Outside, under a cold moon, she now heard from a long way off the sound of iron hooves, the squeal of an axle or gig springs, the rattle of wheels on the avenue. Billy Winters seemed to be singing contrapuntally to a melody from Mickey Dolphin’s mouth organ.
Already her heart had begun to stumble unevenly, straightened, and now quickened to beat in a way that made her breathe deeply. She picked up the paraffin lamp, brought it down to the dining-room, lit a candle in the scullery and kitchen and went up to the long window at the turn of the staircase looking down on the yard. In the moonlight, the old labrador came out stiffly to greet the returning concert-goers.
Mickey Dolphin had began unstrapping the gig. He wheeled it into the coach house and had come back now to take the collar and britchen off Punch. Billy stood watching. She then heard him address the horse, as Mickey led him to a paddock behind the yard.
‘Above all beasts I bow to you, Lord of all.’
He then stood in the middle of the yard staring up at the moon. He continued doing this for what seemed like five minutes or longer. She could hear a corncrake in the distance and the bleat of sheep over by Brackagh. Mickey Dolphin came back to the yard. For a while they stood talking, then Mickey left for the loft bedroom over the coach house. Sound of the back-door latch, the bolt thumping into its holder, footsteps on the scullery flags, then on the pine boards of the kitchen floor.
Upstairs in her bedroom she sat on trying to read till she heard the rattle of keys in the dining-room. She closed the novel, waiting. There was a sound of the sideboard cupboard opening, the clink of glass against a bottle as Billy Winters moved towards the dining-room table. She would not have to suggest a nightcap. She stood, picked up a lamp, took a very deep breath and went downstairs and straight into the dining-room. He pointed an angry finger at her as she came in:
‘You missed it, girl, the best night ever in the town of Enniskillen; you might say the best night ever in the province of Ulster and you out here on your own with Mr Keats.’
She could not tell if he was half, three quarters or fully drunk. Certainly he was not swaying, and as he spoke the words were not obviously slurred: ‘Is there a splash of spring water?’ She went immediately to the scullery, picked up the jug spiked with bromide, and brought it back to the table where he was muttering to himself about water-rights, grist-mills, flax-mills and water-mills. ‘It’s the spring water I’m after,’ he said. As she put the jug down he said:
‘They march along the deep, and that’s where I’d keep them . . . down on the ocean floor!’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Bewley’s brew . . . judgements pending!’
He began laughing, spluttering. When this subsided she said:
‘I can make you a pot of tea.’
‘No tea, none of the brown stuff, no, I’ll stay loyal to my own pure spring water.’ He winked.
She watched him put out his hand again for the water jug. It was like watching something in a dream. She noticed a welt from a deep cut and the way the skin tensed and smoothed as he poured. As he began to talk she sat at the table watching the water. It did not discolour or cloud the whiskey. She felt her mouth go dry as he talked, half-hearing:
‘Town Hall was packed to the gills with high, middle and low gentry, the blind earl and that fella from Crom with his heiress, the American bride, and the Wrights and the Millers and the Mooreheads, and old Leslie from Glaslough in his kilt and monocle, and Hare-Foster who was always prancing round your mother . . . and your fat friend at school . . . what’s her name? . . . Pig-packer’s daughter . . .’ ‘Roisin . . . Roisin Reilly,’ Beth said.
‘The very girl . . . and two Bishops . . . ours and yours. Your wee fella Donnelly had his chain gang with him. Maguires, and liars and small squires and dodgy contractors and cattle-shippers along with the “millionaire” Micks and Chicago brogues, all there to hear our Percy . . . And because he was an hour late your wee Jimmy sang for us.’
Billy now suddenly burst into ‘Kathleen Mavoorneen’, sang a verse, glanced at Beth, and said:
‘And of course myself, William Hudson Winters without his daughter Elizabeth . . . And when Wee Jimmy was done singing and everyone was moved to embarrassment or tears, I wondered would Christ have sung arias in the back garden of Latlurcan House in Monaghan Town. Would he have travelled incognito to operas at Milan . . . or Rome, shipped home paintings from Paris? All the while caning pennies from half-starved paupers to build a brute Cathedral . . . Yes, I did wonder . . . He’ll not go to Glencolumbkille for his holidays, Wee Jimmy. One of Parnell’s cronies tried to foul things up. Percy was fit for him, and at the end we were all singing with him and clapping.’
It was clear now to Beth that he was oddly drunk. He had paused to take a mouthful of whiskey and her heart twisted now as she saw him lick his upper lip. He did not say anything, look at the glass or smell it:
Everyone stood and for that minute we were one: everyone on that second floor in the Town Hall of Enniskillen, all of us: one; you missed it, girl . . . badly.’
And because she thought he would see the beating of her heart through her blouse she made herself say:
‘Perhaps I did.’ There was a pause. As he sat looking at the whiskey in the glass, she asked, ‘Did you get talking to him afterwards, to Mr French?’
‘No, he was booked, away, out the door; no one got talking to him, but I’ll tell you one thing, he’s worth a whole gang of Parnell’s trouble-makers, bloody dividers! Percy made one of us tonight: he’s a magician!’
Beth was so transfixed as she watched him lift the glass of whiskey to his mouth again that she asked without wanting to know:
‘And did you get talking to Mr Fairbrother?’
‘Yes, I talked with Mr Fairbrother.’
Billy Winters stared so long at the table that she thought perhaps he had lost track of what he was saying. Then his gaze shifted. He looked from her forehead to her tranquil eyes, to her brown hair, to the fullness of her mouth, to the line of her neck, then back to the eyes that looked straight into his:
‘Green and orange and foul and fair, is what Mr Fairbrother seems to think of Ireland and her people. “Yes, Sir,” he said, “the bogs of Ireland are full of secrets and Christ alone knows what goes on in the bogs of Ireland.” That was mosdy what he talked about . . . secrets.’
Beth waited for him to continue. There was about his drunkenness now the sway and danger of a wounded animal as he pointed directly at her and said:
‘He knows a thing or two, the fairest of us all . . . Parnell’s philandering with O’Shea’s wife, all that. When Jimmy Donnelly knows that for certain he’ll sing solemn requiems all round . . . and farewell Parnell!’
Billy Winters took a bite from a sandwich and wrinkled up his nose:
‘By God, you fairly lashed on the mustard, girl.’
‘I know you’re partial to it, Sir.’
‘He asked about you.’
‘Who did, Sir?’
‘Mr Fairbrother . . . What, I asked him, do decent Irish girls get up to in Italy or elsewhere? It’s not smuggling guns or dynamite. It’s minding children, I said, governessing with an old family near Pompeii! . . . De Cortese. Like her mother, I said, a governess well fit to govern . . . Then what, he wanted to know, had brought you home? My increasing age, I told him . . . loyalty perhaps to the modest house of Winters, to the fair fields of Fermanagh . . . not the ties of kith and kin . . . that would be a falsehood and on your behalf I would not deceive Mr Fairbrother . . . No, no, so I said . . . hearth and home, Sir . . . be certain she’s had no truck with Mr Garibaldi or his cut-throat Corsican Fenians . . . a decent girl, I said, of pure and honest disposition, hard-working, bright, trustworthy.’ Billy stared away for a moment at the rectangle of moon on the carpet and pitchpine surround and said almost casually:
‘I didn’t mention that you’d curtsied to Mr Parnell here in the hall . . . I wouldn’t let you down that way.’
Stung to sudden anger she
said:
‘I did not curtsy to Mr Parnell!’
‘I was here, I saw you . . . you curtsied to a Protestant Wicklow landlord.’
‘I inclined my head, Sir.’
‘You curtsied! . . . I wouldn’t mind Mercy falling on her knees to kiss his hand . . . they all do that here . . . kiss your hand, cut your throat . . . all the one . . . but you, Beth . . . you’re proud as your mother . . . proud as hell, and you curtsied.’
She was glad of the unexpected and real anger which helped mask the tremor in her hands, the painful beating of her heart.
Billy went on:
‘Percy’s the man for me, Percy the peacemaker; he deserves a curtsy or two . . . Percy is my hero.’
As she watched him lift the glass of whiskey to his mouth, she heard herself say almost without thinking:
‘They often end as clowns or criminals.’
Billy looked at her.
‘Who do?’
‘Heroes, Sir.’
‘The greatest Irishman of this century or any other! A clown? . . . a criminal? . . . just who in hell do you think you are girl?’
‘You can tell me that, Sir.’
‘What do you mean?’ For half a minute she said nothing, then calmly and quiedy said:
‘You know what I mean . . . My real father.’
‘You’re being impertinent!’
‘No, Sir, pertinent.’
She could see that she had reined his glowing account of Percy French in the Town Hall to a sudden jolting halt:
‘A simple question begs a simple answer.’
‘You ask that tonight above all nights!’
He blinked, put down the whiskey glass, and looked at her.
Silence but for the ticking of the hall-clock. Finally Billy muttered:
‘Hawk-proud and wren-poor . . . the dodgy daughter of a dodgy horseman!’ He then looked at Beth and said carefully:
‘Twenty-five years ago I made a solemn covenant with the Roman Catholic Church that all children born to us would be of that faith . . . a small matter I thought . . . I’d no faith much to lose, I’ll grant you I was no saint . . . and gold can put a halo on the devil . . . but to marry as she did, knowing what she knew . . . no giddy mishap or drunken blunder . . . no, no . . . coldly, deliberately . . . monstrously . . . duped me, and I loved her! . . . my Jezebel ripped by a mad bull . . . I loved her.’
He began to tremble, covered his face with both hands, giving great inward gulps. As the trembling increased, his hands gouged into his face. There was no further sound. When she could see the tears coming through his fingers, the effect was so grotesque, so unexpected that she found tears coming down her own immobile cheeks. As she put out her hand to touch his arm, he uncovered his face and shouted suddenly:
‘A brazen, bare-faced bitch! You ask now and I did then . . . asked and asked and asked till she screamed up in my face that she didn’t know . . . It could, she screamed, be “One of two” . . . That she loved neither, “a bit of bad luck” . . . The Corrys . . . father and son deflowered and dowered, bull calf and Scrub Island . . . I gave you nothing but your name . . . Elizabeth . . . that much I was allowed.’
He was shaking a little. As he lifted the glass some of it splashed on the table, ‘“One of two; a bit of bad luck,” that’s your answer.’ Beth got up went to the scullery where she stood wringing out a cloth at the sink till she heard Billy’s voice coming from the dining-room:
‘Come in here, Beth: sit by me, girl, I’m not out to hurt, to pass on any cup of sorrow, bowl of poison, not a thimbleful of tears would I wish on you child for all your days . . . how you came into the world is not your doing . . . truth is you’re all I care about in the world now.’
She knew from other nights that it was simpler to pretend to go along with him. She returned to the dining-room. After a staring silence he put his hand on her shoulder and said:
‘My crime, girl, is I reared you and loved you overmuch; the best of men can make the worst of blunders and be heart-sorry . . . and the best of women . . . I suppose.’
Unpredictably he stood suddenly, knocking over a chair. He glanced at her and said:
‘I’ll tell you more,’ he paused, then said: ‘No, I’ve told enough . . . you tell me now.’
‘Tell, Sir?’
‘Yes: tell!’
Silence, till Billy Winters asked:
‘Nothing?’
‘What is there to tell, Sir, except you must be very tired . . . You should be in your bed!’
He finished the glass of whiskey, put it down on the table and moved towards the door. She moved back to let him pass, listening with all her body as she heard him stumble. She counted up to twenty, waiting for him to move. Silence. She then went to the dining-room doorway. He was sitting on the second step of the staircase staring at the pine boards of the hall floor. He did not look up. She did not speak, was startled when he did:
‘What are you staring at?’
‘I heard you stumble, Sir.’
‘Has the old codger broken his back, his skull, his neck.’
He pressed his head against the banister rails and muttered:
‘Are you honest, girl? Would you deceive me?’
‘How could I, Sir.’
‘You tell me . . . Can you, will you, should you, ought you? Could you pretend I’m your confessor? Or are you loyal to Rome like your mother?’
‘Rome is as much to me, Sir, as your bowler hat is to you.’
‘And that’s what?’
‘Dressing up to keep others down.’
Billy snuffed out a laugh as he said:
‘By God, you’re crafty: you have the answers.’
‘Do I, Sir?’
‘Your mother’s daughter; that’s for certain!’
He glanced at her again and levered himself to his feet. She watched him as he used the banisters to pull himself up, step by step, to the upper landing where he turned and said:
‘You’ll lock up, girl?’
‘Of course I will, Sir . . . Good night!’
For a moment he stood pointing down at her about to say something, changed his mind and crossed the landing without mishap or stumble to his bedroom. For five minutes she stood in the doorway of the lower hall listening. She could tell from the creak of certain boards that he was either in bed or sitting on his bed. She went back into the dining-room, picked up the fallen chair, placed it at the table and sat. The carriage-clock on the mantelpiece told her it was a quarter to one. No light for at least four hours.
At one o’clock, she picked up a paraffin lamp and went up to Billy Winters’ bedroom. He was lying sideways across the bed, one arm tucked awkwardly under his body, one booted foot cocked out, the other on the bed. She loosened his collar, undid his laces, pulled off his boots, turned him on his side and put a pillow under his head.
During this she was watching the gold chain with the keys lock-snapped onto a specially tailored leather loop above his left-hand pocket. Twice she tried to undo the lock-snap. It was too tight, her fingers fumbling at the patent safety catch. She crossed to her bedroom, returned with scissors, cut the leather loop and pulled the chain slowly from the pocket till the bunch of keys appeared on Billy Winters’ hip. Her hands closed round them. She put them in her skirt pocket, covered him with an eiderdown, crossed to her bedroom for the empty case under her bed and went down to the dining-room.
She placed the lamp on the floor and knelt, going through the keys, her hands trembling. The key of the panel door was simple to guess. It opened easily, then the steel door sliding sideways, then the double-sided brass key and the safe swung open silently. She pulled out the drawer containing the gold. She began filling handfuls of gold coins into stockings, knotting each stocking at the top and placing it in the case. In less than half an hour, she had emptied the steel drawer. She paused once as Billy groaned upstairs. When she had snapped the case closed, she began to look through other shelves and boxes in the safe: bric-à-brac, personal det
ails and possessions of generations, a request from Henry Grattan for money, the thank-you letter from Parnell, deeds of transfer, bundles of diaries, rent books, agreements, share certificates of a South African diamond mine.
In a small rosewood box, she found a wedding ring, a lady’s pocket-watch and an envelope containing two faded photographs of her mother and Billy. One was taken in a studio: both standing looking directly at the camera. The other was taken outside, with her mother seated, her hair tied up, and Billy standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Billy was smiling; her mother looked ghostly. In another envelope, she saw WILL: COPY. It was dated July 1880. She opened it and read. Through the fustian language it was clear that she, Beth Winters, if she married, must marry a man of the Protestant faith. Failing that, all land, monies and shares would remain in trust. If she proved childless, the entire estate would pass to the next of kin. There then followed a list of names of people that she had scarcely ever heard of, most of them from County Tyrone. She took out the three-cornered beaver cap, placed the will inside it and heard herself say:
‘If I’m a thief, you’re a cheat, Sir! It must be bred in both of us.’
She brought the case of gold to the scullery, went upstairs, collected her other case from under the bed and brought it near the back door. It would be three hours before light. She lay down, very wide awake, on the long upright couch between the two windows in the kitchen. She closed her eyes, certain she would not sleep. She could try to rest and maybe the painful gnawing at her heart would ease, because all the time something kept saying to her: I can stop this now, I can put it back, lock the safe, return the keys and leave tomorrow . . . without the gold.
Soon, she thought, light would come flooding into the yard and kitchen of Clonoula, into the dirt streets and gardens, the towns and villages and town lands of Fermanagh, into the fields, the watery acres of Lough Erne flowing onwards to the Atlantic where they would sail away to a new world. And she would never again hear Billy’s drunken voice singing ‘Love thee dearest, love thee’. And as she tried to block off the sound of his voice she saw the red-headed dwarf in the wattle house, then he was sitting high in the swing tree pointing down and chanting and shrieking ‘Jezebel, Jezebel, Jezebel’. It was her mother on the swing. As she fell to the ground, a pack of hounds attacked, pulling and tearing and ripping. Then the dwarf was laughing and throwing gold coins into the briars and nettles of the secret garden, and she was sitting up awake, frightened, her heart thumping. She looked at the clock. She had been asleep scarcely five minutes. She got up again. Sleep was more unnerving than staying awake. She went out to the hall and stood listening to the hollow ticking of the clock and, from the open door of the upper landing, the steady rhythm of Billy Winters’ breathing.
Death and Nightingales Page 14