by Molly Keane
“No girls here yet,” he said as he came in, “oh, good.”
She laughed: a complicity between them.
“Because I’ve made a Sally Lunn,” he went on disappointingly practical, “and we can have two huge slices before they set into it.”
“Oh, do let’s.” She accepted the change to a less exciting level. “Darling April keeps such a close watch on my diet. All for my good, but I do long for seconds.”
“I thought the veal we had for lunch was quite a success, did you?”
“Perfect. I cried behind my specs thinking of darling Papa and Wiener Schnitzels – I’m not sure yours weren’t better. But he had magical ways with a goulash.”
“Can you remember? Do tell.”
“Yes, of course. First you. …”
“Oh and you had to let my fire go out,” it was June, down on her knees coaxing and whispering with the bellows. “Isn’t the tea in a bit early today?”
“Not really, considering I have quite a lot to do about dinner.”
“Wouldn’t scrambled eggs do us? Christy found three more eggs today.”
“I thought he was working for May today.”
“He found them in his lunch hour.”
“Pâté sandwiches, I suppose.”
“And what happened the two slices of cooked ham I bought myself for him? Your cat, I suppose, too.”
Jasper looked slightly embarrassed. The ham had made sandwiches for a different pet, an outdoor pet.
“A fellow has to get a bit to eat. That’s a fact, Tiny. Isn’t it a fact, Tiny?” June let the matter drop.
On the edge of the least privacy Jasper was never sorry to be pushed back into the ordinary banalities of life. He dreaded an irreclaimable step of any sort. The edge of anything was near enough for him. But he found edges irresistible. In the same way he found excitement in the creation of a wonderful dinner from forgotten scraps irresistible. He would denigrate its perfection in the dining-room before finishing any morsels left by his sisters when the dishes came back to the kitchen, testing and satisfying his exact judgement.
Leda had been with them for a week now and he could see with malign interest how April and May elbowed each other for her favours – two jealous ladies-in-waiting. He wondered how long it would be before June became a victim. He was glad to know himself outside the spell, amused and well able to resist any advances, to side-step any risky involvement. He saw exactly how to play a role in the comedy, and found it an unusual diversion to watch those two poor old things in a shadow-land of sexual combat.
“Oh, Baby-blessed-June,” Leda stretched out her hands and feet, supplicating warmth, “your fire is wonderful. Thank you, darling.”
“Were you cold?” Jasper asked in a surprised, hostess voice.
“I’m always cold, cold in my bones. It’s a left-over from …” She stopped. “Not to be a bore. Worse things happened.”
“Did they put your eyes out?” June asked stolidly. She put down the hot poker (a delicate idea) as she spoke.
“Not quite.” Leda didn’t laugh. “No oculist – naturally. And after ‘all that’ it was a bit late. I’m used to it now. It gives me more time.”
“What for?” June was as curious as a vet about a sick animal.
“Oh, shut up, Baby.” Jasper wanted to spare himself, rather than Leda, any details.
Leda’s laugh fluted away again. “Oh, you get to know people so much better. And you miss lots of awful things, like the telly advertisements. That sort of vulgarity.”
“You can still hear the announcers’ voices, especially the weather-men, and the appalling language they speak. ‘Black Ice,’ what is ‘Black Ice’?” Jasper shuddered.
“You see – I feel you shudder,” Leda said with intimate suggestion, “and we are nowhere near.”
“Let’s tremble together,” Jasper said loudly as May came into the room and sat down, “and have some more of my Sally Lunn,” he moved the silver dish gently away from May.
“Sally Lunn? We haven’t had that since Mrs Byrne left us.”
“Left us? And who sacked Mrs Byrne?” Jasper asked sharply.
“Need we go into that? You know how it was on her Thursday afternoons.”
“No. Why should I know?”
“Or care – even when the handlebars of her bicycle were literally bending under the loads of food she stole for her friends.”
“What a kind woman,” Jasper said mildly.
“And who, May, nearly poisoned us putting the hyacinth bulbs in the Irish stew in place of the onions?”
“Quite right, Baby,” Jasper commended the memory. “That was when I was compelled to throw you out of the kitchen, wasn’t it, May? Cooking not my line of country then.”
“If you ever had a line of country.” May threw the end of her cigarette into June’s fire. “I knocked quite a spot of work out of your spoilt boy, Baby. Quite a good afternoon. He looked rather tired at the end of it,” her tobacco-stained teeth glinted briefly.
“You couldn’t tire that fellow. He’s ready to tackle any lousy job any time you like,” June spoke up as usual in Christy’s defence.
“No more, Jasper – April will see me being piggy.” Leda put out a hand to cover a plate that was no longer beside her. Jasper had just put a wedge of Sally Lunn on it.
“Right. All right. Give it to me.” May snapped up the cake.
“Like a dog with a bone,” Jasper said to Leda, “can you hear the clack of teeth? Pity falsies don’t grind.”
Leda held a silence for a moment. Her great ornamented glasses swam in her face, invoking some sort of gentleness.
“May, do you give us seakale tonight?” she said, “you thought it might be ready.”
“Yes, Leda,” there was a great note of special giving in May’s voice, “and I only hope Jasper won’t spare the melted butter.”
Jasper’s face lit. He had thought immediately of the proper sauce. “But it has to be lemon juice and yoghurt,” he said spitefully, “because that’s what suits April.”
“All I want is a cup of tea, without milk, please.” April sat on a square Victorian stool, shoulders down, pelvis up, ease and distinction united, beauty served. “Tiny man wants a tiny crumb of whatever that is. He’s had such a long walk with Mum and Aunt Leda, bless him.”
“And my old love can lick the dish,” June said.
May screamed a denial, and Jasper said: “Of course. Why not?”
“It seems to me Gripper is the only unspoilt dog in this family,” Leda’s voice communicated a preference in May’s direction. She intended tea-time attentions to soften and still the gripe she had tasted in the air when she and April had passed May by. She would make up for any defection from April later on, when, in the hour before dinner, there would be strong little drinks in April’s room. She was thankful that April was able to ignore the connection between alcohol and obesity.
Punctually that evening April knocked on Leda’s door. She entered the room at once, assuming a “come in”. She smelt warm and scented. Leda could hear the movement of her luxurious, touchable clothes. If April’s evening dress had been hanging on padded shoulders she would have been pleased to run her hands over its contrived simplicities. She compromised by saying: “Givenchy tonight? And you smell wonderful – Balmain?” All equal whatever she said, but Leda liked to get things right in her own mind. She was a purist and an exact one.
“Drink time,” April answered, but she was aware of Leda’s approval and pleased acceptance.
After a week Leda was satiated by the discussions of clothes past and present, but she kept the game going. The vodka martinis were worth the smiling effort. Even the nauseous herbal draught preceding them, and the exercises, the deep breathing and stretching, the invisible contracting of pelvic muscles which April supervised along with other weight-watching austerities, seemed endurable when the moment came for: “Another little drinkie, darling?” – “I shouldn’t, but I will.” Then she could direct April int
o the past; hear her say the things that brought moments out of the deeps, their suggestions to Leda more potent, almost forbidden, because they were outside April’s understanding.
… “Your dirndl skirts and all those petticoats – white stockings. …”
… “and Aunt Violet forced me into awful knickers … I stuffed one pair into the garden bonfire. …”
… “I had blue accordion pleats for the dancing class … Bronze sandals, elastic straps. …”
… “Thank God my feet were too big for your old sandals, she’ld have had me in them too. …”
… “Even in children’s clothes Mummie had such marvellous taste. …”
“Say that again and I’ll hit you.”
“My first ball dress – can you see it? Do remember: yards and yards of white tulle, tiny bands of satin and a simple string of pearls.”
“That was the night she said I couldn’t embarrass her in my German fancy dress.”
Here they both stopped. April recalled, through the pretty memory of her own first ball dress, the tears and protests of that forever unhappy evening.
For Leda their sudden silence woke again the wild pleasurable memory of her flight down the long staircase, of the arms that caught and held, the scent of the handkerchief, showing a peak above the breast pocket of the velvet jacket on which her head was laid – the surprise enclosed in that embrace was present always, and with it the sudden knowing of his unwilling rejection as he set her on her feet and fiddled sadly for a moment with a whisp of hair, sticky with tears and spit.
That was the evening it began – the all-in-all that was to be the nothing. Adoration violated by every circumstance of propriety, unforgivably dangerous – a flirtation, and a forsaken nymph. The giggling and the guessing with April were left behind, pitiable in their inconsequence beside this new ravishing dimension of living to which she succumbed delightedly in first acceptance. Certain that her darling loved as wildly as she did, sure that his pleasure to touch and caress her matched with her own and that he asked no more, she was without a guilty or remorseful thought. Aunt Violet was sedately plump and old, almost fifty, so love with her must be a comic indecency, not to be considered, while for Leda the immeasurable delight and changing intensities of a first love affair were sharpened through every escapade and escape made to contrive a meeting.
Inevitably it happened – the summons one morning to the quiet of Aunt Violet’s bedroom. There love was set aside and denied in fear and shame by a child, derelict and cast-away, beating on a shut door. She could hear Aunt Violet’s voice, quiet and sure: “I have your ticket to Vienna, my dear, third on the train, first on the boat. This money is for a little something to eat on the journey. Don’t over-tip the porters. Just a change in our plans here. This will be the best way – your uncle wishes it too. My darling child” (she had said my darling child) “you do see we are doing this for your sake, and nothing need be said to ‘Maman’ – that’s what you call her, isn’t it, ‘Maman’?”
Then the two days of black mistrust, for there was no speaking to him, he had gone to some race-meeting or some shoot, obediently out of the way. After that she remembered best the packing of the black school trunk and April, as unquestioning of Mummie’s decision as she was oblivious of its cause, crying and kissing (such childish kisses) and pressing small precious things on Leda, objects that Leda had admired and envied – a pearl choker, blue satin camiknickers edged with écru lace, a photograph of April, softened into nonentity in the manner of the day, all valueless to Leda now, they were squeezed into the black trunk. She could see Aunt Violet’s luggage labels, every change on the way to Vienna clearly marked as they were carefully tied to the leather loops and straps of the trunk.
On her unexpected return home there were many questions asked, and sulky answers given. Suspicious silences that were reft apart by Aunt Violet’s (perjured Aunt Violet’s) letter to her mother. In it was a summary of the shocking things she had felt it right that Leda’s mother should know, should be aware of, in her own daughter. They had shown Leda the letter, her mother and poor Papa together, and asked her in frightened angry voices if she could explain or deny any of it.
Far from denial, Leda, stung into utter wickedness, had admitted, she had sobbed out an exaggerated confession, incomplete in her passionate ignorance, but frightening and explicit enough to justify the letter written to Aunt Violet, and another from the wild sister to the vicious brother, a letter of terrible accusations and suspicions requiring immediate verification or denial.
Before her mother’s vigilance was relieved by Leda’s punctual menstruation the answer came in the news of that tragic accident on the mountain. A man had died on her account. There was grandeur in Leda’s desolation – not remorse. No meaner, lesser calculation entered her mind; nothing to include a chaste shocked wife, or the stresses of an estate and a bank balance run into extremities, came into the pictures she kept: absolved from faithlessness, he had killed himself for her only. The remembrance of his charming looks failed from her, but his voice never cheated her memory, capturing and echoing the wild certainty of first love, distancing that from many another.
In April’s bedroom, an empty glass in her hand, Leda said: “Jasper has his voice.”
“Jasper,” April caught the familiar word. “I wonder what he’s giving us for dinner tonight.”
“Seakale,” Leda answered sadly, back in the present. “Would it be terrible if I had another?” She held out her empty glass. “… And then we didn’t even have a glass of sherry before dinner,” said April, taking both glasses back to the vodka bottle. “How did we survive it?”
“Don’t you remember? We were so happy,” Leda answered miserably. Recovering her good manners, she wrote on her note pad, “Tell about your Going Away dress. How was it after that? Did he pounce? Or was he sweet about it?”
“I bet Aunt Violet never told her a thing,” she said aloud.
If April was part of Leda’s restoration and re-establishment at Durraghglass, May, too, was an important object for subjugation to the limitless charm that was Leda’s whole trade in life. She could find a use for any person or circumstance even before she knew how such a one or such an event could forward her aims. People had to be kept apart, distanced from one another by small steely jokes and denigrations verging on kindness. So, to May she might say: “Oh, you are so wise and patient. How do you do it? I love April, but one gets to the end … and she can’t read my writing.” Then there was laughter, first at her own infirmity, then perhaps a reprise of some absurd non sequitur of April’s they had heard together. Like fitting pieces in a puzzle, familiarity joined them until Leda could whisper, “Save me, save me!” when April came to insist on some stringent exercise or a direful fast for beauty’s sake, perhaps when the incense from Jasper’s cooking was falling from the air.
May could seldom rescue, but she could sympathise and join in the fun of saying things that April could not hear. Leda warmed their intimacy with her special skills to capture love in any form that she could use at her own discretion and requirement. And May, the sad pretender to all importances, the stringent avoider of pity, the deviser and maker and restorer of so many lifeless pretty things, found herself borne on a mild tide of sympathy and appreciation. The tide was making, was invading the dry shores of her life, where before its flow only her own courage and fortitude had sown and grown her importances. Her cultivated corners of the deserted garden, her flower decorations, her china restoration, her industry on behalf of The Countrywomen’s Association and the Flower Guild – even her friendship with Alys – were all maintained by usefulness alone. Beyond these things it was her secret vagrancies that lent her a power outside herself, a power that she accepted questionless. It was her ultimate protest and defence against her infirmity – it was a power that took her like a spasm, a secret untold even to herself. But to have the other lonely territories invaded, to find warmth and understanding sneaking round her, to have questions asked and
answers remembered, woke in her a gratitude and gentleness absent from all her self-given responsibilities and occupations. This was, since her mother died, the first time that May knew a whisper of love to be in the air about her. Appreciation she earned often. Love, never.
The underhand contest with April was another matter. It was a sport without a name, a point scored when she knew herself preferred, points lost in those pre-dinner meetings in April’s bedroom. Neither saw that Leda was a doll to them. And she played the doll. They were children scrapping for the favourite doll. In every nursery there is a Princess Baby Doll, the forerunner of the favourite dog. The dog precedes the lover, and the lover the baby. For the sisters, dogs had, for a long time, taken the empty places of lovers and babies; now, with the coming of the lost Princess Doll, even those importances had lessened. The accusations and arguments concerning them were fewer. Leda in her gallant helplessness, with a silent past of persecution behind her, superseded their darlings. She was there for April to diet and exercise, a face to paint and restore into something approaching her recollection of it, which was also a recapturing of her own youth. Because blind Leda could see no change, all April’s years of stringency held a proper validity. She had put Time back and now, with eyeless Leda, she truly felt herself again the giggling school-girl, the jeune fille en fleur. Her pleasure in this was lovely and insatiable.
May was the Nannie figure who washed and ironed, folded underclothes and filled hot-water bottles. She was the over-careful guide. Leda resented guidance. If she had to go down on all fours to find her way she would do so. She disliked having too much explained too often. She could smell secrets in a tone of voice, a hesitation told her as much as a change in eyes or mouth told the seeing person. But, suffering May’s leading and coaxing as of a blind dog, she played reliance, making small demands, clinging to an arm and laughing if she stumbled, maintaining a lively interest, asking a question as she heard again one of May’s accounts of some worthy and successful activity.