The Silence in the Garden Page 16

  Tom gasped. He wished Neck Daly and Deso Furphy had come over to the island so that they could see. The girl’s stockings were hanging down her legs, and Briscoe was clumsily undoing the buttons of her blouse, kneeling on her arms so that she couldn’t resist him. ‘God, you have the fine legs,’ he said, his voice thickly slurred, like Drunk Paddy’s when he was shouting at the seagulls. ‘God, you’re great!’

  ‘Will you leave me alone? Will you get up and behave yourself?’ She said something else but again Tom couldn’t hear what it was. The porter told her to have sense. ‘D’you love me?’ the girl said.

  ‘Amn’t I telling you? You’re great altogether.’

  ‘You said you loved me the other night.’

  The porter’s face bent into hers again. He moved his knees so that she could put her arms around his neck. He murmured and she murmured back, and then suddenly he stood up and shouted at her.

  ‘That’s the end of it so. That’s the finish of the whole caboodle as far as I’m concerned.’

  She covered herself. She sat up on the grass, buttoning her blouse. Neither of them noticed Tom standing there although if they’d looked they would have seen him straight away.

  ‘You’re a right bitch,’ Briscoe shouted at the girl.

  Tom gasped again. He could feel a hotness at the back of his neck, creeping round into his cheeks. As quietly as he could, he went away, his eyes still wide.

  ‘A right little convent whore!’ Briscoe’s voice shouted, and in the same rough voice he swore at the girl, calling her names Tom thought only the boys at the Christian Brothers’ used. Crossing an expanse of heather to the cliffs, he walked along the cliff edge, now and again looking down at the waves breaking over the black rocks far below. A piteous note had come into the girl’s voice when she’d asked the porter if he loved her. She’d whimpered when he’d abused her.

  Tom knew it was what Holy Mullihan meant, with all histalk about sinning. Once he’d gone with Neck Daly and Deso Furphy to the goat field behind the corn yard and they’d waited for one of the goats to climb up on another. Neck Daly said there wasn’t an animal that existed that didn’t do that. ‘Even two rats,’ he’d said. The older boys had eyed Tom closely to see what his reactions would be, and he’d guessed that was the only reason they’d brought him with them. It was how he’d come to be born himself, he’d thought afterwards, his mother and father in a field somewhere because they weren’t married. ‘That’s filthy dirty, Tom,’ Holy Mullihan had said when he’d found out about watching the goats. Holy Mullihan found out about everything; he had eyes in the back of his head. ‘Don’t ever do that again, Tom. Give me a promise now.’ Neck Daly and Deso Furphy would have told him to take a running jump at himself, but Tom promised because it was easier.

  He walked inland again, on a road that was flat and straight, with turf bogs on either side of it. His mother would have lain there like the fish-sheds girl, protesting and yet putting her arms round the man. ‘There’d be people who’d think that, all right,’ Holy Mullihan had said. ‘About how a sin would definitely contaminate them.’

  On the road a shawled woman in a donkey and butt caught up with him. The woman slowed the pace of the donkey so that she could talk to him. He’d seen the donkey tied up at the pier. She’d been over to get meal for her fowls, the woman said; she lived near where the bridge was being built; it would be handy for her in the future, i knew Corny Dowley,’ she said, and Tom could tell from the way she said it that she knew who he was, that she knew Corny Dowley had killed his father. She wouldn’t give you tuppence for Dowley, she said. ‘A right eejit, that fellow.’ The woman was sorry for him, trying to be good to him, but even so she didn’t suggest he should climb up beside her on the cart.

  He thought about that while she talked to him. ‘Keep well away from that fellow,’ Dorrie Deavy’s father would have said. The Deavy boys crossed the street when they saw him approaching; he’d seen them doing it. His grandmother had been going to kiss him that day, only she’d changed her mind like Mr Coyne had. Deso Furphy and Neck Daly only bothered with him because they were curious about him.

  ‘I never thought I’d see a bridge,’ the woman on the cart said, ‘Isn’t it a wonder what they can do?’

  He agreed it was. He had never before thought of his mother like that, out in a field with her clothes half off. He’d only pretended to understand when Holy Mullihan went on about saying prayers to cleanse him. It was why all of them were keen on making him touch the holy clay.

  The woman said goodbye, shaking the reins to hurry the donkey up as it turned away on to the track that led to her cottage. In the distance Tom could hear the voices of the men working at the bridge, and when it came into sight he saw that it now extended over fourteen of the iron supports. Three lorries, empty of their loads, filled the air with dust as slowly they drove away. ‘A fellow at Confession,’ was how a joke of Neck Daly’s went.’ “Father, I sinned: I rode a woman from Carrigtohill.” “Well,” says the Father, “isn’t anything better than walking?” D’you understand that, Tom? D’you get the meaning of it?’

  His grandmother would be frightened to be in a room with him, which was why they couldn’t go and see her in her house; his grandfather would be frightened to be near him at all. ‘We’ve mongrels enough,’ he’d heard Mr O’Hagan complaining, kicking at a dog that had climbed up on another one by Mr Coyne’s petrol pump. Mongrels were any old dogs, sometimes peculiar-looking, the street-corner curs that gathered dust and fleas, carelessly born also. ‘God takes back a soul,’ Holy Mullihan said; a soul was only on loan. There was a man out in the hills beyond the town who had a terrible disease, a man who lived alone in a hovel, blinded in both his eyes, hardly able to walk.

  Holy Mullihan said he was like that because he’d been born in sin.

  Hearing the sound of his returning footsteps on the gravel sweep, Villana turned down the page of her novel and with her cigarettes and lighter in one hand went to greet her husband. She poured him sherry. She made him tell her about his day. She listened to the detail of disputes that had arisen, and to his courthouse gossip. She was restless until, once more, he touched upon her girlish beauty and what it meant to him.

  Letters came for John James. They were letters of apology, all of which he burnt without reading a second time. In passing, the money was mentioned, a statement to the effect that it didn’t matter, that between friends money never did. But in subsequent letters the sum referred to appeared to matter more. Attention was drawn to the circumstances of its withdrawal from the Munster and Leinster Bank, to its time in the hat-box, to its eventual arrival on the island. A loan had been agreed, one letter in particular stated, though no arrangement had been made for how it might be repaid, and in what manner.

  John James swore. He cursed the woman. His leg ached. No loan had been agreed; the banknotes had been foisted on him in public, the cause of acute embarrassment. Clearly he would have to return the money since he had no claim to it. Clearly he had no option but to make another journey to the boarding-house. Without quite knowing why he did so, he waited until a Monday afternoon came round again.

  ‘Oh, honey! Oh, my darling boy!’ She wept as soon as she saw him. The apologies that had been written down poured again from her lips. She would kneel before him if he required it. She had suffered a sunstroke that day, she wouldn’t have spoilt the wedding occasion for worlds.

  He attempted to count the banknotes into her hands, so that there could be no argument afterwards. He tried to be exact and businesslike, but the notes dropped to the floor and he was obliged to go down on his hands and knees to retrieve them. As soon as he stood up again he felt an arm around his waist. He shook it off, insisting that he had come on a commercial matter, but somehow or other he found himself on the way upstairs, and then she was saying that she forgave him, that it was a terrible way to behave, not replying to a person’s letters, especially after a person had been taken ill. She sprinkled eau de Cologne on to her sheets
, telling him not to be silly when he shook his head.

  Carriglas, October 16th, 1931. Sunshine glances over harvest stubble, petals fall in the garden. The apples have been picked, the air smells softly of the season. Almost as though they’ve made a mistake, the strawberry trees blossom, then Michaelmas daisies come.

  ‘You never forget,’ he said this afternoon, taking the can of tea from me in the orchard, where old trees are being felled. He hesitated, again as though about to say something, but in the end he did not.

  For just a few moments Mrs Rolleston forgot that Villana had married the solicitor, and wondered why he was reading a newspaper in the drawing-room. People had always come and gone at Carriglas, servants and visitors, friends, relations, painters and wallpaper-hangers, friends of other friends, the man to repair the banister-rail. Sarah Pollexfen had come. She’d come herself. Linchy had come.

  She closed her eyes. The chaffinch flew about the drawing-room, she tore the paper into scraps. ‘Come and get the rabbits,’ her son said, and in the little study Villana lifted the shotgun from the wall. With her eyes still closed, she remembered the wedding preparations, the wedding itself: events and statements came swiftly back to her, and she chided herself for her silliness in forgetting that Villana had married the solicitor.

  ‘The shreds of summer left,’ she remarked. ‘The nicer side of winter just arriving.’

  They listened to her, books and cigarettes for a moment laid down. They honoured her age, they showed a suitable respect: she’d brought them up to that. The solicitor’s newspaper was on his knees, Sarah Pollexfen’s embroidery idle.

  ‘October is my favourite month of autumn,’ Villana obligingly responded. Her husband concurred, devoting consideration to a survey of the autumn months. November he liked less, he said.

  ‘I should like arrangements made for the disposal of my jewellery,’ she informed them. ‘I shall be parted from it soon in any case.’

  They did not care for that. The finely wrought Rolleston brows of her grandchildren frowned. They did not meet her gaze. They did not wish to have this conversation.

  ‘Oh, now,’ Villana said.

  But since she had begun, since she had become entangled in the subject, it was certainly better to continue. ‘I do not wish to distress you, Villana, nor anyone else. I am simply endeavouring to converse. Old women die in the night, you know.’

  She did not know if she loved her grandchildren any more, and rather thought she did not, and had not for many years. She felt she had been damaged and considered that unfair, since she was, after all, only their grandmother, not their mother.

  ‘Send to Cork,’ she said, her tone peremptory, ‘for a man to come to value what there is. Accept any offer that is not a swindle.’

  ‘There is no need,’ John James began. ‘Really there is no need.’

  ‘Well yes, there is. As a matter of fact there is, you know.’ And she explained that the motor-car which the garage man had apparently earmarked for the family should be purchased. ‘You will not be made use of,’ she reassured the solicitor. ‘Villana has said you were not married for your possessions.’

  She made that clear in case Villana had not said it herself to him, for Villana was often careless. In childhood it had been the same.

  ‘There is another thing, since we are talking on the subject and since in fact we have our own solicitor in the room. Provision must be made for that child.’

  Again they did not like it. John James spoke, attempting to placate her, she supposed: she did not listen. ‘You are in charge now,’ his father used to say each time he went away to join the regiment, but John James wasn’t the sort to be in charge. John James, she’d often thought, should have been a travelling salesman.

  ‘The child,’ Villana began, but feeling it to be her privilege she interrupted her. She did not trust Villana in this matter. She did not trust John James. And Lionel would give in to pressure. The picnic was over, she thought; twilight was giving way to darkness. She liked the sound of that and wanted to repeat the observation aloud, but did not do so.

  ‘Wait please, Villana.’ She turned her look upon the solicitor, offering him a smile that once had upset the demeanours of younger men. ‘Finnamore, will you see that papers are drawn up?’

  ‘Concerning the estate, Mrs Rolleston? I can assure you I am proceeding with considerable alacrity. The law, unfortunately, cannot be pressed beyond its natural pace. But certainly advances are being made.’

  ‘I do not mean concerning the estate. If Villana has not told you yet she will tell you soon—there is no point whatsoever in your snatching back those forgotten acres.’

  ‘I do not seek to snatch, Mrs Rolleston. Only to regain what is rightly the family’s due.’

  ‘Will you see that papers are drawn up, Finnamore, that ensure provision is made for the gate-lodge child?’

  ‘Yes, of course. If that is your wish. As to the other work—’

  ‘Such a child is often kept hidden, you know. It was I who insisted otherwise years ago. We therefore have an obligation.’

  He seemed nonplussed, but even so he nodded and she was glad of that. Again she closed her eyes for a moment, for she felt her breathing quicken, and thought to rest them for a moment. The solicitor’s voice continued, informing her of irrelevancies.

  ‘You understand, Finnamore, how that child’s father died? My granddaughter has explained?’

  ‘Indeed. I am quite conversant, I believe.’

  Once upon a time, of course, there’d been another child: Villana might not have told him that, either. They none of them might ever have spoken to a soul, keeping all of it to themselves, as their childhood habit had been. A day would come, some time in the future, when nobody would know, when the truth would be buried and lie like some forgotten treasure in the ground.

  ‘I hope you will accept,’ she said to the solicitor, ‘that you have a duty in all this? You are a clever man. You are cleverer than the Rollestons.’

  ‘There is no need for this!’ Villana suddenly cried out, anger causing her to stammer slightly. ‘Finnamore must not be spoken to in this way.’

  ‘I do not speak to him in any way in particular. By saying clever, I do not insult him. You worry when you are old, Finnamore, that the innocent are punished. It is enough that poor Linchy died in error.’

  Her hands, resting lightly on the arms of her chair, now pushed her to her feet. Sarah Pollexfen moved in some manner, as though to offer assistance. Lionel moved forward too. But assistance was not necessary, and they should have known it.

  ‘Be certain, Finnamore, that my granddaughter has explained the circumstances of our butler’s death. I would ask you to be certain. That is a personal wish.’

  It was too simple just to say it was her grandchildren’s flesh and bones that should have been scattered all over the avenue. It was easy to avoid the heart of the matter, though naturally people would want to.

  ‘Naturally,’ she repeated.

  No one commented. She had thought John James or Villana would make further protestations, but no one said a thing. Sarah Pollexfen remained where she stood, having sensed the rejection of her assistance. Lionel stared at a rug on the floor. John James leaned against the wall between two of the French windows. Villana played with her cigarette-lighter.

  She thought she saw the solicitor’s lips move, no doubt wishing to acknowledge her requests, to affirm in his solicitor’s manner, not giving too much away. He had crossed the room and stood stiffly beside her granddaughter’s chair. She had made them all unhappy, she thought, and they were glad to see her go, being fearful of what she might say next.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she begged, but her voice was so tired she wondered if they could hear it. She raised it with an effort. Only the gate-lodge child mattered now, she said. Only he was important, since he was their inheritor.

  Carriglas, October 27th, 1931. In the drawing-room the pages of the Irish Times rustled as John James turned them. There was the s
ound of the flint sparking in Villana’s cigarette-lighter. No one spoke. Mr Balt seemed awkward and upset, as puzzled as I was myself, both of us beyond the family pale. Since their marriage Villana has been attentive to him in a way I had hardly thought she would be, fussing over how his eggs are cooked and his clothes ironed. ‘Finnamore,’ he has said to me. ‘You must call me Finnamore, for I should like to call you Sarah.’ I must remember that. I must address him as Finnamore, though I know I shall continue to write Mr Balt in my diary and I shall always think of him as Mr Balt. Of that I’m certain.

  Later tonight, as I passed the door of the nursery-schoolroom, I heard his voice raised. ‘But nothing could,’ he urgently exclaimed. ‘Nothing on earth could ever change my feelings for you.’ There was a murmur in reply, and with greater passion than before he repeated this confirmation of his attachment.

  In my bedroom, as now I write, I hear again the old woman’s insistent voice rambling on about the butler’s death and provision for the gate-lodge child. Through a flicker of lamplight Villana glances away, as though seeking solace in the shadowy flowers of the garden. John James sighs. And in Lionel’s eyes there is such pain as I have never seen before in a human face.

  Carriglas, November 22nd, 1931. The man came today to make an offer for Mrs Rolleston’s jewellery. It was accepted on her insistence.

  Carriglas, November 27th, 1931. ‘You have made provision?’ she said at dinner, addressing her grandson-in-law. ‘You have seen to my wishes?’ He replied that the matter had been discussed with her grandchildren, and then proceeded to go into detail as to the agreement reached. She cut him short. She did not wish to hear, she stated sharply. ‘In no way do I distrust you, Finnamore,’ she added later on.