The Old Jest (12 page)

‘This house …?' Nancy couldn't ask the question.

Maeve leant over and touched her knee.

‘You needn't worry. We won't pull it down. It needs money spent on it. He'll do that all right. A house like this should be looked after.'

‘Charles Dwyer Esquire, late of the County of Cork.'

‘I didn't know you had relations in Cork. My father's sister is married and lives down there.'

‘He left Cork in sixteen something and began to build the house … I mean, it's not like it was then, lots of people have fiddled around with it since. He just came into my mind. Aunt Mary's the last Dwyer left … apart from Grandfather.'

‘No one to carry it on?'

‘No.'

‘So you see … it's no great tragedy. Is it?'

‘No great tragedy.'

The orange cat walked carefully along the wall and sat down with his back to them, his sleepy orange eyes watching the movements of the swallows.

‘Does Harry know all this?'

Maeve got up from the chair.

‘Would you look at the time. I must fly. I have to change. Thanks a million for the cup of tea. Don't move. I'll just cut across the field.' She stood looking down at Nancy. ‘I'm glad you weren't …'

‘It was just a passing dizziness. Thanks for calling.'

‘You must come over soon. You and your aunt. We'd like that. I'd really like to get to know you better.'

‘Thank you …'

‘Tooraloo.'

Maeve moved away. Down the steps and along the winding path through the roses, the yellow scarf lifting gently as she moved. At the gate into the field she turned and waved. Nancy didn't wave back.

‘Why didn't you tell me before? Why on earth?'

They were sitting in front of the fire in the little study behind the drawing room. The curtains were not pulled and they could see dim shadows of themselves against the black sky.

Aunt Mary had returned from the races gaily intoxicated by several wins, several drinks and the undemanding good humour of her friends. She had pushed the old man round the garden in his chair, talking animatedly, her eyes shining, her hands never still, punctuating sentences, describing, tweaking the dead heads from the roses, stroking lovingly, from time to time, the sleeve of his jacket. He presumably enjoyed the attentions, but never spoke, except at one moment to make some fretful remark, pointing as he spoke, with a trembling finger, towards the railway line. After they had eaten their dinner, Aunt Mary wheeled him off and helped him to bed. Nancy sat by the fire and listened to the rising and falling of her voice and the little tremors of laughter that burst out from time to time. She loved the precise sounds of evening and night time, when every tiny noise had its own significance and clarity. At last her aunt had come into the room and closed the door.

‘Tra la!'

She went over to the corner, where some bottles and glasses stood on a table, and poured herself a large whisky, and then, the energy draining away visibly from her face, taking with it the colour that had given it gaiety before, she sat down by the fire and leaned her head against the back of her chair.

‘Why on earth!'

Aunt Mary frowned down into her now empty glass.

‘Pet …'

She got up slowly and went and poured herself another drink.

‘ … I suppose I didn't want you to worry … brood perhaps over something … something about which you could do nothing.'

‘You mean it's a
fait accompli
!' She wondered if they were already sitting in someone else's room.

‘No …' Aunt Mary shook her head. ‘I am still turning it over and over in my mind. Pringle is advising me. I always meant to tell you before anything …'

‘What is he advising you?'

‘Sense, dear. Mr Pringle is a very sensible man. I'm afraid the sensible thing to do is …'

‘Is?'

‘Sell. I'm afraid so.'

‘It can't be.'

Aunt Mary smiled.

‘It's really a question of making ends meet.'

There was a long silence.

‘As bad as that?'

‘I'm … well … it all boils down to five people, if you count Jimmy, and we have to count Jimmy really, all living off money that doesn't exist any longer. What comes in is far less than what goes out. Mr Pringle did explain it all. You see, since Gabriel was killed … I suppose we should have done something earlier.'

She took a drink from her glass and held the liquid in her mouth for a long time before letting it slide down her throat. Nancy watched the movement of her throat as she swallowed.

‘It's been a little like those people pursued by wolves who throw everything out of the sledge until there's nothing left. I've kept going by selling things. Silly, I admit. Now there's nothing left.' She sighed. ‘I've never been much good at facing reality. Gabriel wouldn't have let this happen. He was practical and quick-witted. I've never been like that. Long ago there didn't seem the need … I suppose in a way we've been lucky to have things to sell. I don't even know about that. One ought to face reality. Really ought to.'

Nancy got up and went across to the window. She found the darkness there oppressive; she couldn't bear their reflections another moment. She pulled the curtains.

‘Perhaps if I'd thought about all this thirty years ago, or even twenty, I would have been able to cope … make something credible … not just drift. It'll be all right though. It's the people that matter, nothing else. Father and Bridie and poor old Jimmy. They'll be all right. And you're young. You will only notice a small irritation in your life. You won't mind for long because too many other things will be happening to you. You will be starting to live. Perhaps it will even prevent you from making a lot of similar silly mistakes.'

‘Couldn't we keep the house?'

‘We'll get a cottage somewhere. A nice old cottage.'

‘Maeve said he'd build you a bungalow.'

Aunt Mary laughed.

‘Don't be a bloody fool. We'll get a cottage up in the hills somewhere, looking over the sea, and that damn railway if possible. Father has to have something to look at with his blooming glasses. You can get digs in Dublin and come out and visit us at weekends.'

She had it all worked out.

‘I only hope …' she ran a finger round the rim of her glass and it sang, a long high-pitched note that took a long time to die ‘they won't be too precipitate … you know … he will miss the trains … and things. I wouldn't want him to be discomforted.' She smiled. ‘Not discomforted at all. I suppose it would be best if he were just to … I hate to think like that.'

‘Is it very terrible being grown up?'

A burst of laughter.

‘Pet, I wouldn't know. I don't think it's ever happened to me. Perhaps now.'

‘You never answer important questions.'

‘I try not to create confusion.'

‘We could stay on though? Sell the rest and stay on ourselves.'

Aunt Mary shivered slightly and stretched out a hand towards the fire. ‘No, no. I don't think it would work. It would just be another half-measure. Anyway I have enough … oh I don't know what you'd call it … foolish pride perhaps not to want to see the houses and the tennis courts squeezing up around us. Know that critical eyes were assessing us from behind white curtains, watching us pushing the dust under the carpets or only polishing the bottom halves of the windows. Maybe it's wrong to think like that but that's the way I am. Anyway this house is part of the deal. I suspect they want it for themselves.'

‘Oh!'

‘It's years since any money was spent on it. I'd like to see it receiving the attention it deserves. You'll be all right. I promise you that.'

The fire muttered and a slim blue flame quivered in the darkness at the back of the chimney.

‘What can I do?' Nancy spoke suddenly after a long silence. ‘I'd like to know if there was something I could do.'

‘Oh no.' Aunt Mary's voice now was blurred with drink and tiredness. She giggled slightly, and then began to speak very rapidly, almost as if she didn't want Nancy to hear what she was saying. ‘Yes. Of course. Yes. Everything's changing. You must realise that. I suppose it's for the best, but I don't imagine I will ever know for sure. Change takes time. You must be part of that. That's important. You must move, re-energise. Don't just drift as I have always done. Your grandfather's dead and I am dying. Not,' she held up a hand to stop Nancy speaking, ‘that I have ever lived. I've been happy, calm and useless most of the time. The great thing to remember is that there is nothing to be afraid of. You learn that as you get older. We live in a state of perpetual fear. All the horrible things we do to each other, all our misunderstandings, are because of fear. All our terrible mistakes.' She giggled again. ‘I think I must be terribly drunk.'

‘A bit.'

‘It doesn't matter one way or the other. Bridie'll be angry with me. She'll know when she brings me up my tea in the morning that I've had too much to drink and she'll click her tongue and give me the cold eye.'

‘She'll hate a bungalow.'

‘Cottage.'

‘Cottage. She'll hate that too.'

‘Not once she gets used to it. Cosy, easy, everything at hand. She won't know herself. She and I can spend our declining years sitting by the fire reading and playing cards. And that sinister cat.'

‘It sounds dull.'

‘Not at all. The world can go mad and we will sit and make our own quiet comments and back a few horses and sleep and remember things. Bridie and I have a lot of memories in common. I really must either go to bed or have another drink.'

The last standing piece of turf crumbled inwards on to the glowing ashes.

‘Oh bed, I suppose,' said Nancy.

13 August

My dream would be that the wind should catch up this old house and whirl it away as it whirls the seagulls. It could land us gently on the edge of the sea somewhere with a racecourse in easy reach for Aunt Mary and a curving horizon of railway line alive with shining engines, goods trucks, carriages, points, signals, sidings, the whole lot, within nice range of grandfather's glasses. Nothing but pleasure for his last days, or years as the case may be. No anxiety, no sadness, just a miraculous happening. Silly dream. Still, like a child I have silly dreams. I can see them living here, a lovely pair, as Bridie will undoubtedly call them when the moment comes. He will keep the place up to the mark and she will play her white piano in the drawing room and they will never notice our bruised ghosts lurking in the corners. I suppose in fact that their corners will be too clean and well lit for ghosts to be comfortable in. There will be nothing left of mother or Gabriel or the child who has sat for so many years on the top step of the terrace, not getting piles. There used to be horses in the stables and Uncle Gabriel hunted twice a week, and there was a boy who kept the tack, polished the lovely shiny boots. There was a smell of saddle soap and horse dung. The saddles are flaking now, out in the damp tack room. The little fire in the corner is never lit and birds drop twigs down the empty chimney and they fall out from the fireplace and litter the floor. Sometimes though you can still hear the sound of a horse backing up on the cobbles, the stutter of hooves, a soft whinny. If you're in the right mood of course. I was always afraid. I remember the thud my heart used to give when one of them would raise its head and move towards me. Martin was the boy's name. He used to whistle between his teeth as he rubbed and rubbed, curry-combed and polished their gleaming coats. He would lean his head against their warm necks and kiss them with the side of his whistling mouth. He's in prison in England now. He was caught after a raid on a barracks down near Cork somewhere. He was wounded, I think, and couldn't get away. Something like that.

They will make a lovely couple. I don't suppose he would ever love someone like me, even if I were five years older. She is so new and perfect and polished looking, and she won't be really kind to him and he'll probably never notice. They will both accept most graciously what the world has to offer. That's no crime. It's more of a crime I suppose to want to mess things up a bit. Oh God, don't let me be too feeble and please help me to stop biting my nails! Amen.

The wind got up again during the night, and in the morning the garden was littered with branches and whirling leaves. Nancy saw in her mind the beach strewn with wrack and driftwood. I'll light a fire, she thought.

‘It's a lovely walking day,' she said. ‘I think I'll go for a long long walk. I'll bring some fruit. I won't come back for lunch.'

‘Mmm!'

‘I don't think it'll rain, do you?'

‘Mmm!'

‘You could really stride for miles on a day like this.'

Aunt Mary never stirred from behind the paper. ‘Tell Bridie before you go.'

She lit her fire about half a mile on the town side of the hut, halfway between the nuns' bathing box and the point. She had brought two newspapers and a box of matches as well as two bananas and an apple. She crumpled the paper page by page – crumpled the ‘Fashionable Intelligence', the sports pages and the advertisements for White's Wafer Oatmeal and J. W. Elvery and Co. Ltd. ladies' and gentlemen's waterproof and rainproof coats, Robt. Roberts' pure China tea, and a one week sale of Clery's boots and shoes, the stock exchange reports and the Parliamentary reports and the news. She piled a pyramid of grey driftwood over the whole lot and put a match to it. The fire caught at once, and she sat watching the smoke curling up into the wind and wondered if grandfather were watching it through his glasses and whether a new set of memories curled into his mind with the smoke. She ate her bananas eventually as the fire died down into a pile of simmering ashes, and then she walked along the sea's edge towards the hut. She became aware suddenly that she was walking along beside someone's footmarks. Male shoe marks. The heels sank quite deeply into the sand and the soles were criss-crossed patterned. She stopped walking and looked back along the beach. The marks came down from the railway line. Straight and purposeful they marched along the sand. No dog gallivanted beside them. Just a man on his own had walked that way. They moved up to the right and finally disappeared among the blocks of stone. Quite disappeared. She searched around carefully for any signs of them but found none. As she stood up straight again, she saw the man, Cass, watching her from beside a rock.