This Cold Country (37 page)

At the beginning of May, again unphotographed by the magazine, Belfast was bombed for the second time. By then, Daisy was drifting around Shannig in a waking dream. Or two dreams, for she spent much of the day in bed, sleeping deeply. Day-to-day life at Shannig seemed no more real than the photographs reproduced in the
Illustrated London News.
She felt as though she were passing from one dream bubble to another, the only moments when she felt awake were those spent lying sleepless in the dark. While the rest of the household slept, Daisy, who had been resting and napping all day, lay brooding on her bed. Then she understood that her husband was a prisoner of war, that his last letter was dated eight weeks earlier, that she had betrayed him, that her life now consisted of little other than waiting. And, for the first time ever, she lacked the energy, willpower, or ability to do anything to alter her circumstances, even if she knew what she should do.

Later in May, Hess parachuted into Scotland and brought a new element—mysterious farce—into the news. For days Daisy found herself surrounded by others as fascinated by the news as she was; she even temporarily moved her focus to the BBC and the
Irish Times.
For a while it was all anyone talked about; four meals a day were accompanied by fruitless speculation. Then it became clear that the mystery would not be explained or, perhaps, that there was no rational explanation, that Hess, disappointingly, had acted in an impulsive, naïve, and almost random way. Interest faded and Daisy once again found herself alone in her preoccupation. And her lethargy.

The sinking of the
Hood
and, three days later, that of the
Bismarck.
The loss, fear, grief, and pity followed by drama, excitement, the chase, bloodlust. Daisy was astonished that anyone could pay attention to day-to-day life at Shannig while such events were played out on the world stage. She was overexcited, tired, and tearful: like a child, she would weep and then fall asleep.

Dublin was bombed at the end of May; thirty-four citizens of a neutral country were killed. On the fourth of June, the Kaiser died. That day Ambrose came to lunch, the first time Daisy had seen him since Dunmaine had caught fire. He was full of war news, teased Corisande, flirted with Daisy, and gave her a short history lesson about the Great War.

Daisy, by now, skipped some meals, preferring sleep or the long solitary hours she spent curled up in her warm nest of sheets, blankets, and eiderdown. After the meals she ate in the dining room, she would sometimes sit in the library or, if the day was mild and sunny, walk down the avenue as far as the gate and back again. Then she would return to her room to rest and dream again.

 

A MONTH WENT
by at Shannig before Daisy started to read to Maud again; a month during which both settled into the new pattern of their lives: Maud adapting to life without Philomena, to the new bedroom, to better food; Daisy, fueled by the
Illustrated London News,
sunk into a dreamlike state. Then Daisy appeared one afternoon in Maud's bedroom carrying a copy of
Can You Imagine Her?
Daisy's demeanor was the same as it had always been, polite, respectful, not expecting a response, although her opinion of Maud's mental capabilities had changed substantially. The night of the fire, Maud had surprised her.

Four afternoons a week, all through the end of May and through June, Maud failed to acknowledge Daisy's presence in any way. Daisy was beginning to wonder if the shock of the fire had finally moved Maud's mind to a place from which it could no longer return, when one warm afternoon in early July, Maud laughed. It was not clear to Daisy whether or not the laughter was a response to the book.

The next afternoon she spoke.

“A Nugent ancestor was drowned, in a shipwreck. In 1782. He was crossing the Irish Sea—he was drowned, there was a storm and he was drowned. And his wife and son, and the coachman and the horses.”

“Oh?” Daisy said encouragingly. But Maud, having nodded thoughtfully once or twice, closed her eyes. Daisy waited a long moment and then continued reading. The passage she was reading did not involve travel but it was not impossible that Maud's reflection had been caused by some association with the story of the book.

“If he had lived,” Maud said, a little later, interrupting a scene where there was the first glimmer of hope that the novel would have a happy ending, “all our lives would have been different. There is no reason to suppose that either of us would have lived in this house.”

Daisy thought about this for a moment. While she and Maud would have existed—they had, after all, been born independently of the Nugents—the Nugent family would have taken a different path. Maud had married into the line of a younger brother, a line that probably would not have existed but for the unexpected inheritance of the estate. And if Maud's destiny had been dependent on an eighteenth-century shipwreck, so had her own.

Daisy marked her place and closed the book. She sat quietly for a moment, watching Maud out of the corner of her eye and waiting to see if she said anything more. She was beginning to understand that Maud was not merely the delicate scale on which the legal and financial present and future of the Nugent family balanced so precariously, but that she was the silent force and will from which the life of the family emanated. And she felt that she, Daisy, was merely an agent and tool of that indifferent force.

After a little while, Daisy rose and made her way quietly to the door. Her hand was on the doorknob when Maud spoke again.

“Edmund always loved playing spies, even as a child. He'd do anything Ambrose told him.”

Daisy felt her whole body stiffen. Then, slowly, conscious of every movement, she carefully released the doorknob, allowing the mechanism to slip quietly back into place, and turned toward Maud. But Maud, her eyes closed, drew in a deep, sighing breath, and turned her head and shoulder toward the window and the yellow late-afternoon summer sunlight.

Walking along to the corridor toward the landing and her bedroom, Daisy was unsure, because of Maud's uneven breathing, whether Maud had said “Edmund always loved playing spies. Even as a child, he'd do anything Ambrose told him,” or if she had said “Edmund always loved playing spies, even as a child. He'd do anything Ambrose told him.”

R
OSSLARE TO FISHGUARD
. Daisy felt sick, and she felt cold. She considered the possibility that at the midpoint between Wexford and Wales, say directly south of the Isle of Man, it was always dark and always raining. She was not very cold, not even very sick; if she were to get out of her bunk and go up onto the wet deck she would begin to feel better. But the cause precluded the cure, so she huddled under her inadequate blanket and breathed in the stale air.

She remembered a moment, almost a year ago, during her first visit to Shannig. Aunt Glad, after Ambrose had, straight-faced, used the phrase “since we got our freedom” for the third time during the same meal, had glanced toward Daisy and had caught her not quite quickly enough concealing a grin.

“England,” Aunt Glad had said, reproving her treacherous fellow countrywoman, “England. Where the Irish go when they're in trouble. When they need work, or get pregnant, or to find somewhere to hide. Then they forget about Cromwell and oppression and the talk of freedom; suddenly they're dancing to quite another tune.”

Daisy had opened her mouth, ready to rush into an angry and not thought-out reply but, before she could disgrace herself, Ambrose had laughed.

“Rises like a trout, every time,” he said to Edmund, and it was Aunt Glad who looked flushed and unsatisfied. And Daisy was left wondering at her own loyalty to her new country, a country where she was generally considered more allied to the former oppressors than to the oppressed. Unlike Edmund and Ambrose, she didn't feel she could have it both ways.

Now, sick, cold, and unhappy, she was recrossing the Irish Sea. The only feeling this voyage had in common with the one she had made as a newly married woman was the sense that she was leaving home for the unknown. Not, of course, the time she planned to spend with her parents, but after that. The England to which she was returning was more alien, threatening, unwelcoming, and harder than her worst imaginings of the unknown Ireland she had traveled to when she had first crossed the Irish Sea. However nervous and apprehensive Daisy had been, lying in a similar bunk, a year ago, she had at least been a bride and known herself to be loved. Now she felt utterly alone.

Alone, and without a cogent plan. She was to visit her parents and stay for a couple of weeks. That part was easy and required no explanation; her husband was overseas and her home was unhabitable. Less easy to explain would be her luggage; had anyone been paying attention, he might have asked whether she intended ever to return to the country she had so enthusiastically embraced as her own.

 

SAUSAGES AND MASH
for lunch. The equivalent of almost a week's ration for each member of the family. Except for Daisy, who pleaded a slow recovery from a rough crossing. Her excuses were unnecessary; her family's attention was on the meat.

“You appear to have packed the better part of a pig in your suitcase,” her father said. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful” had, for once, been accompanied by suitable expressions of gratitude around the table.

“I had two suitcases,” Daisy said. “It was quite a decision what to put in with the sausages and bacon. I've a couple of old skirts that have a distinct suggestion of the smokehouse.”

“Nowadays that might be more seductive than Chanel No. 5,” her grandmother said; the laughter—and the food—breaking, for a moment, the always tense atmosphere of meals in the Creed household.

Watching the pleasure on her father's face—a little of the slab of butter she'd brought had gone into the mashed potatoes—Daisy felt a moment's regret that she hadn't brought more. But she hadn't dared dip any further into her small reserve of money; the amount she had left until the end of the quarter would allow her to do little more than live, as a dependent, in her parents' house.

“Where is Joan?” she asked. Too long a silence could result in an airing of the real or imaginary grievances usually manifested during mealtimes. Such eruptions in Ireland, Daisy disloyally thought, unpredictable, uncensored, and uncontrolled, were a good deal more interesting than the almost ritual sniping between her mother and grandmother.

“Joan's still at Portsmouth,” her father said. “She came home for a weekend's leave in the middle of last month.”

“She's become fat,” her grandmother said, “and she has a lot of grand new friends.”

“One of the Wrens on Joan's shift is Lady Brenda Chadwick,” Daisy's mother said. Daisy was unable to tell whether her mother was pleased by the possibility of Joan, if not actively social climbing, at least not quite so dramatically throwing in her lot with the coarser society of the able-bodied seamen she worked with. “The Chadwicks invited Joan to stay with them the last time she and Brenda were given leave.”

Daisy watched her grandmother choose not to speculate on the probability of Joan having disgraced herself during the visit; then she watched her mother's equally silent reaction to her grandmother's unspoken thought. She longed to know how Joan had got on, staying with the aristocracy, but it seemed wiser to ask her mother at a time when her grandmother was not present.

“How long are you planning to stay?” her mother asked, her tone the usual one of mild anxiety, little curiosity. It was a question that Daisy had, since she arrived, been expecting but for which she still had no answer. She hesitated, and her mother continued, “It's just—I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about your ration book. I know you've brought more meat and butter than your rations would get you in a year, I was just wondering about procedure.”

For the rest of lunch Daisy's mother argued with her own mother about Daisy's ration book, how long it would take to reactivate, and the physical location of the book itself. Daisy's father, after an affectionate but already vague smile at his daughter, allowed his thoughts to drift away. Daisy tried to follow the argument about the ration book; she had no idea where she would be living in three weeks, or what she would be doing, but if it were in England she would need a ration book. She was grateful to have the first practical step on the unknown road she was to take indicated.

She became aware that the other three were looking at her slightly reproachfully; after all, it was her ration book they were agonizing over. There was the pause that preceded a change in subject.

“She's put on a little weight,” her mother said defensively—of Joan, Daisy hoped. “They feed them pure starch.”

***

“I'D LIKE A DAY
return to Farnham, please.”

It was the second time that week Daisy had bought a railway ticket; she paid for this one with the exact money, using up the loose change in her handbag rather than breaking a ten-shilling note. There were two people behind her at the ticket office, a middle-aged woman in a dark blue uniform and a slightly younger man in a tweed suit whose drawn face and slight frame declared him unsuitable for military service. Both, without speaking, managed to convey impatience and the suggestion that important official business was being delayed by Daisy's selfishness. There was no train waiting at the platform but, nevertheless, Daisy came away from the ticket-office window flustered and flushed. The day was warm and she could feel sweat dampening her dress. She found a seat in the shade and sat down to wait for the train.

Her family had shown, about her excursions, the kind of curiosity that conveyed mild criticism rather than interest in her actions. Her mother seemed hurt that Daisy had apparently no sooner arrived home than she had set out for London. Her grandmother had sniffed a little, and several times wondered at the frivolous way Daisy appeared to be spending money, gadding about. Her father's “Where are you going today?” required no answer since, without pausing, he followed the question, with “I had been hoping we might take a walk together.”