‘Good for you Kildare.’
I found Sexton in the kitchen gardens coming out of his potting shed where inside the Latin names of flowers were pinned up on sheets of paper. And inscriptions were written under a little altar on which stood a statue of a blue robed woman. Holding it up to his tall face, I showed him the Latin. He peered at it. And I said now you know what it means.
‘Ah now I’m not going to bother meself about translating another man’s Latin.’
‘I translated it. And do you want to hear what it says.’
‘Sure if you’ve nothing better to do, I’m not against encouraging scholarship. Life is short art is long, and the beauty of the siprepedium lasts forever, if you understand me.’
‘It means every madman thinks everyone else mad.’
‘Is that fact.’
‘Yes and it’s what Mr Arland says about you.’
‘He what. The insolence of him. Shoot me down would he. Make a mockery of a poor old horticulturist, would he. Madman is it. And he is the sane one is he. I’ll soon teach that cheeky pup to address his intellectual betters with more respect.’
‘I thought you might have something in Latin to say back to him.’
‘In Latin is it. It’ll be in English delivered on the end of an Irish boot that that sasanach bastard will hear from me.’
‘But you said Crooks was as mad as a hatter.’
‘And so he is, completely demented.’
‘And now you are angry that someone has said something about you.’
‘I am by God I am.’
And then as I stood there, Sexton’s one eye grew moist and brimming and suddenly, from under his eye patch, tears streaming down his face. As the giant man bent and broke into convulsive sobs.
‘O God almighty I’m not mad, don’t say that, never say I’m mad. I’m not that. I only love the flowers and nature and the beauties of the world with my whole heart, my whole soul. And I conscientiously do my religious duty. And any man who would say I was mad has no charity. O God and his only begotten son, save me.’
Darcy Dancer reached forward to touch Sexton’s arm to comfort him and he drew away. His hands pushing up over his face and his whole body racked with more sobs as his shoulder leaned in against the wooden panels of the shed wall knocking a stack of clay flowerpots from the shelf which broke hitting the ground. His voice came muffled out between his moans.
‘Leave me be. Leave me be.’
Day after day Catherine the cook scraped together chicken scraps and boiling turnips and dished out cauldrons of potatoes covered in slabs of melted butter for the men to eat who had too far to travel back to their cottages for lunch. And Darcy Dancer still sniffed the smell of freshly baked bread coming up the stairwells. But slowly the bacon sides and hams hanging and curing from the basement ceilings vanished. Sexton now left the apples, pears, damsons and plums falling from the orchard trees for the birds to peck till they were rotting brown on the ground. The clock chimes stopped sounding in the stable tower. And the one bell outside the kitchen that all watched and listened for. Hoping to hear it ring, jangling back and forth on its curled spring. Its brass turning green. And its unused wire through the house, grown stiff with rust. Where it went turning corners on little wheels under floorboards and joists to the pearl inlaid ebony knob in my mother’s silent room.
Crooks who read his bible aloud each evening in his quarters, shuttered the ballroom and closed up half the top floor, locking off chambers where he said the chill would snuff out a candle. He would sit, on the cold evenings, thick woollen dressing gown pulled over his livery and a heavy pair of white boot stockings pulled up over his trouser cuffs. And once when I came to his room to ask him for the hot bottle that was usually there warming my bed, there was a strong smell of whiskey and I pointed to a door bolted with a large padlock which he said was the hanging room and haunted by a previous butler who had hung himself from the ceiling.
‘It is cursed, and should never be entered. Furthermore Master Reginald, it is not done for you to come to my chambers, it is proper you should summon me to yours.’
‘I rang the kitchens. And no one came.’
‘Still, it’s not done. And stay away from Foxy, he sets a bad example with every broken bone in his body.’
The electric light which always faithfully glowed pale yellow in the filaments of the light bulbs was wavering weaker and weaker each evening, and now went out. The generator set on the hillside in the woods received visit after visit from the amateur engineers among the men and was given kicks, nods, pats and clanks and spins and turns but stayed still. And a man from Dublin would not come till all of Andromeda Park’s unpaid bills were paid.
Candles now gave their flickering glow as the winds groaned along the stone paved corridors. And the shadows moved and loomed and maids, those with locks and those with keys to their doors, tried to make them work. With Crooks still at large midnights or dawns trying all the doors. And when my mother’s father’s portrait crashed down on the main staircase, Crooks stood there with a lantern and said the ghosts who have risen this night from the grave are guilty of this. And one more maid frightened into her senses was gone fleeing the next day.
The walnut grand piano began to warp and rust. The huge gilt mirror on the chimneypiece of the back drawing room fell forward where it lay crashed, broken and untouched on the floor. While slowly his mother’s fortune and estate declined with the further sale by his father of their shrinking lands. From six thousand acres down to three. And now several more and larger and nearer fields were auctioned. Neighbours’ boundaries coming closer and closer and arguments over trespassing sheep and cattle more and more frequent. With Crooks announcing himself at the schoolroom door as Mr Arland and I would look up from our books.
‘Mr Arland please forgive my interruption. Master Reginald, while his father is away, should have announced to him callers whom I am sure you do not wish to entertain the thought of seeing, but we must at least pay them the courtesy of inquiring that this is in fact the case.’
‘Thank you Crooks, I don’t wish to see them.’
‘Very good Master Reginald.’
Autumns, winters and a distant war, and his father’s absentee and indifferent farming spread weeds and left dead sheep and unmended fences and pot holed roads. With irate farmers now threatening violence and bloodshed on the front steps. And upon his infrequent brief returns, he would immediately following lunch, reconnoitre the remaining crops or livestock. To be heard cursing as he did when the men let the hay ricks collapse or a thorough bred horse get loose which a buyer was coming to see. And it had to be chased as it ran wild for miles. And always following three days of these continued catastrophes he would be gone again, not to be heard of for weeks and weeks. As more wagon loads of hay, sheep and bullocks disappeared, lost or stolen. But just as the grumbles would deepen, a money order would arrive for the agent, a swarthy beetle browed gentleman, to pay the back wages of the servants and men who lined up outside the old rent room.
And the evening following one such departure, and the recent hiring of a new lady housekeeper, I lay awake thinking that meaner men than my gambling father were getting closer and closer. Shouting out and shaking their fists at Crooks. And to feel I wanted to run. Gallop up over the hills. Take my pony and my mother’s dogs and find a round tower made of big stones where I could climb up into and be safe. From this new woman who went poking around the house snapping orders and commands at the servants and throwing Crooks into frequent door slamming rages. And a creak of boards made me listen and then I heard a little knock and a voice.
‘Are you there.’
And I thought some thoughtful ghost had come who heard me thinking. And the black knob with the golden circles, turning. A wind rushing up against the window and rattling the casement. And I sat frightened in my bed as the door slowly pushed open with a shadowy head under a cap peeking round it.
‘It’s me Foxy, are you awake.’
‘
What are you doing here.’
‘Sure didn’t I tell you I’d come and get you. Keep your voice down and I have it all fixed.’
‘Go away.’
‘What way is that to talk when I near kilt meself getting in to get you out.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Suit yourself but there’ll never be another time. As ripe as right now I’m telling you. I’m going meself whether you come or not. With whiskey and all. And don’t breathe a word of that. It’s me own whiskey and not out of the house. Are you coming.
The wind high and a full bright moon above the grey speeding shadows of clouds Foxy looking back over his shoulder. For any signs of the now two major demos of the household. With Miss von B’s room at the upper end of the corridor. Who had that day in her towered silk dress and white cloth gloves sent Foxy to the town to get men to come and mend the leaks in the roof. Wish Foxy standing in the front hall, his cap in hand and pulling his forelock as he said yes ma’am, that’s right ma’am. And then she called for Crooks to have the crashed mirror on the back drawing room floor cleared away. And her voice was heard raised and shouting.
‘I am in command of zis household and you should do what I say.’
And the mirror remained. With the seven years bad luck Crooks said anyone would get cleaning it up and he put his nose in the air and walked out. And as I came down the main stairs with Crooks slamming another door somewhere down the end of the hall, I could hear Miss von B still in the salon as she called it.
‘Swine. Dirty filthy swine. You are all swine in this house.’
I stood in some alarm and disbelief on the stair. Miss von B came out in the hall and saw me there. Composing herself, she stretched her neck, looking over both her shoulders from which she brushed imaginary debris. Then putting her white gloved hands to her throat she stood staring at me across the black and white tiles. I thought it appropriate one should adapt Mr Arland’s cool measured words and deliver them accordingly.
‘Ah Miss B.’
‘It is von B thank you.’
‘Ah, Miss von B. Do I perceive that you are aggrieved. Is there something I can do.’
‘What can you do with swine. It is squalid. These people are nuts. They are completely nuts.’
‘Nuts.’
‘Yah, nuts.’
‘I’m sorry but I do not know what you mean.’
‘Cuckoo. Batty. Loony bin. Fruity cake crazy. I am speaking perfect English. Do you understand.’
‘Yes.’
‘Veil den. I am thinking I am in a madhouse. It is falling down. The dirt. It is pushed under the rugs. The greasy fingers. They go so on the doors, on the lamp shades, on the objets d’art. The mud. It come off the boots. It go all over the floors. The hair off the dogs. The rain through the ceiling. Your father, he wants spick and span. It will be smudge and stain he will get.’
‘I am sorry. But we in Ireland do not think it unfit for there to be some dust and cobweb about.’
‘Dust and cobweb. Ha ha. That is a good one. You are dirty people.’
‘How dare you.’
‘Dare. Of course. Look at my gloves. They should stay white when I touch so, and look. My finger, it is dirt. A chicken it run back and forth downstairs, in the corridor. It come in the broken window. Then there is one dead in there behind the curtain. With the feathers all over the floor.’
‘Why don’t you go if you are unhappy.’
‘Go. I have just come. Sixty miles. I tell your father how I am treated too.’
Miss von B passed by me up the stairs. I thought perhaps on her way to her room to pack. But later she was in the blue walled north east parlour taking afternoon tea and perusing the colour plates of my mother’s large vellum bound volumes on pottery and china. Her only ally being Sexton who daily brought her a bouquet of flowers and said, by god she’s a woman of culture come in her innocence to this temple of defective intellects. And von B appreciating this attendance upon her, stood patiently but dumbfounded at Sexton’s stream of Greek and Latin. And one wonders now. If she lay asleep up the hall contemplating how to escape back to civilization again. Or if she sits up trembling at the creaks Foxy and I make, shoes in our hands, and stealing past her door. To proceed down by the west stair landing. The shadows of the grove of big beech trees out there. Through which we can run. To haunt the countryside this night.
‘Follow me now, and never breathe a word of where I’m taking you.’
‘Where are you taking me.’
‘Out by the tunnel.’
‘How can you get to the tunnel.’
‘Ah now haven’t I tolt you I’d get you out. It is how the priests got in and out of the house long ago. Quiet now, that ould eegit Crooks will be coming drunk out of his bedroom and falling on his head. Now watch where you’re going over these bottles I put here on the stairs.’
‘You could hurt someone.’
‘It’s only to know if Crooks was following me. He’d only get a little tumble and knock on the skull. Sure there are carpets over the timber. And wood never did any harm cracking your head. It’s stone and cement you might feel if you wasn’t used to it.’
Touching the wall, following the way behind Foxy. His stale smell of dogs and stables. Go tiptoeing down past the great window, the moon silver against the leaves and bark of the birch trees. The unhappy moan of a cow out somewhere missing its calf. Through the swing door from the main hall where the grandfather clock chimes half past the hour and down the stair to the basement. At the corridor’s far end the night’s white white light through the arched panes of the transom. And only feet away the bedroom door of Catherine the cook. Whose gnarled hands still toiled over her cauldrons from dawn till all the household were asleep. And she lies loudly snoring.
‘Listen to the noise of that ould bitch. In here behind me now. Don’t make a sound.’
The cold clammy air of the pig curing room with its shelves and slabs of slate. The heavy clank of a stone as Foxy digging in with all his fingers, prised it up from the floor. Climbing down into the darkness. The earthy damp musty chill air. And Foxy crouched grunting as he pulled on a ring to drag the stone slab thumping closed over their heads.
‘No one can hear us now. And never breathe a word. This goes out now to the big tunnel back of the house. And not another soul knows.’
‘The smell is not nice.’
‘It takes some pipes. And they do be leaking betimes.’
‘And you must stop making your unpleasant comments on members of the household.’
‘What harm is that to pass a few ould remarks when I’m taking you out to the best lesson you’ll get in your life. Sure and that old Catherine owns a forty acre farm and has it stocked with sheep and pigs and is stacking up pound notes in the bank. And how do you know she’s not stealing.’
‘Our cook is honest.’
‘It’s none of me business but let me tell you they’re robbing the place blind.’
‘Do you steal.’
‘Ah only ould bits and pieces now and again. But I’m honest in general. I only lie not to get a beating. But when I’m telling the truth they think I’m lying because I’m such a liar. So it’s all the same. They love giving a beating. But I don’t feel a thing.’
Through the blackness, crouched hobbling forth, and hands touching in the cold mud along the dank low corridor. Water drips on the back of the neck from the roof of the tunnel. A scurrying and scrabbling.
‘What’s that Foxy.’
‘Ah them’s only a few ould rats.’
‘I don’t like rats.’
‘Sure they’ll do you no harm if you give them a swipe of your hand in the gob. It’s only the very big ones that can kill cats, that’ll jump for your throat and chew open your vein and take the blood out of you.’
‘I want to go back.’
‘Ah sure there’s only a dozen or so of them in the tunnel. Sure they’ve only managed twice to take a bite out of me and each time I gave them a wallop with m
e boot that made manure of their guts. It’s not more than a few yards now and we’ll be in the tunnel to the stable yard. Mind these slippery steps.’
The great shadowy arch of the farm tunnel as Foxy pulls Darcy Dancer out behind him. And pushes back the stone and lifts another stone. Turf mould spread over the cobbles. The air sweet smelling with hay where clumps of it had fallen from the carts hauling it in from the fields. Down more stone steps and now along another underground passage wide enough for two men to walk abreast and tall enough that you had to reach to touch the vaulted ceiling.
‘Mind now the big rats be worst here, kick out if you feel something putting teeth into you.’
‘I don’t like this.’
‘It’s not far now.’
In a black mustiness they emerged. Foxy lighting a match. A strange fear. In the chill stillness of death. A room of cob-webbed coffins stacked on stone shelves. Their rusted handles and copper nails stained green. On the oak and elm, brass plates engraved with names. Of Darcys and Thormonds. Bertha, Elizabeth, Esekiel and his own name, Reginald. On the top corbels were smaller coffins near the big ones. And the tiniest one of all. To whom death came at ten months of age. With the same christian name as his eldest sister. Beatrice Blossom Thormond.
‘All your mother’s lot back till Kingdom come. They’ll put you in here too when your time comes.’
‘They will not.’
‘Ah they will. There be jewels on them in the coffins. That’s why they are put here secret the way they are behind them big bars and locked with the size of them locks.’
‘How do you know there are jewels.’
‘I’ve heard tell.’
‘Did you try to look.’
‘I’m not going to go touching in them skulls and bones. But there are others I hear talk of who’d like to get in here.’
‘Who are they.’
‘Ah I’m not saying now. But they be grave robbers from beyond the other side of the lakes.’
The headstones of the cemetery looming. A breeze rustling the ivy leaves. They stepped out under the massive tangle of vines roofing over the ruins of the ancient chapel. Foxy’s breathing heavy as he tugged lifted and nudged with knees and shoulder the heavy grey slab back into place. And reaching under a moss covered rock, he pulled forth a bottle of whiskey. Squatting, he planted his elbows across his thighs and tipped the pale spirit up to his lips.