This Cold Country (34 page)

She passed Edmund on the stairs; he was carrying a painting. Daisy had never noticed it before and even now in the dim light, had Edmund not appeared to have thought it worth saving, she would have passed it by. She peered at it as they paused, a dark portrait of a far from handsome woman; it badly needed cleaning.

“Where—” Daisy asked, embarrassed that she had not asked the obvious question before, “where exactly is the fire?”

She had opened the dining-room door to take out silver a little earlier and had been faced with such thick smoke that she had been unable to enter, but the smoke had not been accompanied by flames or the crackle of fire.

“It's in the chimneys; they're all connected and it's probably been burning all night. Or longer.” Daisy remembered, horrified, the small belches of smoke she had seen from above the fireplace in the dining room. “But it's going faster now, getting hotter—what happens is that when it reaches a certain temperature the whole thing goes up and—”

Edmund gestured and Daisy, reminded of the lack of time, continued more quickly up the staircase. It felt strange and almost dreamlike that she and Edmund were drifting around the burning house, making arbitrary and probably illogical choices of what they would save.

Daisy wandered—her lack of any kind of plan making her light-headed—into Maud's bedroom. What were the old lady's treasures? Philomena still sat, forgotten, in the armchair. She had to be taken downstairs, but where? Not to the drawing room to join Maud and Corisande. Not out onto the lawn, to be exposed to the dew and the increasing light of day. Maybe Mrs. Mulcahy and Nelly—Kathleen had disappeared sometime before—would go and tell her daughter, still asleep in the gate lodge.

Daisy swept the photographs off the dressing table into a large tapestry bag, which Maud must once have used to keep her needlework, and hurried on to find Edmund. Philomena would have been too heavy for Daisy to have carried herself, even if she had known how to carry the now perhaps stiffening body.

Holding the heavy but not large clock that sweetly chimed the hours and quarters from the landing table, Daisy ran downstairs. As she crossed the hall there was a sound—a whoosh—as though a rush of air was being drawn out of the whole large drafty house and expelled through the chimney. She fled through the hall door, across the gravel, onto the semicircle of lawn. The grass was wet under her feet.

Corisande and Edmund were helping Maud slowly out through the conservatory. Daisy slipped past them; looking back through the dusty, mildew-edged glass, Daisy could see that a light armchair for Maud had already been carried onto the lawn. Despite the whoosh, there were still no flames. It seemed foolhardy to go back through the front door into the paneled hall, but she thought it might still be possible to save a few things—silver, photographs, a small painting—from the drawing room. The conservatory would surely be one of the last places to catch fire.

On a wicker sofa in the conservatory were piled the valuable and random objects brought from upstairs or from the library and smoke-filled dining room, left there until the last moment to protect them from the dew. Corisande's fur coat had been tossed over one end of the sofa. Daisy picked it up; she didn't much care if it got wet on the dew-covered grass, and it might serve to keep someone—probably Corisande—warm during the next few hours. She was surprised, even at such a moment, by the softness of the fur. Squirrel, she thought. Underneath the coat lay Corisande's dressing case. Pale leather, with her initials on it. Daisy glanced out at the group on the lawn and unlocked the fasteners; she was curious to see what contraband Corisande had chosen to rescue from her room. Would, for instance, the photograph of Ambrose have been saved? As she opened the dressing case, releasing the sweet mixture of powder and scent, the soft leather of the case's interior changing and adding to the comforting smell. Inside there was a jewelry box and a flat case, similar to the one she had found under the mattress of Maud's bed. And a silk scarf loosely wrapped around an oblong object. Daisy picked it up; it was heavier than she expected. Unwrapping one end, she found that she was holding a gun. A revolver or a pistol, she thought, not knowing the difference. Not a kind of gun she had ever seen before. Not a gun for shooting birds or even one that she imagined soldiers using—this was the kind of gun a man could carry, concealed, in his pocket.

There was the sound of a footstep from the drawing room behind her. Daisy, shocked by what she held in her hand, remained frozen for a moment, then rewrapped the gun, and put it back in the dressing case.

“I think we should—” Edmund said, and then seeing Daisy replacing the gun, paused. Daisy, shocked and confused, looked at him silently for a moment. His face was expressionless and for a moment he didn't say anything. Then, “It's probably time to get out of the house.”

Daisy picked up the dressing case and the fur coat and stepped out onto the lawn, followed by Edmund. Corisande and Maud were not far away but Daisy could hear nothing but the sounds of dawn. A cow, waiting to be milked, lowed in the pasture below the house; a blackbird, oblivious to the drama of the burning house, assured his mate on her nest that all was well with the world.

A lilac tree, mature, the blossoms wet, the leaves green and full of resilient presence, magnificent against the black horizon of incipient rain. Rain that would be hard and heavy, but probably not heavy enough or soon enough to drench the flames that would surely engulf Dunmaine.

...
T
HERE WAS SOMEBODY
coming up the avenue on a bicycle. At first, I thought he was coming to help
—
although I don't know what good a boy on a bicycle could have been. He'd been given the package of letters and told to bring them on his way home. Mrs. Crowe knew we hadn't had a letter from you since the first one. But he—it was never clear, he was evasive—I think been to a dance in the other direction and was on his way home. I suppose he'd planned just to push them through the letterbox but when he saw us he didn't seem at all surprised. I took letters and Edmund sent the boy off to the village.

Daisy, once again writing from Shannig, had already described the fire and the extent of the damage. Not in huge or depressing detail. She had told Patrick that Dunmaine was intact but uninhabitable. She reassured him that everyone had a roof over his head and that she, Mickey, and Maud were staying with Edmund and—leaving this bit out—a visibly less enthusiastically hospitable Corisande.

First, of course, we looked at the dates. The postmarks on the envelopes. The last one was addressed to me and was dated six weeks ago. Mickey said I could open it first if I wanted, that I wasn't to read it out to anyone, so that your letters could be read in the proper order.

She hadn't opened it first, although she had held the letter in her hand, her eyes focused on the blurred postmark. She waited silently as Mickey sorted the other letters into the order in which they had been sent; it was the first time she had seen Mickey take charge, or assert himself in any way that did not involve sullenness, withdrawal, silence. When he had sorted them, he handed them out. Some of the letters written over Christmas were addressed to the family as a group; these he handed out in order, as though dealing cards for a primitive game. They opened them and took turns reading them aloud.

Now that I know you get my letters,—or have been getting my letters—it is easier to write.

She paused; it was true that it was easier to write, but not true, as she had implied, that it was now easy. Six weeks was a long gap; she didn't know whether Patrick was still at the prisoner-of-war camp from which he had written.

Your last letter took six weeks to get here. Since they all came at the same time, that's probably longer than they usually do. When you next write please let me know how long this one takes to get to you.

Daisy no longer sent the questions she needed answered to Patrick. Too long without a letter back made them feel demanding, and the letters that had arrived, all at once, the morning of the fire, contained little information and no direct answers. Maybe he had not had all her letters. By now Daisy knew these questions would have to be answered, although gradually, by herself. Through inference, instinct, and sometimes, as she understood more of the world of the Anglo-Irish, by a process of elimination.

I don't know how much Philomena meant to you. I gathered from Corisande that she had at one time been a nurserymaid, but she didn't go into details

No need to enlarge on that conversation; she had to assume that Patrick knew his sister better than she, Daisy, did. And that he knew Mickey to be a source only of information of his own choosing.

I am sorry another link to the past has been broken. At the very least she must have been a familiar face. It seems she died in her sleep. The fire had nothing to do with it, and she didn't suffer. Nor was she alone. Your grandmother is being looked after by the wife of Edmund's groom. She seems kind and quiet; it is hard to tell how Aunt Maud feels about her, but time will tell.

Still no one had speculated on the cause of the fire; it seemed to have been accepted as an act
of
God. But Daisy feared it had come from a spark in the dining-room fire, a fire lit for Andrew Heskith. She had lit it for the benefit of a paying guest, but her conscience made her feel she had burned Dunmaine to warm her lover.

 

“
STRICTLY SPEAKING, IT'S
not necessary for women to go to funerals,” Edmund said, “but, in this instance, I thought we should perhaps show the flag.”

“Which flag would that be?” Corisande asked sourly.

“Of course,” Daisy said quickly, her mind already turning toward suitable clothing.

“A large turnout is going to look more like curiosity than what you call showing the flag—” Corisande added, “although that's certainly a better choice of phrase than solidarity.”

Corisande was right, of course. Daisy was pleased that she was going to the funeral, her pleasure that of drama and curiosity, and she was well aware a funeral such as Sir Guy's could be one of the larger social events of the foreseeable future. And something she could write to Patrick about.

“You're right,” Edmund said, his expression and voice pleasant, “of course. As usual, you're right. You probably shouldn't go, especially not from this house.”

Since she had come to stay at Shannig, the spats between Edmund and her sister-in-law had embarrassed Daisy, less by their content than by the implied subtext. Edmund, every time he and Corisande exchanged verbal blows, was silently saying
I haven't married you yet and if you don't behave, maybe I never will
and she, in return, was suggesting that she was holding her punches until after she was his wife, but that then there would be a day of reckoning. Daisy watched, horrified, as Corisande from a position of weakness habitually overplayed her hand. But now Daisy was beginning to realize that, as was so often the case, everyone was doing exactly what he wanted. Not that it made it less embarrassing for those who witnessed these outbursts of malice.

No one was surprised when Corisande, exquisite in a black coat and skirt with a little gray hat and a long gray chiffon scarf was, uncharacteristically punctual, ready and waiting in the hall when the others assembled for the funeral. Mickey was wearing his usual Sunday tweed suit with the addition of a black tie. Edmund was dressed in his up-from-the-country-for-a-day-in-London dark suit. He, too, wore a black tie. It seemed possible to Daisy that elegance, as well as a love of good clothing, was one of the stronger bonds between Edmund and Corisande.

Corisande had made the wreath. The day before, the sink and draining board of what was still called the butler's pantry, had been piled with greenery and clumps of wet moss. Corisande had taken a piece of chicken wire and twisted it into a large circle. Then she had stuffed it tight with moss; Daisy watched, fascinated not only by her sister-in-law's skill but by the way her beautiful, pale fingers with their immaculate nails plunged into the cold muddy moss and forced it through the wire netting. Then she covered the moss-filled wire with larger, greener pieces of moss, binding them to the base with raffia. Corisande managed to tie the raffia so that it made a pattern and, at the same time, cut deep enough into the wet moss not to show. Next, tendrils of ivy were plaited and entwined, each piece pulled taut enough to remain a tight part of the wreath and for the leaves to appear to be growing from it. Sprigs of rosemary were pulled from their larger branch, the leaves at the base of the stalk stripped off, and the pantry filled with their evocative scent as Corisande threaded the rosemary into the moss and ivy. Once the base looked fat and solid and no longer even a little bare, Corisande added the flowers. She had a loose assortment in a bowl of water, white flowers of different sizes picked from the hedgerows between the fields and japonica from the garden wall. Daisy knew few of their names, though she was sure Corisande knew them all. Corisande, secateurs in hand, trimmed the stem or stalk of each flower and stuck it into the wreath, making sure it was securely placed and deeply enough embedded for it to stay damp. When the whole wreath was evenly, but not profusely covered, Corisande stopped.

“I'm going to leave it upstairs in the nursery bath,” she explained, “with a couple of inches of water. In the morning I'll add a few last minute flowers and replace any that haven't lasted. The trick is to remember to take it out of the bath tonight and allow it to drain; otherwise we'll arrive at the funeral tomorrow with it dripping on our gloves and skirts.”

Daisy had been the one who had gone upstairs after dinner with a plate rack to take the wreath out of the bath. The water had already drained out, the perished rubber plug another of the small factors and adjustments that Daisy was learning to remember and allow for while performing the simplest task. The bath plug that wasn't watertight, the doors that didn't close, the windows with broken sashes, the dripping taps, the smoking fireplaces, the temperamental stoves—and those, she thought ruefully, were only the inanimate objects. If she started to consider the human factors, most of them now relatives of hers—the mute grandmother; the silent but not necessarily mysterious brother-in-law; the untrustworthy, wreath-making sister-in-law; the gun-carrying future brother-in-law; the husband she hardly knew—she would feel like a tired Alice slipped through a dark looking glass.