The One and Only

by Doris E. Smith

  A problem. If you were like Nana Mouskouri you would look great in specs. Kelly was not like Nana Mouskouri. She was a mouse. To Maggie the sweetest mouse in the world, but then Maggie was prejudiced. Look through unprejudiced eyes and you would see a pale little girl, tube-shaped, with pointed features and limp light brown hair. And, most unfortunately, foolish beautiful Sally, who had always pitied people with specs, had pitied them all too often in Kelly’s hearing. It would take an oculist with the wisdom of Solomon, Maggie thought, to repair that bit of damage.

  Kelly had spotted her now and was unwinding from the fence rail. The dark jeans and sweater in which for practical purposes she all but lived gave her arms and legs the look of a stick drawing as she ran. Maggie was almost knocked off balance by the strangling hug.

  ‘You said Tuesday!’ Kelly shouted. ‘That’s not till tomorrow.’ She took Maggie’s case and staggered with it into the stable yard where Phyllida waved a pitchfork and jumped a bit disconcertingly to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘All fixed up, then? Good girl!’ Charles had had to go away and the temporary helper had not shown up. ‘You must have heard me praying—or cursing!’ she rattled on. ‘I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.’ The last stable routine of the day was in progress. ‘And I’m all behind!’ she added boisterously, presenting just that ample portion of her anatomy as she forked up the aired straw for bedding. ‘So could I ask you—seeing I won’t have you much longer ‘

  ‘You will, I’m afraid. I’m not going.’

  Maggie had sold Scotland so enthusiastically to Kelly that she expected disappointment. It was quite the reverse. Her arm was gripped wildly and an uncharacteristic ‘Yippee!’ rent the air. She had expected Phyllida to look pleased. But here too things went by contrary.

  Phyl’s face had dropped. ‘Not going?’ she echoed. ‘Not at all?’

  Dear Phyl, such a good sort. It was like her not to think of herself. She’s bothered about me, Maggie thought, about me and Derek.

  ‘What’s happened? Tell me,’ Phyllida was demanding, her tone sharp and urgent.

  One thing sure. They were not standing round talking while there was work to be done. Maggie had already had nearly three days of Fairley Hall’s time. ‘First things first,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we’re through.’

  Including paying guests there were six horses to be looked to and when the last one had been fed and bedded down there was Kelly.

  ‘Get into bed, sweet one,’ Maggie bade, trying not to see the so obvious disappointment ‘You can read till I come up. I must talk to Aunty Phyl.’

  ‘She’s an incredibly good child,’ Phyl, who had been a witness, remarked. ‘But she did miss you. It was quite harrowing. We couldn’t get two words out of her. She just went into her shell and suffered.’

  It was not calculated to rejoice. ‘Do you know you’re saying all the wrong things?’ Maggie bemoaned.

  ‘And what about you, honey chile?’ Phyl retorted. ‘Me and the aul’ feller were just about tasting the bubbly!’ She marched Maggie into what had once been Fairley Hall’s elegant drawing-room, put a cushion to her back and a large sherry to her hand, wriggled her own broad shoulders into a jacquard tweed jacket—the lofty room was also very draughty—and commanded briskly: ‘Now—give!’

  Maggie, obeying, found it hard to judge the impression she was making and at the end it was still in doubt.

  ‘So you turned it down?’ Phyllida’s voice was entirely devoid of expression. Suddenly it grew less sterile. ‘You turned down a marvellous job and Derek for the sake of this—this misanthrope. Maggie Campbell, are you well!’

  ‘I haven’t turned Derek down...’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Let’s hope he hasn’t turned you down.’ The brown eyes flashed. ‘Why, girl—for heaven’s sake why?’

  ‘I’ve told you. The stables are in the grounds of Angus MacAllan’s house. I’d have been living literally on his doorstep and he didn’t want me. He made it very plain.’

  ‘Nice fellow,’ Phyl commented shortly.

  Maggie tried again. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle,’ she said desperately. ‘Only he’s Scottish. It was going to hurt him to have me there. I’d have felt like a spy.’

  ‘Maggie? Do I detect a note of pathos? You haven’t fallen for the guy?’

  ‘Fallen for Angus MacAllan? That was a laugh. ‘No, Phyl. He’s a bear. That’s another reason. I couldn’t bring Kelly there. She’s timid enough as it is. Being made to feel we were trespassers would just about put the lid on it.’

  ‘But isn’t Derek terribly disappointed?’

  ‘Yes.’ But Derek would get over it. He was sunny, not shallow, of course, but certainly not cavernous. His aura, you might say, was pastoral, Angus MacAllan’s more like a cliff-scape in Sutherland. Suffering would not be too strong a word, but she did not use it.

  ‘Derek knows how I feel. It was lovely seeing him again. And I do mean that.’ Some sort of change had flitted over Phyllida’s face. She was really taking this very personally. ‘You mustn’t worry about me, Phyl. Things will work our eventually. Another year or two could make all the difference to Kelly. I’ve promised I’ll...’

  ‘Another year or two?’ Phyllida interrupted. Her voice had seemed to echo. She went on more quietly, ‘Oh, honey, perhaps it’s not my business, but do you know what you’re doing? Your whole life has been one quixotic gesture after another. It’s time you thought of yourself.’

  ‘Don’t worry. That’s exactly what I am doing,’ Maggie laughed. She went on, still laughing, ‘Unless, of course, you and Charles want to be rid of me.’

  ‘And don’t worry to you too!’ her employer retorted, and tossed off the sherry in her glass. ‘When that happens you’ll soon get your cards!’

  Being more friend than employee, Maggie was usually made aware of the purpose and duration of Charles’s trips abroad. This time she was not.

  ‘Er—London,’ Phyllida said, and again looked vaguely troubled.

  ‘You should have gone too,’ Maggie remarked casually, and paused. ‘Phyl, now I’m back, why don’t you? When is he coming home?’

  It had been an impulse. She thanked heaven for it when Phyllida asked doubtfully: ‘Could you cope? It hardly seems fair, but I confess it would be easier than phoning.’ Phoning? In seconds Maggie’s mind raced wildly to Charles’s indigestion, Charles’s smoker’s cough, Charles’s backache. A second opinion? Harley Street? ‘There’s nothing wrong with Charles? He’s not ill?’

  Phyllida’s laugh gave ample reassurance. Charles had gone to see friends, he would be home on Saturday. And if Maggie really felt she could manage three days in ‘the Smoke’ would not come amiss.

  There was only one answer, the one Phyl herself had given a week ago.

  ‘Does the girl think she can’t be done without?’

  ‘Yes—well—try and cut down a bit,’ Phyl said vaguely. ‘Don’t mind if you can’t take bookings.’

  Before leaving on Wednesday she repeated the injunction. Maggie decided immediately to ignore it. It was hard enough for any business these days to pay its way. Fairley Hall Riding stables was no exception.

  Thursday morning was awkward because Kelly had an appointment for an eye test in Dublin, but happily Phyl, who had in fact made the arrangement with an oculist friend, went off without remembering.

  Maggie rose at five, aired and mucked out the stables, put the bedding in wind rows on the veranda and woke Kelly to give the residents a morning cuppa of long hay. Between their own breakfast and the time the bus passed the corner, she got in as much exercising as she could. Most of the horses would be in regular work from November when the hunting season commenced and had to be got into trim after a relatively easy summer. Today, however, the morning stint had to be cut. She did what she could, left the rest to the temporary helper, grabbed Kelly for a wash and change and put on her own lipstick and town shoes in the bus.

  Behind her lay a flat wh
ich had not been dusted since Monday, unmade beds and unwashed breakfast things. It was a case of first things first and there was no time to worry about niceties. Time at Fairley Hall was always at a premium and killing it was as rare as an osprey’s nest.

  Mr. Wills’s consulting room was part of eighteenth-century Dublin. Two hundred years ago its frescoed ceiling must have looked down on many an elegant soiree. Today it looked down on keen dark eyes and a leprechaun glove puppet on the end of a probing torch. Kelly needed glasses. Mr. Wills explained it to her with charm and the aid of a tiny comic horse.

  ‘When you get your glasses, Kelly, you won’t know yourself. You’ll see things you never knew were there.’

  Tike fairies?’ Kelly enquired eagerly.

  ‘Shouldn’t be at all surprised.’ Mr. Wills took the horse with the jointed legs and closed her fingers over it. ‘Here’s one to be going on with.’

  ‘Oh, but isn’t he everybody’s?’ Kelly exclaimed with a gasp of joy. Mr. Wills’s mantelpiece supported an inspired collection of pint-sized creatures all of whom worked for their living.

  ‘He’s yours now. I think he fancies those chaps of yours.’ The Spanish donkeys fore and aft on Kelly’s red sweater received a friendly poke. Maggie’s thanks were also waved aside. ‘Please, Miss Campbell, don’t embarrass me. Plenty more where that came from.’ He had already confided that several of the toys had been filched from his own offspring. ‘Take it for luck,’ he added. ‘Mrs. Fox tells me you’re emigrating.’

  Nobody, Maggie thought wryly, could accuse Phyllida of putting the cart behind the horse. ‘Not now. That’s off.’

  Astonishingly, the surgeon’s face registered concern. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Good luck anyway wherever you go.’

  ‘Where are we going, Maggie?’ Kelly asked as they walked past the Neapolitan-coloured hall doors that flashed the brick livery of Fitzwilliam Square.

  ‘To get you fitted for your frames.’

  ‘I didn’t think he meant that.’

  Me neither, Maggie acknowledged, but obviously he had not listened properly to Phyllida. Listening was a gift not everyone possessed.

  It was something she herself thought important and tried to do well, especially with Kelly who was selective in her choice of audience. Maggie accepted, of course, that she was not as good at it as the horses in whose company the child’s tongue seldom stopped, but when they weren’t there she was the number one sub. As now.

  ‘I’m going to call my horse Zebedee because he’s a fairy.’ A little ‘square’ for these days, and a pity the brain evolving it was not as devoted to arithmetic as to the Magic Roundabout.

  ‘Walk on, love,’ Maggie commanded.

  The experiment of Grafton Street being pedestrianed was going like a bomb. The narrow artery from the trees of St. Stephen’s Green to the trees of College Park had once been Dublin’s beau monde. Today a busker tap-danced in the roadway, a Chinese girl with a baby on her back sauntered up the centre of the street, long-haired youths twanged their guitars on the kerb-side benches and every few yards brought either a dog selling flags or one of the travelling people with a blanketed baby asking alms.

  Kelly missed nothing and nobody missed Kelly. Maggie paid up; two pence for a flag from an Alsatian, two pence of coward’s money to a travelling person and two pence to Kelly to place in the busker’s hat. Surely she’d done her duty, but no! Here she was being dragged to another canine flag-seller, this time one that looked like a mountain.

  Not a bad simile. Kelly asked questions, the boy the dog had brought with her to hold the box answered them. She was a Pyrenean mountain dog and her name was Sophie.

  ‘On, darling,’ Maggie prompted, and heard her own name.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Campbell. I thought you were in Scotland.’ The voice belonged to a Mrs. Grey, a friend of Phyllida’s.

  ‘Back since Monday,’ Maggie responded. Phyl and Charles are away now. In London.’

  If she thought she was giving news it seemed she was mistaken.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Phyl’s friend said in an impressed tone. ‘Fixing up that deal. Marvellous how that worked out, wasn’t it? If you hadn’t got that job in Scotland I could see Phyl turning it down. She did six months ago, you know. Swore us to secrecy, but it doesn’t matter now.’

  Dazed as Maggie felt, urgency sharpened her wits. ‘She didn’t really have much time to talk to me. I gather it’s a good offer?’

  ‘Fabulous. Of course it’s “all in”, so I daresay there’ll be fighting with the locals.’ Mrs. Grey gave details of the development company’s plans. ‘Pity, but not from Phyl and Charles’s side. I think they’re going to start by taking a whole year off. Did she tell you?’

  Maggie said no, flicked a glance at her wrist and hoped she did not look as glazed as she felt. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Grey, but we must run. I really shouldn’t be out when Phyl’s away, but I had to bring Kelly to the oculist. See you!’

  Three years ago the doctor at the hospital had told her her father was ‘very low’, little more than a year later a police constable had broken the news about Tom and Sally. Each sick cold moment had brought the same instant reaction—’Ifs not true’. But both of them had been—and so was this.

  Phyl and Charles were selling. She was as good as out of a job and given a month or so out of a roof as well. Worse than that even. In honour she had no breathing space. If Phyl had already turned down the deal once on her account there was no knowing what quixotic proposal she might not at this moment be making to the developers in London.

  There was no way round it, it was marching orders.

  She tried not to be melodramatic, but winter was in the offing and it was not just a case of Maggie Campbell, have legs, will travel, it was Maggie Campbell, have niece, need roof. Derek had done what he could, Phyl had done more than her share, the rest was up to her.

  It made a nightmare jigsaw as the bus struggled through the lunch hour strangulation.

  A car with a foreign number plate had got itself going against the traffic flow in a one-way street.

  ‘You’d be sorry for them,’ a fellow passenger remarked. ‘They’re visitors. There’s some kind of conference on.’

  True enough. Maggie remembered reading that Dublin was host this week to an international wool symposium and this morning the city centre had come out in a rash of yellow metal signs.

  ‘Make a wish,’ Kelly invited, holding up ‘Zebedee’. ‘He can do anything. He’s a steam magician.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He comes in a great cloud of steam.’

  She was rising seven. She should have put all that out in the snow along with Father Christmas. Other children did. Maggie decided on the firm line. ‘You’re a big girl now, love. I’d rather you behaved like one.’

  Back at the stables it was still all go. The temporary helper had gone home, but she’d mixed the midday feed and left it ready. Kelly took it from there. Some time ago Charles had put up a gong for her in the food store and this was now an important part of ritual. Today as always she struck it, waited for the chorus of neighs and sallied forth.

  In the flat allotted to them, Maggie threw a scrap meal on the table. They ate, changed and got back on the job. Maggie groomed, Kelly cleaned tack. A child was due for a lesson at half past four.

  The tempo slowed from the morning’s frantic rush, if only because no one could work indefinitely at the pace Maggie had set. Except perhaps Kelly whose small figure trotted tirelessly in and out of the tack room, first with a bucket and then staggering a little with her arms full of saddle. It was not every child of seven who could look after tack or whose eye could see at a glance if the feed was too dry. Kelly’s aptitude had been the brightest part of the Glencullen story and Maggie often thought how Duncan Campbell, ex-Captain of Horse, would have delighted in his granddaughter.

  But was it enough? Somehow, today, she seemed only able to see the dark side of the coin. Outside of stable work, Kell
y was young for her age, dreamy and timid. Where could she bring her that she would not be swamped and tongue-tied? What folk would make allowances for her as kindly as Charles and Phyl?

  The next few minutes drove the point home full force.

  The stables were quiet. Maggie, working against time, was doing so silently and Kelly was probably lost in a make-believe about ‘Zebedee’. No sounds at any rate except the clink of bits against the side of the bucket as she dipped them, and the twittering of sparrows in the eaves. Maggie had the sun in her eyes and that was because already it was staying low. Some weeks back at this hour it would have been over the pointing of the roof. That too was depressing—a reminder that winter was just around the corner.

  Because of the sun she had not noticed that Kelly had company until she heard his voice. It was an assertive eight-year-old voice and it belonged to Pat Roche, heir to the Roche farm which marched with Fairley Hall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he was demanding. ‘That’s wrong. That’s not the way.’

  Pat and Maggie had just finished with mutual relief an acrimonious course of lessons. He had been allergic to instruction, she had not pulled her punches and the day he had taken out his temper on the pony sparks had flown. Besides all that, he was meddlesome and could do mischief. Maggie’s first thought was to dispatch him speedily, her second—if only Kelly would do it.

  ‘Not that way, goaty. Let me.’

  It was the invariable sequence. Maggie watched, craving for just one spark of resistance as Kelly was dispossessed of the saddle she had been stripping, but alas, she said nothing. Mouse in looks and mouse in nature. And it was not a world for mice.

  Maggie waited till she saw the saddle being laid down on the ground in just such a way as would cause the tree to spread and then she went across the yard in a cloud of dust.