Petunia shying, rearing, falling sideways and throwing Darcy Dancer to the ground. His skull crashing back banging the bulging roots of a beech tree. Petunia struggling up shaking her head and with reins slapping loose, galloping away. Darcy Dancer getting to his feet. Stumbling forward on the wet boggy ground. Turning to see Petunia pounding and crashing up through furze, bracken and briars. Abandoning me. If anything a horse hates it’s a ghost. Almost feel cracking my head open is a relief. Sticky on the back of one’s neck. Blood. Not a sign of anyone or anything on the bridge. Amazing how one’s troubles finally drive one into having visions. Just like everyone else mentally unhinged at Andromeda Park.
Darcy Dancer once more catching Petunia’s reins as she stood finally grazing the other side of the hill and halfway across the bog. With the brown chill water filling and spilling out over the tops of one’s boots. Nearly dark and nearly lost Just shadows on the horizon. Without a sign of any light or life. Except snipe, wings beating as they chirp speeding left and right, away into the sky. Can’t even see the top turret of the great castle. Walk Petunia quietened out on the edge of these wild uncharted lands. Without disappearing forever into a bog hole. Dump the moisture out of one’s boots. Bless oneself like Dingbats does when she sees a ghost. Or my highly exaggerated penis engorged.
Darcy Dancer returning over another two miles. By the forest and around the lake. To at last find one’s way to the parkland meadow. Without a horse between one’s thighs one’s legs would be frozen. Cross the stream. Head up the hill. The house looms darkly with all its shuttered windows. Except one. The whim room. Behind the shiny black panes. A figure standing watching. O god what new strange haunting is afoot.
Following a hot bath I lay shovelling more sherry than was good for me down my throat. And wrapped in blankets on the chaise longue reclined waiting for supper. Imagining that Dingbats had gossiped below stairs about seeing me with a raging erection in the bath. And Leila would think one a shameless debauchee. Returned from wallowing in the fleshpots of Dublin. With ill met dissolute friends. And at the knock on my door. Hoping with all my present indisposition that she would come. I was utterly disconsolate when Norah did instead. Saying it was everyone else’s night off. And a dance in the town. With a brandy I went to bed. And lay practising dying. Somehow muchly preferable to being killed. By the bloody worries here. Even the men taking my mood from the nosegay of a morning. Made one choose to wear a dried purple cornflower. No point in letting them think I’m happy and that the time was ripe to ask for a bit of hay, straw, firewood or extra milk. As one was often asked for anyway. And one did not exactly scowl but I tell you my demeanour was considerably less than ebullient.
Needless to say in finally tossing and turning to sleep one had a nightmare of a dream. Of being attired in pyjamas in the front lobby of the Royal Hibernian Hotel unable to pay my hotel bill. With Rashers Ronald behind me with his very best British military accent blasting out pretending to be my adjutant and me his general. Rashers demanding to see the manager and rather loudly and pretentiously declaring that I was a man of enormous land holdings. Plus being the Marquis of Delgany and Prince of Kilquade. Who was not about to be insulted by a hotel clerk’s insolence asking for settlement of an account. But somehow in the dream one was insulted. And I think referred to as a chancer. And Rashers Ronald, as he once did when so called by a clerk on a similar occasion, loosed his fly, unreeled his prick, and peed all over the lobby. Of course Rashers was peeing too over one’s heels and it wasn’t till Crooks himself woke me from my thrashings about the bed that I realized it was all a dream. Crooks with his arm in a sling. A limping Dingbats putting a tray by my bedside. Reassuringly set with Meissen. A plate of six sausages, two rashers, and three fried eggs. But somehow even a stack of toasted soda bread and slabs of butter only minus a knife, pepper and salt did not lighten a blackdog depression crushing down upon one. To put a shotgun barrel to one’s head in this loveless life. Condemned. By convention and birth. To the great granite shell of this mansion. To all these prying eyes and ears listening. And who would care if I were found mortally wounded. A few screeches out of Dingbats perhaps at the blood and gore. A message to the victualler in the village. To prepare the body. And in one of our own sycamore coffins I’d be lowered in the ground. Sexton would mind. He would I think be quite sorry to miss our talks. But none other would much give two or more hoots.
‘And how are things in Shangri La this morning Master Darcy.’
‘They are Sexton I suppose, as per usual.’
‘Well let me tell you. Right straight from the contentment here in the intimacy of all these growing things. And having recently travelled up to Dublin and visited the Botanic Gardens of Trinity College, that what we need now is a new heated plant house in which choice and tender exotics can be grown. The professor himself from the College will come down to consult.’
‘Well in my opinion Sexton, I do, I really do think instead of a new plant house that this entire island of ours should, with suitably strong tug boats, be shifted many latitudes further south. Especially now that upended floorboards have been added to cracked ceilings and walls held together only by the debris choking them.’
‘Well take consolation sir now that if the dust and debris filled chinks and crevices were over cleaned, dusted or scrubbed away out of the big house, the winter winds would penetrate all that more arctic into your bones and likely freeze you and the rest of the occupants to death.’
‘While I take no consolation I do quite see your point, Sexton. Clearly a dirty house is a warmer one.’
‘Fronti nulla fides. And that Latin translated, means. There is no trusting to appearances.’
Between Sexton’s botanical dreams and Latin references one did want to broach the matter of the figure on the bridge as casually as possible. If anyone was left sane enough in this place who might give one a reasonable explanation of the previous evening’s events it was Sexton.
‘And by the way, Sexton. I was out exercising yesterday evening. Went beyond Thormondstown to Thomastown. Got quite lost. Petunia has put on rather too much condition and is not as fit as one would like. Thought a good long run would do her good. Just happened on the way by the old ruined bridge.’
‘Ah the old stone bridge that’s tumbled down by the oak forest over the big river.’
‘Yes, and I wonder is anyone ever to fix it to be crossed again.’
‘True vaulting in the arches that was built with. There isn’t a stone mason about if you searched a dozen parishes around here that could do a job the like of that. And if there were he wouldn’t go near it.’
‘Why not.’
‘Be gob. Why not. I’ll tell you why not. Been a couple of heads gone white overnight with fright. That’s why not. The ghost of the lame girl haunts it she does. Nineteen summers old she was. Her horse threw her upon the stones that once built the bridge over the river. Her back and neck broken. Lay a whole night before she was found in the morning. Be gob I was there wasn’t I. Helped lift her. Her black long hair spread on the grass. A face like your mother’s. Her beautiful blue eyes staring up at you. O god it would crush your heart. Her hat found a mile away afloat on the river. But her horse nor saddle have never been seen since. I’d say ended up in the clutches of some villain.’