Bloodstock and Other Stories

by Margaret Irwin

  Was she mad? Was she laying a spell on him?

  But what did it matter? He had no business to lose his nerve just because he had been through a stiff strain. He shook himself out of his oilskins, took up his bag and went to the bed to what looked like being a hopeless job.

  An hour later it was less hopeless. He paused an instant to look round the room, which was fresher since he had got them to open the door.

  The thundering roar of the sea came through it, but on this sheltered side the wind, fast dropping with the dawn, did no more inside this house than flutter the black fringed shawl of the old woman who sat across the threshold.

  She was sitting with the turf-cutting spade they call a loy across her knees, and once again the sight of her startled O’Reilly, this time because he was certain he had seen her before, sitting just like that.

  He had not recognized her earlier, he knew he had never seen her face before; yet now that she was sitting turned away from him he recognized that huddled, motionless black figure with the long, sharp-pointed turf-cutting spade across her knees, as vividly and as detachedly as if he had seen it in some picture or in a scene in a play—a picture or a scene that had filled him with dread, though he did not know why. Where could it have been? He would never remember. His tired mind could not even make the effort of trying to recall where he had seen that strange figure before, so silent, so curiously filled with foreboding.

  And what was she doing sitting there as if on guard? Was it some superstition, more ancient than the curraghs? Did she sit there to guard the threshold from death himself? He would never know. They would not tell him.

  He went on with his job, while behind him there crouched that immobile relentless figure whose ferocity of purpose defied death himself.

  In two hours more his job was finished. An apparently lifeless scarlet scrap of female humanity had been produced, and slapped, squeezed, bathed in shock after shock, of now cold, now hot water, into life. The woman lived, and should continue to do so. He straightened his shoulders, turning round again, and, as he had half expected, the old woman got up and put away the loy. She knew, then, that the immediate danger was over.

  He looked at her and past her through the doorway at the islands that now shone like pale jewels in a glittering, dancing sea.

  “She’ll do now,” he said.

  The old woman nodded.

  “Won’t you tell me,” he said, in his most persuasive voice (and surely he had earned his reward), “why you sat there all the time with the loy across your knees?”

  Once again she peered up at him, and this time her wrinkled eyes were at peace.

  “For yourself,” she said. “If my daughter had died you’d not have left this house alive.”

  Bloodstock

  The Dispensary Doctor had already tugged twice at the bell. He stood on the curved flight of steps and looked up under the dripping brim of his hat at the stern pillars of Baranemona. The house confronted him, grey and calm; the many windows of old glass reflected uncertainly the wide scene and sky; clouds and falling rain glistened in them, and trees waved dark and shadowy.

  The door was opened cautiously.

  “If it’s the old Badger you’re wanting, she’s down in the kitchens,” said the farm lad within, squinting uneasily down at his alien pair of tight black trousers.

  “Now, Micky Dugan, you a footman and not know the difference between a badger and a dowager? And is the young sir married that her Ladyship should be a dowager at all?”

  Micky Dugan shook a rough bewildered head. Badger or dudger, it was some such word his mother had used in speaking of his new mistress—anyway, here was herself, and let her say what she answered to. Out of a dark egress at the end of the hall, her Ladyship’s head heaved up, massive, portentous, with two prongs protruding from it like the horns of a snail; so might some monster from an earlier world emerge angry from its lair.

  “I declare to God, Doctor, I can’t make out what’s the matter with her,” came in a querulous shout, increasing in volume as she approached him, while he carefully wiped his wet boots and felt the draught from the closed door take him in the crick of his neck. “She’ll not tell me a thing but that she’s too sick to get up, and I’d greatly like not to send her up any meals, or drive her down with a broom-handle, but I’m in dread of her having any infection on her, and then where would all the children be? So says I, Dr. Halloran will ferret her out, like the kind patient man I know him to be’—and she rolled an eye at the doctor (“a fine gross man with a beautiful mousstache’) while she coyly poked the prongs of her curling-pins into her unfettered locks.

  Cook or barmaid or whatever it is that elderly baronets marry by mistake, her Ladyship had been it.

  “Poor old Stancy, his first wife was a de la Poer, and his second a barmaid.”

  “Poor old Stancy, he was broken-hearted at his wife’s death, and then he went and married his cook.”

  Whichever it had been, Sir Standish O’fflaherty had died of it, said his neighbours; and his eldest son and heir, now Sir Murrough O’fflaherty, had left the place after his father’s death and never come back to it—nor got a penny out of it, if anybody knew anything of his stepmother.

  Dr. Halloran wondered for an instant if her delicate reference to his kindness and patience gave him any chance to open the subject of his unpaid bills. But Lady O’fflaherty took no chances. Her compliment continued without pause into a screech to one of the young girls to come and take the doctor upstairs to throw an eye over the governess.

  And all his way up the first flight her genteel conversation rolled echoing after him. Had he had his house searched for arms lately? There was poor Mr. Darcy had lost his last sporting gun—some masked men had come and held up his cook with revolvers on Tuesday night when he was out, and she had to hand it over to them, though he was going out after the birds the very next day. Was there going to be any more of the troubles, and she a lone lorn widow with a long weak family and no man in the house to protect her?

  “Ask that of Hyacinth Doran, ma’am,” the doctor shouted back over the banisters. “I hear you’re going up to Dublin with all the rest of the quality for the Horse Show next week, and sure you’ve only to hang your glove in your window for him to take the hint.”

  Her Ladyship’s reply to the compliment rose through the air like the coquettish whistle of a steam engine.

  “God help the horse-dealer!” was the doctor’s prayer for Mr. Hyacinth Doran as he trudged upstairs.

  His boots squeaked, the stairs creaked, the thin stair carpet flapped where the rods had slid out of their fastenings.

  “Maybe it’s a broken neck the young lady is sick with,” he remarked, pointing out this deficiency with the toe of his boot.

  “She is not, and it’s not my doing, for I only came yesterday,” replied the indignant girl.

  “There’s the faithful retainer! It’s not many stay here as long as that!”

  He stumped into a long room, curved at the end, where the bay windows looked over the park lands. All the trees were blowing one way, and the rain lashing down on them. A faint green light like water poured into the room through the bent old panes of glass. A patch of rug lay on the unstained boards, cracks ran down the wall-paper, which peeled back from them as if in horror, a huge double bed stuck out into the room, and between two of its four carved posts was a rough coppery patch. Under the red hair a very bright eye peered out at the doctor, who approached the strange animal cautiously, instinctively aware that his professional dignity was in danger.

  “What’s your age?” he demanded.

  “Twenty-two.”

  “And your name?” He brought out his notebook, all ready for the prescription.

  “Miss Smith.”

  “English, and an English accent,” thought the doctor, impressed; “how did that one manage to get her?” Aloud he asked for her initials.

  “A, B, C, D.”

  “Ah, quit your funning.”

 
“There’s nothing funny about Anna Bella Celia Delia, except that my father gave me one of them, I never can remember which. If you want to know my real name, it’s Kay.”

  “K for Kathleen?”

  “Kay for Killarae.”

  “That’s a place, not a girl,” said the doctor suspiciously.

  “Yes, a place that my mother was fond of. It’s a queer thing that if you don’t want to be believed, you’ve only got to tell the truth.”

  The doctor saw a smile go in and out on the face of his patient like the flicker of a will-o’-the-wisp. Her answers to his professional questions seemed to come at random like votes picked out of a hat—or like her names,—Anna, Bella, Celia, Delia—whoever heard of such a string? He glowered at her between the rubber cords of his stethoscope as she sat up with such impatient vigour in her movement that it shook the warm red hair out of her eyes.

  He sounded her chest through her thin nightdress (for he was a modest man) and felt her strong young shoulders shaking, but her face was that of a grave little girl. Not a thing could he find out about her that was not as sound as a bell.

  He exclaimed in exasperation, “But, my good girl, there’s nothing whatever the matter with you.”

  “I know that,” she answered.

  “What in the name of heaven, then—?”

  “I’ve not had a penny of my wages paid me, and I’ll not get up till she hands me the ten pounds she owes me.”

  The doctor’s hand shot out in a superb gesture.

  “Shove over,” said he. “She owes me thirty.”

  The girl rolled to the side of the bed. “Leave all the room you can,” she told him, “for the butcher and grocer will be taking their place alongside of us before they get their bills paid either.”

  Their gusts of laughter rolled through the room; Dr. Halloran blew out on top of them, while in echo the door slammed behind him, the windows rattled, the torn curtains flapped out in billows of faded chintz.

  The governess pulled a small musical box from under her pillow, lay on her back with it on her chest, and turned the minute handle round and round, pricking out the tiny music on the damply sighing air.

  “Oh God,” she sighed in unison, “why did I come here?”

  A tornado worse than the wind rose and roared through the house. Kay sprang out of bed and ran to the top of the stairs. Leaning sideways over the banisters, she was just in time to see the doctor being swept out by Lady O’fflaherty.

  “Ah now, my good woman,” came his mollifying growl through her shouts, “all I said in the world was that if you want to get rid of her, you’ve only to pay her wages.”

  “So that’s the game, is it? Will I pour money down the sink, paying wages to a slob of a girl that does nothing but lie in bed—no, and not another bite nor sup will I send up to her either! Gets you to ask for money for her, does she?—and for yourself too—money, money, money—you think I’m made of it, do you, you lazy, lying, hulking—”

  “Ah, lay by the flattery,” cooed Dr. Halloran’s most seductive tones.

  The house shook to her answer, the grand slam of the front door. Kay stepped thoughtfully back to bed. “I may be a coward,” she told herself, “but I will not have a scene with that woman if I have to run away in my nightgown to avoid it.”

  A head like a mop was thrust round the door, and there remained.

  “I forgot the knocking,” said the head.

  “Too late for it now. Come in and shut the door, or your hair will blow off you altogether.”

  The child came in backwards, carrying a tray, then shot out a foot and kicked the door to.

  “I got you a cup of tea off the kitchen hob, and here’s a slab of cold mutton and some potatoes. I kept the tray on the back stairs and grabbed the lot while me mother was shoving out the doctor.”

  “That’s the noble girl. Didn’t I tell you, Cassie, you kept your brains outside your lessons?”

  The child pushed herself up backwards on the foot of the bed.

  “Me mother says you are an adventuress. Is that true?”

  “Yes, but I’ve not had much luck. This is my first adventure, and I find it dull.”

  “I don’t call it an adventure, staying in bed.”

  “No, but I call it one not to be able to get away till I get some money.”

  “Why do you want to get away?”

  “I don’t get on with your mother.”

  “Oh, nobody does that,” Cassie told her reassuringly; “do they with yours?”

  “They did. It’s my father they don’t get on with.” The corners of her up-curved mouth turned down, and for the first time Cassie thought Miss Smith looked like a governess.

  “Is your da like me mother, then?”

  “Like—! Put her on one of the two Poles and he’d be on the other.”

  Cassie seemed to think it a recommendation. With an ingratiating wriggle she said, “Tell me more about England. They’re very rich there, aren’t they? Then they can hunt a lot?”

  “Some are, and can—or can’t. Anyway, they can talk about it a lot, all in loud clacking voices with their jaws going up and down like wooden clappers. “Quite, quite. Yes yes. Quack quack. Did you go there for the fishing? Do you go there for the golf? No golf-course? What do you do?’”

  “Oho!” laughed Cassie. “You’re turning yourself into somebody else.”

  “That’s what I’ve always wanted, but here I am staying in bed just the same as I always was, and even this musical box only plays the same tune.” And out pranced all the little notes again like a box of needles stepping up and down, pricking out a tune that had been fashionable more than fifty years ago.

  “Oh, pretty pretty Polly Hopkins,

  How do you do—oo?

  How do you do?’

  sang Cassie in her shrill treble,

  “None the better, Mr. Topkins,

  For seeing you.

  For seeing you.

  Oh tra la la, la la, la la la!

  Tra la la la—”

  “My da used to sing that,” said Cassie, proud of the silent attention she was getting from the governess, “and his da used to sing it to him when he sat on his powerful fat knee and felt how warm it was through his holland breeches.”

  The tousle-haired child posturing at the foot of the bed gave Kay a brief vision of this house when it had echoed to gayer sounds than Lady O’fflaherty’s bawls.

  This house, when she first saw it, had brought a memory so vivid and disturbing that it was more like a premonition, for it had come on her, not with the dreamy, nothing-to-be-done-about-it tenderness with which one surveys the past, but with the urgency and importance of the future. She had thought, “This place matters. It matters to me’—and why should she have thought that? Was it only because it was so like her mother’s old home at Killarae, where half her childhood had been spent—and the half that mattered, for it had been the half in which she had escaped from her father’s correct London house?

  Voices like the screams and chattering of seagulls, and almost as unintelligible, were squalling to each other outside the windows, the voices of the young O’fflahertys on the lawns below. The rain had stopped. Cassie’s nose was peaked up at the window like that of a setter pointing. No more did she need now of the governess’s chat. In one movement she had disappeared, leaving Kay with the tray, an empty plate, and an untouched cup of tea as strong as death, as red as hell, over which the milk, shuddering from its contact, was slowly forming a thick curdled scum.

  The afternoon slid into a silver twilight; then darkness gathered in the curved room round the four-post bed, it pushed further and further out, covered the glimmering green outside, and all but the white sky. Quiet shut down through the great house; even the children went in time to bed; even their mother fell silent at last except when she snored.

  Only the girl in the four-post bed lay awake, her vigorous young body untired by any fresh air and exercise, her brain anxious, amused, more alive than ever it ha
d been in its hitherto unruffled existence.

  “You have only to get up and put on your clothes,” it said to her, “and creep downstairs through the dining-room window to the stables, and there steal Micky Dugan’s bicycle and so get away.”

  She reached out her hand beyond the heavy curtain and fumbled for the matches and lit the candle that had before tonight dropped a shroud of grease far down over the tall silver candlestick. She got up and found her clothes, cautiously dragging out the heavy drawers from their chest, and they protesting in loud groans. There she stood, dressed in a tweed coat and skirt and her thickest woollen jumper, and a woollen cap on her head; and after a long peering look in the blistered glass at a tense and pallid face that did not look as though it belonged to her, there was nothing for it but to blow out the candle, take her brogues in her hand, turn the handle of her door so slowly and deliberately that it shrieked like the banshee, and then feel for the banisters and start step-stepping, squeak-squeaking down the stairs.

  Now she had opened the dining-room door, and there was the great room, surprisingly light after the thick darkness of the stairs and hall.

  “They forgot to draw the curtains,” she thought, staring at the shapeless grey lumps of food, never cleared away, that huddled together in the glimmering immensity of the tablecloth.

  The black shape of a whisky bottle, the pale shape of a siphon, stood flanked by the lesser forms of Guinness; a heavy teapot squatted like a broody hen in its falsely maternal air of domesticity.

  “God, what a party!” breathed Kay in the doorway, drawing in the stale smells through her nostrils,—then suddenly held her breath as she noticed the cool night air that blew the reek towards her.

  The window at the end of the dining-room was open.

  And that, she knew, had not been forgotten, for Lady O’fflaherty would never have supped with the window open.

  She was half-way across the room to it before she realized that she was not alone in the room. She stopped dead; and now in the stillness that froze round her she could hear breathing. She swung round and began a blundering move for the door. There was a rush towards her, a clatter, a scuffle, her own voice gasping and then stifled by a hand clapped to her mouth, a grip numbing her arm, and a voice saying very quick and low, “Don’t scream or I’ll shoot.”