The Fox's Walk (26 page)

My temporary status—since my brush with the spirit world, I was being treated as though I were recovering from a not very serious illness—even with its potential for exploitation, was not a comfortable one. Aware that the situation could be turned to some advantage, I didn't know what I wanted, and that in turn frustrated me and made me more wretched, as though I had been told while I was feeling slightly sick that I could eat as many chocolates as I wished. I didn't want indulgence; I wanted the safety of unquestioned rules and a return to the belief that my grandmother's strictures, although often inconvenient, were infallible. It was a day I would have been happy to spend in the schoolroom at Glenbeg, but Clodagh and I were on holiday from lessons for another week.

Rain fell intermittently all that day; normally it would not have excused me from some form of outdoor exercise. But that afternoon neither Grandmother nor Aunt Katie sent me upstairs to rest or outdoors for a walk. I sat on the sofa opposite the fire and read
The Thirty-nine Steps.
Aunt Katie was reading
A Man of Property,
Grandmother the memoirs of the Due de Saint-Simon. The clock ticked and from time to time embers fell through the grate; these sounds apart, the silence was broken only by Aunt Katie's asking me, when the light outside changed from gloom to dusk, if I had enough light. The ornate box of chocolates Uncle William had given me the day before remained unopened in the drawing room.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
Tuesday, I woke to a gale blowing in from the sea. Hard points of rain smashed against the windows of my bedroom. I lay in bed for a few minutes on the assumption that the normal unquestioned necessity for punctuality was in abeyance, and wondered how long the current atmosphere of laissez-faire would continue and whether the resumption of the often exhausting rules that composed and restricted my life at Ballydavid would be gradual or sudden. I considered the likelihood of another long day in front of the fire in the library, quietly reading my book and growing old beside Grandmother and Aunt Katie. What if on Wednesday morning I also awoke to an unchanged situation?

I need not have feared an imagined eternity of uneventful days. For one thing, I seemed to have forgotten Sonia. She had spent Easter Monday in bed, diplomatically ill, perhaps assuming that responsibility for the previous day's debacle would be laid at her feet and trying to think of a plan that would put someone else's roof over her head.

The atmosphere at breakfast announced business as usual. Grandmother's eye fell on me as soon as we had all exchanged greetings and I had taken my place. I could sense her looking for something to criticize, and I sat up straight, elbows by my side, and concentrated on my table manners. She gave me the minimal nod with which she bestowed temporary approval and asked me when I had last written to my mother. I saw Aunt Katie blink.

I realized that the old ladies needed to see what, if anything, I would tell my mother about our attempt at table tilting. I nodded obediently, if unenthusiastically; letters to my mother were another area in which I struggled and failed to come up to Grandmother's standards. The contents were not censored, the knowledge that she would read them censorship enough, but often the letter would be rewritten, sometimes more than once, on grounds of poor handwriting, poverty of description, or inelegant wording. On this occasion, since there had been no discussion of what had taken place two days earlier, I would have welcomed a hint as to the party line.

Since my grandmother's question constituted a suggestion, not an instruction, I had, by my reckoning, until teatime to present to her a draft of a neatly written, adequately expressed account of those events my mother might be interested in having described and of a reassurance of my health, well-being, and continuing affection. I also remembered that Miss Kingsley had given me the holiday task of tracing a map of Ireland. Again, there was no urgency; lessons wouldn't resume until the following Monday, but experience had taught me that when I had grandmother's full attention she would sometimes, if the mood took her, review every aspect of my life: Questions as to the regularity of my prayers and bowel movements might be followed by a quiz on French verbs and multiplication tables, an inspection of my fingernails, and an instruction to listen to the way she pronounced a series of words and then to say each word back to her five times—the latter exercise a precaution against my acquiring an Irish accent.

After breakfast I retired to my room. So far as I can remember, Sonia had not appeared in the dining room, and I left Grandmother reading the
Morning Post
to Aunt Katie. The alacrity with which I excused myself and set off toward my tasks was less a sign that I was conscientious than that I was developing political opinions at odds with those expressed in the
Post's
editorial pages. It had taken me a little time to understand that the “grateless Irish,” about whom Grandmother read in tones of scorn, included Bridie and Maggie and the two men who worked on the farm; even the
Morning Post,
I assumed, would not dare so to describe the formidable O'Neill.

Tracing the map seemed the more appealing of the two tasks before me, and I spent the next hour following, with a sharp pencil on a piece of tracing paper, the jagged indentations of the Adantic on the west coast of Ireland and the smoother outlines of the rest of the island. I retraced the outline, pressing harder with my pencil, the tracing paper on top of a sheet of drawing paper, and then I followed the faint impression on the drawing paper with a pencil until I had reproduced the coastline for my map. After that came the most satisfying part of my task: shading the outline of the coast in blue to denote the sea; for this I chose the darkest blue in the box of colored pencils Uncle William had given me for Christmas.

I started shading the easier east coast, working my way down from Ulster—Belfast, Dublin, Wexford and round the corner to the south coast. I carefully shaded Hook Head which lay on the far side of the estuary from Ballydavid—the origin, I had been told, of the expression “by Hook or by crook.” Someone—I now forget who—had told me these were Cromwell's words, spoken when he declared his intention of taking Waterford. Later I questioned the story when I learned Cromwell did not approach Waterford by sea. He came instead from New Ross, a town at the confluence of the Nore and Barrow, the rivers that later joined the Suir to flow past Ballydavid into the Atlantic. He failed to take Duncannon, on the Wexford side of the estuary, but captured the fort at Passage, the village a few miles up the Suir from Ballydavid where the ferry crosses between the Waterford and Wexford shores. Waterford held out against Cromwell, aided by the winter weather and sickness—a form of malaria, spotted fever, and dysentery—in the Commonwealth army. It fell to one of his generals the following year.

After Hook Head, I went back and carefully shaded around the tiny Saltee Islands which lay on the other side of the head, at the far end of Ballyteige Bay; it was my secret ambition to visit them one day.

Some time had passed, and I started to feel restless and a little lonely. I took my pencil down to the kitchen to be sharpened.

The request was legitimate; if I had been at Glenbeg I would have taken the pencil to Miss Kingsley, who would have sharpened it with her silver penknife, a possession I had the impression was of some sentimental value to her. Bridie took a knife from the drawer of the kitchen table and with two or three uneven strokes put a point on the pencil. She seemed impatient, and I, an expert, sensed tension—not extreme—in the kitchen. I wondered if Aunt Katie had decreed a late change to the menu for lunch; I knew better than to ask. Reluctant to go back upstairs, I wandered out the kitchen door.

It was still raining, but not heavily. I thought that I would go and see if Patience was in her stall. The hunting season over, Patience and Benedict spent most days in a paddock close to the stables, but it seemed unlikely that O'Neill would have turned them out in the gale that had been blowing that morning. A lack of exercise followed by a scoop of oats in Patience's evening feed could result in an unsatisfactory riding lesson the following day. My visit was as much placatory as sentimental.

I glanced back at Bridie and Maggie before slipping out the door; I hadn't changed my shoes and I wasn't wearing a coat. But Bridie and Maggie didn't care if I got my feet wet or came back cold; they were, in their way, as keen on cause and effect as were Grandmother and Aunt Katie, but different causes, different effects.

I glanced toward the gate to the back avenue; I hadn't seen the red-haired boy since the September afternoon that Grandmother and I had taken a walk through the Ballydavid woods. Although Jarvis de Courcy had replaced the young Clancy in my affections—the events of my birthday party having provided more material for fantasy—I remained curious about the boy with the mocking smile, his soldier brother, and the letters he read to Mrs. O'Neill. But I was alone.

Patience was in her stall. I wasn't tall enough to see her through the bars, so I slid back the door a little; she looked at me with a complete lack of interest. I wasn't sure what to do next. I could have stepped inside and closed the door behind me, crossed the stall, and patted her, but I was still frightened of her and knew her capable of biting or kicking me if I gave her the chance. After a moment or two, I thought that my mistake was to come empty-handed, so I closed the door and went in search of a treat. I knew she would like a lump of sugar, but the kitchen atmosphere was not conducive to a request for sugar for a pony. There was a storeroom where apples from the previous summer, now wrinkled and softening, lay on slatted shelves, and carrots, equally soft and unpleasantly limp, were buried in a heap of sand on the concrete floor. Both commodities were in diminishing demand for human consumption, and I knew it would be all right to take one of either for Patience. An apple would have to be taken to the kitchen to be cut into quarters, but the sand on a carrot could be rinsed off under the yard up; I weighed the disadvantages of each: kitchen and bad temper, or yard tap and wet shoes.

Mrs. O'Neill's door was open as I came back through the passageway and hesitated in its dry shelter, regretting now that I hadn't put on boots and a coat before coming out. She called out to me. I entered her kitchen shyly; despite her invitation I was ready to sidle out again if O'Neill were sitting at the kitchen table. But Mrs. O'Neill was alone.

“Come in and sit by the fire,” she said. “You must be perished and you out with no coat on you.”

The fire and chimney wide above it were set into the wall; on either side of the open hearth was a ledge wide enough for me to sit on, and I gratefully perched myself there, warming my legs. On the other side of the fire, a heavy, flat iron rested on its end, and there were some pots and implements involved in the meal Mrs. O'Neill was preparing. On the wall, to one side of the hearth, was a framed photograph of Tom O'Neill in uniform, his pose stiff, his expression proud and uncertain. I would have liked to say something to Mrs. O'Neill about her son, but I didn't know how.

Mrs. O'Neill looked cross. Usually an expression of anger or irritation on an adult face was enough for me to take myself into another room. But an invitation to come into her kitchen was by no means her automatic response to seeing me pass by. I wondered if she was bored or if she wanted someone to complain to. It crossed my mind that she might have recognized me as someone who would provide a sympathetic ear if she wished to unburden herself about her husband's shortcomings.

The meal cooking on the fire—I could tell from its smell—was boiled bacon and cabbage. A large black pot hung just above the embers, attached to a hook suspended from a cast-iron arm that swung across the fire. The lid of the pot was upside down and in it a cake of bread was cooking. I watched as Mrs. O'Neill leaned in to poke the fire, the glow from the turf illuminating her already heat-reddened face.

Mrs. O'Neill was famous for her hair and I took this opportunity to stare at it. It was, of course, pinned up—red, thick, shining—without either a gray hair or the fading of color that usually comes with middle age. How Mrs. O'Neill kept her lovely hair in this condition was a question I had heard discussed in both drawing room and kitchen. Years ago, a widow of a Bagnold cousin and thus, as Grandmother invariably remarked when her name came up, no blood relation, had asked Mrs. O'Neill to unpin her hair. Mrs. O'Neill had done so, not offended by the impertinent request, and had shaken it out, displaying it in its full glory. It had reached, uniformly thick, to a few inches below her waist. I had been told that the secret was that it had never, ever, been washed. The idea was slightly shocking to me; I sensed the grown-up reaction was more complicated. Logically, I suppose, either the explanation was not true, in which case there was nothing to be shocked about, or else it was true, and Mrs. O'Neill's beautiful hair vindicated the disregard for hygiene. But I now think the source of information was the root of the drawingroom discomfort; it seems more than probable that Cousin Dorcas, who had asked Mrs. O'Neill to display her hair, was also the one who had asked for the secret of its beauty.

From the distance of time it is hard to see that Cousin Dorcas had done any harm by showing curiosity about Mrs. O'Neill's beautiful hair; but the disapproval was so strong that I still remember it as an example of the kind of behavior that condemned Cousin Dorcas to a life of loneliness and genteel poverty. I don't know whether Mrs. O'Neill was flattered by the unfortunate woman's admiration or thought of her as not being quite a lady, but I am certain that O'Neill shared Grandmother's and Aunt Katie's disapproval. As, it would seem, even now do I.

Mrs. O'Neill felt no need to entertain me. She knew, I think, that I was happy to sit beside her fire and interested enough in what was going on around me without an attempt—hard even now to imagine what form it could have taken—at conversation. To the virtue of silence instilled in early childhood and reinforced almost daily since I had come to Ballydavid, I had added my own observation that the less I said the more I was told or, at least, allowed to observe. I sat by the fire, my feet now warm and my shoes drying, admiring the cheerful decoration of the wall surrounding the fireplace. The wall had been painted a strong blue, the paint not the kind employed on the interior of Ballydavid: It was of a thicker consistency and shinier. On it, in an equally strong red, a pattern had been superimposed—a not quite regular shape, more oval than round, divided into four quarters by thin strips that crossed in the middle. Mrs. O'Neill saw me touch one of the red shapes with the tip of my finger.