A malodorous sewer smell in the basement hall. Edna Annie tried to get up to bow as I entered her warm little room and I had to hold her and help her back into her chair but up again she stood, her white hair with a red ribbon coffied and brushed up from her birdlike skull. Her gnarled fingers busy as ever knitting and grabbing me strongly by the arm. Making this supreme effort to leave her bedridden bed. Hugging me, the tears were welling and dropping from her old pale blue eyes.
‘Ah Master Darcy you’re hitting the ceiling with your head now. A gossoon no more, god love you. Sure I haven’t been able to make soap now. My days are numbered. Out there soon under the sod.’
‘Nonsense, you look so marvellous.’
‘Ah flattery will get you somewhere.’
Taking a peek in the kitchen a hot breeze blew at me out the door. The nervously collected snugly comfortable staff jumping to their feet at the snap of Crooks’ fingers. Dingbats with her cheeks bulging out with cake. The rats had not upset her appetite. One could see the wooden backs and seats of the chairs shining with the months and months of polishing from so many human bottoms and shoulders. Table centre, large pots of tea, plates stacked with biscuits, cake, barmbrack. Mounds of golden butter. Pots of jams. Clearly no deprivation or starvation was going on below stairs. Kettles steaming on the stove. Blazing fire in the fireplace. Mouths chewing. Awful smell of cigarettes. Frankly it looked like a feast was going on.
Climbing back up the servants’ stairs. Damp everywhere one looked. To push open this mahogany door to the old schoolroom. To step inside. My books as I opened them, their pages softened by moisture, nearly fell apart. The cobwebbed maps peeling down from the wall. Abandoned crayons and pencils. So many hours spent here. My dear Mr Arland. His sad yet noble life. The only man aside from Sexton and Uncle Willie upon whom I ever felt I could depend. Young as he must have been as my tutor, he so ably yet so gently led me into the old ways of the world.
As I departed in the front hall, I passed Leila, the only one not at the feast, on her knees cleaning ash out of the grate. One is now even more frightened of speaking than she must be of being spoken to. God one must get on. Sympathy for others in a household has a way of depriving one of convenience. My cap and scarf still miraculously where I last left them with my boots in the small vestibule inside the door. Shake off the dust and push my feet into my father’s Wellingtons. Take a walking stick. Go out.
Darcy Dancer, blowing his clouds of breath out in the crisp cold air and kicking his feet through the snow. Stand looking out across the whitened parkland. The river flowing darkly between its banks. The woods beyond up the hill. How can it continue. The massive roof to stay atop this house. One’s spirit did crash down as one saw a new crack in the front hall and the plaster crumbling. Rain stains on the front hall tiles. The food pours down all these throats. The worst that can happen is I die. At least there is no shortage of graves. Lie next to my mother. But I did take heart again at the brief sight of Leila at the grate. Was tempted to summon her to the estate office. Mention the subject of a medical consultation with Dr Wellbeing in the town. And ask her. Would you please smile so that I can see your teeth.
Go now making a fresh path of footsteps towards the orchard. The snow dry and ice patches crackling underfoot. I would in Dublin be at this moment taking a mid morning coffee in the lounge of the Hibernian Hotel waiting for the likes of Rashers Ronald to come eagerly sauntering in. With some new plan for making a fortune or at least a fiver by lunchtime. And to dissect the previous night’s partying. And hear his very English voice say bash on regardless. His face flushed with new further and better particulars of plans to marry a rich widow. And then his octaves dropping to his confidential whisper as he inevitably wanted the loan of a fiver till teatime. He would I’m sure tell me to pawn Andromeda Park, land, stock and chattels. And one supposes he would be right.
Push open this barred squealing iron gate. The apple tree branches weighted down. There ahead the potting shed. Smoke rising out of Sexton’s tiny chimney jutting above the wall. The world I left here. Cows gobbling up the juicy autumn apples. Chasing to catch fat frisky lambs as they would run for their tiny tail twitching lives. This old green door, brass handle worn so shiny. Well oiled hinges. The comfort inside of ancient smells. His Latin lists pinned upon the walls. This place in which Sexton offers up the toil of his life to beget beauty, bent at his bench whistling happily, gently lovingly packing his plant roots in turf mould.
‘Ah good morning Master Darcy. I see you’ve come safely across the tundra. This weather’s great for tracking the poachers. But now as soon as the frost’s gone from the ground, I’m going to plant out in honour of your return, the greatest avenue over there of Acer Pseudoplatanus Brilliantissimum.’
‘Dear me Sexton, that is awfully thoughtful of you. But you must let me in on the secret, my Latin is awfully rusty this morning.’
‘Ah the noble sycamore, Master Darcy.’
‘I do wish that appellation Master might be dropped, Sexton. It leaves me looking rather too young in a task I feel requires one to seem a little older.’
‘Ah it’s the habit of it. But certainly it’s only right and proper, as gaffer you’d be now the viceroy, hospodar, pasha, tsar, and undisputed Squire Lord of Andromeda Park.’
‘Well we needn’t be quite so extravagant about it, the mere word sir will do.’
‘At your command sir.’
‘And saluting Sexton is certainly not necessary.’
‘Ah now this morning you’d not be I see in the happiest of moods.’
‘Well I have just cause. The sewers.’
‘I know sir. Conduits burst, pipes blocked up all over kingdom come. Not a drain working. A blessing it’s all frozen by the cold. Everything on the blink. But for us born here in Ireland, where god has long looked down on us smiling, and kept us safe from the world’s scourges and disasters, its floods, earthquakes, poisonous spiders and snakes, and from the foul diseases of impurity, we should remain truly thankful.’
‘One is quite aware of our gifts from god but somehow it’s still all quite bad enough. And I should be glad if it does not ever get worse. God did however send us famine.’
‘Only to remind us of our favoured position.’
‘I see.’
‘Well it’s not the half of it now, I was only getting you ready to hear the finale. Two old cows who should have known better frozen stiff as statues as they lay down by the lake to sleep. We’ll have to wait till they thaw to move them.’
‘I’ll have the agent buy in new stock.’
‘Let me buy the stock Master Darcy, ah sorry that slip. Sir it is. And never mind that agent. Up there in the estate office like it was his own private preserve, Napoleon calling for that Leila to fetch cups of tea all morning when he wasn’t at the whisky in the wine cellar.’
‘Where exactly did the agent find her Sexton.’
‘Now you’ve got me there. I’d only know he’s very sweet on her. Comes stealing my indoor flowers no less to present her with. He found that other one of the frizzy hair in the scullery of a pub, breaking so many glasses and dishes the poor old publican was ready to pay to have her taken away at any price. The agent he’ll lie low now you’re back. But sine dubio the esprit de corps of the household is very low. You might say, it’s made no one any saner and that’s a fact. I wouldn’t let them cut or remove a thorn tree, there beyond, in case it would bring any more ill luck.’