The small contingent proceeding up the grand stairs. Candle aloft flickering in the breeze, a limping Crooks unable to lift the bag leading the way. Sexton following, kicking as he went, the brass carpet rods. Around the landing, past the great window, facing the grove of beeches silvery in the stilly snowy moonlight. Crooks mumbling back over his shoulder at Sexton.
‘Boots in the house, boots in the house.’
Halfway down the hall, just as a bat flew by overhead, Crooks turning to announce.
‘Your bath is drawn Master Reginald. And supper will be at your convenience.’
I could hear Sexton murmuring under his breath that last word should have the letters I and N in front of it. And by these sounds apparitions and sights, one did indeed know one was home.
Sexton lifting the luggage up on the oak baggage stand. The candles flickering. Darcy Dancer shivering in the damp room. Where under the long acquired dust nothing seemed touched or changed. Opening the shutters, the snow looking even colder out on the trees in the moonlight. The idea of a bath floating with icecubes fills one with dismay. At least Crooks need not worry about the debris and snow melting off Sexton’s boots.
‘The fire’s out Master Darcy. I’ll go fetch matches and light it.’
‘That’s alright Sexton. Leave it till the morning. It will help me get out of bed.’
‘Now is there anything else. That would make your comfort kinder.’
‘No thank you Sexton.’
‘Master Darcy just let me say, it’s good to have you back, you were sadly missed.’
‘I appreciate your saying that, Sexton.’
‘And by god, whose holy name we praise, we’ll have the estate shipshape again in no time.’
Sexton just as of old, always hating to take his departure, lingering, his eye sparkling and as always searching for any new topic of conversation. And I must confess, despite my famished cold condition, I had not the heart not to aid and abet him a little.
‘Who are they Sexton.’
‘Who’s who sir.’
‘Those two new girls.’
‘Well now the two of them arrived at the station. One is perhaps the dumbest creature god ever put on earth, and well she deserves the name Dingbats. Daughter of a blacksmith in Galway. Who I’m sure between belting the sparks out of horseshoes has been trying to get rid of her for years. The agent collared the two of them. Just the day before your father packed up his shotguns and was away to parts unknown.’
‘Is she addressed by the name Dingbats.’
‘It’s cook who started calling her Dingbats. And as it’s now universal, so you might too, being as she’s familiar with the name now. Sure she’d smile back at you if you called her a tart, liar or layabout. And mind you, she’s just enough brains to understand the two last at which she’s best at.’
‘Oh dear me Sexton, do tell. Seems all so familiar.’
‘Dumb when it suits her. And the rest of the time she spends cowering around inside the house terrified of her own shadow seeing a host of ghosts. Swears there’s a rat bigger than a cat in her room. Outside she’s in dread of the dogs. And it’s probably the only thing she’s to be believed about.’
‘Well I can’t think that that’s going to do, Sexton.’
‘Ah but now the other young lady is a different kettle of fish altogether. Parents unknown. And was from out of the female orphanage. By god isn’t she some looker though.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t remark on that Sexton, she seemed to shrink somewhat back in the shadows.’
‘Shy she is. But her wits about her. With shopkeeping experience no less. And a set of teeth you wouldn’t believe were her own. Sculpted they look by Galileo himself.’
Sexton seemed to have revised his feelings about former departed members of the household. Speaking rather nostalgically of Mr Arland my tutor who would have surely corrected him on his reference to Galileo.
‘She’d even be an improvement on the beauty of Baptista Consuelo, upon whom poor old Mr Arland wasted his love, and scourged himself with the evil pain of jealousy. But now there was a man, Master Darcy as who knew his Caesar and Gcero.’
Departing off down the hall, as I closed the door Sexton went murmuring, et incarnatus est. Facit indignatio versum. One did wince at the papist bias in Sexton’s Latin. And his latter phrase certainly, as I loosely translated it to mean righteous wrath creates poetry, did not materialize in my case as the dressing cupboard door, promptly as I opened it, fell off its hinges and my righteous wrath created a bloody blast and damn and a good kick to the shins of the wretched furnishing. All my clothes too small. My dressing gown coming above my knees, the sleeves inches above my wrist. The faded mauve and the chocolate brown borders and facings which sported my mother’s racing colours, now mottled with a dusty mould.
Going bathroom wards, a breeze blowing out the candle in the hall. And promptly tripping over the carpet to open a wrong door. To the scrabblings of a rat, and the fume of dead mice. A taste and sure smell of things to come. Dear god. Please. Give me fortitude to, by oneself, stomach such immense difficulties. I do not ask to lie on velvet. Or even to wine and dine well. Just merely to have some horses sound and be able to once more decently hunt, decently shoot and decently fish.
A relief to find the fragrance of bath oil in the ablution room. The towels dank, no longer aired as they once were in the kitchen oven. But Crooks had indeed drawn my brimming bath steaming hot. In which stretched immersed I immediately fell asleep. And with my head slipping under the water, nearly drowning. Dreaming momentarily of a rather recent night life moment in Dublin after the races. Of a waiter, wildly out of control, rushing from one of the better restaurant kitchens to dump a pail of freshly caught uncooked prawns on top of an American lady’s head who’d incessantly complained she wanted really fresh seafood. I did on the real occasion witnessing it with my pal Rashers Ronald, who bent double at our table slapping both his thighs, also ungentlemanly laugh. But now waking not knowing where I was, I felt boiled like a lobster in a pot.
Darcy Dancer wrapped in a towel shivering back along the corridor. Seeing by the light now coming from the staircase. Avoid holes worn in this ancient carpet. My slippers too small. My dressing gown hopeless, split in half by my shoulders. Use its tattered girdle to hang myself when that time comes. Floorboards crackling underfoot ready to give way. Perhaps I shall move. Select a bigger, grander bedroom. More befitting my position. Better suited to taking my privacy. Decorate it in a manner of my recent preference for Regency. Somehow black dog doldrums and despondency do not seem to soul scourging when one can reach out and lightly caress a lavender scented rosewood furnishing in one’s life. And damn it, it does not mean that one is in the least effeminate.
My door ajar. My hairbrush moved. My ties laid out on my dressing table. Shoes neatly placed together. And a linen card propped against the mirror.
Sir: Sherry will be served in the library.
A note written in the most elegant print, ever so slightly slanted to the left. And who now would know the use or meaning of a colon in this household. Perhaps of course Sexton, who would certainly pretend he knew. But he has never written such a fine hand. The pen’s black ink strokes discreet yet bold enough. And curled as if engraved. Well, well. Dear me. Provided the sherry has the suitably fresh nutty tang of old, this could all be rather unexpectedly cheering. Requires a dig in my luggage for my silk shirt. And my gold best cufflinks.
Darcy Dancer in black tweed, a blue polka dot tie and silk hanky peeking above a pocket. A candelabrum placed on the window sill of the staircase landing. Making it all feel a little safer proceeding down these steps. Flame reflecting on the panes of the window. And right here where I stood once. A tiny innocent boy. When from the front hall foot of the stairs, my so called father, a sour cruel look on his face, called me a little bastard. And one does wonder. What now do all these portraits think. The long departed dead. Staring down from the mouldering walls. Grand aunt of my mother’s. Painted as she regally sat on a dais in the ballroom. Her haughty beautiful face. A ringlet halo of hair. The indistinction close up of the thick mottled lumps of colour which come into miraculous focus as one stands away. The sumptuous finery of her black lace gown. Bejewelled straps across her pink shoulders. Sparkling necklace of pearls and diamonds upon her bosom. If artistic standards are to be considered, this is undoubtedly one of the finer pictures escaping theft by my father. Who upon being advised that certain paintings could indeed be genuinely by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo then assiduously denuded the walls of same.