Another Heartbeat in the House (51 page)

They bathed her and dressed her in a white nightgown, and laid her on the dining-room table, with her face shrouded. It was cold, and her feet were bare. I asked where were the slippers with the daisies that she had worn that morning, but they had gone missing. They covered her with my cashmere shawl, under which I slipped the pair of little carved wolves that she had doted upon, the ones that she had called Romulus and Remus. I asked that they be put in the coffin with her.

I remembered her as I had last seen her, laughing, hair flying as St Leger spun her round. I will not forget that the last words I spoke to her were spoken in anger. I will not forget that her last words to me were,
Mama! Come back!

If I had gone back, I would have taken her from her father's arms and carried her into the house. I would have dressed her in the clothes that William had given me before we left London, hand-me-downs from Annie and Minnie, but pretty garments nonetheless: a pinafore over a red wool dress and cream kid pumps, or half-boots and the hooded cape if we had designs on going out. We might have sat together by the fire in the library, where she had left her animals filing two-by-two into the ark. I might have given her paper to draw on while I wrote to William to thank him for his kindness. I might have read her a story from Grimm's Fairy Tales: ‘Little Red Riding Hood' or ‘Hansel and Gretel' or ‘The Sleeping Beauty'. Whatever we had wound up doing, she would not have wandered into the woods alone.

In the six short years of my daughter's life she might have died a dozen ways: she might have been poisoned by the laburnum tree that I was foolish enough to have planted; she might have drowned in that part of the lake where treacherous weeds grew; she might have succumbed to starvation, or to one of the numerous diseases that raged rampant in Ireland during the years of the potato famine; she might have suffered any of the fates doled out by Mr Dickens to his juveniles, for a huge percentage of children in those days did not reach the age of five. So, yes, it surprises me still when I find myself writing the words: Clara Venus died at the hand of her father.

St Leger did not know that she had gone back into the wood. He had been careless, she had surprised him, the gun had gone off. Clara Venus had died instantly, shot through that sweet place where the pulse beat, just below the left ear.

She was buried in the graveyard of the little church in Doneraile. Only three people attended the funeral: St Leger, Christy and Young Biddy. Old Biddy stayed at home to mind me and to negotiate with Death. I begged him to take me. I promised that if he let me join Clara Venus I would be his worshipful and devoted handmaiden for ever. But Old Biddy thwarted me. I saw the pair of them muttering together hugger-mugger at the foot of the bed: the parley went on for weeks, I am told, until Death finally found Old Biddy's haranguing so wearisome that he stalked off and went elsewhere. God knows, he had plenty of people to call upon in Ireland at that time, and as I write this, I realize that most of the dramatis personae who played a part in this tale are dead.

I never met William again. He wrote to me, of course, but as his reputation as a literary colossus grew, so his letters became less frequent. He arranged for money to be sent to me on a regular basis, in recognition of my contribution to the book that had made him famous. We could not decide whether this payment – which I was not inclined to refuse and which I invested prudently – should be designated an ‘honorarium' or a ‘stipend'. I favoured the word ‘emolument', for Johnson's
Dictionary
told me the word came from the Latin ‘
emolere
: to grind out' – an emolument being originally a fee paid to a miller. This, of course, put me in mind of
Rumpelstiltskin
, the tale of the miller's daughter who spun corn into gold, and I wrote to William to tell him so. William declared that my aperçu made him laugh heartily, for
Vanity Fair
made him a fortune. I don't think he quite got the joke.

He sent me a copy of the novel when it finally appeared in a bound edition, but I did not open it until after his death, and by then it was too late to voice my reservations. I did not like what became of Becky Sharp (stuck in Bath, doing charity work!), and I thought the character of Dobbin (whom William had clearly modelled on an ideal version of himself) insufferably smug.

Who else has died? Old Biddy – unsurprisingly – died of old age. Christy died of septicaemia. Both the O'Dowds died of drink (I heard it from Mrs Grove-White who forgave me for slapping her across the face, because she was a Christian). Maria died after a fall from a balcony in Venice; her sister died in a coach accident. Sir Silas Sillery died of syphilis.

Young Biddy (who is no longer so very young) and I are the only survivors of this dirgeful tale; apart from Isabella Thackeray, who, I understand, is still immured with her gaolers. Since poor Isabella had invested so much time and energy in doing away with herself, the notion that she is likely to outlive us all is a
beau idéal
of irony.

But there is one major player left alive withal. It was his unlooked-for return to Lissaguirra that inspired me to resurrect this manuscript, and to write an epilogue to it.

People seldom come here. Lissaguirra has always remained off the beaten track, and Young Biddy and I prefer it that way. Those few who have sought out these heavenly hunting grounds with any view to a sojourn have been sent unceremoniously packing.

I was taking my constitutional one afternoon as usual, in the woods. I walked there most days even though I had never acquired a dog: Young Biddy's daughter, Martha, had begged me to get one, but I did not care to become too emotionally attached to any creature.

The sound of hooves on the bridle path made me stop dead. Between the trees I discerned that the approaching animal was a chestnut hunter, ridden by a gentleman whom I can only describe as … equally thoroughbred. His appearance was sleek, yet he had about him an untamed air. The symmetry of the bones beneath the wind-burnt face recalled to me a painting my father had made of the Greek hero Achilles. He sat astride with that easy grace peculiar to men who have practised those arts essential to true manliness – boxing, riding and dancing.

As he drew nearer I felt as though he had just taken hold of my heart and tugged it. After thirty-five years I knew him, even though we were barely on nodding acquaintance. I may have dropped a cursory farewell kiss on his fuzzy head the night I gave birth to him, as he lay on my wolfskin wrapped up like a parcel and ready to be delivered to Sophia St Leger, but we had not exchanged so much as a pleasantry before he had been spirited away.

As my son approached, I stepped forward and said, ‘Good afternoon, sir.'

‘What the
deuce
!' Reining in his horse, George St Leger recovered with an effort. Then he dismounted, doffed his hat and said, ‘Madam, I beg your pardon. You startled me.'

I am sure I did startle him. For a moment as he had approached, I had thought myself a girl again, and had, accordingly, adopted the demeanour of a much younger woman. Poor George! I have to laugh now, when I think of it. I was wearing the walking costume that Jameson had bought for me in Dublin and carrying a switch of stripped hazel. The costume fitted me still, but was distinctly outmoded with its bell-shaped skirts and open sleeves, and because I wore it to tramp out in all weathers, it was dark around the hem with dried mud. I rarely bothered with a bonnet or a parasol, so my face was brown and weathered from the sun, I wore my hair (which had grown quite silver) loose about my shoulders, and when it blew about too much I simply made a rope of it and looped it through my belt. Altogether I resembled some old woman of the roads. And yet I advanced towards the unfortunate fellow as though I expected him to kiss my hand and lead me onto a dance floor!

‘You are St Leger, are you not?' I said, deciding there and then to dispense with formalities.

‘Yes, madam. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I –'

‘You must come home with me at once and have tea. My house is not half a mile down the track.'

‘That is indeed where I was heading, madam. I –'

‘My name is Miss Drury, but if it does not make you uncomfortable, I should prefer if you called me Eliza.'

He actually did look rather uncomfortable, but since he had clearly deduced that I was a deranged crone, he sportingly acceded with a ‘Very well,' and took the hand I proffered.

I was glad to see that he had a good, firm grasp. It was an honest handshake, and now that I looked more closely at him, I saw that he had candid eyes. Honesty and candour! I wondered from whom he had inherited
those
attributes.

‘You are a lord now, I suppose?' I said, as we started off along the path.

‘Yes, I am.'

‘What is your full title?'

‘Duke of Roesworth and Marquess of Cholyngham.'

I laughed. ‘La-di-da! And what Christian names have you?' Jamey had listed them for me once, but I had forgotten them.

‘George Frederick James Richard Patrick Charles.'

‘Goodness! What a mouthful. Which do you prefer?'

‘Patrick, because my father was Irish. But I'm stuck with George, after my maternal grandfather.'

I wondered what he would have thought of his real grandfather's name, which was Ignatius Drury. I tucked the corners of my mouth into a smile and slashed idly with the hazel switch at a clump of nettles growing by the side of the path.

‘I knew your father, a long time ago.' This was where I should have to tread carefully.

‘He spoke very fondly of this part of the world. That is why I've come here. I had hoped to visit the house, but it's in such a state of disrepair that there is nothing left to see.'

‘Dromomore? It was a fine house once.'

‘Were you ever there?'

‘No. But I knew of it. Many splendid houses fell into dereliction in the first half of the century, when the aristocracy abandoned them.'

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George stiffen.

‘I know your father had no choice but to leave,' I hastened to add. ‘Since he was posted overseas. To the Punjab, wasn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you and your mother join him there?'

‘No. He died at the Battle of Gujrat in '49.'

‘I'm sorry.'

Of course, I knew that St Leger had died. But he had not died in an obscure war waged on behalf of the East India Company. That was a story put about by custodians of Roesworth family history. I had heard from Maria that he had been killed in a brawl in Lahore. I glanced up at George's face, stamped with his father's heroic Greek profile, and thought again how ignoble a demise it had been. It would perhaps have been more fitting if he had died by my hand, when I had tried to kill him the night our daughter lay stretched out in the dining room, her face covered with a damask napkin.

‘Are you unwell?'

George's voice brought me back from the image of St Leger weeping at the kitchen table, the pitiful hunch of his broad shoulders, the grip of Young Biddy's fingers as she wrested the knife from me …

‘No. I beg your pardon. I am a mad old woman, so I tend to wander off in my mind from time to time. Now, tell me all about you. What brings you here?'

George looked at me cautiously, as though gauging how much a madwoman might remember of what he had already told me. ‘Well, my father was born not far from –'

‘No, no! I mean, what brought you
here
, to Lissaguirra.'

‘I have heard that there is excellent fishing to be had.'

‘And who might have told you that? A poacher?'

He smiled apologetically. ‘Yes. I heard it at the inn in Doneraile.'

‘I am glad to know it. Poachers I tolerate. Those chaps who come with a view to mounting their swag in a glass case I do not. I have the lease of these fishings, and I will gladly allow you to fish here if you swear to me that you will never have your catch stuffed and hung on your wall as a trophy.'

‘That's an easy oath to make.'

‘Good man. Here we are. This is my house.'

I looked at him as he led his horse out of the wood onto the greensward.

‘This is a fine place,' he said, gazing as stout Cortez might have done on viewing the Pacific. ‘This is splendid!'

‘Isn't it? I designed it myself. Once upon a time it was a ramshackle bothy, but I knew it had potential.'

The French windows to the library lay open. I knew that Young Biddy would have been anticipating my arrival, and would have set out the tea things. After all these years, she still clung to the shreds of refinement that the ritual conjured.

‘I shall ask my housekeeper to lay another place. Tether your horse there, outside the window. That way you can feed him sugar lumps.'

George looped the bridle over the handle of one of the stone jardinières that I had bought decades ago when I was fitting out my house. No geraniums grew there now. Ox-eye daisies had seeded themselves, and I encouraged them to grow in profusion.

I stepped from the terrace into the library, and for the first time in years I allowed myself to see the room through the eyes of a stranger. There was clutter everywhere – books and manuscripts and memoranda, newspaper clippings and diaries and heaps of correspondence. It was not unlike an illustration from Dickens's
Old Curiosity Shop
. But there was method in my madness, and the library made sense to me, for it had been arranged with the precision of an ordnance surveyor, to accommodate my own idiosyncratic filing system.

‘Forgive the disorder,' I said. ‘I do not allow Young Biddy to disturb my things.' I had come across her one day, surreptitiously trying to cull my papers, and I knew she occasionally helped herself to them when we were short of kindling to light the fire. She was also on a perpetual mission to get rid of things belonging to me that were not to her taste, or things that she hated having to dust. She had always had an aversion to the wolfskin rug Jamey had given me, she loathed the climbing monkey that he had won for me at a funfair in Dublin, and she had thrown out the heart-shaped pebble that William had presented to me on his last day at Lissaguirra, because it was ‘just a stone'. And wasn't she right? Some say the heart is just like a stone.