The Fox's Walk (8 page)

For what seemed like a long time, nothing did. Then a small cart drawn by a shabby donkey came along the road. It travelled slowly. There was a large milk churn on the cart, and the donkey was old, with worn misshapen hooves. A man sat on a front corner, paying no attention to the donkey. A daily routine: The donkey knew where it had to go, and the man knew that no action of his would get them there any faster. He had plenty of time to observe me and Jock as they came closer. Without any instruction to the donkey, he stepped down from the cart; the animal took a couple more paces and then stopped. Jock woke up.

“Locked out, are ye?” the man asked. He sounded amused. He spoke, of course, with a local accent. It is not possible to put in writing what he sounded like, and an attempt at an approximation tends to read like the dialogue of a stage Irishman. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the gates and allowed Jock and me to proceed up the avenue.

Although I had often passed the gates on the way to Waterford and knew who lived behind them, I had never seen the Coughlan house before, and I was, for a moment, disappointed that it looked like the other houses in the neighborhood that belonged to the gentry. The avenue was shorter than that at Ballydavid and, unlike Ballydavid, where the gardens were enclosed in faded red brick at the rear of the house, there was to one side of the avenue a lawn with a narrow gravel path and flower beds, to the other a tall hedge that presumably concealed the kitchen entrance and outbuildings such as the laundry and dairy that serviced the house.

We approached the front door. This should have been another moment when I hesitated to ponder the wisdom of my unannounced visit, but instead I wondered how I was to make myself known. I was not tall enough to reach the door knocker, and it seemed unlikely that the noise of my small soft knuckles on the door would attract the attention of the inhabitants, whom I imagined as pale attentive beings in thrall to Mrs. Coughlan, circling in her colorful orbit.

The door was slightly ajar. First I knocked, but, as I had anticipated, this produced a less than adequate sound. Then I called out. This presented two problems: I was not sure what words would be appropriate and, were I to keep my voice at a polite level, it was unlikely that I would be heard.

“Hello, Mrs. Coughlan. Is anybody there?” I called out, selfconscious and ineffectual.

There was no reply. I could hear the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway and the pleasant early summer sound of birds behind me. Leaving Jock outside, I pushed open the heavy green door and stepped into the hall and looked around. The furnishings of the hall were exotic, but in a way that, since I came from a military family that had served in India, were familiar to me: a brass gong, a carved wooden chest, even a python skin, similar to the one at Ballydavid, mounted over one of the two doorways that, on either side, led off the hall. A tiger-skin rug lay on the large stone flags. I went over to it and looked down; it stared back at me with yellow glass eyes.

Outside, Jock began to bark. I recrossed the hall and reached the door just in time to call off my dog and welcome the rightful owners of the house.

“Hello,” Mrs. Coughlan said with a smile. She didn't recognize me.

“I'm Alice,” I said. “I've come to visit you. This is Jock.”

Mrs. Coughlan's smile became even more welcoming.

“It's the little girl from Ballydavid, dear,” Major Coughlan said. The only words I heard him speak that day. When Major Coughlan had married the woman I heard Grandmother once refer to as “a Jewess he picked up in Cairo,” he had committed himself to living forever in his wife's colorful shadow.

“You're just in time for lunch,” Mrs. Coughlan said. She was wearing a dress in two shades of deep pink, with a fringed Chinese shawl over her shoulders. She carried, unopened, a parasol she clearly hadn't bought in Waterford which she now put into a brass umbrella stand beside the front door. Crossing to the looking glass over the hall table, she pulled out her hatpins and took off a large shady hat with dark pink feathers that had brushed one of her shoulders.

“Why don't you tell Norah there will be one more for lunch,” she said in a kindly tone to her husband, who disappeared through a green baize door that led off the hall. He was shorter than she was.

“Well,” she said, “you must tell me all about yourself.” And she took my hand and led me into the drawing room.

My life seemed pathetically banal beside hers; besides, who knew when I would again have an opportunity to talk to her? I was wondering how best to frame a question about her experiences as a Jewess in Cairo when a door, not the one we had entered through, opened and an Indian servant, in a white jacket and a turban, announced: “Luncheon is served.”

I was, fortunately as I now realize, speechless in the face of this new and exotic sight. I had never seen a male house servant before. I hadn't known that they existed. I knew that there were such things as Indians and I had seen pictures of them in books, but I had never expected to have the great good fortune of seeing one in the flesh.

I followed Mrs. Coughlan back through the hall. The dining room, the one with the python skin over the door, was a room of the same size and shape as that we had just left. Major Coughlan was there already, standing by the sideboard, sharpening the carving knife.

“Sit here,” Mrs. Coughlan said, putting a cushion on one of the three chairs at the end of the dining-room table. “Now, what would you like to eat?”

It was the first time I had ever been consulted about what food I would prefer; unfortunately, since all the choices were unknown to me, I could not take full advantage of the opportunity. I looked at what I now know to be curry, a bowl of rice—at Ballydavid more often met in a milk pudding—and many little dishes filled with interestingly colored chutneys, relishes, and the other traditional accompaniments. I didn't know how to answer and remained silent.

“How about a little of everything? You don't need to eat anything you don't like. Unless, of course, like my Ancient Husband, you'd prefer cold mutton and pickles.”

I shook my head and glanced at Major Coughlan. The knife and sharpener still in hand, he was sizing up the cold meat as though considering how best to go about carving it. His lack of reaction to his wife's description of him suggested that the nomenclature might be a nickname.

Mrs. Coughlan helped me to the colorful food, carefully keeping each portion separate on the plate. The spicey smell made me look forward to trying the curry. But it was not to be.

The door of the dining room was flung open. Grandmother came in, in her wake Mother and the Indian manservant. I glanced at Mrs. Coughlan; her expression was one of mild surprise and welcome. But before she could speak, Grandmother had crossed the room.

“Alice,” she said, her voice cold and angry as she took my arm and slid me off the chair. No one spoke as she led me to my mother who clasped me in her arms, then followed Grandmother to the hall door. Behind us I could hear only the rhythmic sound of the bone-handled knife being drawn once again over the steel sharpener.

 

WE MARCHED SILENTLY
back to Ballydavid. My grandmother, head in air, drew ahead of us, although my mother, holding my hand, was already walking too fast for me. “We thought the tinkers had taken you,” she said, quietly enough for Grandmother not to hear her.

I didn't reply. It thought it likely that if I spoke I would draw Grandmother's wrath, and it seemed wise to allow a little time to elapse before the full extent of my transgressions were discussed.

They never were. I was sent up to bed as soon as we reached Ballydavid. That I hadn't had my lunch was an oversight rather than a punishment. I was tired and overexcited—as were Grandmother and my mother—and I shouldn't be surprised if they both had retired for a prolonged rest that afternoon.

Their fears were real, although I didn't then understand their source. When I woke up from my nap, I wondered—there was no clock in my room—if enough time had elapsed for me to go downstairs. I lay in bed for a little time, not reluctant to put off the moment when I would face the reproaches of the adults I had inconvenienced and, apparently, frightened. I considered my mother's words and thought her fear that I had been stolen by the tinkers illogical. When we had driven past the tinker encampment several days before, I had observed them as carefully as was possible while obeying the injunction against staring. It seemed to me they already had more children than they needed. So why had my mother been afraid? Had they some other use—unknown to me—for children? Did they sell them? Or was it possible that I might have served the same unidentified purpose as the snails whose charred shells had suggested some sinister meal or ritual? Might they have eaten me? I had now frightened myself enough to get out of bed, dress quickly, and go downstairs.

I opened the door of the drawing room a little and slipped in. Mother was sitting on the sofa, Edward crawling around at her feet. She smiled at me and beckoned. I crossed the room quietly and sat beside her, close enough to feel her warmth. Neither Grandmother nor Aunt Katie seemed to notice my arrival, but I did not have the feeling that I was being pointedly ignored. Avoiding my mothers habit of premature relief, I waited to see what would happen next. Tea had been brought in some time before, and empty teacups and small plates with crumbs had been put back on the tray. My mother put two cucumber sandwiches on a plate. The upper side of the sandwiches had become dry and started to curl at the corners, but I was hungry and ate them happily. When I finished, Mother silently cut a slice of Madeira cake which she handed to me with a gesture that cautioned me not to drop crumbs on the sofa.

I ate and watched. The room was very quiet, the silence broken by the scratching of Grandmother's pen and the cards that Aunt Katie was laying out for one of her ritual games of patience. Grandmother, at the table beside the window, engrossed in her task, had covered several sheets of writing paper. I glanced at my mother. Her face was calm and relaxed, the expression one of the near happiness she attained when not faced with the demands of others. I, too, was happy that I seemed to have been forgiven or forgotten, grateful for the peace of the late afternoon, the day winding down, the changing color of the light, the quiet of the approaching evening.

“The nine of spades,” Aunt Katie said dramatically. She stood up and left the room quickly.

“Oh dear,” mother said sympathetically, but not as though she shared her aunt's sense that something tragic had occurred. Grandmother did not even look up from her task. I had the impression that she was now writing more quickly and with greater urgency.

Mother, Grandmother, and Aunt Katie were intensely superstitious, but each had her own taste in superstition. What seemed to one a portent of great weight was merely indulged by the other two, each having some more reliable method of her own to ward off disaster or to predict the future. Grandmother would not allow hawthorn or marigolds inside the house, the stricture against the former at least having a good pagan origin. Aunt Katie depended on cards and symbolic messages from a wide variety of inanimate objects that came unexpectedly into her line of vision. My mother's foible was a series of small anxious rituals, superstitious and neurotic, the rewards of their observance as unspecified as the disasters that would surely befall if they were ignored.

Grandmother laid down her pen and read through her list. When she finished she nodded with the satisfaction of one completing an arduous, subtle, and physically exhausting piece of work.

“Katie—” she said, and then, noticing for the first time that her sister was no longer in the room, turned to Mother.

“I thought,” she said, “we might have a tennis party. I've made a list.”

Mother smiled, a little weakly I thought. Later I would understand the principles and procedure for entertaining at Ballydavid. Grandmother drew up the invitation list. If one took into account geography, religion, and Grandmothers social beliefs and prejudices, there were a finite number of people who could be invited. For most families living close to Waterford, the cast and characters of their modest and occasional parties would be fairly consistent; there would be a wider range of those asked to, say, a garden party than to dinner. The guest list varied only when the young English officers stationed at the garrison behind the city were posted elsewhere and a new wave of young men took their place. Grandmother's variation on this otherwise unquestioned social procedure was to take the conventional list, add a name or two—nothing dramatic, something on the lines of allowing a person who could expect nothing more than a garden party to come indoors—and, this her main contribution to the entertainment, to strike off the names of one or two neighbors who might have expected to be invited. The withholding of an invitation might be temporary, but, since entertaining among the far from affluent Anglo-Irish was not constant, it might be months or even a year before the offending—and not unreasonably offended—party was restored to his rightful place. Having drawn up the list, Grandmother turned all other arrangements over to the capable hands of Aunt Katie.

Aunt Katie had had time only to instruct O'Neill to prepare the tennis court and to read through the invitation list—the Coughlans the only omission, a cousin to whom Grandmother had not spoken in several years restored in order to make the omission more pointed—before rumors began to arrive of an unimaginable disaster.

 

NEWS AND INFORMATION
from the outside world came a day late—or sometimes two if the mail boat was delayed by weather—from the
Morning Post.
In addition to the war news so carefully read by my family, the conservative English newspaper often contained a leading article about the trumped-up grievances of the ungrateful Irish.

More personal communications came by mail. There were two mails a day, though the second post was not delivered, and someone would have to ride or walk for it to the post office at Rossduff, a cottage three miles away on the side of the Waterford—Dunmore road. There was a telephone in the hall at Ballydavid, but the connections took time and were generally unsatisfactory. I never heard it used socially. The maids were afraid of it and ignored the ringing; even Grandmother, on the rare occasions she used the instrument, held it a little away from her ear and raised her voice to the loudest level consistent with ladylike behaviour.