by Molly Keane
Jasper passed easily on from the thought of Baby. Other, more interesting ideas sifted and changed in his mind: which subject might make good progress in such a situation, when shelter matured; what vista could be created draughtlessly, and how, and where. There was a great deal to be discussed with Brother Anselm this afternoon: Brother Anselm, the strong young friend and ally. Jasper continued on his way through the torn woodland, between Durraghglass and the monastery lands, to the point from which he saw the monastery tractor waiting – a clean and opulent object, redolent of good care and good money. On this afternoon there was to be no wavering, no saving temporisation and postponement; no delays; no sidestepping of issues. In a torrid state of determination, foreign to his entire nature, Jasper advanced; his walk, sure and unalterable as his melodious voice, did not betray the tumult within.
A monk – a strong, middle-aged, ugly monk – got off the tractor, and walked down the road to meet him. His habit, although the same, had none of the grace and flow of Brother Anselm’s; it looked tougher, shorter, more workmanlike. His approach was determined, and, in some way, authoritative – as though he had an unwelcome message to deliver. If it was difficult, he was the man for the job.
As Jasper stopped and waited easily (the ex-landlord, and gentleman at ease on his own property) a dreadful supposition assailed him; a remark of Leda’s blew through his mind again, and with it came the memory of a sour and silly riposte of his own, made to May, on the subject of a handsome – no, a “pretty” – young monk. Linking the two, a wild possibility became credible.
“Good afternoon, Brother.”
“Good evening, Mr Swift.” The monk’s bulk in his habit seemed to fill the little roadway with menace. He was turning over in his mind what he had to say.
“Rather a wonderful afternoon.” Jasper spoke to bridge the gap of silence.
“Beautiful, thank God,” the monk agreed. Then, accepting the conversational opening, he went on: “I think, Mr Swift, you were expecting Brother Anselm. You meet frequently, I understand.”
“As our lands touch, it would be rather hard to avoid meeting quite often – and,” Jasper went on hardily, “I very much hoped to see him today. We had urgent business to discuss.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr Swift, discussions are an impossibility. The Brother is in heavy trouble for transgressing the Rules of our Order. The Abbot has him back in Silence.”
A horrified disbelief, beyond any discreet evasion, became for Jasper a reality to contend with. Present and future dreams expired into nullity; gone as utterly as the dream at waking goes. “Oh, I am sorry,” was all he could find to say; perhaps it was appropriate to his feelings.
“It may seem a small thing to you,” the old monk was eyeing Jasper’s load of garden tools, “but it’s the rule. It’s Obedience.”
“Well,” Jasper hesitated, “we only talked about it.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr Swift, there was a lot more than talk to it.”
“Brother Anselm certainly brought me several loads of hurdles for my wind-breaks.”
“Never mind the hurdles. Hurdles are neither here nor there in the case. This is a serious thing. Did you, or did you not, give Brother Anselm a ham sandwich? Or any other class of a sandwich?”
What next? Jasper wondered. What was coming next? “Of course, I did.” He felt sandwiches were a long way from any nasty implication Leda had contrived to convey to the Lord Abbot. “The boy looked desperately cold, and hungry too, working all day on the mountain. What is more,” he continued, with an artist’s defiance for his oeuvre, “my sandwiches are the proper sort. I hope he enjoyed them. I think he did. He should have.”
“The Lord Abbot saw no harm in a sandwich – ham or any other kind of a sandwich.” The monk paused portentously, a stern, habited figure, stolid in disapproval, unafraid to speak, Sin his subject matter. “The Rule does not forbid the acceptance of a cup of tea, or a sandwich itself, provided the little refreshment is outside of the monastery. But, to bring it back with you, in among the Brotherhood, and to eat it, solitary in your cell – that is the sin of disobedience to the Rule of the Order. And the Abbot is strict on that one; oh, very strict indeed.”
Jasper seldom – almost never – laughed, but the waves of pleased relief that swept through him on the tides of so perverse an absurdity was such that its suppression brought a flow of tears to his eyes, both the blind and the seeing. Brother Declan arrested his lecture on the niceties of disobedience as Jasper mopped his eyes. When he saw the black patch shifted, the better to stem the rivulets coursing down Jasper’s cheek he averted his eyes, politeness forbidding comment, and gave all his attention to Jasper’s armoury of gardening weapons. Then, with beautiful manners, he prolonged the conversation by a change of subject.
“We hear up at the monastery that you’re a great gardener, Mr Swift.”
“Oh, I think I’m more of an old weeding woman,” no sooner spoken than Jasper hoped his deprecatory description was not going to be misunderstood.
“Ah, there’s a lot more than that to a horticulturist.” The old monk’s eyes lit. “Brother Anselm was telling me you have a very rare subject well established down there. And from his account I can only think it should be Hoheria populnea. And if you can flower that – it should only put you in mind of the Bride of God. Now I always considered Hoheria populnea as an exotic. How do you winter it, at all?”
What was this? What new road had been opened – and by Leda’s treacherous mischief – for the hopes she had vilified to follow? Would the dream shared with Brother Anselm, an ardent but limited horticulturist, be near now to practical solution? The scheme they had discussed was dependent on the sale of the last lands of Durraghglass at a low price to be agreed as exchange for perpetual labour in his groves. In the still undrafted agreement shelters were to be planted – drear conifers, of course, but supplemented by screens of ash, hazel, alder, oak – all to be cherished into maturity. And in this haven from mountain winds the right sites should be prepared for delicate subjects, their individual likings in soils imported from no matter what distances. Below the groves, the river bank and its boggy margins were to be planted with every rarity found in Waterers’ Catalogue, suitable to the situation. Here groupings of dogwood and golden willow would shelter the dammed pools on which water-lilies and swans might float together. Only the harsh problem of Baby June’s heartbreak had come between Jasper and the blissful consummation of his designs. Today that problem had gone a long way towards solving itself, for, lacking Christy Lucey, how could June contend with the work? A successor might be found for the farm labour, but what postulant could there be for the role of that centaur she had trained and made? It was strange that Christy’s defection was most likely due to Leda, and yesterday’s desertion of their cake making for the sake of more fun with Alys: again, the dancing class; but not again the gloved hands clasped beneath the carriage rug.
Pocketing his handkerchief and picking up his tools, Jasper felt that this new-comer from the monastery might prove to be a far more stable agent than Brother Anselm. “If we aren’t breaking any rule,” he said with real hesitancy, “may I show you what I’ve tried to do? All a miserable wilderness, of course. But some of my plantings may amuse you.”
In the hour that followed Jasper found his perfect companion. Brother Declan was an ardent and knowledgeable horticulturist. Before entering the religious life he had worked in the Botanical Gardens at Glasnevin, and he had once refused an offer to go to Kew; “Now, when it’s all only in the mind,” he said, “it can’t get in the way of your religion.”
“What about the gardens at the monastery?” Jasper asked. “You ought to propagate unusual herbs. They ought to make liqueurs – something like that.”
“Not a hope of that, son. I suppose I’ld be too happy to be at it. I’ll only have to offer it up,” he said in his most practical voice; then he stooped down over a sickish camellia to instruct Jasper on its treatment and revival.
Mentally hand in hand and seeing eye to eye, they walked together. The sun shone through the glades they envisaged, they changed the nature of the soil for the species they discussed; they might have been talking about women, their ardour was so restrained.
Then, the rain came, and the wind changed, whipping through Jasper’s meagre belts of trees. They sheltered together in the hooded cab of the tractor and it was while Brother Declan was eating the ham sandwich that Jasper (June’s heartbreak properly isolated) put his proposition about the sale of the land.
Brother Declan screwed up the foil that had wrapped the sandwich into a neat ball, and aimed it out into the rain. He screwed up his face too, even his hoodless tonsure wrinkled as he shook his head. “With the depression and the inflation the money isn’t in it. The Brotherhood haven’t it to give,” he said.
“Brother Anselm was rather hopeful.” Jasper looked sadly down between his thin knees.
“That’s the way with the young,” Brother Declan sounded like a nannie closing the book at the end of a bedtime story. He looked out into the blinding rain and back to Jasper. “It’s not to say,” he went on, “there’s not a middle way in everything. That narrow strip, now, between us and you – all rushes and ragweed – if we had that it would be like a little convenience getting stock back to the road; we have two gates and around the world to go the way we are situated presently.”
“What sort of financial arrangement would you suggest?” His heart beating as at first love, Jasper seemed only mildly interested.
“Oh, finance! If that has to come into it, we’re done. … I was just thinking we might come to some little arrangement. … if the monastery supplied you with a bit of labour, yourself and myself could direct it.” His face expanded, almost illuminating the rain-beaten interior of the cab. “We’ld make a lovely job of it.” He waited.
“Well, I’m not saying yes and I’m not saying no. I’m saying, well, but, perhaps. …” Jasper could only teeter on the edge of accepting what he wanted most in life.
“Take your time,” the monk said patiently. “I’ll be here again on Thursday. You can let me know then if I’m to put the notion to the Lord Abbot.”
Jasper got out of the tractor cab. He stood in the rain like a heron at the water’s edge, a heron about to miss its fish. Just before Brother Declan started up his engine he opened the door and pushed his head in, past the tall window. “Tell him I like the idea very much. Tell him tonight,” he said. He shut the door before Brother Declan could answer, then opened it again to ask: “Do you see the journal of the Royal Horticultural? I can let you have my back numbers.”
“God bless you,” Brother Declan said sincerely. He let in the clutch and the tractor roared away to its proper labours.
Standing alone on the stony roadside, Jasper looked through the falling rain into the possibilities open to him now. Without the sacrifice of Baby June, the unsatisfied appetites of his life were at last to be gratified. His struggles against rabid Nature, battles so often lost to the meshed briars and nettles that overtook his clearings, would be won now with the gift of obedient, monkish labour. With the power that this promised him he could accomplish his vision; slice away the mountain winds; create the garden he had seen for so long as far beyond any horizon or reality. Possessed by his delight, Jasper experienced, for the moment, some of the emotion he could have known, perhaps, with an undemanding bride, had love not been so aborted in him when he was young. Now, his resigned, dispirited face was lighted in a brief glory of acceptance. His happiness was now, and for the future years when the stored love of half a life-time should find its true employment. Rain on his face, graceful coat clinging, indifferent to discomfort, Jasper was in love; age forgotten, no age he; overdraft whistled away; over his shoulder went every care.
Jasper was not one to thank God, or any lesser power, for this benificence. Sourly he agreed with himself that the break had come through horrid Leda. However she had done it, she had alerted the busy Abbot’s worst and most reluctant suspicions. Or, Jasper’s inmost vanity suggested, it was the inspired ham sandwich, proffered in ignorance, that had been the catalyst for such a providence. The thought of Brother Anselm, back in Silence, affected him not at all: the silly fellow had been, in any case, rather an eager bore. Beyond his own exhilaration – which he soon tied grimly into place: never exaggerate – was the lightening of that tiresome sense of contrition towards Baby June which would have loomed had the sale of the land gone through, as he had intended. Obviously, as he had seen so lately, she was still able for a difficult horse; and, perhaps, Jasper thought, a holy brother on a tractor would be a valuable substitute for that spoilt Beauty Boy, Christy Lucey.
Soaking wet, but light-hearted, he turned back towards the kitchen, going with him the happy thought of the strong hands so soon to be at work on his briars and thickets. After a quick inspection of a group of gold mottled eleagnus, to check on May’s depredations (from the back, as usual she had cut some promising young growth) Jasper’s mood changed to its ordinary state of vengefulness. “I’ll put the Monk Pack on to her,” he promised himself. The idea of a new tease was always satisfactory and added to the blessed sense of a return to the usual. This was especially so after that preposterous interlude when he had seen himself through Leda’s eyes that could not see. A delicious, villainous moment was thankfully over. It had been a brief entertainment, ridiculously exciting – for vanity, he owned, outlives all the handicaps of the ageing. Although the climax to the charade had been monumentally embarrassing, Jasper, slashing at young nettles, felt that he had escaped something worse than death with decorum and tactfulness.
He could not feel the same about that dreadful breakfast scene with its illicit exposures of each to each. He retreated now from any understanding of his sisters other than the way in which he had always known them. He had no wish to be made an intimate of their secret behaviours. He would put all that aside, as he trusted (but doubted) that they would put aside Leda’s suggestion of his possible perversity. Not that he cared; such fancies had never been one of his worries. “I just wish I was more of a Human Being,” he sighed, but comfortably and with no regrets. A crooked gratitude was what he felt for Leda now. Perhaps a faint sympathy as well, because she had deaf, devoted April for ever by her side.
Back on the road and nearer to the gates of Durraghglass, he heard the sounds of a horse coming towards him – sounds sharp in the distance, harsh and hollow as they came closer: Baby June on her way home. He had news for her, but he would not hurry himself in its telling; no further delays in the rain. He felt very kindly towards Baby June since he had been spared the acceptance of those drastic ideas for change favoured by May. In his present euphoria he could put aside the exigencies of the situation and allow life to pursue its accustomed downhill course. He was ready to give a nod and a smile, perhaps a little greeting when Baby June should overtake him. He turned to make his pleasant little gesture as horse and rider came round a bend in the road behind him. But his gesture checked and failed in his surprise when he saw that the rider was not Baby June, but a wild red-haired tinker boy who held his reins as if he drove an ass in a cart, looped his long legs inwards far below June’s short leathers, changed his ash-plant stick from right to left hand to smack it down along the horse’s ribs as he turned him, with a wild shout, from the gates to his stableyard, and sent him back the way he had come, crying out to Jasper, as he hit the horse twice more: “There’s a woman dead below – hurry on till you see her. Hurry, or you’ll be late.”
Like a bad fairy with a fatal message the boy could have come from the blackened heather and grey mountain stones, where the gold of the gorse was sodden back into its heart. Dread and annoyance possessing him equally, Jasper dropped his tools and ran, his long spider’s legs weaving, his breath catching. “How unpleasant, how tiresome,” was how he phrased the fear that shook him through at the idea of life at Durraghglass without Baby June.
Only an imitation of her particular sense
of order gave May the resolution necessary to set her afternoon in order. Her true sense of loyalty to her own art-and-crafty skills and to the expectant flower Guild ladies moved her delicate testing of the newly assembled piece of porcelain. Would it, or would it not endure transport? Quite a question. Packed by her, she decided “Yes”. It would be a pity if her recreative genius was not seen at its finest moment. After the return of the candlestick to Alys, any further exhibition would be out of the question. It never occurred to May that to smash the piece to irreparable atoms would be a fitting revenge for Alys’ disloyalty and cruel disparagement of herself to Leda. Small, beautiful objects were, to May, far more important than the breakage of her own self-respect and confidence – established with so much discipline and difficulty.
She put the materials for her afternoon’s lecture together with a cold lack of interest, a sense of duty quite unlike the bustling certainty in which she usually made such preparations. Her latest tweed picture – cottage with geese and chickens – a little masterpiece of its kind, evoked in her no pleasant anticipation of the moment when she would display it before the ravished eyes of her disciples. Lessening every accustomed importance that came to mind were Leda’s sneering words and the all too recognisable quotations from Alys. She knew that, together, they had laughed at her, insulting the hand she hated and cherished, spreading the fungus of their persecution into the roots of her life – and why? She could see no reason for it. They had undone her trust in the country women and in the flower ladies, whose appreciation and admiration had stayed her self-confidence for so long against any tease or gibe from Jasper, any idiocy of June’s or April’s, holding her above the rot she could not remedy at Durraghglass. Coldest of all these realities – for, indeed they were factual miseries to her – was the unacceptable impact of unspoken pity and overdone politeness with which the air was loaded. June’s awkward gentleness was hard enough to take; but, when she thought of the wine Jasper had produced (so unnecessarily) for luncheon, her resentment, and her pain, were absolute.