‘Ah little man sometimes you are so sweet.’
‘Why madam do you stay here.’
‘Because there is plenty to eat.’
‘I see.’
‘Ah but I am half joking of course. I stay because I like it. At first I did not like you. But now I like you. And I like to live in the country. It is somewhere very pleasant. When you have nowhere. Of course I miss the mountains. The snow. The skiing. The crisp cold air. And the white everywhere. But then here there is the hunting. And such beauty over the fields. The crazy people who hunt. Who give me-a laugh. Like imbeciles when the fox run out, they all shout and scream which way he went. So I shout too.’
‘Of course madam that is quite incorrect. To point to the line the fox has taken you must put your horse in that direction, take off your hat and hold it out in front of you.’
‘But of course which of them could do that, each with a bottle of whiskey in them before breakfast they don’t know where they point.’
‘Please madam, come closer. I do like that coat on you. And you know don’t you that I have been very much wanting these days to put my arms around you. And hold you.’
‘Ah ha. How do you say, you are randy.’
‘That is not madam a ladylike term.’
‘Ah but it is what you are.’
‘Please don’t make light of my feelings. It’s not usually customary for me to express myself in this candid fashion concerning one’s deeper emotions. You wouldn’t would you, think it was disagreeable if I could just rest my head against your bosom.’
‘I will perhaps if you are a good boy, come back later tonight. And hold your hand.’
‘Now.’
‘No. Anyone could come in. Why do you take such a risk. When your father is suspicious already and you have run away from school.’
‘Well then we must do all we can do right now. Otherwise everything is going to be too late.’
‘Ah a relief to hear someone is in a rush. That is welcome for a change.’
‘Are you going to the next meet of the hunt.’
‘Yes.’
‘I shall join you.’
‘But you are not to do so. You are to stay as the doctor says, indoor for some time yet. And certainly not to hunt. So many are out who are all so stupidly dangerous.’
‘Ah madam in hunting there are but two words about safety. Should this in the least concern you, the words are. Don’t hunt.’
Sunday the sun outside was momentarily shining bright as heaven, as Sexton would say, and feeling much stronger, I walked through the house. Even to the spick and span ballroom. The parquet all waxed and gleaming. Where I felt it might be time for me to hold a grand party. Invite everyone of note from all over the countryside excluding only the very meanest. Unless they were especially of significance. No point in cutting off one’s social nose just to stick to one’s principles. And let them drink the cellars clean. Then before I decamp, pile straw in some quantity in the front hall and set to it a match and burn the whole ruddy place down just as the local peasantry have been threatening to do for centuries.
Darcy Dancer passing down the hall to the schoolroom. On the wall the old barometer newly cleaned. Its brass polished and hung back up again where it had not been for years. Its gilt doves surmounting its dial nestled in gilt oak boughs. Makes one feel you know the mystery of what’s happening out across the skies. And its rectangular mirror flanked by thermometers. Reading as usual rather cool interior temperatures and the weather pointer pointing as it always did between variable and rain. Everywhere one sees the work of Miss von B. Her constant improvements are the only things that give one hope for the future.
From out of the back of the library clock Darcy Dancer fetched the key to the gunroom. To unlock the big heavy iron barred door to that windowless chamber and therein choose from the mahogany rack of firearms my grandfather’s best shotgun. To polish and wipe clean its barrels of dust. Fill my gunbelt with a dozen cartridges. Just as Crooks pushed open the door.
‘Begging your pardon Master Reginald. I wasn’t sure that it was your footsteps I heard on the floor below in the wine cellar. You’re shooting.’
‘Yes Crooks, thought a few snipe wouldn’t come amiss.’
‘There should be plenty down in the bottoms. You’ll lock up well now Master Reginald. It wouldn’t do if any unauthorized person should have access in here. It’s this arsenal that keeps them having a second thought who would be contemplating getting past Kern and Olav with a mind to trespass in this house. And that scoundrel Foxy Slattery has been at the door with a chisel more than once.’
After lunch in my room and following a brief walk in the orchard and garden and through the farmyard where there seemed still fewer pigs and chickens in evidence, I returned with my legs decidedly springier and feeling quite refreshed. Went to take tea by the fire in the north east front parlour. Miss von B who said she had finally given up smoking and now had to occupy her mind, was seated with a local newspaper which was blotched and wet and brought personally for her by Luke all the way on his bicycle from the town in a miracle of speed and dispatch when an English ladies’ fashion magazine he’d been sent to collect didn’t arrive. The presence of a newspaper was in fact quite unprecedented. As my grandfather, who did not believe in modern communications, maintained that you could by human voice and ear, get enough news of anything that mattered within five miles of Andromeda Park to last you a lifetime and he would therefore have no newspaper or radio in his house. Much to the irritation of my father, my mother inherited this same principle. And now Miss von B totally hidden behind newsprint, was laughing. Rather uproariously I thought. And crossing and recrossing her legs most provocatively under her clinging grey wool dress. Perhaps she needs to take one hell of a hearty pee.
‘Would you mind awfully pouring me some more tea.’
‘Ah I am sorry.’
‘What has you so damned amused.’
‘Here, you should read. It is always of course, just like I say. The whole place is nuts.’
Miss von B’s finger pointing to the headline across the entire top of the page. Which I hold up between my two nervous hands. As one certainly does not know what and who, and especially including one’s self, will be the latest news these days.
SACRILEGIOUS ROBBERY
On Friday evening last, the Parish church near Thormondstown was broken into and robbed of vestments and a cask of the finest old Marsala Altar Wine. The empty cask was later found in the chapel graveyard. The Police are seeking to interview a man they think can help them in their further inquiries.
The man in question was seen by a witness who described him as ‘laggards drunk’ and who was spreadeagled on a memorial stone not far from the cask, singing ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’ in a riotous manner, considering the vicinity. Witness thought that in the interests of keeping the peace he should inquire as to what such person was doing on the grave stone. As the witness who wishes to remain anonymous, more closely approached, he was at first aghast to see that it was a priest who was there prostrated and he immediately suspected that the reverend gentleman was delirious as a result of foul play. However as he inquired of the prone figure as to whether he could be of assistance to him, he was met with shouts and arm waving and loudly told to F off. Realizing this was not the language of a man of god he attempted to ascertain the identity of the stretched out form and thought he recognized the face of a person he had seen upon occasion in the district who had a reputation of a violent nature. This impression was immediately reinforced with the prone figure becoming quickly erect and with further use of obscene language and threats witness thereupon realized the fruitlessness of pursuing further pacification.
However the witness in beating a quick retreat, was then without provocation attacked, taking upon his face a swipe of a fist and his backside sustaining a kick of a boot. Witness said that in the circumstances he was forced to run every which way hopping over the gravestones for his very life, and
as a consequence went down into a hole involuntarily disturbing and desecrating the dead and badly twisting both ankles where he lay incapacitated till dawn. The fact that his pursuer was in priestly robes and spouting filthy language left him with a very bad taste in his mouth.
The garda should like the assistance of anyone who might have knowledge of the incident to help them in pursuing their further investigation.
I did think that Miss von B as she took the paper back again and slowly read aloud certain passages that she was rather making much of it all in ridiculing our simple country ways.
‘They are so funny.’
‘Well I’m glad you think so.’
‘Ah but you must forgive one. Imagine two broken ankles he gets falling into someone’s grave.’
‘They were sprained as a matter of fact. And how would you like it if someone trampled your skeleton.’
‘O dear you are so serious sometimes.’
But in any event I was quite certainly serious about the way Miss von B’s grey wool dress looked quite stunning with a very large thick leather belt and a big brass buckle tightening it snug around her. And I did not really mind her being so amused. And must confess my penis was painfully hard as I stared with great excitement at the way her girth made her waist so slender and her hips and bosoms swell so splendidly out. To use Miss von B’s unladylike word I was indeed randy. Even as I managed to change the subject of rural indiscretion to discussing my pedigree. As Miss von B had been previously leafing through the vellum volume describing it.
‘I am at least agreeably surprised by the Thormonds and the Darcys. But nowhere can I find the name Dancer.’
She of course quite cleverly ruined all the compliments by stating that so much Irish ancestry had been compromised by parlour and scullery maids, grooms, gardeners and gamekeepers. And that it could hardly be discerned by appearance as to who was mistress and master and who was servant or menial. I don’t know what on earth she thought we gentry did all the time, if indeed we had any free from our presumably constant putting it up our various female staff. I mean we really didn’t sit around all day as I only just happen to be doing with damn big erections. Or indeed, having the lady of the house get it put up her by stablemen, cowherds and shepherds. Her whole aspersion began to be quite heinous. Especially as to most of us being English, Jews or Danes and that the fine blood of those races had been horribly diluted by that of the native peasant Gael. I was quite alabaster faced with anger. I mean to say, one’s pedigree gives one confidence to keep others in their place. She did however finally smile in the firelight and say I was singularly possessed of an amazing resemblance to Uncle Willie. Whose most attractive eyes were further apart than my father’s and who also had my upper class jaw and cheekbones.
‘Ah yes, all is not completely lost. You have at least, the good bone structure.’
That late evening following supper in my room, and when Crooks had left my hot drink by my bedside, Miss von B came. She had quite marvellously and magically repaired my suit and darned so beautifully my socks worn in my cross country escape. But I of course despite my penis bulging in my trousers, could not help immediately resuming defence of my ancestry. The whole damn issue had already ruined my enjoyment of the rather tasty boiled bacon and cabbage and buttered spuds Catherine had dished up. But as I was about to let her have a socially redeeming salvo or two, she opened before me a black leather album embossed with a coat of arms and full of photographs.
‘I brought this for you to see.’
Bending close by me her soft grey breast touched my cheek. I couldn’t just grab her as I dearly wanted at that moment or I’d muck up her album. As her fingers turned the black sheets of pages of pictures of her when she was a little girl. With the castles and palaces where she grew up. And in front of which, festooned in furs in the winter snows, she sat in a horse drawn sled. Of course it was quite grandly embellished and there was a coronet obvious on the sled’s lantern lights which she did not allude to. In other pictures she was on skis, big boots on her feet. And then there she was in a hay meadow in front of a hunting lodge with balconies growing flowers. Smiling in her native costume. A bonnet on her head and holding a big scythe.
‘All the colours you cannot see were in the meadow and also in my frock.’
As each page turned she grew bigger. Then there were pictures of her with other girls, her bare arms crossed. And in one, she sat in the long grass on a hillside overlooking a castle. She said she was angry at that moment. She would not say why. Nor when I asked, was she entirely forthcoming as to whose particular castle it was. But it was suitably impressively imposing sitting there with numerous turrets and battlements. And then on the castle terrace she sat a smiling jolly looking girl. Who seemed she might enjoy a good joke and play tricks on you and not nearly be so solemn as she seems now.
‘And here we are for the boar hunting.’
A photograph in a valley on an edge of forest with great white capped mountains rising out of the steep wooded hillsides all around. Gentlemen in breeches and boots and others in short leather trousers with staves and their hats with brushes sticking out. She showed me her robust grandfather with a great moustache and big watch chain across his chest. I thought he looked quite an ordinary chap as a matter of fact. And another sadder one of her walking along a country road in a black dress and a coat tied half way closed and her long tresses over her shoulders. Which she said fell reaching all the way down to her bottom.
‘The week before this picture was taken, the handsome Count to whom I was betrothed had while skiing disappeared forever in an avalanche of snow. In my face you can see the end of the world.’
And that, by my reckoning anyway, was three poor gentlemen of whom she was clearly enamoured gone to their doom. She was clearly such a nice girl. Although in the picture she was only seventeen, she seemed quite grown up. Behind her all in black as well, was her favourite aunt called Mafalda.
‘She did my dear lovely aunt die six months later of consumption. Her husband, he was dead but a year later of grief.’
‘You have haven’t you madam, had much sorrow in your life.’
‘Ah but when you expect little else, it is then just life.’
‘I do think I live in quite as grand a house as some of those you have lived in.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘I do think so, madam. I really do. Especially when you include our ballroom.’
‘This. Just look. This is my uncle’s castle. Andromeda Park you could fit into the drawing room and sit on the chimneytop and not be able to touch my uncle’s chandeliers. And besides inside there is beauty and elegance. Not like here, where everything is ruin. There everything it was polished, spotless. Gold leaf, it was simply everywhere. Pearl, marble. Not like this, rotting boards, damp crumbling plaster, pipes that you do not know where they go or what will come out of them.’
‘I rather take that amiss you know.’
‘Ah you poor little peasant, you get so upset when I point out to you that there are far grander places out in the rest of the world. You have never for instance been in a palace. Have you. Come now. Have you.’
‘Of course I have, as you well know. I’ve been in the great castle.’
‘Nothing. Absolutely mere nothing. A palace is so much more splendid. With long long halls of mirrors. Ceilings of mirrors.’
‘Well, when our ballroom shutters are closed they are inside painted gold.
‘You do not paint gold. It is with a hammer you make it into like a leaf.’
‘Well we did have mirrors in our own dining room ceiling. My grandfather had them put there. So he might by casting his eyes upwards peer down upon the ladies’ bosoms and the only reason they were taken away was because the hot dishes from the kitchens fogged them over which angered him when he couldn’t see the ladies’ décolletage and he had them removed.’
Miss von B and I went on and on about our various lists of embellishments. I nearly punched her when she just la
ughed in a superior manner when I told her of the vine my grandfather had trained to grow from the greenhouse through a hole in his bedroom wall so that he could eat grapes in bed. I thought it a jolly good damn idea even though the grapes never ripened. And then she spoke of all manner of architectural accoutrements, formal gardens and water works. I did somehow think that she was rather putting it on. Assuming graces to which she was not entitled. With her princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, counts and I may as well say it, cunts and their seemingly endless castles and palaces to which she was privy. In order that I should feel that Andromeda Park was not quite grand enough. Nor my blood royal blue. However I made it quite clear that the Thormonds had not descended to squalor and we could easily claim to be a minor dynasty with a standing in society quite assured. And for many miles about one was still accustomed to locals giving way on the roads. Fortunately, when finished viewing her album we only kept on earnestly discussing that kind of thing for another few hours till perhaps well past midnight. And I was nearly hoarse. When she finally said.
‘You take it all so seriously. I am not saying you do not live here in some refinement.’
‘You are. If you are not directly saying we have descended to squalor then you most certainly infer a distinct lack of stylishness.’
‘Ah. In that, there is far more than a lack. There is none.’
‘What. How dare you. My sisters are ladies of rank and my mother bought her better things from the very leading London shops across the water. And I say damn you.’
‘Ha ha. You sweet little man. Do not upset your lovely dark curls or your vivid marvellous eyes. What matter is it, a little lack of as you say, stylishness.’
And I did so want to kiss her. To put my lips on her soft smooth skin. O god I was nearly dying to. Utterly mad to. And to undo that belt around her waist. And then replace it with my arms squeezing her tight. Her slight aloofness these past few days was most irritating. Not to say inciting to sheer blatant lust. And I felt she might be heeding the attentions of other men. Some perhaps as odious as the agent with whom she admitted she sat for more than just the cursory moment in the parlour.