The Banished Children of Eve (54 page)

“More tea?” she asked.

He seemed startled.

“More tea?” She gestured with the pot.

He looked around the room as though he were getting his bearings. From the walls, the images of his ancestors gazed serenely into the distance. Recovered from his surprise, his expression seemed similar to theirs. Reposed. Thoughtful.

“Tea, of course. Yes, please.”

She poured it and went about gathering up the dishes. As she was about to reenter the pantry, he said, “When you're through, please bring me pen, paper, and ink.”

She went into the library and brought back pen, paper, and an inkwell. She had planned to clean the dining room first thing, or at least get a start before Mr. Bedford came down for his breakfast. But the old man could very well spend the whole morning scribbling at the table and throw off her schedule. She put the writing materials in front of Ward. He picked up his spectacles, fitted the wire arms around his ears, and began to write. She stood at his elbow and read, mouthing the words to herself.
The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness.
The script was large and legible and flowed across the page. He stopped and dipped the pen into the well. She wondered whom he was writing to, but then she saw that he was copying from the book he had been reading. His finger sought out the line where he had left off. He started to write again.
But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted.
He paused. She waited for him to continue. Without looking up he said, “That will be all, thank you.”

“Of course, sir.”

She
hurried out of the room, embarrassed that he had caught her reading his words. But what was the harm? It wasn't a letter to his mistress, not that Mr. Ward was the kind that would have one. Mr. Bedford, maybe, there was no telling, but Mr. Ward was wed to his books, as faithful a spouse as there was. She shouldn't have been peering over his shoulder. Privacy of the eyes, it could be called. Something she had to practice. But not much of a sin, not when all she saw was merely words copied from a book. Hardly worth a Hail Mary.

Margaret put the breakfast dishes in the dumbwaiter and tried to decide whether she should wait for Mr. Bedford to come down for breakfast before she began her cleaning. That was the trouble with the Bedford household. No instructions. She away so much, and he not caring, and no housekeeper to run things, although Miss Kerrigan liked to imagine she had that job. It was worse with Minnie and Eileen in summer exiles. Margaret had to deal with the disorder left behind. Closets to clean and put right. Rooms to maintain until the house was in full use again in the fall. Every hallway, corner, and cranny to be dusted, swept, wiped, mopped, polished, so that the dirt and soot blown from the street through the windows or tracked in on boot bottoms would never go unchallenged.

She decided that she would begin with Mrs. Bedford's room. She could start and stop when she wanted, without worrying about leaving it unfinished. She went through the dining room as quietly as she could. Mr. Ward never looked up. He was poised pensively over his paper. When she reached the top of the stairs, she could hear Mr. Bedford in the water closet. He would be in there awhile, for sure.

Mrs. Bedford's room
was still in disarray from yesterday's packing, clothes tossed onto the bed and chairs, boxes strewn across the floor. After two and a half years, Margaret was still impressed by the sheer profusion of things. Not merely the quality of the things the Bedfords owned, but the multiplicity. A mountain of things. In the bedroom, quilts from Belgium, rugs from Persia, sheets from France, blankets from Scotland, armoires so full the doors would barely close, shelves crammed to capacity, dresses and jackets and petticoats crushed together, hatboxes piled one atop another and more under the beds, drawers packed tight with silk shifts, silk blouses, silk handkerchiefs, silk scarves, silk stockings, a cedar chest filled with intimate silk apparel from Paris, lavender paper between the layers; in the attic, standing trunks in which hung winter capes, coats, jackets, more dresses; in the basement, more clothes and the overflow of shoes, racks going from the floor to the ceiling jammed to capacity; in the kitchen, a tall, broad cabinet overflowing with everyday china, flowered cups and plates from Nanking, serving dishes, tureens, bowls; in the dining room, two more sets of plates and utensils: the ancient pewter plates and cups and flatware brought from Holland by Mrs. Bedford's first American ancestor, each piece kept in its own felt purse, and, in the towering china cabinet against the wall, the formal dinner service, Limoges plates edged in gold, and gold flatware. An endless number of possessions to be cleaned, polished, pressed, tucked away, retrieved, a seasonal flow of raiment and instruments that were impossible to catalogue fully. As grand as the house was, it strained to contain all inside it.

Margaret picked up a dressing gown from Japan that was the color of jade. It had been thrown in a ball onto the bed. Next to it was a jewelry box, the lid opened, and necklaces, earrings, and brooches spilled across the damask coverlet. She worked at putting things away until she heard Mr. Bedford leave his bath. She went back to the dining room. Mr. Ward was nowhere to be seen. She cleared the table. In the kitchen, Miss Kerrigan was sweeping the floor.

“Mr. Bedford will be down in a minute,” Margaret said.

“Sure, I know what time it is.” Miss Kerrigan put the broom aside and went back to the stove.

Mr. Bedford was easy
to serve. He read the paper until his food came, and then devoured both at the same time, his chair set sideways to the table, turning pages with his left hand, eating with his right. After he gulped his coffee, he would be gone. He did his lingering in the water closet, not in the dining room, but this morning he sat at the table a little longer than usual, taking more time with the paper than was his custom. Whatever it was that he read, it seemed to make him happy.

He left at half past nine. Margaret handed him his hat and gloves in the vestibule. Andrew, the coachman, stood below, holding open the door to the brougham.

Mr. Bedford surveyed the street from the top of the stoop.

“A lovely day, sir,” Margaret said. She hoped he would take these as parting words and be on his way, but he didn't move.

“I should take the victoria today,” Bedford said. “No sense in being cooped up when I could be enjoying the day.”

Margaret was afraid he was going to send Andrew back to get the victoria. It could take another half hour to unhitch and rehitch the horses, and she would be left standing around, kept from her work, perhaps fetching more coffee. But Bedford was only thinking aloud. Finally he started down the steps.

“Better yet, I should take the trap, hook up the trotter, and race downtown on my own, in and out of traffic, to the Devil with all obstructions, be they men or monuments.”

Margaret knew there was no chance of that. He kept the trotter in a stable up near the shantytown. He got into the brougham. Andrew tipped his hat, shut the door, climbed into his seat, and off they went. Margaret went into the dining room and set to work. She stripped the table, washed it, dried it with a cloth, poured on wax and rubbed it in, rubbing hard until it had a sheen. Yet the sheen couldn't hide the table's age, its tally of dents, chips, scratches. Margaret didn't understand why people with the Bedfords' means didn't buy a grand table of cherry or mahogany, and put this relic in the basement. Eileen said it was because they wanted something for the help to do. “Making the old look new, isn't that what we spend most of our time doing?” she asked.

Finished with
the table, Margaret emptied the glass-faced cabinet in the corner, wiping each piece as she took it out: wide-mouthed goblets with hollow knopped stems, Dutch fluted glasses etched with roses, candlesticks with baluster bases, bucket shaped crystal bowls with intricately faceted rims, fruit dishes that stood on elegantly molded feet, a serving platter in the shape of a fish. When everything was returned to its place, she swept the rug. On Thursdays, the silverware was polished. Fridays, the parlor and music room were dusted and scrubbed. Mondays, the hallways were swept, the doorknobs shined, the curtains taken down, and the windows in the bedrooms cleaned. Tuesdays, she did the windows, in the library, glass crisscrossed with bands of lead that divided the panes into diamond patterns, each to be washed inside and out, then rubbed dry. An endless cycle. But still, she preferred to be here than with Minnie and Eileen in the dunes of Jersey, cramped quarters, bloody mosquitoes, and sand in everything.

The day was getting warm. She felt herself perspiring. She swept the stairs. She polished the banister, fetched a duster from an upstairs closet, and worked over the pictures that lined the stairs. Men in togas. Temples in flames. Young women in white robes holding a garland. Romans and Greeks. Pagans, by the look of them, the genuine kind, not like her father. He had always been a Christian at heart, her mother said. “'Tis this cursed country hardened his heart, but they are few it hasn't done that to, in one degree or another.”

When she reached the first floor, she dusted the pictures along the hallway. Men in red coats, horses, hounds, the hunt in progress, flying across the countryside, a fox turning to look behind him. One day in Macroom, she had been walking with her uncle up a boreen when a troop of hunters had come cantering from the other direction. The riders took no notice of them, and they had to scamper up the steep side of the lane to avoid being trampled. At the top, her uncle quickly turned, removed his hat, and smiled in a tense, unnatural way. “A fine day for it, Your Lordships,” he said. “Good luck to ye.” The horsemen never looked his way. In the picture, the fox was still ahead of the hounds and their masters, a thundering pack of landlords. Margaret hoped he got away.

She turned the
tap in Mr. Bedford's bathroom and leaned over to take a drink. There had been a few blistering days in May, but the heat hadn't settled in yet, not the way it did when summer arrived with full intensity, the gritty, grinding heat that sat on the city day after day, the night bringing no relief. On the boat over from Ireland, they had hardly noticed the change in temperature until they had come through the Narrows and it suddenly felt like the steam engines were all throwing off excess heat and cooking the atmosphere. People were crowded on deck for their first glimpse of New York, but the seamless curtain of gray, lifeless air blocked their view and left them panting for breath. The men took off their woolen coats. The women removed their shawls and unwrapped their babies. It was a heat they had never felt in Ireland, steamy and inescapable. Margaret felt her clothes grow wet with perspiration. Out of the mist came a small tender that chugged up alongside the ship. A rope ladder was thrown down. Margaret and the others watched as a man in a blue coat with a single row of gold buttons pulled his way up and climbed onto the deck. Their first American. He took off his cap. His round, fleshy face was crimson and dripping with sweat. He pulled a great red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow. He looked around the deck at the wilted passengers, and chuckled. “Well, ladies and gents,” he said, “welcome to hell.”

Margaret made the bed in Mr. Bedford's room. She hung up his robe and made a pile of his soiled clothes and the towels he had used. Mrs. Bedford wanted him to have a valet. They had even interviewed one. But Mr. Bedford had never gone any further. He was too preoccupied with his business to be bothered. Margaret dusted the armoire and the nightstand next to the bed. The first time she had entered the Bedford house, she had had the feeling of being in a church, a place of quiet and peace, unchangeable, a fixed refuge from the noise and crowds that filled the rest of the city. At the top of the front stairs was a skylight of stained glass. Holy colors. She stood in the hallway, nervously fingering the latch on her handbag, rubbing it like a rosary bead, trying to contain her nervousness. Suddenly Mrs. Bedford appeared; her footsteps had been inaudible on the thick carpeting. She wore a white dress with blue ribbons at the throat and cuffs. Our Lady's colors. She was a handsome woman, with a passing resemblance to Molly Foley, Margaret thought, but she had a fuller figure and a commanding way about her. The house seemed especially suited to her, as if built with her in mind, a permanent shelter for her loveliness and beauty, a space where she would always be safe. That impression lasted for the first few weeks of Margaret's employment. But one afternoon, while serving tea to Mrs. Bedford and a guest, she couldn't help but overhear that Mr. Bedford was contemplating building a larger home, somewhere nearer to Central Park. “This time,” Mrs. Bedford said, “we'll employ an architect of our own, instead of relying on some contractor's version of metropolitan elegance.” She waved her hand in a circle, an indictment of the entire premises. “We hope to get started as soon as possible.” The war had made them postpone their plans. But Margaret's perception of the house had changed. She realized that neither Mrs. Bedford nor her husband regarded this as their home, a setting in which to live out their lives, year following year, accumulating memories as numerous and substantial as the furniture. Both of them in their own way lived here in the expectation of leaving; and despite all its size and grandeur, the house had no more claim on its inhabitants than the tenements or shanties that filled other parts of the city.

Margaret went
to Mr. Ward's room. She knocked. There was no answer, so she opened the door slowly and stuck in her head. Sometimes, when he didn't answer, he was in there poring over his books, and would be annoyed by the disturbance. The room was empty. She made his bed and dusted the furniture. The windows needed washing, but they would have to wait their turn. She dusted the windowsill. Down below, Miss Kerrigan was standing in the yard talking to Mrs. Flynn, the washerwoman. They had their arms folded in the same way, fists tucked into the elbows. Mrs. Flynn came down every day from Shantytown to do the washing. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her arms were red and beefy, like a man's. A head taller than Miss Kerrigan, she leaned down toward her, busily nodding in agreement with what was being said.