This Cold Country (24 page)

“Mosley, you know,” Mickey said, “was one of the people who took a stand against the organization of the Black and Tans.”

No one spoke the rest of the way to the station. Mickey had said his piece and settled back into silence. Corisande continued sulking and Daisy felt herself effectively silenced. That Edmund had chosen to describe one more crumbling Anglo-Irish house rather than discuss the presence of an eminent Fascist—two eminent Fascists?—at the lunch party, suggested that he, for his own unimaginable reasons, did not want to discuss it.

Daisy, sinking into the Nugent silence, wondered if Edmund was embarrassed that he had brought them to meet such a person. It was hardly his fault since he couldn't have known the Wilcoxes would be there. And the Powers? They were apparently on good terms with the Wilcoxes. Fernanda Power's nationality and Hugh's anti-English feelings might well account for such a friendship. Which left Daisy wondering about Edmund's acquaintanceship with the Powers. It occurred to her—especially after his “citizen of a neutral country” speech of the night before—that he might not, as she had assumed, share all her English views and feelings. But Ambrose and Patrick were officers in the English army, so surely Edmund felt as they did. Or did he?

At the station Edmund busied himself retrieving their luggage from the stationmaster's office and made small talk to Daisy until they could hear a vibration on the rail. All eyes looked along the track and soon they could hear the engine, then see smoke above the small stone bridge that crossed the cut into the side of the hill, and the train chuffed into the station.

“You know, Daisy,” Edmund said, as the train hissed to a halt, “I'm really very pleased with Partlet. The way she behaved at lunch. You know, I think any man might be proud to have her as his wife. I know I would myself, but unfortunately I have no way of asking her. She doesn't hear me when I speak to her and I'm no great hand at writing letters.”

Before Daisy could answer him—she would have liked to slap him and, while she was about it, give Corisande a good shake—the stationmaster blew his whistle and began slamming doors farther down the train. Corisande mounted the step; Daisy followed her and stood on one side to allow Mickey to take their luggage from Edmund.

“I don't think this is the sort of thing you should joke about,” Daisy said, with uncharacteristic severity. “It's not kind and later on it'll seem like a—like a waste.”

But Edmund was looking toward the window of the first compartment. Irritated, Daisy sighed and followed Mickey through the narrow door, past the grimy windows of the corridor, to join Corisande.

Corisande was standing by the open window. She was still silent, but from the angle of her head Daisy thought she was looking at Edmund. He was certainly looking up at her, his head a little on one side and with a small closed-mouthed smile. As the train lurched, a preliminary to drawing out of the station, Edmund nodded. Corisande remained immobile for a split second, then turned, and pushed her way past Daisy.

“Get out of my way,” she snarled at Mickey, who was trying to put her suitcase onto the rack, and dashed out into the corridor.

“Don't you want your—” Mickey dithered with the heavy suitcase and then carried it to the window.

“Give it to me,” Edmund said to him and reached up to take the suitcase. “What about her dressing case?”

Mickey turned back to the rack where the rest of the luggage was stacked, but the train was gathering speed and Edmund only just managed to catch Corisande as she threw herself into his arms.

A
LTHOUGH DAISY WAS
not averse to becoming the head of her own household, she would have been grateful to have someone show her the ropes.

Corisande sent a list, surprisingly short, on Shannig writing paper, of things to be packed—she suggested by a maid—and announced that it would be easier all round if she were to marry from Shannig. Clearly this was true; were she to be married from Dunmaine it would be up to Daisy to arrange the wedding. Equally clearly, it was out of the question for the housemaid to pack Corisande's clothing and effects. Daisy would not have expressed this opinion aloud—she knew that being mindful of what servants might think was bourgeois; she also suspected that there was little in Dunmaine that was secret from the kitchen and, were she the sort of woman who gossiped with servants, she could have learned much of what she wanted to know from them.

Mickey took his sister's departure—elopement?—with equanimity; it was as though, after a day or two, he had forgotten she once lived with him. Daisy found herself grateful for his presence, although his contribution to mealtime conversation was minimal. After a couple of attempts she stopped asking him even the most innocuous questions about his family; he became inarticulate and sullen and his replies, such as they were, were not to the point. History was a bond between them; any question about Ireland's past caused Mickey's face to light up and made his voice full of energy. Daisy was still eager to learn about her new country, although sometimes she would set Mickey in motion and allow her thoughts to wander. Mickey would have made an excellent teacher, but Daisy knew better than to ask him why he had never considered life as a schoolmaster.

Instead, Daisy tried not to imagine what her life would have been like if Mickey weren't there and she had to live out the war, and an indeterminate period afterward, in the company of old Mrs. Nugent and the maids.

Daisy waited until the end of the week to begin her reforms. The kitchen seemed the obvious place to start. Armed with what she thought of as a preliminary list, starting with a suggestion about the amount of time vegetables need to be cooked, she arrived in the kitchen about an hour and a half after breakfast had been cleared. The cook, Philomena, and the two maids were seated at the kitchen table drinking tea. Daisy recognized elevenses and withdrew, telling them she would come back a little later.

She retreated to the library, the warmest room—other than old Mrs. Nugent's room, the kitchen, or the linen closet—all, in a sense, out of bounds to her. Already she could feel some of her first enthusiastic energy draining away. Seating herself at the desk, she started a new column of her list, things that needed taking care of around the house. She began with the burned out lightbulbs on the chandelier in the room where she was now sitting, the cobwebs in the corners of the hall ceiling, the tarnished rods that held the carpet in place on the front staircase.

When she returned to the kitchen she found Philomena leaving by the back stairs, carrying a tray, on it a cup of milky tea and a plate of oatmeal biscuits. The cook was still sitting at the kitchen table; she did not rise as Daisy entered. Daisy, who had intended to start as she meant to continue, wondered if she should say something, found herself unable to frame the words for a reproof, and instead, took a seat at the other end of the table.

Mrs. Mulcahy seemed to be about the same age as Daisy's mother. She was heavy, her breath came in a wheeze, and Daisy imagined her feet gave her trouble. On the table in front of the cook were two slim paperbound notebooks, one older than the other and both stained with kitchen grease.

“The baked apples at lunch yesterday were delicious,” Daisy said. It was not how she had intended to start, but Mrs. Mulcahy's massive presence unnerved her.

“Herself is partial to a soft baked apple; she wants one for her tea tonight.” When the cook spoke, her whole bosom, covered by a striped and not particularly clean apron, heaved. It seemed even breathing was a conscious and draining exercise for her.

There was a little pause. Daisy had planned to follow her compliment about the baked apples with some gentle but firm amendments to the set weekly menu and a question about the cold beef on Monday tradition having been adhered to even though everyone who might have eaten it hot on Sunday in the dining room had been away for the weekend. Now she could answer the question herself. Corisande had not countermanded the standing order; old Mrs. Nugent was entitled to her roast beef for Sunday lunch whether she knew what day of the week it was or not, and there were the unspoken but always implicit rights of the servants. Daisy also paused before speaking about the overcooked vegetables; it now seemed possible that soft vegetables were an accommodation to Mrs. Nugent's teeth or digestion. It also occurred to her that the cook was not the person to speak to about lightbulbs and cobwebs. Mrs. Mulcahy broke the silence.

“You'll be wanting the messages,” she said, pushing the newer of the two notebooks toward Daisy. Her bosom prevented her from reaching even half the length of the table. Daisy rose and took the order book. She had been reading, along with Irish history, for balance and light relief, the works of Somerville and Ross. Now she felt like one of the foolish and ineffectual English characters from their novels. Without voicing a complaint or asking a question—she had, in fact, limited herself to a compliment—she had been bested. No contest; holding the order book, she did not sit down again. But Mrs. Mulcahy had not finished with her.

“There's one other thing, madam.”

Daisy soon learned that to be addressed as “madam” by anyone who worked for the Nugents was a precursor to a request or demand, rarely unreasonable, for money.

“Miss Corisande didn't pay the wages before she left last Friday.”

“Oh,” Daisy said faintly.

Mrs. Mulcahy held out the second notebook. Daisy took it; who paid the wages was a question she had not asked herself but had assumed that the grown-up in charge paid the running expenses of the house. It suddenly seemed important not to allow a silence to develop.

“I'll go to the bank when I go into Cappoquin for the shopping,” she found herself saying. Mrs. Mulcahy nodded, and Daisy, dismissed, left the kitchen.

Lunch was minced beef, with snippets of toast stuck into the top; apart from an overliberal addition of salt, it was unseasoned. Two pounds of minced beef, to feed kitchen and dining room, might be almost priceless in England, but here it was merely unappetizing. And expensive.

Outside it was sunny and cold. Daisy and Mickey sat at a small table beside the dining-room windows. Soon, Daisy thought, it would be time to move the table closer to the fire. Mickey ate his way through lunch with no indication of either pleasure or disappointment.

Shortly afterward, the whole meal having taken no more than twenty minutes, he went outside again. What, Daisy wondered, did he do during the winter? What, for that matter, would she herself do when the weather got colder and the days shorter and darker?

Daisy was about to leave the house when she realized she didn't have the ration books. Aware that the bank closed before the grocery shop, and with the image of Mrs. Mulcahy's truculent face before her, Daisy, with an anxiety beginning to border on panic, searched the desk in the library without success. For a moment she considered leaving without them; it would be humiliating as well as inopportune to return without money. Then she thought that returning without tea would be a failure only slightly less unacceptable to the kitchen than leaving the wages unpaid. After a moment of frustration and resentment, reflecting that doing without the odd cup of tea or sugar to sweeten it was far from the worst thing happening to those suffering all over Europe, she went upstairs to look for the ration books in Corisande's bedroom.

Daisy had only once before entered Corisande's bedroom, when she packed a suitcase of her sister-in-law's clothes and possessions to send to Shannig. Now she opened the door, aware that not only was she unlikely to be observed—it was the hour after lunch when Dunmaine seemed as uninhabited as the
Marie Celeste
—but that the search she was about to engage in was legitimate and necessary. The room had the dead feeling of one that neither fresh air nor a living creature had entered for some time. Crumpled scraps of tissue paper lay on the bed, left there from when she had packed. The wastepaper basket had not been emptied; at the bottom of it lay small wodges of cotton wool, stained with lipstick and nail polish. No maid had entered the bedroom since Daisy had last been in it. No one had dusted, tidied, or changed the sheets on Corisande's bed. Daisy felt surprised and betrayed; with a glimmer of humor she now understood what her grandmother meant when she complained of being “let down.” But had she been? Was the neglect of Corisande's bedroom part of a lazy and cynical reaction to a new and inexperienced employer—as Daisy supposed was now her role since she was being held responsible for the wages—or had Nelly, the housemaid with the untreated adenoids, assumed that without instructions no action was expected?

Corisande's desk was closed and locked. As were the drawers beneath. For a moment Daisy was unsure what to do. She had been brought up in a family where it would be unthinkable that any member would invade the privacy of another. The locked desk made her feel both guilty and insulted; nevertheless there seemed no choice but to persevere. Looking now for both the key and the ration books—not necessarily behind the locked lid of the desk—Daisy sat down at Corisande's dressing table and opened the drawer. The drawer smelled of Corisande; face powder mingled with scent that had leaked or been spilled from a small, pretty, now empty bottle; there was an open mascara box, worn down in the middle, the brush caked with dried mascara and spittle; a broken eyebrow pencil; the stub of a lipstick in Corisande's everyday color; all of which seemed, like the wood of the drawer itself, to have absorbed, and contributed to, the essential smell of Corisande herself.

At first Daisy did not see the key, then she found it concealed by a bottle of solidified nail polish and a crumpled lace handkerchief; she picked it up and closed the drawer, a little uneasy at this unnerving glimpse of her sister-in-law's toilette.

The inside of the desk was, in contrast, neat and orderly. On one side of a leather-bound blotter with a pristine sheet of blotting paper stood a large box of chocolates, on the other, a framed photograph of Ambrose. No sign of the ration books. Daisy opened the shiny, black chocolate box with the red tassel. Four cups of crenulated dark brown paper in the center of the box were empty. On the inside of the top of the box was an illustrated chart of the contents; Corisande had eaten the ones that contained nuts. Daisy smiled and carefully lifted one edge of the paper separating the layers. Two chocolates were missing from the center of the second layer. After a moment's hesitation, she took a chocolate filled with marzipan. She picked up Ambrose's photograph; in it he was wearing a tweed jacket and knickerbockers, one foot on a stile, a game bag over his shoulder and a double-barreled shotgun broken open over his arm. A dog stood beside him, looking up expectantly. Ambrose, a few pounds lighter than he now was, smiled at the photographer.