The Ladies (12 page)

They spent hours of their evenings reading. Eleanor transcribed long passages into her day book. Sometimes she practised her harp, sometimes they played backgammon and kept their scores faithfully, although skill and luck were bestowed equally upon them. Sarah embroidered and wrote faithful letters to Mrs Tighe or to her father's brother, with whom she had begun to correspond. (Passing through Llangollen one Easter season on his way to London, he had sent a polite inquiry about her health.) Eleanor's harp made rough, twangy, rasping noises that Sarah claimed she enjoyed while she painted.

Every evening before they retired, Eleanor recorded the state of their finances. She would put money into envelopes for the current, small bills to be dispensed when the creditors called at the kitchen door: ‘For the Corn Man.' ‘For the Coal Man.' ‘For the Butcher: our first year's provision of pork.' Relieved that they had once more cleared themselves in the district, she would shut the day book and reach for Sarah's hand. Carrying their candle and a book they would go up the stairs and come to the room where, for them both, the most pleasurable hours of the day would begin. It was now nine o'clock.

Settled into the New Bed, the moreen curtain drawn across its length, Tatters and Flirt drowsing on the flourished quilt at their feet, they are alone, within a silent house (Mary-Caryll is permitted to retire directly after supper is disposed of), in a vale isolated from the village: emigrants in a foreign state, far from what they regard as the common world. Here they are royalty, goddesses, elevated and aristocratic. They suspend all rules and relax into warm, loving chaos. Theirs is the lenity of illicit love. They provide their own sanctions for the singular acts they believe they have invented. In their enormous nightcaps, which they always wear to prevent toothache despite the fire burning in the grate and the thick grey carpet that warms the floor, they might appear, were they to be seen, as figures of fun, heavy Roman generals (Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus) of the first century engaging in unlikely activities behind the heavy arras. In each other's eyes, they are beautiful, elegant, graceful women, more desirable than other persons in the world of either sex. They believe they live on a higher plane and in a fuller life, committed to a more passionate engagement than any known to women before. They have discovered acts of tender mutual satisfaction that reduces them to languor and to sleep by midnight, in each other's arms, exhausted and happy.

‘Madame de Sévigné has just such a bed, I have read,' Eleanor tells Sarah soon after theirs was erected. She does not go on to say that she believes Madame de Sévigné, whose letters she is reading, had a passionate love for her daughter, Françoise, ‘the prettiest girl in France,' the love-struck mother wrote. Twenty years younger than her mother, Françoise married a count, moved some distance away from Paris, and broke her mother's heart.

On days of constant rain they rose later and spent their morning before the library fire near the bookshelves they had had built to hold their growing (‘expensive') collection. On such mornings Eleanor read
La Nouvelle Héloise
aloud, because she thought she saw in its eloquent pages a resemblance to their own lives, while Sarah worked her cross-stitch.

Or: Eleanor entered in her day book, made by Sarah of mottled green boards and crimson leather spine and corners, their weekly accounts: ‘shoe bill (high): £4.4s' ‘candles: 6s.4p.' ‘Moses Jones gardener: 10s.' ‘books: 14s.3p.' ‘chimney sweep: 5s.' ‘cheese maker: 8s.' ‘meat: 12s.'

Or: She wrote of the activities of the day past: ‘My love and I spent from 5 to 7 in the Shrubbery in the field endeavouring to talk and walk away our little Sorrows.' The little sorrows she does not enumerate, they being well known to them both. Worst of them all are the migraines that plague her monthly, so that she stays in bed for two days, Sarah with her, bathing her forehead, purging her with emetics and laxatives, feeding her broth and milk toast. There are Sarah's dreams and fantasies, which fail to be understood by Eleanor as real but that haunt poor Sarah for days after she has ‘seen' them. There are Eleanor's continuing worries about money. Or nagging creditors. Or, for Sarah, Eleanor's increasingly bad temper. Or Sarah's fright at bulls, cliffs, the river, the impending deaths of Frisk and Hope the lamb, the rough boys on the road, the cries of babies, the poisons possibly concealed in the cheeses they are sold, being buried alive. Or Sarah's throat mucus and coughing that causes her voice, on occasion, to entirely disappear. Or Sarah's withdrawal from Eleanor that always accompanies this loss, from the traffic of the house and garden, into the silent vault of her inner self. The sorrows mount and nag, but they are always seen as ‘little.' Nothing can diminish the tie that binds them, the inexplicable love they share.

When they cannot be out of doors they talk endlessly about their poverty and plot strategies to recover regular funds. They hope for Butler and Fownes generosity but are granted no sign of it. At times they allow themselves to speculate on prospective family deaths to rescue them from restraints upon their vision of life as they wish to live it, to free them from debts. Behind their talk, they hear loud, violent argument: Mary-Caryll fighting with tradesmen at the door. Once, it is with the fishmonger, who has come selling herring and oysters. The Ladies judge that the fisherman has asked too high a price for his wares. Mary-Caryll receives his quotation by beating him about the head until he lowers his price. Staunch Mary-Caryll understands well the restricted conditions under which they all live, so, acting always in their interests, she performs her loyal attacks upon those who would cheat them. As for herself, she asks no pay from her Ladies. Tradespeople fear her fists, so the day book is able to record prices lower than might be expected.

On fine days, they gardened assiduously, instructing Moses Jones how to accomplish what they envisioned. Eleanor disliked him because he often broke in upon their talk without so much as an apology and always directed his questions to Sarah, whom he thought possessed all horticultural authority about the Place. They themselves planted and weeded, trimmed and picked, working from the Plan for the garden Sarah had drawn. The grounds began to take on the aspect of decorative art: hedges, gravelled walks, the gazebo and rustic sheds and benches, statues and water font, purloined stone by stone from the courtyard of Valle Crucis, little pools and garden beds hidden in the high shrubbery, which were Sarah's greatest love.

At first they were able to hire only one gardener. Mary-Caryll had no assistance for two years. She went to the market, oiled the fine-carved oak furniture, beat and swept the rugs, and brushed and repaired her Ladies' habits and their beaver hats, which hard wear and worse weather had reduced almost to shreds. She fed the animals, built fires in every room, and heated water for their baths. Later, after the cow Margaret (named by Eleanor for her mild sister) was sent to them, she did the milking, made the butter, and sold the excess to her friend at The Hand, keeping the returns (with the Ladies' consent) for her savings. She slept well after her sixteen hours of hard labour, and grew heavier and more muscular each year.

Before the Ladies sleep, they fall into the habit of inserting into their ears balls of brown paper. Eleanor has heard, and now believes, that the practise will ward off deafness.

Eleanor enters into her diary an extract from Madame de Sévigné's letter to her married daughter:

I have seated myself to write to you, at the end of this shady little walk which you love, upon a mossy bank where I have so often seen you lying. But, mon Dieu! where have I not seen you here? and how these memories grieve my heart! There is no place, no spot,—either in the house or in the church, in the country or in the garden,—where I have not seen you. Everything brings some memory to mind; and whatever it may be, it makes my heart ache. I see you; you are present to me. I think of everything and think again. My brain and heart grow confused. But in vain I turn—in vain I look for you: that dear child whom I passionately love is two hundred leagues distant from me. I have her no more; and then I weep and cannot cease. My love, that is weakness; but as for me, I do not know how to be strong against a feeling so powerful and so natural.

They acquire Jersey hens for whom they build a coop. They plant melon and mushroom beds, and many asparagus plants. A small stable is built by the joiner to house their cob. They put in a rose garden and holly bushes. Later, they come to think, the gardens must be both beautiful and useful. ‘We will have a show place from which we can also eat,' says Eleanor, and so they proceed to build it. Now they eat very well: boiled chicken on Sundays as well as on Irish and Welsh holidays and feast days, new-laid eggs, ham they have cured themselves, and mutton from village sheep because they cannot bring themselves to slaughter their own.

Sarah writes to her father's brother, Lord Bessborough: ‘I would not intrude upon your attention were it not that we are entirely without money. Had my father survived I cannot help but think he would not have had his daughter in such straits.'

Against his wife's counsel, Lord Bessborough sends his niece £150. When he dies, three years later, he leaves her the same sum, to be granted yearly. His son attempts to contest the bequest (‘a moral objection,' he tells the court) without success.

‘
Cockroaches?
It cannot be.'

‘It is indeed. Three, in the pantry, Lady Eleanor.'

Eleanor is outraged, first at Mary-Caryll for bearing the unwelcome news, and then at the sense of invasion she feels. Her face reddens with fury. She puts on her hat and, saying nothing to Sarah or Mary-Caryll, starts up the road to the village. She pounds her boots against the mossed stones of the bridge and storms into the baker's shop. Ignoring the waiting customers, she shouts at the baker, informing him that vermin from his shop are marching across the River Dee Bridge, down the Pengwern Road, and into their Place.

Sarah wakes in the night, crying.

‘What is it, my love?' Eleanor asks.

‘I was where a joiner was hammering at pieces and ends of wood and it seemed to me he was constructing a mad house, all angles and uneven floors and short uprights. The roof would not fit the crooked posts, and you said: “Straighten it! Straighten everything,” and at that moment it began to topple over, we and the joiner were buried alive under it …'

‘A dream, my love. Now you are awake. It is over. We are on safe and steady ground, in our bed. Try to sleep again.'

Eleanor cradled Sarah in her arms. Sarah said: ‘Eleanor, my love: do you still scorn the idea of God?'

‘Tush, yes. That God my mother worshipped is a father I prefer not to think is real.'

‘Do you not believe He made us … as we are? So that it is then all right to
be
as we are?'

Eleanor now understood how necessary this theological justification of their life was to Sarah. She hesitated a moment, and then she said: ‘It may be so, my love. He made us as we are. We are God's superior architecture.'

Eleanor wakened at three in the morning. One side of her face throbbed painfully. She explored her mouth with her fingers and found a raw root where a tooth had been. She shook Sarah awake. Together they searched and found the tooth in the bedclothes. Eleanor moaned with pain. Sarah held her in her arms until daylight, discovering the unusual pleasure, for once, of being the comforter.

‘I must go to Chester. The noon coach is to Wrexham and then from there …' Eleanor said. Her face was now badly swollen, her eye almost shut above the obtrusive cheek. Sarah said: ‘I'll come with you.'

‘No need, my love. You so dislike the coach and the bridges.'

Sarah reminded Eleanor of their vow. She did not say she was afraid of being left alone in the Place, even with Mary-Caryll ‘at the back,' as they referred to the kitchen area. By nightfall they were in Chester, where, by good fortune, a Scots dentist, Mr Blair, had just arrived for a week's professional visit to the English city. While Eleanor shrieked with pain, Mr Blair extracted the stump of tooth. After she had recovered somewhat, he told her that two more of her teeth would soon crack away in the same fashion and should be removed at once.

Sarah stood beside her, holding Eleanor's hand, her eyes shut, while Mr Blair extracted the two teeth. With each extraction, Eleanor screamed, a powerful air-splitting sound, and then fainted. At the end, close to fainting herself, Sarah helped the dentist revive Eleanor with salts and comforted her while he stuffed Eleanor's mouth and bound her face with straps of tightly woven linen. Hardly able to see from pain and swelling, Eleanor leaned upon Sarah as they walked slowly to their lodgings. They spent a second sleepless night. Eleanor vomited the blood she had swallowed and groaned with pain, giving way to tears and shaking, the blood seeping from the corner of her swollen mouth.

For two days after their return to Plas Newydd, they remained in bed. On the third day Eleanor was better, although the cheek over the extraction sank into a grey hollow. They resumed their active lives. Eleanor put the terrible days out of her mind by consigning a minute description of them to the day book, where she entered the costs of the journey for them both, the stay at the inn in Oswestry, their purchases: ‘Four boxes toothpowder, two brushes, recommended by Mr Blair. For these and services, gave him his demand: 3 guineas.'

They had been settled in the vale for two years when word reached them by post: Walter Butler's hereditary title had been restored. The letter was from Margaret Cavanaugh. Mr Butler was now legitimately Lord Walter Butler, Duke of Ormonde, and Eleanor's mother Lady Adelaide. The titles they had assumed unto themselves since their marriage and insisted be used by friends and servants alike, were now rightfully theirs.

‘At last, I am truly a Lady,' said Eleanor. She and Sarah laughed at the belated legitimisation. They rejoiced about the one advantage it gave them: Now it was possible for Eleanor, in her ‘retirement,' to apply for a pension from the government and thus add to their slender resources.