Another Heartbeat in the House (31 page)

‘Come and stroll with us before the sun goes down,' I said to William. ‘It is a dream of pure pleasure to walk by the lake on an evening like this.'

William tucked his notebook back into his pocket. ‘Might you lend me a pencil?' he said. ‘I should like to take some notes, but I have taken so many already that mine is but a stub now.'

‘Of course.'

St Leger, too, had risen to his feet. ‘I'll go and fetch my gun,' he said. ‘Head up into the woods and see if I can't bag a pigeon or two for Biddy.'

St Leger loved to walk with me at this hour of the evening, but I could tell that he had had enough of William.

‘See if you can't get a fox too,' I told him. ‘I'm sure William would love to take a brush home as a souvenir of Ireland.'

We all laughed at my little pleasantry, and St Leger kissed me on the cheek before quitting the room. I busied myself with Clara Venus, straightening her bonnet and retying her bib. All the time, I could feel William's eyes upon me.

‘It is a well appointed house, for all you painted such a modest picture of it in your letters.'

‘Did I?'

‘You called it a lodge.'

‘It is more of a … dower house.'

‘You're not a widow.'

‘I was never a wife. And I'm no angel.'

‘He is married?' he said, finally.

‘Of course he is,' I said, with a challenging look. ‘Pray, don't deliver me any sermons, William, for I shan't listen to them.'

I swung Clara Venus onto my hip, and moved towards the French windows, where I paused, waiting for him to open them for me. He did so, giving me a look in which sorrow was mixed with reproach.

‘I do not stand in judgement on you, Eliza,' he began. ‘You are my friend, and –'

‘Indeed, your judgement should have nothing to do with morality,' I said glibly. ‘It should be informed only by humanity.'

William looked rather sheepish, and I smiled to myself, pleased that I had usurped the moral high ground with such effortless flimflam. He stepped back, allowing me to pass through onto the white limestone beyond.

I was pleased with my Italianate terrace. I had planted a pair of stone jardinières with bright geraniums and trailing blue lobelia, but had decided against acquiring a sundial, for I had no need of one. In Lissaguirra the daytime hours (and often the nocturnal ones, too) revolved around Clara Venus, who seized every minute of every day, grabbing and plucking with her chubby little fingers from dawn 'til dusk and beyond. Sometimes I felt so wretched with fatigue that I cursed St Leger for giving me a child I had never asked for.

‘This is the most beautiful place I have ever been,' said William.

He was gazing at the vista, quite transfixed. Somewhere a curlew was fluting its low, mournful call, and below us I saw the rippling trail of an otter fanning out across the surface of the lake. It was all unspeakably tranquil, unspeakably lovely.

I sighed, and cast a perfunctory eye over the beauty spread before us. ‘Sometimes I feel like Rapunzel here,' I said.

William turned to me with a baffled expression.

‘Wasn't Rapunzel the princess who was imprisoned in a tower?' he said.

‘Yes.'

He laughed. ‘
I
felt like a prisoner when I was chained to my little desk in my little room in my little apartment in Paris, where the view from my window was of another little room across the street. You – you have all this loveliness to look at, all this air to breathe, Eliza! You step outside into a landscape every morning! How can you say that you are a prisoner?'

‘I have nothing to complain of.'

‘I should say not!'

‘I'm aware that I have been extraordinarily lucky. All this …
harmony
–' I made a baroque gesture with my hand that took in my surroundings – ‘is something another woman might dream of: a house of her own, a healthy child, a protector to care for her and ensure that her needs are met. And yes, it is wonderful to step out into a landscape each morning. But …'

‘Ma'am?' Young Biddy had come out of the house with my shawl. ‘You might be needing this. There'll be a chill in the air once the sun is gone behind the trees.'

‘Thank you, Biddy.'

I took it from her, and she bobbed a curtsey before retreating. I had to smile: she would never have bothered with the formality of a curtsey had William not been there. As I had told him, we muddled through the days as best we could, the Biddies and I. Draping the shawl around my shoulders, I resumed our conversation.

‘But all this harmony, this praiseworthiness is not what I planned.'

William shrugged. ‘We none of us live lives we've planned. I did not plan to lose my inheritance. I did not plan to marry a madwoman. I did not plan to find myself scraping a living writing for magazines. A plan suggests something mapped, something over which one has a degree of control.'

From above in the oak wood came the sound of a gunshot.

William started. ‘What the devil's that?'

‘It's St Leger,' I reassured him. ‘He must have found some living thing to dispatch.'

We strolled a little way along the terrace, and descended the steps to the lawn. William's face had assumed an expression of that rather self-conscious benignity that urban dwellers tend to adopt when in a country setting, as if he was posing for a portrait by Gainsborough.

‘How is your novel progressing?' I asked.

‘It is not progressing at all. But I have some good epigrams to put in it.'

‘That's a start. I don't have epigrams, but I have some good characters.'

‘It is a universal ambition when times are bad – according to Cicero – to write a novel.'

In my arms, Clara Venus stirred and squinted as a dragonfly hovered an inch or two above her nose. ‘So far, it would seem that our ambitions have been thwarted. Yours by your marriage –'

‘I love my wife,' countered William.

‘I know. But as you say, you did not plan to marry a madwoman.' The dragonfly lit upon the tip of Clara's nose, and I laughed at her surprise. ‘I did not plan to marry
anyone
.'

‘You're not married,' William pointed out.

‘No. But I am a mother.' I brushed away the dragonfly, rearranged the folds of my shawl so that Clara's head was covered, and put her to my breast.

Apprehending what business I was engaged in, William fixed his eyes upon a distant cloud.

‘Think on it,' I said, as Clara tucked in. ‘The greatest writer of this century never married.'

‘Mr Dickens is –'

‘Jane Austen never married.' I threw him a smile as I started off down the path. ‘How typical of a man to assume that I was speaking of Dickens!'

‘You look content enough, Eliza, all the same,' he remarked, catching up with me. ‘You're clearly devoted to the child.'

‘Of course I'm devoted to her. And there's the rub! By loving her, by spending all my days loving her, she is my ball and chain, just as Isabella is yours.'

William kicked at a dandelion clock, sending a cloud of filaments floating off to settle and seed elsewhere.

‘Where is she now?' I asked.

‘In Paris, still. In a private asylum at Chaillot.'

‘Is she improving?'

‘No. But she is not deteriorating. She seems happy, for the most part.'

I privately questioned how anybody could be happy incarcerated in an asylum, however costly. And then I remembered that William had wondered how I could be
un
happy, incarcerated here. Ah!
Vanitas Vanitatum!
Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied? Under the shawl, Clara Venus farted.

‘What a rude noise for such a charming
mignonne
!' remarked William.

‘Was it Marcus Aurelius who said that a man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions?'

‘Yes.'

‘I knew you'd know it! But when you substitute “a woman” for “a man” it sounds vainglorious, doesn't it? Try it.'

William gave me an uncertain look.

‘Go on!'

‘A – a woman's worth is no greater than the worth of … her ambitions.'

‘You see!' I crowed. ‘You say the words as though you were speaking a foreign language. It goes to show, William, that it's acceptable for a man to be ambitious but not a woman.'

‘A man is not held back by the same ties of – um …'

He hesitated, and I raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to continue.

‘A man does not have the same vital bond to a child. Perhaps if you engaged a wet-nurse –'

‘I've fed her myself from the day she was born!' I snapped, disengaging Clara Venus from my left breast and transferring her ostentatiously to my right. That shut him up.

‘Oh, look!' he said. ‘A boat!' And off he trundled, to inspect St Leger's rowing boat, which was rotting down by the little stone-built pier.

I sat down on a hummock and watched him pottering about on the shore while Clara Venus suckled drowsily. The truth was that, now that she was gradually weaning herself, I
had
thought of hiring a nursemaid to take over other aspects of child care. That would mean I would have time to myself to set down my thoughts properly. I had diligently curated my journals and notebooks in the weeks leading up to the birth of the twins, sitting on the floor in my half-finished library surrounded by a reef of paperwork: since then I had not written a word.

However, I knew that St Leger would balk at the cost of a nursemaid, and a staff of four did seem excessive. The Biddies got on well and were comfortable in their quarters above the kitchen; Christy came and went as it suited him; to introduce another servant might upset the equilibrium. Once Clara Venus was fully weaned, I decided, I could prevail upon both Biddies to help with her, for they adored the little girl.

After several minutes, William came back with a bleached skull, a pebble and a shard of clay.

‘What do you want with those?'

‘I always bring interesting things back from the beach. I've been doing it since I was a child. All small boys do it.'

‘Interesting things? Thank goodness I didn't have a boy,' I said, stifling a yawn and forgetting that I
had
had a boy, whom I had elected not to keep. ‘What's so interesting about them?'

‘Skulls are always interesting –'

‘It's a rat's skull, William.'

‘And the pebble is a perfect heart shape.'

I examined it cursorily.

‘And I wondered what this might be.' He held out the piece of clay.

‘It's the stem of a dudeen.'

‘A dudeen?'

‘A clay pipe. It probably belonged to somebody from the village.'

‘What village?'

‘The one on the other side of the lake.'

He raised his head and peered at the horizon.

‘I don't see anything.'

‘That's because there's nothing to see. It's not like one of your picturesque, well-ordered English villages. They call them “clachans” here. There are but a half-dozen cabins, and they are all tumbledown. I wrote to you about it.'

‘I should like to visit it.' He took his notebook from his pocket, along with the pencil I had given him. ‘What is its name?'

‘Aill na Coill.'

‘Is that Irish?'

‘Yes.' I spelled it for him. ‘It means “Cliff of the Woods”.'

‘Woodcliff,' wrote William, and I curled my lip. ‘Rather less poetic,' he added apologetically, ‘but do bear in mind that I'm writing for an English readership. Aill na Coill will mean nothing to them. Perhaps we might go there tomorrow?'

‘St Leger does not like me to go there,' I said. ‘He is fearful that I might catch some disease.'

‘The place is unsanitary?'

‘Yes.'

‘I should like to see it, all the same. I feel it incumbent upon me, as a roving chronicler, to detail all aspects of the country, geographical and political.'

I had not thought of Aill na Coill since I had last been there. I wondered how its inhabitants were faring, and if they too had joined the hordes of beggars that were migrating to the cities now there was a dearth of landlords to oversee their welfare in the provinces.

‘Take my pony and trap,' I told him. ‘I'm sure your joints are aching from a day spent on horseback.'

‘Thank you.'

‘How long do you plan to stay here at Lissaguirra?'

‘If it suits, I should like to stay until the day after tomorrow. I am to dine with the Marquess of Downshire at McDowell's Hotel on Sunday evening.'

‘Fa la!'

At my breast, Clara Venus emitted a tiny snore. She had been lulled into a half-slumber by a glut of milk, her lashes like sable against her peach-bloom skin, her fingers curled into tiny, plump fists. Her eyelids fluttered open briefly as, from the ridge beyond the house, the sound of another gunshot came.

‘There, baba, there, there,' I said. ‘It's just Daddy, gone a-hunting. He's gone to get a rabbit skin, to wrap his baby bunting in.'

‘Strictly speaking, it ought to be “in which to wrap his baby bunting”,' remarked William.

‘You should be writing nursery rhymes for pedants, William, instead of guidebooks.' I shaded my eyes with a hand, to gauge the time by the sun's altitude. ‘We should go back. Old Biddy will have dinner under way, and you will want to change beforehand. She is so pleased to have a guest for once that she's serving
Poulet à la Marengo
in your honour.'

William rubbed his hands together like a gourmand in a Molière farce. ‘Excellent!' he said.

As he helped me to my feet I cast a look across the lake and at the encroaching shadows and thought how strange it was that just half a mile away as the crow flies was an invisible village, inhabited by invisible men and invisible women, some – like me – with babies at their breasts, who lived, like ghosts, on nothing.