The Fox's Walk (38 page)

Inez and her partner thanked each other and separated after they left the court. Captain Blaine fetched a glass of lemonade for Rosamund; I saw a silent moment between them before they became part of a larger group that almost immediately dispersed as the new game, of a staid and known middle-aged quantity, began. There was a general movement, further refreshments were offered, and some of the guests wandered toward the garden.

Major Spenser, still tightening the screws on the press of his racquet, came over to greet my mother who congratulated him on his game. Clodagh, discontented, went to look for her mother; Miss Kingsley did not rise to accompany her. Instead, she and I lazily picked daisies from the less recently mown grass behind us, and she made them into a chain she draped around my neck. She was, I could see, aware of Major Spenser's presence.

“Cubbing begins next week,” Major Spenser said to my mother. “I hope you're planning to come out with us.”

I glanced up at Mother. The question was of some interest to me and I wanted to read her expression as well as hear her reply. Cubbing began the following week; my birthday was the week after. So was the beginning of the new school term. I didn't know whether I—wc—would still be in Ireland for my birthday. If we were, I hoped that in recognition of my greater maturity and as part of my birthday celebrations, I would be allowed to go cubbing.

Mother laughed.

“I don't know,” she said. “O'Neill has clipped my hunter and the pony, but they're both a long way from being fit.”

I was trying to pluck up courage to add my voice to that of Major Spenser's when I became aware of Mrs. Coughlan's approach. She was carrying a lovely pink parasol. I stood up to greet her.

“My little girl,” she said. “It's been a long time since I last saw you. Wherever have you been?”

“Hello, Mrs. Coughlan,” I said breathlessly. I had not seen Mrs. Coughlan since my birthday party, and I was not sure of the current state of relations between her and my grandmother. Jarvis slid silently past me; he seemed to be going in the direction of the front door.

“Let us go for a little walk,” she said, twirling her lowered parasol so that I could admire it. The pink silk was covered with white embroidered rosettes; I wondered where she had come by it. “You can tell me all about what is going on in London. Have you seen any good plays?”

I experienced my usual mixture of flattered delight and confused alarm at Mrs. Coughlan's assumption that she and I would converse on equal terms; after a moment I remembered that my part of the conversation, not a significant one, was largely ignored by her. Instead of being forced to admit that we hadn't seen each other for almost a year not because I had been leading a busy social life in London but because Grandmother had not considered herself to be on speaking terms with Mrs. Coughlan, I was, a moment later, listening to an account of a concert at which she herself had sung and after which attention had been paid to her by a duke. I longed to ask where—in a drawing room or at Wigmore Hall? Waterford or St. Petersburg? They all seemed equally probable. And when? A week ago or when she was a girl? And if the latter, how long ago was that? Then we were interrupted by Captain Blaine.

“Seraphina,” he said, kissing the back of her lace-gloved hand. “How enchanting and cool you look. Who is your little friend?”

“My name is Alice,” I said quickly, in case she hadn't remembered.

“The last time we met,” Mrs. Coughlan said, “you promised to take me for a ride in your motorcar.”

“So I did,” said Captain Blaine. “Why don't we go for a spin now? We'll take—Alice as a chaperone.”

Mrs. Coughlan's cries of girlish laughter—I wonder now how old she was; maybe she was still young enough to have been attractive to Blaine—were interrupted by the arrival of Rosamund. She was red in the face and her hair was damp and frizzy. Her expression told me she was still suffering from defeat, and she looked more determined than usual.

“Good afternoon, Miss Gwynne,” I piped up politely, but, when she seemed not to hear me, I added, not quite so innocently, “I am sorry you were beaten.”

She glanced at me briefly, her expression more one of distraction than dislike.

“And Rosamund, of course,” Blaine said.

Introductions took place; it seemed the Bryces and the Coughlans did not know each other socially. I took note of that fact and of Mrs. Coughlan's first name and that Captain Blaine had addressed her by it and stored it at the back of my mind for consideration later. Then we all strolled toward the Lancia.

There was a pause, slightly awkward, while Blaine decided how to accommodate two large egos and a superfluous little girl in his motorcar.

“You,” Captain Blaine said to Mrs. Coughlan, “will sit here”—he indicated the back seat—“like the Vicereine. Alice will sit beside you. Rosamund, you sit next to me.”

He opened the doors and a moment later we were all seated. Despite the heat, Rosamund allowed him to drape his khaki greatcoat over her shoulders so that she should not catch a chill after her exertions. While Captain Blaine went round to the front of the car to start it, Rosamund turned the collar of the coat up and put on his uniform cap, adjusting it to a saucy angle. She looked very fetching in a boyish way, but I knew her action would earn her a couple more black marks from the critical eyes of the old ladies. It was not until Blaine had swung the starting handle vigorously a couple of times that anyone seemed to notice what we were doing. He leapt into the car as the engine caught, found the gear, and the car lurched forward; all eyes turned to us as he drove across the gravel. I saw O'Neill and Jarvis just outside the hall door, O'Neill's expression stern as he addressed Jarvis. A moment later, Jarvis launched himself across the gravel and, like a monkey, gripped the canvas of the folded down roof of the Lancia, and, with a foot on the fender, attached himself to the back of the vehicle before it gathered speed. As we swung onto the slope of the avenue, I saw Miss Kingsley still sitting on the rug with Major Spenser beside her.

Patience and Mother's hunter, grazing in the field by the avenue, raised their heads for a startled moment before turning and dashing to the far end of the pasture; I imagined O'Neill would have something to say on that subject when we came home. I wondered how far we were going and for a nervous moment whether Captain Blaine was planning to return. Perhaps he would leave me with Mrs. Coughlan at her house, while he and Rosamund Gwynne, sulky from their defeat, returned to the garrison in Waterford. Maybe Grandmother and my mother would again have to come and take me home.

We passed out of sunshine into the shade of the avenue as we turned the bend and drove out of sight of the house. The speed was exhilarating, but the noise of the motorcar and the lack of any barrier between me and outside made me afraid; that Jarvis was insecurely attached to the back also terrified me. I sensed, when we came out onto the road, that Captain Blaine would drive faster and that his other two companions, competing with each other, would encourage him to show off. I began to wish I had stayed at home.

Rosamund Gwynne laughed and with one hand held her military cap in place. Mrs. Coughlan, upright, towered above me; she had taken Blaine's reference to the Vicereine to heart. I turned to look at Jarvis, unsure whether it would be more dangerous for him to try to clamber over the back into the seat with me and Mrs. Coughlan or to continue hanging onto the back while Blaine gathered speed. That the folded canvas projected more than a foot from the back of the Lancia made his position more vulnerable and less easy to negotiate.

My head was turned toward him when the first shot was fired. It didn't have an immediate significance for me; it seemed one more loud noise emanating from the engine of the Lancia. I felt the car swerve and saw that we were not going to clear the gateposts that marked the end of the avenue, behind which lay the Waterford-Woodstown road. I huddled down instinctively for protection and found my face in the lace of Mrs. Cochlan's dress as I heard the second, third, and fourth shots.

 

WHEN I BECAME
conscious again, I was lying on the grass verge that Pat had so carefully mown the day before. Since I could see the greater part of the tennis party streaming down the avenue—only three or four men, two of them in uniform, and Inez de Courcy were already with us—I knew that very little time had passed. I was most aware that sound had begun to come back into the summer afternoon. After the car had bounced off the open wrought iron gate, it skidded across the stony packed earth of the avenue before hitting the opposite gatepost and turning on its side. And after the crash there was silence; only a hiss of what might have been steam escaping from the damaged engine filled the silent afternoon, taking the place of the usual, hardly noticed sounds of birds and the countryside. I felt an intense awareness of every detail of my surroundings; of every passing moment, which seemed to take place at half the speed of normal time, before I floated away into the feeling of a slow, calm dream.

I was lying on the grass, a man's jacket over my legs. I could hear Jarvis's voice close by. Although the words he was speaking did not at first arrange themselves to have much significance, I knew—long before I understood what he was saying—that Mrs. Coughlan, Captain Blaine, and Rosamund Gwynne were dead.

A moment later I opened my eyes again and saw my mother crouched, wild-eyed and pale, above me.

“Are you all right, darling?” She gasped breathlessly, one hand on my shoulder, the other supporting herself on the grass.

I nodded and smiled a little to reassure her. I felt as though I were somewhere else, floating over the scene, and that the physical effort of speaking was for the moment beyond me.

“There were three men. They were wearing masks,” I heard Jarvis say. I allowed my head to fall a little to one side so that I could see him. He was sitting on the grass. The side of his face was grazed and bleeding. Someone had given him a large white handkerchief. The skin had been scraped off both his knees and the side of one leg. He was shivering as though he were very cold, and the way he held one arm I would later, on the hunting field, come to recognize as a broken collar bone, but his voice was clear and confident.

That Jarvis had chosen to lie about what had happened did not in my dreamlike state seem surprising. Nor was I surprised that he knew I would not betray him. I closed my eyes again, as much to avoid having to speak, even to continue reassuring my mother I wasn't hurt, as to have to answer questions about what had happened. I wasn't even playing for time; I knew what I would say: I would, a habit already invisibly in place, follow Jarvis's lead but, as always, I would be one step behind. I would not contradict his lie; he already knew that. Instead I would say I had seen nothing. It would prevent a good deal of questioning; or, if it did not, it would at least simplify my answers. I closed my eyes because I wanted to prolong a little the time before it would all become noisy and urgent and confusing. And if I said and did nothing, I knew that, after the noise, urgency, and confusion, I would be put quietly into my bed where I could lie still and think about what had happened.

There had been two boys, not three men—it had all taken place in a moment, and then they were gone. Through the bushes, onto the Fox's Walk and into the woods. And, although they had worn masks, it now seems to me—I have had a long time to consider every aspect of those moments—the masks had been worn more to dramatize the event, to give them courage, than as an effective disguise. They had surely not expected to leave a witness—or witnesses—alive. One of them was the red-haired Clancy boy. I wondered if he had seen Jarvis and me. I had seen him, but maybe he hadn't seen us. But if he had, he must in that moment—having already shot at two khaki uniforms—have decided not to kill us. And who was his companion? And if he had seen us, why had he, too, spared us?

And during the time I have spent thinking about what happened, there is another question I have had to consider. If Jarvis had not lied, if he had not been there, what would I have done? I am fairly sure I would have said I had seen nothing. Three people, one of whom I had been oddly fond, were dead. I, through halfdosed eyes, had seen their blood-stained bodies being covered with jackets, a shawl, a rug from the motorcar. But I was a child and, although I understood what had happened, there were limits to my understanding. And my instincts and reactions were those of a child. And my loyalties and values were not as clear as they once had been. While I wouldn't side with the assassins, I no longer trusted the forces that would hunt them down if I spoke up. And if he had seen me—surely he had—the red-haired boy had spared my life; did I not now owe him his? And Jarvis, why did he lie? Not often, but from time to time, until his death early in the second war, we would talk about that afternoon. But I never heard him say anything more concrete than that he wasn't an informer.

I kept my eyes closed and breathed in the smell of mud and crushed grass. I listened to Jarvis tell his story once again. It felt as though everything was still and at a great distance, even my breathing had become so slow that it seemed a conscious effort. I thought I would lie still and feel the short grass on my cheek and my mother's hand stroking my hair. I knew that as long as I did not open my eyes I would have a little time.