The Fox's Walk Read online

  “It’s all right, Alice. He’s harmless.” Mother didn’t speak again until we reached the next station. As the train drew into the noisy, brightly lit platform, the man woke up and, without a glance at any of us, stood up and left the carriage. I looked out the window and saw him make his way slowly across the platform, through a gate, and out into the darkness.

  I slept for most of what remained of our journey. When I awoke briefly, Mother was sitting as upright as she had been before. On her face was an expression I had never seen. Angry, resentful, and determined.

  O’NEILL WAS WAITING for us on the Quay at Waterford. The warm, sunny day with a mild fresh breeze seemed to begin when we reached the dock. Tired, dirty, pale, we walked down the gangplank into paradise.

  The crossing had not been particularly rough. But it had been unpleasant—particularly for my mother who, seasick herself, had had to look after an overtired infant. Even though I had tried not to be any trouble, I had, to my shame, vomited on the cabin floor. During the night, I had woken and heard my mother weeping quietly and, I thought, angrily. After the boat had turned into the early morning calm of the river, strong tea had been served. Our fellow passengers availed themselves of its dark reviving powers. My mother added some more milk to hers and told me to sip it. My stomach, still tender, revolted against the strong pale liquid, and I retched; to this day the idea of stewed milky tea in a thick white cup revolts me.

  O’Neill welcomed my mother as though she were a returning princess. He seemed impressed by how I had grown and pronounced the pale and grizzling Edward “a fine looking lad.” O’Neill worshipped my mother. She had a good seat on a horse; and, on the rare occasions that she now enjoyed a day’s foxhunting, the overconditioned hunter still kept at Ballydavid was shown to O’Neill’s credit.

  Patience, the pony that pulled the trap, was for me one of the great attractions of Ballydavid. I hoped to be allowed to ride this summer and I sometimes pretended that Patience was my pony. O’Neill found our luggage, loaded it into the trap, and we were on our way. There was a smell of salt in the air; noisy seagulls circled overhead, and pigeons, sidestepping horses’ hooves, pecked at spilled grain between the cobblestones.

  Ballydavid was six miles from Waterford; in cold or wet weather it seemed a long journey, but on a sunny morning like this it was only pleasure. Color came back into my mother’s face as she questioned O’Neill about people and places and asked after his family—his son Tom was fighting in France—and about my grandmother and great-aunt.

  It seemed to me—a minority view, I was aware—there was more of interest to look at in Waterford than in London. Soon we left the wide streets around the river and the Mall and drove past small gardens with monkey puzzles and the large stone gates of a school where I could see a games field; chestnut trees held large pink and white candles, and a cherry tree in pale bloom stood inside the gates of another large house set back from the road and partially obscured by trees. We passed children and dogs, and a middle-aged woman in a mackintosh, to whom Mother waved, walking two sleek greyhounds. Leaving the town behind us, we descended the steep hill, from which we could again see the river and the island in the wider part of it, home to a Hassard whom my great-aunt had once referred to as “Bluebeard.” I watched for the carved milestones on the side of the road, half-concealed by weeds, an unspecified superstitious advantage to be gained by seeing all six.

  Then we drove up the avenue and saw Ballydavid in all its spring glory. The house was no more than a good Regency villa, but I thought it the most beautiful place in the world. That morning the sun on its ivy-covered walls, the spring grass, and the trees in new leaf made it seem magical.

  Grandmother and Aunt Katie were waiting to welcome us. They stood in the shade of the veranda, tall and straight, the skirts of their dresses—Grandmother’s black, Aunt Katie’s a dark brown—touching the gray flagstones. They were both widows, and had been for some time, Aunt Katie for longer than Grandmother. Both seemed immeasurably old, but, looking back, I now realize that Grandmother, the elder by a year or two, was probably only in her late fifties.

  I looked at the two old ladies and felt admiration, respect, a little fear, and certainty that there was no limit to their power, their authority, or their ability to make safe those within their keeping. Without glancing at my mother, I knew she felt the same way.

  Oonagh, Grandmother’s tigerish cat, and Jock, the Highland collie, were waiting with them; Jock, enthusiastic and playful, rushed out to jump up at us while Oonagh, tail in the air, paraded back and forth, stroking herself on the skirt of Grandmother’s dress. Bridie, the housemaid, stood behind them, alerted to our arrival by one of the men, or perhaps she had been watching from an upstairs window. When we got out of the trap and were embraced by Grandmother and Aunt Katie, Bridie, smiling, stepped forward to help O’Neill with our luggage. Protocol dictated that her welcome should take place a little later. For me, it might be that afternoon when I crept into the kitchen or when she gave me my bath before I went to bed. My mother and she would exchange a few affectionate words when next they found themselves alone, perhaps when Bridie carried up a jug of hot water to my mother’s room. Mother would ask after Bridie’s family and accept her congratulations on how big and strong Edward and I were becoming.

  After I had washed and changed my clothes, I found that I was ravenously hungry. Mother and I sat down to a late breakfast and Bridie swept Edward away to the kitchen. My mother and the two old ladies remained at the table; I was sent up to bed. I protested that I wasn’t tired, but minutes later, lying between the cool sheets in the saggy comfort of the old bed, with a feeling of utter, complete, and all-surrounding well-being, I fell deeply and blissfully asleep.

  From time to time I woke up, once to find Bridie sitting on my bed, stroking my hair back from my forehead. She had brought my lunch up on a tray. I ate it gratefully and went straight back to sleep. When I next woke, the color of the light told me it was late afternoon. I lay still, lazy and happy. I wondered if Bridie would bring my tea. The feel of the old linen sheets, a down-filled pillow, and a horsehair mattress kept me in bed, although I was thinking of the pleasures that awaited me downstairs and, even more, out-of-doors. A cool breeze from the open window touched my face; it smelled of spring rain and the freshly opened buds green on the trees outside.

  My dreamy laziness was interrupted by a crunch of feet on gravel. The crunch became footsteps followed by the scrape of a chair leg on stone. Whoever was below—two people—had stepped onto the veranda and sat down on the old wicker chairs below my window. I was surprised that I could hear them so clearly. It seemed likely that the footsteps were my mother’s and those of one of the old ladies.

  After a moment I could hear the murmur of voices, although not clearly enough to hear what they were saying. Then something in my mother’s voice—I still could not tell which of the old ladies was sitting with her—caused me to listen more intently. It seemed to me I could hear a tightness in her tone that suggested she was worried, and it sounded as though she were asking a question.

  If my mother had questions, I wanted to hear the answers. I climbed quietly out of bed and crossed the room to the open window.

  “What will happen?” My mother asked.

  “We don’t know.” The other voice belonged to Aunt Katie.

  A wicker chair below creaked.

  “But Redmond is sound?” My mother seemed to want to be reassured.

  There was a pause before my great-aunt replied.

  “Yes. He’s behaving well and bravely. But both sides have guns. How long can it be before they use them?

  There was another silence, broken only by one of them sighing, and after a little while the chairs creaked again as they rose and went indoors.

  From the window one could see the river estuary, a calm tidal body of water, and beyond it, in the distance, the Adantic. As I leaned on the windowsill, in the fading early evening light, I could hear the cry of a curlew. A flight
of mallards came in low over the trees, on their way to one of the many small ponds that lay below us in the marshy ground close to the estuary. I could hear the companionable evening sounds they seemed to make to one another as they passed overhead.

  AS THE LONG DROWSY summer began, I was aware of drama and tension in the air and, to some extent, I knew where it came from. There were four sources: the war, the unresolved future of Ireland, a quarrel between my mother and father, and the day-today pitfalls of living in my grandmothers house.

  The war affected me less than did the other three. Every day the Morning Post arrived, a day late, from England. It was eagerly and anxiously read and then discussed by my mother and the old ladies. Occasionally, perhaps once a week, a letter would come from my uncle Sainthill serving in France. It seemed as though time stopped while Grandmother opened the letter and read it. Mother and Aunt Katie watched her closely, trying to deduce its contents from her expression. When she had finished reading her son’s letter, Grandmother would hand it to Aunt Katie and she, in turn, would read it and then pass it to my mother. Every fact, nuance, and inference of the letter would be discussed then and for the rest of the day.

  I understood that the unstable political situation in Ireland was the subject of the conversation that had floated up from the veranda to my bedroom the afternoon of the day we’d arrived in Ireland. Redmond, I knew, was the leader of the Irish parliamentary party. He had succeeded Parnell, whose glorious political career and, with it, the prospect of Irish Home Rule, had disappeared when he was cited in a divorce case. Redmond was popular with the Anglo-Irish because although he supported Home Rule—the question of Home Rule for Ireland having been shelved for the duration of the war—he also supported Irish involvement in the war. At the beginning of hostilities he had suggested that the defense of Ireland should be left to the Volunteers (those of the North and South, both now illegally armed the first by the rifles landed at Larne, the second by the shipment brought into Howth by Erskine Childers in the Asgard) in order to leave the English soldiers stationed in Ireland free to fight. The offer had been declined—an insult similar to Kitchener’s resistance to forming specifically southern Irish regiments—and whole regiments of English soldiers, who, had the offer been accepted, would have been sent to the front, instead spent tours of duty safely and comfortably in Ireland. Young officers, instead of going to France, spent a season in Irish society, shooting and hunting in winter, attending race meetings in summer—a welcome resource for hostesses with unmarried daughters of a dancing age.

  My parents’ quarrel was also conducted through the Royal Mail. It was a more private affair than the war. One morning I watched my mother take a letter, unopened, from the breakfast table. She went upstairs to her bedroom and she didn’t come down for some time. Three days later there was another letter; I recognized my father’s handwriting. When we rose from the table I followed the adults into the hall and watched my mother hesitate for a moment at the foot of the staircase. It was a warm day and the front door stood open. I did not follow her when she went outside but ran upstairs to my room to watch from the window where she would go, what she would do. I saw her standing on the gravel in front of the house, the letter in her hand still unopened; the black cat from the stable yard was setting off on a predatory errand to the woods and Mother was superstitiously waiting to avoid its crossing her path. When the cat disappeared into the dark of the woods, my mother sat down on the bench under the beech tree beside the tennis court. She paused a moment before opening the letter—one side of a single sheet of paper. Father came straight to the point and it was always his point; he didn’t have much interest in the opinions or reasoning of those who disagreed with him. My mother read the letter twice, then refolded it and put it back in the envelope. She sat still for some time, gazing out over the woods and fields toward the estuary, her expression sad, angry, and confused. And stubborn. A characteristic I think she had developed as a reaction to my fathers overbearing ways. She was gentle and not short of courage; a better or more sensitive man would not have reduced her to this state.

  The fourth source of drama and tension, that of everyday domestic life at Ballydavid, affected me most directly, and, apart from the time spent lying awake in the pale darkness, frightened about what would happen to me if my parents’ quarrel continued forever, it gave me the greatest food for thought. And worry. My nervousness was most often caused by the lack of warning before an eruption or a cold reprimand for the infringement of some never-before-invoked rule. Ignorance of the law is at the best of times an inadequate defense, and at Ballydavid I could not plead it without raising the question of how my mother was bringing me up. I came to realize that she was often indulgent when she was distracted, preoccupied, or unhappy. It did nothing for my confidence, while negotiating the everyday, to discover—in addition to the Ballydavid rules that must be obeyed and those that could be discreetly disobeyed—another rule which forbade complaining or showing fear. And I was often afraid.

  It was some time before I realized I could carry these fears to the out-of-bounds kitchen, where they would be listened to and taken seriously. Perhaps too seriously. I would go to the kitchen for company and to postpone the moment when I would have to make my way to bed, the Bickering light of my candle summoning looming shadows from the doorways and heavy dark furniture that lined the corridor. My fear was not specific and would disappear once I was safely in bed, reassured by light from the window and the sound of the rooks in the trees as they settled down for the night. In the kitchen, I was given a sympathetic ear; my fears were listened to, understood, and confirmed. Those that were vague were given form, shape, and provenance. The dark shadows were replaced by the ghost of a weeping woman apparently seen by both Maggie and Bridie, and I was told of the banshee who could be heard wailing when someone in the house was about to die. Both the maids volunteered that nothing would induce them to sleep in the room I occupied. I would leave terrified and with a glimmer of understanding why I was not encouraged to hang around the kitchen.

  One cool early summer day I was standing by the window in the drawing room. It was shortly after breakfast, and I was watching my mother sitting alone on the bench by the tennis court. She was smoking a cigarette, something I had never before seen her do. It was, I knew, an act of defiance against my absent father. I noticed with some surprise when I next saw my mother light a cigarette, sitting on the veranda with my grandmother and great-aunt, that neither showed disapproval.

  The window by which I stood was open a few inches and my bare legs were cold. Watery sunshine shone on my mother; she had a light shawl around her shoulders. I was hoping she would come indoors and wondering if it would be all right to join her, when there was a ping of metal touching wood, the bounce of something soft on the carpet, and Oonagh darting, in simulated self-induced fear, across the room.

  I turned quickly to see the no longer young cat lightly touch the arm of the sofa as she leapt onto the cushions, continue over the farther arm, turn sharply, and return to the small Turkish rug in front of the fire. On the hearthrug lay Grandmother’s knitting: three inches of the ankle of a gray sock, one needle no longer attached, and a ball of gray wool. I was still laughing at Oonagh’s progress around the room when she made a dive at the ball of wool, leaping on it and sinking in her claws as though she were slaughtering a small, soft, gray animal. I laughed again, and was still laughing when the door from the hall opened and Grandmother entered the room. She was carrying a small branch of blossom. She often returned from her walks with booty that was usually turned over to someone else to take care of—Aunt Katie, in this instance, since it was she who arranged the flowers for the house. I stopped laughing, aware—as I should have been a moment later even had I not been reminded by an adult presence—that Oonagh had damaged or destroyed Grandmother’s work.

  There was a short silence. I looked aghast ait the gray mess on the hearthrug. Oonagh gave the ball of wool another tap with her paw and then again le
aped on it. Grandmother’s face was cold and set. Aware suddenly that my presence had apparently made me responsible for what had happened, that I had been found a spectator entertained at the scene of the disaster, I darted forward. Oonagh, startled, but incorporating my action into her game, leaped onto Aunt Katie’s chair, a strand of wool caught between her claws. All three needles were now separated from Grandmothers knitting, and every move Oonagh made unraveled what remained of the sock a little further.

  “Really, Alice,” Grandmother said, and left the room, closing the door behind her. I was in disgrace.

  The rest of the morning passed slowly. I felt ashamed but not guilty. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, and I thought that the grown-ups, even Grandmother, understood that I had not caused or encouraged Oonagh’s moment of wanton destruction. Nevertheless, as scapegoat, I had to keep a low profile until some time had passed.

  I remained silent and scarcely visible for two or three hours without even my mother coming to look for me to say a reassuring word. I considered visiting the kitchen but was afraid that the instinct there to dramatize would leave me feeling even more of a pariah than I already did. It also occurred to me that, if I were caught creeping into that forbidden territory, I might seem defiantly to be breaking another rule before I had been forgiven my last infringement.

  I went outdoors. There was no one in sight; a bored Jock lying half-asleep by the front door opened one eye as I passed. I thought that if I went for a little walk he would accompany me and I should not be so alone. I started to stroll away from the house, down the avenue that led to the front gate. After a moment, Jock heaved himself up and ambled after me. I reached the corner where I had once watched Oonagh emerge from the laurels and remembered that day and the fuss that had been made of me by the grown-ups in the drawing room. I remembered the completely admirable Mrs. Coughlan and her words as we had parted. “I hope you will come and see me one day.” Surely there could be no better time.