The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven (9 page)

Her second reason, it should be noted, was her determination to reclaim the great hall, relieving it of cow flop and the piles of reeking straw, to restore its ancient austerity. It was an offense to Kitty that the hundred-candled chandelier from which Taddy and Brid had been hanged should crown a space given over to cows, peaceable creatures though they might be. She and Kieran had waited far too long to bring back the cold dignity that would be a more fitting memorial to the martyred pair. The flagstones, enduring repositories of the gunpowder still capable of sending the castle heavenward, must be unsullied, a tribute—inadequate as it would always be—to the fair Taddy and the incomparable Brid, a reminder of Hanging Lord Shaftoe's perfidy that nothing could expiate except a damnation that would outlast eternity itself.

So calmed had Kitty become with the appointment soon to take place that, as she climbed the first of the three hills that led to Maude's cottage, she found herself reverting to a longtime habit: She would work while she walked. Declan's delivery of
The House of Mirth
had unsettled her. It was the one and only retrieval from her departed house. That in itself should have been enough to trouble her mind. Why had it been sent back—and nothing else? But, she reminded herself, she
was
a writer. And the novel by Mrs. Wharton, aka Pussy Jones, had, by its presence on her shelf, been considered a candidate for correction. Now it had made a somewhat insistent re-entry, demanding honest consideration. Kitty could claim that she didn't believe in signs or omens, but she also hadn't believed in ghosts—and look at her now. While striding down the far side of the hill, her mind wandered back to Declan's delivery of the book. From there it was one step further to recall his mention of having seen Maude. And from there it was a half step to a thought that hadn't occurred to her before. Had Maude invited him? Or had he sought her out? Had they met by accident? Was talk of a possible thatching a pretext for their meetings? Maude and Declan had no shared history that Kitty knew of. Could it be possible …

As soon as this absurdity introduced itself, it was intensified. Kitty couldn't help it. What had suggested itself was not possible. Declan couldn't! For all his iniquities he did have
standards
. Kitty herself was surely the living proof of that. Never would he descend so low as to … No. He wouldn't. Not Maude McCloskey. He couldn't. Not Declan, who had been made familiar with such splendors that he could never,
never
defile the supreme glory provided by Kitty herself by trying to replicate it, much less best it, with such inferior offerings.

Kitty pressed forward, going up the road and down with even greater determination. As she climbed the second hill, Peter, Maude's eight-year-old son, came alongside on his bicycle, his backpack filled with school books strapped in place on the handlebars, his dog, Joey, trotting at his side. He stopped. The dog stopped, too.

Peter's toes touched the roadway to balance the bike as he began to walk next to Kitty. “Is it all right I'm with you? You look so far away with your thinking.” His clothes were disheveled, his sweater twisted to the side, his shirt tugged out of his pants, the pants muddied at the knees, and his untied shoes covered with bits of turf. His right cheek was stained with grass, and there were scratches among the beads of sweat. His hair, however, was the same as always, a comb being an accessory unknown to his toilette.

It was Kitty's assumption that the faithful dog had arrived too late to participate in the schoolyard melee where its famous courage on its master's behalf might have been of some use. “Because I'm skinny, he's trained to bite anyone who touches me at school,” Peter had explained when, the year before, the dog had bitten her when she did no more than affectionately touch Peter's cheek. Where had the dog been when its services could have been put to good purpose?

In answer to his question about her faraway look, Kitty said, “I was fussing in my head over the book I'm considering for my next project.”

“Oh, a book. Of course. My mother says you're one of the great ones. Is that true?”

Kitty paused not at all. “Well, who am I to contradict your mother.”

“She says you see things no one else can see. Is that true, too?”

“Well, that's why writers write. (That both Peter and his mother were known to possess extravagant capabilities of this nature she would not mention.)

“Oh, is that why you write?” He rubbed his distressed cheek. “I thought it was to make money and buy a castle.”

“One can hardly dismiss the unintended fruits of one's labor, can one?”

“No, I suppose not. And it would be a sad thing not to have you and Mr. Sweeney there, such a fine place and no one to live in it. It wouldn't be right. Is it coming to tea you are?”

“Well, your mother was kind enough to invite me.”

“Then it must be she has things to tell.”

Kitty's interest expanded. “Did she say that?”

“She doesn't have to. It's usually why she asks people to come. And I'm glad you'll be there. With you in the house she won't beat me for playing football after school when I should be home doing chores.”

By now they were walking side by side, Peter instinctively placing the bicycle between Kitty and the dog. “Beats you?” Kitty asked. “With Joey there, too? And he does nothing the like of which he did to me that time?”

“Oh, he helps her. He nips at my ankles while my mother sees to the sides of my head.”

“Could it be your clothes all messed and your face given a good drubbing that brings it all about?”

“My clothes? What about my clothes? Can you tell I've been playing? And my face? What's wrong with my face?”

“Peter, you've been playing football. It's either that or someone dragged you along through the mud.”

“No one has dragged me. I'm the best on the team and they all know it.”

“You?” Kitty immediately repented the amazement in her voice. Quickly she added, “I didn't even know you played.”

“You didn't? Everyone knows I play. Everyone knows how brilliant I am. And you didn't know that at all?”

“I do now.”

“You're surprised because I'm short and I'm skinny. But that's why I'm so brilliant. When you're short and skinny, the first thing you learn is to run. Fast. So many times there are when you have to get away. And I learned—because I had to. Now I can outrun anyone. And the ball, so many times things were taken away from me. But now, running, and my foot guiding and kicking the ball, I dare anyone to try to get it away from me. They never do. Well, hardly ever.”

“I must come watch.”

“Oh, no. Today was the last time for a while. I worry it wears my mother down to beat me. She starts losing her breath, and she's only through with one side of my head and the other side still to be done. I can't do that to her. Not for a while at least. And before I forget, my mother says you're an old friend of Declan Tovey's and maybe you could talk to him and tell him he should take me on and teach me the ways of a thatcher. My mother said she asked him and he only spoke two words: ‘No. Never.' And he'd give no reason why. My mother says it's a dying art and I should learn it before no one knows it at all. But he, Mr. Tovey, he wouldn't take his words away. Except maybe if you talked to him—because he's your close friend, my mother says, and people do things for close friends. Can you do that?”

Well, thought Kitty, now I know the reason for the invitation. Then, unable to restrain herself, she had to ask, “But isn't your mother a close friend of Mr. Tovey's, too?”

Before he could answer, there was Maude herself at her open door and Kitty and Peter not ten feet away, Maude in her black skirt and white blouse that, to Kitty's thinking, almost replicated the school uniform that represented the first flowering of Maude's approaching glory. It is not uncommon, Kitty thought, for people to cling to the costuming they believe contributed to the allure of their youthful days, but it had always bewildered Kitty that Maude had felt the need. True, she, like Kitty herself, had been a bit late coming into her destined splendor, but most surely it had arrived by now. And Maude could well afford to clothe herself in raiment better than that imposed upon a gawky girl in school.

The woman, her lips given over to a happy and expectant grin, said, cheerful as was her way, “I knew it was you.”

Of course she knew. Maude had invited her. Still, the words bothered Kitty. Did the Hag's clairvoyance track her every move, or did Kitty have to come within a given radius to have her movements observed? With a cheerfulness confidently competitive with Maude's, Kitty said, “The promise of a boiling kettle? How could I not be here?”

“Yes, it does enjoy a good whistle now and then. As who doesn't.” She stepped aside to let the chatelaine of Castle Kissane cross her threshold. Which Kitty did, hearing the words the woman spoke to her son: “And you, young man, might want to change from your good school clothes before I have a chance to see them all messed and ruined the way they are.”

Peter rushed past Kitty and through a door to the right, his shirttail flapping in the breeze his swift passage had created.

“The girls, Margaret and Ellen, are at play practice, the school pageant,” Maude said. “Singing, dancing, as only they can, the loves. They'll weep to know they've missed you. Sit yourself down and I'll be back in a jiffy. You'll probably hear the kettle as well as I.”

“And a lovely sound, too.”

“The best there is.”

Nearly knocking over a small table to the left of the kitchen door, Maude managed to make it out of the room. For all her Seer-like attributes, she had been denied the simple gift of seeing what lay directly in front of her.

The television was on but the sound taken down. Kitty couldn't believe what was being shown. A rerun of a popular miniseries of
Pride and Prejudice
with an actress whose name was, if Kitty remembered correctly, Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth, and Colin Firth, handsome beyond bearing, playing Darcy. Both, with unutterable charm, were testing their true feelings one for the other, just to make sure that several added episodes would be necessary, a succession of scenes, until Ms. Austen decided she'd been delighted enough and would, with infinite subtlety and unmatched skill (unmatched, of course, now that Kitty McCloud had abandoned any efforts at improvement) ease them into a presumably secure fulfillment.

Kitty forced herself to watch. They were still at it, Darcy so pridefully polite and Elizabeth so protective of her prejudice against the man, that it was all Kitty could do to keep herself from rising up, going to the television, and giving them both a slap.

No kettle had ever sounded, but, before long, Maude came in with the tray. “The tea has gone off somewhere, but this should do.” She set the tray down on the table at the side of her chair, then went to the television and turned it off. “We don't want them watching, do we?”

Kitty could see on the tray the teapot and two cups and saucers. In each cup was an olive. Maude sat down and poured a clear liquid into each cup, the sound of ice cubes rattling inside the pot. “Since you've had your years in America, I thought this might be appreciated. I did, of course, change the recipe a bit, but shouldn't one always?”

“Oh, yes. Surely.” Maude was up to something. But then so was Kitty.

Maude held out the tray toward Kitty. “You first.”

“I'll take this one. It has more in it.”

“Spoken like a true American.” Her voice was underscored with a waiting laugh. After she had put the remaining cup on the table next to her, she set the tray down on the floor in front of her chair. The two women, teacup in hand, saluted each other. Kitty took a delicate sip. She saw nowhere to set down her cup and saucer, so held them until Maude, after a less delicate sip, set hers down on the tray at her feet. Kitty took this as permission to place her own cup on the carpet.

“Oh, no, dear, not on the carpet. It wants to be cleaned and I haven't done it.” With the toe of her shoe she nudged the tray toward Kitty, placing it within reach. “Here,” she said, “surely this can accommodate more than one.”

Next to the teapot, Kitty saw a bowl of olives. Teatime was obviously going to be an extended session. Taking her cue from her hostess, before putting her cup down, she took a second sip, not as delicate as the first. Then she set the cup and saucer on the tray next to the bowl of olives. As she leaned down, she had a vision of herself and Maude toppling over onto the tray at teatime's end, when they both would have quaffed their fill. Kieran would have to come and cart her home.

This, she decided, must not be allowed to happen. And besides, before the visit had come to an end, she would have teased out of Maude some sensible explanation relative to the confusions she brought to the Hag's door. But would Kitty herself be wiser as to what Maude had in mind when she'd made the invitation? Peter's interest in thatching did not completely explain the woman's willingness to upend her gin bottle and indulge in this extravagant show of hospitality. What did Maude want from her? Had Peter told her about last year's revelations, Kitty and Kieran's shameful family history? Did Maude know that an ancestor of hers and an ancestor of his had pledged to blow up the castle and had then gone off to Tralee to alert relatives about their coming marriage? Had Maude, in a Haglike moment, been informed of the discovery of Declan's bones and their wind-induced burial at sea? Had Maude made herself present at the wake with no fewer than three confessions of murder and no judgment available as to the identity of the actual despatcher?

If Kitty were to be confronted with all of this, she would admit nothing—and ask for a double dose of olives in the next round of their contest. Let Maude believe what she believed, see what she may have seen. She'd get no verifications from Kitty no matter how many olives had been consumed.