This Cold Country (23 page)

Now she was being introduced to Lady Wilcox. Tall, graying hair, no longer the beautiful young girl she had once been, now a handsome, elegant woman and, like her husband, a presence. She wore a black knitted coat and skirt that might have been made in Paris or one of the grander London houses. On the collar, an old-fashioned ruby brooch glowed dully. Country house jewelry.

A not unpleasant smell of roasting meat accompanied the glasses of sherry Hugh Power was now handing his guests. It blended with the unsweet scent of geraniums and a hint of mildew. The sun, warm through the glass of the conservatory, the domestic smells, and the view of cattle grazing in the field by the river made the atmosphere hospitable, benevolent, innocent. Daisy felt outraged, confused, then for a moment seduced into a sense of well-being, followed, as such a thought often was, by one of Patrick, and she found herself again outraged and confused. Mainly confused. Was Edmund, who seemed to operate under a more conventional set of rules than did either Corisande or Mickey, as surprised as she was to meet the Wilcoxes? Their presence in the neighborhood must have been general knowledge, so why had it never been referred to in her hearing? Because she was English and would feel differently to the way they did? Had the treacherous Wilcoxes been welcomed by the Irish Government, the native Irish, and, just as warmly, by the Anglo-Irish? Some of the Anglo-Irish? And was Sir Guy actually a traitor? He was a Fascist, and that was surely a dangerous and morally reprehensible political belief; but since he had flown the coop before he could be arrested, she couldn't know if he would have been interned, or—like the Mosleys—would have gone to prison. But that didn't necessarily make him a traitor. She remembered Rosemary suggesting not everyone shared Daisy's black and white view of the execution, during the Great War, of Roger Casement for treason. Feeling uneasily disloyal and confused, Daisy took a glass of sherry, smiled, and accepted the fact that none of these questions could be asked or answered until the Shannig party left Corrofin.

Daisy sat between Edmund and Sir Guy at lunch. Corisande had been seated on Hugh Power's left, between him and Sir Guy, with Lady Wilcox—Emily—on Hugh's right. Then Mickey and Fernanda Power and back to Edmund to complete the circle. Corisande was now quite cheerful, smiling and chatting; something—the glass of sherry, the placement, sitting next to a new face—had cheered her up. Edmund caught Daisy's eye as she turned back from observing Corisande and winked. Daisy smiled weakly.

They sat down to a prewar English Sunday lunch: a sirloin of beef; Yorkshire pudding; rich, smooth gravy; and roast potatoes. The vegetables presumably came from whatever remained of the famous garden. French wine in Irish cut glass. Daisy was fascinated by the pocket of cosmopolitan sophistication in this remote corner of the former British Empire. She knew that between these isolated instances of worldliness, of education and architectural distinction, lay the cultureless world of the landowning, fox-hunting Irish squires; the market towns, twice a month ankle deep in manure and the sidewalks hazardous with lurching, red-faced drunken farmers; and the relentless poverty of the rural poor. Between the Sunday lunch tables where salsify or purple sprouting broccoli was served, there were a lot of families to whom vegetables were cabbage and boiled potatoes, with an occasional carrot for variety. And many for whom potatoes were the greater part of their diet. And over it all lay, almost invisible, the remains of an old and completely separate culture. And a complicated and, to Daisy, obscure political present.

Sir Guy was entertaining Corisande—and since Daisy also sat next to him, he probably considered her part of his audience too—with a description of his and his wife's domestic life.

“We both agreed it was terribly important not to let the side down, so we looked up our Somerset Maugham for hints about how not to go native and we change to eat our sardines on toast for dinner. I understand you're English, too, Mrs. Nugent—Emily could give you some pointers, if you like. Otherwise you'll wake up one morning and realize you've stopped washing your hair.”

The description was funny because it was true. There was something enervating about Ireland—the climate, the cultural gaps and lonliness, the tolerant attitude toward eccentricity, the lack of an imaginable future—that caused Englishwomen to sink to levels of disheveled despair they could never have previously envisioned.

“Corisande feels as you do,” Edmund said. Daisy had not realized he was listening to their conversation. “She wants to see me in uniform. Either in a pink coat as master of the Lismore Hunt or in khaki; she doesn't much mind which.”

There was a moment's silence while everyone looked at Edmund.
Why,
Daisy thought,
oh, why couldn't Edmund leave well alone?
Even the Wilcoxes, who had not been present for the scene Corisande had made the night before, looked startled.

“Corisande thinks Edmund should join up,” Mickey said helpfully.

“On which side?” Fernanda Power asked with a smile.

“Since my brother—Daisy's husband—is serving in the English army, it would probably make some sense for us to break the habit of a lifetime and all fight on the same side.”

Daisy was impressed by the lightness of Corisande's tone; she had been expecting another outburst, another chair pushed back, another door slammed, more all round embarrassment. Not that the air was now clear of tension.

“My brother, who wore the Italian uniform, is missing in action,” Fernanda said, although without rancor. Again there was a moment of silence.

“I'm sorry to hear it,” Corisande said. “It must be terrible for you.”

“It is,” Fernanda said, “and worse for him.” She paused, then shrugged and smiled. “But—what can I do? And, anyway, here we all are.”

It seemed the storm had been avoided, or at least a corner of it weathered. Daisy turned toward Edmund with no idea what she was going to say. She was willing to embark conversationally on any safe subject, however banal; even those her mother considered the bane of parochial life, poultry and the servant problem. Or she could regress further and ask him how old he was, and if he had any brothers or sisters; anything to stop him teasing Corisande or forcing his fellow guests to declare their colors and personify a different protagonist and fight the war out over the unusually delicious apple pie.

“The accident of origins, the irony of war,” Sir Guy said, drawing her attention back from Edmund. “Mrs. Nugent, may I call you Daisy?”

It didn't seem possible to say no—as a guest not only of the Powers, but of the mysteriously complaisant Edmund—but Daisy was damned if she was going to say yes. But before her silence could become uncompromisingly insulting—and Daisy was very unsure of what would happen once it did, though Sir Guy would clearly come out of the confrontation the winner—they were interrupted by the first voice raised in anger, that of Hugh Power. He was standing, having started to refill the wineglasses from a bottle he now held like a potential weapon. His normally ruddy face was dark.

“Sympathy for my wife and her brother, who is a very decent chap, doesn't make me pro-German. I was born in Ireland, I am an Irish citizen, and I can't think of a reason in the world why I should fight on either side. Enough Irish blood has been spilt fighting for England, and even more fighting against her for our freedom. Hitler's a dangerous madman and Mussolini—Fernanda knows how I feel—is not much better, but neither of them is likely to behave worse to Ireland than England has already done.”

Daisy thought about the atrocities being perpetrated by the Germans even as they spoke, but then she remembered the Irish history book she had been studying. She thought Hugh Power was wrong but was not sure she would win an argument if she were to take him on. Anyway, shouldn't one of the men be making her point? She glanced around the table. Edmund appeared calm and mildly sympathetic. Mickey—who knew what he might be about to say? Sir Guy was a Fascist, dangerous enough for the English Government to want him interned, or even imprisoned, for the duration of the war, but that did not necessarily make him proGerman. Surely the point of a British Fascist party was that it had a different vision for the future of England; any connection with Fascism in Germany or Italy would have ended with the outbreak of war. Or would it? Now would be the moment for the Wilcoxes to state their position, to make their case. But both Sir Guy and his wife were silent, and both completely expressionless.

For a moment no one spoke. No one moved; even Hugh Power seemed frozen in his semiheroic pose. The silence only lasted an instant and was broken by the person least likely to defuse the incipient explosion.

“Power—Poer, probably de la Poer at some time,” Mickey said. “Norman in origin and Hugh here is a good example of what I was talking about. More Irish than the Irish themselves.”

“I am one of the Irish themselves, Goddamn it,” Hugh said, but his anger seemed to be already less dangerous. “My family got here five hundred years before yours did, and there are about eight of what you think of as the original Irish left.”

“Who themselves came—”

“Mickey!” Corisande's tone was its most elder-sisterish, and Mickey stopped in midsentence. He seemed content enough with his performance, although whether it was because he had ridden his hobbyhorse a little farther than he had expected or because he had diverted a full-scale row, it was impossible to tell.

Fernanda Power was the one who broke the brief but significant silence.

“Ireland,” she said, “the history is so—” and she paused as if searching for a word.

“Sad,” Lady Wilcox said. She seemed grateful for an opportunity to rejoin the conversation with a sympathetic observation provocative to no one at the table.

“Depressing,” Fernanda said firmly, but it was her husband, not Lady Wilcox, that she was having a go at.

“Goodness,” Corisande said, glancing at her wristwatch. “It's dreadful, but I think we should leave in a moment if we're going to make the ten to four.”

“She thinks we live in a country where the trains run on time,” Edmund remarked, but his heart wasn't in it.

 

DAISY COULD HARDLY
wait for the pony and trap to take them out of earshot of the Wilcoxes and the Powers, who stood, waving good-bye, on the steps of Corrofin. She was unable to imagine how Edmund would explain and excuse the circumstances that had led them to sit down to a delicious friendly lunch at the same table as the Wilcoxes, as though most of the world was not engaged in bloody combat. Surely affiliations in the largest and most savage conflict in history was not something on which even the most polite could agree to differ.

The pony's hooves crunched the gravel and then clip-clopped down the avenue; the trap had passed through the gates and out onto the winding country road before Edmund spoke.

“Hugh had to put down that old retriever of his; turns out she was sloping off to kill sheep.”

Silence greeted this remark. Corisande seemed to have resumed her sulk. Edmund's eyes flickered toward her and his lips twitched with a suppressed smile. Mickey was quiet also, but Daisy knew his thoughts could be about anything and that there was no reason to attribute significance to his gloomy and preoccupied air. That he and his sister had remained mute for almost five minutes was probably coincidental. Daisy supposed the equanimity with which she was beginning to regard long, loaded, gloomy silences meant she was settling into Patrick's family, becoming a Nugent. Nevertheless, she required some kind of explanation from Edmund.

“Is this the first time you've met the Wilcoxes?” she asked, giving the question no particular weight.

“Yes,” he answered, his tone matching hers. “They took what was the dower house for Winter Hill. Winter Hill doesn't exist any longer; the Moores sort of let it fall down around them—it took less time than you might imagine—but the dower house is very pretty. It's on a good stretch of river.”

“Did you know, ah, that they were going to be at lunch?” Daisy kept her voice as pleasant and her words as unemphasized as before, while making it clear she wasn't going to let the subject drift off in another direction.

“No—Hugh didn't mention it. But I think the Powers helped them find their house when they first came over—”

“They did arrive”—Corisande now broke her silence—“rather unexpect—”

“I thought you were sulking, darling.”

Corisande stopped speaking and pressed her lips firmly together.

“What Corisande was about to tell you,” Mickey said, leaning forward, “is that the Wilcoxes got out of England about five minutes before he would have been arrested. If they were lucky, they'd have spent the rest of the war in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. Or else in prison, like his pal Mosley.”

Edmund's expressionless silence prevented Daisy asking him a direct question; she felt as though she had forfeited that right by approaching the whole subject of the Wilcoxes in such a tentative manner. That she might engage Mickey on the subject in the presence of the stiff silence of Corisande and Edmund seemed equally impossible.

As they approached the station, the road crossed the railway line. The barriers that prevented traffic, such as it was, from crossing the tracks were down, and the pony stopped and danced, as far as the constraints of the shafts of the trap would allow, nervously.

“Damn,” Edmund said. “She's not mad about trains.”

At that moment, a man appeared on the steps of the very small but solid brick house beside the crossing. He glanced at Edmund, laughed, glanced quickly up and down the line, and went back into the house. A moment later the barriers lifted and they drove through. Daisy looked back, carefully avoiding the eye of either Nugent, and saw the barriers come down again behind them.