Darcy Dancer vaulting over a vast fallen beech, uprooted and lying across the old boathouse path. Mushrooms and fungus sprouting on the decaying bark. Pushing further through the overgrown bramble. What an awful mistake, how could she ever find her way here. Mossy ground soft and muddy underfoot. Boathouse door open. Hanging askew on its hinges. Scurry of a rat. The old boat my grandfather fished from, the sides broken and rotted through and half sunk in the water. Oars still in the oarlocks. And go out of this darkness, creaking up this stair. To where in this small room above, other trysts and other rendezvous must have been kept.
Darcy Dancer standing. A shiver. The mirror cracked on the wicker table on the landing. The door ajar. Catch my breath back into my lungs. Push open the door. There. O god. Empty. Empty. Just as I thought. I’ve come late. And she’s not come at all.
Darcy Dancer stepping into the room. Crossing to the bow front leaded window. The little piles of wood worm dust on the floor. The big sill I used to climb and lay upon as a child and watched out on the summer water. To the buzzing of bees and whines of flies. Memorized my first poem here. That Mr Arland bid me read for its celebration of lyric rural Irish beauty. All about the nobility of the nettle, the thistle and the dock. All weeds as it happens. But I suppose you would, if you were a hard put peasant without an Ardagh Chalice you found ploughing in the field or a rusty old tin to piss in, even compose a poem to ragwort.
‘Hello.’
Darcy Dancer spinning round. That soft voice. There. Seated in the wicker chair behind the door of this cobwebbed room. Under this ceiling. Under this roof. Under all these tall trees along the shore. In the darkened late afternoon rising wind. And the rattling of a shutter. And patter of rain on the tiny panes of window. She sits. Long black lashes of her moss green eyes. Nearly hidden in the shadows. The swans. Sound of their wings smacking the water. To go away. Taking their whiteness up into the sky again. Flying lonely to other lonely lakes.
‘You came.’
‘Yes. I’ve come.’
A black cloche hat on her black hair. The rough navy blue material of her skirt. Her hands folded whiter and softer looking now than when first I saw them red swollen as she carried dishes in the dining room. Thick brown woollen scarf around her neck. Her black coat buttoned tight. The alabaster silken skin of her face. A blush of red on her cheeks from the cold. A sudden chill sunshine sweeping across the lake. Comes in the window. Lights the dead leaves strewn on the floor. Brings the gleam of green back to her sombre eyes. The steam of my breath on the air. The sun goes. Room all grey again. Does she hear my voice caught back into my lungs. So demure she sits on the old wet stained broken wicker chair. So pale and slender thin in another bit of sunlight. Breaking out through the clouds and splashing on the broken legged table under the window. Her knees together. Black stockings above her boots.
‘I didn’t think you would come. Or that I’d already find you here. The paths are so overgrown.’
‘I’ve come here many times. By a way from around the other side of the lake.’
‘You’ve been here just alone.’
‘Yes. Now what do you want to say to me.’
‘I don’t know. Except that I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Please. Don’t touch my hand. And please, don’t be offended. It’s not because I don’t want you to. There’s nothing more in this whole world than my wanting you to.’
‘Then why not.’
‘Because it is too late now.’
‘How can it be too late.’
‘You know nothing about me. And if you did, you would not any longer want to be with me. I am not pure and innocent as I appear. I know you have made something romantic of me. As all men seem to. What has happened to me in my life perhaps does not show worn wrinkles yet on my face. But inside me there are the wounds and scars.’
‘But why cannot I hold you or touch you.’
‘Because I could not stop myself letting you make love to me. From the first moment you came in the front hall that bitter cold winter night, so shy and kindly. Your eyes without greed and without suspicion. From that moment, I knew if you wanted to have my body, that I would give it to you.’
‘And why now, can’t you.’
‘Because I am leaving. And please, can’t we just leave it at that. I saw how you were when the blonde lady who is most attractive, came into the hall. Suddenly all the sad way you look sometimes seemed to lift. Almost as if you loved her. I feel you may have had many women and romances.’
‘But I do not. And have not.’
‘And I was angry. And jealous of her. And I hate being jealous. It makes me suddenly do things of which later I’m so ashamed.’
‘And you broke the vase.’
‘Yes. That is why. And why I must pay you for it.’
‘Of course you mustn’t. This is so mournful. Leila. So very mournful.’
‘That is the first time you have ever used my name. And that is mournful.’
‘Could we not make love. Even sometime.’
‘Please. Don’t ask me to do that.’
‘I must. Because I want to so much. And you say you are leaving. I must not let you go. And what would happen to you. Out in the world.’
‘But it is where I come from. Out in the world.’
‘But have you a job or somewhere to stay.’
‘When I go, you need not ever worry. I am well able to take care of myself. I’ve lived rough. I have run away many times from many places. I’ve been with travelling people on the side of the road. I went begging with them in the towns. And I could beg as much money in an afternoon than any ten of them could beg in a month. And they didn’t want me to go away from them. They’d watch me day and night. Take any money off me. Even kept me short of food. It is how I have this cough in my lungs. But to keep my teeth good I’d chew as much carrots and turnips as I could. I’m not complaining but the men would be forever pestering. And you’d never know whether they were more of a nuisance when they were drunk or when they were sober. But one day in Birr where we were begging I got away. I went as if I were begging at the station. I had extra shillings hid in my shoes and knew the time of the train. Asked the station master to let me use the bogs. He wouldn’t let the rest of them come. I got on the train to Dublin.’
‘And what did you do in Dublin.’
‘I got a job. A waitress in a cinema café in Grafton Street. Ah but I must not just sit here telling the tale of my life.’
‘I ran away once. And was a waif too on the road. Why do you smile.’
‘Because I would like to believe you but I think that I shouldn’t.’
‘I was found dying and delirious by some kindly monks. May I. Just to hold your hand. And I want so much to hold you close.’
‘No. Please. Please don’t.’
‘Why. Surely just to touch you.’
‘I should tell you too. I have already had a child. Who was torn out of my arms. A little boy I shall never see again. And I have also sold myself on the street. And I have had diseases. You see. You are. Although you pretend not. You are shocked. You want to run away out of this room, don’t you. Don’t you.’
‘But I have not run out of this room.’
‘I cannot tell you more now than I’ve told you. But I have reasons now to go away. And you must not ask me what they are. But there is one more thing I want to say. With all my heart. With all my soul and with all my sins. Even as I know my already spoken words one by one have closed all the little gates that lead to the garden of your heart. And all I want to say.
Is
I
Love
You
16
Leaden skies above this morn. Flurries of snow swirling across the grey of the granite. A nosegay of heathers in one’s overcoat buttonhole. Above the trees of the distant wood a flock of crows circling. Waiting here on the front steps of Andromeda Park. The clatter of hoofs from the stable yard. Up the road, Sexton driving the victoria. Wheeling it to stop precis
ely in front of one. Wield up to his hands my portmanteau. Step down one step and step up.
‘It’s not a bad old morning now, Master Darcy. There’d be a bit of kindness lurking in the air behind the present bitter bit of breeze.’
Overgrown rhododendron leaves down the drive brushing against our faces. Out across the grey fields a momentary distant ray of sun. The only seldom brightness to come in one’s life these many past days. Leila gone one morning. Departed as I still lay asleep. And woke nearly knowing when I heard the distant sound of the train whistle come in my open window on the chill silent air.
‘And how are you Sexton. How is your back keeping.’
‘Ah a mite more than middling you’d say, if you had to say anything. But it would be me soul I’d be more worried about. I was, not long after dawn’s early light, planning to say me Stations of the Cross around the garden.’
‘That’s very commendable, Sexton.’
‘Ah by me prayer be exalting the humble and weak. And putting the Pharisee and the Philistine to flight. But wasn’t that brazen butcher banging with his stick on me door. With a bill tabulating up two years he was collecting, he was.’
‘Awfully impromptu of him that hour Sexton.’
‘He said he wouldn’t want to approach you himself in the big house direct. As you might not understand. Sure he knows quite right that you’d have blown him off the porch with a shotgun. Ah god now, they’ll give you credit in the town Master Darcy. Up to your eyebrows. And you’d think with the slabs of bacon he’d be giving you a little extra, throwing in the offal and the dog bones and the like for nothing but by god when he’s got the bill high enough giving you what he wants to get rid of and what you think is a good luck penny, then by god you’ll get the bill counting up the whole lot of it. Deceit. Fraud. No other name for it.’
The roar of a motor car. Horn beeping past. Petunia shying and Sexton reining her in along the verge. Wheel hitting a stone nearly upturning us. A wave out the window, exhaust smoke pouring out. Foxy Slattery, a smile across his face leaving consternation across Sexton’s.
‘Look at the like of that lout now. Driving a motor car no less.’
‘Foxy Slattery Sexton.’
‘Don’t I know it’s him. And now an even bigger lout than he was then. The country is sine dubio going to the dogs, I’m telling you. They’re kicking in the teeth of the holy Roman Church that’s protected the moral fibre of their souls all these centuries. While at the same time they’re parading their vaingloriousness as members in good standing of Fatima and the Legion of Decency.’
‘You’re taking a very poor view this morning Sexton. Don’t we as a race and people have something to boast about.’
‘Well as a race we’ve never wasted time rushing anywhere. But no one can beat us at the speed with which we break up your grand piano into your anonymous atoms. Or at destroying your objet d’art into useless smithereens. Or your best architecture burned to the ground.’
‘I may remind you Sexton that soda water was invented in Dublin. And the bubbles are reputed to be of the highest quality.’
‘Well you could say too Master Darcy our lies are of the purest falsehood. Without one redeeming semblance of truth in them. We’re a nation of champions at least in that I can tell you.’
‘We are waxing eloquent in anti Irish propaganda this morning Sexton.’
‘Well I caught your blind man Mick McGinty and his swamp trollop wife. Over in our bog stealing turf. You’d think the lesson I taught them when they attacked you when you were a lad would be enough. Sure they were rushing away to beat the band when they see me coming a mile away. But their old horse idling making a contrary fuss. Wouldn’t get on pulling home his cart full of turf. Eager to be out of there. The pair of them. And doesn’t the blind McGinty give the poor horse such a clatter of his fist. I could hear it where I stood. And didn’t the eegit knock the poor horse dead in its tracks. And then didn’t the wife attack him with the spade. Ah it was a great scene of justice. The pair of them running. And leaving of course the poor old horse there dead for us to bury. But now isn’t the pair of them back to me now for the cart. Sure they’re related to another whole slovenly family like themselves, beyond the edge of Thormondstown, brother, mother, sister, old father and sons, and a more treacherous bunch never walked the face of the earth.’
‘You mustn’t get so upset Sexton. We surely won’t miss a cartload of turf.’
‘Sure who’s upset. I put the turf and cart in our barn. Nor am I near yet like Crooks to dancing the Tyburn jig. But it took long enough to get anyone to stack the turf. No shortage on indolence. Sure your mother’s father had signs posted up on the wall down in the servants’ hall that lying down on the job or lying with words is strictly forbidden in this household. And Master Darcy I wouldn’t mind so much either kind of lying. But it’s the guile, cunning and duplicity of them. Sure some master thief among them would have got off with that silverware. If they could grab hold of it, they’d steal the very piece of sky you were standing under. Then tell you while you’re staring at it that the colour of it was bright green. And not sky a’tall. The only time such a thing as the truth is spoken would be when it’s a bit of scurrilous gossip. Then it would be gospel you can be sure of that. Didn’t I catch that one Mollie with the young Slattery out in the hay. And more than once catch him pulling on himself out in the warmth of the greenhouse. Two of them said they were having a smoke of a cigarette. That one will have her belly as big as her tits, popping out a bastard soon I can tell you. Devoted loyalty is all fake and sham these days. Now I’ll tell you the difference Master Darcy between a Protestant and a Catholic. And it’s as much as if one was black and the other was white. One lies. The other tells the truth. One steals. The other is honest. One is dirty. The other is clean. One is treacherous. The other is loyal. And one would have to be a foreigner to think one was charming and the other dull.’
‘And which Sexton, pray, is the Protestant.’
‘Ah now, Master Darcy, that would be telling wouldn’t it.’
‘Ah Sexton, you are indeed telling a good deal this morning.’
Reaching the station up the little incline. Icicles hanging down from its roof gutters. Another flurry of snow. Two farmers huddled in their black coats, one with a pair of bright new shoes. Amid the pigeon droppings. There was no doubt as to the lighthearted attitude towards travellers this morning. Turf smoke smell of the turf fire in the ticket office. The station master saluting, with his ever cheery greeting.
‘Ah up to town now is it Master Reginald Kildare. The metropolis of the east is your destination. Where there’d be them swanks now wouldn’t there, as would have champagne delivered to their doors of a morning instead of milk.’
Dear old Sexton carrying now my portmanteau. Lugging it ahead of me. And clearly taking exception to the station master’s liberty. Which if I do say so myself is a damn good bloody suggestion. But you’d think I was heading off on the grand tour. Not to return for years. A tear in his eye. His massive hand opening my compartment door. And putting up my case. Suspiciously regarding another inmate.
‘Goodbye Sexton.’
‘Goodbye Master Darcy. And while you’re up in Dublin I’ll be having a visit from the Professor Botanist from Trinity College. And it won’t be long before we’re up to our noses in the very latest horticultural exotics. Take heed now of the man who stepped out into the world liberally endowed with morals and money. And remember that as fast as your man lost the first he lost the second even faster.’
The station master blowing his whistle. Sexton looming next to him, his breath chilled white on the air and waving that long arm. Dear man, through any bleakness, always seems to have his own hopeful world. And some beacon lighting up his future. As mine seethes with worries.
‘Goodbye Sexton. I shall take heed.’
‘And by the way, Master Darcy. Petunia is in foal.’
The train squealing, squeaking. Finally edging forward slowly slow.
Moving, stopping. Moving again. Pulling past the grey little station. Sweet smell of turf burning. Past the station master’s thatched cottage. Wash drying frozen stiff on a line over his little garden. Smoke curling out of the cottage chimney. The deep snows on the countryside when I came. All melted away on the fields grey green. Out there in the coverts, foxes long finished mating. Hope always arises with the days getting longer. Even out there on this passing bereft boggy emptiness. One only wishes one’s fellow passenger wasn’t reading Stubbs’ Gazette. Roll call of the county’s debtors. Clears his throat each time he turns a page and again as he writes something down. Looks so awfully like a solicitor. Wears same odious demeanour as one’s former agent threatening a writ on me. Whose lawyers are still sending letters. I do believe I got a sound kick up the agent’s arse when someone was trying to twist my testicles in the post hunt mêlée. Soon now south, will be the purple dark hills. The first signs of Dublin beyond the abandoned ditches over the heathery boglands. Even as the cold ash branches shake by in the train’s breeze, already feel the quickening pace of the city.