‘Sure you’ll be carrying on like the Duke of Portland in Welbeck Abbey, with shutters closed and no one seeing you for days on end.’
‘Many things Sexton to look after in the office, keeps me in.’
‘And now wasn’t that something. Our little beauty Leila, our St Joan of Arc. Masterly, masterly. Now twisting that eegit Marquis around her tiny finger. Did you hear about that.’
‘I heard, Sexton.’
‘Writing to her he is. She’ll soon move in the highest circles in the land. She’ll rule nations that one. Gone from here in a trice. Saw the envelope meself. The coat of arms there emblazoned in the red wax.’
‘And it does seem to me, Sexton all quite improper.’
‘What, to write to a beautiful woman. When was that ever improper.’
‘I am merely suggesting Sexton that she merely works here in a not particularly esteemed position.’
‘And didn’t she acquit herself in that that evening after the hunt. Let me tell you it wasn’t, was it, as if Apollo was playing his lyre to the muses. Ha ha. Cromwell at Drogheda was more like it. Except now the boot is on the other foot. Struck in defence of you. Fought by your side. Saved you by her loyalty. Ah now Master Darcy, with all due respect to your Protestant forebears, an Irish lass can rise to the heights. Sure who hasn’t in low moments prayed dear god, teach me how to accept the awful scourge of being Irish and that so many other lucky nations and lucky men are not. I’ve thought it I have. Plenty. When they’d shoot you down in England upon the sound of your voice.’
That darkening evening I found myself walking away from Sexton, passing his Stations of the Cross. Veronica wiping the face of Jesus. Jesus falls for the second time. Yes. Leila. Loyal. If you were ever needing my care I would come she said. And she did. And now. Like the gay sound of some summer laughter on the air. She may be gone. Leaving me bereft as I wake yet another morn. So hard to disturb my bones from a bed. That at least keeps the frost off my knees. But not out of my heart. Silent in the household. Always a sign that everyone is warmly collected in the kitchen shining the seats of the chairs. Bent over tea, bread and butter, fried eggs, rashers, sausages. One even has given up making loud noises of my approach. To scare them back outside to work again. At least getting them as far as the underground tunnel. With all its blessings and grievous drawbacks. Built to avoid the aromas of manures or the sight of servants. But certainly more used as an idlers’ paradise, with a smell of contented tobacco smoke coming out the high end.
‘Sir. Sir. It’s your breakfast out here I’m waiting with.’
A thump on the door. Darcy Dancer turning to face the slit of light creeping on the carpet. Yanking up blankets close around the throat. This pre dawn moment one does lie muscles stiff in bed utterly shattered and beaten. And back a week ago, one thought it was another dream. Or nightmare. But the cheeky ruddy nerve. The Marquis galloping off in the night Having run amok among one’s female servants. The whole ruddy lot could end up pregnant beyond belief. The place a maternity hospital. Full of his illegitimate heirs.
‘Come in.’
Dingbats, tripping into the room and clattering the crockery on the tray. The faint hall candlelight behind her. Her hair uncombed, looking like it’d been struck by lightning. My shutters rattling. Closed hopefully against new ill winds. Barred against the hysterical bank manager’s letters. And a dream I had last night of the agent and the timber merchant cutting down a giant old beech, and his men swarming over it like a nest of ants, taking it away. Then seeing just beyond the ridge that the whole parkland was denuded. Stumps of oaks, elms, sycamores, chestnuts, the meadows scarred and rutted.
‘It be dark. It would be drowning rats, such a fierce wild night sir. Wait now while I feel for the box of matches and light the candle.’
On the chimney piece three candles alight. Discomforting my eyes. The rest of the night awake with a ton slate coming adrift on the roof. The rumbling slide. The crash on the front steps below. Pity it didn’t wait to hit the agent’s lawyer or even better the bailiff who’s soon to be banging on the door. Instead of leaving a gaping hole up there somewhere for the rain.
‘Would I put the tray here now, sir.’
‘Is it clean Mollie on the bottom.’
‘Sure it’s the one I fell down with and wiped later I did.’
One has to take every precaution. This day after my sisters announced they were having a ball. Can you imagine. To meet amusing people they said. Bloody hell the house is full of amusing people. A ruddy vaudeville. Dingbats herself two mornings ago on the servants’ stairs carrying a tray, fell tumbling down head over heels covered in butter, coffee, sugar and cream. Claiming she was goosed on the top step by Crooks who, laughing so hard himself, fell after her. Both promptly spending the day in bed. And after the night of the Mental Marquis, rape was the talk of all the staff. And Kitty and Norah locking doors. Giggling. Hoping no doubt someone would break in and jump on them. Crooks rumoured seen past midnight without the merest trace of a hobble or limp, flitting and pirouetting down the hallway in a flowing gown and lady’s Ascot hat. Isn’t that bloody amusing enough. Transvestites anonymous. Without having a ball. Of course outside, there’s a circus. Luke tossed by the bull into manure slops, and getting up running like a blind piccaninny. Straight into a loose pig he clung to and was then dragged into the stable where he ended up covered in barley seed. Crooks then flouncing about the house with a walking stick, and imitating Miss von B’s most officious manner.
‘I won’t have outdoor staff using the indoor comforts of this house, not while I’m butler here, I won’t.’
And Luke in the hospital. Because washing the muck and barley off himself and never having been in a bathtub before in his life, slipped and broke his arse bone. Crooks loftily announcing.
‘Serves him right taking the presumption of cleansing himself in the manner to which he is clearly not accustomed.’
And the ferocious bull was all the talk of the house till Foxy Slattery’s younger brother to whom Foxy must have taught every trick thought he’d have a go with him. And got flung up into the branches of a tree. Then the little eegit caused a fire in the tack room chimney while heaping up logs and toasting himself asleep. The tiresome little scoundrel then pouring lamp oil on it to put it out. The only thing he seems to know how to do is every five minutes sneak into the house to get biscuits from the kitchen. Or if Catherine is resting after her lunch, to fry up a cauldron of eggs, bacon and sausages, enough for an army. And then into the jams and preserves, and after scooping out half their contents the little fucker tightens the caps on everything in the larder so that cook can’t open them. Till Dingbats tried breaking them open with a poker and serves me broken glass in my breakfast honey and jam. Meet amusing bloody people. My god. Someone too, of course, was also being amusing supposing to entertain me by placing a rubber mouse in my bed, not realizing that such creatures were already scampering across my face very much alive and waking me from sleep in the middle of the night. Meet bloody amusing people. My dears. They’re right here under your noses. Of course they’re no doubt wanting their potential suitors, at whom they invariably were turning up their noses, to all be arrayed at their disposal along the ballroom walls. That is if Lavinia wasn’t already hiding behind various pieces of drawing room furniture, as she did when Crooks came to announce a caller who was it appeared, enamoured of her, and of whom it would also appear she was not enamoured, while Christabel at the same time was throwing herself with a screech prostrate in a faint on the soaked garden lawn to attract his attention.