Another Heartbeat in the House (32 page)

THE NEXT MORNING
a woman wearing a knitted hat and a man's greatcoat tapped on the open kitchen window as Edie was clearing up after breakfast.

‘Miss Chadwick!' she said. ‘I'm Mrs Healy, who wrote to you in London. Mr Quilligan said there was a heap of old junk in the stable that you were wanting to get rid of. He asked Mr Healy to come up and take it away, so I thought I'd come with him to say hello.' She stuck her hand through the window. ‘I would have been up to you before now, but we've been fierce busy.'

As Edie shook the proffered hand, she saw over Mrs Healy's shoulder that a cart drawn by a horse had pulled into the yard, and a mountainy man was already hefting boxes onto it.

‘Please come in,' said Edie, ‘and have a cup of tea.'

‘Ah, now, I wouldn't want to disturb you at all,' said Mrs Healy.

‘You're not disturbing me,' said Edie. ‘There's tea in the pot, and I'd be glad of the company.'

‘I can understand that. It must get fierce lonely here.'

‘I have my dog for company. Down, Milo!' she added, as the back door creaked open and Mrs Healy came through.

She laughed when she saw Milo standing in her way, bristling. ‘A dog, is it? It's a queer little clown of a thing. I'd say he keeps you on your toes, all right, but he'd not be much use to you as a guard dog.'

‘He's surprisingly efficient, actually,' said Edie, remembering the nip Milo had given Mr O'Brien's finger.

Mrs Healy stooped down and scratched Milo's ears, which set his tail a-wagging. ‘Look at his little lamby tail! A dote, he is,' she said, and Milo proudly demonstrated his dotiness by smiling and holding out a paw.

Reassured that he wasn't going to take a lump out of Mrs Healy, Edie set about fetching tea things.

‘Don't be bothering yourself with a milk jug,' said Mrs Healy, when she saw Edie reach for one from the shelf. ‘'Tis grand from the bottle. I'll have two sugars, if you don't mind.' She sat down at the table that was covered still with pages from the manuscript that Edie had been reading over breakfast. ‘How've you been getting on?'

‘I've finished, more or less. I would have made more of an effort to spring-clean the place, but Mr Quilligan says it'd be a waste of time.'

‘Isn't he right? The first thing people'll do when they move in is get the lump hammers out and start bashing the place to kingdom come.'

‘Oh, I hope not,' said Edie. ‘It's such a beautiful house. It would be criminal to destroy the plasterwork in the reception rooms.'

‘They did more than destroy the plasterwork of some of the Big Houses during the Easter Rising,' said Mrs Healy ominously.

Edie really didn't want to talk about anything contentious. Someone had once warned her that in Ireland there were two subjects that should be steered clear of – politics and religion – and she decided that today she was going to talk about neither.

‘I loved your handwriting!' she said, out of the blue.

Mrs Healy looked baffled. ‘My handwriting?'

‘I happened to notice that the handwriting in your letter was copperplate.' Edie set another cup on the table. ‘They don't teach that style now. It's an awful pity.'

‘I was never taught any other way. That's the way Mrs Callinan taught all of us childer. If there's one thing we learned, it was how to read and write like gentlefolk.'

‘Mrs Callinan … Somebody else mentioned her the other day.'

‘Mrs Callinan was the head teacher in the school in Doneraile. The best teacher you could ask for.'

‘Oh, now I remember! Seán the Post said something – he said that she was alive, still. Would you like a Ginger Nut?'

‘Thank you kindly.'

Edie shook the last of the biscuits from the packet onto a plate. ‘He gave me an address. I'd love to talk to her.'

‘Why would you be wanting to talk to Mrs Callinan?'

‘Seán the Post said that she would know the history of this house.'

‘She would do. She was born here, far as I know.'

‘What? I mean, was she really? In this actual house?'

Mrs Healy nodded, and bit into her Ginger Nut. ‘So I heard tell. She lived here, anyways, as a child. But she's a fair auld age now. I don't know how much sense you'd get out of her.'

Edie wondered what constituted a fair auld age, but felt it would be rude to ask.

‘That's the kind of writing she taught us,' said Mrs Healy, pointing at Eliza's manuscript. ‘That very hand.'

‘I found those papers here, in the room above the kitchen.'

Mrs Healy raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘That dump. Year after year Mr Frobisher threw anything and everything up there. I warned him the place would end up like a stall in the old English market, but there was no telling him. It's all cleared now, is it?'

‘Yes. I left most of it in the stable, but anything I thought might make a bob or two I put in the drawing room for the auctioneer to have a look at.'

‘He's a sound man, Mr Quilligan. I was at school with him.'

‘Of course,' said Edie. ‘That's why you have the same handwriting!'

Mrs Healy nodded. ‘She taught us well, Mrs Callinan. When were you thinking of calling in to see her?'

‘Today or tomorrow. But I thought I ought to put a note through her door first, as a courtesy.'

‘I'll let her know you're coming. I drop in on her two or three times a week, and I'll be passing that way this afternoon. She can be difficult betimes, but she likes to remember the old days.'

‘That's very kind of you. In that case, I'll leave it until tomorrow. Goodness – that's Thursday, isn't it? I shall be going back to London on Friday. Thank you so much, by the way, for stocking the larder. It was lovely, on my first night here, to have something to eat and the stove going and everything.'

Edie remembered how, when she had arrived at Lissaguirra, she had been cold and hungry and lachrymose still after Hilly's death, and how welcome small things had been: the food in the larder, the hot-water bottle warming the bed, the basket of turf by the fire in the library. It was hard to believe that she had been here for over a week. She got up from the table and fetched her purse from the dresser. ‘How much do I owe you?'

‘Ten shillings will cover it.'

‘The soda bread was delicious, by the way. Did you make it?'

‘I did of course,' said Mrs Healy, pocketing the ten-bob note. ‘I've never bought a loaf of shop bread in my life.' She got to her feet and looked out the window at where Mr Healy was finishing loading the cart. ‘If you've more junk to get rid of, Mr Healy would be glad to come back for it.'

‘Thank you. I think everything's pretty well sorted, though. The only things I can't make my mind up about are the dresses.'

‘Whose dresses might they be?'

‘I don't quite know whose they were. I think they might have belonged to a lady called Eliza Drury.'

Mrs Healy considered. ‘There are no Druries hereabouts.'

‘Mrs Callinan might know of her.'

‘I'll mention the name when I see her. Are they any good, the dresses?'

‘They're Victorian.'

‘Not those old yokes that were in the trunk above?'

‘Yes.'

‘Arra – get rid of them. Sure they'd be half rotted by now. There'd be mice nests and everything in them. A bonfire is all they'd be fit for.' She nodded towards the window and said, ‘That's a grand looking laundry plunger Mr Healy has there. Why would you want to be getting rid of that?'

‘Feel free to take it,' said Edie, joining her. ‘Help yourself to anything at all.'

‘I will, so. Thank you for the tea, and good day to you now, Miss Chadwick. I'll be sure to tell Mrs Callinan to expect you.'

‘Thank you. Goodbye, Mrs Healy – it was good to meet you. I'll leave the key under the stone by the boot scraper when I go.'

Edie watched as Mrs Healy crossed the yard to where her husband was waiting beside a laden cart. Then she sat back down at the table and poured herself another cup of tea.

A bonfire! She could not bear to think of Eliza's dresses and petticoats and dainty kid boots ending up on a bonfire: the ultimate Bonfire of Vanities! If no one wanted them, she would have the trunk delivered to her flat in Onslow Gardens, and damn the expense. She'd find out the name of a haulier when she was next in town … which would be tomorrow! Time was running out. If she was going to call in to Mrs Callinan, she'd want to finish Eliza's manuscript first.

That night after dinner, I did not withdraw to the salon and leave the gentlemen to their brandy and cigars, for I knew that St Leger would not thank me if I left him alone with William. He had quizzed me about Thackeray earlier in the evening as we were dressing for dinner: what was his background, what was our connection, how we had met. I reassured him that William was happily married (I did not add that he had committed his wife to a lunatic asylum) with two small daughters, and that our connection had been forged through a mutual appreciation of culture.

‘Culture?' St Leger sounded mistrustful.

‘Yes. He was educated in Cambridge and in Paris.'

He shot me a splenetic look.

‘He's passionate about classical civilization, the silly old square-toes,' I improvised hastily, trying to make William sound as dull as ditchwater so as not to arouse St Leger's jealousy.

I had found out long since that St Leger's knowledge of Greek culture was confined to a handful of Homeric heroes, and that the learned reference to Bucephalus which had so impressed me when we first met had been singularly out of character. I confess I found his lack of sophistication rather endearing; besides, he possessed other attributes that compensated for it.

‘I found old Thackeray in your library earlier,' he grumbled, ‘scribbling in his notebook. He told me himself he's a man who would rather read a book than hunt.'

‘Shocking, isn't it? Help me with my necklet, Jamie. The catch is snarled.'

St Leger fastened the clasp of the necklet, a pretty thing of silver and Venetian glass that he had purchased in the Burlington Arcade (I had had the nous to pocket the receipt), then embarked upon a trail of kisses that ran from the nape of my neck to the tender hollow beneath my collarbone. Since I had not yet donned my dress, I allowed him to tup me unceremoniously before resuming my toilette, and surprised myself by taking as much pleasure from the hasty act as he did.

A soupçon of salve, a dab of scent, a rustle of silk, and I was ready.

‘You look beautiful,' St Leger said, adjusting himself and straightening his cravat.

‘Thank you. It's agreeable to dress up from time to time. I so seldom have visitors.'

Behind me, in the looking glass, I saw the corners of St Leger's mouth turn down.

‘I suppose you will talk about Greek civilization together all evening,' he huffed.

‘I don't mean William!' I added smoothly. ‘I mean you, of course! I wish you could come more often. I should make myself look pretty for you every night, and then you would have the pleasure of undressing me at the end of each evening. I should be like a present that you could unwrap over and over and over again.'

Up went the corners of his mouth, and I smiled back at him, thinking how absurdly easy it was to mollify a man.

Downstairs, after a dinner that boasted mock-turtle soup and greengage tart as well as
Old Biddy's Poulet à la Marengo
, St Leger opened a bottle of poitín and poured liberally.

‘I dare not drink too much of it,' said William apologetically, ‘for the first time I drank poitín I could not get out of bed the next day.'

St Leger took this as proof that William was indeed a lily-livered square-toes, and proceeded to boast of the quantities of poitín he had consumed in his career as a hell-raiser, illustrating his prowess by pausing every so often to throw back another hefty measure. Soon he was so paralytic with drink that I was obliged to escort him upstairs with the help of Young Biddy. Together we laid him on the bed and removed his boots. Then I covered him with his wolfskin and kissed him on the forehead, gazing at him fondly before snuffing out the candle.