This Cold Country (41 page)

Daisy's arms were full of holly, the branches hard and cold, the leaves green, dark, and alive, and with fewer berries than Daisy had hoped for. Tomorrow, perhaps, she could add some mistletoe to the Christmas decorations she was arranging at Dunmaine. But since the mistletoe grew on the high inaccessible branches of an ash, she would need help with it. A ladder or, more likely, a well-thrown rope. Patrick had written about mistletoe in his first letter to her at Dunmaine, a letter written not a week after their marriage.

Daisy sighed. There were often now days that seemed overloaded with symbols of the past, or a little too heavy with irony to be quite fair. Then, a moment later, she smiled as Conrad, the black Labrador—no longer quite a puppy—came out of the bushes to meet her.

Feet crunching on cold gravel, Daisy approached the glassedin porch that provided an inefficient buffer between the windswept east side of the house and the chilly boot room; a pale light from within shone yellow through the icy and not quite clean glass of the porch. A light had gone on in the drawing room and in one of the upstairs rooms, the guest room now refurbished for paying visitors. The first of whom, a Miss Sealy-Hewitt, had arrived late that morning; Daisy had left her resting to recover from a rough crossing.

Dunmaine, still was not completely repaired, but was lived in once again. And more hers than it had ever been. Ambrose had set in motion the process that made the repairs possible, and Daisy, present each day, had orchestrated them in such a manner that she and Mickey had been able to return to the house. Now they were entertaining their first paying guest; one of several recruited by Ambrose. Daisy was not quite sure how he had done it; by writing to his friends, calling in favors, or, for all she knew, the expense of an advertisement in the
Times.
Maud remained, for the time being, at Shannig with Edmund and Corisande. For once, the words “for the time being” did not mean “indefinitely,” the definition even more firmly established by Daisy than by Corisande.

Daisy set the holly down on the floor of the porch and, using the bootjack, she stepped out of one boot, the sock half off, and onto the doormat, preferring its dried muddy surface to the frigid tiles that covered the floor. The shoes that she now put on were as cold as the tiles, and, closing the doors that were supposed to keep out the cold behind her, she quickly went along the corridor and into the far from warm but noticeably less chilly hall.

A dying fire glowed in the grate of the large fireplace that could never really warm the area since the stairs led up to a large window and a landing. Any heat that rose to that level was immediately dissipated by the drafts emerging from the corridor on either side.

It was teatime, and Daisy opened the door to the drawing room, both to make sure that tea had been served and, if the scene that met her eye didn't deter her, to have a cup herself.

Daisy's grandmother sat in a low armchair behind the tea tray. Mickey and Miss Seally-Hewitt had cups of tea and plates with bread and butter, and Mrs. Cooper, immediate duties fulfilled, had taken up her knitting. A cheerful fire both warmed and lit up the area in which they sat. Mickey was explaining some aspect of climate and soil to Miss Seally-Hewitt who, Daisy realized with relief, was a fellow gardener. Her grandmother was silent, counting stitches under her breath as, on four thin steel knitting needles, she turned the heel of a tightly knit, small stitched sock. Without involving herself more than greeting her guest and inquiring about her recovery from the journey, Daisy was able to drink her tea and leave.

 

THE EVENING BEFORE
she returned to Ireland, Daisy had tapped at the door of her grandmother's room and inclined her ear to hear an invitation to come in. Instead, she heard the sound of the wireless.

Sad, lonely, and feeling, despite the remains of a hot summer's day, the chill of misery and exhaustion, Daisy had gone to visit her grandmother. She knew that she was going to have to start putting a good face on the following days and was almost looking forward to a quiet hour in her grandmother's room. It was her intention to encourage reminiscences of the past and, even if she could not quite pay attention, at least she would allow her grandmother some moments of mild indulgence and herself a restful undemanding time.

About to knock a little louder, she realized she was hearing the familiar voice of Lord Haw-Haw. Daisy hesitated, amused and a little shocked. It was considered unpatriotic to listen to the propaganda of the English-speaking programs broadcast from Germany—although some of them, further to undermine morale, purported to originate in England—but many people, for a variety of reasons, did so.

William Joyce, the most famous and, in a sense, popular of these broadcasters, was known and hated all over England. Because of his voice, rich, confident, and convincing, he had been nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw. Each day he told his English audience of ships sunk, soldiers dead, civilians bombed, that Germany would starve them into submission; and he did so with apparent pleasure. That the population of the battered and hungry country he addressed should have, with a humor suggesting something almost akin to affection, have so nicknamed him, was a sign that that resilient country, starving or otherwise, would never admit defeat.

Nevertheless, listening to Lord Haw-Haw was an unwise and frightening activity usually indulged in guiltily and in secret. Daisy's disapproval of her grandmother's listening habits was not unconnected with her own embarrassment that William Joyce was generally believed, in addition to having been a Mosley Fascist, to be at least in part Irish.

She knocked again, this time a little louder. The voice on the wireless ceased and her grandmother bid her enter.

Her grandmother sat, her hands uncharacteristically idle, in the armchair beside the now silent wireless. Daisy thought for a moment that the woman in front of her had aged since she had last given her her full attention. Then she saw that her grandmother's eyes were pink and that she held a small handkerchief, instead of her usual knitting or needlework, in her hand.

Daisy wondered for a moment if everyone in the whole world was unhappy. Her grandmother was not heartbroken in the way that she, Daisy, was, but she was lonely and frightened. Daisy knew there was little she could do to make herself feel better, but to comfort her grandmother would seem like a small blow against the forces of misery. She sat down beside her and, for the first time since she was a child, took her grandmother's hand.

“Granny,” she said, “I am going back to Ireland tomorrow. Until Dunmaine is repaired I don't have a home of my own. When I do, I hope you will come and stay with me for a long time. For as long as you like.”

 

“
ONE OF THE
Coopers from Sligo?” Ambrose had asked, when Daisy's grandmother had first arrived, and on being told neither she nor Daisy's dead grandfather had any Irish connections, he had treated the old lady with his unfailing courtesy but no further curiosity.

The Nugents, without welcoming Mrs. Cooper, seemed to accept her presence without question. Daisy realized that the eccentricities of one's own blood relations could, if one developed the ability, be judged by the same standards as those of one's in-laws; even so, she still found herself closing her eyes during some of her grandmother's more opinionated conversational pronouncements.

Her grandmother had accepted her invitation on a temporary basis while she ostensibly looked for a suitable—by which she meant inexpensive and genteel—residential hotel, but Daisy knew that her grandmother had taken up residence for the rest of the war. At the very least. Her bossy supervision, a small weekly contribution to the household economy, and assistance in its reorganization apparently had become part of the arrangement. Mrs. Cooper imagined that on Patrick's return there would be a reassessment of the arrangement; Daisy knew that such a reassessment would have to be made by herself—by the new tougher version of herself—and that she would probably have to weigh up the financial and organizational advantages of her grandmother's presence against the frequent embarrassments of her unsubtle English way of dealing with family, friends, and staff. Unsubtle and English had, of course, been exactly what was needed to reorganize the household now without Mrs. Mulcahy. Mrs. Cooper, inspired by the comparative plenty of unrationed food, was training Kathleen to cook and Kathleen's younger sister, Dolores, to take over the duties formerly performed by Kathleen. On Kathleen's day off, Mrs. Cooper cooked dinner; the ease with which she did so—an apron over her very English afternoon dress the only concession—and her expertise in other areas of housekeeping preventing the belief (the undoing of Mrs. Mulcahy) that anyone employed at Dunmaine was indispensable.

The fires that burned most of the day in the grates of every room at Dunmaine that was in use were a recent innovation. The wood burned came from dead trees that had grown at Dunmaine and was extravagant only in terms of labor; the occasional sod of turf was added with an economical hesitation.

Mickey now took responsibility for all outdoor work—apart from the hens—at Dunmaine. With the help of Philomena's grandson, he would, in the coming year, make sure the garden continued to provide vegetables and fruit for the house, and that the avenue and lawns were maintained. For now, he saw that the cows were milked, and the horses cared for; and that firewood was sawed, split, and carried into the house.

Daisy took care of the hens. They lived in a long fenced run with a sturdy wooden henhouse in the garden; even in winter they required little more than a bucket of hot mash each day. She collected the eggs—at this time of the year they were sparse—and occasionally chose an old hen for the pot.

Up the stairs, the carpet and the stair rods still bearing traces of the fire or, rather, the extinguishing of the fire. In time, the carpet should be replaced and, rather sooner, the stair rods would need to be polished. Both tasks were on lists Daisy kept on her desk. One for future expenditure; although the list was long, it was her plan and expectation that in time it would become shorter. The other was of larger tasks that would be fitted into the household when there was time; not immediately, since when Miss Sealy-Hewitt left another middle-aged spinster was expected. Then, in the new year, for the first time, Dunmaine would entertain two paying guests simultaneously. By Daisy's calculations, now that her grandmother was a minor financial contributor to the household, a second paying guest represented clear profit.

Daisy put another log onto the small fire smoldering in the grate and sat down at her desk, as she did at the end of each day when she wrote to Patrick. First she reviewed her accounts, not because she sought information, but because they reassured and satisfied her in the absence of someone else with whom to discuss her aspirations and small triumphs. Once a week she allowed herself, in a letter to Patrick, to mention the progress of her plan that should gradually make Dunmaine solvent, that should allow Patrick to come home to a house that was no longer just marking time before it need be sold.

Closing her account book and drawing some writing paper toward her, Daisy dipped her pen in the inkwell and wrote,

Dearest Patrick,

Four days to Christmas. Today I cut the holly for the hall and dining room. Please God, next year you will be here to enjoy them with us.

 

She paused. Surely it would not be long now. Not now that America had come into the war. The word “us” was one that would require some definition and decisions when the war was over and Patrick returned. After the immediate question of whether “us” should continue to include Daisy's grandmother, the whole question of the paying guests would have to be addressed. Would Patrick expect Dunmaine to be as it was when he left it, or would he—if not welcome—admire, applaud, be grateful for, the manner in which Daisy now ran the household? The former way, she thought, Irish; the latter, English. “English” in the slightly pejorative sense she occasionally heard used by the Anglo-Irish, its meaning usually, although not always, synonymous with “middle class.” Or would he see the change as one of the unavoidable evils of postwar life; a view that would allow him, all of them, to sigh nostalgically over the Good Old Days when they had all lived on the edge of a financial precipice, the bank manager and butcher impatient but not importunate, held at bay by nothing more concrete than the arrogant self-confidence of the Anglo-Irish and their own habit.

She thought it likely that the Good Old Days would, by and large, be the reaction the Nugents would settle on. Although it irked Daisy to think that her work and improvements would be classified as symptoms of the end of those happier times, it was not an unreasonable reaction. Although she should not have been old enough to understand the principle, she knew that the Good Old Days meant—more than pleasanter, easier, more civilized times—“when we were young.” The Good Old Days being defined, by the one who remembered, not so much by the circumstances as by the golden haze of hope, energy, sexual possibility, and novelty of experience that surrounded them.

And Daisy, ten days before the beginning of the New Year—1942, with its continuing fears of war and tired hopes of peace—was not yet twenty-three years old. But she no longer felt herself young. During the long, late summer days at Aberneth Farm, pleasantly physically tired, aware of her own strength and the new muscles in her upper arms and in her calves, full of confident and excited hope and expectations of a new, surely better and more exciting future after the war, her spirits high with health and a new sense of freedom, Daisy had consciously felt her own youth.

And yet, surely she was not so physically changed. She got up and crossed the room to her dressing table, where there was a large looking glass with two smaller hinged sides. Daisy was in the habit of sitting in front of it and brushing her hair; her images reflected sometimes made her wonder about Patrick's mother who, she thought, had sat in that seat and looked into the same glass. Apart from Corisande's one reference to her on the way to Sir Guy Wilcox's funeral, Daisy's dead mother-in-law had never been mentioned. She knew only that after Patrick's father had been killed in the Great War, she had lived here with her children and Maud and had survived her husband for long enough to teach Corisande how to make a funeral wreath.