The Life of Objects (2 page)

A few days after my seventeenth birthday, a woman in a rabbit coat stepped into the shop during a sudden rainstorm and noticed me sewing in a corner. My father, who recognized Lady Vaughan, pulled out the tray that held my finished pieces (my mother was not there) and, while he shook out her umbrella, encouraged her to look at them. A week later, a package was delivered to the shop marked with my name, causing my mother to fear that an embarrassing mistake had been made. Inside the parcel were two books of lace patterns, a gift from
Lady Vaughan to me. Not long after, Lady Vaughan’s maid came into the shop to order half a dozen pieces of bed lace for her ladyship, so infuriating my mother that she did not speak to me for the rest of the week, and only then to tell me that Mr. Knox had sent me a box of books, which she had returned.

My bed lace so pleased Lady Vaughan that she asked if I would make her a black lace shawl in time for a hunt ball in September. With my father’s permission, I no longer waited on customers but sewed in the back room where the light was best, and by summer’s end, my fingers were so red and swollen that I had to soak them each night in hot water and salt. I was afraid that my work would not be fine enough and that Lady Vaughan would be disappointed, but despite my fear, I also felt a strange elation, so new to me that I often laughed out loud, causing my mother to leave the room. When Lady Vaughan’s maid came to collect the finished shawl, I made her an awkward curtsy and rushed into the yard, where I sat for an hour to compose myself. That evening, Lady Vaughan sent a note thanking me for my “lovely” work, enclosing two one-pound notes with an order for two collars and six cuffs.

The morning after the ball, it was known throughout the village that a guest at the castle, a foreign lady in Ireland for the hunting, had noticed my shawl and had asked Lady Vaughan where she had come by such exquisite lace. The lady, who was said to be a cousin of the Tsar, wore a long white taffeta skirt and black sweater to the ball, with a necklace of turquoise and diamonds, a costume so outlandish that by breakfast it
had been described to my mother with screams of laughter by our neighbor, Mrs. Greeley, a maid at the castle (kind Lady Vaughan had worn claret velvet and her garnets). My mother announced that the lady was no more a Russian princess than she was, but I listened with fascination. There had never been a moment when I did not long for the world beyond Ballycarra, and to be offered a glimpse of it by a princess who wore a wooly to a ball was more than I’d imagined possible.

The foreigner—there was no mistaking it was she—came to the shop the following day. I was embarrassed when my mother, who was knitting in a chair, did not rise to greet her, and I rushed to bring a chair from the kitchen. When I returned, my mother ordered me from the shop.

To my confusion, the lady followed me into the street, catching up with me to ask if I’d care to walk by the river—the salmon were running, and she liked to watch the men casting, drops of water flying from their lines, she said, like jewels. Her name was Countess Hartenfels (although she spoke English with a foreign accent and she certainly looked like she could be a relation of the Tsar, she was not, to my relief, Russian). She said that she’d come to the shop in search of “that magician Miss Palmer,” and she confessed her surprise at discovering I was a girl, having expected an elderly gentlewoman in mittens.

Linking her arm in mine (something that no grown woman had ever done, including my mother), she said that she’d like to see more of my lace. She admitted that she herself did not wear lace, except as
lingerie
. I’d never heard the word spoken, although I’d read it in magazines, pronouncing it with a hard
g
, and I didn’t understand her at first. She admired lace on others,
however, particularly on her dear friend Dorothea Metzenburg, who lived in Berlin and owned a rare and extremely valuable collection of lace. The countess was on her way to Germany to visit the Metzenburgs. “You’d find them sympathetic,” she said confidingly. “Felix has the best manners in Europe.” The intimacy of her tone, as well as her physical nearness, made me tremble with happiness. She spoke as if I understood everything that she said and, even more flattering, all that she did not say. When we returned to the village, having walked as far as the Ridge Pool, I stole into the house to gather my lace to show her, proudly spreading my work along the damp stone rampart of the bridge.

Countess Hartenfels met me again the next afternoon. People stared at us as we passed, and in my excitement, I told her the names of the birds that I spotted along the river (a goosander and the rare killdeer), aware that the creature in black riding habit and veiled top hat, strolling with her arm linked in mine, was, at least in Ballycarra, rarer than any killdeer. The countess, who seemed a bit distracted, a quality that I took for sophistication, said that she, too, was
quite
fond of birds, even if she knew nothing about them. Her way of speaking, in which she exaggerated unexpected words, was confusing to me. I wasn’t accustomed to emphasis, and I gave significance to certain of her words and phrases that she perhaps didn’t intend. When she claimed
never
to have seen lace such as mine, I believed her.

Shortly before the countess was to leave Ballycarra, she suggested
that I accompany her to Berlin. I would live in the household of her friends, the Metzenburgs, where I would make lace. If I found myself unhappy, a condition she considered unlikely, I could, of course, return to Ireland. Convinced that she was mocking me, I paid her no mind, but she persisted, describing the amiability of her friends, the Metzenburgs, to whom she was devoted, and the excitement of the great city, until I could think of nothing else, causing my mother to ask if I were ill. I said nothing to her of the countess’s invitation but called on Mr. Knox to ask his advice.

As we walked in the water meadow where he’d first taught me to fish, he saw a short-toed lark and stopped to note it in his journal. I told him, somewhat boastfully, of my unlikely acquaintance with the countess and of the extraordinary proposal she had made me. To my disappointment, he said nothing, only asked if I agreed that there had been fewer corncrakes that year. When I again mentioned the countess, he hushed me, not wishing to startle a redwing that we were following to its nest in an elm. It was my job to carry the long pole that we used to steal nests, and in my distraction, I caught the net in some brambles, causing him to glance at me with uncustomary impatience.

On the way home, he was unusually silent. I knew that he would eventually tell me his mind—I only had to be patient. He motioned to me to wait as he lit his pipe, then put away his matchbox, and we continued across the field. He wished to check the duck decoys that he kept in the mere, as they attracted large colonies of gadwall and grebe each fall (a deception that always left me melancholy). As we walked, he
said that men who had reason to know were fearful that a war with Germany was coming, and he hoped that I was giving the countess’s invitation some thought. Despite Mr. Knox’s attempts to educate me, all of my history came from novels—I knew nothing of a coming war. Even if such a war were imminent, I did not see how it could affect me. I was the citizen of a free state.

He tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot and ground the embers into the dirt. “Who will read to me?” he asked.

I said that it was thanks to him, to his teaching and to the books that he had encouraged, even pressed me to read, that I had such a yearning for the world and that surely he, of all people, would not deny me the chance to indulge it. I said that it was unlikely that I would ever have such an opportunity again. He agreed somewhat wryly, and I realized from his tone that he would forgive me for leaving him. When we reached the rectory, he gave me his blessing and kissed me on the head. I promised that I would write to him.

The following morning, I announced to my parents that I was leaving Ballycarra to sew lace for a family in Berlin. My mother promptly declared that I was suffering one of my attacks of grandeur and refused to believe me, even after I asked my bewildered father to loan me a cardboard suitcase from the store’s stock. I told them that the countess, who was arranging for my passport (Lord Vaughan’s brother was in Dublin Castle), would meet me at the train station in two days’ time.

The night before I left, as I packed and packed again my few belongings (my books of lace), my father came up the stairs to the attic. “I don’t know where you come by it,” he said, sitting
at the end of my bed. “Your mother says it was the books that did it.” He could not bring himself to look at me. He’d made me a present of a new pair of brogues, and I was having trouble fitting them into the small case.

I stopped my fussing. “The books saved me,” I said. “And the lace.”

I sat next to him on the bed and took his hand. I was not accustomed to touching him, and I was embarrassed—I could smell turf smoke on his jacket, and there was a trace of ash on his shirt. “I haven’t much to give you,” he said, tucking a pound into my pocket. “Nothing to get you out of trouble when it comes. Your mother will never forgive you.”

“Think of it as an apprenticeship, Father. I’m going out to work.”

“I have a sinking feeling that woman’s a Papist,” he said with a sigh. He rose stiffly and made his way cautiously down the narrow stairs, his head level with the floor when he stopped to say good night.

My mother would not walk with us to the station in the morning, but Mr. Knox was waiting on the platform with a book for me,
The Ornithology of Shakespeare
, which he’d inscribed
To Maeve, in the hope that she will learn to fly, September 1938
. My father, suddenly tearful, kissed me on the cheek (he nodded shakily to the countess, and she gave him a chilly smile), handing me a letter as I boarded the train.

When I showed the countess Mr. Knox’s present, she asked why my old schoolmaster had inscribed it to someone named Maeve. “I am Maeve,” I said. “That’s my real name.” The countess looked puzzled, although not sufficiently interested to
question me further. She opened a magazine and, somewhat to my relief, soon fell asleep.

I watched from the window as the familiar river slipped past, low and dark behind the rowan trees. My initial excitement had begun to fade, particularly after saying good-bye to Mr. Knox, and I had a stomachache. I was traveling to a strange country whose language I did not speak, with a strange woman whom I had known for eight days, to work for people whom I did not know at all. I wondered what in the world I’d been thinking (I knew exactly what I’d been thinking).

When I could no longer see the river, I read the letter that my father had slipped into my hand. My mother wrote that as I had left
the bosom of your loving family for foreign shores
, she hoped that my new friends would be willing to provide the home that I had so eagerly forsaken, as she no longer felt obliged to do so. I folded the letter and looked for a place to put it—I had no handbag, and I tucked it into Mr. Knox’s book. My mother’s coldness, although familiar to me, caused me pain, and I was grateful that the countess was not awake to see me cry.

Over the five days of our journey to Berlin, my misgivings began to disappear. Countess Hartenfels (who more and more reminded me of Trollope’s Madame Goesler, tall, dark, and thin, and adept with her eyes in a way unknown to any Englishwoman) explained that her maid was in Munich awaiting her arrival, and asked if I would be able to assist her with her hair and clothes, a request that thrilled me. When I noticed her staring at me (it was then that I realized she could not be
embarrassed), she said that while my hair was a bit thin, it was not a bad shade of brown. And,
gracias a Dios
, I was not a redhead.

I had my own berth on the train from Calais, meeting Countess Hartenfels for meals in the dining car or in her private compartment, where I helped her to dress (pinning, fastening, combing, admiring). Her elegance left me feeling both threadbare and inspired, and by the time that we reached Belgium, I’d vowed to model my personal habits on those of the countess, even if my scant means (I had nothing) would be something of a constraint. At home, I wore my best dress to church and to the rare wedding or funeral. I wore tweed skirts and cardigans in the shop, with wool stockings and brogues. In summer, a cotton dress with lisle stockings and brogues. I had two flannel nightdresses, a shawl, a brown tweed coat, knit gloves, and a gray felt cloche that I wore to church. Rubber boots, of course. I did not own a party frock or a pair of high-heeled shoes. The countess dressed as if she were going to a party every day, wearing a suit (
tailleur
, she said, not “suit”), silk stockings, hat, and gloves. In the evening, she wore a chiffon tea gown, with satin shoes in shades of pale blue, gray, or rose. She carried a little gold bag in which she kept a compact, a lipstick, a lighter, and a cigarette case. She wore jewelry in the day (diamonds only after dark) and lipstick all of the time, even when she went to bed.

One night when she went to the dining car, leaving me to put away her clothes, I opened her red leather traveling case to dot some perfume—it was called
Cuir de Russie
and smelled
like oranges and birch bark—behind my ears and on my wrists, and to brush some powder on my cheeks. I had just settled a black grosgrain hat on my head, tilting it so that the feather swept the side of my face as I had seen her do, when the door of the compartment opened. Startled, I knocked the box of powder to the floor.

She stood in the doorway, not particularly surprised at the sight of me in her hat (if I’d known any better, I’d have seen that she glinted). She came inside and closed the door, stepping around the spilled powder so as not to dirty her pretty shoes. “That color is a bit pale for you,” she said. “Your skin is too yellow.” I lifted the hat carefully from my head and put it in its box. I returned the empty box of powder and the scent bottle to her case. As she found the gold lighter she’d forgotten, she said, “They have Saint-Vaást oysters tonight.” She opened the door and looked at me over her shoulder. “Are you coming?” I said that I’d be there in a moment, after I cleaned the powder from the floor.