The Old Jest (11 page)

‘Lady? After all, what's a lady?'

‘You know well what I mean, and them Caseys is only fit to be sweeping the streets, and you go letting your aunt down in front of people like that.'

‘Women and men there are.'

‘That's maybe the way you look at it, but there's more to all these things than meets the eye, and don't you go upsetting Her. She has enough to worry about as it is.'

Bridie always referred to Aunt Mary as Her, unless they were face to face, when a slightly grudging ‘Mam' slipped through her lips.

‘The punnets are on the kitchen table.'

‘Thanks,' said Nancy.

Bridie picked up a small brush and pan from the sideboard and began to brush the crumbs from the table. As she leaned forward, her arms outstretched, she creaked, like her own wicker chair in the kitchen. Under her arms her dark blue dress had faded almost to white. She smelt eternally of the small white peppermints that she crunched between her remaining teeth throughout the day.

‘Dreaming gets you nowhere.'

‘I suppose not.'

Nancy got up and went to pick raspberries.

The day crawled gently along. Bridie had been right, and the rain had started spotting the garden path as Nancy was coming back with the raspberries. By twelve a grey mist of rain covered everything. Aunt Mary had driven off wrapped in a long brown macintosh and a soft leather hat with a brim that flopped around her face. It gave her the look of a leprechaun tired by too much cobbling. She continued to wave her hand through the window of the car until she had passed behind the trees at the bottom of the avenue.

‘You can't see anything.'

The old man's petulant voice made Nancy jump. It was the first remark he had made to anyone since Aunt Mary had waved her way down the avenue. He had been established in his chair by the window, the plaid rug tucked round his legs, his glasses and his panama hat on the table beside him. He had dozed and mumbled meaningless words to himself, and from time to time had lifted the glasses to his eyes to scan the line. Occasional snatches of song had sent him to sleep again.

‘There is nothing to see, Grandfather. Only rain.'

She got up from the sofa where she had been lying, reading a book. She went across the room and stood beside him. His white, very fine hair was stretched tight across the top of his head. The fingers clamped around the glasses looked already dead.

‘There's never anything to see, Grandfather, only the field and railway line.'

‘I see things. I pass my day seeing things. These are very good glasses. Exceptionally so. German field glasses. Military issue.'

He looked down at the glasses with a certain pride.

‘Loot.'

She squatted on the floor beside him and they both stared in silence for a moment at the rain-flecked window.

‘Grandfather,' she said finally. ‘Do you remember Robert? My … well … Robert?'

‘I just took them from this fellow who was lying in this gun emplacement. He was dead. Yes. A blooming Dutch fellow. Loot, I suppose you'd call it. It was frowned upon. A bad example and all that. I remember his face as if it was yesterday. Odd that. He had quite a decent face. Bloody savages those Dutch. After all, if I hadn't taken them, someone else would have.' There was a long pause. ‘Wouldn't they?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It was frowned upon. But everyone did it. You didn't make a song and dance about it, that was all.'

‘Robert,' she suggested.

‘I don't remember. It is very easy to confuse things.'

‘If you can remember the face of a dead Boer, surely you can remember Robert.'

‘If you kill someone, they tend to leave their face with you. As a sort of present.'

‘You mean you killed the man whose glasses you took?'

‘I suppose I had to. I don't remember the exact circumstances. I was after all a soldier. I remember saying to the young chap who was with me, he looks quite a nice fellow. I remember that.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Yes sir, perhaps. Or nothing. There wasn't much he could say.'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Someone once said “Death is an old jest, but it comes to everyone”.' He sighed. ‘Kipling perhaps. Was it Kipling? It's the sort of thing Kipling would say.' Wearily he lifted the glasses to his eyes. ‘It is impossible to see.'

‘Turgenev. He said it. Turgenev.'

He didn't seem to hear or care.

‘I never cared for the Russians,' he surprised her by saying after a long time of searching the line and field below it, and the grey disintegrating sky. ‘Robert was a Bolshevist.'

‘Oh Grandfather, surely not!'

‘Or an anarchist or a socialist. Something infernal like that. I said to him once, I suppose you'll murder us all in our beds one night. I said something like that. Didn't take a feather out of him. His teeth were stained with tobacco.' There was a sudden scurry of wind and the trees waved their branches bravely. ‘You only noticed it when he laughed. Brown streaks. I suppose it was tobacco.'

The effort of having spoken for so long seemed to have exhausted him. His head drooped, his fingers loosened their grip on the glasses and they fell to the floor. Nancy picked them up. The man on the beach, Cassius, didn't have brown streaks on his teeth. She was sure of that. Gently she put the glasses on his knee. His fingers groped for them. She crouched beside him listening to his faint breathing. What would she do if he died on her? Just like that, sitting in his chair? Stopped breathing? Total silence would fill the room and then she would know. Her heart jumped into her throat at the thought of it. Aunt Mary would come home gaily from the races and find them there in the silence. She put out a hand and touched his arm.

‘Ah!' was all he said. He lifted the glasses. ‘The last rose of summer left …'

‘Oh Grandfather!' she muttered angrily, and went back to her book.

The rain eased off during the afternoon. The sun came out eventually and cast black shadows over the flowerbeds and lawn.

The bell rang.

Someone pulled the brass handle by the hall door and the bell danced on its spring high up on the kitchen wall.

‘Now who would that be?'

Bridie looked up at the bell over the top of the paper she was reading.

‘God knows!'

Nancy was at the bread and jam again. It was as if she knew that never in her life would bread and jam be so good again.

The bell jangled again.

‘Whoever it is hasn't much patience.' Bridie rattled the paper up in front of her face again. Her chair creaked around her comfortably. ‘You've young legs.'

‘Oh blow!' said Nancy, shoving the last bite into her mouth. ‘It's bound to be someone awful, or nuns.'

Normally the only people who bothered to use the bell were those collecting for some charity or other; almost everyone else just opened the door and yoo-hooed their way into the house.

It was Maeve.

‘Oh hello.' Nancy blushed. ‘It's you.'

‘The rain stopped and I felt like a little walk, so …' The ends of the yellow scarf tied round her hair moved gracefully in the wind. ‘I just thought I'd come up and see if you were all right. Had recovered.'

‘I just didn't feel well, all of a sudden. Sick … a bit dizzy … I didn't want to make a fuss … so I …' As she gabbled out the lies, her finger picked a little knob of paint on the door jamb.

‘Did you go home to bed?'

‘Fresh air … you know how sometimes what you really need is fresh air. I walked a bit. Anyway I do apologise. Will you come in?'

Maeve hesitated.

‘Or we could sit in the garden. It always smells so nice after rain.'

‘I can't stay long. I have to go up to town.'

Meeting Harry no doubt. Pink lampshades. Wine. Bangles clinking across the table as they held hands.

‘Have you had tea?'

‘I never say no to a cup of tea. If it's not too much trouble.'

‘No, no,' muttered Nancy vaguely. ‘You go on round the back. You'll find deckchairs on the terrace. I'll be with you in a minute.'

She ran down the passage to the kitchen.

‘Any tea left in the pot?'

Bridie remained behind the paper.

‘Who's wanting tea?'

‘Blooming old Maeve Casey. I never say no to a cup of tea.'

‘You'd better make some fresh.'

‘I'll just put some more water in the pot.'

Bridie dropped the paper on the floor.

Four killed in ambush.

‘Make the girl a cup of tea and don't have her saying she got nothing but stewed tea in this house. And there's cake in the tin, if you haven't eaten it all when my back was turned.'

‘Fuss, fuss, fuss. You'd think she was the Queen of England.'

Nancy emptied the clogged tea leaves into the sink and rinsed the pot out with boiling water.

‘Let's hope no English Queen, nor King neither ever passes this threshold.'

‘Don't be silly, Bridie, you know perfectly well if they ever came to Dublin, you'd rush up in your best clothes to cheer at them.'

Sniff.

‘I wouldn't. I'm a republican.'

‘You and your big words. Hurry up with that tea or Mademoiselle from Armentières will have gone home.'

Bridie pulled a magazine out from under her behind and began turning the pages with her first finger and thumb. ‘Don't forget the sugar.'

‘Why don't you read proper books instead of those old lavatory paper magazines?'

‘You write a book as good as one of these and I'll read it. There's very good stories in this. True stories. And knitting.'

‘Maybe I will.' Nancy put two cups on the tray. ‘And I'll put you in it. The true story of Bridie Ryan.'

‘That'll give the world a laugh.'

The two girls sat on slightly damp deckchairs, one on each side of the wrought iron table. Maeve refused a piece of cake. She put two lumps of sugar into her tea and in spite of the kitchen teapot and cups, her little finger crooked elegantly as she drank. The scent from Aunt Mary's rosebeds was everywhere. The drawing-room window had been opened and the weary voice of the old man sounded intermittently.

‘Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day …'

‘Does he do that all the time?'

‘He's old.'

‘I know … but sing like that? All the time?'

‘We hardly notice it.' Some obscure loyalty made her lie.

‘How gorgeous the garden is looking! How many gardeners have you?'

‘Well, we have Jimmy …' She tried to make it sound as if he were the first of a long line of gardeners. This is Jimmy, our head gardener.

‘Jimmy?'

‘He's getting on a bit now. He's been here since he was fourteen. His father used to look after the horses … years ago that would have been. Jimmy never does what he's told, but he's sweet. As Bridie says, he has his little ways. I don't know what we'd do without him.'

‘Just Jimmy?'

‘Aunt Mary gardens. She likes it. She knows the names and habits of all the flowers and trees. I always find that amazing. She can cut little bits off things and stick them in the ground and they'll grow.'

Maeve wasn't listening.

‘Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes …'

‘It must be a lot of hard work for her. And she's not getting any younger.'

‘She's not old.' Nancy spoke sharply. She thought of her aunt's weathered face and how, when she was tired, her eyes paled to an almost washed colour, losing for a while their brightness, their challenging look. ‘Not nearly old.'

Maeve put her teacup down on the table and laced her hands behind her head, leaning back in the damp deckchair, preening herself slightly as she looked down the slope towards the roses. Yellow, red, pink, the ground beneath the bushes was littered with a patchwork of colours.

‘I presume your aunt has told you …' her voice was casual, as if she were discussing the price of shoes, ‘that my father is negotiating with her … with her … to buy this place. I suppose you know.'

Bewildered, Nancy looked at her in silence.

‘… its glories pass away …'

‘Which place?' She asked after a long time.

‘Here. Ardmore. This house, these …' She gestured towards the roses.

‘Negotiating?'

‘Yes. With your aunt. He wants the land for development. You must have been told surely?'

Nancy began to laugh. When in doubt, laugh.

‘He always thinks up such great ideas. He thinks this is just the sort of place people will want to live in. More and more they're moving out of the city. You can understand that, with the trouble and everything. They'll need nice houses and gardens. Tennis courts, all that sort of thing. And there's the sea and the golf club, and it only takes half an hour in the train to get up to … Nice people. Professional people and business people … Why are you laughing?' Away across the field a man climbed up the embankment and began to walk along the line. Nancy stopped laughing and followed him with her eyes as she tried to collect her thoughts.

‘I'm afraid I don't understand.'

The distant figure disappeared behind the trees.

‘It'll be a great thing for everyone. Not just him. I wouldn't like you to think … For you, everyone. He's a great man for ideas.'

‘Oh Thou who changest not abide with me.'

‘Sing. Yes, sing,' said Nancy.

‘Pardon?'

‘Sorry,' said Nancy. ‘I don't know why I said that.'

‘You see, he would build your aunt a bungalow, down at the bottom of the hill somewhere, near the village. No stairs, that sort of thing, make life easier for her as she ‥ gets … on.'

She unlaced her hands and sat up straight in her chair. She traced an invisible pattern on her silk skirt. Her nails shone with careful polishing, and were neatly shaped, but short so as not to interfere with her piano playing. Over the rosebeds the swallows were playing their evening game, swooping and soaring, almost brushing the leaves with their quivering wings.