Before wedding bells chime
How I do love this time
Would it could never change
This sweetness of my dream
Of being sweet seventeen.
‘I think the poem and she are so beautiful.’
Still with my glass of wine raised in my hand. And I nearly dropped it. Finding her words spoken as if she were standing inside my soul. Caught so unaware. And speechless. As I was just three previous days ago. When from the main staircase landing where always I pause to look out at the so stately silver boughed grove of beeches. I had just turned from the window to step down the remaining stairs. To see Leila standing on the black and white tiles of the front hall. She seemed suddenly taller. Her well turned slender black stockinged legs. Black hair swept back from her face, her chin raised. And I hardly know any other word one can choose but aristocratic, to describe her at that moment. As she looked up at the painting of my mother’s grand aunt. I froze frightened to move. The seconds dragging on. And still she stood there looking. Desperately not wanting to disturb her, I tried to retreat back up around the landing. Promptly of course kicking and clattering loose a carpet rod with my heel. And startled, she saw me. I felt so mortified to have intruded upon her in her quiet communion. I wanted to say. Please. Do. Go on watching. It’s my favourite painting. But even as she rushed away, I knew, that though we had yet to speak, it was as if we had already spoken. A spiritual language that only ancient friends can speak. And go as silent companions touching in each other’s lives. And there she stands now staring me straight in the eye. The chilblained redness it caused me pain to see in her trembling hands. And nervous as she clearly is, I am even more so. My dressing gown sticking out in an inexplicable randiness so that I must move behind the back of the chair. A cow moaning somewhere in the distance. The thump thump of a chimney cowl spinning. Her face flushed pink in the fire and mirrored candle light. The white skin of her neck a bright red.
‘I should not have taken such a liberty. To say that. But I could not help seeing, open as it was the other day to the page on your dresser. And some might think such a poem trivial but it so clearly came from the heart.’
The precise, confident sound of her voice. Yet so soft and sweet. Her words. Intrude. The word trivial. Coming from her soft moist lips. Leaving me awed that she should have the solemnity of spirit to think them in her mind. Under her thick black hair. Behind the alabaster beauty of her face. Surprising me so much I find my mouth opening and not a word of my own coming out. Clearly now she thinks she has overstepped her position. Before one could reply suitably. Moving her shaking hands behind her back in embarrassment. Watch her fingers move plates to balance the tray and lift it deftly. Her black stockings on her slender but strong legs. How does one deal with disaster that steals so stealthily into one’s life. So at a loss. What does one say. Stay. Put back that tray. Don’t please go towards the door. Speak your beautiful voice again. Don’t avert your eyes. As past me you go. Berry bright luscious lips pressed together as if any moment tears will pour from your eyes. Head bent. Door closing. Your feet. Gone. Leaving me more crushed and dismal now than ever. Offending you. Cruelly bruised your spirit. Nothing seems to go right in this place. Everything becoming like a dirge forever playing in one’s heart. Her words. Said again. Intrude. Trivial. How can I ever find other words to say to you back. And what I could not ever admit. Those previous three days ago. That after watching you in the hall. That later that day. At a water trough. And closing an old iron gate into a low rushy field. My hand on the wall. An evening sun coming over the rising western hills, warming one’s back. And suddenly I felt as if shot. That every energy left in me would burst forth in tears. Your name on my lips. Leila. And again. Leila. And good god it cannot. It must not. It will not Happen. That I stand here. Tonight. As I did that afternoon. Trying to make you know. I want to touch. Place my fingers against you. Press lips to your hair. Leave them there.
Like the snow lies
On the tree branches bent
To breaking
5
Since the night she spoke of the poem in my mother’s album, nothing could drive the thought of her out of one’s mind. I knew the touch of her hand everywhere. My breeches, stock, jersey, laundered by Edna Annie, now carefully neatly folded and placed on my mother’s dressing room chair. My socks in a symmetrical pyramid on top of my underwear. I stood staring not wanting to move them. To leave them just as her hands had. Wondering where her fingers had rested. Seeing where she creased to make the folds. And then finally lifting the clothes in a sacred bundle, making space and placing them away in a bottom drawer of my mother’s dresser. Where they stay untouched.
I had thought life had so hardened me to have made me free of such wretchedly painful sentimentality. To atone for such lapse these last days before the lawn meet, one brandished out at dawn saddling up to exercise horses before breakfast and again every afternoon before tea time. Still searching for the stallion. But only finding the furrow marks of his hoofs and where he had removed great patches of bark from trees and chewed saplings to the ground.
One abysmally attempted to have the servants’ bell to my mother’s apartments reactivated, the wires and pulleys clearly having been rusted into total disuse. And for one’s trouble one got a twisted ankle, falling in the dark into where the floorboards had been removed. And on that exhausted evening, I ordered an early supper and went to bed. Hoping desperately that Leila would come with my tray. But Dingbats did instead. And wouldn’t you know she would with one bloodcurdling crash, not only fall over the upended floorboards but with her leg plunging through the ceiling below, send my meal over the hall rug for the rats to have a feast.
One did hope for a cheering day to dawn soon. Heading out after breakfast to find, as always, Sexton safe in the warmth of his potting shed. One of the few places one could take refuge. And pass the time of day.
‘Ah how are things in Katmandu this morning Master Darcy.’
Things were certainly not good in Katmandu, especially in the afternoon. With an irate farmer coming thumping a walking stick on the front door. And a family of tinkers found milking half our cows. Dingbats poured a bucket of hot grease down the sink and as it congealed the kitchen was flooded. Crooks attempting to get the dumb waiter to the pantry working once more, had his knuckles crushed for his efforts and Catherine wondering what all the screams were about looked up the shaft to have the dumb waiter come crashing down on her head. I must say, one did just pop out of the maelstrom for a Madeira behind the locked door of the library. No wonder the country houses for miles around were full of their drunken inmates.
One felt quite tipsy saddling up Petunia to ride out. To view land a rather rat faced farmer had bought surrounding a distant choice field to which he said I no longer had a right of way. Suffice to say I rode straight through his feeble fence. And found myself where banks were washed down along the big river and a flood was pushing out across the fields. I was planning to have a gallop across the long meadow joining Andromeda Park to the land of the great castle. And maybe catch a glimpse of the exotic goings on one felt must be in evidence there. Low dark clouds and heavy mist were lowering from the sky. Suddenly the great castle was out of sight as one got lost descending through an ancient oak wood. Too far from roads even for the agent to be bothered stealing. Surrounded by a plantation of gone wild rhododendrons, merging into another wood. Dripping spooky fern. Mushrooms sprouting out of the boggy tangled roots. Nearly dark now. Along the river the bridge is half down. Remains of an old farm road. Rotted trees. Foundation mounds of abandoned cottages. Centuries ago, feet trod and lives were lived here. And something is ahead there. On the little stone bridge. Rein up. There is something. Petunia shaking. So am I. In the white wisps of mist. Like a christening dress. In long flowing veils. Someone is standing on the ruin of the bridge. A figure. Swathed in white. Long dark flowing hair. Her garments move as she stands so still.