This Cold Country (29 page)

Then she remembered the plaque in the church at Bannock, the memorial to an even younger Nugent who had also given his life for his country. She started to weep softly. Weeping for the vague and formidable Lady Nugent; for her pale aggressive daughters; for James, who would never again shoot a pheasant or creep into a pretty girl's bedroom; for all the never agains; for Patrick; for herself; for all the poppies and the lilies; for the whole brave, lonely, and inarticulate bunch of them; for the hopelessness of it all.

She wept for James, then for families all over England who had lost husbands, fathers, children. For the Londoners bombed nightly. For those who, whatever the outcome of the war, had already lost the center of their lives, someone who could never be replaced. For mothers who could never be comforted. She wept for families in occupied countries, for parents no longer able to protect their children. She wept for all the horrors of war, and hopelessness of living in a world where men could do this to one another. She had been brought up with the assumption of happy endings; now she understood that anything was possible, that these horrors could happen anywhere to anyone.

She continued to weep quietly for some time, quietly enough for Mickey, slumped, blending into an old and shabby armchair, either not to notice, or to be able to pretend not to notice, her tears. Outside she could hear the hunt moving off, the crunch of gravel, a voice raised, the yipping of the hungry, eager hounds. After a while, Ambrose, now wearing an old and rather worn tweed suit instead of his smart hunting clothes, came back. He gave Daisy his handkerchief and rang for the drinks tray.

W
HEN AMBROSE ARRIVED
, Daisy was sitting at the desk in the library. She was trying to write a letter to her grandmother. He greeted her warmly, but he did not hug her as she had throught he might. She offered him a drink.

“It's quarter past three. To offer me a drink suggests either you have been brought up in a convent or consider me a dipsomaniac. So unfair when I came over to take you for a ride.”

“I don't know how to ride—”

Ambrose looked at her with interest.

“You're not frightened of horses, are you?”

Daisy shook her head; it had never occurred to her that one might fear domestic animals.

“Good. Put on some old slacks and thick socks so your ankles don't get pinched, and I'll get that old cob of Patrick's saddled up.”

When Daisy came downstairs, dressed rather as she had as a Land Girl, Ambrose was waiting in front of the hall door with his own mare and the reassuringly fat and unclipped cob.

“There are two good rides, one through the woods and one over the moor. Let's go over the moor today, so you can see where you are.”

There was an awkward and undignified moment when Ambrose gave her a leg up onto the sturdy Osbert. Daisy had imagined that his boost and her spring would land her gracefully in the saddle of the mercifully immobile horse; this turned out not to be the case and she was sliding back toward the gravel when Ambrose shoved her into position. He stood back, panting a little.

“Sorry,” Daisy said; it was the first time she had ever thought of herself as heavy, but she knew she would not feel slim again until she had been reassured by a looking glass.

“You'll get the knack of it; it's harder than it looks,” Ambrose said reassuringly, and then added, “There's a mounting block in the stable yard.”

Ambrose led the way to the end of the avenue. Then, just before the gates, he turned along a narrow path between the high stone wall and the edge of the woods.

“Don't let him get too close; Cissy might give him a little kick to encourage him to keep his distance. They're so much bigger than we are that they can hurt you without meaning to. A little love nip from Cissy left me with a bruise that took two months to fade. Just remember that they bite and they kick, and don't let them fall on you and you're not likely to come to any harm—until we get you out hunting at least.”

That was unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, even apart from a lack of reckless courage and the new austerity measures Daisy planned for the household. There was, in a family photograph album, an image of Corisande seated sidesaddle on a sleek, fit, and clearly well-bred horse. Not only the contrast between Corisande's mount and the comfortable old armchair on whose back Daisy was now seated, but Corisande's posture, her elegant habit, her hat—with, or maybe Daisy had imagined it, a small veil—her hair, anchored safely but attractively, like a dancer's, made Daisy feel she had a long way to go, on many fronts, before she would make her debut on the hunting field. She had no intention of appearing at a meet, mounted on a horse with a reputation as a nurserymaid, and floundering about like a bag of laundry on a day when her sister-in-law and Edmund made a vice-regal appearance.

“Don't let him do that,” Ambrose said sharply, interrupting her musings. He was referring to Osbert's—it seemed to Daisy harmless and reassuring—new activity, the tearing of succulent greenery from the bushes they passed and his meditative munching as he plodded along, an exemplary distance behind the heels of Ambrose's mare.

Soon the path led them past a field, then through a wooden gate that Ambrose dismounted to open and close behind them, then uphill along a stony and deserted lane. Ambrose's mare showed signs of not quite convincing fear at arbitrarily chosen objects: a stone gatepost, a cow looking over a gate, a dog barking in a farmyard.

When they had ridden about a mile, all of it gently uphill, the thick hedges on either side of the lane gave way to low banks topped by a single strand of rusted barbed wire. The unpaved but hard surface of the road became cart track. Now packed-down earthen tracks ran on either side of a strip of rough grass and weeds, the height of the growth limited by the hooves of the horses and donkeys that pulled the cart and by the load they drew. But it was, however, high enough for Osbert to pause from time to time and lower his head to snatch a mouthful of the grass. Each time he did so, Daisy found herself grabbing hold of the pommel of her saddle to avoid sliding, head first, down his sturdy neck.

“Don't let him make a fool of you,” Ambrose said quite kindly. “He doesn't know he's bigger than you are.”

“I know it, though.”

“You're going to have to learn to ride, so—”

They passed through another gate; Daisy realized she would have to learn to mount and dismount without assistance if she were to take this ride by herself. The cart track continued, but now there was open moor to each side. The plants between the tracks were lower, coarse and prickly; Osbert didn't seem interested by them. For a long way there was nothing but stones, heather, and the occasional sheep. The heather was purple and dull green on top, below it was brown and dry and the roots seemed to have raised a small mound around each plant; Daisy had the impression that each winter the dying plant contributed a little to the earth in which it grew and that the soil beneath was veined with roots and more like the turf they burned at Dunmaine than the rich dark earth in the vegetable garden. The afternoon was fine and clear, the mild wind part of the quiet sounds of the moor. Daisy saw a skylark high above and, a little later, a hawk. She was filled with the unreasoning happiness that Ireland sometimes gave her.

“Make him come alongside,” Ambrose said, and with new confidence Daisy pressed her heels into Osbert's fat, furry ribs. To her surprise he reacted obediently to her instructions—or maybe he just wanted to walk beside Cissy.

“You have to grip with the upper part of your legs,” Ambrose said. “If you depend on balance you're going to spend a lot of time on your bottom in the mud. If you grip, you'll be ready if your horse shies or changes direction without warning.”

“I've been thinking about what you told me the day I asked about Dunmaine.”

Ambrose nodded, not apparently surprised by the change of topic; for a moment Daisy wondered if his last equestrian instruction had contained a hint of metaphor, then decided it was not likely.

“When I drew up some rough accounts, it seemed to me as though Dunmaine was a disabled ship drifting very slowly toward an iceberg—”

Ambrose laughed.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I'm not unsympathetic, it's just I've often—usually in the small hours of the morning—drawn similar pictures for myself. A sluggish whirlpool, a waterfall around the bend of a slow-moving river. But I've never heard anyone voice these images. Perhaps everyone in the same situation, and that's practically everyone we know, thinks like that.”

“With an image of water, do you think?” Again, Daisy had the impression that Ambrose was not much interested in metaphor. “But the point is that it is slow-moving and therefore not necessarily inevitable—in the case of Dunmaine, at least.”

“It doesn't have to be, but it usually is,” Ambrose said gently. “Everyone has a scheme for cutting costs or earning money; it's just that they don't usually work or they don't work enough to change anything. Which isn't to say there isn't fat that could be cut from most households; it's just the luxuries are often the last to go—they often feel like the only thing that makes existence bearable.”

Daisy looked puzzled.

“My place is fairly uncomfortable, but I'm attached to it. I don't know how long I'd go on trying to make a go of it, though, if I couldn't have the occasional whiskey and soda and a couple of days a season with the West Waterfords.”

“Why doesn't anyone get a job?” Daisy was surprised at the level of irritation in her voice. “Mickey, for instance, why couldn't he get a job as a teacher?”

“A knowledge of the Irish language is necessary to graduate from a school or college or to obtain most professional qualifications. I suppose there are a few Protestant schools that might employ Mickey, but nothing around here.”

Corisande's clothes, Mickey's maze. Now was the time to ask Ambrose about the private finances of her new family, of her brother- and sister-in-law, of her own husband, but Daisy found herself putting off these questions for another occasion.

“Mild market gardening, keeping hens, they've all been tried,” Ambrose continued. “Even PGs—that could work if it was done properly, but most people think of it as a last resort and combine it with cutting costs around hot water and edible food.”

“PGs?”

“Paying guests. Five guineas a week is about what you can get. But you can't act as though there is something amusingly eccentric about taking in lodgers. And you can't think of it as a fiver clear profit and five shillings to be spent on the unfortunate guest. You charge someone five guineas and you have to spend some of it on food, heat, and making sure they have a comfortable bed, a warm room, and an adequate clean bathroom.” Ambrose spoke severely; Daisy could not be sure if he was lecturing the impoverished Anglo-Irish as a class or telling her that Dunmaine had a long way to go before she could think of entertaining a guest, let alone making one pay for the privilege. Charging five guineas—it could be a way out of the quicksand, out of the end-of-week embarrassment of late wages, the end-of-the-month bills let slide by, the middle-of-the-night fears. The thought of it made Daisy feel energetic and somewhat excited.

“But where would one—where do they find paying guests? Do they advertise? And doesn't that cost a fortune?”

“I suppose the initial advertisement in, say, the Agony column of the
Times
probably sets you back a good part of a week's rent, but you don't necessarily have to invest an advertisement for each guest. You should get more than one response and if you do it properly you'll get most of your business by word of mouth.”

“So, why don't more people try it—if everyone's in the same boat?”

“Lack of imagination, pride, a level of household disorder they would be reluctant to show to a friend, let alone a stranger with some rights and expectation of comfort. Not enough energy or capital to deal with the leak in the middle of the spare room.”

“And form? How about form?” Daisy asked, addressing what she suspected was the principal obstacle in such an endeavor. What would Patrick have to say if he came home and found his bride running a boardinghouse? But what would he say if he returned, exhausted, from Europe to find bailiffs in the kitchen? And if he never came home? Or if the war lasted another five years?

“Oh form—it's a little late for that,” Ambrose said dismissively.

Daisy knew he could not really mean so lightly to renounce the creed by which he lived; that he had omitted form from the list of reasons the south of Ireland had not been converted into a series of uncomfortable lodging houses was an indication he approved of her as yet unarticulated plan.

“If you wanted to give it a try,” Ambrose said casually, “a friend wrote and asked only the other day if I knew of a house in the country where a fellow officer could put up for a week or two. He's on medical leave and would like to be somewhere with fresh air, fresh vegetables, and plenty of meat.”

The casual manner of Ambrose's suggestion did not ring quite true and Daisy wondered if Dunmaine were in greater trouble than her amateur calculations had suggested.

“What do you think Patrick would want me to do?” she asked after a moment's hesitation.

“I think Patrick would want you to use your judgment and initiative. And housing a wounded officer would surely be something he would approve of.”

“Even if I was charging him for it?”

Ambrose shrugged; she was losing his attention.

“Now we're going to go a little faster. No one can teach you to post; it's just a matter of trial and error. In the meantime, it's pretty uncomfortable so you'll probably catch on quite quickly.”

Without any, to Daisy, perceptible action on Ambrose's part, Cissy walked a little faster and then broke into a gentle trot. Daisy flapped her calves and heels against Osbert's sides and he lumbered into a gait that kept him close to, though not abreast of, Cissy. Daisy was jarred, awkward, bounced about by Osbert's changed stride. She tried to find his rhythm and after a while she found it for a moment and then lost it again. It was quite enough to keep her thoughts occupied until they turned and headed back to Dunmaine and tea.