At Home in Mitford (51 page)

“Excuse me.” It was the girl who had come looking for Dooley once before. “Is Dooley home?”

“You’ve just missed him,” said the rector. “But he’ll be back in a flash, why don’t you stay and wait for him?”

“Thank you,” she said, softly.

Cynthia patted the step next to her. “Come. Sit on the steps with us. I’ve just popped over to see the new rabbit.”

“I like rabbits,” the girl said, sitting down. She was wearing a sleeveless dress that bared her brown arms, and her blonde hair was in French braids. A pretty girl who looked straight out of a Nordic fairy tale, observed the rector.

“What’s your name?” Cynthia wanted to know.

“Jenny. See that red roof over there? That’s my house.”

Another neighbor! And another pair of luminous eyes.

“I’m Cynthia, and this is Father Tim.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “What’s the bunny’s name?”

Cynthia laughed. “I wanted them to name him Clarence, but they won’t listen to me. Can’t you just see him with a little pair of horn-rimmed glasses and tweed knickers? Anyway, he doesn’t have a name, yet. As soon as Dooley gets back, we’re going to give him one. I have two bunnies.”

"Do they have names?”

“Flopsy and Mopsy. It was a busy day, and I didn’t have the wits to be original.”

“This one could be Cottontail.”

“It could,” said Cynthia, “but I don’t think they’ll go for it.”

When the red bicycle tore around the side of the rectory, Dooley, who was carrying a grocery bag in one arm and steering with the other, looked with amazement at the visitor, and, without slowing down, crashed headlong into the sycamore tree.

The bells continued to sit under a tarp on the lawn at Lord’s Chapel, though he tried almost daily to get the crew to install them. They were all working, it seemed, on the golf resort in Wesley. “Putting golf before God!” he said to Ron Malcolm. “Now there’s a sermon title, and I ought to be man enough to preach it!”

The earliest they could get to it, they said, was Friday, June 28. They’d get right on it at 8 a.m., and by noon the bells should be chiming.

He noted the date on his calendar. June 28? Why did that have a familiar ring, no pun intended?

He wouldn’t put more roses in his own garden this year, but he would certainly put a new bed in the church gardens. He had ordered the memorial plaque from a catalog and was pleased with the bold, Gothic lettering.

The Souvenir de la Malmaison, with its five-inch pink blooms, had been named in honor of the Empress Josephine’s famous gardens, and he’d been intimidated for years by its reputation for being difficult and hard to establish. Well, then, no use to hold back any longer, he told himself, it’s now or never.

He also ordered several Madame Isaac Pereire, reputed to be far less temperamental, to climb up the east wall. Even more aromatic than Malmaison, they were said to smell like crushed raspberries. What an extraordinary thing, a rose! He was beginning to feel some inspiration for his talk at the festival.

"Y’ought t’ make ’at hole bigger,” said Dooley, who was helping him install the roses before he went off to Meadowgate. “’at hole ain’t near big enough.”

“How do you know it isn’t?”

“I jis’ know, is all.”

When they were putting the rotted manure in the holes, the rector realized he’d forgotten to bring a second pair of gloves.

“I ain’t scared of no cow poop,” said the boy, working it deftly into the soil with his hands.

“Good fellow. And what did Jenny have to say the other day?”

"Said she was sorry I got in trouble f’r knockin’ Buster Austin’s lights out. Said he was askin’ for it, he’s always goin’ aroun’ askin’ for it.”

“Yes, but do you always have to be the one to give him what he asks for?”

“I ain’t goin’ to, n’more.”

"Thanks be to God. And why is that?”

" ’cause.”

“Because why, may I ask?”

Dooley took a deep breath. There was a long silence, and then he spoke carefully. “Jis’ ’cause,” he said.

“Here’s the deal,” said Walter, who called before the evening news. “Katherine and I have it all worked out. We meet you at the Shannon Airport on July 21. We take a bus to the train in Limerick City and go up to Sligo, where we stay three weeks in a marvelous old farmhouse near Lough Gill. Then we take a car down to Claremorris and Roscommon, perhaps all the way to Ballinasloe. Margaret says we’ll find a few family archives at an abbey in Ballinasloe, but you know how she varnishes the plain truth.”

“There’s no way under heaven I can do this now, there are too many . . .”

“Timothy, for God’s sake! You’ve been making excuses about this trip for fifteen years! Come now, old fellow, if you wait until you have time, you’ll never set foot outside Mitford.”

“That’s true. I agree with you completely.”

“Then, let’s do it! Katherine and I could go on our own, of course, but we’d much rather go with you in tow. You know how we’ve talked about splitting up in three directions during the day, to pursue the family secrets, then coming together every evening at dinner to put it all in one pot. What ground we could cover! It would be an experience of a lifetime, following those crooked turns back to our ancestral castle. Timothy, this is the year for it! Trust me on this.”

“Walter, I have a boy now, you know, with a long summer stretching ahead of him like a jet runway. He needs someone to hold down the fort. And his grandfather, recovering from pneumonia, and a parishioner who’s waiting for a heart transplant, and a five-million-dollar nursing home on the drawing board. What’s more, I just put in a dozen vastly expensive roses, which will need looking after. You must understand, I simply can’t do it. Perhaps next year . . .”

“Cousin, you deceive yourself. There will always be a boy and a nursing home and a case of pneumonia, in a manner of speaking.”

He noticed that Walter sounded genuinely disappointed.

“I despise saying no, again and again, to this wonderful dream . . .” His voice trailed off. He was miserably disappointed in his own everlasting inability to get up and go, to take strong action and seize control, and do all the things that other people seemed able to do, and which the world admired so much.

There were times when he felt the Ireland trip was the most possible thing in life, and his heart would lift up and he’d begin to plan and read and even daydream about it. Then, suddenly, it seemed ridiculously impossible, a trivial pursuit in a world of so much suffering and pain. It was vain to go gadding after one’s thoroughly dead ancestors and a vague ruin of a castle.

“And another thing,” he said, having a sudden revival of energy, “Barnabas is missing, and if that twenty-five-hundred-dollar reward works—as a lot of people think it will—who would be here to welcome him back?” There! That was something Walter could not knock down, not in the least.

“Well, of course,” his cousin said, reasonably. “You’re right. Katherine will be disappointed, but perhaps we’ll screw up our enthusiasm and go anyway, just the two of us. We’ll bring the research home and see what
you
can make of it.”

“Yes!” he said, immeasurably relieved, “That’s a terrific idea. You do the footwork, I’ll pore over the papers and the dates and try to make sense of everything, and then, perhaps, we could all go later and fill in the holes.” Why did he have to say that? He could never leave well enough alone.

On June 13, remembering the date at the top of Willard Porter’s letter, he took Miss Sadie a birthday card. The walk up the hill warmed him considerably, and he wished for his running clothes, which he hadn’t donned in weeks. He must call Hoppy but fervently disliked telling the truth about the neglect of his exercise and diet program.

He had done so well, for so long, and then he had lost control. A few days off his medication here, a few taboo foods on his plate there, and the first thing he knew, he was again overweight, fatigued, low in spirits, and generally aggravated by the aggressive takeover agenda of his hateful disorder.

When Louella offered him a piece of coconut birthday cake, he responded with such severity that she was taken aback.

“Sorry, Louella, I was snapping at myself, not at you. Please forgive me.”

Miss Sadie was breezing about the bedroom, rouging her cheeks, and getting ready to drive to town with Louella to pick up Q-tips at the drugstore.

“I’m glad to see you got over being tired. Happy birthday!” He kissed her forehead. “May there be many more to come.”

“I want all God can give me!” she said brightly. “Oh, and I’m thrilled to say that Olivia Davenport would love to have Mama’s hats. But when I told her there were thirty-two of them, she was kind of shocked, I think.”

“I’ll see that’s taken care of in the next few days. Now, what may I do for you on your birthday? I have a half hour or so.” He thought she might like a piece of furniture moved, perhaps, or something carried to the basement.

“You’ve done more than enough, already. More than enough! But if you could spare the time, one day soon, I’d dearly love to know what’s carved on that beam in Willard’s attic.”

He had an odd, sinking feeling when Dooley went to his room to pack for Meadowgate. He could feel it coming; the house already seemed forlorn. What had he done all those years with no dog and no boy, just the everlasting monotony of his own company? He supposed he hadn’t noticed very much that he was alone, proving the old adage that “you can’t miss what you never had.”

He paced the floor of his study, thinking, It’s only for three or four weeks, imagine what you can get done around here with no interruptions, no bologna to fry, no hamburgers to fix, no jeans to wash, no homework to help with. He tried to imagine himself sitting with his feet up, reading Archbishop Carey’s book, but somehow that didn’t seem very interesting, at all.

He heard Dooley thumping down the stairs, dragging a suitcase that was evidently filled with lead.

“What are you taking in that thing, anyway?”

“Jis’ some ol’ poop f’r Rebecca Jane.”

“And what might that be?”

“Jis’ a baseball and a dump truck an’ stuff like ’at.”

“Hal will be here any minute. I pray you’ll remember what we discussed.”

“Say please and thank you, don’t cuss, wash m’ hands, don’t sass Miz Owen, change m’ underwear, make m’ bed. That’s all, ain’t it?”

“No, that ain’t all,” said the rector.

“An’ say m’ prayers?”

“Right. Good fellow. And I’ll call you twice a week, and try to get out there before too long.” He was astounded that he’d just heard himself say ‘ain’t,’ as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was good that Dooley Barlowe was going away for a while, as he’d begun talking exactly like him.

He’d been right, of course. The house seemed hollow as a gourd. He heard his footsteps echo dully in the hall.

He took two carrots out of the refrigerator and walked to the garage. “Well, Jack,” he said, stooping down and putting the carrots in the rabbit cage, “it’s just you and me, old boy.”

He walked back to the study, and looked at the clock on the mantle. Five-fifteen. Maybe he should run. Puny hadn’t come today, so maybe he’d walk to The Local and get something for dinner. He felt ravenous, as he’d skipped lunch, quite without meaning to. He’d worked on his sermon until twelve-thirty, and then the phone had started ringing, and somehow the afternoon had slipped away and he’d come home to say good-bye to Dooley, and here he was, standing in the middle of the floor as bereft as if he’d lost his last friend.

He gazed out on Baxter Park, half-hidden from view behind the rhododendron hedge. The light had stolen softly across the wide, open park bordered on all sides by darkly green hedges. What a treasure, that park, and yet he never used it, nor even encouraged Dooley to go there. A perfect place to sit and read. To sit and think. To have a picnic.

A picnic?

He looked in the refrigerator and found four lemons and made a jar of lemonade. He found cold chicken and then a fine wedge of Brie and French rolls. There were berries left from breakfast and Puny’s banana bread that hadn’t even been cut.

He put it all into a picnic basket with damask napkins and fetched a starched tablecloth out of the bottom drawer of the buffet.

He stopped suddenly and shook his head. Once again, he had put the cart before the horse.

“Cynthia?” he said, when she answered the phone, “would you like to go on a picnic?” He feared the worst. She was probably off to the country club, perhaps to a dinner dance with a full orchestra.

“You would?” He had certainly not meant to sound so joyful.

Cynthia sat on the tablecloth in her denim skirt and chambray blouse, with a large napkin across her lap. She held her palms up. “Surely it’s not raining?”

“No, indeed. That was dew off the leaves. We’re not having rain.” He poured the lemonade into crystal glasses. How happy he was with his idea, with an idea that was quite unlike his usual ideas. Perhaps he wasn’t as thoroughly dull, after all, as he’d felt when talking with Walter.

“Cynthia,” he said, raising his glass, “here’s to your next book, and all your future books! To your illustrations, may they come alive on the page! To your happiness, to your health, and to your prosperity!”

They drank.

“My!” she said, “that was a toast and a half. Goodness!”

“A picnic, Cynthia, think of it! How long has it been since you were on a picnic?”

“Shall I tell you the truth?”

“Of course. Always.”

“Yesterday,” she said simply.

He was fairly devastated. To think he’d imagined he was clever and original, and then, to learn it was all merely humdrum and everyday. Andrew Gregory, he supposed, feeling a slow drip on his pants from the perspiring glass.

“Violet and I found a mossy bank on Little Mitford Creek and had deviled eggs and popcorn and tuna on toast.”