The Fox's Walk (7 page)

My parents' quarrel was also conducted through the Royal Mail. It was a more private affair than the war. One morning I watched my mother take a letter, unopened, from the breakfast table. She went upstairs to her bedroom and she didn't come down for some time. Three days later there was another letter; I recognized my father's handwriting. When we rose from the table I followed the adults into the hall and watched my mother hesitate for a moment at the foot of the staircase. It was a warm day and the front door stood open. I did not follow her when she went outside but ran upstairs to my room to watch from the window where she would go, what she would do. I saw her standing on the gravel in front of the house, the letter in her hand still unopened; the black cat from the stable yard was setting off on a predatory errand to the woods and Mother was superstitiously waiting to avoid its crossing her path. When the cat disappeared into the dark of the woods, my mother sat down on the bench under the beech tree beside the tennis court. She paused a moment before opening the letter—one side of a single sheet of paper. Father came straight to the point and it was always his point; he didn't have much interest in the opinions or reasoning of those who disagreed with him. My mother read the letter twice, then refolded it and put it back in the envelope. She sat still for some time, gazing out over the woods and fields toward the estuary, her expression sad, angry, and confused. And stubborn. A characteristic I think she had developed as a reaction to my fathers overbearing ways. She was gentle and not short of courage; a better or more sensitive man would not have reduced her to this state.

The fourth source of drama and tension, that of everyday domestic life at Ballydavid, affected me most directly, and, apart from the time spent lying awake in the pale darkness, frightened about what would happen to me if my parents' quarrel continued forever, it gave me the greatest food for thought. And worry. My nervousness was most often caused by the lack of warning before an eruption or a cold reprimand for the infringement of some never-before-invoked rule. Ignorance of the law is at the best of times an inadequate defense, and at Ballydavid I could not plead it without raising the question of how my mother was bringing me up. I came to realize that she was often indulgent when she was distracted, preoccupied, or unhappy. It did nothing for my confidence, while negotiating the everyday, to discover—in addition to the Ballydavid rules that must be obeyed and those that could be discreetly disobeyed—another rule which forbade complaining or showing fear. And I was often afraid.

It was some time before I realized I could carry these fears to the out-of-bounds kitchen, where they would be listened to and taken seriously. Perhaps too seriously. I would go to the kitchen for company and to postpone the moment when I would have to make my way to bed, the Bickering light of my candle summoning looming shadows from the doorways and heavy dark furniture that lined the corridor. My fear was not specific and would disappear once I was safely in bed, reassured by light from the window and the sound of the rooks in the trees as they settled down for the night. In the kitchen, I was given a sympathetic ear; my fears were listened to, understood, and confirmed. Those that were vague were given form, shape, and provenance. The dark shadows were replaced by the ghost of a weeping woman apparently seen by both Maggie and Bridie, and I was told of the banshee who could be heard wailing when someone in the house was about to die. Both the maids volunteered that nothing would induce them to sleep in the room I occupied. I would leave terrified and with a glimmer of understanding why I was not encouraged to hang around the kitchen.

One cool early summer day I was standing by the window in the drawing room. It was shortly after breakfast, and I was watching my mother sitting alone on the bench by the tennis court. She was smoking a cigarette, something I had never before seen her do. It was, I knew, an act of defiance against my absent father. I noticed with some surprise when I next saw my mother light a cigarette, sitting on the veranda with my grandmother and great-aunt, that neither showed disapproval.

The window by which I stood was open a few inches and my bare legs were cold. Watery sunshine shone on my mother; she had a light shawl around her shoulders. I was hoping she would come indoors and wondering if it would be all right to join her, when there was a ping of metal touching wood, the bounce of something soft on the carpet, and Oonagh darting, in simulated self-induced fear, across the room.

I turned quickly to see the no longer young cat lightly touch the arm of the sofa as she leapt onto the cushions, continue over the farther arm, turn sharply, and return to the small Turkish rug in front of the fire. On the hearthrug lay Grandmother's knitting: three inches of the ankle of a gray sock, one needle no longer attached, and a ball of gray wool. I was still laughing at Oonagh's progress around the room when she made a dive at the ball of wool, leaping on it and sinking in her claws as though she were slaughtering a small, soft, gray animal. I laughed again, and was still laughing when the door from the hall opened and Grandmother entered the room. She was carrying a small branch of blossom. She often returned from her walks with booty that was usually turned over to someone else to take care of—Aunt Katie, in this instance, since it was she who arranged the flowers for the house. I stopped laughing, aware—as I should have been a moment later even had I not been reminded by an adult presence—that Oonagh had damaged or destroyed Grandmother's work.

There was a short silence. I looked aghast ait the gray mess on the hearthrug. Oonagh gave the ball of wool another tap with her paw and then again leaped on it. Grandmother's face was cold and set. Aware suddenly that my presence had apparently made me responsible for what had happened, that I had been found a spectator entertained at the scene of the disaster, I darted forward. Oonagh, startled, but incorporating my action into her game, leaped onto Aunt Katie's chair, a strand of wool caught between her claws. All three needles were now separated from Grandmothers knitting, and every move Oonagh made unraveled what remained of the sock a little further.

“Really, Alice,” Grandmother said, and left the room, closing the door behind her. I was in disgrace.

The rest of the morning passed slowly. I felt ashamed but not guilty. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, and I thought that the grown-ups, even Grandmother, understood that I had not caused or encouraged Oonagh's moment of wanton destruction. Nevertheless, as scapegoat, I had to keep a low profile until some time had passed.

I remained silent and scarcely visible
for
two or three hours without even my mother coming to look for me to say a reassuring word. I considered visiting the kitchen but was afraid that the instinct there to dramatize would leave me feeling even more of a pariah than I already did. It also occurred to me that, if I were caught creeping into that forbidden territory, I might seem defiantly to be breaking another rule before I had been forgiven my last infringement.

I went outdoors. There was no one in sight; a bored Jock lying half-asleep by the front door opened one eye as I passed. I thought that if I went for a little walk he would accompany me and I should not be so alone. I started to stroll away from the house, down the avenue that led to the front gate. After a moment, Jock heaved himself up and ambled after me. I reached the corner where I had once watched Oonagh emerge from the laurels and remembered that day and the fuss that had been made of me by the grown-ups in the drawing room. I remembered the completely admirable Mrs. Coughlan and her words as we had parted. “I hope you will come and see me one day.” Surely there could be no better time.

Large trees and bushes grew on either side of the avenue, with areas of carefully mown grass between them. Soon we came to where the wood began; it lay at the base of the hill and ran along the southern and eastern boundaries of Ballydavid. Jock and I turned off the avenue onto a footpath. The trees, with fresh green foliage, gave the narrow path the daytime darkness of a fairy tale; to either side there were brambles and stretches where dead leaves lay under sunless, bare, brown lower branches. I began to feel afraid and was glad to have Jock's company. My fears were based on nothing specific, but they were not nameless. Jock and I were on the Fox's Walk.

The Fox's Walk—I don't know how it came by its name and there is now no one left alive who might know—was a path that ran through the woods from the front gate to Rowe's Lane at the other end of Grandmother's property. Rowe's Lane wandered between high thick hedges to a large farm and an unpretentious farmhouse belonging to Nicholas Rowe, the most prosperous of Grandmothers Roman Catholic neighbors; to either side of the lane stood the cottages of the men who worked on the Rowe farm and of some who worked at Ballydavid. The Fox's Walk was a little more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its terrain was uneven. Part of it had once been landscaped, and although brambles and indigenous scrub now largely obscured the exotic flowering shrubs that been planted during a more affluent period in the family's past, this stretch of the walk was wider than the footpaths that lay at either end. It was the first time I had been on the Fox's Walk by myself.

Jock and I passed overgrown azaleas and crowded tufts of pampas grass and entered an alley of overgrown yews. At the end of it we took a path, no wider than the one we had taken from the avenue, which ran downhill toward the Woodstown road. I knew the path beneath my feet and Jock's paws might once have been a trail used by animals, but now it was human feet—workmen and maids using it as a short cut to the farm or house—that had packed down the mud beneath our feet. I knew what a fox looked like, and I also knew that, in the unlikely event Jock and I met one, the fox would flee and Jock would chase him. Even so, I was aware that I had left the world of houses and humans and had invaded the territory of unseen woodland life and nocturnal animals. And of mythic beings. I glanced nervously at Jock, but he was still slouching along behind me, his head down, too lazy to sniff at the scent of small animals.

After a while it became lighter and I could see a space between the trees beyond. In it was a stile, built into the overgrown bank that was the boundary of Grandmother's land—low on the Ballydavid side but with a drop of four or five feet down onto the road below. I climbed over the stile and scrambled down into the ditch and onto the main road. Jock squeezed himself under the low branch of a sapling that had taken root in the bank and jumped down beside me. We set off along the road toward the house where Major and Mrs. Coughlan lived, leaving behind the unfairness of being held accountable for the misdeeds of Grandmother's cat.

As we turned the corner, Jock, for the first time, began to react to his surroundings. He growled. A low, provisional, warning growl—the kind he might make if a familiar but infrequent beggar were coming up the avenue. But now we were in full sunlight and I had no fears. I was in a hurry to present myself to Mrs. Coughlan, to be fussed over and offered refreshment.

We continued along the deserted road—we had seen no one since we had left the house—and Jock growled again, this time deeper in his throat. And he slunk a little closer to my side, as though afraid, or at least apprehensive, in the presence of the unknown.

At first I could see nothing, but I began to become aware of an unpleasant but not identifiable smell. Soon the smell became stronger, and I put my hand over my nose and mouth and breathed through my fingers. The wide grassy area on the side of the road was where the tinkers had camped.

I had heard the maids talking about the tinkers: They were afraid of them. A fierce tinker woman had come to the front door, begging, a day or two before. Aunt Katie had given her money, but had avoided the further ritual conversation—sympathetic inquiries on her part and promises that she would be remembered even more fervently than she already was in the prayers of the recipient. The woman had whined, pulling back her heavy black shawl to reveal a pale and comatose baby, her thanks quickly becoming an aggressive demand for more money. Aunt Katie had tightened her lips, looked coldly at the woman, wished her a good morning, and closed the door firmly. She had watched from the drawing-room window until the woman turned the corner of the avenue and went out of sight. O'Neill had reported two pullets missing from the hen house and, listening to his talk with Pat and Ned, I had gathered that the local farmers were getting close to the moment when they would unite to move the tinkers on. The tinkers, whose senses, it is likely, were tuned toward such a moment, had made a round of last-minute thievery and disappeared during the night.

They left behind—like pieces of cloth on a bush beside a holy well—scraps of rags on the hedgerow, the ashes of their fires, some animal droppings, and the lingering and unidentifiable smell. And, mysteriously, among the cold ashes of their fires, I saw the burned shells of fifteen or twenty snails. Did they eat snails, I wondered, or had they burned them as a gratuitous act of cruelty? Or did the snails have some practical use of which I was not aware? Or perhaps the charred shells were the remains of a ritual or had a superstitious significance. Each possibility was disquieting, and, although I wondered, I knew I would never ask about it for fear the answer would be one of those previously unimagined distressing facts that, once heard, I could not dismiss from my mind.

We hurried past the site of the encampment. The road ran uphill and the day was growing warmer; I began to feel tired and thirsty. At last we reached the gates to the Coughlans' house. They were closed.

I was taken aback by this unforeseen obstacle. The gates were large and heavy. With no anticipation of success, I tried to lift the black, paint-encrusted latch; I could not move it. The obvious thing would have been to return home and to say nothing about my clandestine and premature attempt at adult social life. But I was tired and full of the anticipated pleasure of a visit to the gaudy world of Mrs. Coughlan. I was also reluctant to repass the place where the tinkers had camped. I sat down on the sparse gravel and leaned against the closed gates; after a moment Jock slumped, bored, beside me and closed his eyes. Without a plan, I waited to see what would happen next.