for a few minutes to watch it make its way across the wide expanse of the page, measure by measure. A cool breeze blew through the shed. My arms erupted in goose bumps and my nipples stiffened.
“Hello there,” Tom said, ducking through the doorway, taking care not to hit his head. The low, chocolate timbre of his voice resonated in my chest, sending a signal to my brain to make my nipples even more taut. I noticed him looking. He flicked his eyes upward to my face. “I was after my mam.”
“I’m on my own today,” I said, picking up the basket of eggs to show off my accomplishments.
“Been awhile since I’ve seen you. How’re you keeping?”
“I’m getting strong, that’s for sure.” I made a muscle with my bicep. My arm shot down immediately, once I realized I was showcasing my chest. “I just meant that working the rotation has been really physical. I like it, especially the horses. Other than Demon, obviously. Your mom’s been really kind to me.”
“She said you’ve been at hers quite a bit.” He read the chores list. It was the same one that had been hanging there since I came.
Summer at Castle Stone Page 19