The Fox's Walk Page 6

  Large trees and bushes grew on either side of the avenue, with areas of carefully mown grass between them. Soon we came to where the wood began; it lay at the base of the hill and ran along the southern and eastern boundaries of Ballydavid. Jock and I turned off the avenue onto a footpath. The trees, with fresh green foliage, gave the narrow path the daytime darkness of a fairy tale; to either side there were brambles and stretches where dead leaves lay under sunless, bare, brown lower branches. I began to feel afraid and was glad to have Jock’s company. My fears were based on nothing specific, but they were not nameless. Jock and I were on the Fox’s Walk.

  The Fox’s Walk—I don’t know how it came by its name and there is now no one left alive who might know—was a path that ran through the woods from the front gate to Rowe’s Lane at the other end of Grandmother’s property. Rowe's Lane wandered between high thick hedges to a large farm and an unpretentious farmhouse belonging to Nicholas Rowe, the most prosperous of Grandmothers Roman Catholic neighbors; to either side of the lane stood the cottages of the men who worked on the Rowe farm and of some who worked at Ballydavid. The Fox’s Walk was a little more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its terrain was uneven. Part of it had once been landscaped, and although brambles and indigenous scrub now largely obscured the exotic flowering shrubs that been planted during a more affluent period in the family’s past, this stretch of the walk was wider than the footpaths that lay at either end. It was the first time I had been on the Fox’s Walk by myself.

  Jock and I passed overgrown azaleas and crowded tufts of pampas grass and entered an alley of overgrown yews. At the end of it we took a path, no wider than the one we had taken from the avenue, which ran downhill toward the Woodstown road. I knew the path beneath my feet and Jock's paws might once have been a trail used by animals, but now it was human feet—workmen and maids using it as a short cut to the farm or house—that had packed down the mud beneath our feet. I knew what a fox looked like, and I also knew that, in the unlikely event Jock and I met one, the fox would flee and Jock would chase him. Even so, I was aware that I had left the world of houses and humans and had invaded the territory of unseen woodland life and nocturnal animals. And of mythic beings. I glanced nervously at Jock, but he was still slouching along behind me, his head down, too lazy to sniff at the scent of small animals.

  After a while it became lighter and I could see a space between the trees beyond. In it was a stile, built into the overgrown bank that was the boundary of Grandmother’s land—low on the Ballydavid side but with a drop of four or five feet down onto the road below. I climbed over the stile and scrambled down into the ditch and onto the main road. Jock squeezed himself under the low branch of a sapling that had taken root in the bank and jumped down beside me. We set off along the road toward the house where Major and Mrs. Coughlan lived, leaving behind the unfairness of being held accountable for the misdeeds of Grandmother’s cat.

  As we turned the corner, Jock, for the first time, began to react to his surroundings. He growled. A low, provisional, warning growl—the kind he might make if a familiar but infrequent beggar were coming up the avenue. But now we were in full sunlight and I had no fears. I was in a hurry to present myself to Mrs. Coughlan, to be fussed over and offered refreshment.

  We continued along the deserted road—we had seen no one since we had left the house—and Jock growled again, this time deeper in his throat. And he slunk a little closer to my side, as though afraid, or at least apprehensive, in the presence of the unknown.

  At first I could see nothing, but I began to become aware of an unpleasant but not identifiable smell. Soon the smell became stronger, and I put my hand over my nose and mouth and breathed through my fingers. The wide grassy area on the side of the road was where the tinkers had camped.

  I had heard the maids talking about the tinkers: They were afraid of them. A fierce tinker woman had come to the front door, begging, a day or two before. Aunt Katie had given her money, but had avoided the further ritual conversation—sympathetic inquiries on her part and promises that she would be remembered even more fervently than she already was in the prayers of the recipient. The woman had whined, pulling back her heavy black shawl to reveal a pale and comatose baby, her thanks quickly becoming an aggressive demand for more money. Aunt Katie had tightened her lips, looked coldly at the woman, wished her a good morning, and closed the door firmly. She had watched from the drawing-room window until the woman turned the corner of the avenue and went out of sight. O’Neill had reported two pullets missing from the hen house and, listening to his talk with Pat and Ned, I had gathered that the local farmers were getting close to the moment when they would unite to move the tinkers on. The tinkers, whose senses, it is likely, were tuned toward such a moment, had made a round of last-minute thievery and disappeared during the night.

  They left behind—like pieces of cloth on a bush beside a holy well—scraps of rags on the hedgerow, the ashes of their fires, some animal droppings, and the lingering and unidentifiable smell. And, mysteriously, among the cold ashes of their fires, I saw the burned shells of fifteen or twenty snails. Did they eat snails, I wondered, or had they burned them as a gratuitous act of cruelty? Or did the snails have some practical use of which I was not aware? Or perhaps the charred shells were the remains of a ritual or had a superstitious significance. Each possibility was disquieting, and, although I wondered, I knew I would never ask about it for fear the answer would be one of those previously unimagined distressing facts that, once heard, I could not dismiss from my mind.

  We hurried past the site of the encampment. The road ran uphill and the day was growing warmer; I began to feel tired and thirsty. At last we reached the gates to the Coughlans’ house. They were closed.

  I was taken aback by this unforeseen obstacle. The gates were large and heavy. With no anticipation of success, I tried to lift the black, paint-encrusted latch; I could not move it. The obvious thing would have been to return home and to say nothing about my clandestine and premature attempt at adult social life. But I was tired and full of the anticipated pleasure of a visit to the gaudy world of Mrs. Coughlan. I was also reluctant to repass the place where the tinkers had camped. I sat down on the sparse gravel and leaned against the closed gates; after a moment Jock slumped, bored, beside me and closed his eyes. Without a plan, I waited to see what would happen next.

  For what seemed like a long time, nothing did. Then a small cart drawn by a shabby donkey came along the road. It travelled slowly. There was a large milk churn on the cart, and the donkey was old, with worn misshapen hooves. A man sat on a front corner, paying no attention to the donkey. A daily routine: The donkey knew where it had to go, and the man knew that no action of his would get them there any faster. He had plenty of time to observe me and Jock as they came closer. Without any instruction to the donkey, he stepped down from the cart; the animal took a couple more paces and then stopped. Jock woke up.

  “Locked out, are ye?” the man asked. He sounded amused. He spoke, of course, with a local accent. It is not possible to put in writing what he sounded like, and an attempt at an approximation tends to read like the dialogue of a stage Irishman. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the gates and allowed Jock and me to proceed up the avenue.

  Although I had often passed the gates on the way to Waterford and knew who lived behind them, I had never seen the Coughlan house before, and I was, for a moment, disappointed that it looked like the other houses in the neighborhood that belonged to the gentry. The avenue was shorter than that at Ballydavid and, unlike Ballydavid, where the gardens were enclosed in faded red brick at the rear of the house, there was to one side of the avenue a lawn with a narrow gravel path and flower beds, to the other a tall hedge that presumably concealed the kitchen entrance and outbuildings such as the laundry and dairy that serviced the house.

  We approached the front door. This should have been another moment when I hesitated to ponder the wisdom of my unannounced visit, but instead I wonder
ed how I was to make myself known. I was not tall enough to reach the door knocker, and it seemed unlikely that the noise of my small soft knuckles on the door would attract the attention of the inhabitants, whom I imagined as pale attentive beings in thrall to Mrs. Coughlan, circling in her colorful orbit.

  The door was slightly ajar. First I knocked, but, as I had anticipated, this produced a less than adequate sound. Then I called out. This presented two problems: I was not sure what words would be appropriate and, were I to keep my voice at a polite level, it was unlikely that I would be heard.

  “Hello, Mrs. Coughlan. Is anybody there?” I called out, selfconscious and ineffectual.

  There was no reply. I could hear the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway and the pleasant early summer sound of birds behind me. Leaving Jock outside, I pushed open the heavy green door and stepped into the hall and looked around. The furnishings of the hall were exotic, but in a way that, since I came from a military family that had served in India, were familiar to me: a brass gong, a carved wooden chest, even a python skin, similar to the one at Ballydavid, mounted over one of the two doorways that, on either side, led off the hall. A tiger-skin rug lay on the large stone flags. I went over to it and looked down; it stared back at me with yellow glass eyes.

  Outside, Jock began to bark. I recrossed the hall and reached the door just in time to call off my dog and welcome the rightful owners of the house.

  “Hello,” Mrs. Coughlan said with a smile. She didn’t recognize me.

  “I’m Alice,” I said. “I’ve come to visit you. This is Jock.”

  Mrs. Coughlan’s smile became even more welcoming.

  “It’s the little girl from Ballydavid, dear,” Major Coughlan said. The only words I heard him speak that day. When Major Coughlan had married the woman I heard Grandmother once refer to as “a Jewess he picked up in Cairo,” he had committed himself to living forever in his wife’s colorful shadow.

  “You’re just in time for lunch,” Mrs. Coughlan said. She was wearing a dress in two shades of deep pink, with a fringed Chinese shawl over her shoulders. She carried, unopened, a parasol she clearly hadn’t bought in Waterford which she now put into a brass umbrella stand beside the front door. Crossing to the looking glass over the hall table, she pulled out her hatpins and took off a large shady hat with dark pink feathers that had brushed one of her shoulders.

  “Why don’t you tell Norah there will be one more for lunch,” she said in a kindly tone to her husband, who disappeared through a green baize door that led off the hall. He was shorter than she was.

  “Well,” she said, “you must tell me all about yourself.” And she took my hand and led me into the drawing room.

  My life seemed pathetically banal beside hers; besides, who knew when I would again have an opportunity to talk to her? I was wondering how best to frame a question about her experiences as a Jewess in Cairo when a door, not the one we had entered through, opened and an Indian servant, in a white jacket and a turban, announced: “Luncheon is served.”

  I was, fortunately as I now realize, speechless in the face of this new and exotic sight. I had never seen a male house servant before. I hadn’t known that they existed. I knew that there were such things as Indians and I had seen pictures of them in books, but I had never expected to have the great good fortune of seeing one in the flesh.

  I followed Mrs. Coughlan back through the hall. The dining room, the one with the python skin over the door, was a room of the same size and shape as that we had just left. Major Coughlan was there already, standing by the sideboard, sharpening the carving knife.

  “Sit here,” Mrs. Coughlan said, putting a cushion on one of the three chairs at the end of the dining-room table. “Now, what would you like to eat?”

  It was the first time I had ever been consulted about what food I would prefer; unfortunately, since all the choices were unknown to me, I could not take full advantage of the opportunity. I looked at what I now know to be curry, a bowl of rice—at Ballydavid more often met in a milk pudding—and many little dishes filled with interestingly colored chutneys, relishes, and the other traditional accompaniments. I didn’t know how to answer and remained silent.

  “How about a little of everything? You don’t need to eat anything you don’t like. Unless, of course, like my Ancient Husband, you’d prefer cold mutton and pickles.”

  I shook my head and glanced at Major Coughlan. The knife and sharpener still in hand, he was sizing up the cold meat as though considering how best to go about carving it. His lack of reaction to his wife’s description of him suggested that the nomenclature might be a nickname.

  Mrs. Coughlan helped me to the colorful food, carefully keeping each portion separate on the plate. The spicey smell made me look forward to trying the curry. But it was not to be.

  The door of the dining room was flung open. Grandmother came in, in her wake Mother and the Indian manservant. I glanced at Mrs. Coughlan; her expression was one of mild surprise and welcome. But before she could speak, Grandmother had crossed the room.

  “Alice,” she said, her voice cold and angry as she took my arm and slid me off the chair. No one spoke as she led me to my mother who clasped me in her arms, then followed Grandmother to the hall door. Behind us I could hear only the rhythmic sound of the bone-handled knife being drawn once again over the steel sharpener.

  WE MARCHED SILENTLY back to Ballydavid. My grandmother, head in air, drew ahead of us, although my mother, holding my hand, was already walking too fast for me. “We thought the tinkers had taken you,” she said, quietly enough for Grandmother not to hear her.

  I didn’t reply. It thought it likely that if I spoke I would draw Grandmother’s wrath, and it seemed wise to allow a little time to elapse before the full extent of my transgressions were discussed.

  They never were. I was sent up to bed as soon as we reached Ballydavid. That I hadn’t had my lunch was an oversight rather than a punishment. I was tired and overexcited—as were Grandmother and my mother—and I shouldn’t be surprised if they both had retired for a prolonged rest that afternoon.

  Their fears were real, although I didn’t then understand their source. When I woke up from my nap, I wondered—there was no clock in my room—if enough time had elapsed for me to go downstairs. I lay in bed for a little time, not reluctant to put off the moment when I would face the reproaches of the adults I had inconvenienced and, apparently, frightened. I considered my mother’s words and thought her fear that I had been stolen by the tinkers illogical. When we had driven past the tinker encampment several days before, I had observed them as carefully as was possible while obeying the injunction against staring. It seemed to me they already had more children than they needed. So why had my mother been afraid? Had they some other use—unknown to me—for children? Did they sell them? Or was it possible that I might have served the same unidentified purpose as the snails whose charred shells had suggested some sinister meal or ritual? Might they have eaten me? I had now frightened myself enough to get out of bed, dress quickly, and go downstairs.

  I opened the door of the drawing room a little and slipped in. Mother was sitting on the sofa, Edward crawling around at her feet. She smiled at me and beckoned. I crossed the room quietly and sat beside her, close enough to feel her warmth. Neither Grandmother nor Aunt Katie seemed to notice my arrival, but I did not have the feeling that I was being pointedly ignored. Avoiding my mothers habit of premature relief, I waited to see what would happen next. Tea had been brought in some time before, and empty teacups and small plates with crumbs had been put back on the tray. My mother put two cucumber sandwiches on a plate. The upper side of the sandwiches had become dry and started to curl at the corners, but I was hungry and ate them happily. When I finished, Mother silently cut a slice of Madeira cake which she handed to me with a gesture that cautioned me not to drop crumbs on the sofa.

  I ate and watched. The room was very quiet, the silence broken by the scratching of Grandmother’s pen and th
e cards that Aunt Katie was laying out for one of her ritual games of patience. Grandmother, at the table beside the window, engrossed in her task, had covered several sheets of writing paper. I glanced at my mother. Her face was calm and relaxed, the expression one of the near happiness she attained when not faced with the demands of others. I, too, was happy that I seemed to have been forgiven or forgotten, grateful for the peace of the late afternoon, the day winding down, the changing color of the light, the quiet of the approaching evening.

  “The nine of spades,” Aunt Katie said dramatically. She stood up and left the room quickly.

  “Oh dear,” mother said sympathetically, but not as though she shared her aunt’s sense that something tragic had occurred. Grandmother did not even look up from her task. I had the impression that she was now writing more quickly and with greater urgency.

  Mother, Grandmother, and Aunt Katie were intensely superstitious, but each had her own taste in superstition. What seemed to one a portent of great weight was merely indulged by the other two, each having some more reliable method of her own to ward off disaster or to predict the future. Grandmother would not allow hawthorn or marigolds inside the house, the stricture against the former at least having a good pagan origin. Aunt Katie depended on cards and symbolic messages from a wide variety of inanimate objects that came unexpectedly into her line of vision. My mother’s foible was a series of small anxious rituals, superstitious and neurotic, the rewards of their observance as unspecified as the disasters that would surely befall if they were ignored.

  Grandmother laid down her pen and read through her list. When she finished she nodded with the satisfaction of one completing an arduous, subtle, and physically exhausting piece of work.

  “Katie—” she said, and then, noticing for the first time that her sister was no longer in the room, turned to Mother.