by Molly Keane
“Shut the door, if you please, sir. My son will choke me if one of them curs gets at his little bitch, Fairy, he calls her. Excuse me,” she pushed by him to the door. “Begone! Begone!” she screamed, leaning out menacingly.
“How do you do?” Jasper said, taking off his cap, when at last she turned to him.
“Come on in till you see her,” the change of voice from a tone of rage to quiet solemnity held its own presage for him. “I have her in on the divan,” the old woman pointed towards a further partition.
Infinitely embarrassed and infinitely sad at the picture he foresaw, Jasper went towards the more exclusive apartment. It was nice of them to have put her out of the sight of curious eyes.
Baby June was sitting up on a padded bench that could transform itself into a divan bed, drinking tea out of a china cup.
“Hullo, Jasper,” she said, “what a fool I was to part; I’m sorry.”
An immense surge of gratitude stilled the air and hovered for a moment in and over Jasper, until relieved by annoyance. “My dear girl,” he said, “how silly can you get?”
“It was only the shock quenched her out,” the old woman took over the conversation. “And don’t worry yourself at all. My little boy have the horse re-captured, he’s sorting him up, now. You’ld want a good jockey for a start, and the Holy All about it is the lady’s past that class of work. It’s the age knocks you. What she’ld want is a quiet little animal could travel the bogs – a donkey is light, you know. We have a Spanish breed, they came from Spain, they have a long mane like a horse. Would you buy a little donkey, my lady? Take a cup of tea, sir. Take a little cup, dear, it’s nice tea. Take a seat, sir. Forget about the horse, now. Don’t think about him at all. My little fellow will take the short way back across the mountain and he’ll have the horse civilised. I’m bloody sure he will. He can charm warts and he can stop blood too. His uncle, God rest his soul, was able to stop the flow of blood even if it was only a goat itself was bleeding. …”
Only the subdued, tamed sounds of a horse, walking quietly, interrupted her flow of tea-time talk. It happened to be just the sort of conversation Jasper approved, leaving no gap for answers. Now he could get to his feet and ask June how she felt about getting home.
“I’m going great,” she said, “only a bit shook, that was all I was. I’m great now, after the tea. I’ll ride the bastard back.” She got up and took the old woman’s hand.
“And you’ll take a look at the little ass in the morning.” Careless and polite as any great hostess she followed them out with easy goodbyes, before shouting abuse at the craving dogs and shutting her door.
Outside the warm gypsy cave there was a late shudder in the evening. The boy dismounted and waited, the reins turned over the horse’s head, expectant of a good reward.
“And how did you like your ride?” June asked him, while Jasper searched for his note-case.
“Great out, m’lady, that’s the lad watches his chance to fire you. Head him for home and he’s gone into the air with buck, lep and kick.”
The innocent realism of the words recalled, for Jasper, the despair and agonies of nerves which had once been his own cruel affliction and alerted him now to the reason for June’s delay; for the crumpling of her little face when she turned the Wild Man’s reins back over his head; when he heard the shake in her voice as she said: “Catch my foot, boy,” and held out a leg to be thrown up. Some long abandoned collusion with the days before she had shot and wounded him told Jasper how distant was the June of this evening, even of this afternoon, when he had watched as she set out, unchanged, as he thought, by her years, to the Baby June of long ago.
“Stop a minute, Baby,” he said, catching at the sleeve of her muddy Husky. “Let’s just see how useful this boy is.”
June put her foot back on the ground. Gratitude beamed, an aura round her stout little body, while she tossed the boy up, light as a feather, into the saddle. “Take him easy, now. Walk on. Jog on. That’ll do.” After ten minutes she turned a radiant look of expectancy to Jasper. “Well, what d’you think?” he asked her.
“He does it like an Indian, a Red Indian, what they call a Brave.” June had the illiterate’s long memory for books read aloud to her in childhood. Books such as Tales of the Blackfoot Indians. “I’ld say he’ll do. I’ld say we should chance him.” She said no more. In silence she waited for Jasper’s answer, afraid to hope for a future when a new companion would wait for her in the mornings, do her bidding, and accept her kindness through the length of the day.
“I’m no judge,” he said doubtfully. “You decide.”
“Come over here, child,” June called to the boy who waited in careless unity with his horse at a little distance from them. “Can you milk a cow?” she asked.
“I can. Or a goat. Or a donkey mare, itself.”
“Ride on up to the big house, so,” she said, “and we’ll have a talk. And mind you don’t bring that horse in sweating.”
Was June fit to walk even the short way home? Jasper, feeling that he had already overstepped discretion, and commonsense too, by his implicit agreement in the employment of a flighty young tinker, was not in the mood to burden himself with any further worry or decision. But it was a latent care for the chubby figure, trudging off so urgently in pursuit of horse and rider, that made him stand firmly in the path of the car he recognised at once as the Durraghglass Renault 4.
“Jasper,” May leaned her cross little face out of the window, “how typical! I could have killed you. I suppose you want a lift. Get in. Get in. That door’s locked. Don’t touch it. Please, leave it to me.”
June out of sight, Jasper’s always solicitous feelings for his own comforts urged him to get into the car and drive, rather than walk, back to home and tea. As he opened the unlocked door, Gripper, after an afternoon of boredom too long for his patience, shot out past him and, ignoring May’s cries, scurried across the road to join the pack of longing dogs round the caravan wheels. As one, they turned on this fresh postulant for Fairy’s favours. The frightening turmoil of a genuine dogfight (so different from the morning’s little fracas) tearing at his ears, Jasper’s nerve failed him utterly. Unashamed, he leapt into the car, slammed the door, and shut the window. As quickly, May was out, and across the road, embroiled at once and dangerously in the heart of the matter. She flung dogs, ravening for blood or sex, or both, off her darling, and was in the proud act of unclenching Gripper’s teeth from the neck of the fiercest combatant, when the old tinker lady, so lately the polite hostess, leaned down from her eyrie. “Bring him in, lady, bring him in,” she called, “bring the little fellow in before they choke him, God bless him. He’s the very article my son would pick for Fairy.”
“Have you got some clean water?” May asked.
“Spring water, my lady, I wouldn’t use any other.”
It was on Gripper’s account, and not for her own bleeding hand that May climbed the steps leading to the squalor that she expected and deplored. As the door shut behind her, she was surprised to find herself in a smugglers’ cave of old lamps – their bowls ruby glass and clear glass, milk glass, pink and blue and white glass; some of the lamps were still mounted on their brass pedestals; legless bowls, flowered and plain, sat, sitting ducks, waiting for her skills. May swallowed a gasp of wonder and delight at the prospect of such an exchange and mart at her gate. Near to dreaming, she considered how, one by one, these peerless objects might be bought, re-conditioned and re-sold, by her to Ulick. So absorbed she was, that it was only when she heard a magnificent ribald shout of laughter and saw toothless jaws agape to laugh again, that she realised a mating was being consummated, happily, and beyond interruption in the back of the caravan. The old woman stared engrossed in its contemplation, a bucket of water swinging and slopping unnoticed from her hand. “And did you ever see a donkey’s wedding, lady?” she asked, ready with a reprise of the tea-time conversation.
May hesitated; if tolerance of Nature’s horrid ways was the way
to business, that way must be kept open. “No. Actually, no,” she said, “but what I’m really interested in is your collection of oil lamps … Now this one, with the cracked base, would you let me have it in exchange for –?” She indicated the continued nuptials.
“You wouldn’t sooner take a little pup, lady? My son bought those lamps very dear. He travelled every little house when the people had them thrown out, for the electricity. He has the lot priced. Seven pounds for the blue.”
“Dear at the price,” May turned away smiling and shaking her head. She foresaw that the bargaining would be long and enjoyable.
Jasper, crunching up his long, cold legs in the inadequate spaces of the car, slid back his window in response to May’s imperative tapping. Considering all that had come to light that morning, “saucy” seemed to him the best description of her present manners.
“Well?” His tone conveyed a disinterested rebuke, tinged by present martyrdom. “Are we ever going home?”
“Afraid you’ll have to walk it,” May smiled brilliantly, then snapped her smile shut. “I’ve got some business to do in there. It may take a little time.”
“Business with the tinkers? Your favourites?”
“They’ve got some quite pretty things. Stolen property, obviously.”
Jasper stared at her. How, after Leda’s revelations, could she pronounce the word “stolen” in a way suggesting that it was only tinkers who stole? When, in the miseries of breakfast-time, such meagre sympathies as he had to spare went out to her violated privacies, how could he have foreseen this speedy resurrection of all her assured perkiness of manner? It was at this point that a nasty misgiving struck him – the remembrance of the mysterious collection of coloured glass eyes, big and small, all arranged provocatively and accessibly along the shelves in the caravan. How to play this safe? How to avoid a scandal with the tinkers?
“You’ll want some money?” he said, his hand going towards his note-case. “Oh dear. How much?”
“Thank you, Jasper. I’m full of money. Actually, I landed rather a paying job in the Antique World, today.”
“Not with Ulick? You can’t have. What about the playing fields of Eton?”
“Someone has to make up for April’s departure. Right? So there it is. Anything’s better than the bread-line. By the way, there’s a bottle of wine in my basket – quite a good year. Take it back and warm it for dinner, would you? I may be some time.”
He saw her bend her head into the weather and light a cigarette expertly, before she turned to walk back across the road, heels down, toes out, in her natural and determined style. As he watched her disappear (without knocking) through the door of the caravan, he reached into the back of the car and felt for the bottle in the basket. When he looked at its label, the vintage year surprised him pleasantly. He wondered, as he walked home through the chillier evening, whether it would be worth the trouble of transferring its contents for his own future enjoyment and substituting a lesser wine. Despite May’s silly patter on the subject, neither she nor June had any sort of discriminating palate. Perhaps the search for the silver funnel, through which butlers used to fill decanters with the best of clarets, would be too arduous and time consuming a task for him. He put the idea aside as he reached his derelict gates and empty gate-lodge.
When, as he walked down the drive, he saw the tinker boy, a foxy shadow, slip out of the dark Portugal laurels, he accepted the fact of another Christy Lucey in the failing years of Durraghglass. Another boy, pretty and useless, and always needing one of June’s stealthy sandwiches, was what he envisaged; a ghastly mistake, allowing June to engage him. However, nothing like a new worry to keep the mind off worse things to come.
Worries put aside, permitted, or ignored, Jasper’s mind went back to that happy hour – previous to the shock and anxiety he had experienced over June’s tiresome little accident – that he had spent in Brother Declan’s company: an hour pervaded by garden visions far more ambitious than any of his previous unattainable dreams. Now, as he walked back to his kitchen, underneath the cold bare trees, doubt, as usual, took him over. The prospects, discussed in that euphoric hour with Brother Declan, were so vast as to be nearly unacceptable. Jasper sighed, sniffed disparagingly, and trusted that, given more time, he would grown accustomed to the idea. He hoped Brother Declan – perhaps rather a talkative fellow – would not urge him on too fast. There was no hurry. Autumn plantings were best. As he neared the house, he was only glad to think that life at Durraghglass, lately so intemperate, could now return to its accustomed importances, their establishment unshaken by Leda’s appallingly embarrassing behaviour.
June and Christy Lucey were clenched in argument outside the closed door of the Wild Man’s box. Christy was putting undue emphasis on his virtuous return to employment. “I have Sweetheart fed, and my hens in, and my cow milked, and I would think, Miss Baby, if you’ll excuse me, you should know more than allow such a little tinker near my horse.” His voice rose with emotion.
Vengeful as any victim of a betrayal, June answered him. “Your horse? Thank you very much. Whose horse was he when you walked off this morning? To your indoor toilet, and your electric light, and your ride in Dublin Show?”
In the relentless memory of a wrong done, June was as deeply unforgiving as her peasant ancestress, the regretted dairy-maid. Her lack of education left her without any false leanings towards diplomacy or convenience. How often, when she was shielding Christy’s frequent failures from duty in exchange for his value to her as a rough-rider, an able substitute for her own lost courage, had she indulged the pretensions to a religious discipline with which he excused his early departures and late arrivals. And today, in his worthless betrayal and light departure he had not only justified May’s endless spyings and steely criticisms, but, without a thought, he had left June to chill and sicken in a bitter wind of fear.
Now, when deliverance from fear and new hopes had come to her, brought by such another postulant as Christy had once been, he was back to reclaim his position as lightly and confidently as he had whistled away to brighter prospects in the morning. He was ready, too, with a shamelessly pathetic answer.
“And how should I know,” he asked her, “the Brigadier would throw me out? After all, the lady promised my mother; and my girl-friend in a condition I don’t like to mention.”
“Christy – you never! What about your religion?” June’s voice was almost respectful in its incredulity.
“When an accident like that could happen to me,” Christy spoke with real distress, “it could happen to the Lord Abbot himself.”
“It’s no good putting such things on the Lord Abbot,” June said with literal conclusiveness, “and my new little boy has done his horse down quite nicely, before he went.” She stretched up her child’s height to peer over the half door of the box. “And he’s engaged now for the job you threw up when you pedalled away this morning.”
“Pulling favourites at Flapper meetings and riding donkeys on the strand is all he knows,” Christy said with angry jealousy.
“I’ll teach him,” June answered with quiet certainty, “the same way I taught yourself. So now, goodbye.”
“My mother’ll only kill me,” Christy stooped miserably over his bicycle.
“Watch yourself, your girl friend might be cross, too.” June gave the caution seriously.
Looking round him at the shelter of the stableyard, Christy made his last appeal: “Miss Baby,” he said, “I was never one to let you down.”
“Oh no, never-ever,” June laughed nastily, “and you can pedal off to her ladyship in the morning, for you’re not wanted here.” Pain and temper were joined in her stubborn reply.
“Ah, Miss Baby, you’ll say a little word for me to the Brigadier,” Christy persisted, confident as always of winning his way through to her kindness. “The words he used to the Lady today when he knew I was from Durraghglass were only shocking. And” – Christy spoke with prim disapproval – “what he said to myself for
leaving you, I wouldn’t care to repeat.”
A ripple of warm feeling towards old Hippo who, through his proper sense of behaviour, had put her in power to say or to withold a word for or against Christy, melted the edge of June’s resentment; in that faint thawing she glimpsed a little of his predicament, entoiled between his mother, his pregnant girlfriend and the strictures of his religion. All considered, he could be granted … perhaps not forgiveness, but a last indulgence.
“All right, Christy,” she conceded, “I’ll slip in a word to the Brigadier.”
As she spoke the quiet, reluctant notes of a distant bell recalled and dispelled the ties between them.
“Do I hear the Angelus?” June said. Her back against the stable door, she nodded towards the archway. Christy bowed his head and crossed himself gently before he rode away towards his church and his mother.
June opened the door of the loose-box, and went inside to stand in deep straw, and appraise her horse for the hundredth time. Warmed in the thought that she need never again ride the Wild Man she made him move over in his box with a commanding admonishment, and an authoritative slap or two. She bolted the door of his stable and left the yard by its great familiar archway. When she reached the front of the house, the sour look on its darkened face did not dismay her at all. It was as she had always known it.
The dear and beautiful young nun who had shown April round the flat for two, complete with every possible convenience, and overlooking the convent garden, paused at the door. “Our last old lady, God rest her soul, was very happy here. You won’t mind the stairs, will you?”
“But I do mind,” Leda wailed, “I shan’t know my way to the loo.”
“Your own toilet is here too; you won’t even have to ring a bell and wait,” the Sister assured her.