‘Kildare, take this down. To live long, ought not to be our favourite wish, so much as to live well. By continuing too long on earth, we might only live to witness a greater number of melancholy scenes, and to expose ourselves to a wider compass of human woe. Got it.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Good. Resolve syntactically into its elements, analyse and describe.’
Mr Arland’s quoted exercise seemed to me to make much sense, especially since the next night after the débâcle, Foxy’s father chased him all around their cottage pounding him with his fists. Until Foxy grabbed a hammer and clouted his dada senseless. To then run back across the fields to the farmyard and go up to the tiny bedroom loft over the stables, from where watch was kept on foaling mares. And there he jumped upon Luke the sleeping groom, who had been one of the four upon whom he had sworn vengeance. Punching his face black and blue and tearing one of his ears half off.
Next morning Foxy was gone. The rumour was he’d run away to join the circus. And then one late afternoon a week later I was out galloping my pony up over and down the other side of spy glass hill. When I heard this shout. Coming from behind an entanglement of gorse and brambles. And as I reined round there was Foxy cold and shivering, a big old macintosh over his shoulders.
‘Ah is there no sign yet of his funeral.’
‘No, he woke up this afternoon.’
‘Ah I’m glad to hear that. I was sure he was murdered with the guards out after me. But I didn’t want to do me poor old father any permanent harm, just to keep him quiet a bit so’s the whorer wouldn’t always be after landing punches on me.’
By darkness accompanied by Kern and Olav, I brought Foxy butter bread cheese and turnip slices. And watched him over a fire, burn the feathers off a chicken he caught the night before roosting in the barn.
‘The doctor said you put dents in your father’s head. And he still doesn’t know where he is. He may be invalided to bed.’
‘Ah sure after a while they will clear up and he’ll feel the better for it. I’ve had them dents all over me skull and it only would make you that bit giddy now and again. Sure half the time I don’t know where I am meself.’
In mild moist westerly breezes the white snowdrops were poking up in the long sheltery grass under the chestnut trees. Foxy was again back milking and making himself as his father said, useless around the farmyard. And just before Christmas my father sent a wire that he was detained in Dublin. My two sisters now taken from school and sent to live with an elderly maiden aunt in Devon. From them came a stamped and addressed photograph. Where they stood wearing wide straw hats by a beehive in a winterish landscape in an orchard, holding between them a comb of honey. On the back of the picture a message scrawled.
WE MISS OUR SMALLEST DEAREST BROTHER
Early on Christmas eve, Uncle Willie came. In a black glistening gilt trimmed brougham drawn by two splendid black mares. The top hatted coachman’s face reddened by the wind and Uncle Willie’s by the indoor consumption of malt. And I saw him from the whim room walking back across the front lawn where I knew he’d been visiting my mother’s grave. Foxy told me he’d handed out half crowns round the household and gave him a pound. And that it was grand that there was such a decent skin as my uncle and didn’t his race horses deserve winning races everywhere across the countryside so that his pockets were stuffed with stacks of them big hundred pound notes that farmers peeled off at the markets.
Uncle Willie sat with me in the recently dusted library, where the spines of the old bound volumes had been wiped and polished by Miss von B. His blue sad eyes under bushy black brows looked round the shelves and his big hands took a glass of whiskey brought by Crooks.
‘Ah in spite of the depredations the old place is holding together. It would still take a lot to tumble all this in a heap.’
‘Crooks is threatening to give his notice if Miss von B the housekeeper stays.’
‘Ah don’t mind Crooks. He’ll go to his grave here. And you wouldn’t be doing too badly either if you went to yours beyond as well.’
‘I don’t want to stay here to die.’
‘Sure this is yours. To keep you living. Every last pillar and post and beyond there for well over a thousand good fattening Irish acres or more.’
‘Do I own these books too.’
‘Ah your mother’s father was a great one for the books. He got them I’m told from all over. Sure them’s yours. Along with every blade of grass every stone and brick and beast breathing out there on the land. In trust as you might say. Ah in spite of all the housekeepers it misses the hand of your mother. It needs a mistress like that marvellous woman. But now you’re growing into a young man. I hear tell you’ve been raising some hell out there in the bogs. Ah don’t mind that a bit. Sow your wild oats. Sure your father’s still sowing his.’
And as Uncle Willie slammed the carriage door closed and put down his window to say it’s been grand grand grand, he kissed me on the brow as another carriage came up the drive. My mother’s two strange clerical friends. To call. And I sent a reluctant Crooks quickly for Miss von B to assist receive them. And ordered tea in the blue parlour. Where the four of us sat. With Miss von B in a pink flowered dress talking excitedly of opera. And the two clerics frowning their eyebrows as their eyes, between mention of Verdi and Wagner, swept the empty spaces and table tops that had once held the objets d’art they so often had declared they adored. And when I said that my father had stolen these things from the house. And I would demand their return. There was much awkward silence and reference to their large gold waistcoat watches. Till they politely bowing and stuffing hankies back up their sleeves, took their leave.
‘That was not proper for you to say, that your father steal from this house.’
‘He’s a dirty thief.’
‘Grosser Gott, shame on you.’
On the suddenly grey cold misty Christmas morning all the household and estate workers assembled in the front hall. Kern and Olav getting many pats on the head and wagging their big grey tails. Mr Arland came by his bicycle early to stay to Christmas dinner. He stood nearby sniffing from his knuckle his little speckle of snuff and overseeing as I shook the hands and gave each an envelope out of the black strongbox brought from the town bank the day before. First in line was Foxy’s father now able to limp about. With two red healing imprints of a hammer’s head on his brow. Followed by Luke the groom who wore a bandage over where his ear had been sewn back on. And last came the ancient white haired washer woman Edna Annie with her gnarled face and hands, who never left her two steamy laundry rooms where she ate and slept. Now made her little bow and gave her toothless smile.
‘Ah may the god almighty save and love you you’re the spitting image of the mother.’
Shortly after Crooks rang the dinner gong Miss von B appeared from around the grand staircase just as Mr Arland and I, proceeding to the dining room, came along the hall. We stood aside for her. She wore a flannel skirt, string of pearls and a flimsy blue blouse through which one could see the white shapes of her undergarments and there was a heavy perfume in her wake. She awaited my seating and as I gently tucked in her chair she gave me her first smile ever. I nodded but couldn’t smile back. But found myself stealing glances at her sitting there to my right, her hair brushed back straight from her forehead, and a gold bauble hanging from the lobe of each ear. As I felt a thumping in my beating heart, she was suddenly and strangely looking pretty. With Mr Arland on my left glumly looking sad.
In the course of my carving I sent a goose leg skidding into Miss von B’s lap. She tweezed it up with her napkin covered fingers and without a murmur placed it on her plate. And finally in my embarrassed anguish, I dismembered the bird, chopping off the remaining limbs piece by piece. Crooks clearing his throat in a pained manner and pretending to look out the shuttered window as the grease and gravy slopped all over. Till he finally retreated to serve the wine. The bottle wrapped in white linen and each drip carefully blotted from the pouring. And
then his chin loftily raised surveying matters before ushering Sheila and Norah to serve the sprouts. Seemingly the nude sight of Miss von B did something for his morale and he mostly now passed her silently by. While Mr Arland asked in his best quizzical manner.
‘I understand Miss von B that you rather had a difficult time escaping from Warsaw.’
‘What do you mean, I have not escaped from anywhere.’
‘O I am sorry, someone had told me you had.’
‘Do not believe all you hear Mr Arland. There is much rumour and story I am sure.’
Darkness fallen and the tallow candles, made by Catherine, lit and smoking in the hall. Coffee and brandy served by Crooks in the salon. The polite conversation continuing as I drank my lemon barley water and the fire blazed. Miss von B seated on the sofa. Her long angular fingers brushing a speck from the recently laundered flowered cover. And smoothing her skirt down, her legs stretched crossed, with two tiny mends now on her silk stockings, from which I caught Mr Arland withdrawing his eyes as he stood sipping his brandy at the corner of the mantelpiece. We spoke of horses and hunting and Mr Arland referred once more to the prewar beauty of Warsaw and Miss von B said somewhat testily that she came from the Salzkammergut and was born in the small town of Durnstein on the Danube. And was not and had never been from Poland. And later that evening we played each other in chess, Mr Arland finally winning against a battling Miss von B and I thought, as I enjoyed the evening’s society that perhaps this would be the only family I might ever know.
Mr Arland said he had to be up early in the morning. If he were to be ready in time to come and see us all off to the meet. He rose and bowed at the salon door to Miss von B who inclined her head gently in his direction. He thanked me in the front hall as I helped him on with his naval great coat.
‘You know you are, Kildare coming along quite nicely. Your chess game is lively. And despite a little slip here and there with the goose and a few other small lapses regarding your French irregular verbs, you promise to be a most worthwhile member of society. Indeed to use your sobriquet, one might say, the destinies of Darcy Dancer, gentleman, are foretold. And I must thank you again, and for the marvellous cravat. I shall wear it often.’
The sound of rain on the skylight. Faint embers of the hall fire. Mr Arland keeps so secret all his woes. To return back to his lonely room. Into which he would never invite me. And once I saw his cracked ceiling as he kept me waiting in the governess’s cart outside when we were on our way to the big castle and he had detoured to collect prints to show the ladies he lectured. And he told me. When I was stammering over some words. That he had stammered. So much so that he could not speak. And remained mostly silent during all his school years. Until upon entering University, he had changed his rural Irish accent to an English one. And never stammered again.
‘Kildare, I wonder might I trouble you with the request of a favour. I fear of a rather personal nature.’
‘Most certainly Mr Arland.’
‘It is somewhat of an imposition but would it be asking too much. I should like for tomorrow’s hunt to borrow kit, should there be any spare lurking in the household.’
‘Ah Mr Arland shall you come out with us tomorrow. After the fox.’
‘Yes Kildare, after the fox.’
‘That would be so splendid. You’ll be my guest and most welcome. We have drawers and closets full of breeches, jackets. I’m sure we’ll fit you out. Crooks will see to everything. I didn’t know you hunted.’
‘Well Kildare, I don’t actually. To tell the honest awful truth. At most I’ve been on a horse. And when given a little luck, have stayed thereon. And I might just manage I think not to give too much offence if I turned up.’
‘The scent should be good tomorrow. O that’s exciting. You’re coming out. That really is.’
‘I’m not quite so sure about that, Kildare. As I think I am very likely to break my neck.’
‘Foxy will have a very safe mount for you. We’ll saddle up Petunia.’
‘Thank you Kildare.’
Watching from the open door Mr Arland affixing his candle lantern to the front of his handle bars and disappear down the little hill beyond the rhododendrons. The world so dark wild and windy out there that you could not think that it would ever blossom so green again under grey skies at morning.
And Mr Arland now, who would come, perhaps even hard riding by day on the chase and hard drinking by night. And who had brought me once to have my hair cut. To the fox hunting barber he said was the most erudite in the county and with whom he often discoursed in the pub. And Mr Arland asking him why he hadn’t seen him having a pint for some time. And the barber stopped cutting my hair and looked up at the ceiling.
‘Now I’ll tell you Mr Arland, I had to give up the hunting and abandon the drink for a bit, as I drank so much the scissors of a morning was jumping like a live fish out of me hand.’
And as I sat there I felt the nip of the leaping shears taking bites out of my scalp. With Mr Arland grinning behind his sleeve.
And tonight to walk back over these worn, chipped and cracked black and white tiles. Push ajar this heavy mahogany door into the salon. Its warmth of fire and light. Miss von B, a tome open across her lap, turning the pages.
‘Miss von B may I offer you further refreshment in the way of another liqueur.’
‘O I couldn’t. It is my third brandy.’
‘It will as a matter of fact be your fourth. But of course I’m not counting.’
‘Ha ha.’
Darcy Dancer taking the stopper from the decanter. Crossing the creaking boards under the carpet to pour the pale brown liquid with its sweet aroma into the balloon shaped glass.
‘Miss von B I don’t believe I have had the pleasure of hearing you laugh before.’
‘The occasions are perhaps rare, I admit. Nothing has been very funny for some while. Today it has been very nice. And you, you can be a perfect little gentleman when you choose.’
‘I hope you have not been too unhappy here.’
‘Ah but anywhere you can be unhappy.’
‘Have you been very unhappy somewhere.’
‘I have seen much and been through much. So much awful things. Here at least there is a little peace.’
‘And madness.’
‘Ha yes. But it is mostly foolish madness. It is not evil madness. Maybe there is evil madness but I do not see it yet. You turn the water tap it say cold and out come hot. It is dirty and the people are stupid but what matter. Maybe it is better that way.’
‘Mr Arland is not stupid. Nor is Sexton.’
‘Mr Arland no he is not. He is very clever. He speaks such perfect German, such perfect French. But Sexton O tempora O mores, he says. With this black mess on his hair. It come off all over the cabinets in the flower room and everywhere it gets on the vases. He is charming. But quite insane.’
‘He would not appreciate it to hear you say that Miss von B.’
‘No Sexton, poor man he would not. He is so easily upset. Ah but it is beautiful, the hills, the fields so green. And when sometimes you want it to be, life can be so slow. That you do not do today what you won’t do tomorrow.’
‘That is because cattle never stop eating and the grass never stops growing.’
‘Yes perhaps that is why.’
‘And we have rainbows.’
‘Yes you have. And it was nice that you call me when the priest and parson come. You and I, I think we could be friends. Perhaps. But you should not call your father a thief.’
‘That’s what he is. If he is stealing what is mine. And all this belongs to me.’
‘Ah you are a funny little one.’
‘I’m not so little. And I don’t think I am so funny.’
‘Ah but you are. Come. Sit by me here on the sofa. I will not bite you.’
Two candles guttering out on the mantel. And the glow of the fire waving on the moss green brocaded cloth of the walls. The wind still blowing hard beyond the panes and shut
ters. Darcy Dancer placing a log on the fire and pushing the big embers together. Letting the tongs lean against the cold marble chimneypiece. To go sit on the sofa. My jacket tight, my sleeves short and trousers hiked up round my ankles. And Miss von B pats a seat beside her.
‘Ah but you can sit closer than that. Come. Here. Beside me.’
‘I don’t mean to be unfriendly Miss von B but I do think I am close enough. I have an aversion to being too close to people.’
‘Ah what is that word aversion. I do not think I know it.’
‘It means repugnance. I have a slight repugnance to other people.’
‘Ah repugnance, now my English is not that specialized. This repugnance, what is that.’
‘I suppose incompatibility. Not getting on with others.’
‘Ah but you get on. Perhaps it has not been too good between us. But it has been better like now and today.’
‘Why does Mr Arland think you come from Poland.’
‘As a matter of fact, as you say, that is a long story. I shall tell you sometime. But now you tell me something.’
‘What.’
‘About that day in the bogs. You don’t want to tell.’
‘No.’
‘I understand you were over there to learn something about life.’
‘Who told you that.’
‘Ah I have perhaps ways of learning these things. You have such big innocent eyes. With the beard coming on your face. Your voice it is getting deeper. And you do not know about women.’
‘I know about women.’
‘Ha ha, you know nothing.’
‘I do.’
‘I could teach you about women. As Mr Arland, he teach you Latin. But you might make it difficult.’
‘What would you teach me.’
‘You are so young. And there is so much to learn. Perhaps it would be better for a start, that I ask you what you would like to know.’
‘Are women cruel.’
Miss von B taking her long ivory cigarette holder which stuck out from her gold mesh opera bag. Delicately pushing a cigarette in its end. As she raises it held between the very tips of her fingers. She stands up to step to the chimneypiece. Putting down her glass and leaning to light the cigarette in the flame of a candle held in the blue pink and gold candelabrum just as the clock tinkled the time. And she regarded the tiny watch on her wrist.