by Ian McDonald
This morning I did not want to see them. Whatever apology they offered, whatever apology they demanded, they would only have made me angry again. On the excuse of morning sickness, I rang for Mrs. O’Carolan to bring me breakfast in my room, which she did. At least I have one friend in Craigdarragh.
I went to the bathroom to wash, and as I did, I saw a thing contemptible in its familiarity in the light of a totally new revelation. At the end of the landing by the linen press was the small door that led to the old servants’ staircase and their quarters in the attics. In all my living memory it has been locked shut; Mummy says that the floorboards are not safe. Mrs. O’Carolan keeps a small bed-parlour beside the potato store—the heat from the range is good for her rheumatism, she insists. The rooms under the eaves have not been used since before I was born. This morning, the door stood the tiniest, the very least crack ajar. How could I not explore?
Such treasure that had been buried in those servants’ rooms and forgotten! The first room was filled with old cracked albums and crumbling boxes of photographs: soft, blurry daguerreotypes of upright moustached gentlemen in caps and bloomers proud beside their new bicycles; ladies who somehow looked cool and elegant in ruffled silks and taffeta on what must have been a stifling summer day; sportsmen in tweed jackets and knee boots leaning on staves; fox hounds too quick for the lens a blur about their feet; little boys in sailor suits, about to burst into tears; gents with hands thrust nonchalantly into pockets, lolling about the enclosure at the Sligo Races; tinker families posed self-consciously in their doorways, surly and unwashed looking; girls in first communion dresses standing shyly in front of Drumcliffe High Cross. Boating excursions, tennis parties, expeditions by jaunting car to local beauty spots, windswept family picnics in the dunes at Strandhill, weddings, baptisms, Easters, Christmases: all those times, all those moments, captured and frozen. I flicked through box after box of dusty, sepia-toned memories pressed like flowers in a Bible … and I stopped. The photograph was of a girl of about thirteen, standing by the sundial in the sunken garden. On the face of the sundial was something I could not quite distinguish; it had moved just as the photograph had been taken and the plate was blurred, but it looked like a tiny person, no more than a foot high. The caption read: Caroly: Wood nymph: The Time Garden, August 1881.
In the next room watery light through the streaming skylight cast strange, rippling shadows over the bare floorboards. Everywhere were piled trunks, up to the ceiling in some places. When I opened them they turned out to be filled with old clothes.
But what clothes! In the first I opened were pure silk hunting stocks; white kid gloves still folded in their tissue wrappings; voluminous skirts split for sidesaddle riding; whips, crops, sticks, and over-the-knee hacking boots; hunting pinks and dubbined britches stiff with French chalk. One trunk held nothing but hats for every conceivable occasion from the most sober to the most preposterous: black Brussels lace funeral veils; bird of paradise concoctions bursting with fruit and feathers for the Fairy house Races; smart straw boaters, ribbons still crisp and clean. In another I found fringed parasols, painted Chinese fans, and mismatched pairs of pearl-studded opera gloves; in a third, party dresses and ball gowns, all as fresh and clean as if they had only last night been discarded after the Dublin season and laid in their trunks by Mrs. O’Carolan. But best of all, most beautiful of all, was what lay within the trunk directly beneath the skylight: a Chantilly silk wedding dress. I have never seen a dress so beautiful before, and I never shall again. When I am to be a bride, I shall be wed in such a dress of Chantilly taffeta and creme organdy. I lifted it out of its folds and held it against me; there was no mirror in the trunk room so I could only imagine how I looked. It felt made for me, hidden away in that trunk in the old servants’ rooms all these years, waiting for my discovery. But I did not try it on. Somehow, the idea of it actually touching my flesh disturbed me.
It was the third room that I adored most of all. Pushing open the door, I saw a figure in the middle of the bare floor. It gave me quite a start before I realised it was only the reflection of my silly self in a full-length mirror. Even now, as I try to write down my impressions on entering it, I find that the only way to do justice to how the room revealed itself to me is to recall it as a series of photographs. Sepia: that was the first and overriding impression—of a creamy brown light that seemed to be made up of memories of things past. Stillness: motes of dust hung suspended in the rays of chestnut light; the rafters were festooned with bunches of flowers, set there to dry and desiccate in the still air, long forgotten. A strange perfume haunted the room, ubiquitous, unidentifiable, like the ashes of roses. The ochre light was broken into planes and shafts by the rafters and hanging posies of flowers. In one corner was a beekeeper’s hat, veil, and smoke can. In the shadows where the sepia light did not reach, indistinct stepped pyramids were revealed by my inspection to be rolls of piled wallpaper. There in the shadows, the scent of sun-dried paper, soft and yellow and musty, was magical.
I do not recall how long I stood there as the room revealed itself to me; I was, for the most part, simply overwhelmed. That in the fifteen years I have spent exploring every nook and cranny of this house and grounds I should never have known of these hidden rooms before amazes me now, but then, I stood spellbound, setting the bunches of drying flowers swaying with a touch, tracing the patterns of the old wallpapers and friezes.
I would have stayed longer, but in the distance I could hear Mrs. O’C calling me to lunch. That time already! With reluctance I closed the door and took one last look back into the room of dried flowers. I saw something. I am certain I saw something. No trick of the light, I saw reflected in the mirror the Chantilly lace wedding dress, standing, as if before an altar, and where the body should have been, was sheaf upon sheaf of dried flowers.
October 26, 1913
Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
County Sligo
My Dear Dr. Chambers,
I trust that this letter, coming as it does after so long a period since our paths last crossed, will not prove too great a surprise; I sincerely hope that it finds you in the best of health and fortune. Perhaps you recall the occasion of our last meeting—five years ago, at the testimonial dinner in the Glendalough House Hotel for our old beloved Headmaster, Dr. Ames. Certainly, the evening is still vivid in my memory. We were seated opposite each other and I recall enjoying a most stimulating conversation on the Home Rule question and the problem of Ulster, those most perennial of chestnuts which have, once again, reared their shaggy heads. I had meant, many times, to congratulate you on your appointment as successor to the post as Headmaster of Balrothery Endowed School. The oversight was most remiss of me; permit me to extend my sincerest best wishes for your past, and undoubted future, successes.
It is in your official capacity as Headmaster that, truth be told, I am writing to you. Please excuse my forwardness in so doing. Only the most extreme of circumstances, you must understand, would force me to such a pass. Alas, you cannot but be aware of the unfortunate lot that has befallen the Desmond household these past few months. The popular press doubtless penetrates even as shady a cloister as Balrothery Endowed, and, as a consequence, I am forced to put Craigdarragh and its lands onto the open market and content myself with a humbler estate in life. To this end, I am inquiring concerning the possibility of a teaching position at the school. I understand that you have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff of a suitable calibre in the disciplines of the sciences and mathematics—disciplines with which I am most intimately acquainted by dint of my former profession. I would consider it the greatest personal favour if you were to hold me in consideration should such a vacancy occur in the near future. You will need no assuring over my academic credentials, which are impeccable, and I know I can trust you to treat any slur the public domain may have cast upon my character with the contempt and disregard it so properly merits. I am sure that you will need no convincing that my services can be of eno
rmous benefit to your establishment and, in concluding, may I express the fervent hope that you will look favourably upon my petition, and wish you the best of health, wealth, and happiness.
Yours Sincerely,
Edward Garret Desmond, Ph.D.
Emily’s Diary: November 5, 1913
I AM GETTING LAZY and lackadaisical. I have not been keeping you up-to-date, dear diary. It has been almost ten days since I last made an entry in your pages. I can make all manner of excuses—my moods, my feelings, this general lethargy which seems to have filled my bones with lead; this thing in my belly. Sometimes I feel I am nothing more than an elaborate fold of flesh wrapped protectingly around this tiny, inhuman thing. Sometimes I feel I am a great fat lazy bubble of warm oil, tautly stretched, ready to burst at the slightest tap. But the truth is that the honesty of your pages, the openness of your secret heart, frightens me. You reproach me; you demand that I confess.
So, if I must confess, I will confess. And what sin shall Emily confess this day? Sloth? Already confessed, set down in blue ink, and absolved into the receiving paper. Anger, perhaps? Yes, anger, diary.
They were so apologetic, so careful and chary lest the least little word would cause me to once again tip over the breakfast table and storm off to my room. Everything was explained to me in very slow, very deliberate, very simple words, as if I were a foreigner, or an idiot.
I can still see the smile on Mummy’s full, moist lips; still hear the smug politeness in her voice as she said, “Emily, we are going to have to move from Craigdarragh. I know it won’t be easy for any of us—we all love this house dearly—but with the money your father will receive from the sale of the lands, we’ll be able to find a nice little place somewhere close to Dublin where we can all try to be a family once again, with the governess I promised for you so you can continue your education, and maybe even a nurse for the baby.”
I imagined this nice little place, some desirable gentleman’s town residence in Ballsbridge or Palmerstown—a red brick terrace with steps to the front door and servants in the basement and smoke pouring out of the chimneys with nothing to see from the window but other chimneys pouring out smoke, and rooftops, and telephone wires. A place where the wild spirit of the land has been chained up and tamed and smothered under respectability and properness and progress so long it has died and rotted without anyone ever noticing. Horrible! Horrible! I jumped up and knocked over my chair, screaming, “No! No! No! No! You can’t sell Craigdarragh. You can’t sell my home. You can’t, You can’t make me go to Dublin. I’ll run away, just you see…” and I was halfway out of the room before the simultaneous replies came: “The notices have already been posted in the newspapers,” and “Where do you think you could go in your condition, girl?”
Anger, diary, anger, and a growing, crushing grey cloud of misery. I suppose I had always considered it somewhere in my heart to be an inevitability that Craigdarragh would have to be sold. But being an inevitability does not make it a joy. Dying is the inevitable of inevitables, but that does not make it into a thing to be looked forward to. My only respite from the anger and the sense of despair growing day by day, hour by hour, was in the attic rooms—particularly that room I have named the Room of the Floating Rowers. There especially is a spirit of serenity and tranquility, a sense of beauty and wonder waiting to be discovered. I find myself drawn to that spirit, but also I fear it, for it is the spirit of the old magic, the magic of stone and sky and sea. Strange—that which repels me is also that which attracts me, perverse creature that I am.
I have discovered a splendid and totally idle amusement: with a pair of Mrs. O’Carolan’s sewing scissors, I snip out the beautiful and complicated floral patterns on the rolls of old wallpaper and borders. Having cut out the twining vines and stems and climbing roses and ornate foliage and fantastical birds half living, half flame, I then move the shapes around on the floor, arranging and rearranging and mixing and mingling and combining them into funny little hybrid creatures: flowery chimeras; cloudy dragons; ugly, funny little basilisks made from tangled foliage; goblins and sprites woven from flourishes and curvets. It was the patterns themselves that suggested the pastime to me; they seemed to me somehow incomplete in themselves—parts of a greater pattern that had been separated and trapped, immobile, powerless, on the printed paper. All I provide is the connection between long-sundered parts.
Remarkable—when I am sitting on a cushion on the floor, busy with scissors and glue pot, the time just vanishes. Before I know it the latticed rectangle of pale autumn sunlight has moved from the left wall across the floor to the other wall and Mrs. O’Carolan is calling me for supper. Perhaps time is flowing faster up there in the attic. Perhaps the accumulated mass of the past gathered there is pulling time out of the future faster, like a weight on a line. Or perhaps, more mundanely, it is only that I am getting older every year and that it is the accumulated weight of time behind me that is unreeling the years with ever-increasing speed. What a horrible thing it must be to grow older and find that ever-decreasing number of years hurrying you faster, faster toward your grave, as if time were impatient to be rid of you.
I have deliberately hesitated in writing down the events of the Harvest Mass, not because it is the pinnacle (or should I say, rather, pit?) of this confession, but because what I saw there disturbed me so—disturbs me still.
I have always loved the great festivals of the Church. At those times, on those days, I feel the Church succeeds in bringing the spiritual realm and the worldly together. The flickering light of the Advent candles; the patient tolling of the iron bell, out across the winter fields, calling all the people to celebrate the death of the year and the birth of the Redeemer, the sombre pallid sorrow of the Paschal drama, pure, stripped of all colour and decoration, contrasted so wonderfully with the joyful celebration of resurrection and rebirth on Easter Day. When the Church reaches back to its ancient, elemental roots, heaven and earth seem closest. Most especially at the Harvest Mass, with the stacked sheathes of barley, the careful piles of apples and pears, the baskets of gooseberries and blackberries, the hampers laden with scrubbed carrots and parsnips, leeks the size of your arm, golden heads of onion and cauliflower, bushels of oats and rye; sacks and mounds of potatoes. Mountains of the noble potato are watched over by corn dollies and woven straw St. Brigid’s Crosses. All celebrate the goodness, the holiness, of the earth we walk upon. For me it has always been the highlight of the Church Year. This year, as on every other Harvest morning, I was up with the lark getting myself ready. I dressed in my very finest, all earth colours, choosing russets and browns, tans and mustards and fir greens from my wardrobe. There wasn’t much that would fit around my bump, but nevertheless, by ten thirty I was downstairs in the hall waiting for Daddy. When he came out of the drawing room, pulling on a pair of driving gauntlets, he was most surprised to see me.
“Emily,” he said, “what are you doing?”
“I’m going with you to the Harvest Mass,” I replied.
“My dear,” he said, and from the words my dear, I knew nothing good was going to follow. “My dear, you can’t come this year. I’m sorry, you’ll have to stay behind.”
I bit back the fury.
“Why can I not come?” I asked. Then out of the drawing room came Mummy, tying the ribbon on her Sunday hat in a bow beneath her chin, and the fury almost overwhelmed me, because Mummy never, never, goes to chapel. The one small battle she won over the Pope was that I would only go to Mass when and if I wanted to; she herself remained resolutely Protestant.
“Emily, darling,” she said, “you’re looking very prim this morning.”
“She wants to go to the Harvest Mass,” Daddy said, and Mummy looked at me as if I were a sick lamb or a lap dog and said, “But darling, dearest, you can’t possibly go in your condition. Emily, darling, you don’t know what you might catch, and, well, you wouldn’t want to do anything that might hurt baby, would you? Just give it a miss this year, darling, all right? There’l
l be other years.”
As if I were a lap dog, or a sick lamb. I was too furious to be able to do anything but stand there, dumb, stupid, while they got into the car and drove off. Mrs. O’Carolan waved shamefacedly and guiltily from the tip-up seat in the back. I watched them turn through the gates and down the road to Drumcliffe crossroads. Mummy’s words whispered over and over and around and around in my head. But not the words she said; the words she meant. “Darling, dearest, we can’t possibly let you be seen out in your condition. I mean, what would the tenants, the priest, the neighbours, my friends think, for heaven’s sake, if they saw an unmarried pregnant girl of not even sixteen sitting as bold as brass in the very House of God?”
It was that decided me. I would not be shut away and hidden, a sordid object of sin and shame. One thought rang in my head as I stormed down the drive and along the road to the crossroads: I would be there, in the front pew, on my knees before my parents and the entire parish and God Himself. They were ashamed of me; they blamed me for what had happened; they held me responsible. A painful stitch in my belly wanted me to give up and stop, but it only stoked my fury all the more. I marched the mile and a half to the chapel in twenty minutes.
Father Halloran was about to start his homily (doubtless another tirade against the godless Protestant Unionists in the next county and the atheist socialists in Dublin); the people were rising from the prayer for the preacher as I entered. All I really remember is staring. Father Halloran was staring at me, and, seeing him staring, the parishioners turned around to see what had commanded his attention. My own father was blushing with embarrassment, rising from the pew to come to me, hurry me out. And myself; staring—not at the craning necks and turned heads, but at the centrepiece of the Harvest display. At the heart of the corn sheaves and plaited breads and St. Brigid’s Crosses, there, her, all Chantilly silk and creme organdy, the bride’s dress filled with dried flowers.