The Fox's Walk (20 page)

I glanced up at Aunt Katie, not knowing whether I had broken some rule by being found in conversation with a stranger. But Aunt Katie was still gazing after the Countess.

Shortly afterward, O'Neill brought Patience up from the stables, and I stopped thinking about Aunt Katie or the Countess as I concentrated on coordinating my scramble onto Patience's back with O'Neill's leg up and my pony's determination to practice a complicated dance step. Although there was an instant when it seemed as though I had turned into a sack of potatoes, O'Neill saved the day with a second shove, and I landed, if not lighdy, at least in the saddle. Soon we were moving off.

It is difficult to make interesting an account of one's sporting experiences, and rather than describe my first day's hunting field by field, bank by bank, ditch by ditch—all of which I remember with the clarity that the old reserve for certain magical or terrifying events in their childhoods—I will try to describe what it felt like. And my first day's hunting was both magical and, at first, terrifying. During the next few hours—I was only out for half a day—I shed two fears. Both were lost during the first run. The fox broke covert soon after the hounds had gone into the bracken to flush him out. I had ridden up an overgrown boreen, frightened and excited. But, hearing the baying of the hounds and the huntsman's horn, I felt a new kind of exhilaration. I had tucked myself and Patience a little away from the other horses and riders, determined neither to be in anyone's way nor to be hurt by a sudden move from one of the huge, overexcited horses. The hounds, following the scent and encouraged by the hunting horn and the whips of the hunt servants, set off—tails up and noses down—across the frosty field into a stony lane with heavy, bare hawthorn growing on its banks. Soon we turned into another field and the pace picked up. It was then I understood that Patience was a pony whose more usual work was to pull a trap and that I was in no danger of being in at the kill or being blooded. By the time I had arrived at the first five-barred gate, I found it open; Patience and I were not the only ones incapable of jumping such a barrier, or the only ones happy to avoid ridiculous risks. I began to realize I would not be called upon to make death-defying and foolhardy attempts to emulate the experienced riders on large athletic horses. As I urged Patience to gallop as fast as she could, I felt my fear slip away. By now I was trailing behind, but I was not alone. Clodagh, who I knew hunted—one of the many sources of unexpressed envy on my part—but whom I had not seen at the meet, was also among the five or six of us who were not keeping up with the better-mounted, hard-riding group. We could see them, Mrs. Hitchcock among them, disappearing over the hill. I followed some older women and a courteous middle-aged man on a sturdy cob who dismounted to open gates or to lower the top pole barring the entrance to a field. I was so excited by this time that when I miscalculated a narrow grass-topped bank on which Patience touched down before clearing the ditch on the other side and I tumbled off, I felt neither fear nor pain. Before I knew it, I had got myself back on board and was galloping after my reassuring companions. I had fallen and not been hurt, and I had remounted; I had felt excitement, not fear. I knew that I would make mistakes and would take more serious falls, but I would not again fear the hunting field, and, if I were to disgrace Ballydavid, it would not be there.

O'Neill was following the hunt in Mrs. Hitchcock's motorcar with her groom. The groom carried refreshments—sandwiches and a flask of Irish whiskey—and probably her lipstick and face powder; O'Neill was keeping an eye on me and ready to take me home at the end of the run closest to one o'clock. To follow a hunt by car successfully requires not only a good driver (less in terms of attaining great speeds or taking sharp corners than judgment as to where one can or cannot take a car) but a knowledge of the geography of the narrow roads, small lanes, and mud tracks of the countryside, the coverts, the fox's habits, and the place to where he was most likely to make his run once he had broken covert. It was no surprise to me that O'Neill, who knew the countryside like the back of his hand, should be comfortably ensconced in the front seat of Mrs. Hitchcock's motorcar, but I was interested to see, when we assembled at the next covert to be drawn, that one of the grooms following with remounts was also leading Benedict.

It was time to go home. I was tired, muddy, and very happy. Clodagh wasn't going home after half a day, so I muttered something about Patience not yet being fit. We were now some miles from Ballinamona and O'Neill and I set off across the fields and down the lanes until we came to the road. I knew enough not to burble or boast, and O'Neill was a man of few words, none of them employed in compliments. But his slow, judicious nod confirmed that I had done well enough in his eyes. And, when we rode into the stable yard at Ballinamona Park, he said he would brush down Patience and feed her himself and that it would be better to leave her at Ballinamona overnight—thus excusing me the otherwise mandatory long hack home.

I brushed as much mud as I could off my boots on the doormat before I went into the house. Aunt Katie had stayed at Ballinamona—indeed she had no way of going home since O'Neill was out following the hunt—and had presided over lunch from her former place at the head of the dining-room table. Now she sat beside the fire in the library with the Countess. They looked up as I came into the room, though I did not feel that I was interrupting an intimate conversation. The Countess had her feet tucked up under her and was reclining in the corner of the sofa nearest the fire. Her back was to the window and I couldn't see her face clearly. It occurred to me I still didn't know how to address her.

“There you are,” Aunt Katie said. “You must be exhausted. Come closer to the fire and we'll get you something to eat before O'Neill takes us home. Now tell me all about it.”

Although no less self-centered than the next child, I was far more curious about what had taken place between Aunt Katie and the Countess at Ballinamona while I had been gone. I gave them a short account of the hunt, ending with a grateful reference to my new boots; I knew them to be a generous extravagance on the part of Grandmother since I would outgrow them by the following year.

A little later, after I wolfed a boiled egg, fingers of toast, and a pot of tea, I climbed into the Sunbeam with Aunt Katie. Apart from her smile and an expression of interest while I'd briefly described the hunt, I had had no further conversation with the Countess. I would have liked to ask Aunt Katie about her but thought I would wait. I was fairly sure my great-aunt would have something to say on the subject.

“What,” she said, relaxing as O'Neill successfully steered us between the Ballinamona gate posts and turned onto the Waterford road, “did—ah—Countess Debussy say to you?”

“She just asked me my name and said I had a present and then something about a cigarette case, but that was to you.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. Well, she said Alice in Wonderland after I said my name.”

“I see,” said Aunt Katie.

We did not speak again until we arrived at Ballydavid. We both had plenty to think about. When we got home I was sent into the kitchen to have my boots pulled off; Bridie had already put two cauldrons of water on the range to heat for my bath. I went upstairs to a bedroom where a fire had been lighted and towels were warming on the fireguard. The bath tub had been set on the mat in front of the fire—the temperature perfected by Bridie, who, sleeves rolled above her elbows, was ready to give me a bath.

A more independent child might have felt that, since she was now a fully fledged member of the hunting community, she was old enough to wash herself, but I did not. A bath in front of the fire with Bridie squeezing hot water from a sponge over my back was the most sensuous pleasure I had ever experienced or could imagine. I lay back and allowed my tired muscles to relax. Afterward Bridie wrapped me in the warm towel from the spark guard. I remembered nothing more until I woke up in the dark; I was in bed, lazy and content, the curtains open to the now black sky.

When I went downstairs I found Grandmother and Aunt Katie in the drawing room. The tea tray had already been taken away. Despite my midafternoon meal, I was hungry and hoped some alternative arrangement for me had been made. Since I went to bed early, I usually had only a glass of milk and an oatmeal biscuit between tea and the time I went upstairs.

It appeared my needs had been anticipated; in response to my glance toward the table where the tea tray no longer sat, Grandmother said:

“We thought, Alice, that, since you had an inadequate lunch and we let you sleep through tea, tonight you would stay down for dinner. Run along and tell Maggie you'll be eating with us.”

On the way to the kitchen I considered why Grandmother had not rung to summon Bridie, her normal way of conveying minor instructions. Evidently, I had interrupted a conversation not intended for my ears.

Bridie was sitting at the table peeling potatoes, and Maggie was in front of the range, lifting boiled eggs out of a saucepan with a slotted spoon, when I came into the kitchen.

“I'm to stay down for dinner—tonight,” I said, both proud and apologetic.

“Potato and hard-boiled eggs gratin,” Maggie said. “There's two extra boiled for the kedgeree for lunch tomorrow.”

Bridie took another potato from the sack.

“Look at your boots,” she said. When I was in the kitchen, I was in the habit of pronouncing the word
your
as “yer”—as Bridie just had—but I could not have attempted Maggie's
boiled
; the i emphasized, the
o
more hinted at than pronounced.

“Did you-?” I asked, wide-eyed with gratitude. My boots stood just inside the kitchen door, the polish even deeper than it had been when I had first taken them out of their box. Wooden trees held them proudly upright.

“O'Neill did your boots. No one but himself is let do the hunting boots. He did a grand job of it altogether.”

He had done a grand job of it. And of making me understand that the torch had been handed to me—temporarily, at least. If my mother decided to take up hunting again, I knew how quickly I would take second place. But she wasn't going to come to Ireland and hunt. She was going to stay in London and look after her new baby.

I changed my dress for dinner. I put on the pink and beige wool dress I wore at Christmas and when Uncle William came to lunch on Sundays, but I was careful to make sure that the rest of my appearance was plain and neat; I wanted to seem cognizant of the honor accorded me without seeming to dress up or show off. Grandmother looked at me searchingly when I returned to the drawing room; after a moment she gave me a small nod of approval.

The heavy velvet curtains were drawn in the dark dining room when we sat down, the table lit by a pair of candelabra, each of which held three candles. Nothing else was changed, even the meal was one we might have been served for lunch, but the candlelight reflected on the wood of the table, as richly and deeply polished as my boots, made dinner seem dramatic, exciting, sophisticated.

“Aunt Katie tells me you and she met the Russian woman who is staying with Mrs. Hitchcock.”

“She said she comes from Manchuria.” As soon as I closed my mouth I realized that I had contradicted Grandmother. I had no reason to assume that Manchuria was not in Russia. My geography lessons so far had been limited to an intensive study of Ireland and a general impression of the pink on the map of the world that denoted the length and breadth of the British Empire. Russia and Manchuria seemed more the names of places in myth or story books.

“What did you make of her?”

I felt as though I had grown up five years during the course of the day. The change in O'Neill's demeanor, staying down for dinner, now being asked for my opinion on an adult—I put it all down to my new status as a fox-hunting woman. At the same time, however flattering it was to have my opinion solicited, it raised an awkward question: Should I or should I not mention the startling resemblance the Countess bore to Mara? I could not help feeling they must be connected.

“It felt,” I said slowly and a little reluctantly, “like I had seen her before.”

“As though
I had seen her before,” Grandmother said. She was in the habit of correcting not only my grammar but my way of expressing myself. But she said it automatically. She and Aunt Katie caught each other's eye in a way not perceptible to anyone who had not studied their expressions and habits as carefully as I had.

I had considered mentioning Mara but, after another hesitation, I thought I had said enough. Until I understood better the nervous excitement that lay just beneath the surface of every word and silence since we had met the Countess, a demeanor of innocence and a simulated lack of interest seemed prudent.

I forget now what else we talked about or when I went to bed; not surprisingly, it is all a long time ago. The moments I describe are those that stand out either for their significance or for one of the invisible, seemingly arbitrary reasons that some moments of childhood remain with us forever.

I do, however, clearly remember waking later with a start. I had the sense that I had not been asleep for long. I imagine I woke because I had gone to sleep with an unaccustomed and undigested meal in my stomach, but at the time it seemed that I had woken up because I remembered that my boots were still standing by the kitchen door. It suddenly seemed important that I should not leave them there for O'Neill to see in the morning. I thought it would appear ungrateful after the masterly job he had done of polishing them. It also seemed a casual way to treat a present of Grandmother's. I did not like leaving my room after dark, but I had the sense that I was not the only one still awake.

I lit my candle and climbed out of bed. There was an ever present fear of fire at Ballydavid and at all other houses of a certain age that depended on turf or wood fires for heat and on candles and oil lamps for light. The condition of the interiors of the chimneys, perhaps never repointed since the house had been built in a previous century—not necessarily the one before—was, like an overdraft or the political situation, one of the small-hours-of-the-morning terrors of an anxious or imaginative householder. Nevertheless, a candle and matches were left in my room—many rules, warnings, and injunctions surrounding them—in case I woke in the night and needed to go along the corridor to the WC.