Another Heartbeat in the House (33 page)

‘Mr Thackeray and I will have some hot negus in the library,' I told Biddy, after I had checked to see that all was well with Clara Venus. ‘Is the fire still alight?'

‘Yes. 'Tis grand and comfortable in there. I'll clear the table in the dining room, and set it up for the morning. Old Biddy heard the gentleman boasting about the breakfast he had at the Shelbourne in Dublin, so she has near a banquet planned for him of broiled kidneys and poached eggs and rashers and sausages, and a veal-and-ham pie.'

‘Something tells me soda water will do for Mr St Leger,' I told her, and she giggled conspiratorially. ‘Please tell Old Biddy that Mr Thackeray sends his compliments to the chef, and says he has never tasted a finer chicken Marengo.'

I found William in the library, looking over the gleaming leather bindings of the volumes I had arranged neatly in my bookcase. The collection was still rather spartan, but it afforded me great pride.

‘I've been thinking,' he said, taking a map book from a shelf, ‘about the question we were discussing earlier.'

‘We discussed many things earlier. Motherhood, the parlous state of the Irish peasantry, your predilection for
objets trouvés
… Did you keep the rat's skull, incidentally?'

‘No. But I kept the pebble, as a souvenir.'

‘You sentimental ninny. I expect your baggage will be crammed with such junk by the time you leave the country.'

‘No. I only keep souvenirs of places that are special to me. This is one of the most special places I have ever visited in my life.'

‘Then we should swap.' I crouched down and held a taper to the fire. ‘I could go and live in Paris, and you could come here.'

‘But it is your presence that makes this place so very special.'

William was clearly waxing moony. It was time to change the subject. I lit two or three more candles, then sat down on my fireside chair, arranging the folds of my skirt gracefully around me.

‘When do you leave Ireland?' I asked.

‘I plan to stay until November.'

‘And what places are you visiting?'

‘From here I go to Cork.'

‘Will you stay at Maria's?'

‘Yes. I will remember you to her.'

‘I dare say she remembers me quite well.'

The last time we had met – when I had been pushing babies out of me –was certain to be etched ineradicably in Maria's memory.

‘Whoever could forget you?' said William.

I was beginning to find his mawkish expression irksome. However, I was spared the necessity of giving voice to my dissatisfaction by the timely arrival of Young Biddy with the negus. William opened the book, and feigned fascination with its contents while Biddy blathered about the weather and riddled about with a poker in the fire. Then she bade us goodnight.

‘Where do you go after Cork?' I asked, wrenching the conversation back to the bland topic of travel.

‘From Cork, I continue on to Kerry,' said William. Hunkering down beside me, he set the map book upon the small table by my chair and traced a winding road with a forefinger.

In the candlelight, the map – with its provinces marked in different colours, the coast indented with estuaries and dotted with islets, the lines that showed where highways and byways looped and rivers twined – gleamed with magical promise.

‘I shall spend August carousing in Killarney, and in September I travel up along the spectacular wild west coast. In October I head north to Belfast and the verdant glens of Antrim. And finally –' William's finger swooped abruptly down to the dot marked Dublin – ‘I return to the capital and a well-earned dinner at the Kildare Street Club, courtesy of Sir Blacker Dosy, Mr Serjeant Bluebag and Counsellor O'Fee!'

He had broken the spell.

‘They serve the best wine in Europe at the Kildare Street Club,' he remarked, sitting back on his heels and reaching for his negus.

‘Are they real people, Sir Dosy and Mr Bluebag?'

‘Not at all. They are names I have dreamed up to be characters in my novel, along with Lady Slowbore, the Earl of Portansherry and Lady Grizzel Macbeth.'

I managed a smile, though I was feeling sick with wanderlust.

‘You are here,' said William, indicating a point on the map half an inch away from Cork city, ‘between the Blackwater River and the Boggeragh Mountains.'

‘Good God,' I said. ‘I think I'd rather find myself between the devil and the deep blue sea.'

‘Why don't you come with me?'

I looked at him blankly.

‘On my tour.'

‘What an excellent idea! I shall toss one or two necessaries into a handkerchief like Dick Whittington and jaunt off for a month or two without a care in the world. I am sure that St Leger, my protector and the father of my child, would have nothing to say about that.'

‘Come to Dublin, then. At least do that. I shall be there at the end of October.'

It was July now. By the end of October … Clara Venus would be nearly a year old, and fully weaned if I wanted her to be.

‘I shall be meeting some men of letters there – publishers among them. I could introduce –'

‘William, you are a dear person. But my novel is not fit for publication. I deluded myself when I thought I could ever write anything worthwhile.' I rose to my feet. From the room above I could hear the melodic sound of Clara Venus singing for her supper. ‘The Irish have the best stories, you know. But they don't go to the trouble of writing them down, and maybe that has its merits. Can you see yourself to bed?'

Taking a candle, I left him to his map book. As I made my way to the staircase, unfastening my bodice with my free hand to ready myself for my starveling child, I narrowly missed bumping into the baby carriage in the hall.

William stayed over the following night. He had returned from his trip to Aill na Coill drenched by a summer shower and in uncharacteristically taciturn form, and at table that evening the conversational onus fell on me. I avoided politics, and discoursed instead on a variety of unrelated topics, working hard to keep my beaux amused. After dinner I played and sang, and read from Maria Edgeworth's
Castle Rackrent
, which St Leger loved for its broad humour, and which I knew William would appreciate for its satire. St Leger suggested a gentle hand of cards but I discouraged William from taking up the offer, for I knew that he would be roundly trounced. Instead, he decided to retire early, for he was to start for Cork the next morning after breakfast.

In my dressing room, as I was folding my new stockings, I noticed on my
table de toilette
a small flat rectangular box. It was of leather embossed with acanthus leaves: the hinges along one side and the tiny catch on the other told me it was a diptych. With a fingernail, I unhooked the clasp that joined the two panels. One of them contained a likeness of St Leger, the other a miniature of Clara Venus. I stood motionless for one, maybe two minutes. I was more affected than I can say. When I heard St Leger come from the bedchamber, I turned with the little case in my hand.

‘How did you do it?' I asked. ‘How did your artist get the resemblance?'

‘I had commissioned a portrait of Sophia with George,' he said, ‘and I asked him to make me another as the infant might look as a girl, in miniature, with the features a little softer and the eyes more brilliant. Some whimsy prompted me to do it, but when I saw the portrait finished as I had asked, I thought it astonishingly like Clara.'

‘It is like. It is just like both of you.'

‘I hope the notion does not strike you as too fantastical, Eliza? I was concerned lest you take umbrage, or scoff at it. That is why I delayed giving it to you.'

‘How could I take umbrage at such a tender gesture? It is the loveliest thing anyone has ever given me.' I looked down at the double miniature, then raised the case and pressed it to my lips. ‘My best beloveds. I shall treasure it. It is more precious than any formal portrait in a gold-leaf frame.' I set the portrait case upon the table, and then I took St Leger's hand and led him through to the bedchamber.

‘Raise the sash,' I said. ‘The rain will have brought up the scent of the roses.'

Together we made ourselves comfortable on the cushioned window seat, I leaning against the embrasure with the wolfskin around my shoulders, St Leger with his head upon my breast. We remained like that for a long time, listening to the owls hooting softly in the wood beyond the house and watching the silver path cast by the moonlight on the lake.

It was a moment in my life when I felt truly content.

The next day I walked with William to where his horse was being led from the stable by Christy. As we waited for St Leger to join us in the courtyard, he looked at me sorrowfully, the big lovelorn booby, and pressed something into my hand. It was the pebble he had found on the shore, the one shaped like a heart.

‘That is your souvenir of Lissaguirra!' I remonstrated.

‘The symbolism of the gesture will not be lost on you.'

On cue, St Leger strode across the yard and adopted a proprietorial stance by my side. I slid the stone into my pocket and together we watched William sling his bag over the saddle and mount the horse that would take him to the next staging post en route for Cork. He cut a comical figure astride the roan mare: the mount was too small for him, and he was clearly uncomfortable in the saddle. His discomfiture was not eased by St Leger's jocularly telling him that he looked as though he had a chronic case of haemorrhoids.

I wandered back into the house, feeling foolishly bereft. St Leger had gone down to the pier with Christy, to see what repairs needed doing to the boat, and Clara Venus was sleeping in her baby carriage under the bough of one of the sessile oaks that bordered the garden. I wheeled her there often because when she woke she loved to lie and watch the leaves move in the breeze, mesmerized by the play of light and shadow.

The baby carriage had been one of the gifts lavished upon his daughter by St Leger: from time to time he brought me such newfangled contraptions because he reasoned that whilst George might be heir to Sophia's fortune, it did not follow that his twin sister should want for material things. In his heart, St Leger loved both babies equally, and in a way I think he loved Clara Venus more because, being a girl, she favoured me.

In the dining room, I heard Young Biddy clearing away the breakfast things; from the kitchen came the smell of baking: Old Biddy was making St Leger's favourite bread-and-butter pudding. In the study I found an unsealed letter propped against the mantel clock. It was from William, formally thanking us for our hospitality, which he hoped to cordially reciprocate before he left Ireland; in Dublin, perhaps, where he would be happy to entertain us to dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel.

I left the letter for St Leger to find and made to leave the room, but as I crossed to the door I saw on the floor – half concealed by the rug beneath my chair – a sheet of paper. I stooped to retrieve it: it was a page from William's notebook, densely covered with his flowing script.

I am writing this in what is probably one of the most enchanting corners of the world. Before me lies a vista of blue hills; before me a lake bathed in moonlight; beyond the perimeters of the domain comes the gentle ‘Whoo whoo' of an owl as he embarks on a night's hunting, and above me lies the woman I love above all other.

What was William thinking? I thanked the Lord that St Leger had not come across this amorous declaration before I had, for he would undoubtedly have fallen straight away upon his pistols, and challenged his rival to a duel.

On the reverse of the page, William had written his description of Aill na Coill:

Humans & animals – pigs with their farrow, geese, hens and whatever else – lodge in boggy dugouts, whose interiors are at most ten feet long & about half as wide. In one such there lived a family of no fewer than seven persons. An English or French peasant is a Prince compared to these Irishmen.

It is hard to imagine that only a few miles from this wasteland there lie the castle and the lands that belong to the Duke of Devonshire. Ireland is full of contrasts – here, an opulent demesne with proud avenues, there stony land that only with an effort yields crops. When such miserable creatures as I have described – & of whom there are hundreds of thousands on the island – are hunted from house & home by their landlords, there is nothing left for them to do except take to the road to beg for food & shelter, for I am told they find work only in the sowing & harvesting seasons.

Is what I am saying somewhat exaggerated? Should I withhold the information because it will displease my publishers, who are hoping for something amusing from me? I have no moral alternative, but to speak out what I saw, & feel is my right & my duty to report.

There came the sound of a voice in the hall singing ‘Peg in the Low Back'd Car'. Young Biddy came into the library with a basket of logs, a dustpan and a goose wing.

‘Excuse me, ma'am,' she said when she saw me. ‘I thought you were still beyond in the yard.'

‘Come in, Biddy. You're not disturbing me. You might set the fire in my sitting room upstairs if you have not done so already, for we shall have no need of it here tonight.'

‘So Mr Thackeray is on his way?' she remarked, hunkering down by the grate. ‘Old Biddy took a fair fancy to him, big handsome man that he is.'

I smiled abstractedly.

‘What a smoker! I'd wager he puffed his way through an entire box of cigars last night.'

‘But he retired early.'

‘He must have come down again when we were all abed. I woke at sunrise and came straight to this room, for the smell made me think the house was after catching fire, and there he was, smoking like a dragon and scribbling in his book.'

Hunkering down by the fire, she set about sweeping the hearth with the goose wing.